"There was no great disparity of years, Though much in temper; but they never clash'd: They moved like stars united in their spheres, Or like the Rhone by Leman's waters wash'd, Where mingled and yet separate appears The river from the lake, all bluely dash'd Through the serene and placid glassy deep, Which fain would lull its river child to sleep."] 2["Mr. Hobhouse and myself are just returned from a journey of lakes and mountains. We have been to the Grindelwald, and the Jungfrau, and stood on the summit of the Wengern Alp; and seen torrents of 900 feet in fall, and glaciers of all dimensions; we have heard shepherds' pipes, and avalanches, and looked on the clouds foaming up from the valleys below us like the spray of the ocean of hell. Chamouni, and that which it inherits, we saw a month ago; but, though Mont Blanc is higher, it is not equal in wildness to the Jungfrau, the Eighers, the Shreckhorn, and the Rose Glaciers." B. Letters, Sept. 1816.]

With a fresh pinion; which I feel to spring, Though young, yet waxing vigorous, as the blast Which it would cope with, on delighted wing, Spurning the clay-cold bonds which round our being cling.

LXXIV.

And when, at length, the mind shall be all free
From what it hates in this degraded form,
Reft of its carnal life, save what shall be
Existent happier in the fly and worm,--
When elements to elements conform,
And dust is as it should be, shall I not
Feel all I see, less dazzling, but more warm?
The bodiless thought? the Spirit of each spot?

Of which, even now, I share at times the immortal lot?

LXXV.

Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part
Of me and of my soul, as I of them?

Is not the love of these deep in my heart
With a pure passion? should I not contemn
All objects, if compared with these? and stem
A tide of suffering, rather than forego
Such feelings for the hard and worldly phlegm
Of those whose eyes are only turn'd below,
Gazing upon the ground, with thoughts which dare
not glow?

LXXVI.

But this is not my theme; and I return To that which is immediate, and require Those who find contemplation in the urn, To look on One, whose dust was once all fire, A native of the land where I respire The clear air for a while-a passing guest, Where he became a being,-whose desire Was to be glorious; 't was a foolish quest, The which to gain and keep, he sacrificed all rest.

LXXVII.

Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau, 3
The apostle of affliction, he who threw
Enchantment over passion, and from woe
Wrung overwhelming eloquence, first drew

The breath which made him wretched; yet he knew
How to make madness beautiful, and cast

O'er erring deeds and thoughts a heavenly hue 4 Of words, like sunbeams, dazzling as they pass'd The eyes, which o'er them shed tears feelingly and fast.

3 ["I have traversed all Rousseau's ground with the 'Héloïse' before me, and am struck to a degree that I cannot express with the force and accuracy of his descriptions, and the beauty of their reality. Meillerie, Clarens, and Vevay, and the Chateau de Chillon, are places of which I shall say little because all I could say must fall short of the impressions they stamp."— B. Letters.]

4 ["It is evident that the impassioned parts of Rousseau's romance had made a deep impression upon the feelings of the noble poet. The enthusiasm expressed by Lord Byron is no small tribute to the power possessed by Jean Jacques over the passions: and, to say truth, we needed some such evidence; for, though almost ashamed to avow the truth,-still, like the barber of Midas, we must speak or die, we have never been able to feel the interest or discover the merit of this far-famed performance. That there is much eloquence in the letters we readily admit there lay Rousseau's strength. But his lovers, the celebrated St. Preux and Julie, have, from the earliest moment we have heard the tale (which we well remember), down to the present hour, totally failed to interest There might be some constitutional hardness of heart; but like Lance's pebble-hearted cur, Crab, we remained dryeyed while all wept around us. And still, on resuming the

us.

LXXVIII.

His love was passion's essence—as a tree
On fire by lightning; with ethereal flame
Kindled he was, and blasted; for to be

Thus, and enamour'd, were in him the same.
But his was not the love of living dame,

Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams,
But of ideal beauty, which became

In him existence, and o'erflowing teems

Along his burning page, distemper'd though it seems.

LXXIX.

This breathed itself to life in Julie, this Invested her with all that's wild and sweet; This hallow'd, too, the memorable kiss 1 Which every morn his fever'd lip would greet, From hers, who but with friendship his would meet; But to that gentle touch, through brain and breast Flash'd the thrill'd spirit's love-devouring heat; In that absorbing sigh perchance more blest Than vulgar minds may be with all they seek possest. 2

LXXX.

His life was one long war with self-sought foes,
Or friends by him self-banish'd; for his mind
Had grown Suspicion's sanctuary, and chose
For its own cruel sacrifice the kind,

'Gainst whom he raged with fury strange and blind.
But he was phrensied, — wherefore, who may know?
Since cause might be which skill could never find;
But he was phrensied by disease or woe

To that worst pitch of all, which wears a reasoning show.

