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intellectual gratifications are rejected; the mind, in weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favourite conception; and feasts on the luscious falsehood whenever she is offended with the bitterness of truth. By de

she grows first imperious, and in time despotic. These fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture or of anguish.

"This, Sir, is one of the dangers of solitude, which the hermit has confessed not always to promote goodness, and the astronomer's misery has proved to be not always propitious to wisdom."

It is to be observed that Dr. Johnson has only described the indulgence of pleasurable imaginations, as the origin of mental delusions; but it is a lamentable fact that involuntary despondency, or miserable imaginations, are the most general forerunner, if not the origin, of insanity; or what the common people aptly enough call, a sinking of the heart.

THOS. BAKEwell. Spring-Vale, near Stone, 4th July, 1822.

can attain this man's knowledge, and few practice his virtues, but all may suffer his calamity. Of the uncertainties of our present state, the most dreadful and alarming is, the uncertain continuance of reason. The princess was recollected, and the favour-grees, the reign of fancy is confirmed, ite abashed; Rasselas, more deeply affected, inquired of Imlac, whether he thought such maladies of the mind frequent, and how they were contracted?-Disorders of intellect, answered Imlac, happen much more often than superficial observers will easily believe; perhaps if we speak with rigorous exactness, no human mind is in its right state. There is no man whose imagination does not sometimes predominate over his reason, who can regulate his attention wholly by his will, and whose ideas will come and go at his command. No man will be found, in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope, or fear, beyond the limits of sober probability. All power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity; but while this power is such as we can control and repress, it is not visible to others, nor considered as any depravation of the mental faculties; it is not pronounced madness but when it becomes ungovernable, and apparently influences speech or action. To indulge the power of fiction, and send imagination out upon the wing, is often the sport of those who delight too much in silent speculation. When we are alone, we are not always busy, the labour of excogitation is too violent to last long, the ardour of inquiry will sometimes give way to idleness or satiety; he who has nothing external that can divert him, must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not,-for who is pleased with what he is? He then expatiates in boundless futurity, and calls from all imaginable conditions, that which for the present moment he should most desire; amuses his desires with impossible enjoyments, and confers upon his pride unattainable dominion. The mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all combinations, and riots in delights which nature and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot bestow.

"In time, some particular train of ideas fixes the attention, all other

(To be continued.)

Extract of a Letter from the Rev. Samuel Leigh, Missionary, dated New Zealand, February 25th, 1822.

"WE rejoice in having the pleasure of writing to you from New Zealand. We left Sydney, New South Wales, on the 1st of January, and landed in the Bay of Islands in three weeks, in good spirits, and in hopes of being useful to the poor degraded heathens.

We

"The New Zealanders have been at war with a distant tribe, and those, under whose protection we are to dwell, have gained the victory. They are now preparing for a second war. suppose that not less than two or three thousand fighting men have gone from the Bay of Islands since we arrived. We are, however, happy to say, that they never attempt to disturb either us or any Europeans. We are thank-" ful for this, and we have no doubt that the blessed gospel of peace will effect a great change among them.

"You will learn from my letter to

that the New Zealanders have been at war among themselves, and continue so to be, but we hope it will soon come to an end. I am fully persuaded that nothing but the gospel of the Son of God will do them good. Oh that it may be soon made known to them in its fulness and power!

"The late war at Mercury Bay, and the River Thames, has been dreadful. Shungee and his party slew three thousand men, three hundred of whom they roasted and ate before they left the field of battle!!! Can any good come out of New Zealand? Oh, yes. Grace can effect great things. In the gospel day, all nations whom the Lord hath made shall come and worship before him, and shall give glory to his name, and his name shall be great among the Gentiles, for the Lord hath spoken it.

"Since the New Zealanders have returned to the Bay of Islands, they have killed more than twenty slaves, and have roasted and eaten several; and some of the human flesh the natives brought to one of the settlers' table; and it was there some time before it was discovered by the Europeans. This morning a New Zealander brought a man's head to me to sell it. This is frequently done; and I always seize the opportunity of speaking against such a practice. I have found that they are much ashamed of such traffic, and I hope it will soon cease amongst them."

"New Zealand is become a great place for ships, 'Whalers.' There have been twelve ships at a time in the Bay of Islands, and I understand there are at this time twenty-five ships upon the coast.

