or suppression. On this subject, the Journal makes Lord Byron speak as follows:

"I am sorry not to have a copy of my Memoirs to show you. I gave them to Moore, or rather to Moore's little boy." *

"I remember saying, Here are 20007. for you, my young friend.' I made one reservation in the gift,—that they were not to be published till after my death.

"I have not the least objection to their being circulated; in fact they have been read by some of mine, and several of Moore's friends and acquaintances; among others, they were lent to Lady Burghersh. On returning the MS. her Ladyship told Moore that she had transcribed the whole work. This was un peu fort, and he suggested the propriety of her destroying the copy. She did so, by putting it into the fire in his presence. Ever since this happened, Douglas Kinnaird has been recommending me to resume possession of the MS., thinking to frighten me by saying that a spurious or a real copy, surreptitiously obtained, may go forth to the world. I am quite indifferent about the world knowing all that they contain. There are very few licentious adventures of my own, or scandalous anecdotes that will affect others, in the book. It is taken up from my earliest recollections, almost from childhood, -very incoherent, written in a very loose and familiar style. The second will prove a good lesson to young men; for it treats of the irregular life I led at one period, and the fatal consequences of dissipation. There are few parts that may not, and none that will not, be read by women."

part

In this particular, Lord Byron's fate has been singular; and a superstitious person might be startled at the coincidence of so many causes all tending to hide the secret of his character from the public. That scandal and envy should have been at work with such a man is not very extraordinary; but the burning his Memoirs and the subsequent injunc tion on the publication of his Letters to his Mother, seem as if something more than mere chance had operated to preserve unconfuted the calumnies of the day for the benefit of future biographers. Of these letters we were fortunate enough to obtain a glimpse; and never, we will venture to say, was more innocent, and at the same time more valuable matter so withheld from the world. It is but an act of cold justice to Lord Byron's memory, to state that they appear the reflections of as generous a mind as ever committed its expression to paper. The traces of his temperament, and of his false position in society, are indeed there: but the sentiments are lofty and enthusiastic; and every line betrays the warmest sympathy with human suffering, and a scornful indignation at mean and disgraceful vice.

To the sacrificed Memoirs and the incarcerated Letters, the present Journal is a sort of supplement; and it is avowedly published as an attempt to supply some portion of the information, of which the public have been, as Mr. Medwin thinks, so injuriously deprived. Indeed, both from the matter, and the sostenuto style of some of the passages, we have been almost tempted to think them a leaf rescued from the flames. All men, however, are apt to speak much of themselves; and great men often do this well: it is not, therefore, very unlikely that Lord Byron's conversations might frequently be mere fragments of his written life, at least as far as concerns the sequence of thoughts; and we

* Moore's son was not with him in Italy; there is consequently some trifling inaccuracy in this. It is, nevertheless true, as we happen to know, that this was the turn which Lord B. gave to his present, in order to make it more acceptable to his friend. REV.

are convinced that upon some points the most material facts are thus preserved for the benefit of society. Of this description is his account of his own connexion with Lady Byron, their loves, marriage, and separation.

His account of his situation immediately before his leaving England is sufficiently melancholy: he closes it by saying,

"In addition to all these mortifications, my affairs were irretrievably involved, and almost so as to make me what they wished. I was compelled to part with Newstead, which I never could have ventured to sell in my mother's life-time. As it is, 1 shall never forgive myself for having done so ; though I am told that the estate would not now bring half as much as I got for it. This does not at all reconcile me to having parted with the old abbey. I did not make up my mind to this step, but from the last necessity. I had my wife's portion to repay, and was determined to add 10,000l. more of my own to it; which I did. I always hated being in debt, and do not owe a guinea. The moment I had put my affairs in train, and in little more than eighteen months after my marriage, I left England, an involuntary exile, intending it should be for ever."

From the darker part of this great man's autobiography we turn with very different and pleasant sensations to the history of his boyish days.

