TO THE EDITOR.

S.-I have never in my life entered the lists of Cri. ticism before; but there are at present so many persons who offer their novel systems to the public in this age of improvement, that it behoves those to whom they address themselves to examine whether these novelties be real im. provements, or mere quackeries. I have attended Mr. Hamilton's lectures, and perceiving by a pamphlet (publised in London) and by letters in the Liverpool papers, that his system is undergoing an exposeé, I shall leave his wonder-working engine to exhaust itself; and if he estabLish a durable footing in Liverpool upon the same basis of instruction that he has set out on, I shall soon expect the arrival of some professor to announce that he purposes giving a lecture in the Music hall on teaching languages by steam!

Abridgment is now all the rage! What was acquired by our predecessors in a series of years, is to be compressed "By the high-pressure principle" into as many days.Pupils now call on professors of languages, and inquire in what time they can learn a language, expressing them elwes surprised if it should exceed a quarter of a year! and I heard a few days ago of a person making an application to be taught three languages in a fortnight! Grammars, which were formerly books, are now reduced to the form of a table, about the size of a Liverpool Almamack and Tide Table, or a pocket map of the town. One of these rare productions is now advertising in the Liverpool papers, styled a "SynOPTIC Table of the SPANISH Grammar, and of all the Difficulties which the Spanish Language can present, &c. by Mr. Fernandez, Author and Translator of several Works." Price 3s. on a sheet, and 4s. 6d. in a case. As the table includes conjunctions, but omits and as well as or, it is not so surprising that the learned author has used the wrong one, unless the price be really 78. 6d., case included.

I shall now proceed to analyze this valuable 3s., 4s. 6d., or 7s. 6d. Synoptic Table and Case, and lay a synopsis of the errors before the optics of your readers; premising that it contains about as much printing as is usually included in thirty decimo-octavo pages, which might be struck off it sixpence each, with a good profit to the printer; the ddition to the charge must of course be allowed moderate canvas, case, and the compiler's compensation for his fill and talent..

The table contains 22 divisions, which I shall examine eriatim.

1. ALPHABET AND PRONUNCIATION.

The professor informs us that "the Spanish language ontains sir vowels," though he only condescends to name Ce of them, a, e, i, o, u;-y has escaped, and perhaps he ill inform us why. It has generally the same sound as i, some grammarians consider it a consonant in certain sitions, where it is pronounced with a faint aspiration.

佛

Mr. F. has discarded it from the consonants likewise, appears to consider the "y griega" beneath his notice. Che," he informs us, should be pronounced "tcha," nd in the same line "che," " tcho."

2. OF COMBINED VOWELS.

The dipthong ui. Ex.: guisar, to "koock." hich is the professor most fit for, a teacher or a

Query:

"cook ?"

There are in Spanish four double consonants, which

te the ee, oo, 77, and the cc." Rare grammarian! who heard ee and oo called double consonants! (Above ry repeated.)

6. OF ARTICLES.

"The definite articles in Spanish are de for the genitive
and ablative, and a for the dative. To is always translated
into Spanish by a."

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum" is a maxim which does not appear to have much influence with many of the friends of this eccentric nobleman; and whether it proHere is a fine specimen of the declension (“ declination!") ceed from a scrupulous regard for truth, and a sincere of articles; pronouns he, him, her, they, and them, are desire to read the world a moral lesson, or from the more called articles; the prepositions de (of or from) and á (to) ignoble motives of personal aggrandisement, we shall not are called definite articles; and he gives us a beautiful il-venture to surmise; but we must say that the character lustration of vocatives, "O him, O her, and O them." of Lord Byron is exhibited by his friends and companions “Oh dear! how queer! that in a light more unfavourable since his death, than it was To which might be added, The author also says, ever represented during his life by his bitterest enemies. such talent should be here!" The following observations on this subject are copied that "when the feminine article la is followed by a word beginning with another a, the article changes into a mas- from the Liverpool Mercury of Friday laet. culine el, though the word still remains the same. Ex. el agua, water." This observation would lead the learner astray, because the rule here given should only apply to singular nouns, feminine, beginning with a, having the accent on the first syllable; for, when the accent falls on any other, although the feminine noun begin with a, it

takes the feminine article la, and not el.