"The Lord is going on with his work at Otaheite, and in the South Sea Islands; great good is doing among them, and there is great encouragement for missionary labours. Glory be to God."

MEMOIRS OF THE LIVING POETS OF GREAT BRITAIN.

Lord Byron. AMONG the paradoxical assertions of the Younger Scaliger, one of the most singular is this, that "no person was ever a poet, or an admirer of poetry, who was not at the same time a honest man." This opinion is in direct op

position to that of Plato, who, notwithstanding his veneration for Homer, and the adoption of a highly figurative style of composition, thought so unfavourably of the moral tendency of poetry, as to exclude its professors from a place in his perfect republic,

Severe as this judgment may seem, it has been defended in an express treatise "De futilitate Poetices," by Tanaquil Faber, the brother of Madame Dacier; and there have been other writers, both French and English, who have viewed poetry in a light equally disadvantageous. The question is curious and interesting to morals and literature; but whoever shall undertake the discussion of it in the same spirit of philosophical criticism, must expect to raise a host of adversaries, who will allow no middle course, or any thing short of unqualified praise.

The poetic art, in the estimation of its enthusiastic devotees, is transcendental to every other power of genius, not only in the display of invention, but in practical utility. Not content with claiming for their favourite pursuit, the merit of enriching language, and polishing the minds of men, the admirers of poetry assume the lofty tone of superiority, and make it an arbiter of principles, and a regulator of actions. According to them, there is no excellence, literary or moral, but what is possessed and promoted by this matchless art, which, like Lord Peters's brown loaf, has, in itself, all the essential properties of elegance and nutrition; containing, in short, beef and mutton, flesh, fowl, and fish; solid food for the support of life, and luxuries for the indulgence of a delicate appetite. They, on the other hand, whose imagination is less lively, scruple not to affirm, that poetry is an art, which only serves to corrupt the judgment; and, as a natural consequence of that deception, to vitiate the heart.

Whatever may be thought of these discordant sentiments, thus much will be agreed on all sides, that in every country where letters have been cultivated, poetry has had a preponderating influence on the public mind. Of its effects in Greece and Rome, we have numerous evidences; but since the invention of printing, and the diffusion of knowledge by education,

poetry has become more extensively Byron has obtained in the temple of powerful than it ever was among the Fame, it seems perfectly just that his ancients; for though its professors memoir should take precedence in were distinguished by extraordinary this collection, without meaning therehonours, their works were necessarily by to give him a superiority over those confined to a particular circle, and poets who are of older standing in the those in the higher order of life; republic of letters. whereas in our days, the productions of Shakspeare, Milton, and Pope, are familiar even to the husbandman and mechanic.

Till of late years poverty and poetry were considered as synonymous, which only proves that the popularity of the art was limited, and that books, however well written they might be, had too contracted a sale to enrich their authors. The case is now strangely altered; and if our modern bards are not quite equal to the Spensers, and Butlers, and Drydens, of former times, they have the satisfaction of seeing genius better rewarded than it was a century ago.

This is the golden age of letters, if we are to judge of it by the extraordinary popularity of its poets, and the munificent sums which they receive for their performances; but there is some reason to fear that this avidity for new things is a sign of a capricious, rather than a correct, taste; and that the liberality of publishers is not governed so much by the intrinsic merit of the works which they purchase at an extravagant rate, as by the celebrity of the writers. It would be very easy to support this position by many pointed facts; and it would be as easy to shew that the fame of modern authors has, in too many instances, risen more from artful contrivance and adventitious circumstances, than from any just discrimination of merit on the part of the public. This shews that a view of the present state of English literature would be a most valuable work, if conducted in a spirit of honest freedom, by a man well acquainted with ancient and modern learning, and above being prejudiced in favour of individuals or parties' opinions or institutions. Subsidiary to such a desideratum, it is proposed to give, in the Imperial Magazine, a series of biographical and critical sketches of the living poets of greatest eminence, whose history will be narrated with a sedulous regard to truth, and their talents appreciated with impartiality.

