MISCHIEF OF POETICAL SOPHISTRIES. 363 and against the reasonableness of religion in general; and there is no answer so much as attempted to the offensive doctrines that are so strenuously inculcated. The Devil and his pupil have the field entirely to themselves and are encountered with nothing but feeble obtestations and unreasoning horrors. Nor is this argumentative blasphemy a mere incidental deformity that arises in the course of an action directed to the common sympathies of our nature. It forms, on the contrary, the great staple of the piece- and occupies, we should think, not less than two thirds of it; so that it is really difficult to believe that it was written for any other purpose than to inculcate these doctrines or at least to discuss the question upon which they bear. Now, we can certainly have no objection to Lord Byron writing an Essay on the Origin of Evil- and sifting the whole of that vast and perplexing subject with the force and the freedom that would be expected and allowed in a fair philosophical discussion. But we do not think it fair, thus to argue it partially and con amore, in the name of Lucifer and Cain; without the responsibility or the liability to answer that would attach to a philosophical disputant- and in a form which both doubles the danger, if the sentiments are pernicious, and almost precludes his opponents from the possibility of a reply. Philosophy and Poetry are both very good things in their way; but, in our opinion, they do not go very well together. It is but a poor and pedantic sort of poetry that seeks chiefly to embody metaphysical subtilties and abstract deductions of reason-and a very suspicious philosophy that aims at establishing its doctrines by appeals to the passions and the fancy. Though such arguments, however, are worth little in the schools, it does not follow that their effect is inconsiderable in the world. On the contrary, it is the mischief of all poetical paradoxes, that, from the very limits and end of poetry, which deals only in obvious and glancing views, they are never brought to the fair test of argument. An allusion to a doubtful topic will often pass for a definitive conclusion on it; and, when clothed in beautiful 364 CAIN'S SACRIFICIAL ADDRESS. language, may leave the most pernicious impressions behind. In the courts of morality, poets are unexceptionable witnesses; they may give in the evidence, and depose to facts whether good or ill; but we demur to their arbitrary and self-pleasing summings up. They are suspected judges, and not very often safe advocates; where great questions are concerned, and universal principles brought to issue. But we shall not press this point farther at present. We shall give but one specimen, and that the least offensive we can find, of the prevailing tone of this extraordinary drama. It is the address (for we cannot call it prayer) with which Cain accompanies the offering of his sheaves on the altar- and directed to be delivered, standing erect. Shown in the exemption of thy deeds from evil; Take them! If thou must be induced with altars, Two beings here erect them unto thee. If thou lov'st blood, the shepherd's shrine, which smokes In the first of his flock, whose limbs now reek In sanguinary incense to thy skies; Or if the sweet and blooming fruits of earth, Of the broad sun which ripen'd them, may seem He is such as thou mad'st him; and seeks nothing LORD BYRON · - HIS MORAL OFFENCES. And whether that be good or ill I know not, Its mandate-which thus far I have endured.". 365 · p. 424, 425. The catastrophe follows soon after, and is brought about with great dramatic skill and effect. The murderer is sorrowful and confounded- his parents reprobate and renounce him- his wife clings to him with eager and unhesitating affection; and they wander forth together into the vast solitude of the universe. We have now gone through the poetical part of this volume, and ought here, perhaps, to close our account of it. But there are a few pages in prose that are more talked of than all the rest; and which lead irresistibly to topics, upon which it seems at last necessary that we should express an opinion. We allude to the concluding part of the Appendix to "The Two Foscari," in which Lord Byron resumes his habitual complaint of the hostility which he has experienced from the writers of his own country makes reprisals on those who have assailed his reputation and inflicts, in particular, a memorable chastisement upon the unhappy Laureate, interspersed with some political reflections of great weight and authority. It is not however with these, or the merits of the treatment which Mr. Southey has either given or received, that we have now any concern. But we have a word or two to say on the griefs of Lord Byron himself. He complains bitterly of the detraction by which he has been assailed — and intimates that his