7. OF NOUNS.

"In the whole range of modern literature, there are few works more entertaining and instructive than the Life of Dr. Johnson, by his friend and companion Boswell; for although it cannot be denied, that some parts of that singular production are puerile, impertinent, and provokingly minute, there is always a moral to be derived even from the foibles and peculiarities of our great Lexicographer; nor is there any thing to be met with offensive to delicacy, or calculated to sap the foundation of the moral and social virtues, upon which human happiness so essentially depends. Any occasional prolixity which occurs in Boswell's memoir, is compensated a hundred fold, by the faithful picture it presents to us of the minor actions and prevailing opinions of a man, whose extraordinary talents were improved by great erudition, and who was, moreover,

"The Termination of the Adjective."
"To form the feminine from the masculine, nothing
else is necessary than to change the o into a. Ex. bueno,
buena. All other terminations are of both genders."-
This is not correct, for some adjectives ending in and s,
in the masculine, add an a in the feminine, as Español,
Espanola, (Spanish ;) Ingles, Inglesa, (English,) &c.
I fear I shall transgress your limits if I extend my pre-gifted with unrivaled colloquial powers.
sent critique farther; but as your work professes to exa-
mine literary productions, I shall again trespass on your
columns in continuation of the subject, if you consider
the Spanish language one of sufficient interest to your

readers.

OBSERVATOR.

While Bonaparte commanded in Egypt, the following
incident occurred:-Kleber was envious and refractory,
and disobeyed an order to the General. Bonaparte sent
for him. He attended with a haughty bearing, which,
joined with his stature, gave him an air of heroism. The
Staff-all present at this scene-silently contrasted the
heroic height and proud deportment of Kleber with the
little person and pale countenance of the Commander-in-
Chief. Bonaparte, at a glance, read their thoughts, and
changed his aspect in an instant. His countenance became
animated, his eyes flashed, his voice broke out with extra-
ordinary splendour: Which of us," said he, addressing
Kleber, is above the other here?" "You are higher than
I am only by a head-one act of disobedience more, and
that difference will disappear." Kleber obeyed.
It was prettily said of Lord Bacon, that he had the art
of inventing arts.

Men and Filanners.

"We are, indeed, occasionally mortified to find, that a

man of such mental endowments was prone to bigotry and to narrow prejudices unworthy of his character; but we forgive all, in consideration of the sterling integrity which

formed the basis of his character.

"Some of the works professing to be auto-biographical memoirs of the late Lord Byron are of a very different description :-in too many of these narratives, with which the press now abounds, we meet with very little to admire,

much to condemn, and scarcely any thing which has any tendency to improve the morals or the heart. If the work, for the suppression of which Mr. Moore has incurred much abuse, in which, however, we never joined, bears any resemblance to some of the trash with which the public is now inundated, that gentleman is eminently entitled to the thanks of the community, for the step he has taken. We are not amongst those who think that great talent is any excuse for its misapplication ;-we do not admit that a man of extraordinary endowments has any prescriptive right to set at defiance the ordinary decencies of life; and, if we were assured that the late Lord Byron was aware, without protesting against the measure, that the profligate ribaldry and unmanly exposure of private

THE AUTO-BIOGRAPHY OF THE LATE LORD BYRON. character, which too often characterized his convivial

(Continued from our last.)

hours, were to be given to the public;-were we thoroughly convinced of this, we should most heartily despise "O'er the heart of Childe Harold' Greek maidens shall weep, his memory, nothwithstanding his genius, and the emiIn his own native island his body shall sleep,

With bones of the bravest and best;
And his song shail go down to the latest of time,
Fame tell how he rose for earth's loveliest cline,

And mercy should blot out the rest."

American Literary Gazette.

"Save me from my friends, and I will take care of my enemies," was a saying of some one who, in all probability, had found by experience, that there is sometimes as much danger to be apprehended from an indiscreet friend, as from an implacable enemy.

