upon them—and he attempts no concealment they seem to have been neither numerous nor great. He was no seducer of female innocence. He was not a gambler. Nobody ever said he was a drunkard. What then were his sins? Ask your own heart, and it will answer, Probably the same as your own. But he moved before the eyes of the world, an object conspicuous in his own light; and thus the stains on his "bright and shining youth" were visible both near and afar, while the blots on yours have been unobserved, in its obscurity and insignificance. Were a sudden revelation to be made, before the eyes of the little world in which you move, (we mean nothing personal,) of all your delinquencies, into what a horrible monster would you be transformed! You, the immaculate, would be covered over with black and yellow spots, like a leopard or the plague.

In Byron's after life, there was much to condemn; "things ensued that wanted grace;" but let us not heap upon his youth all the charges to which he may plead guilty in more advanced years. Above all, let us not heap upon it charges now known to be as false as ever were canted from the lips of malignant hypocrisy;

nor believe that there was any resemblance at all between him-a noble, but self-misguided man, and the picture of the Fiend, painted to represent him, by stupid sinners, whose imaginations could soar no higher than the old story of the Devil with Horns. But the truly pious,they who, knowing the corruption of our nature, have by that knowledge been taught

"Still to suspect, and still revere themselves

In lowliness of thought,"

will see in Byron a fallen brother like themselves; and instead of loudly declaiming against his sins, which they cannot know, silently repent of their own, and keep aloof from all temptation to those which do the most easily beset them, perhaps as fatal as any that ever vanquished By

ron.

So shall the cause of Morality and Religion be upheld by their Flaming Ministers"-Justice and Truth.

Now-no more. Recollecting Southey's Life of Nelson, and Lockhart's Life of Burns, we do not hesitate to say, that as far as our knowledge extends, Moore's Life of Byron is the best book of Biography in the English language.

MR MOORE has been at some pains to prove that Byron's course of life, previous to his Pilgrimage-with the exception, perhaps, of his early boyhood in Scotland-was "the very reverse of poetical." His athletic sports, his battles, his love of dangerous enterprise at Harrow, were all, it seems, unfriendly to the meditative pursuits of poetry; and however they might promise to render him, at some future time, a subject for bards, gave assuredly but little hope of his shining first among bards himself. The habits of his life at the University were even still less intellectual and literary; playing at hazard, fencing and sparring, bear-baiting, and bulldog-fighting, if not the most favourite, were at least the most innocent of his pursuits. His time in London passed equally unmarked either by mental cultivation or refined amusement. He haunted hotels. Such a life, his biographer thinks, must have been wholly incompatible with those "habits of contemplation," by which the mental faculties are unfolded and refined, and more especially those essential to success in song.

Allow us to say, that it is no easy matter to sketch even the outline of a young poet's education. The scheme that might be good for one, would be bad for another; and, as to "habits of contemplation,” and so forth, why, in many cases, the later they are acquired, so much the bet

VOL. XXVII. NO. CLXIV.

ter; for, when too early indulged in, they make men dreamers. Pray, what is there for the waxing intellect and imagination, between the years of twelve and seventeen, to contemplate? The external world. Well, then, upon it Byron seems always to have looked with delight; the passionate feeling was sufficient; no need to keep staring eternally at streams, or trees, or clouds, or hills, in fits of abstraction, as if there were some mighty mystery about them, into which no poet could get initiated, without standing hour after hour, all by himself, with folded arms, in the open air, perhaps without a hat, like a simpleton. True, that there is a mighty mystery about all creation; but the young poet is the most unlikely person in the whole world to resolve it; witness Keates, and even Shelley, who began far too soon to form habits of contemplation on nature; the first from some strange sort of whimsies, and the second from some strange sort of scenery, so that they both became fantastic in their rites of worship of the Mighty Mother; and to the last-alas, it came too soon!-whined like spoiled children of genius. But, besides the external world of nature, there is the internal world of mind. And would you have the mere boy, between twelve and seventeen, to meditate on the structure and constitution of that world? Would you have him to form habits 2 E

of contemplation on his own soul, while

"Like some tall palm, the noiseless fabric grows"

grows of itself, flinging wider and wider every week-and 'tis spring all the year—its thousand branches all glowing green as the sea, and sometimes when winds are blowing strong, roaring loud as the sea, even as if a thunder-cloud were in the hollowsounding heart of its umbrage, which, in one moment, is again hushed as death? The soul will keep-thinkthink-thinking away upon and about itself; but by fits and starts, into which it is, as it were, precipitated; notGod forbid!-in regular habits of contemplation. The boy who makes a regular study of his own soul, will soon cease to have one, and become an absolute metaphysician.