"I lost my father when I was only six years of age. My mother, when she was in a rage with me, (and I gave her cause enough,) used to say, Ah, you little dog, you are a Byron all over; you are as bad as your father!" It was very different from Mrs. Malaprop's saying, Ah! good dear Mr. Malaprop, I never loved him till he was dead.' But, in fact, my father was, in his youth, any thing but a Colebs in search of a wife.' He would have inade a bad hero for Hannah More. He ran out three fortunes, and married or ran away with three women, and once wanted a guinea, that he wrote for; I have the note. He seemed born for his own ruin, and that of the other sex. He began by seducing Lady Carmarthen, and spent for her 4000l. ayear; and not content with one adventure of this kind, afterwards eloped with Miss Gordon. His marriage was not destined to be a very fortunate one either, and I don't wonder at her differing from Sheridan's widow in the play. They certainly could not have claimed the flitch.

The phrenologists tell me that other lines besides that of thought, (the middle of three horizontal lines on his forehead, on which he prided himself,) are strongly developed in the hinder part of my cranium; particularly that called philoprogenitiveness. I suppose, too, the pugnacious bump might be found somewhere, because my uncle had it.

"You have heard the unfortunate story of his duel with his relation and neighbour. After that melancholy event, he shut himself up at Newstead, and was in the habit of feeding crickets, which were his only companions. He had made them so tame as to crawl over him, and used to whip them with a wisp of straw, if too familiar. When he died, tradition says that they left the house in a body. I suppose I derive my superstition from this branch of the family; but though I attend to none of these new-fangled theories, I am inclined to think that there is more in a chart of the skull than the Edinburgh Reviewers suppose. However that may be, I was a wayward youth, and gave my mother a world of trouble,-as I fear Ada will her's, for I am told she is a little termagant. I had an ancestor too that expired laughing, (I suppose that my good spirits came from him,) and two whose affection was such for each other, that they died almost at the same moment. There seems to have been a flaw in my escutcheon there, or that loving couple have monopolized all the connubial bliss of the family.

"I passed my boyhood at Marlodge near Aberdeen, occasionally visiting the Highlands; and long retained an affection for Scotland;—that, I suppose,

I imbibed from my mother. My love for it, however, was at one time much shaken by the critique in The Edinburgh Review' on The Hours of Idleness,' and I transferred a portion of my dislike to the country; but my affection for it soon flowed back into its old channel.

"I don't know from whom I inherited verse-making; probably the wild scenery of Morven and Loch-na-garr, and the banks of the Dee, were the parents of my poetical vein, and the developers of my poetical boss. If it was so, it was dormant; at least, I never wrote any thing worth mentioning till I was in love. Dante dates his passion for Beatrice at twelve. I was almost as young when I fell over head and ears in love; but I anticipate. I was sent to Harrow at twelve, and spent my vacations at Newstead. It was there that I first saw Mary C- She was several years older than myself: but, at my age, boys like something older than themselves, as they do younger, later in life. Our estates adjoined: but, owing to the unhappy circumstance of the feud to which I before alluded, our families (as is generally the case with neighbours who happen to be relations) were never on terms of more than common civility-scarcely those. I passed the summer vacation of this year among the Malvern hills: those were days of romance! She was the beau idéal of all that my youthful fancy could paint of beautiful; and I have taken all my fables about the celestial nature of women from the perfection my imagination created in her-I say created, for I found her, like the rest of the sex, any thing but angelic.

"I returned to Harrow, after my trip to Cheltenham, more deeply enamoured than ever, and passed the next holidays at Newstead. I now began to fancy myself a man, and to make love in earnest. Our meetings were stolen ones, and my letters passed through the medium of a confidante. A gate leading from Mr. C. 's grounds to those of my mother, was the place of our interviews. But the ardour was all on my side.. I was serious; she was volatile. She liked me as a younger brother, and treated and laughed at me as a boy. She, however, gave me her picture, and that was something to make verses upon.