If Lord Byron could have conceived it possible that

nent services he has rendered the Greeks.

every idle word, every libertine expression, or scandalous MISCELLANEOUS SELECTIONS FROM CAPTAIN MEDWIN'S CONVER

his moments of thoughtless levity or reckless debauch, was
insinuation, or vain glorious boast, which escaped him in
registered for the purpose of posthumous publication,-
he, too, would have exclaimed, "Save me from my
friends."

These reflections naturally arose in our minds upon
reading certain auto-biographical notices of the life and
them." conversations of Lord Byron, whose enemies will be highly
gratified by these disclosures of his intimate friends.

SATIONS OF LORD BYRON, AND OTHER WORKS.

"Murray," said he, "pretends to have lost money by my writings, and pleads poverty; but if he is poor, which is somewhat problematical to me, pray who is to blame? his great friends, during the last year, so many expensive The fault is in his having purchased, at the instance of voyages and travels, which all his influence with The Quarterly cannot persuade people to buy,cannot puff into popularity. The Cookery book (which he has got a law

ray.

suit about) has been for a long time his sheet anchor; but they say he will have to refund-the worst of funds. Mr. Murray is tender of my fame! How kind in him! He is afraid of my writing too fast. Why? because he has a tenderer regard for his own pocket, and does not like the look of any new acquaintance, in the shape of a book of mine, till he has seen his old friends in a variety of new faces; id est. disposed of a vast many editions of the former works. I don't know what would become of me without Douglas Kinnaird, who has always been my best and kindest friend. It is not easy to deal with Mr. MurMurray offered me, of his own account, £1000 a canto for Don Juan, and afterwards reduced it to £500, on the plea of piracy, and complained of my dividing one canto into two, because I happened to say something at the end of the third about having done so. It is true enough that Don Juan has been pirated; but whom has he to thank but himself? In the first place, he put too high a price on the copies of the first two cantos that came out, only printing a quarto edition, at, I think, a guinea and a half. There was a great demand for it, and this in. duced the knavish booksellers to buccaneer. If he had put John Murray on the title-page, like a man, instead of smuggling the brat into the world, and getting Davison, who is a printer, and not a publisher, to father it, who would have ventured to question his paternal rights? or who would have attempted to deprive him of them?

"The thing was plainly this; he disowned and refused to acknowledge the bantling; the natural consequence was, that others should come forward to adopt it. Mr. John Murray is the inost nervous of God's booksellers. When Don Juan first came out, he was so frightened that he made a precipitate retreat into the country, shut himself up, and would not open his letters. The fact is, he prints for too many bishops. He is always boring me with piratical edition after edition, to prove the amount of his own losses, and furnish proof of the extent of his own folly. Here is one at two shillings and sixpence, that came out only yesterday. I do not pity him. Because I gave him one of my poems, he wanted to make me believe that I had made him a present of two others, and hinted at some lines in English Bards, that were certainly to the point. But I have altered my mind considerably upon that subject; as I once hinted to him, I see no reason why a man should not profit by the sweat of his brain as well as that of his brow, &c. besides, I was poor at that time, and have no idea of aggrandising booksellers. I was in Switzerland when he made this modest re

quest and he always entertained a spite against Shelley for making the agreement, and fixing the price, which, I believe, was not dear: for the third canto of Childe

Harold, Manfred, and The Prisoner of Chillon, &c. I got £2,400. Depend on it he did not lose money-he was not ruined by that speculation.

batteries will be opened; but I can fire broadsides too.
They have been letting off lots of squibs and crackers
against me, but they only make a noise and ****”
Do you think,' asked I, that Sir Walter Scott's
novels owe any part of their reputation to the concealment
of the author's name?'- No,' said he, such works do
not gain or lose by it. I am at a loss to know his reason
for giving up the incognito, but that the reigning family
could not have been very well pleased with Waverley.
There is a degree of charlatanism in some authors keeping
up the Unknown. Junius owed much of his fame to that
trick; and now that it is known to be the work of Sir
Philip Francis, who reads it? A political writer, and one
who descends to personalities, such as disgrace Junius,
should be immaculate as a public, as well as a private
character, and Sir Philip Francis was neither. He had
his price, and was gagged by being sent to India. He
there seduced another man's wife. It would have been a
new case for a Judge to sit in judgment on himself in a
Crim. Con. It seems that his conjugal felicity was not
great; for when his wife died, he came into the room
where they were sitting up with the corpse, and said,
Solder her up, solder her up.' He saw his daughter
crying, and scolded her, saying, An old hag, she ought
to have died thirty years ago!' He married, shortly
after, a young woman. He hated Hastings to a violent
degree; all he hoped and prayed for was to outlive him.
But many of the newspapers of the day are written as well
as Junius. Matthias's book, The Pursuits of Literature,
now almost a dead letter, had once a great fame.