We cannot, then, agree with Moore in thinking that Byron's life at Harrow-where he was chiefly distinguished as an idle and daring schoolboy-was "the very reverse of poetical." That life is the most poetical which is the fullest of impulses; and Byron's life at Harrow was full to overflowing of affections and passions. We must first feel, and then think; first experience, and then analyze ; else we put the cart before the horse, and may stand stockstill till death. Byron did not, during play hours, sport Tityrus "sub tegmine fagi," but, though lame, preferred cricket; and can there be any doubt that, out of school, a bat is better than a book, and the wickets a thousand times more poetical than the gates of Paradise Lost? The very bodies of rejoicing schoolboys at play are spiritual-not at all like the bodies of elderly gentlemen like Mr Moore and us-and "poetic visions swarm on every bough" of the green shady trees, rustling over their heads as they are swimming like Dracones in the milk-warm

rivers of Summer, or racing along the banks, to dry themselves in the sunshine, all as naked as the day they were born. Byron's life was the very reverse of poetical"-forsooth, at his beloved Ida, because his bathing and his bowling were good, -his diving at the top of the tree, and his right mawley dangerous to the ugliest customers among the clodhopping Pubes round Harrow on the Hill! This seemeth to us to be somewhat shallow philosophy-and to have been borrowed by Mr Moore from Dr Beattie, who, though one of the most delightful of poets and of men, was rather miss-mollyish and musical, and gave to his Edwin an effeminate character-too passive for a Minstrel, who ought to be in the whole frame-work of his life-as much as his fate will allow-a Hero. Shenston, probably, would have exhi bited, at Harrow, "habits of contemplation"-but Byron had too much sense and soul to oppose natureand, on the whole, we prefer Thyrza to Delia, Childe Harold to the Schoolmistress-Newstead Abbey to the Leasowes.

But, the truth is, that Byron, before he went to Harrow, had been a great reader-and he was no small reader at Harrow. He had gormandized on much history, poetry, voyages, and travels-tearing out and absolutely eating authors' hearts. His mind was early full both of natural and acquired knowledge-and fortunately all his acquired knowledge was natural. His soul obeyed its own bidding-but hated taskwork. Yet, though an imperfect classical scholar-for his classical education had been botched by frequent removes from school to school

he saw into Homer farther than he did into a millstone. Had it not been so-never never-a very few years afterwards-could he have exclaimed

At Cambridge Mr Moore has told us very little about Byron's lifeyet we see no reason for believing it to have been " the reverse of poetical." Young poets must have their amusements at college, like young prosers. They cannot surely always be forming and indulging in "habits of contemplation!" Now, what are poetical amusements? Playing on the flute or flageolet-fiddle-English or Scotch-or that eternal grumbletonian, the unhappy violoncello? Sketching trees and towers in chalk, black or red, on whitey-brown? Taking lessons in net-work from young ladies that superintend circulating libraries? Perpetually buying gloves-or oil macassar in shops where the breath of the fair distributress is lost in one sultry haze of miscellaneous perfumery? Why, all that is vastly well to those who like it; and Byron, no doubt, occasionally partook, according to the best of his abilities, in such poetical recreations. But what if he, on the whole, preferred swimming-playing at hazard-sparring-sometimes with a man, and sometimes, as it is said, with a bear? What if he occasionally even drove the cold-meat-cart?* Is the behaviour of a being by hypothesis human and rational, when we look on him playing the fiddle in a parlour, more poetical than the behaviour of another member of the same great family playing the porpoise in a pool? Hazard is a dangerous game

