of everything. Take your own experience for example. Who among you has not heard some oration so powerfully and eloquently expressed that it has become heightened into poetry? Is it not commonly the case that a glowing and beautiful description is spoken of as being "quite poetical?"

I will now with your permission quote to you a few passages from the works of different poets illustrative of my opinion on the subject. How very poetic for example is Milton's "Ode on his Blindness.!" he speaks of being

"Debarred from sight of vernal bloom and joy."

How poetic also is that passage in Rogers' "Pleasures of Memory" descriptive of a dog welcoming his master after a long absence!

"His faithful dog will tell his joy to each

With that mute eloquence which passes speech !"

How poetical also are these lines in the "Pleasures of Hope" descriptive of an Arctic scene!

"Cold on his midnight watch the breezes blow,
From wastes that slumber in eternal snow."

The

Here the mind at once pictures to itself a scene of wintry desolation as forcibly as any other set of words could have compelled it to do. same poet also describes a social and domestic scene, the pleasures of the evening fireside, in the middle of winter

"Trim the gay taper in his rustic dome,

And light the wintry paradise of home."

The mind at once

Can anything be more poetic than these lines? revels in the delights of the domestic circle, and traces for itself images of fireside happiness and home, enlivened both by the interchange of frank, and affectionate feeling, and the play of harmless fun, amid the raging of the wintry elements. Of all poets, I have always been of opinion that Thomson, the author of "The Seasons," is one whose writings contain the pure spirit of poetry, as much, or more so, than those of any other poet. Speaking of green, he says,

"Thou smiling nature's universal robe,"

and addressing the sun he says,

"The very dead creation from thy touch the power assumes of mimic life."

How in these quotations we at once view nature in all the climax and redundancy of vegetation, and blooming in all the summer luxuriance of landscape loveliness! To conclude this part of my lecture, how poetical is the same poet's "Hymn on the Seasons!" for instance, when he says, addressing the Almighty,

"The rolling year is full of Thee."

Returning to the immediate subject of my lecture, I cannot but think that Byron possessed all the combined characteristics of a great poet more than almost any, excepting perhaps Milton and Shakspeare. His descriptions of natural scenery are conducted in a manner, which at once brings to the mind's eye either landscapes of surpassing loveliness, teeming with the sylvan beauty of the stream, or the meadow, or again others clothed in the wildness of a perpetual winter, where, to use his own glowing and poetic language,

"Falls the avalanche, that thunderbolt of snow."

How beautiful also are his descriptions of women, and his delineations of the female character, as in the case of Medora and Zuleika for instance ! How clothed in an atmosphere of almost divine radiance when touched by his magic pencil appears the form of one of the softer sex, and how we recognize her, in the plenitude of her smiles of gentlehess, of her blushes of purity, and her bursts of tenderness and affection, as the great earthly representative of Deity in His softer, attributes! It has always seemed to me that Lord Byron's poems evince one attribute, the possession of which no other but myself ever gave him the credit of possessing, viz., an intimate knowledge of the feelings of human nature, and in the course of this lecture I shall endeavour to point out the passages shewing the attribute, when we come to them. There are interspersed throughout his poems passages which describe the workings of the human heart on great and trying occasions, touches of Nature delineating in eloquent, and vivid, and masterly strokes the play of her own wonderful mechanism. Great originality of thought is also one of Lord Byron's attributes, as I hope to point out to you, and his ideas are often clothed with a vigour, beauty, and electrifying greatness, which almost startles the mind by its grandeur, appealing to the intellect in language eloquent not only for its quality, but for its brevity. His descrip

tions often fall upon us like a flash of lightning, instantaneous, and dazzling, and then all is over. Other writers frequently lean to the opposite extreme, our own Classic Addison for example (as Dr. Blair in his essay on rhetoric suggests) is remarkable more for his circumlocution than his brevity, and according to the opinion of that eminent critic, that very circumlocution is his fault, confessedly pure, and elegant as his style is. A word or two as regards the versification of the noble Lord. Grace, beauty, harmony, and refinement, combined with glowing vigour are its characteristics, as I hope to shew you before the conclusion of this lecture; and I know no poet who more brought the heroic couplet to the climax of perfection than he did, although he did not seem to be so well aware of the matter, but I think that the circumstance tends to shew the truth of the well-known adage, that "a poet is not the best judge of his own works." In the preface to "The Corsair" he says that the species of versification most after his own mind is the Spenserian stanza, that, you are probably aware, is the kind of verse in which "Childe Harold" is written. I must own, I disagree with him on the subject, not only am I of opinion that the heroic stanza is the most beautiful, and noblest kind of versification, both for descriptive, and didactic poetry, but that it was the kind in which the poet excelled the most, as I hope to shew you, as much as anything can be shewn to which you cannot apply mathematical demonstration, and which after all is but a matter of opinion. When wielded by the hands of Byron there was not only a beautiful harmony, but a masterly vigour, and an electrifying power in the heroic couplet, which no other author possessed to equal extent, although some have approached him, Pope, Rogers, and Campbell in particular; the two first equal him in the smoothness, grace, and beauty of their versification, but want his vigour; the latter, viz., Campbell, surpasses the other two in his approach to Byron, not only is I think his verse equally graceful, but also possessed of a great share of the same soul, and electrifying power.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, with your permission, I will read to you two extracts relatively to the subject, the first from Moore's "Life of Byron," the second from "Macaulay's Essays," and then I will take his principal poems, "Childe Harold," "The Corsair," "The Bride of Abydos," and "The Giaour," and quoting the principal passages in each, comment upon them. I now read you the extract from Moore-" Thus surrounded by