separate

not been canvassed, and made the subject of epistolary discussion, what does that prove but the gentrif merit of the whole piece? And the correspondence will be valuable by and bye, and save the commentators a vast deal of labour and waste of ingenuity. People do wisest who take care of their fame when they have got it That is the rock I have split on. It has been said that he has been puffed into notice by his dinners and Lady Holland. Though he gives very good ones, and female Maecenases are no bad things now-a-days, it is by to means true. Rogers has been a spoilt child; no wonder that he is a little vain and jealous. And yet he deals praise very liberally sometimes; for he wrote to a little friend of mine, on the occasion of his late publication, that he was born with a rose-bud in his mouth, and nightingale singing in his ear,' two very prettily turned orientalisms. Before my wife and the world quarrelled with me, and brought me into disrepute with the public, Rogers had composed some very pretty commendatory verses on me; but they were kept corked up for many long years under hope that I might reform and get ins favour with the world again, and that the said lines for he is rather costive, and does not like to throw away has effusions) might find a place in Human Life.' But after a great deal of oscillation, and many a sight at their hard destiny-their still-born fate-they were hermetically sealed, and adieu to my immortality."

"Rogers is the only man I know who can write epigrams, and sharp bone-cutters too, in two lines; for m stance, that on an M. P. (now a Peer) who had reviewed his book, and said he wrote very well for a banker-' "They say he has no heart, and I deny it,

He has a heart and gets his speeches by it" The following is his Lordship's opinion of Campbell:poetry of the day, and a question arose as to which was the "The conversation turned after dinner on the lyrical for Coleridge's on Switzerland, beginning, Ye clouds, most perfect ode that had been produced. Shelly contended &c.; others named some of Moore's Irish Melodies, and Campbell's Hohenlinden; and, had Lord Byron not been present, his own Invocation to Manfred, or ode to Napo leon, or on Prometheus, might have been cited. the oil; he is never satisfied with what he does; his firest "Like Gray," said he, "Campbell smells too much ef things have been spoiled by over polish-the sharpness of highly finished. The great art is effect, no matter how the outline is worn off. Like paintings, poems may be too produced.

"Since you left us," said Lord Byron, "I have seen Hobhouse for a few days. Hobhouse is the oldest and best friend I have. What scenes we have witnessed together! Our friendship began at Cambridge, we led the same sort of life in town, and travelled in company a great part of the years 1809, 10, and 11. He was present at my marriage, and was with me in 1816, after my separation. We were at Venice, and visited Rome together, in 1817. The greater part of my Childe Harold was composed when we were together, and I could do no less in gratitude than dedicate the complete poem to him. The first canto was inscribed to one of the most beautiful little creatures I ever saw, then a mere child-Lady Charlotte Harleigh was my Ianthe. "Hobhouse's Dissertation on Italian Literature is much superior to his Notes on Childe Harold. Perhaps he understood the antiquities better than Nibbi, or any of the Cicerones; but the knowledge is somewhat misplaced where it is. Shelley went to the opposite extreme, and consider little inferior to the best which the present prolif.:. never made any notes. "Hobhouse has an excellent heart: he fainted when he age has brought forth. With this he left the table, airt before the cloth was removed, and returned with a maga heard a false report of my death in Greece, and was won-zine, from which he read the following lines on Sir Jea derfully affected at that of Matthews a much more able Moore's burial, which perhaps require no apology tá man than the Invalid. You have often heard me speak finding a place here:+ of him. The tribute I paid to his memory was a very inadequate one, and ill expressed what I felt at his loss." The following particulars are given by Captain Medwin, respecting his manner of composing and his powers of conversation:

