itself most, is so apt to be betrayed-to put forth his whole power, yet never to transcend the limits of reason, and to embody the visions of an excited imagination in a form so perfect as to defy the most fastidious criticism of his country, and to challenge a place among the imperishable monuments of his art-this was indeed to be a "maker ποιητης—this was to be truly Attic and classical. Accordingly, what is most admirable in that matchless literature, is this simplicity and ease, produced by the study of unity and the severe reasoning on which we have been dwelling. It is, we conceive, impossible not to be struck with the difference, in this respect, between its masterpieces, and those of any other language--for Shakspeare himself frequently falls into bombast and conceit. In short, the strength of Greek genius is never discovered in monstrous contortions or laborious struggles-it wields the mightiest subjects, apparently, without an effort, and with all the grace of conscious superiority. Its beauty is not confined to a single feature, "to a lip or eye," but is emphatically "the joint force and full result of all"-it is not the hectic glow of disease, or the meretricious lustre of a painted cheek, but the lumen juventæ purpureum, the bloom of youth, the proper hue, as the natural effect of a vigorous and robust constitution. Lord Byron's speculative opinions in literature, were, as we have seen, all in favour of the classical models. His preference of Pope is owing to this; though it must be admitted that in spite of his extraordinary merits, Pope is, in some degree, a mannerist, and, so far, falls short of absolute perfection. But theory and practice are unfortunately not more inseparable in literature than in other matters, and of this truth, there is no more striking example than the author of Childe Harold. We stated in our notice of Mr. Moore's first volume, that Manfred struck us as decidedly the master-piece of Lord Byron. The long analysis which we have just gone through of the principles of the ideal, will, as we flatter ourselves, have done much towards accounting for this preference. The merit of Manfred has been acknowledged by Goethe, who thinks he recognizes in it a copy, or an imitation rather, of his Faustus. His remarks are furnished by Mr. Moore, and are as follows: "The following is the article from Goëthe's Kunst und Alterthum,' enclosed in this letter. The grave confidence with which the venerable critic traces the fancies of his brother poet to real persons and events, making no difficulty even of a double murder at Florence to furnish grounds for his theory, affords an amusing instance of the disposition so prevalent throughout Europe, to picture Byron as a man of marvels and mysteries, as well in his life as his poetry. To these ex aggerated, or wholly false, notions of him, the numerous fictions palmed upon the world of his romantic tours and wonderful adventures in places he never saw, and with persons that never existed, have, no doubt, considerably contributed; and the consequence is, so utterly out of truth and nature are the representations of his life and character long current upon the continent, that it may be questioned whether the real "flesh and blood" hero of these pages, the social practical-minded, and, with all his faults and eccentricities, English Lord Byron,-may not, to the over-exalted imaginations of most of his foreign admirers, appear but an ordinary, unromantic, and prosaic pers 'nage. "Byron's tragedy, Manfred, was to me a wonderful phenomenon, and one that closely touched me. This singular intellectual poet has taken my Faustus to himself, and extracted from it the strongest nourishment for his hypochondriac humour. He has made use of the impelling principles in his own way, for his own purposes, so that no one of them remains the same; and it is particularly on this account that I cannot enough admire his genius. The whole is in this way so completely formed anew, that it would be an interest ng task for the critic to point out not only the alterations he has made, but their degree of resemblance with, or dissimilarity to, the original: in the course of which I cannot deny that the gloomy heat of an unbounded and exuberant despair becomes at last oppressive to us. Yet is the dissatisfaction we feel always connected with esteem and admiration. "We find thus in this tragedy the quintessence of the most astonishing talent born to be its own tormenter. The character of Lord Byron's life and poetry hardly permits a just and equitable appreciation. He has often enough confessed what it is that torments him. He has repeatedly portrayed it; and scarcely any one feels compassion for this intolerable suffering, over which he is ever laboriously ruminating. There are, properly speaking, two females whose phantoms forever haunt him, and which, in this piece also perform principal parts-one under the name of Astarte, the other without form or actual presence, and merely a voice. Of the horrid occurrence which took place with the former, the following is related. When a bold and enterprizing young man, he won the affections of a Florentine lady. Her husband discovered the amour, and murdered his wife; but the murderer was the same night found dead in the street, and there was no one on whom any suspicion could be attached. Lord Byron removed from Florence, and these spirits haunted him all his life after. "This romantic incident is rendered highly probable by innumerable allusions to it in his poems. As, for instance, when turning his sad contemplations inwards, he applies to himself the fatal history of the king of Sparta. It is as follows:-Pausanias, a Lacedæmonian general, acquires glory by the important victory at Platæa, but afterwards forfeits the confidence of his countrymen through his arrogance, obstinacy, and secret intrigues with the enemies of his country. This man draws upon himself the heavy guilt of innocent blood, which attends him to his end; for, while commanding the fleet of the allied Greeks, in the Black Sea, he is inflamed with a violent passion for a Byzantine maiden. After long resistance, he at length obtains her from her parents, and she is to be delivered up to him