Remarks

ON

DON JUAN.

Ir has been asked why this very extraordinary Poem of Don Juan remains unnoticed, by those on whom this office more peculiarly devolves: The reasons are known by many, but they will be avowed by none. This consideration must be my excuse for intruding on a department of literature, which I would willingly have left to abler hands. In fact, I have been more occupied of late, in writing what others may criticise, than in criticising what others may write. This little effort, therefore, is the hasty production of such moments as I could snatch from a much larger undertaking, on the prosecution of which I have expended some time and thought; but to what purpose, others must judge. His Lordship will, in all likelihood, either not read these remarks, or if he does, he will despise them. The contempt however will not be reciprocal ;-had his Lordship been a puny champion, I would not have selected a shaft from the quiver, nor a pebble from the brook. His Lordship will be surprised to find, however, that the opinions here advanced on his poetical achievements, are the general

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opinions; should they turn out to be as just as they are general, would it then become his Lordship to despise them? I conceive that to be true greatness, which would not be falsely accused, for the sake of others; nor truly, for its own. I admit that there are a few who think that some of the objectionable parts of Don Juan are reclaimed by others that are both beautiful and faultless. But alas! the poison is general, the antidote particular; the ribaldry and the obscenity will be understood by the many; the profundity and the sublimity will be duly appreciated, only by the few. We might also add, that as disease is more contagious than health in the natural world, so in the moral, vicious propensities are stronger than those that are virtuous. As his Lordship has threatened us with ten cantos more of Don Juan, in case the two before us should be favourably received by the public, I shall relate a little anecdote in hopes that he will profit by the hint it contains. The witty lady L. on being reproved by some one, for having Don Juan in her library, replied, "Oh but you don't see in what good company I have placed him;" on looking again, it was found that her Ladyship had put the volume between Young and Cowper ;-" As Don Juan," continued she, "is but a youth as yet, and vastly agreeable, I have put him there, in hopes of his reformation.”

In the review of so stupendous a subject as the talent of Lord Byron, and so interesting a one as the tendencies of such talent, it will be out of my power to confine myself entirely to Don Juan; my remarks will sometimes be general, and sometimes particular; never personal, except where it is impossible to separate the poet from his theme.

Lord Byron might have been not only the best, but the greatest poet of past or present times, with the exception of Shakspeare alone; he has chosen to be the most mis chievous and dangerous without any exception. His Muse possesses the precise quantum of evil, to effect the greatest

possible quantum of harm; had she more, or had she less, in either case she would not be so destructive; were her poison more diluted, it would not kill; were it more concentrated, it would nauseate, and be rejected. The impurity of Rochester is too disgusting to do harm; the morality of Pope is too neutralized to do good: but the Muse of Byron has mixed her poison with the hand of an adept; it is proffered in a goblet of chrystal and of gold; it will please the palate, remain on the stomach, and circulate through the veins.

Truly we live in precious times at present; we have a Carlisle with his dram for the ignorant, and his Lordship with his liqueur for the enlightened; poisons precisely adapted to their respective recipients; both equally suré, and equally dangerous; but differing from each other, only as the grape from the grain, or the nut from the juniper.

Francis Quarles must have been a prophet, as well as a poet, or he could not thus have fulfilled the double office of the Vates, and anticipated in the sixteenth century, the glories of the nineteenth! "Redeunt Saturnia Regna !"

"Our coblers shall translate their souls

From caves obscure and shady,

We'll make Tom T as good as my Lord,

And Joan as good as my Lady.

We'll crush and fling the marriage ring

Into the Roman See;

We'll ask no bands, but e'en clap hands,

And hey! then up go we!!"

But it is time to return to our subject. Like Shakspeare, who alone has surpassed him, the genius of Lord Byron, must not be tried by the established and ordinary canons of criticism. Such writers can make rules, rather than follow them. Like the peaks of Chimborazzo, or Cotopaxa, they rise above all measured distance, and ordinary spectators guess at their height, chiefly by their inability to

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REMARKS ON

arrive at it; they rate them rather by the inferiority of others, which they can ascertain, than by their own elevation, which they cannot. Although men of no talent break through all rules of criticism, only to be laughed at and despised, yet it must be confessed that her scant domain may accord well enough with the regulated and chastised, but subordinate genius of an Addison, and by confining, concentrate it: but a mind like that of a Shakspeare, or a Byron, is restless and impatient of critical control and limitation. "Estuat infelix angusto in limine." It soars above such barriers, and beyond them, only to secure a more extensive fame, a more exalted admiration ; like a horse of the highest blood, true genius never shews itself to such an advantage as in the moment of her escapade from all restraint of rein and of curb.

In the order of succession, poetry certainly preceded all rules and canons about it; and a Homer has made an Aristotle, although an Aristotle has never yet made a Homer. In fact the most brilliant conquests of the poet, no less than of the hero, have been achieved either before rules, or without them. Burns knew but little of Bentley; and Shakspeare, still less of Longinus; and Alexander had conquered the world, long before Polybius had told him how to accomplish it. There are Hannibals in both departments, who scorn to learn the art of writing from the commentators, or of fighting from the rhetoricians. The stupendous powers of a Byron can charm not only without all rules of criticism, and what is far more deplorable, of morality, but even against them. Deep as he has dipped his pen into vice, he has dipped it still deeper into immortality, and he must and will continue to be read and admired, in spite alike of our vituperations, and of his own delinquencies. Alas! we envy him not the fiend-like satisfaction, (if such it be) of shining, only to mislead; of flashing, only to destroy. His beams are a beacon set up by the Genius of evil; a beacon that

would warn us from that which is safe, only to decoy us to that which is dangerous; having a false light to amuse, a Syren to allure, a Circe to intoxicate; lest we should perceive that the fatal coast is covered with wrecks.

Were we to attempt to illustrate this phænomenon of the intellectual world, by any comparison drawn from the natural, we should depict it as an unclassed and non-descript concreation, that can wallow like the quadruped, or sting like the serpent, or soar like the eagle; producing, however, a sensation of the sublime in the spectators; the invariable effect of that which is at once both beautiful, and terrible, and new.

The invention of printing has given this author's efforts omnipresence, his own invention has insured them durability. He has therefore committed that which he cannot efface, he has uttered that which he cannot recal. "Fugit irrevocabile verbum." How much are such authors to be pitied if they have feeling; how much more if they have none. There is A Greater Teacher than any critic, and a sterner one too; there is an awful moment when such a monitor might whisper: "You have manifested the possession of the highest talent, only by the lowest perversion of it; and as far as this world is concerned; whatever may be the measure of your remorse, or the paroxysms of your despair, two inexorable necessities now await you; one part of you is going where it must cease to benefit your fellow men; another part of you must remain, where it cannot cease to injure them."

The poem opens with some very vapid and inharmonious lines, not at all unworthy of the meerest driveller of the day; all that we can discover from them is, that his Lordship has a very comfortable contempt for the whole herd of Heroes and of Conquerors, " Who filled their sign-posts then, as Wellesley now," and whom his Lordship can hardly pardon, for occupying some little of that public attention

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