"Murray has long prevented The Quarterly from abusing me. Some of its bullies have had their fingers itching to be at me; but they would get the worst of it in a set-to." (Here he put himself in a boxing attitude.) "I perceive, however, that we shall have some sparring ere long. I don't wish to quarrel with Murray, but it "Sometimes when I call, I find him at his desk; but seems inevitable. I had no reason to be pleased with him he either talks as he writes, or lays down his pen to play at the other day. Galignani wrote to me, offering to pur- billiards, till it is time to take his airing. He seems to be chase the copyright of my works, in order to obtain an able to resume the thread of his subject at all times, and exclusive privilege of printing them in France. I might to weave it of an equal texture. Such talent is that of an have made my own terms, and put the money into my an improvisatore. The fairness, too, of his manuscripts own pocket; instead of which, I enclosed Galignani's let-(I do not speak of the handwriting) astonishes no less than ter to Murray, in order that he might conclude the matter the perfection of every thing he writes. He hardly ever as he pleased. He did so, very advantageously for his own alters a word for whole pages, and he never corrects a line interest; but never had the complaisance, the common in subsequent editions. I do not believe that he has ever politeness, to thank me, or acknowledge my letter. My read his works since he examined the proof sheets, and yet differences with Murray are not over. When he pur- he remembers every word of them, and every thing else chased Cain, The Two Foscari, and Sardanapalus, he worth remembering that he has ever known. sent me a deed, which you remember witnessing. Well: after its return to England, it was discovered that

• But I shall take no notice of it."

Some time afterwards he said :

Murray and I have made up our quarrel; at least, it is not my fault if it should be renewed. The Parsons have been at him about 'Cain.' An Oxonian has addressed a bullying letter to him, asking him how so moral a bookseller can stain his press with so profane a book? He is threatened with a prosecution by the Anti-Constitutional Society. I don't believe they will venture to attack him: if they do, I shall go home and make my own defence." Lord Byron wrote the same day the letter contained in the notes on "Cain," Some months afterwards he said in a letter:

"Murray and I have dissolved all connexion. He had the choice of giving up me or the Navy Lists.' There was no hesitation which way he should decide; the Admiralty carried the day. Now for The Quarterly: their

"I never met with any man who shines so much in con-
versation. He shines the more, perhaps, for not seeking
to shine. His ideas flow without effort, without his having
occasion to think. As in his letters he is not nice about
expressions or words, there are no concealments in him,
no injunctions to secrecy; he tells every thing that he has
thought or done without the least reserve, and as if he
wished the whole world to know it; and does not throw
the slightest gloss over his errors. Brief himself, he is
impatient of diffuseness in others, hates long stories, and
seldom repeats his own. If he has heard a story you are
telling, he will say, you told me that,' and, with good
humour, sometimes finish it for you himself.

The following is Lord Byron's opinion of Rogers:
(Medwin) "Is there one line of that poem (the Plea-
sures of Memory) that has not been altered and re-altered,
till it would be difficult to detect in the patchwork any
thing like the texture of the original stuff?"

(Byron)" Well, if there is not a line or a word that has

"I will show you an ode you have never seen,

"Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.
We buried him darkly at dead of night,

The sods with our bayonets turning,-
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light,
And the lantern dimly burning.
No useless coffin enclosed his breast,

Nor in sheet nor in shroud we bound him,
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him.
Few and short were the prayers we said,

that I

And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we steadfastly gazed on the face of the dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.
We thought, as we hollow'd his narrow bed,
And smooth'd down his lonely pillow,
That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,
And we far away on the billow!
Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him,
But nothing he'll reck, if they let him sleep him on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.
But half of our heavy task was done,

When the clock told the hour for retiring:
And we heard, by the distant and random gun,
That the foe was suddenly firing.
Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

From the field of his fame fresh and gory:
We carved not a line, we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory.

See our preparatory remarks.

+ We have frequently published this very striking elegyEdit. Kal.

"I should have taken," said Shelley, "the whole for oh sketch of Campbell's."

