Just as a sexton plies the spade,
Who, in the practice of their trade,
Grub up the dark sepulchre's gloom,
Search subjects in oblivion's tomb,

And with their glutton maws becramm'd,
Feed on all authors-dead or damn'd-
Our poet swore, and justly too,

He'd snatch his babes from the foul crew;
Therefore the critic's counsel craved
How his young implings might be saved.
Quick as the query was pronounced
The critic on the quarry pounced,
And cried, with a most natural tone,
"Cut them in pieces,-one by one!"

The poet, shock'd, an instant stood
To mark his friend's imp'rative mood.
He, in accordance with the fire
Of Genius, long'd to have a pyre
Whereon the bodies might be burn'd;
But this the critic overturn'd,

Lest the young offspring of old Fame
Might spring from the consuming flame,
And each a chattering phoenix rise
Up through the chimney to the skies.
To work they went, then, nail and tooth,
(Pardon th' inversion), nothing loath.
As for the critic, 'twas his trade
To mar the jokes another made,
And cut (like all his tribe, 'tis said)'
The writings he had never read:
He plunged in medias res--the story
Hack'd, slash'd, and scatter'd, con amore;
Quotations flung abroad by chance;
Spoil'd English epigrams in France;
Made puns upon each rumpled fair sheet,
Swore he was brother to Doll Tearsheet;
And glow'd 'midst the disjecta membra,
Although the day was quite Novembry.
And then the unnatural father, too,
Upon his mangled offspring flew ;
And seem'd resolved d'avance to try
How he might rob posterity.

Here ends the tale. The moral is,
That Fame, which wise ones call a quiz,
But which most authors think a treasure,
One can forego with honest pleasure,
When he must pay for 't at the price
Of one right feeling's sacrifice.

And also, that though Bards there be

All greatly penitent as he,

Who can, in moments of compunction,

Keep from their souls Fame's flattering unction,

CRITICS ne'er flinch from their foul function!

THE eccentric spirit to whom we are indebted for a new poem under the above title, has returned, in this instance, to that style, or rather that class of work which he seemed to have finally abandoned for something, certainly less generally interesting and attractive, however elevated in rank and ambitious in pretension. It is to his narrative poems-his Giaours, his Corsairs, his Laras, &c. that Lord Byron owes his popularity at least, if not his reputation. If it were not for these, and the intense interest that they had excited towards any thing he might offer to the world, his Manfreds, his Cains, and even the noblest of all his productions, his "Heaven and Earth," might have remained mysteries, in more senses than one. The latter were a kind of "Caviare," that nothing could have rendered palatable "to the multitude," unless their appetite had been previously excited in a degree that prevented them from judging exactly what it was of which they were partaking. If even the "Heaven and Earth" had appeared anonymously, and had not included any internal evidence of the source from whence it came, it would have fallen still-born from the press. As it was, people read it without relishing it, praised it without appreciating it, and laid it by without ever intending or desiring to take it up again. Whereas, of all the numerous fragments which this extraordinary writer has put forth, if there is one which indicates the true nature of the poetical structure he is capable of raising, and (we are determined to hope and expect) he some day or other will raise, to the glory of his art and the immortal honour of his name-it is this.

ture.

The Island, as we have hinted above, is a narrative poem, like those by which the author first became celebrated; with this difference, however, against it—that it is "founded on facts." We say "against it,” for this reason, that facts are not only such "stubborn," but such stirring things in their individual selves, that any suspected, much more any avowed alteration or embellishment of them, never fails to weaken the effect of a narration in which they are to form a distinguishing feaAbstract truth will very well bear to be "in fairy fiction dress'd ;" that which merely may have been, may be described to have been in any manner that the fancy or the feelings of the narrator may suggest, consistently with the object in view. But that which has been cannot be safely treated in this way, if the person who treats of it places any dependence on the fact of its having actually happened. To tell us, in the plain and intelligible prose of an eye-witness, that certain events took place thus and thus; and then to tell us, over again, the same story in substance, but after a different fashion, and one that is intended to be more poetical;-this is something worse than a work of supererogation. If Lord Byron had a mind to tell a story of the mutiny of a ship's company and its consequences-well and good; the subject would immediately strike us as being well adapted to his powers, and susceptible of the most poetical treatment. But why hamper himself with an actual narration of a mutiny, only to alter or abandon it, just as he might think fit at the moment ;-re