-but you must not call it unpoetical-till you have struck out of poetry all the passions—or at least a few of them, such as Fear, Hope, and Despair. Plato sparred well-and at the cross-buttock was a Jem Belcher. He was a greater athlete than Byron-yet famous for his "habits of contemplation." A young poet who spars frequently is always, it may be said, in training; and we all know that to be in training merely means to be in the highest health. Now, Hygeia has even more to do with poetry than Apollo-and therefore Byron did right to spar daily with a bear. Driving a hearse in a dark night-even with no inside passenger-cannot be truly called "the reverse of poetical;" and if inside passenger there be, the snoreless sleep of the last upper-earth journey must, we should think, have been inspiring to such a genius as Byron who knew all along that

"The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

But farther-what are all amusements and recreations-be they fiddling, fluting, or fox-hunting, swimming, sparring, or shaking the elbow, -what, we ask, are they all to a man who is not a mere idler or ass? Nothing or less than nothing. One single hour's study, which has been visited by glorious insights, often constitutes the day, and a day, too, whose memory will never die. All the

other hours may be given to idleness -if idleness it indeed be-during your preparation for holy orders to undertake an occasional steeplechase or play at buffets with Bruin before you venture to tackle to with a still greater Enemy of mankind. There is always a life within a life-visible not to a wall-eyed world-in which the youthful soul of genius divinely sleeps or soars-like an eagle on cliff or in cloud-and till you have come upon genius there and then-you know as much of its inner heart, as you do about what is going on in the core of the bole of a rough-rinded tree, which you, like a thickhead, forgetting the season of the year, might presume dead-but which, all alive with celestial ichor, called by the homely name of sap, will, in a few months, dazzle the very rising sun, as it hath brightened into the full glory of Windermere's GOLDEN OAK.

Byron began to contemplate and meditate upon his own soul, and the souls of other men-and also of women-for they too have souls, though most different indeed from oursvery much about the proper time for such in-door and in-breast studies. His early poems prove that he didalways passionate-sometimes metaphysical. He was never a self-conceited boy-nor arrogant; but neither was he blind to his future fate. He knew that he was Somethingand the knowledge of that sharpens the mind's eyesight towards all the ongoings of this world. He soon knew that this life was worth looking into-worth listening to-as afar-off the tide was coming in over the sands. To feel, to think, to do, and to suffer, was to be his lot-and therefore he was reckless-and melancholy—and half mad—and in love -and in friendship-and red with joy and pale with rage-fond of stargazing and of sparring-of the Great Bear as a beautiful constellation, and the lesser Bear as an ugly customer -his favourite haunts Limmer's and Stevens's hotels, or in imagination the Cliffs of Ballater, and the Linn of Dee.

"From his total want of friends and connexions," Mr Moore tells us, that he had, in London, before his Pil grimage, no resources in private society, and was left to live loosely about town among the loungers in

coffeehouses. Scarcely so. But suppose it were-still he could not truly be said to suffer " from a total want of friends," even if few of them were then with him, he who at Harrow and Cambridge had formed so many passionate friendships with so many worthy objects. The very "desiderium" of them he so tenderly loved, must have kept awake finest feelings and highest thoughts-human as well as poetical-and saved him from the doom of common coffeehouse loungers. "Whatever else may have been the merits of these establishments, ("Limmer's and Stevens's hotels,") quoth Mr Moore," they were any thing but fit schools for the formation of poetic character." Just as fit as the dull home to which many a poet has in his youth been condemned -with a father whom he must have seen was not a little of a knave-and a mother very much of a fool-and shoals of brothers and sisters, perhaps, who kept perpetually pitying the inspired Idiot. Colleges, according to Mr Moore, such as those of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge-are very bad schools for the formation of poetical character-so are public schools like that of Harrow-mountains, he opines-administered in boyhood, do not help much -and the Muses do not put up, when they visit London, at Limmer's and Stevens's hotels. What, then, is a poetical education? Where ought it to be pursued? And who may be the tutors?

But let it not be thought that in these rambling remarks we are seeking to depreciate the value of what Mr Moore has said about Byron's earlier life. Nothing can be more just and true than the following passage.

"By thus initiating him into a knowledge of the varieties of human character, --by giving him an insight into the details of society, in their least artificial form,in short, by mixing him up, thus early, with the world, its businesses and its pleasures, his London life but contributed its share in forming that wonderful combination which his mind afterwards exhibited, of the imaginative and the practical—the heroic and the humorous-of the keenest and most dissecting views of real life, with the grandest and most spiritualized conceptions of ideal grandeur.

"To the same period, perhaps, another