This dull and dark, a thing of prey; When such extremes se touchent, 'tis worse When Angels come to sport with woman, Are snugly garreted, be sure That (whether by flattery or bribe, Begot by Sin on mother Wit, With bastard claims would seek to wage War 'gainst dull Sense's heritage- With grins for smiles for satire jeers- 'Twas sometime gone this Poet's Muse } } For ev'n Fame's offspring, if unfather'd, I take 't for fact, each reader knows High up were piled, unstitch'd, unbound, But strangled ere they drew their breath A species of Hibernian death. Full many a quire was there bespread With many a wild and wicked joke And beauties crush'd, and smother'd sweets, The bard, a slave of the whole sex, Like waves on shatter'd masts and decks. For though her character's a gay one, Thought all her young penchants were over. He now would blot each damning proof, And stand in dire resolve-a pattern For sculptors of a second Saturn. The only puzzle that appear'd, } Just as a sexton plies the spade, And with their glutton maws becramm'd, He'd snatch his babes from the foul crew; The poet, shock'd, an instant stood Lest the young offspring of old Fame Here ends the tale. The moral is, 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,- } THE ISLAND.* 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. 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 feature. Abstract 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. Like coral reddening through the darken'd wave, 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 The fair-hair'd offspring of the Hebrides, Where roars the Pentland, with its whirling seas; His young eyes opening on the ocean-foam, Had from that moment deem'd the deep his home; The only Mentor of his youth,-where'er His bark was borne, the sport of wave and air;- |