No," replied Lord Byron: "Campbell would have laimed it, if it had been his." "I afterwards had reason to think that the ode was Lord Byron's; that he was piqued at none of his own being mentioned; and, after he had praised the verses so highly, ould not own them. No other reason can be assigned for his not acknowledging himself the author, particularly as he was a great admirer of General Moore. Or Malame de Stael he said:

"No woman had so much bonne foi as Madame de tael: her's was a real kindness of heart. She took the reatest possible interest in my quarrel with Lady Byron, r rather Lady Byron's with me, and had some influence wer my wife as much as any person but her mother, which is not saying much. I believe Madame de Stael did her utmost to bring about a reconciliation between us. She was the best creature in the world."

by his wife's melancholy fate, which ever after threw a cloud over his own. The year subsequent to this event he married Mary Wolstonecraft Godwin, daughter of the celebrated Mary Wolstonecraft and Godwin; and shortly before this period, heir to an income of many thousands a year, and a baronetage, he was in such pecuniary distress that he was nearly dying of hunger in the streets! Finding, soon after his coming of age, that he was entitled to some reversionary property in fee, he sold it to his father for an annuity of £1000 a year, and took a house at Marlow, where he persevered more than ever in his poetical and classical studies. It was during his residence in Buckinghamshire that he wrote his Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude; and perhaps one of the most perfect specimens of harmony in blank verse that our language possesses, and full of the wild scenes which his imagination had treasured up in his Alpine excursions. In this poeni he deities nature much in the same way that Wordsworth did in his earlier productions.

The feeling with which he recited these admirable character of great eccentricity, mixed in none of the amuse anas, I shall never forget. After he had come to an ments natural to his age-was of a melancholy and reserved ad, he repeated the third, and said it was perfect, parti-disposition, fond of solitude, and made few friends. Neiularly the lines ther did he distinguish himself much at Eton; for he had But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, a great contempt for modern Latin verses, and his studies With his martial cloak around him." were directed to any thing rather than the exercises of his class. It was from an early acquaintance with German writers, that he probably imbibed a romantic turn of mind; at least, we find him before fifteen publishing two RossaMatilda-like novels, called Justrozzi' and The Rosicrucian,' that bore no marks of being the productions of a boy, and were much talked of, and reprobated as immoral by the Journalists of the day. He also made great pro. gress in chemistry. He used to say, that nothing ever delighted him so much as the discovery that there were no elements of earth, fire, or water; but before he left school he nearly lost his life by being blown up in one of his experiments, and gave up the pursuit. He now turned his mind to metaphysics, and became infected with the materialism of the French school. Even before he was sent to "Inattentive to pecuniary matters, and generous to University College, Oxford, he had entered into an episto- excess, he soon found that he could not live on his income; lary theological controversy with a dignitary of the Church, and, still unforgiven by his family, he came to a resoluunder the feigned name of a woman; and, after the second tion of quitting his native country, and never returning to term, he printed a pamphlet with a most extravagant title, it. There was another circumstance, also, that tended to The Necessity of Atheism.' This silly work, which was disgust him with England: his children were taken from only a recapitulation of some of the arguments of Voltaire him by the Lord Chancellor, on the ground of his Atheism. and the philosophers of the day, he had the madness to He again crossed the Alps, and took up his residence at circulate among the bench of Bishops, not even disguising Venice. There he strengthened his intimacy with Lord his name. The consequence was an obvious one; he was Byron, and wrote his Revolt of Islam, an allegorical summoned before the heads of the College, and, refusing poem in the Spenser stanza. Noticed very favourably in to retract his opinions, on the contrary preparing to argue Blackwood's Magazine, it fell under the lash of The them with the examining Masters, was expelled the Uni-Quarterly, which indulged itself in much personal abuse versity. This disgrace in itself affected Shelley but little of the author, both openly in the review of that work, and at the time, but was fatal to all his hopes of happiness and insidiously under the critique of Hunt's Foliage. Perprospects in life; for it deprived him of his first love, and haps little can be said for the philosophy of The Loves of was the eventual means of alienating him for ever from his Laon and Cythra. Like Mr. Owen, of Lanark, he befamily. For some weeks after this expulsion, his father lieved in the perfectability of human nature, and looked refused to receive him under his roof; and when he did, forward to a period when a new golden age would return treated him with such marked coldness, that he soon quitted to earth-when all the different creeds and systems of the what he no longer considered his home, went to London world would be amalgamated into one-crime disappear—– privately, and thence eloped to Gretna Green with a Miss and man, freed from shackles civil and religious, bow beWestbrook-their united ages amounting to 33. This last fore the throne of his own aweless soul,' or of the act exasperated his father to such a degree, that he now Power unknown.' broke off all communication with Shelley. After some stay in Edinburgh, we trace him into Ireland; and, that country being in a disturbed state, find him publishing a pamphlet, which had a great sale, and the object of which was to soothe the minds of the people, telling them that moderate firmness, and not open rebellion, would most tend to conciliate, and to give them their liberties.

