THE WORKS OF LORD BYRON, INCLUDING The Suppressed Poems. ALSO A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. BY J. W. LAKE. COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME. Philadelphia: PUBLISHED BY HENRY ADAMS, AND SOLD BY JOHN GRIGG. STEREOTYPED BY J. HOWE. 1831. Fragment from the Prometheus Vinctus ... ib. THE DEFORMED TRANSFORMED. The Episode of Nisus and Euryalus .... ib. Translation from the Medea of Euripides.. 14 HEAVEN AND EARTH.. BY J. W. LAKE. O'er the harp, from earliest years beloved, It was reserved for the present age to pro- their readers, far beyond the range of those dace one distinguished example of the Muse ordinary feelings which are usually excited haring descended upon a bard of a wounded by the mere efforts of genius. The impression , and lent her lyre to tell afflictions of of this interest still accompanies the perusal omary description; afflictions originating of their writings; but there is another interest, proba'sy in that singular combination of feel- of more lasting and far stronger power, which ing with imagination which has been called each of them possessed,-which lies in the the poetical temperament, and which has so continual embodying of the individual characden saddened the days of those on whom it ter, it might almost be said of the very person has been conferred. If ever a man was enti- of the writer. When we speak or think of tand to lay claim to that character in all its Rousseau or Byron, we are not conscious of strength and all its weakness, with its un- speaking or thinking of an author. We have bounded range of enjoyment, and its exquisite a vague but impassioned remembrance of men MEBALLaty of pleasure and of pain, that man of surpassing genius, eloquence, and power,was Lord Byron. Nor does it require much of prodigious capacity both of misery and tre, or a deep acquaintance with human na- happiness. We feel as if we had transiently tore, to discover why these extraordinary met such beings in real life, or had known powers should in so many cases have con- them in the dim and dark communion of a tributed more to the wretchedness than to the dream. Each of their works presents, in suchomess of their possessor. cession, a fresh idea of themselves; and, while The imagination all compact," which the the productions of other great men stand out greatest poet who ever lived has assigned as from them, like something they have created, the distinguishing badge of his brethren, is in theirs, on the contrary, are images, pictures, every case a dangerous gift. It exaggerates, busts of their living selves, clothed, no doubt, deed, our expectations, and can often bid at different times, in different drapery, and to possessor hope, where hope is lost to reason; prominent from a different back-ground,—but but the delusive pleasure arising from these uniformly impressed with the same form, and Vs of imagination, resembles that of a mien, and lineaments, and not to be mistaken chid whose notice is attracted by a fragment for the representations of any other of the of glass to which a sunbeam has given mo- children of men. mentary splendour. He hastens to the spot But this view of the subject, though univerwith breathless impatience, and finds that the sally felt to be a true one, requires perhaps a object of his curiosity and expectation is little explanation. The personal character of equally vulgar and worthless. Such is the which we have spoken, it should be underman of quick and exalted powers of imagina- stood, is not altogether that on which the seal ta: his fancy over-estimates the object of of life has been set,-and to which, therefore, has wishes; and pleasure, fame, distinction, moral approval or condemnation is necessaare alternately pursued, attained, and despised rily annexed, as to the language or conduct when in his power. Like the enchanted fruit of actual existence. It is the character, so to in the palace of a sorcerer, the objects of his speak, which is prior to conduct, and yet admiration lose their attraction and value as open to good and to ill,-the constitution of soon as they are grasped by the adventurer's the being in body and in soul. Each of these hand; and all that remains is regret for the illustrious writers has, in this light, filled his time lost in the chase, and wonder at the hal- works with expressions of his own character, lacitation under the influence of which it was -has unveiled to the world the secrets of his undertaken. The disproportion between hope own being, the mysteries of the framing of and possession, which is felt by all men, is thus man. They have gone down into those depths doubled to those whom nature has endowed which every man may sound for himself, with the power of gilding a distant prospect though not for another; and they have made by the rays of imagination. We thank that many points of resemblance may be traced between Byron and Rousseau. Beth are distinguished by the most ardent and Trad delineation of intense conception, and by a deep sensibility of passion rather than of section. Both, too, by this double power, have held a dominion over the sympathy of disclosures to the world of what they beheld and knew there-disclosures that have commanded and forced a profound and universal sympathy, by proving that all mankind, the troubled and the untroubled, the lofty and the low, the strongest and the frailest, are linked together by the bonds of a common but inscrutable nature. |