* The Island; or, Christian and his Companions. A Poem, by the Right Honourable Lord Byron.

taining the actual names, places, &c. but mixing them up with other names and places, and adapting them to other and fancied events? This is the only general fault we have to find with the interesting work before us. For the rest, it includes several admirable descriptive passages, some fine touches of character and passion, and a few clear, distinct, and highly interesting pictures. It consists of four cantos, the first of which is by many degrees the most inferior: indeed it is inferior to any other piece of writing of the same length that we remember of this author. It merely gives a slight sketch of the completion of the mutiny on board Captain Bligh's ship, and of the captain and part of the crew being set adrift; and then accompanies the mutineers (Christian and his companions) in their adventures in one of the Otaheitan Islands. The second canto introduces us to the two persons who make the principal figures in the poem.-Torquil, a young mountaineer, who formed one of the mutinous crew, and Neuha, an island girl, who attaches herself to him as a lover. The descriptions of each of these are among the best parts of the poem.

"There sat the gentle savage of the wild,

In growth a woman, but in years a child,
As childhood dates within our colder clime,
Where nought is ripen'd rapidly save crime;
The infant of an infant world, as pure
From nature-lovely, warm, and premature;
Dusky like night, but night with all her stars;
Or cavern sparkling with its native spars;
With eyes that were a language and a spell;
A form like Aphrodite's in her shell,
With all her loves around her on the deep;
Voluptuous as the first approach of sleep;
Yet full of life-for through her tropic cheek
The blush would make its way, and all but speak;
The sun-born blood suffused her neck, and threw
O'er her clear nut-brown skin a lucid hue,
Like coral reddening through the darken'd wave,
Which draws the diver to the crimson cave.

Such was the daughter of the Southern Seas."

The description of the English, or rather Scotch lover, if not so distinct and picturesque, is equally spirited.

"And who is he?-the blue-eyed northern child

Of isles more known to man, but scarce less wild;
The fair-hair'd offspring of the Hebrides,

Where roars the Pentland, with its whirling seas;
Rock'd in his cradle by the roaring wind,

The tempest-born in body and in mind,

His young eyes opening on the ocean-foam,

Had from that moment deem'd the deep his home;

The giant comrade of his pensive moods;

The sharer of his craggy solitudes;

The only Mentor of his youth,-where'er

His bark was borne, the sport of wave and air;

A careless thing, who placed his choice in chance;
Nursed by the legends of his land's romance;
Eager to hope, but not less firm to bear;
Acquainted with all feelings, save despair.
Placed in the Arab's clime, he would have been
As bold a rover as the sands have seen,

And braved their thirst with as enduring lip
As Ishmael, wafted in his desert-ship;
Fix'd upon Chili's shore, a proud cacique;
On Hellas' mountains, a rebellious Greek;
Born in a tent, perhaps a Tamerlane ;
Bred to a throne, perhaps unfit to reign.
For the same soul that rends its path to sway,
If rear'd to such, can find no further prey
Beyond itself, and must retrace its way,
Plunging for pleasure into pain; the same
Spirit which made a Nero, Rome's worst shame,

A humbler state and discipline of heart

Had form'd his glorious namesake's counterpart :*
But grant his vices-grant them all his own-
How small their theatre without a throne!"

The remainder of this canto is chiefly occupied with sketches of the island scenery, and reflections arising out of the situations of the "halfsavage and the whole." The following grand piece of invective is finely characteristic of the noble writer's style, both of thought, feeling, and expression.

