We believe that few books are so extensively read and admired as those which contain the narratives of intelligent travellers. Indeed, the greater part of every community are confined, either by necessity or indolence, to a very narrow space on the globe, and are naturally eager to contemplate, in description at least, that endless variety of new and curious objects which a visit to distant countries and climates is known to furnish, and of which only a very limited portion can be accessible to the most enterprising individual. If, then, this species of information be so attractive when conveyed in prose, and sometimes, it must be confessed, in very dull prose, by what accident has it happened that no English poet before Lord Byron has thought fit to employ his talents on a subject so obviously well suited to their display? This inadvertence, if such it be, is the more extraordinary, because the supposed dearth of epic subjects has been, during many years, the only apparent impediment to the almost infinite multiplication of epic poems. If it be supposed that the followers of the muse have not carelessly overlooked, but intentionally rejected the materials offered by a traveller's journal as too anomalous to be employed in a regular and grand composition, we answer that Homer was of a different opinion, and that the Odyssey is formed of exactly such materials.

We do not know whether Lord Byron ever had it in contemplation to write an epic poem ; but we conceive that the subject, which he selected, is perfectly suited to such a purpose; that the foundation which he has laid is sufficiently solid, and his materials sufficiently ample for the most magnificent superstructure; but we doubt whether his plan be well conceived, and we are by no means disposed to applaud, in every instance, the selection of his ornaments. The plan indeed has not been developed in the two cantos which are now given to the public; but it appears to us that the 'Childe Harold,' whom we suppose, in consequence of the author's positive assurance, to be a mere creature of the imagination, is so far from effecting the object for which he is introduced, and 'giving some connexion to the piece,' that he only tends to embarrass and obscure it. We are told, however, that friends, on whose opinions Lord Byron sets a high value,' have suggested to him that he might be suspected' of having sketched in his hero a portrait of real life; a suspicion for which, he says, 'in some very trivial particulars there might be grounds; but in the main points I hope none whatever.' Now, if he was so anxious to repel a suspicion which had occurred to friends, on whom he set a high value; if he was conscious that the imaginary traveller, whom, from an unwillingness to appear as the hero of his own tale, he had substituted for himself, was so unamiable; we are at a loss to guess at his motives for choosing such a representative. If, for the completion of some design which has not yet appeared, but which is to be effected in

the sequel of the poem, it was necessary to unite, in the person of the pilgrim, the eager curiosity of youth with the fastidiousness of a sated libertine, why revert to the rude and simple ages of chivalry in search of a character which can only exist in an age of vicious refinement? And why is the group of antiques sent on a journey through Portugal and Spain, during the interval between the convention of Cintra and the battle of Talavera? Such inconsistencies appear to us to be perfectly needless; they may be easily removed; and they are by no means innocent if they have led Lord Byron (as we suspect) to adopt that motley mixture of obsolete and modern phraseology by which the ease and elegance of his verses are often injured, and to degrade the character of his work by the insertion of some passages which will probably give offence to a considerable portion of his readers.

But we have not yet exhausted our complaints against the wayward hero of the poem, whose character, we think, is most capriciously and uselessly degraded. [Here follow a great many reflections of the Reviewer, which we think unmerited and petulant, upon these passages.]

Three hosts combine to offer sacrifice;

Three tongues prefer strange orisons on high;
Three gaudy standards flout the pale blue skies;
The shouts are France, Spain, Albion, Victory!
The foe, the victim, and the fond ally

That fights for all, but ever fights in vain,
Are met as if at home they could not die-
To feed the crow on Talavera's plain,

And fertilize the field that each pretends to gain.

There shall they rot-Ambition's honour'd fools!
Yes, honour decks the turf that wraps their clay!
Vain Sophistry! in these behold the tools,
The broken tools, that tyrants cast away.'

'Enough of Battle's minions! let them play
Their game of lives, and barter breath for fame:
Fame that will scarce re-animate their clay,
Though thousands fall to deck some single name.
In sooth 'twere sad to thwart their noble aim
Who strike, blest hirelings! for their country's good,
And die, that living might have proved her shame.'
he would not delight

(Born beneath some remote inglorious star)

In themes of bloody fray, or gallant fight,

But loath'd the bravo's trade, and laughed at martial wight.'

Canto II. St. 39.

Now surely it was not worth while to conjure a 'Childe Harold' out of some old tapestry, and to bring him into the field of Talavera, for the purpose of indulging in such meditations as these. It is undoubtedly true that the cannon and the musketry must often anticipate the stroke of time; and carry off, in the vigour of life, many who might have been reserved at home to a long protracted decay. It is moreover true that the buried will rot; that the unburied may become food for crows, and consequently, that the man who has bartered life for fame has no chance, when once killed, of coming to life again. But these truths, we apprehend, are so generally admitted that it is needless to inculcate them. It is certainly untrue that fame is of little value. It is something to be honoured by those whom we love. It is something to the soldier when he returns to the arms of a mother, a wife, or a sister, to see in their eyes the tears of exulta ion mixing with those of affection, and of pious gratitude to heaven for his safety. These joys of a triumph, it may be said, are mere illusions; but for the sake of such illusions is life chiefly worth having. When we read the preceding sarcasms on the 'bravo's trade,' we are induced to ask, not without some anxiety and alarm, whether such are indeed the opinions which a British peer entertains of a British army.

Having already given our reasons for thinking that the perversity of character attributed to the hero of the piece is far too highly coloured, it is needless to comment on that settled despair,

That will not look beyond the tomb,

But cannot hope for rest before.'-(p. 52.)

