an opinion which has certainly not been formed on particular passages, but from the whole effect of the story, -and I appeal to the first chapter, in the first instance. To give quotations would be ridiculous; but I request you to read it again, and say, if any man who had ever enjoyed the solicitudes of the parental hearth, and the intimacies of fraternal affection, could have conceived such a contemptuous representation of home. That a man who, never since the second stage of boyhood, knew properly what home or kindred was, might so write and conceive, is, however, highly probable. Home is what mankind have always been accustomed to consider as the sanctuary of human happiness; and it was natural, that one who owes much of his celebrity to his resolute determination to see every thing connected with the social state, in a different point of view from the rest of the world, should try the shafts of his satire on that which, above all things, above even religion itself, has been held most sacred and dearest. It was natural, that a mind which suffers the sense of solitude in cities, and which contemplates the fickle ocean as the most invariable image of the unchangeable divinity, should delineate the state of home as one destitute of all regulated sympathy and habitual affection. That Mr Hope would ever have made such an attempt, cannot for a moment be supposed. He is a domestic animal, and has been linked into every description of the social ties from his childhood. It never would have entered into his head to degrade the cherished sentiments which are associated with the remembrance of a father's roof, and the light free-hearted intercourse of intermingled children. But the case is different with Byron; and it is less his fault than his misfortune, that he does not feel that reverence for the domestic reciprocities in which other men so much delight. In him it was a natural feeling; and, instead of inspiring any adverse sentiment, it ought to make us reflect with sorrow, that a mind so ductile to impressions of the good and fair in moral action, should have been so cast on the world, as to imbibe so much of misanthropy and spleen. If Hope, that "prosperous gentleman," is capable of writing such an account of a domestic circle, and while under feelings which he has adopted as homogeneous to his own, let him pray nine times a-day, that he may never be subjected to the temptations of adversity. For what in Byron is spleen, must, in one so enriched with the gifts of good fortune, be nothing less than the innate malice of some andeveloped traitor, to all that is social and kind in life. The second chapter, contains, I conceive, the ground work of the description, where Don Juan is represented as a captive for sale; and this is a proof of the identity of the author. The third chapter is full of the spirit and fire of the Giaour, and I would refer you to the following passages, as bearing the strongest traces of Byron's abrupt, satirical, and impassionate pencil; independent altogether of those minute and descriptive touches respecting the dress of the Albanians, which none but one who was familiar with them could have introduced, for they are not such things as travellers are at all in the practice of recording. Byron lived some time among the Albanians, he had two of them in his service, and in different parts of his declared works shews the most thorough knowledge of their customs and characteristics. Hope knows nothing about them personally. "My great ambition had been to take a left the disabled man, as secure, to his own prisoner, to possess a slave. I therefore meditations, and with my biggest voice called to his companion to surrender, Luckily he did not even look round at the stripling who addressed him; but presently leaping down a little eminence, disappeared in a thicket, where I thought it prudent to give up the hazardous chase. "I now returned to the fellow whom I had left writhing on the ground, apparently at the last gasp; and when sufficiently near, lest there should still lurk about him some latent spark of life, which might only wait to spend itself in a last home thrust, swiftly sprung forward, and, for fear of foul play, put an extinguisher upon it, ere I ventured to take any other liberties with his person. This done, I deliberately proceeded to the work of spoliation. With a hand all trembling with joy, I first took the silver-mounted pistols, and glittering poniard, and costly yatagan; I next collected the massy knobs of the jacket, and able sequins lying perdue in the folds of clasps of the buskins, and still more valuthe sash; and lastly, feeling my appetite for plunder increase in proportion as it was gratified, thought it such a pity to leave any part of so showy an attire a prey to corruption, that I undressed the dead man completely. When, however, the business which engaged all my attention was entirely achieved, and that human body, of which, in the eagerness for its spoil, I had only thus far noticed the separate limbs one by one, as I stripped them, all at once struck my sight in its full dimensons, as it lay naked before me ;-when I contemplated that fine athletic frame, but a moment before full of life and vigor unto its fingers' ends, now rendered an insensible corpse by the random shot of a raw youth whom in close combat its little finger might have crushed, I could not help feeling, mixed with my exultation, a sort of shame, as if for a cowardly advantage obtained over a superior being; and, in order to make a kind of atonement to the shade of an Epirote of a kinsman-I exclaimed with outstretched hands, 'Cursed be the paltry dust which turns the warrior's arm into a mere engine, and striking from afar an invisible blow, carries death no one knows whence to no one knows whom; levels the strong with the weak, the brave with the dastardly; and, enabling the feeblest hand to wield its fatal lightning, makes the conqueror slay without anger, and the conquered die without glory!"" What follows this fine