Byron's scholars should acquire his peculiar state of spirits, before they think of catching his manner. Accordingly, we were not disappointed, at the moment when we opened Ahasuerus, as to the sort of character with whom he had to deal. We found that gentleman seated on the sea-shore, alone, in the evening; in short, with every aid to a sombre imagination, and all nature admirably in tune with his misanthropy. He therefore exclaims, naturally enough,

With regard to the legend itself, on which the author has founded his poem, our readers will perceive that it is one of the gloomiest conceptions that ever leaped out of a German imagination.

"Ahasuerus crept forth from the dark cave of Mount Carmel." Goaded by never-ending restlessness he roves the globe from pole to pole. He is denied the consolation of the grave!

"Ahasuerus crept forth from the dark cave of Carmel! he shook the dust from his beard, and roared in dreadful accents: They could die; but I, reprobate wretch! alas! I cannot die! Dreadful is the judgment that hangs over me! Jerusalem fell! I crush'd the sucking babe, and precipitated myself into the destructive flames I cursed the Romans! but alas! alas! the restless curse held me by the hair, and I could not die! Rome, the giantess, fell! I placed myself before the falling statue - she fell, and did not crush me. Nations sprung up, and disappeared before me; but I remained, and did not die. From cloud-encompassed cliffs did I precipitate myself into the ocean; but the foaming billows cast me on the shore, and the burning arrow of existence pierced my cold heart again. A forest was on fire: I darted on wings of fury and despair into the crackling wood! fire dropped on me from the trees, but the flames only singed my limbs alas! it could not consume them.

"I now mixed with the butchers of mankind, and plunged into the tempests of the battle. I roared defiance to the infuriate Gaul—I roared defiance to the victorious German, but arrows and spears rebounded in shivers from my body. The Saracen's flaming sword broke upon my skull-balls hissed in vain upon me: the lightning of the battle glared harmless around my limbs! in vain did the elephant trample mein vain the iron hoof of the wrathful steed. The mine big with destruction burst upon me, and hurled me high in the air! I fell upon heaps of smoking limbs, and was only singed. The steel club rebounded from my body, The executioner's hand could not strangle me. The tiger's tooth could not pierce me, nor could the hungry lion of the circus devour me. I now provoked the fury of tyrants: I said to Nero, Thou art a bloodhound! I said to Muly Ishmael, Thou art a bloodhound! I said to Christiern, Thou art a bloodhound! The tyrants REV. MAY, 1824. invented

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invented cruel torments, but could not destroy me. Ha! not to be able to die! not to be able to die! not to be permitted to rest after the toils of life! Awful Avenger in heaven! hast thou in all thy armoury of wrath a punishment more dreadful? Then let it thunder upon me! command a hurricane to sweep me to the foot of Carmel; that I may there be extended, may pant, and writhe, and die!"

'Such are some of the reflections that darkened the closing scene in the eventful history of the Wanderer!'

Yet, while we have classed the poem of Ahasuerus among the numerous imitations of Lord Byron, it is by no means one of those vulgar imitations which imply the triumph of skill, not of genius. There are passages in it of which Lord Byron might have been justly proud;-passages of great power, and, we might add, sublimity. Ahasuerus is one of those beings, who, to use Swift's phrase, are "supremely cursed with immortality;" or at least with a life destined to extend far beyond the usual limits of mortal existence. Like the Prometheus of Æschylus, he sees no approaching termination to his misery;

πῆ ποτέ μόχθων

Χρη τέρματα των δ ̓ ἐπιτεῖλαι;

a conception by no means new, for it is that which produced Faustus, St. Leon, and Manfred. In lyrical passages like the following, the author most resembles his prototype: but he resembles him as a disciple of Rafaelle resembles his great model, — by producing works worthy of his pencil.

'On! Wanderer, on! thy bark bounds fleet,
But oh! the burthen it bears is sweet.
The meteors blaze bright

On thy nuptial night,

And the dæmons who dance on the tossing tide
Are out, to gaze on the Wanderer's bride.
On! Wanderer, on! thou may'st not sta!
Over the waves

away! away!

Each spot must be

Alike to thee,

Over the waves! away! away!

A boat is on the water! a boat is on the water!

Who are the two

That form her crew?

Like Grief and his young daughter!

Like Grief and Hope! it may not be
A being beautiful as she

Should take her couch in the cold sea.

* While this article was passing through the press, the news of the death of that singular but highly endowed nobleman has reached

this country.

She

She looks through the night
A single star,

So blessed and bright

Her beauties are:

But who is the other? he looks not so

Is it the weight of weariless woe

Which on that forehead has stamp'd the mark
That tells the spirit within is so dark?

How suits the drunken waves' excess
With yon meek child of gentleness?
It is but some few hours ago

She had not even dream'd of woe;
Would tell her beads, and bless her God
'That vain man's footstep never trod
The sacred threshold of a cell
Where only holy peace might dwell;

Yes, she was pure, and bright, and fair,
If ever thing created were!'