vexations, and thus deeply feeling them, it is not too much to say, that any other spirit but his own would have sunk under the struggle, and lost perhaps irrecoverably, that level of self-esteem which alone affords a stand against the shocks of fortune. But in him, furnished as was his mind with reserves of strength, waiting to be called out, the very intensity of the pressure brought relief by the proportionate reaction which it produced. Had his transgressions and frailties been visited with no more than their due portion of punishment, there can be no doubt that a very different result would have ensued. Not only would such an excitement have been insufficient to waken up the new energies still dormant in him, but that consciousness of his own errors, which was for ever living present in his mind, would, under such circumstances, have been left undisturbed by any unjust provocation, to work its usual provocation, and perhaps humbling influences on his spirit. But, luckily, as it proved for the further triumphs of his genius, no such moderation was exercised. The storm of invective raised around him, so utterly out of proportion to his offences, and the base calumnies which were everywhere heaped upon his name, left to his wounded spirit no other resource than in the same summoning up of strength, the same instinct of resistance to injustice which had first forced out the energies of his youthful genius, and was now destined to give a still bolder and loftier range to its powers. It was indeed, not without truth, said of him by Goëthe, that he was inspired by the Genius of Pain, for, from the first to the last of his agitated career, every fresh recruitment of his faculties was imbibed from that bitter source. His chief incentive, when a boy, to distinction was, as we have seen, that mark of deformity on his person, by an acute sense of which he was first stung into the ambition of being great, as with an evident reference to his own fate, he himself describes the feeling

'Deformity is daring,

It is his essence to o'ertake mankind

By heart and soul, and make itself the equal,

Ay, the superior of the rest. There is

A spur in its halt movements, to become

All that the others cannot, in such things
As still as free to both to compensate
For Stepdame Nature's avarice at first.'

Then came the disappointment of his youthful passion, the lassitude and

remorse of premature excess, the lone friendliness of his entrance into life, and the ruthless assault upon his first literary efforts, all links in that chain of trials, errors, and sufferings, by which his great mind was gradually and painfully drawn out; all bearing their respective shares in accomplishing that destiny which seems to have decreed that the triumphal march of his genius should be over the waste and the ruin of his heart! He appeared, indeed, himself to have an instinctive consciousness that it was out of such ordeals his strength and glory were to arise, as his whole life was passed in courting agitation and difficulties; and whenever the scenes around him were too tame to furnish such excitement, he flew to fancy or memory for thorns' whereon to 'lean his breast.'

And now with your permission, I intend reading you a few extracts from "Macaulay's Essays" relative to the subject, and I may add that I never yet have met with any criticism on the writings of the noble bard which have pleased me more or which appear to me more felicitous, or a-propos to the matter in question. "Lord Byron, like Mr. Wordsworth, had nothing dramatic in his genius. He was indeed the reverse of a great dramatist, the very antithesis to a great dramatist. All his characters, Harold looking on the sky, from which his country and the sun are disappearing together, the Giaour standing apart in the gloom of the side aisle, and casting a haggard scowl from under his long hood at the crucifix, and the censer, Conrad leaning on his sword by the watch tower, Lara smiling on the dancers, Alp gazing steadily on the fatal cloud as it passes before the moon, Manfred wandering among the precipices of Berne, Azzo on the judgment seat, Ugo at the bar, Lambro frowning on the siesta of his daughter and Juan, and Cain presenting his unacceptable offering, are essentially the same. The varieties are varieties merely of age, situation, and outward show. It was in description, and meditation that Byron excelled. His manner is indeed peculiar, and is almost unequalled, rapid, sketchy, full of vigour; the selection happy, the ⚫ strokes few and bold. In spite of the reverence we feel for the genius of Mr. Wordsworth, we cannot but think that the minuteness of his descriptions often diminishes their effects. He has accustomed himself to gaze on nature with the eye of a lover, to dwell on every feature, and to mark every change of aspect. The proverb of old Hesiod that a half is often more than the whole, is eminently applicable to description. The policy of the Dutch who cut down most of the precious trees on the Spice Islands, in order to