The Tim Lænd Beton wrote this stanza, he had, no doubt, assage in Boswell's Johnson floating on his -Denge day with General Paoli, and talking a po wetud journey to Italy, A man,' said Johnson, in Italy, is always conscious of an infeha ha me having seen what it is expected a man I grand object of all travelling is to see the -- Met terrabean. On those shores were the four m of the world; the Assyrian, the Persian, the et he Boy An All our religion, almost all our arts, almost all that sets us above savages, to the shares of the Mediterranean.' od that The Mediterranean' would be a ‚mi ir a poem." - Life of Johnson, vol. v. p. 145. old perhaps, be read without emotion, that Lord Byron was here describing his bad bats, and that this was an unaffected pomopeniuties and amusements even from childstened to the roar, and watched the bursts one on the tempestuous shores of Aberdeenwarful and violent change at the age of ten - ated from this congenial solitude, - this acted to his haughty and contemplative • grandeur of nature, and thrown among red and selfish ferocity, the affected cscombry, of a great public school. tran! times did the moody, sullen, and indig. ATMM back to the keen air and boisterous a1 Ar lonely upon the simple and soul-invigorma et as childhood. How did he prefer some wee tale of second-sight; some relation of ta: the harrowing narrative of buccaneercat(H¬cace, and Virgil, and Homer, that was the popraknive spirit! To the shock of this change Were a delight; and if the freshening sea And laid my hand upon thy mane- as I do here. CLXXXV. My task is done 3-my song hath ceased-my theme Has died into an echo; it is fit The spell should break of this protracted dream. The torch shall be extinguish'd which hath lit My midnight lamp-and what is writ, is writ, – Would it were worthier! but I am not now That which I have been-and my visions flit Less palpably before me-and the glow Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low. CLXXXVI. Farewell a word that must be, and hath been- He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell; with you, the moral of his strain ! is, I suspect, to be traced much of the eccentricity of Lord Byron's future life. This fourth Canto is the fruit of a mind which had stored itself with great care and toil, and had digested with profound reflection and intense vigour what it had learned: the sentiments are not such as lie on the surface, but could only be awakened by long meditation. Whoever reads it, and is not impressed with the many grand virtues as well as gigantic powers of the mind that wrote it, seems to me to afford a proof both of insensibility of heart, and great stupidity of intellect."- SIR E. BRYDGES.] "It was a thought worthy of the great spirit of Byron, after exhibiting to us his Pilgrim amidst all the most striking scenes of earthly grandeur and earthly decay, after teaching us, like him, to sicken over the mutability, and vanity, and emptiness of human greatness, to conduct him and us at last to the borders of "the Great Deep." It is there that we may perceive an image of the awful and unchangeable abyss of eternity, into whose bosom so much has sunk, and aif shall one day sink, of that eternity wherein the scorn and the contempt of man, and the melancholy of great, and the fretting of little minds, shall be at rest for ever. No one, but a true poet of man and of nature, would have dared to frame such a termination for such a Pilgrimage. The image of the wan. derer may well be associated, for a time, with the rock of Calpe, the shattered temples of Athens, or the gigantic fragments of Rome; but when we wish to think of this dark personification as of a thing which is, where can we so well imagine him to have his daily haunt as by the roaring of the waves? It was thus that Homer represented Achilles in his moments of ungovernable and inconsolable grief for the loss of Patroclus. It was thus he chose to depict the paternal despair of Chriseus Βῆ δ ̓ ἀκέων παρὰ θῖνα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης. - WILSON.] 1 THE tale which these disjointed fragments present, is founded upon circumstances now less common in the East than formerly; either because the ladies are more circumspect than in the "olden time," or because the Christians have better fortune, or less enterprise. The story, when entire, contained the adventures of a female slave, who was thrown, in the Mussulman manner, into the sea for infidelity, and avenged by a young Venetian, her lover, at the time the Seven Islands were possessed by the Republic of Venice, and soon after the Arnauts were beaten back from the Morea, which they had ravaged for some time subsequent to the Russian invasion. The desertion of the Mainotes, on being refused the plunder of Misitra, led to the abandonment of that enterprise, and to the desolation of the Morea, during which the cruelty exercised on all sides was unparalleled even in the annals of the faithful. [The “Giaour" was published in May 1813, and abundantly sustained the impression created by the two first cantos of Childe Harold. It is obvious that in this, the first of his romantic narratives, Lord Byron's versification reflects the admiration he always avowed for Mr. Coleridge's "Christabel," the irregular rhythm of which had already been adopted in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel." The fragmentary style of the composition was suggested by the then new and popular "Columbus" of Mr. Rogers. As to the subject, it was not merely by recent travel that the author had fami liarised himself with Turkish history. "Old Knolles," he said at Missolonghi, a few weeks before his death, "was one of the first books that gave me pleasure when a child; and I believe it had much influence on my future wishes to visit the Levant, and gave, perhaps, the oriental colouring which is observed in my poetry." In the margin of his copy of Mr. D'Israeli's Essay on the Literary Character, we find the following note: "Knolles, Cantemir, De Tott, Lady M.W. Montague, Hawkins's translation from Mignot's History of the Turks, the Arabian Nights - all travels or histories, or books upon the East, I could meet with, I had read, as well as Ricaut, before I was ten years old."] 2 [An event, in which Lord Byron was personally concerned, undoubtedly supplied the groundwork of this tale; but for the story, so circumstantially put forth, of his having himself been the lover of this female slave, there is no foundation. The girl whose life the poet saved at Athens was not, The Giaour. No breath of air to break the wave Fair clime! where every season smiles Benignant o'er those blessed isles, Which, seen from far Colonna's height, Make glad the heart that hails the sight, And lend to loneliness delight. There mildly dimpling, Ocean's cheek Reflects the tints of many a peak Caught by the laughing tides that lave These Edens of the eastern wave: we are assured by Sir John Hobhouse, an object of h ship's attachment, but of that of his Turkish servar the Marquis of Sligo's account of the affair, see Notices. 3 A tomb above the rocks on the promontory, supposed the sepulchre of Themistocles. - [" The says Cumberland, in his Observer, "a few lines b upon the tomb of Themistocles, which have a turn of and pathetic simplicity in them, that deserves a bette lation than I can give : By the sea's margin, on the watery strand, 4" Of the beautiful flow of Byron's fancy," says "when its sources were once opened on any sub Giaour affords one of the most remarkable instan poem having accumulated under his hand, both in and through successive editious, till from four hund of which it consisted in its first copy, it at present to fourteen hundred. The plan, indeed, which he had of a series of fragments, a set of orient pearls at strung left him free to introduce, without refe more than the general complexion of his story, what But springs as to preclude his care, And if at times a transient breeze Break the blue crystal of the seas, Thx wakes and wafts the odours there! Te maid for whom his melody, Ha themand songs are heard on high, b.%, and seen the evening star; st—that where Nature loved to trace, As for Gus, a dwelling place, And every charm and grace hath mix'd bere ceaseless summer smiles, c'er th me b'essed isles, 1. we, Torn far Colonna's height, the bright abodes ye seek, La fanom Occan's cheek, ed the waters lave of the eastern wave. - the transient breeze grow a the gentle au Tut wares and wafts the fragrance there." ditha pasange, from line 7. down to line 167., rait art had cause to grieve," was not in the first tatens of the nightingale to the rose is a well. If 1 mistake not, the "Bulbul of a * tta me of fits appeilations. [Thus, Mesihi, as • by Wundra Judes :— han ng maid and hear thy poet sing, i he the bird of spring: Saname, and Love will be obey'd. Los win the dowers of spring will fade."] And sweetly woos him-but to spare! And, fix'd on heavenly thrones, should dwell So soft the scene, so form'd for joy, So curst the tyrants that destroy ! He who hath bent him o'er the dead 3 Ere the first day of death is fled, The last of danger and distress, Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,) And mark'd the mild angelic air, That fires not, wins not, weeps not, now, The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon; The first, last look by death reveal'd !6 'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more [7 So coldly sweet, so deadly fair, We start, for soul is wanting there. 2 The guitar is the constant amusement of the Greek sailor by night with a steady fair wind, and during a calm, it is accompanied always by the voice, and often by dancing. 3 [If once the public notice is drawn to a poet, the talents he exhibits on a nearer view, the weight his mind carries with it in his every-day intercourse, somehow or other, are reflected around on his compositions, and co-operate in giving a collateral force to their impression on the public. To this we must assign some part of the impression made by the "Giaour." The thirty-five lines beginning "He who hath bent him o'er the dead" are so beautiful, so original, and so utterly beyond the reach of any one whose poetical genius was not very decided, and very rich, that they alone, under the circumstances explained, were sufficient to secure celebrity to this poem. - SIR E. BRYDGES.] ["And mark'd the almost dreaming air Which speaks the sweet repose that's there."