and animated passage is one of those freaks which Byron alone would have ventured to indulge. Voltaire is the only other writer that, after such impassioned eloquence, would have been so cruelly playfully as to add this "On the very point of departing after this sort of expiatory effusion, with my heavy but valuable trophy huddled on my back, the thought struck me that I might incur a suspicion of sporting plumes not my own, unless I brought my vouchers. With that view I began detaching from my Arnaoot's shaggy skull both the ears, as pledges for the remainder of the head, when I should be at leisure to fetch it; but considering how many gleaners stalked the harvest field, and that if I lost my own head, none other might be found to make me amends, I determined to take at once all I meant to keep. The work was a tough one, and the operator at best still a bungler, but I succeeded at last ;-and now, in an ecstacy of delight, though almost afraid to look at my bundle, I return ed to our party for ever cured, by an almost instantaneous transition to temerity, of every sentiment of fear. Indeed such remained for some time the ferment of my spirits, that, while I carried my load on one arm, I kept brandishing my sword with the other, still eager to lay about me, and to cut down whomsoever I met." VOL. X. The description of the approach to Constantinople from the Propontis could only have been made by one who had actually seen that magnificent view. Byron sailed up the Hellespont in an English frigate, and Anastasius is represented to have performed the voyage in a Turkish man-of-war. The description which Anastasius gives of his employment at the arsenal of Constantinople, is clever and ingenious; but it wants those little incidents which actual experience would have given, while it shews that the author's eye was acquainted with the localities of the place. Hope might, therefore, have written the account of the employments, but he could not have so spoken of the localities. An actual and familiar acquaintance with the situation and environs of the arsenal, such as no literature nor painting could give, was requisite to enable the author to speak of it as Anastasius speaks. In the same chapter the whole adventure with Theophania is full of the frolics of Byron's pen; and his dismissal by Maroyeni could have been written by no other. "In the twinkling of an eye the whole Fanar was informed of the secretary's disgrace;-only it was ascribed to my having, with a pistol in one hand, and a sword in the other, made such proposals to Madame la Droguemane, as she could not possibly listen to from her husband's clerk." The adventure with the Jew is full of absurdity, but it is redeemed from contempt by the rich embroidery of imagination which is thrown over the grossest improbabilities. All Byron's stories are of this sort; they are either wild, wonderful, or absurd. His exuberant fancy alone makes them interesting and beautiful. The death of the Parsée is such, that none but himself could have fancied and so described. "One evening, as we were returning from the Blacquernes, an old woman threw herself in our way. and taking hold of my master's garment, dragged him almost by main force after her into a mean-looking habitation just by, where lay on a couch, apparently at the last gasp, a man of foreign features. I have brought a physician,' said the female to the patient, who, perhaps, may relieve you.' Why will you', answered he faintly, still persist to feel idle hopes! I have lived an outcast: suffer me at least to die in piece; nor 2 C' disturb my last moments by vain illusions. My soul pants to rejoin the supreme Spirit; arrest not its flight: it would only be delaying my eternal bliss!' As the stranger spoke these words which struck even Yacoob sufficiently to make him suspend his professional grimace the last beams of the setting sun darted across the casement of the window upon his pale, yet swarthy features. Thus visited, he seemed for a moment to revive. I have always,' said he, considered my fate as connected with the great luminary that rules the creation. I have always paid it due worship, and firmly believed I could not breathe my last whilst its rays shone Carry me therefore out, that I may take my last farewell of the heavenly ruler of my earthly destinies !' upon me. "We all rushed forward to obey the mandate: but, the stairs being too narrow, the woman only opened the window, and placed the dying man before it, so as to enjoy the full view of the glorious orb, just in the act of dropping beneath the horizon. He remained a few moments in silent adoration; and mechanically we all joined him in fixing our eyes on the object of his worship. It set in all its splendour; and when its golden disk had entirely disappeared, we looked round at the Parsee. He too had sunk into everlasting rest." In the sixth chapter, the account of the Bagnio is rich in all the peculiarities of Byron's impartial and misanthropic satire. The comparison with hell might have occurred to any other mind, even to Furniture Hope's, for a hell upon earth is a vulgar enough idea; but those specialties of morose reflection, which scowl throughout the picture, could only have presented themselves to one accustomed to contemplate the inward workings of guilt, and the physiognomy of passion, rendered sullen in its energies by defeat or disappointment. Mackari is evidently the Corsair. Hope certainly might have copied the portrait, but could he or any other have done so in a manner which in many points transcends the original, and that too in points which seem only such as the first author could have imagined and brought forward; and who but Byron could have embodied that sublime impersonation of the plague? The story of Anagnosti is told quite as Byron would tell such a story, but in this he might have been imitated, and I should not lay on it much stress, were it not for one little touch at the conclusion, in which the ill-fated dancer expresses his presentiment