at night. She modestly desires the servant to put out the lamp, and, while groping her way in the dark, she overturns it. Pausanias is awakened from his sleep, apprehensive of an attack from murderers-he seizes his sword and destroys his mistress. The horrid sight never leaves him. Her shade pursues him unceasingly, and he implores for aid in vain from the gods and the exorcising priests. "That poet must have a lacerated heart who selects such a scene from antiquity, appropriates it to himself, and burthens his tragic image with it. The following soliliquy, which is overladen with gloom and a weariness of life, is, by this remark, rendered intelligible. We recommend it as an exercise to all friends of declamation. Hamlet's soliloquy appears improved upon here." pp. 229, 230. As to the imputed imitation, Byron (rather implicitly than expressly) disavows it in a letter to Murray: "Enclosed is something which will interest you, to wit, the opinion of the greatest man of Germany-perhaps of Europe-upon one of the great men of your advertisements (all 'famous hands,' as Jacob Tonson used to say of his ragamuffins)-in short, a critique of Goëthe's upon Manfred. There is the original, an English translation, and an Italian one; keep them all in your archives, for the opinion of such a man as Goëthe, whether favourable or not, are always interestingand this is more so, as favourable. His Faust I never read, for I don't know German; but Matthew Monk Lewis, in 1816, at Coligny, translated most of it to me viva voce, and I was naturally much struck with it; but it was the Steinbach and the Jungfrau, and something else, much more than Faustus, that made me write Manfred. The first scene, however, and that of Faustus, are very similar." p. 228. When we speak of Manfred as the master-piece of Lord Byron, we speak of it as a whole. There are to be found in most of his other compositions, especially in Childe Harold, many passages of unsurpassed beauty and power. But in the first place, these passages in the poem just mentioned, are short, isolated, uncombined. The wandering bard describes the remarkable objects which present themselves to him in his progress, in a sort of poetical itineracy. He lavishes upon them, it is true, the wealth of an exuberant imagination-and whether it be Waterloo, or the romantic Rhine, or Lake Leman and its magic shores, or the Alps, or an Italian sun-set, or the tombs of the famous dead, or the monuments of Roman magnificence, or the master-pieces of antique art, he is still equal to his subjects, and crowns them anew with glory and immortality. But such effusions are not, cæteris paribus, comparable to works, in which the beauty of design and composition is added to all other beauties. A lyrical rhapsody is an easier, and much easier thing than a sage and solemn drama, exhibiting a rare portraiture of character, combining many incidents, introducing the difficult and even perilous machinery of magic, incantations, and the spirits of the air or the deep, and withal unfolding an impressive moral truth. There is a great deal more both of invention and of art, more creative genius, in short, required in the latter than in the former. The very necessity of preserving a uniform tone of colouring, the harmony, the keeping, of such a work, is a most important addition to the task of the artist. We have seen what immense emphasis the Greeks laid upon this circumstance. In the next place, the style of Manfred is more sober and subdued than that of Childe Harold--and so is, comparatively, exempt from the faults which we impute to that poem. It is indeed, remarkable for a degree of austere and rugged force, which reminds us as strongly of Dante, as the spirit and character of the poem itself does of the Inferno. When the Italian poet says of the souls in his limbo, who shut out from the beatitude of heaven, still endure no other punishment, than the total want of all interest or enjoyment, a consuming ennui, a dismal desolation of the heart---non hanno speranza di morte---" they may not hope for death"---he pronounces the terrible doom of Manfred, in almost his very words: "Accursed! what have I to do with length of days, They are too long already." As in the Inferno, too, so also in Manfred, the darkness and the desolation that seem to cast a gloom over the whole work, are relieved by gleams of beauty and freshness, ever and anon breaking forth, the more striking as they are unexpected, the more touching because softened by melancholy associations, and escaping, as if in spite of it, from a mind in which neither sorrow nor pain, nor even despair itself, has been able to quench the deep love of nature. There is an unspeakable charm of the kind in the soliloquy with which the second scene of the first act opens. Manfred is standing alone upon the cliffs of the Jungfrau, as the day dawns and reveals to him the magnificent scenery of that Alpine region, upon which his desolate soul must no more gaze with rapture. He is doomed, henceforth, to see "undelighted all delight"---to know that what he looks upon is beauty, to feel it even, but just enough to make him conscious of the curse that is upon his soul, the blight that has seared his heart, and deadened and destroyed all its capacities of enjoy ment. ******* My mother earth! And thou fresh breaking day, and you, ye mountains, That openest over all, and unto all Art a delight-thou shin'st not on my heart *****: * * How beautiful is all this visible world! How glorious in its action and itself; But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we, To sink or soar, with our mix'd essence make * * Hark! the note, The natural music of the mountain reed- A pastoral fable-pipes in the liberal air, Mixed with the sweet bells of the sauntering herd; A living voice, a breathing harmony, So in the second scene of the second act. "It is not noon-the sun-bow's rays still arch * Beautiful spirit! with thy hair of light And dazzling eyes of glory, in whose form The charms of earth's least mortal daughters grow To an unearthly stature, in an essence Of purer elements; while the hues of youth, Upon the loftier glacier's virgin snow, The blush of earth embracing with her heaven,-[a conceit.] |