LXXXI.

For then he was inspired, and from him came, As from the Pythian's mystic cave of yore, Those oracles which set the world in flame, Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more : Did he not this for France? which lay before Bow'd to the inborn tyranny of years? Broken and trembling to the yoke she bore, Till by the voice of him and his compeers Roused up to too much wrath, which follows o'ergrown fears?

LXXXII.

They made themselves a fearful monument ! The wreck of old opinions-things which grew, Breathed from the birth of time: the veil they rent, And what behind it lay, all earth shall view. But good with ill they also overthrew, Leaving but ruins, wherewith to rebuild Upon the same foundation, and renew Dungeons and thrones, which the same hour re-fill'd, As heretofore, because ambition was self-will'd.

volume, even now, we can see little in the loves of these two tiresome pedants to interest our feelings for either of them. To state our opinion in language (see Burke's Reflections) much better than our own, we are unfortunate enough to regard this far-famed history of philosophical gallantry as an unfashioned, indelicate, sour, gloomy, ferocious medley of pedantry and lewdness; of metaphysical speculations, blended with the coarsest sensuality.""SIR WALTER SCOTT.]

This refers to the account in his "Confessions" of his Passion for the Comtesse d'Houdetot (the mistress of St. Lambert), and his long walk every morning, for the sake of the single kiss which was the common salutation of French acquaintance. Rousseau's description of his feelings on this Occasion may be considered as the most passionate, yet not impure, description and expression of love that ever kindled into words; which, after all, must be felt, from their very

LXXXIII.

But this will not endure, nor be endured! Mankind have felt their strength, and made it felt. They might have used it better, but, allured By their new vigour, sternly have they dealt On one another; pity ceased to melt With her once natural charities. But they, Who in oppression's darkness caved had dwelt, They were not eagles, nourish'd with the day; What marvel then, at times, if they mistook their prey?

LXXXIV.

What deep wounds ever closed without a scar?
The heart's bleed longest, and but heal to wear
That which disfigures it; and they who war
With their own hopes, and have been vanquish'd,

bear

Silence, but not submission: in his lair Fix'd Passion holds his breath, until the hour Which shall atone for years; none need despair: It came, it cometh, and will come, the power To punish or forgive-in one we shall be slower.

LXXXV.

Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake, With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring. This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing To waft me from distraction; once I loved Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring Sounds sweet as if a Sister's voice reproved, That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved.

LXXXVI.

It is the hush of night, and all between

Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,
Mellow'd and mingling, yet distinctly seen,
Save darken'd Jura, whose capt heights appear
Precipitously steep; and drawing near,
There breathes a living fragrance from the shore,
of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear
Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,

Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more;

LXXXVII.

He is an evening reveller, who makes His life an infancy, and sings his fill; At intervals, some bird from out the brakes Starts into voice a moment, then is still. There seems a floating whisper on the hill, But that is fancy, for the starlight dews All silently their tears of love instil, Weeping themselves away, till they infuse Deep into Nature's breast the spirit of her nues. 3

force, to be inadequate to the delineation: a painting can give no sufficient idea of the ocean.

2 ["Lord Byron's character of Rousseau is drawn with great force, great power of discrimination, and great eloquence. I know not that he says any thing which has not been said before; but what he says issues, apparently, from the recesses of his own mind. It is a little laboured, which, possibly, may be caused by the form of the stanza into which it was necessary to throw it; but it cannot be doubted that the poet felt a sympathy for the enthusiastic tenderness of Rousseau's genius, which he could not have recognised with such extreme fervour, except from a consciousness of having at least occasionally experienced similar emotions."— SIB E. BRYDGES.]

3 [During Lord Byron's stay in Switzerland, he took up his residence at the Campagne-Diodati, in the village of

LXXXVIIL

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!
If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires,—'t is to be forgiven,
That in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o'erizap their mortal state,
And claim a kindred with you; for ye are
A beauty and a mystery, and create

In us such love and reverence from afar, That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star.

LXXXIX.

All heaven and earth are still-though not in sleep,
But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep : —
All heaven and earth are still: From the high host
Of stars, to the lull'd lake and mountain-coast,
All is concenter'd in a life intense,

Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
But hath a part of being, and a sense
Of that which is of all Creator and defence.

XC.

Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, where we are least alone;

A truth, which through our being then doth melt,
And purifies from self: it is a tone,

The soul and source of music, which makes known Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm, Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone, Binding all things with beauty; —'t would disarın The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm.

XCI.

