"I AM PLEASED, AND YET I'M SAD." WHEN twilight steals along the ground, And all the bells are ringing round, I at my study window sit, And, rapt in many a musing fit, To bliss am all alive. But though impressions calm and sweet And I am inly glad, I am pleased, and yet I'm sad. Does that disturb my breast? Is it that here I must not stop, At home where'er I stray. When thou no more canst hear? Then whence it is I cannot tell, That holds me when I'm glad; TO CONSUMPTION. GENTLY, most gently, on thy victim's head, Of death to those good men who fall thy prey, Whisper the solemn warning in mine ear! That I may bid my weeping friends good-by Ere I depart upon my journey drear: And, smiling faintly on the painful past, Compose my decent head, and breathe my last. THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. WHEN marshall'd on the nightly plain, The glittering host bestud the sky; One star alone, of all the train, Can fix the sinner's wandering eye. Hark! hark! to God the chorus breaks, Once on the raging seas I rode, The storm was loud-the night was dark, The ocean yawn'd-and rudely blow'd The wind that toss'd my foundering bark. Deep horror then my vitals froze, It was the Star of Bethlehem. It was my guide, my light, my all, Now safely moor'd-my perils o'er, The Star!-The Star of Bethlehem! TO AN EARLY PRIMROSE. MILD offspring of a dark and sullen sire! Thee, when young spring first question'd winter's sway, And dared the sturdy blusterer to the fight, Thee on this bank he threw To mark his victory. In this low vale, the promise of the year, Thy tender elegance. So virtue blooms, brought forth amid the storms While every bleaching breeze that on her blows And hardens her to bear LORD BYRON. GEORGE Gordon BYRON was born in London on the twenty-second of January, 1788. His father, who was a man of dissolute habits, quitted England in the following year, and soon afterward his mother retired to Aberdeen, where at an early age he was placed at a grammar school, in which he remained until the death of his great uncle, the sixth Lord BYRON, when (his father having previously died in France) he succeeded to the family title and estates, and removed to Newstead Abbey. Soon after this he was placed under the guardianship of the Earl of Carlisle, by whom he was sent to Harrow, where he remained about four years. He is described by Dr. DRURY, the head master here, as having been sensitive and diffident, and not easily governed except by gentle means. He did not excel in scholarship, but none of his school fellows, among whom were the present Sir ROBERT PEEL, Mr. PROCTOR, and others who have since been distinguished, were equal to him in general information. In his seventeenth year he was transferred to Trinity College, Cambridge. His general characteristics were still the same as at Harrow. He cared nothing for the honours of the university, and its discipline was not of a nature rightly to influence his conduct. On leaving Cambridge BYRON resumed his residence at Newstead Abbey, a place rich in legendary associations, and situated in one of the most romantic districts of the country. He now published The Hours of Idleness, a collection of verses written during his college life, and remembered at this day chiefly on account of the severe criticism they received in the Edinburgh Review,* which lashed the dormant energies of the poet into action, and led to the composition of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, a satire in which he took ample vengeance not only upon his critics but upon nearly all the literary men of the day who were more fortunate than himself. A circumstance occurred about this time which had a powerful influence upon BYRON'S future character. MARY CHAWORTH was pro *This celebrated article was written by Lord Brougham. | bably the only Englishwoman whom he ever loved. He had become acquainted with her soon after his removal from Scotland, and had never wholly abandoned the hope that his affection would be returned, until now, when he underwent the trial of seeing her married to another. She is the heroine of The Dream, and is alluded to in many of his sweetest verses, written in subsequent years. Immediately after the publication of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, the noble author took his seat the first time in the House of Lords. He entered upon public life under peculiar and adverse circumstances. He was unknown in society, and there was no peer to present him in parliament. The loneliness of his position destroyed an incipient ambition of political eminence, and deepened the gloom and misanthropy which had been caused by earlier disappointments. He suddenly determined to travel, and leaving London with Mr. JOHN CAM HOBHOUSE, in July, 1809, he passed two years in Portugal, Spain, Greece, Turkey and Asia Minor. Approaching England in the summer of 1811, he wrote to a friend, "Embarrassed in my private, and indifferent to public affairs; solitary, without the wish to be social; with a body enfeebled by a succession of fevers, but a spirit and heart yet unbroken, I am returning home, without a hope, and almost without a desire." Before he reached Newstead his melancholy was increased by intelligence of the death of his mother, and within a few weeks he lost five more of his nearest friends and relations. This depression gradually wore away. He employed himself in revising the poems he had written while abroad, and in March, 1812, when the author was but twenty-four years of age, England was electrified by the appearance of the first two cantos of Childe Harold. Alluding to the applause bestowed upon this work, he says tersely in his diary, "I awoke one morning and found myself famous." He became at once the idol of society. A few days before, he had made his first speech in parliament. It was praised by SHERIDAN, and other eminent men, and its success might have incited him to seek political distinction, but for his far greater success as a poet, which immediately determined his subsequent career. Childe