From the distinction which Lord

The family of Buron, or Byron, is of Norman origin, and came in with the Conqueror, who bestowed upon two lords of that name considerable estates in the counties of Lincoln, York, Nottingham, and Derby. From the latter branch is the present peer descended, being the grandson of the famous Admiral Byron, who sailed with Anson, and afterwards commanded an expedition sent out to explore the southern extremity of America, and the islands in the Great Pacific Ocean. His son, John Byron, a captain of the guards, married first the divorced Marchioness of Carmarthen, and next Miss Gordon, a lady of small fortune, but of noble descent, in the county of Aberdeen, where she had two children, a son, George Gordon, now Lord Byron, and a daughter, who died some years since. Captain Byron died at Valenciennes, in 1791, just as his lady was preparing the process for a divorce, on account of alleged adultery and ill treatment. She lived till 1810, having seen her son established in the title and estates, though these last were considerably encumbered by the late Lord William, who died without issue at a very advanced age, in 1798, at which time his nephew was ten years old, being born January 22, 1788.

Hitherto this last male representative of a noble line, had lived in Scotland, under the immediate care of his mother, a woman of superior intellect, well educated, and strictly, though not superstitiously, religious. She was a great sufferer by the misconduct of her husband, but strength of mind, and purity of principles, enabled her to bear her troubles with fortitude, and to discharge the parental duty which devolved upon her with conscientious diligence. When her son came to the barony, he was placed under the guardianship of his noble relative, the Earl of Carlisle, whose mother was sister to Admiral Byron, and a woman of lively genius, but very whimsical in her manners. deed, talent and eccentricity appear to be characteristic of the Byrons, in

In

England, as well as of the Birons in France, to whom they are distantly allied; and were we at liberty to enter upon the inquiry, the result would be abundantly amusing. The young Lord, on the death of his great uncle, was removed from Aberdeenshire to Harrow School, where he was placed under the tuition of Dr. Drury, of whom, in one of his notes to Childe Harold, he speaks in the following terms of respect; "He was the best and worthiest friend I ever possessed, whose warnings I have remembered but too well, though too late, when I have erred; and whose counsels I have but followed, when I have done well and wisely."

While at Harrow, Lord Byron was remarked for considerable mental activity, and a spirit not easily trained to scholastic discipline; so that he often incurred animadversion for the neglect of those ordinary exercises, which no one of his standing was more capable of performing. After going through his grammatical course of learning, without any particular distinction in classical knowledge, he was, in 1805, transplanted to the University of Cambridge, and admitted a student of Trinity College, where he kept a few terms, but neither sought academic rewards, nor took the regular degrees. This proud contempt of the favours of Alma Mater, he carried so far, as to write some very caustic verses on such of his fellow students as were ambitious of those honours. A poetic genius, and a strong turn for satire, appeared in his Lordship while at Harrow, the head master of which seminary he lampooned with unbecoming asperity, under the appellative of Pomposus. On leaving Cambridge, in 1807, he went to reside at the old family mansion of Nusteed Abbey, in Nottinghamshire, which, though a noble pile, and surrounded by a beautiful park, had been suffered by the late lord to go very much to decay, owing, in a great measure, to an unsocial disposition, and the consideration that being without children of his own to inherit it, he had little or no interest in keeping the house in order.

ark. To this collection he gave the title of " Hours of Idleness," and prefixed thereto a dedication, written in a very complimentary strain, to his noble guardian, the Earl of Carlisle. These juvenile productions possess various degrees of merit; but though in general of a slight texture, proofs of a rising and vigorous genius appeared abundantly amidst the luxuriant foliage.

Yet this precocity of talent, for some of the poems were written at the age of fourteen, could not protect the author from the angry blast of criticism, which fell upon him with more than ordinary fury. What could have induced the Edinburgh Reviewers to attack this unassuming little volume in a long diatribe of abuse, unmixed with a single expression of encouragement, is difficult to guess; but the most probable conjecture is, that the author's rank and connection with Lord Carlisle, were the incitements to this rancour. The northern review, it is well known, was instituted upon party grounds, and in an avowed spirit of hostility to the ancient institutions of the country. Our young bard had not, as yet, given any indications of his being actuated by similar sentiments; farther than in his contemptuous manner of treating the line of study pursued at Cambridge; which, it may be, only served to increase the spleen of the reviewer, who had just before rendered himself ridiculous by his scurrilous attacks on the University of Oxford. Let this be as it will, the critic by his conduct on this occasion involved his journal in complete disgrace, and the blow which he aimed so ferociously against the young poet, recoiled with a vengeance upon the whole formidable band of Scotch Reviewers, who have never recovered from the shock to this hour.