"During the last year that I was at Harrow, all my thoughts were occupied on this love-affair. I had, besides, a spirit that ill brooked the restraints of school-discipline; for I had been encouraged by servants in all my violence of temper, and was used to command. Every thing like a task was repugnant to my nature; and I came away a very indifferent classic, and read in nothing that was useful. That subordination, which is the soul of all discipline, submitted to with great difficulty; yet I did submit to it: and I have always retained a sense of Drury's kindness, which enabled me to bear it and fagging too. The Duke of Dorset was my fag. I was not a very hard task-master. There were times in which, if I had not considered it as a school, I should have been happy at Harrow. There is one spot I should like to see again : I was particularly delighted with the view from the Church-yard, and used to sit for hours on the stile leading into the fields;-even then I formed a wish to be buried there. Of all my schoolfellows, I know no one for whom I have retained so much friendship as for Lord Clare. I have been constantly corresponding with him ever since I knew he was in Italy; and look forward to seeing him, and talking over with him our old Harrow stories, with infinite delight. There is no pleasure in life equal to that of meeting an old friend. You know how glad I was to see Hay. Why did not Scroope Davies come to see me? Some one told me that he was at Florence, but it is impossible. "There are two things that strike me at this moment, which I did at Harrow: I fought Lord Calthorpe for writing D-d Atheist!' under my name; and prevented the school-room from being burnt during a rebellion, by pointing out to the boys the names of their fathers and grandfathers on the walls. "Had I married Miss C, perhaps the whole tenor of my life would have been different. She jilted me, however, but her marriage proved any thing but a happy one. She was at length separated from Mr. M—, and proposed an interview with me, but by the advice of my sister I declined it,

I remember meeting her after my return from Greece, but pride had conquered my love; and yet it was not with perfect indifference I saw her.-For a man to become a poet (witness Petrarch and Dante), he must be in love or miserable. I was both when I wrote the Hours of Idleness ;' some of those poems, in spite of what the Reviewers say, are as good as any I ever produced. For some years after the event that had so much influence on my fate, I tried to drown the remembrance of it and her in the most depraving dissipation; but the poison was in the cup!

In these conversational sketches given to his intimate friends, his youthful amours have not been omitted; and the Journal enables us to verify many scandalous reports, which have long been abroad, and passed current in society as the on dits of the time. They indeed fully justify what he himself observes: "I have seen a great deal of Italian society, and have swum in a gondola, but nothing could equal the profligacy of high life in England, especially that of - when I knew it."

For these communications many persons will thank the author. The more scrupulous respecter of confidential conversations would have been better satisfied if such passages had been omitted. It is but fair, however, both to Lord B. and his friend, to add that they might have said on this occasion, with a trifling alteration of the poet,

And all that passes inter nos

Has been proclaim'd at Charing Cross.

There is certainly no betrayal of secrets. His feelings on his early excesses and dissipation may be gathered from the following extract.

"Don't suppose, however, that I took any pleasure in all these excesses, or that parson A. K. or W- were associates to my taste. The miserable consequences of such a life are detailed at length in my Memoirs. My own master at an age when I most required a guide, and left to the dominion of my passions when they were the strongest, with a fortune anticipated before I came into possession of it, and a constitution impaired by early excesses, I commenced my travels in 1809, with a joyless indifference to a world that was all before me." "Well might you speak feelingly," said I: "there is no sterner moralist than pleasure."

The parties who will be least contented with the present publication, will be the literary friends of Lord Byron. The work is full of criticism and of anecdotes; many of which, without being (in a private room) offensive to friendship, are (in publication) a little mortifying to those little vanities, to which authors, of all men, are the most liable. We suspect the Reverend Mr. Bowles will not be pleased to have it known that he could be " a good fellow for a parson," and entertain an afterdinner company with "good stories." Neither will Sir Walter like its being "let out," that he inadvertently acknowledged Waverley to Lord Byron.*