Not vainly did the early Persian make
His altar the high places and the peak

Of earth-o'ergazing mountains, and thus take
A fit and unwall'd temple, there to seek
The Spirit, in whose honour shrines are weak,
Uprear'd of human hands. Come, and compare
Columns and idol-dwellings, Goth or Greek,
With Nature's realms of worship, earth and air,
Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy pray'r!

XCII.

The sky is changed!—and such a change! Oh night,

And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman! Far along,

Coligny. It stands at the top of a rapidly descending vineyard; the windows commanding, one way, a noble view of the lake and of Geneva; the other, up the lake. Every even. ing, the poet embarked on the lake; and to the feelings created by these excursions we owe these delightful stanzas. Of his mode of passing a day, the following, from his Journal, is a pleasant specimen:

Ar

"September 18. Called. Got up at five. Stopped at Vevay two hours. View from the churchyard superb; within it Ludlow (the regicide's) monument-black marble -long inscription; Latin, but simple. Near him Broughton (who read King Charles's sentence to Charles Stuart) is buried, with a queer and rather canting inscription. Ludlow's house shown. Walked down to the lake side; servants, carriages, saddle-horses, all set off, and left us plantes là, by some mistake. Hobhouse ran on before, and overtook them. rived at Clarens. Went to Chillon through scenery worthy of I know not whom; went over the castle again. Met an English party in a carriage, a lady in it fast asleep-fast asleep in the most anti-narcotic spot in the world,--excellent! After a slight and short dinner, visited the Château de Clarens. Saw all worth seeing, and then descended to the Bosquet de Julie,' &c. &c.: our guide full of Rousseau, whom he is eternally confounding with St. Preux, and mixing the man and the book. Went again as far as Chillon, to revisit the little

From peak to peak, the rattling crags among Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue, And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!

XCIII.

And this is in the night :- Most glorious night! Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be A sharer in thy fierce and far delight, -A portion of the tempest and of thee ! 2 How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! And now again 't is black,—and now, the glee Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth, As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth. S

XCIV.

Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves his way between
Heights which appear as lovers who have parted
In hate, whose mining depths so intervene,
That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted;
Though in their souls, which thus each other thwarted,
Love was the very root of the fond rage [parted:-
Which blighted their life's bloom, and then de-
Itself expired, but leaving them an age

Of years all winters,-war within themselves to wage.

XCV.

Now, where the quick Rhone thus hath cleft his way, The mightiest of the storms hath ta'en his stand: For here, not one, but many, make their play, And fling their thunder-bolts from hand to hand, Flashing and cast around: of all the band, The brightest through these parted hills hath fork'd His lightnings, - -as if he did understand, That in such gaps as desolation work'd, There the hot shaft should blast whatever therein lurk'd.

XCVI.

Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings! ye! With night, and clouds, and thunder, and a soul To make these felt and feeling, well may be Things that have made me watchful; the far roll Of your departing voices, is the knoll

Of what in me is sleepless, -if. I rest. 4 But where of ye, O tempests! is the goal? Are ye like those within the human breast? Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, some high nest?

torrent from the hill behind it. The corporal who showed the wonders of Chillon was as drunk as Blucher, and to my mind) as great a man: he was deaf also; and, thinking every one else so, roared out the legends of the castle so fearfully, that Hobhouse got out of humour. However, we saw things, from the gallows to the dungeons. Sunset reflected in the lake. Nine o'clock going to bed. Have to get up at five to-morrow."]

See Appendix, Note [F].

2 The thunder-storm to which these lines refer occurred on the 13th of June, 1816, at midnight. I have seen, among the Acroceraunian mountains of Chimari, several more terrible, but none more beautiful.

3" This is one of the most beautiful passages of the poem. The fierce and far delight' of a thunder-storm is here described in verse almost as vivid as its lightnings. The live thunder leaping among the rattling crags'-the voice of mountains, as if shouting to each other-the plashing of the big rain the gleaming of the wide lake, lighted like a phosphoric sea-present a picture of sublime terror, yet of enjoy. ment, often attempted, but never so well, certainly never better, brought out in poetry.". SIR WALTER SCOTT.]

4 [The Journal of his Swiss tour, which Lord Byron kept

for his sister, closes with the following mournful passage:"Is the weather, for this tour, of thirteen days, I have been very fortunate-fortunate in a companion" (Mr. Hobhouse) "fortunate in our prospects, and exempt from even the Ettle petty accidents and delays which often render journeys to a less wild country disappointing. I was disposed to be pased, I am a lover of nature, and an admirer of beauty. I can bear fatigue, and welcome privation, and have seen some the noblest views in the world. But in all this, the reOlection of bitterness, and more especially of recent and more one desolation, which must accompany me through life, has reyed upon me here; and neither the music of the shepherd, be crashing of the avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have for one moment htraed the weight upon my heart, nor enabled me to lose By cwn wretched identity, in the majesty, and the power, and the glory, around, above, and beneath me."]