"Had Cæsar known but Cleopatra's kiss,

Rome had been free-the world had not been his.
And what have Cæsar's deeds and Cæsar's fame
Done for the earth? We feel them in our shame :
The gory sanction of his glory stains

The rust which tyrants cherish in our chains.
Though Glory, Nature, Reason, Freedom, bid
Roused millions do what single Brutus did,—

Sweep these mere mock-birds of the despot's song

From the tall bough where they have perch'd so long,—

Still are we hawk'd at by such mousing owls,

And take for falcons those ignoble fowls,

When but a word of freedom would dispel

These bugbears-as their terrors show too well."

We must counteract the effect of the above not very soothing passage, by the delightful one which follows it, and which is no less characteristic of the author's other style.

"Rapt in the fond forgetfulness of life,
Neuha, the South-sea girl, was all a wife;
With no distracting world to call her off
From love; with no society to scoff

At the new transient flame; no babbling crowd

Of coxcombry, in admiration loud,

Or with adulterous whisper to alloy

Her duty, and her glory, and her joy;

With faith and feelings naked as her form,

She stood as stands the rainbow in the storm,

Changing its hues with bright variety,

But still expanding lovelier o'er the sky,
Howe'er its arch may swell, its colours move,

The cloud-compelling harbinger of Love."

Towards the end of the second canto we are introduced to another

personage, whose appearance

and character contrast somewhat strangely,

*The Consul Nero.

but yet very naturally, and with great spirit, with the two above described. This is a thorough-bred Wapping jack tar, with a pipe and an oath constantly in his mouth, who comes to announce that a strange sail is in sight, and that Christian (whom we now hear of on the island for the first time) has "piped all hands"-anticipating the nature of its errand. The remainder of the poem is occupied in alluding to the general battle which takes place between the mutineers and those who have come in pursuit of them, and in describing the events which follow on the result of that battle; which events are fatal to all the mutineers, with the exception of Torquil-who is saved by his mistress plunging with him into the ocean, and taking him, by a submarine entrance, into a rocky cave, which she has previously prepared for his reception, Here they remain till the strange ship-believing them to be drowned— leaves the island; and we are left to suppose that they live happy for the time to come.

This is the whole substance of the story-if story that can be called, which is, in fact, little more than a collection of sketches-pieces of pure execution-scarcely at all bound together by any plot, and scarcely needing it.

The description of the remnant who escape from the first general skirmish, and take temporary shelter among the rocks and crags, is excellent. We have space but for one or two short portions of it. The fol lowing shews us the leader of the desperate band:

"Stern, and aloof a little from the rest,

Stood Christian, with his arms across his chest.
The ruddy, reckless, dauntless hue once spread
Along his cheek, was livid now as lead.
His light brown locks so graceful in their flow,
Now rose like startled vipers o'er his brow,
Still as a statue, with his lips compress'd,
To stifle ev'n the breath within his breast,
Fast by the rock,-all menacing, but mute,-
He stood; and save a slight beat of his foot,
Which deepened now and then the sandy dint

Beneath his heel, his form seem'd turn'd to flint."

It will be observed, in perusing this part of the poem, that the manner in which Ben Bunting, the jolly jack tar, is occasionally introduced, (always with his pipe in his mouth) not only gives a fine contrast to the grouping of the pictures (for this part is a series of pictures) but it communicates an extraordinary reality and naturalness to the effect.

The death of the last three desperadoes—particularly that of Christian-is finely given. So is the following preparatory passage to it, which seems to place them before us in a kind of monumental gloom and stillness, as if they were already changed into their own funeral effigies.

"They landed on a wild but narrow scene,
Where few but Nature's footsteps yet had been ;
Prepared their arms, and with that gloomy eye,
Stern and sustained, of man's extremity,
When Hope is gone, nor Glory's self remains,
To cheer resistance against death or chains,-
They stood, the three, as the three hundred stood
Who dyed Thermopyla with holy blood,