of history, of the mighty objects left as
wrecks of time, but he dwells chiefly on what is familiar to the mind of
every school-boy; has brought out few new traits of feeling or thought;
and has done no more than justice to the reader's preconceptions by the
sustained force and brilliancy of his style and imagery. Lord Byron's
earlier productions, _Lara_, the _Corsair_, &c. were wild and gloomy
romances, put into rapid and shining verse. They discover the madness
of poetry, together with the inspiration: sullen, moody, capricious,
fierce, inexorable, gloating on beauty, thirsting for revenge, hurrying
from the extremes of pleasure to pain, but with nothing permanent,
nothing healthy or natural. The gaudy decorations and the morbid
sentiments remind one of flowers strewed over the face of death! In
his _Childe Harold_ (as has been just observed) he assumes a lofty and
philosophic tone, and "reasons high of providence, fore-knowledge, will,
and fate." He takes the highest points in the history of the world,
and comments on them from a more commanding eminence: he shews us the
crumbling monuments of time, he invokes the great names, the
mighty spirit of antiquity. The universe is changed into a stately
mausoleum:--in solemn measures he chaunts a hymn to fame. Lord Byron has
strength and elevation enough to fill up the moulds of our classical and
time-hallowed recollections, and to rekindle the earliest aspirations of
the mind after greatness and true glory with a pen of fire. The names of
Tasso, of Ariosto, of Dante, of Cincinnatus, of Caesar, of Scipio, lose
nothing of their pomp or their lustre in his hands, and when he begins
and continues a strain of panegyric on such subjects, we indeed sit
down with him to a banquet of rich praise, brooding over imperishable
glories,

"Till Contemplation has her fill."

Lord Byron seems to cast himself indignantly from "this bank and shoal
of time," or the frail tottering bark that bears up modern reputation,
into the huge sea of ancient renown, and to revel there with untired,
outspread plume. Even this in him is spleen--his contempt of his
contemporaries makes him turn back to the lustrous past, or project
himself forward to the dim future!--Lord Byron's tragedies, Faliero,[B]
Sardanapalus, &c. are not equal to his other works. They want the
essence of the drama. They abound in speeches and descriptions, such as
he himself might make either to himself or others, lolling on his c