Of Coleridge he had the highest opinion: *Coleridge is like Sosie in Amphitryon; he does not *now whether he is himself or not. If he had never gone to Perutany, nor spoiled his fine genius by the transcendental hilosophy and German metaphysics, nor taken to write ay sermons, he would have made the greatest poet of the ay. What poets had we in 1795? Hayley had got a nonopoly, such as it was; Coleridge might have been any hing; as it is, he is a thing that dreams are made of." The account of the performance of the last offices to Mr. Shelley's remains, and the account of Shelley given by Captain Medwin, are highly deserving of extract :** 13th August, 1822. —On the occasion of Shelley's meancholy fate, I revisited Pisa, and on the day of my arrival earnt that Lord Byron was gone to the sea-shore, to assist performing the last offices to his friend. We came to a spot marked by an old and withered trunk of a fir-tree, and near it, on the beach, stood a solitary hut, covered with reeds. The situation was well calculated for a poet's are A few weeks before I had ridden with him and Lord Byron to this very spot, which I afterwards visited more than once. In front it was a magnificent extent of the blue and windless Mediterranean, with the Isles of Elba and Gorgona.-Lord Byron's yacht at anchor in the offing: on the other side an almost boundless extent of sandy wilderness, uncultivated and uninhabited, here and "He also spoke at some of their public meetings with tiere interspersed in tufts with underwood curved by the great fluency and eloquence. Returning to England the 2-breeze, and stunted by the barren and dry nature of fatter end of 1812, and being at that time an admirer of the soil in which it grew. At equal distances along the Mr. Southey's poems, he paid a visit to the Lakes, where coast stood high square towers, for the double purpose of himself and his wife passed several days, at Keswick. He garding the coast from smuggling, and enforcing the quarantine laws. This view was bounded by an immense self with The Age of Reason, Spinosa, and The Political now became devoted to poetry, and after imbuing himextent of the Italian Alps, which are here particularly pic-Justice, composed his Queen Mah, and presented it to unsque, from their volcanic and manifold appearances, most of the literary characters of the day-among the rest and which being composed of white marble, gave their

bomis the resemblance of snow.

**As a foreground to this picture appeared as extraorhay a group. Lord Byron and Trelawney were seen anding over the burning pile, with some of the soldiers of the guard; and Leigh Hunt, whose feelings and nerves eld not carry him through the ene of horror, lying back in the carriage, the four post-horses ready to drop with the intensity of the noon-day sun. The stillness of ill around was yet more felt by the shrill scream of a soliary curlew, which, perhaps, attracted by the body, wheeled in such narrow circles round the pile, that it might have been struck with the hand, and was so fearless that it could be driven away. Looking at the corpse, Lord Byron

aid,

666

Why, that old silk handkerchief retains its form better than that human body!"" "Scarcely was the ceremony concluded, when Lord Byron, agitated by the spectacle he had witnessed, tried to dissipate, in some degree, the impression of it, by his fa vourite recreation. He took off his clothes, therefore, and swam off to his yacht, which was riding a few miles distant." We shall here terminate our extracts this week, in order to troduce the following most interesting memoir of the fortunate Shelley.

to Lord Byron, who speaks of it in his note to The Ten
Foscari thus:-'I showed it to Mr. Sotheby as a poem of
great power and imagination. I never wrote a line of the
notes, nor ever saw them except in their published form.
nions and mine differ materally upon the metaphysical
No one knows better than the real author, that his opi-
portion of that work; though, in common with all who
the poetry of that and his other productions."
are not blinded by baseness and bigotry, I highly admire
It is to be
remarked here, that Queen Mab, eight or ten years af-
terwards, fell into the hands of a knavish bookseller, who
published it on his own account; and on its publication,
nions contained in that work, as being the crude notions
and subsequent prosecution, Shelley disclaimed the opi-
of his youth.