- MS.] 5 "Ay, but to die and go we know not where, To lye in cold obstruction?" Measure for Measure, act fii. sc. 2. I trust that few of my readers have ever had an oppor. tunity of witnessing what is here attempted in description; but those who have will probably retain a painful remembrance of that singular beauty which pervades, with few exceptions, the features of the dead, a few hours, and but for a few hours, after "the spirit is not there." It is to be remarked in cases of violent death by gun-shot wounds, the expression is always that of languor, whatever the natural energy of the sufferer's character: but in death from a stab the countenance preserves its traits of feeling or ferocity, and the mind its bias, to the last. 7 [In Dallaway's Constantinople, a book which Lord Byron is not unlikely to have consulted, I find a passage quoted from Gillies's History of Greece, which contains, perhaps, the first sced of the thought thus expanded into full perfection by Hers is the loveliness in death, That parts not quite with parting breath; Expression's last receding ray, A gilded halo hovering round decay, The farewell beam of Feeling past away! Spark of that flame, perchance of heavenly birth, Which gleams, but warms no more its cherish'd earth!! Clime of the unforgotten brave! 2 Whose land from plain to mountain-cave Was Freedom's home or Glory's grave! Shrine of the mighty! can it be, That this is all remains of thee? Approach, thou craven crouching slave. Say, is not this Thermopyla? These waters blue that round you lave, Oh servile offspring of the freePronounce what sea, what shore is this? The gulf, the rock of Salamis ! These scenes, their story not unknown, Arise, and make again your own; Snatch from the ashes of your sires The embers of their former fires; And he who in the strife expires Will add to theirs a name of fear That Tyranny shall quake to hear, And leave his sons a hope, a fame, They too will rather die than shame : For Freedom's battle once begun, Bequeath'd by bleeding Sire to Son, Though baffled oft is ever won. Bear witness, Greece, thy living page, Attest it many a deathless age! While kings, in dusty darkness hid, Have left a nameless pyramid, Thy heroes, though the general doom Hath swept the column from their tomb, A mightier monument command, The mountains of their native land! There points thy Muse to stranger's eye The graves of those that cannot die! "T were long to tell, and sad to trace, Each step from splendour to disgrace, Enough- -no foreign foe could quell Thy soul, till from itself it fell; Yes! Self-abasement paved the way To villain-bonds and despot sway. What can he tell who treads thy shore? No legend of thine olden time, No theme on which the muse might soar High as thine own in days of yore, genius "The present state of Greece compared to the ancient, is the silent obscurity of the grave contrasted with the vivid lustre of active life."- MOORE.] [There is infinite beauty and effect, though of a painful and almost oppressive character, in this extraordinary passage; in which the author has illustrated the beautiful, but still and melancholy aspect of the once busy and glorious shores of Greece, by an image more true, more mournful, and more exquisitely finished, than any that we can recollect in the whole compass of poetry. - JEFFREY.] 2 [From this line to the conclusion of the paragraph, the MS. is written in a hurried and almost illegible hand, as if these splendid lines had been poured forth in one continuous burst of poetic feeling, which would hardly allow time for the hand to follow the rapid flow of the imagination.] 3 Athens is the property of the Kislar Aga (the slave of the scraglio and guardian of the women), who appoints the Way When man was worthy of thy clime. The hearts within thy valleys bred, The fiery souls that, might have led Thy sons to deeds sublime, Now crawl from cradle to the grave, Slaves-nay, the bondsmen of a slave," And callous, save to crime; Stain'd with each evil that pollutes Mankind, where least above the brutes; Without even savage virtue blest, Without one free or valiant breast. Still to the neighbouring ports they waft Proverbial wiles, and ancient craft; In this the subtle Greek is found, For this, and this alone, renown'd. In vain might Liberty invoke The spirit to its bondage broke, Or raise the neck that courts the yoke: No more her sorrows I bewail, Yet this will be a mournful tale, And they who listen may believe, Who heard it first had cause to grieve. Far, dark, along the blue sea glancing, He shuns the near but doubtful creek: Who thundering comes on blackest steed With slacken'd bit and hoof of speed? Beneath the clattering iron's sound The cavern'd echoes wake around In lash for lash, and bound for bound; The foam that streaks the courser's side Seems gather'd from the ocean-tide: Though weary waves are sunk to rest, There's none within his rider's breast; And though to-morrow's tempest lower, "Tis calmer than thy heart, young Giaour I know thee not, I loathe thy race, But in thy lineaments I trace What time shall strengthen, not efface: Though young and pale, that sallow front Is scathed by fiery passion's brunt; wode. A pander and eunuch - these are not polite appellations now governs the governor of Athens 4 [The reciter of the tale is a Turkish fisherman been employed during the day in the gulf of Egin the evening, apprehensive of the Mainote pirates w the coast of Attica, lands with his boat on the h Port Leone, the ancient Piræus. He becomes the ey of nearly all the incidents in the story, and in one a principal agent. It is to his feelings, and parti his religious prejudices, that we are indebted for so most forcible and splendid parts of the poem. ELLIS.] 5 [In Dr. Clarke's Travels, this word, which meat is always written according to its English prom Djour. Lord Byron adopted the Italian spelling ust the Franks of the Levant.] |