[Stanzas XCIXx. to cxv. are exquisite. They have every thing which makes a poetical picture of local and particular

scenery perfect. They exhibit a miraculous brilliancy and force of fancy; but the very fidelity causes a little_constraint and labour of language. The poet seems to have been so engrossed by the attention to give vigour and fire to the im agery, that he both neglected and disdained to render himself more harmonious by diffuser words, which, while they might have improved the effect upon the ear, might have weakened the impression upon the mind. This mastery over new matter-this supply of powers equal not only to an untouched subject, but that subject one of peculiar and unequalled grandeur and beauty was sufficient to occupy the strongest poetical faculties, young as the author was, without adding to it all the practical skill of the artist. The stanzas, too, on Voltaire and Gibbon are discriminative, sagacious, and just. They are among the proofs of that very great variety of talent which this Canto of Lord Byron exhibits- SIR E. BRYDGES.] 2 See Appendix, Note [G].

3 Voltaire and Gibbon.

Yet, peace be with their ashes,- for by them,
If merited, the penalty is paid;

It is not ours to judge, — far less condemn ;
The hour must come when such things shall be made
Known unto all,-or hope and dread allay'd
By slumber, on one pillow, in the dust,
Which, thus much we are sure, must lie decay'd;
And when it shall revive, as is our trust,
'T will be to be forgiven, or suffer what is just.

CIX.

For Banquo's issue have I filed my mind."-MACBETH. 2 It is said by Rochefoucault, that "there is always something in the misfortunes of men's best friends not displeasing to them."

3["It is not the temper and talents of the poet, but the use to which he puts them, on which his happiness or misery is grounded. A powerful and unbridled imagination is the author and architect of its own disappointments. Its fascina. tions, its exaggerated pictures of good and evil, and the mental distress to which they give rise, are the natural and necessary evils attending on that quick susceptibility of feeling and fancy incident to the poetical temperament. But the Giver of all talents, while he has qualified them each with its separate and peculiar alloy, has endowed the owner with the power of purifying and refining them. But, as if to moderate the arrogance of genius, it is justly and wisely made requisite, that he must regulate and tame the fire of his fancy, and descend from the heights to which she exalts him, in order to obtain ease of mind and tranquillity. The materials of hap piness, that is, of such degree of happiness as is consistent with our present state, lie around us in profusion. But the man of talents must stoop to gather them, otherwise they would be beyond the reach of the mass of society, for whose benefit, as well as for his, Providence has created them. There is no

Who glorify thy consecrated pages;

Thou wert the throne and grave of empires; still, The fount at which the panting mind assuages Her thirst of knowledge, quaffing there her fill, Flows from the eternal source of Rome's imperial hill. CXI.

Thus far have I proceeded in a theme Renew'd with no kind auspices: - to feel We are not what we have been, and to deera We are not what we should be, and to steel The heart against itself; and to conceal, With a proud caution, love, or hate, or aught,Passion or feeling, purpose, grief, or zeal,Which is the tyrant spirit of our thought, Is a stern task of soul: No matter,—it is taught.

CXII.

They could not deem me one of such; I stood Among them, but not of them; in a shroud [could, Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.

CXIV.

I have not loved the world, nor the world me,But let us part fair foes; I do believe,

Though I have found them not, that there may be Words which are things,- hopes which will not deceive,

And virtues which are merciful, nor weave Snares for the failing; I would also deem O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve; ? That two, or one, are almost what they seem, — That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream. 3

royal and no poetical path to contentment and heart's-ease: that by which they are attained is open to all classes of mankind, and lies within the most limited range of intellect. To narrow our wishes and desires within the scope of our powers of attainment; to consider our misfortunes, however peculiar in their character, as our inevitable share in the patrimony of Adam; to bridle those irritable feelings, which ungoverned are sure to become governors; to shun that intensity of galling and self-wounding reflection which our poet has so forcibly described in his own burning language:

I have thought

Too long and darkly, till my brain became,
In its own eddy, boiling and o'erwrought,
A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame

-to stoop, in short, to the realities of life; repent if we have offended, and pardon if we have been trespassed against; to look on the world less as our foe than as a doubtful and capricious friend, whose applause we ought as far as possible to deserve, but neither to court nor contemn-such seem the most obvious and certain means of keeping or regaining mental tranquillity.

Semita certe

Tranquillæ per virtutem patet unica vitæ.'"-
SIR WALTER SCOTT.]