"Wild and visionary as such a speculation must be confessed to be in the present state of society, it sprang from a mind enthusiastic in its wishes for the good of the species, and the amelioration of mankind and of society; and however mistaken the means of bringing about this reform or "revolt" may be considered, the object of his whole life and writings seems to have been to develope them. This is particularly observable in his next work, The Prometheus Unbound, a bold attempt to revive a lost play of schylus. This drama shows an acquaintance with the Greek tragedy-writers which perhaps no other person possessed in an equal degree, and was written at into a tragedy, which, but for the harrowing nature of the Rome, amid the flower-covered ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. At Rome also he formed the story of The Cenci subject, and the prejudice against any thing bearing his name, could not have failed to have had the greatest success,-if not on the stage, at least in the closet. Lord Byron was of opinion that it was the best play the age had produced, and not unworthy of the immediate followers of Shakspeare.

"After passing several months at Naples, he finally settled, with his lovely and amiable wife, in Tuscany, where he passed the last four years in domestic retirement and intense application to study.

"His acquirements were great. He was, perhaps, the first classic in Europe. The books he considered the models of style for prose and poetry were Plato and the of the modern languages. Calderon in Spanish, Petrarch Greek dramatists. He had made himself equally master and Dante in Italian, and Goethe and Schiller in German, were his favourite authors. French he never read, and said he never could understand the beauty of Racine.

"Discouraged by the ill success of his writings-persecuted by the malice of his enemies-hated by the worldan outcast from his family, and a martyr to a painful complaint, he was subject to occasional fits of melancholy and dejection. For the last four years, though he continued to write, he had given up publishing. There were two occasions, however, that induced him to break through his resolution. His ardent love of liberty inspired him to write Hellas, or the Triumph of Greece, a drama, since translated into Greek, and which he inscribed to his friend Prince Maurocordato; and his attachment to Keats led him to publish an elegy, which he entitled Adonais.

"His marriage, by which he had two children, soon turned out (as might have been expected) an unhappy one, and a separation ensuing in 1816, he went abroad, and passed the summer of that year in Switzerland, where the scenery of that romantic country tended to make nature a passion and an enjoyment; and at Geneva he formed a friendship for Lord Byron, which was destined to last for life, It has been said, that the perfection of every thing Lord Byron wrote at Diodati (his Third Canto.of Childe Harold, his Manfred, and Prisoner of Chillon) owed something to the critical judgment that Shelley exercised over those works, and to his dosing him (as he used to say) with Wordsworth. In the autumn of this year we find the subject of this Memoir at Como, where he wrote Ro salind and Helen, an eclogue, and an ode to the Eugenean I am corroborated in this opinion, lately, by a lady Hills, marked with great pathos and beauty. His first ose brother received it many years ago from Lord Byron, visit to Italy was short, for he was soon called to England the mourners at the funeral of his poet friend, he draws

Percy Bysshe Shelley was removed from a private school at thirteen, and sent to Eton. He there shewed a

Lordship's own hand writing."

"This last is, perhaps, the most perfect of all his compositions, and the one he himself considered so. Among

this portrait of himself (the stanzas were afterwards ex- Ratcliff's entering just at the moment he is recovering panged from the elegy):

SIR,-I understand, for I was not present,-that, at The remains of one who was destined to have little re-individual who performed the character of Cassio went the representation of Othello in our theatre, last week, the pose or happiness here, now sleep with those of his friend down on his knees, in the drunken scene, to utter the Keats, in the burial-ground near Caius Cestus's Pyramid; spot so beautiful, said he, that it might almost make words "forgive us our sins," which are obviously a portion of the Lord's Prayer. e in love with death.'”