Harold was followed by The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, Lara, and The Siege of Corinth, in quick succession, and each added to his gigantic reputation. In January, 1815, Lord BYRON was married to a daughter of Sir RALPH MILBANKE. The union, it is well known, was not productive of happiness, and in the following year, after Lady BYRON had given birth to a daughter,* a separation took place. The public, with its customary impertinence, interfered, and it chose to side with the lady. Lord BYRON was libelled, persecuted, and driven from society. No man was ever more grievously wronged. As Mr. MACAULAY Well observes, first came the execution, then the investigation, and, last of all, the accusation. There was a quarrel, but there has never been any thing proved, or even alleged, to show that BYRON was more to blame than any other man who is on bad terms with his wife. He again quitted England for the continent, and with a determination never to return. Resuming his pen, he produced in the three succeeding years The Prisoner of Chillon, Manfred, The Lament of Tasso, Beppo, the last cantos of Childe Harold, and many shorter poems, which were received with almost universal applause. He fixed his home in Venice, and there abandoned himself to every kind of pleasure. Under the influence of excesses his health decayed, and his hair turned gray. His mind, too, suffered sensible injury. Don Juan and some of his dramatic pieces contain many passages which only BYRON could have written, but his verse lost the energy for which it had been distinguished, and with his remarkable command of language passed away much of that delicate perception of the beautiful, which more than any thing else constitutes the poetical faculty. Among BYRON's companions in Italy were SHELLEY and LEIGH HUNT, associated with whom he established a periodical paper called The Liberal; but after the publication of a few numbers, the plan was relinquished. The dead body of his friend SHELLEY he assisted in burning by the bay of Spezia; HUNT, with whom he had quarrelled, returned to England, ADA BYRON, now Countess of Lovelace. and be directed his own eyes toward Greece, in contemplation of the last and noblest effort of his life. Sated with literary fame, weary of inaction, and thirsting for honourable distinction in a new field, he entered the Grecian camp, where his reception was like that of Lafayette in America, though more enthusiastic, more triumphant. Had he lived, he might have become eminent as a soldier and statesman; but anxiety, action and exposure induced disease, and on the nineteenth of March, 1824, seven months after his arrival in Cephalonia, he died at Missolonghi, in the thirtyseventh year of his age. The admirable criticisms of MACAULAY and other late writers have placed BYRON in a more just position than could have been anticipated from the vague and partisan views that so long obtained respecting him. The world is fast learning to discriminate between his genius and character. The fervour of his poetry no longer blinds men to the fallacy of his moral code, nor is his life judged as formerly with heartless and intolerant severity. He had very many noble qualities; he was alive to tender and generous feelings, and performed numerous acts of disinterested liberality. His amours are the subject of the most melancholy chapter in his life, but they were less numerous and less dishonourable than has been supposed. His liaison with Madame GUICCIOLA, though by the standard of morality established on the shores of the Adriatic it might be called virtuous, was criminal; yet it is not to be visited with the censure which such a connection would deserve in England. In ByRON's early history, his unhappy education, his severe trials, and the capricious treatment he received from society, there is much to explain and to palliate his conduct. He knew the world, and his judgment of it was not very erroneous. He was indeed what almost any man of genius, exposed to such vicissitudes, might be expected to be, unless guided and restrained by religious principle. His writings present a variety of states of mind and conditions of feeling, and critics have pointed out in them what is respectively the offspring of blind passion and genuine sentiment. The descriptive portions of Childe Harold, the versification of the Corsair, and the pure melancholy of some of his occasional effusions, will always be warmly admired by many who can never sympathize with the misanthropic overflowings of a sceptical mind. THE LAMENT OF TASSO.* LONG years!-it tries the thrilling frame to bear How Salem's shrine was won, and how adored. Of my own spirit shall be found resource. Nor cause for such: they call'd me mad-and why? To lift my love so lofty as thou art: At Ferrara (in the library) are preserved the original MSS. of TAsso's Gierusalemme and of GUARINI's Pastor Fido, with letters of Tasso, one from TITIAN to ARIOSTO; and the inkstand and chair, the tomb and the house of the latter. But as misfortune has a greater interest for posterity, and little or none for the contemporary, the cell where Tasso was confined in the hospital of St. ANNA attracts a more fixed attention than the residence or the monument of ARIOSTO-at least it had this effect on me. That thou wert beautiful, and I not blind, But ours is fathomless, and hath no shore. With these and with their victims am I class'd, pass'd; Mid sights and sounds like these my life may close: So let it be for then I shall repose. I have been patient, let me be so yet; I had forgotten half I would forget, But it revives-oh! would it were my lot Feel I not wroth with those who bade me dwell Which echoes Madness in her babbling moods;- call None! save that One, the veriest wretch of all, LORD BYRON. The vivid thought still flashes through my frame, A something which all softness did surpass- It is no marvel-from my very birth My soul was drunk with love, which did pervade The world is all before him-mine is here, It may be, tempt me further, and prevail |