works have been received by the public with far less cordiality and favour than he was entitled to expect. We are constrained to say that this appears to us a very extraordinary mistake, In the whole course of our experience, we cannot recollect a single author who has had so little reason to complain of his reception - to whose genius the public has been so early and so constantly just-to whose faults they have been so long and so signally indulgent. From the very first, he must have been aware that he offended the principles and shocked the prejudices of 366 LORD BYRON. -- -UNHAPPY TENDENCY OF HIS WRITINGS. the majority, by his sentiments, as much as he delighted them by his talents. Yet there never was an author so universally and warmly applauded, so gently admonished so kindly entreated to look more heedfully to his opinions. He took the praise, as usual, and rejected the advice. As he grew in fame and authority, he ag gravated all his offences-clung more fondly to all he had been reproached with- and only took leave of Childe Harold to ally himself to Don Juan! That he has since been talked of, in public and in private, with less unmingled admiration-that his name is now mentioned as often for censure as for praise- and that the exultation with which his countrymen once hailed the greatest of our living poets, is now alloyed by the recollection of the tendency of his writings—is matter of notoriety to all the world; but matter of surprise, we should imagine, to nobody but Lord Byron himself. He would fain persuade himself, indeed, that for this decline of his popularity-or rather this stain upon its lustre-for he is still popular beyond all other example -and it is only because he is so that we feel any interest in this discussion;-he is indebted, not to any actual demerits of his own, but to the jealousy of those he has supplanted, the envy of those he has outshone, or the party rancour of those against whose corruptions he has testified;-while, at other times, he seems inclined to insinuate, that it is chiefly because he is a Gentleman and a Nobleman that plebeian censors have conspired to bear him down! We scarcely think, however, that these theories will pass with Lord Byron himself we are sure they will pass with no other person. They are so manifestly inconsistent, as mutually to destroy each other—and so weak, as to be quite insufficient to account for the fact, even if they could be effectually combined for that purpose. The party that Lord Byron has chiefly offended, bears no malice to Lords and Gentlemen. Against its rancour, on the contrary, these qualities have undoubtedly been his best protection; and had it not been for them, he may be assured that he would, long ere now, have been PECULIARITY OF THEIR CORRUPTING INFLUENCE. 367 shown up in the pages of the Quarterly, with the same candour and liberality that has there been exercised towards his friend Lady Morgan. That the base and the bigotted-those whom he has darkened by his glory, spited by his talent, or mortified by his neglect-have taken advantage of the prevailing disaffection, to vent their puny malice in silly nicknames and vulgar scurrility, is natural and true. But Lord Byron may depend upon it, that the dissatisfaction is not confined to them—and, indeed, that they would never have had the courage to assail one so immeasurably their superior, if he had not at once made himself vulnerable by his errors, and alienated his natural defenders by his obstinate adherence to them. We are not bigots or rival poets. We have not been detractors from Lord Byron's fame, nor the friends of his detractors; and we tell him far more in sorrow than in anger- that we verily believe the great body of the English nation-the religious, the moral, and the candid part of it- consider the tendency of his writings to be immoral and pernicious and look upon his perseverance in that strain of composition with regret and reprehension. He has no priestlike cant or priestlike reviling to apprehend from us. We do not charge him with being either a disciple or an apostle of Satan; nor do we describe his poetry as a mere compound of blasphemy and obscenity. On the contrary, we are inclined to believe that he wishes well to the happiness of mankind—and are glad to testify, that his poems abound with sentiments of great dignity and tenderness, as well as passages of infinite sublimity and beauty. But their general tendency we believe to be in the highest degree pernicious; and we even think that it is chiefly by means of the fine and lofty sentiments they contain, that they acquire their most fatal power of corruption. This may sound at first, perhaps, like a paradox; but we are mistaken if we shall not make it intelligible enough in the end. We think there are indecencies and indelicacies, seductive descriptions and profligate representations, which |