From the dialogue between Ahasuerus and Eda we make the succeeding extract; and who that peruses it can deny that the author has extraordinary powers? She reminds the Wanderer that he had perpetual youth, health, and inexhaustible riches; to which he replies:

Vain gifts!

To me refinement brought no luxury,
And merriment no mirth! joy offered no
Zest for enjoyment, but the more I felt
An icy barrier twixt my
kind and me,
How did I curse my being, curse the lot
That made me human, yet distinct from all
Man prizes in humanity! with wants
Ungratified and infinite

a thirst

Of knowledge inextinguishable - wishes,
That tortured with excess - desires that knew
No source of pleasure whence to sate them
To give them all their ardour - and a love
Of novelty, that had excitement none
To cheat life of its dull monotony
In rest still longing after action, and
In action languishing for rest for ever
Busy, and yet unoccupied and jaded
With one long chase of happiness, whose goal
Grew more and more removed, deluding still
With a false apparition, kept in view
To lure me onward in the vain pursuit
As unattainable and distant still,
Yet ever in perspective, till the hope
That comes to all no longer came to me.

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youth

Eda.

Eda. (I fear to question further.) 'Tis a scene
Your mind alone has colour'd. Say, with man,
Held you what fellowship, in good or evil?

Ahasuerus. For years, long years, after that fatal day,
I had no interchange of interests

Or sensibilities with them; and if

I mixed in their detested intercourse,

A cold electric chill would creep upon them
A shuddering sense of horror unexplain'd,
And undefinable; when each would turn
His blank eyes on the other, as to read
The thoughts he fear'd were mirror'd in his own,
And leave me to the frightful solitude

Of my own uncompanionable breast!

Eda. Why did they shrink from thee? whence came
their awe?

'Ahasuerus. They saw my woe in its external form.
There were who met the glance of my wild eye
And never smiled again; some fled from me
As from a pestilence - but this endured not;
For soon I learn'd to mask my face with smiles,
And by Arabian art to hide the scars
Misery and guilt had graven there. I sought
By potent drugs, and crucibles, and spells,

For youth, when nought could waken a new spring
In my decay'd affections. No! the blight
Of age, that, like the canker, preys unseen
Upon the core of the tree's life, had work'd
Its paralysing way into my heart,

And wither'd it for ever in its springs !'

The mountains and excavations in India, probably those of Elephanta, are the subjects of the ensuing gorgeous descrip

tion:

'Can I forget that I had wander'd

Over the Indian Appennines- those Ghauts,
Whose summits, inaccessibly secure,

Are pinnacled with fortresses that frown

The stern defiance of the mountaineer!

Lo! where the pass winds onward through ravines
That clothe their perpendicular sides with trees,

And thousand odorous shrubs, and plants, and flowers,
Unnumber'd in degree; and parasites,

Of every shape and hue, that, as a web

Of the most intricate texture, weave their folds
About the trunks; that like Bacchantes, stretch
From bough to bough their garlands evergreen
Festooning; whilst in the far gulf below

Voices of many cataracts roar unseen:
Over that blossomy wilderness

What power

Was here to lure me from the path-whose thorns

Of

Of anguish and despair goaded me on
My ever-weary way! But what are these,
Unlike the fabrics of man's art, these temples,
Buried in subterranean solitude,

And silence awful as the grave? Some, deep
And dank, and dimly seen athwart the gloom
Cast by the shadows of the massy pillars

That bear a roof of mountains in their arms!
Some were as things of wonder, and did seem
To move towards me, on the backs upraised
Of tigers and of hippogriffs! and some,
Tier above tier, on fretted galleries piled,
Until they glitter'd in the vault of heaven!
Whilst others in the fathomless abyss
Of crags, that toppled as to overwhelm,
Stood islanded! On all sides I beheld
The delicatest sculpture; and within
The vast and desolate courts, with grass o'ergrown,
Sphynxes, and elephants, and obelisks,
And columns fairer than Ionic, rose!

And who are they, that in these countless caves,
Of unimaginable shapes, and arm'd

With strange and mystic implements of death
And torture, in admixtures stranger still
Of men and beasts of prey, deformity
Brute-like nor human the distemperature
Of Fancy in her most distorted dreams,
Stand ranged along the empty corridores?
Are they of other worlds, or beings such
As ruled in this before the mighty flood
Swept all things else in undistinguish'd wreck!
And spared it, in its devastating course,
This work of giant hands, this monument,
Eternal as myself?"

Julian dies for love of Eda, ignorant of the secret of her

birth, for she was his sister!

We must close our citations with these lines, in which the result of their ill-fated tenderness is described.

And from that time of sorrow Eda pined
As with a secret spell! whether it were

Pity for Julian's fate-who died for her!

A brother known too late- and lost when known!
Or that the immedicable grief of one

She loved beyond all power of mortal love,
Wither'd her heart! she pined and day by day
Grew lovelier, as more weak, till her fair earth
Seem'd a fit shrine for spirit! and oft a hué,
A hectic flush, like that which paints the rose,
And destin'd, as that flower, too soon to fade

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The