Rosalind. Farewell, Monsieur Traveller: Look, you lisp, and wear strange suits: disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your Nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think that you have swam in a Gondola.

As You Like It, Act IV. Sc. 1.

Annotation of the Commentators.

That is, been at Venice, which was much visited by the young English gentlemen of those times, and was then what Paris is now all dissoluteness. S. A. (1)

the seat of

(1) [Roger Ascha., Queen Elizabeth's tutor, says, in his "Schoolmaster"-"Although I was only nine days at Venice, I saw, in that little time, more liberty to sin, than ever I heard tell of in the city of London in nine years."- Ej

[BEPPO was written at Venice, in October, 1817, and ac. quired great popularity immediately on its publication in the May of the following year. Lord Byron's letters show that he attached very little importance to it at the time. He was not aware that he had opened a new vein, in which his genius was destined to work out some of its brightest triumphs. "I have written," he says to Mr. Murray, " a poem humorous, in or after the excellent manner of Mr. Whistlecraft, and founded on a Venetian anecdote which amused me. It is called Beppo-the short name for Giuseppo,—that is, the Joe of the Italian Joseph. It has politics and ferocity." Again"Whistlecraft is my immediate model, but Berni is the father of that kind of writing; which, I think, suits our language, too, very well. We shall see by this experiment. It will, at any rate, show that I can write cheerfully, and repel the charge of monotony and mannerism." He wished Mr. Murray to accept of Beppo as a free gift, or, as he chose to express it," as part of the contract for Canto Fourth of Childe Harold ;" adding, however,- "if it please, you shall have more in the same mood; for I know the Italian way of life, and, as for the verse and the passions, I have them still in tolerable vigour."

The Right Honourable John Hookham Frere has, then, by Lord Byron's confession, the merit of having first introduced the Bernesque style into our language; but his performance, entitled "Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Stowmarket, in Suffolk, Harness and Collar Makers, intended to comprise the most interesting Particulars relating to King Arthur and his Round Table," though it delighted all elegant and learned readers, obtained at the time little notice from the public at large, and is already almost forgotten. For the causes of this failure, about which Mr. Rose and others have written at some length, it appears needless to look further than the last sentence we have been quoting from the letters of the author of the more successful Beppo. Whistlecraft had the verse: it had also

the humour, the wit, and even the poetry of the Italian model; but it wanted the life of actual manners, and the strength of stirring passions. Mr. Frere had forgot, or was, with all his genius, unfit to profit by remembering, that the poets, whose style he was adopting, always made their style appear a secondary matter. They never failed to embroider their merriment on the texture of a really interesting story. Lord Byron perceived this; and avoiding his immediate master's one fatal error, and at least equalling him in the excellences which he did display, engaged at once the sympathy of readers of every class, and became substantially the founder of a new species of English poetry.

In justice to Mr. Frere, however, whose " Specimen " has long been out of print, we must take this opportunity of showing how completely, as to style and versification, he had anticipated Beppo and Don Juan. In the introductions to his cantos, and in various detached passages of mere description, he had produced precisely the sort of effect at which Lord Byron aimed in what we may call the secondary, or merely ornamental, parts of his Comic Epic. For example, this is the beginning of Whistlecraft's first canto :

"I'VE often wish'd that I could write a book,
Such as all English people might peruse;

I never should regret the pains it took,

That's just the sort of fame that I should choose.
To sail about the world like Captain Cook,
I'd sling a cot up for my favourite Muse,
And we'd take verses out to Demarara,
To New South Wales, and up to Niagara.

"Poets consume exciseable commodities,

They raise the nation's spirit when victorious,
They drive an export trade in whims and oddities,
Making our commerce and revenue glorious;
As an industrious and pains-taking body 'tis
That Poets should be reckon'd meritorious:
And therefore I submissively propose

To erect one Board for Verse and one for Prose.

"Princes protecting Sciences and Art

I've often seen, in copper-plate and print;
I never saw them elsewhere, for my part,
And therefore I conclude there's nothing in 't:

But every body knows the Regent's heart;

I trust he won't reject a well-meant hint; Each Board to have twelve members, with a seat To bring them in per ann, five hundred neat:

From Princes I descend to the Nobility:

In former times all persons of high stations,
Lords, Baronets, and Persons of gentility,
Paid twenty guineas for the dedications;
This practice was attended with utility;

The patrons lived to future generations,
The poets lived by their industrious earning,-
So men alive and dead could live by Learning.

"Then, twenty guineas was a little fortune;

Now, we must starve unless the times should mend: Our poets now-a-days are deem'd importune If their addresses are diffusely penn'd;

Most fashionable authors make a short one

To their own wife, or child, or private friend,
To show their independence, I suppose;
And that may do for Gentlemen like those.

"Lastly, the common people I beseech

Dear People! if you think my verses clever,
Preserve with care your noble Parts of speech,
And take it as a maxim to endeavour
To talk as your good mothers used to teach,

And then these lines of mine may last for ever;
And don't confound the language of the nation
With long-tail'd words in osity and ation.

"I think that Poets (whether Whig or Tory)

(Whether they go to meeting or to church) Should study to promote their country's glory With patriotic, diligent research;

That children yet unborn may learn the story,
With grammars, dictionaries, canes, and birch:
It stands to reason This was Homer's plan,
And we must do-like him- the best we can.

"Madoc and Marmion, and many more,

Are out in print, and most of them have sold; Perhaps together they may make a score; Richard the First has had his story told But there were Lords and Princes long before, That had behaved themselves like warriors bold: Among the rest there was the great KING ARTHUR, What hero's fame was ever carried farther?"

The following description of King Arthur's Christmas at Carlisle is equally meritorious:

"THE GREAT KING ARTHUR made a sumptuous Feast,
And held his Royal Christmas at Carlisle,
And thither came the Vassals, most and least,
From every corner of this British Isle;
And all were entertain'd, both man and beast,
According to their rank, in proper style;
The steeds were fed and litter'd in the stable,
The ladies and the knights sat down to table.

"The bill of fare (as you may well suppose)
Was suited to those plentiful old times,
Before our modern luxuries arose,

With truffles and ragouts, and various crimes;
And therefore, from the original in prose

I shall arrange the catalogue in rhymes:
They served up salmon, venison, and wild boars
By hundreds, and by dozens, and by scores.

"Hogsheads of honey, kilderkins of mustard,

Muttons, and fatted beeves, and bacon swine;
Herons and bitterns, peacock, swan and bustard,
Teal, mallard, pigeons, widgeons, and in fine
Plum-puddings, pancakes, apple-pies and custard:
And therewithal they drank good Gascon wine,
With mead, and ale, and cyder of our own;
For porter, punch, and negus were not known.

"The noise and uproar of the scullery tribe,

All pilfering and scrambling in their calling,
Was past all powers of language to describe-
The din of manful oaths and female squalling:
The sturdy porter, huddling up his bribe,

And then at random breaking heads and bawling,
Outcries, and cries of order, and contusions,
Made a confusion beyond all confusions;

"Beggars and vagabonds, blind, lame, and sturdy,
Minstrels and singers with their various airs,
The pipe, the tabor, and the hurdy-gurdy,
Jugglers and mountebanks with apes and bears,
Continued from the first day to the third day,

An uproar like ten thousand Smithfield fairs;
There were wild beasts and foreign birds and creatures,
And Jews and Foreigners with foreign features.