So thinks the writer of this article. I am of a different opinion. I suspect SirW. Scott will not feel a moment's displeasure at his being known to be the author of Waverley, -all scepticism on the subject having long ago become stale.-And why should Mr. Bowles dislike its being known that he is "a good fellow for a parson," and that he can entertain an after-dinner with good stories? Every one who is acquainted with Mr. Bowles's general character, knows that he is remarkable for any thing but indelicate conversation; so that if his stories after dinner be good, they are not likely to be so in the sense which either Mr. Medwin or the reviewer palpably mean to insinuate. We shall be told perhaps, that we have Lord Byron's testimony for all this gossiping about living characters. Softly, we have only Mr. Medwin's. And without disputing

Lord Byron, indeed, carried his frankness in friendship to a fault, and he more than once got his friends into a scrape, by showing letters and repeating speeches, just as he would have told the same parties his own sentiments on the transaction in question.

There are several singular situations in which he was placed during his travels or residence abroad mentioned in this volume. They show the fearlessness of his character, and the disregard of consequences in every case which so much distinguished him. One of them will be found at page 33, in the mention of a murder committed by order of the police on an officer opposite his palace at Ravenna. A second we cannot refrain from giving here; and a third will be found in page 177.

"A circumstance took place in Greece that impressed itself lastingly on my memory. I had once thought of founding a tale on it; but the subject is too harrowing for any nerves,-too terrible for any pen! An order was issued at Yanina by its sanguinary Rajah, that any Turkish woman convicted of incontinence with a Christian should be stoned to death! Love is slow at calculating dangers, and defies tyrants and their edicts; and many were the victims to the savage barbarity of this of Ali's. Among others a girl of sixteen, of a beauty such as that country only produces, fell under the vigilant eye of the police. She was suspected, and not without reason, of carrying on a secret intrigue with a Neapolitan of some rank, whose long stay in the city could be attributed to no other cause than this attachment. Her crime (if crime it be to love as they loved) was too fully proved; they were torn from each other's arms, never to meet again and yet both might have escaped, she by abjuring her religion, or he by adopting hers. They resolutely refused to become apostates to their faith. Ali Pacha was never known to pardon. She was stoned by those dæmons, although in the fourth month of her pregnancy! He was sent to a town where the plague was raging, and died, happy in not having long outlived the object of his affections!

"One of the principal incidents in The Giaour' is derived from a real occurrence, and one too in which I myself was nearly and deeply interested; but an unwillingness to have it considered a traveller's tale made me suppress the fact of its genuineness. The Marquis of Sligo, who knew the particulars of the story, reminded me of them in England, and wondered I had not authenticated them in the Preface:

“When I was at Athens, there was an edict in force similar to that of Ali's, except that the mode of punishment was different. It was necessary, therefore, that all love-affairs should be carried on with the greatest privacy. I was very fond at that time of a Turkish girl,-ay, fond of her as I have been of few women. All went on very well till the Ramazan for forty days, which is rather a long fast for lovers; all intercourse between the sexes is forbidden by law, as well as by religion. During this Lent of the Mussulmen, the

Mr. M.'s intention to be accurate, we must recollect that the best memories are not infallible. It is possible that a man of pure mind and character may forget himself in a social moment, and tell a story which may be good only with reference to the taste of its convivial hearers. If such were the fact, any candid person would certainly sooner forgive the story-teller, than the relater of tittle-tattle, who should publish the fact. But as all human memories are fallible, and as "tittle-tattle" is apt to be pursued in convivial moments, it is not impossible that this may have been an after-dinner anecdote of Lord Byron's, or inaccurately reported by Mr. Medwin. There is a good deal of flippant matter about Mr. Rogers, which will probably offend Mr. R.'s friends more than himself. As far as Mr. Rogers may be anxious to have stood favourably in Lord Byron's opinion, he seems upon the whole to have stood so. About the stranger's estimation of him, whom Mr. Medwin mentions as beginning and carrying on the conversation detailed in the present work, the author of the "Pleasures of Memory" cannot be nervously uneasy.

EDITOR.