It is to be regretted, however, that the noble author of this powerful satire should have diverged from the proper object of his resentment; to assail men of worth and genius, who had given him no offence. Among others who came in for a large share of wanton castigation, was the Earl of Carlisle, upon whom the satirist had before been as lavish of hyperbolical praises, as he now was of the bitterest sarcasms. The cause of this versati

Here, at the age of nineteen, the new possessor of the Abbey wrote some poems, which he was tempted to publish in a small volume, from the neighbouring printing press of New-lity was merely personal and private,

so that the abuse poured upon the venerable nobleman's poetical works did not proceed, as the satirist pretended, from a disinterested regard to the rights of literature.

But this was not the only act of inconsistency of which the noble author of "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" was guilty; for after having, in this vigorous imitation of Juvenal, severely lashed Moore for his lewdness, Lord Holland for heading the phalanx of anonymous critics, and Walter Scott as a literary hireling and ballad-monger, he endeavoured to conciliate them by dedications and eulogies on their talents and virtues. It is true, the satire was suppressed by the author; but it is no less true, that he did this just as it was about to appear in a third edition, by the entreaty of a powerful friend, to whom he was under considerable obligations; and it may be doubted whether the recall of the poem was not in fact more injurious than beneficial to the ends of justice, since it made the piece an object of greater curiosity, and the difficulty of procuring it excited more attention to its contents. In one respect the public lost by the suppression; for the exposure of the unfair practices of the northern critics was so just, and calculated to do so much good, that the poem of the noble Lord, if purged of its personalities, might have been productive of a reformation where it was so much needed; instead of which, the measure adopted in withdrawing the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" from public sale, had the appearance of a retractation, and, as such, emboldened the offenders to go on in their old course of vituperation, taking care, however, in future, how they meddled with their youthful antagonist.

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Shortly after this war of the pen, Lord Byron set out on his travels, but as the continent of Europe was then nearly under the power of France, he embarked for Lisbon, from whence he crossed the mountains, and descending into the plains of Andalusia, proceeded to Seville, where he remained some time with a family, to whom he was nearly related on the mother's side. Having resolved upon a tour in the Levant, the noble Lord, in company with Mr. John Cam Hobhouse, took shipping at Cadiz, and after a

rough passage landed at Previsa, on the coast of Albania, the territory of the late chief Ali Pacha, by whom they were most hospitably received and entertained, both at Joannina his capital, and Trepani his country seat. Under the escort of a guard of Albanians, appointed by the special orders of Ali himself, our travellers explored the whole of that romantic but dangerous country, without meeting with any accident, or suffering any loss. From thence they proceeded to Athens, where Lord Byron laid the plan of his poem entitled " Childe Harold," and wrote a part of it amidst the ruins of that celebrated seat of ancient wisdom. Here also he sedulously studied the modern Greek language, under a learned native, for whom he undertook to get printed, a translation of Bartheleme's Tracts of Anacharsis into that tongue; but this work never appeared.

While at Athens, his Lordship wrote a spirited poem against Lord Elgin, for having dismantled the Grecian temples of many of their beautiful ornaments; but this satirical piece, bearing the title of "The Malediction of Minerva," he suppressed, after printing a few copies. The substance of it, however, was condensed in the introduction to the second canto of Childe Harold; but the original would not have been published with safety in its integral state. Some amatory effusions of his Lordship's pen, during his residence in Greece, particularly one addressed to the Maid of Athens, who was the daughter of the English Consul, may vie with the best odes of Anacreon.

After traversing the Morea in different directions, our noble countryman and Mr. Hobhouse visited Constantinople, in the Salsette Frigate, Captain Bathurst; and on the third of May, 1810, while lying in the Dardanelles, the trial was made by Lord Byron, of swimming over the Hellespont, which he accomplished in one hour and ten minutes; thus verifying the story of Leander, as related by Ovid and other writers, with regard at least to the practicability of such an exploit. Lord Byron had before this, while at Lisbon, displayed his power and skill in swimming, by crossing the Tagus, which took him up three hours in performing; and since his residence in Italy he has achieved a

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