This is the consummation of human misery; and if it had been the author's principal object, in delineating this fictitious personage, to hold him up to his young readers as a dreadful example of early profligacy, such a finishing to the picture might be vindicated as consistent and useful. In that case, however, it would have been doubly essential to devest the Childe' of his chivalrous title and attributes;[a] and the attention of the poet and of the reader being engrossed by one dismal object, it would have become necessary to sacrifice a large portion of that elegance and animation by which the present work is confessedly distinguished.

In the note inserted at p. 143, Lord Byron has certainly replied, with great liberality and decorum, to a set of critics, who, in their censures of his earlier works, had not set him the example of extreme urbanity; but the instance of unprovoked pugnacity to which we allude is exhibited in pp. 146 and 147, where he denies to Mr. Thornton any claims to public confidence from a fourteen years' residence at Pera;' assuring us that this can give him no more in

[a This reminds us of Rymer's remarks on Shakspeare, in the last number of our Repository.]

sight into the real state of Greece and her inhabitants than as many years spent at Wapping into that of the western Highlanders.' But, in the first place, if Lord Byron be right, Mr. Thornton cannot be wholly wrong; for, on comparing their respective opinions, it will be found that, in all essential points, they very nearly coincide. Secondly, as Constantinople and its immediate vicinity may furnish about one hundred thousand specimens of Greeks of different ranks and conditions, whilst Wapping cannot be supposed to offer very numerous samples of western Highlanders, we cannot consider the noble lord's illustration as very apposite.

It is now time to take leave-we hope not a long leave-of Childe Harold's migrations; but we are unwilling to conclude our article without repeating our thanks to the author for the amusement which he has afforded us. The applause which he has received has been very general, and, in our opinion, well deserved. We think that the poem exhibits some marks of carelessness, many of caprice, but many also of sterling genius.....But it was our duty attentively to search for, and honestly to point out the faults arising from caprice, or from a disregard of general opinion; because it is a too common, though a very mischievous prejudice, to suppose that genius and eccentricity are usual and natural companions; and that to discourage extravagance is to check the growth of excellence. Lord Byron has shown that his confidence in his own powers is not to be subdued by illiberal and unmerited censure; and we are sure that it will not be diminished by our animadversions we are not sure that we should have better consulted his future fame, or our own character for candour, if we had expressed our sense of his talents in terms of more unqualified panegyric.

ART. VIII. The Works of Mr. JOHN DENNIS, in Two Volumes, consisting of Plays, Poems, &c. London, 1721.

Original Letters, Familiar and Critical, by Mr. DENNIS, in Two Volumes. London, 1721. [Retrospective Review-May, 1820.]

JOHN DENNIS, the terror or the scorn of that age, which is sometimes strangely honoured with the title of Augustan, has attained a lasting notoriety, to which the Reviewers of our times can scarcely aspire. His name is immortalized in the Dunciad; his best essay is preserved in Johnson's Lives of the Poets; and his works yet keep their state in two substantial volumes, which are now before us. But the interest of the most poignant abuse, and severest criticism, quickly perishes. We contemplate the sarcasms and the invectives which once stung into rage the irritable generation of

poets, with as cold a curiosity as we look on the rusty javelins, or stuffed reptiles, in the glass cases of the curious. The works of Dennis will, however, assist us in forming a judgment of the criticism of his age, as compared with that of our own, and will afford us an opportunity of investigating the influences of that popular art, on literature and on the affections.

But we must not forget, that Mr. Dennis laid claims to public esteem, not only as a critic, but as a wit, a politician, and a poet. In the first and the last of these characters, he can receive but little praise. His attempts at gayety and humour are weighty and awkward, almost without example. His poetry can only be described by negatives; it is not inharmonious, nor irregular, nor often turgid-for the author, too nice to sink into the mean, and too timid to rise into the bombastic, dwells in elaborate 'decencies. for ever.' The climax of his admiration for Queen Mary-Mankind extols the king-the king admires the queen'-will give a fair specimen of his architectural eulogies. He is entitled to more respect as an honest patriot. He was, indeed, a true-hearted Englishman-with the legitimate prejudices of his country-warmly attached to the principles of the Revolution, detesting the French, abominating the Italian opera, and deprecating as heartily the triumph of the Pretender, as the success of a rival's tragedy. His political treatises, though not very elegantly finished, are made of sturdy and lasting materials. He appears, from some passages in his letters, to have cherished a genuine love of nature, and to have turned, with eager delight, to her deep and quiet solitudes, for refreshment from the feverish excitements, the vexatious defeats, and the barren triumphs, of his critical career. He admired Shakspeare, after the fashion of his age, as a wild irregular genius, who would have been ten times as great had he known and copied the ancients. The following is a part of his general criticism on this subject, and is a very fair specimen of his best style:

'Shakspeare was one of the greatest geniuses that the world e'er 'saw for the tragic stage. Tho' he lay under greater disadvantages than any of his successors, yet had he greater and more 'genuine beauties than the best and greatest of them. And what 'makes the brighest glory of his character, those beauties were ' entirely his own, and owing to the force of his own nature; whereas his faults were owing to his education, and to the age that he 'liv'd in. One may say of him as they did of Homer, that he had 'none to imitate, and is himself inimitable. His imaginations were ' often as just, as they were bold and strong. He had a natural 'discretion which never could have been taught him, and his judg'ment was strong and penetrating. He seems to have wanted 'nothing but time and leisure for thought, to have found out 'those rules of which he appears so ignorant. His characters are