sees of misfortune from his friends. There is The farther I proceed in the work, It of an individual, and that individual, the sort of person which the charitable conceive Lord Byron to be. But you will say, that in this instance, I try to prove too much, and that, had Byron been the author of Anastasius, the incident of a man branded for life with ineffaceable ignominy, was exactly such a character as would have drawn forth all the terrible powers of his genius in its fiercest and most implacable mood. True-Had Byron been describing the feelings of such a man-But he was there writing as Anastasius; and because he could not go out of his assumed character to express the feelings of the disgraced and dishonoured wretch, he gets rid of him by making him quit Constantinople; and I think you must acknowledge, that there was, in this evasion, an admirable instance of good taste. The opening of the 11th chapter reminds me of the gaudy description in Childe Harold, of Sunday in London and Seville. Compare these, I request, and say if it is likely that two different authors would have thought so similarly on the same topic; for we cannot suppose that the author of such a work as Anastasius would have condescended to become so palpable a plagiarist from a poem so well known as Childe Harold. But if Byron and that person are one and the same, the thing is natural enough. He only repeats himself, under the modifying influences of the local circumstances of a different scene. It is, however, needless to refer to particular instances; the reader at all acquainted with Byron's manner of thinking, must trace his mind in every page of Anastasius, even though the incidents and expressions bore little resemblance to those of his other works. But I cannot refrain from noticing one circumstance that I think curious. You remember, in his Letter concerning Bowles, the antagonist of Pope's poetical and moral reputation, that there is a description of a storm off Tenedos, or thereabouts, in the Archipelago. The coincidence is somewhat remarkable, that Anastasius should describe a storm in the same place; and it would seem as if the author had placed himself on board one of the little barks that Byron describes in his letter as scudding before the gale. Could this coincidence be accidental? I pass over the account of the attempt to drown the Jew, and the subsequent robbery. It is a fiction, and, like all Byron's fictions, improbable; but so well sustained by the force of his wit and genius, that it acquires that air of impossible probability which constitutes one of the most powerful sources of the interest of his remarkable productions. I have already told you, that those descriptions which the author has drawn from his own observations may be easily discovered from the more elaborate, which he has formed from books of travels; and the account of the ruins of Rhodes, is an instance of the latter. He has evidently never been there; no particular feature of the place is mentioned, but only vague moral reflections, a little too sentimen tal for the character of Anastasius, but very like those of Childe Harold at Athens. The whole, indeed, of the voyage to Egypt, and the subsequent descriptions of that country, of Palestine, and of Arabia, partake of this vague and general character. Here and there, it is true, a little picturesque incident is introduced; but it belongs not to the permanent features of the scenery, and is evidently employed to give animation to a narrative, which, without something of the sort, would be lumbering and lifeless. The historical disquisitions concerning the Mamelukes, and the political and statistical disquisitions, I pass over altogether; they may be written by Byron himself, or they may be the tributary contributions of Hobhouse. I have not read them. To me they are as appalling as the Osmanlee's simile of the Nile was to Anastasius himself. You must, however, have been struck with the remarkable omission of the pyramids and ancient architecture of Egypt. Had the author ever been in that country, is it probable, that in placing his hero in familiar situations, in the Castle of Cairo, for example, he would have omitted to represent him under the influence of the feelings, which the superb views from the windows of the audience-chamber of the castle never fail to awaken? He does not even allude to it: while at Constantinople, he appears, as it were, at home; in Cairo, he seems to have no points of local reference, nothing which shews he has ever been there. Where the author of Anastasius sticks to his own story, he is amu sing, lively, and sometimes more; but, where he mingles up his adventures with details from Mouradgea d'Ohsson's History of Turkey, he is as tiresome as the old Armenian himself. By the way, Kit, it argues very little for the lore of our reviewing tribes, that none of them have noticed how much of a free-booter Anastasius is, with respect to the work alluded to. Nobody filches so bravely from others as Byron,-few can so well afford to do so,-few have the courage to be so free. The description of the Arabian wizzard is whimsical, but improbable; and the picture is altogether erroneous, in the circumstances of the back ground and still life. It is drawn from the caricatures of a European fortune-teller, and lacks the uncouth enthusiasm that is mingled with the pretensions of the true Arabian astrologer. The introduction of an astronomical globe into the arcanum of a fortune-teller in Djedda, is sufficient to prove how little the author, from his own knowledge, knew of the country. But, nevertheless, the hand of Byron is manifest in the vigour of the painting, and his genius is heard in the albacadabra ravings of the charac ters. I must refer you to the sixth chapter of the second volume for the former, while I beg your attention to what I consider one of the irrepressible biases of Byron's mind. He is speaking, it is true, here ironically; but it is curious that he should so speak: "In the opinion of Malek,” says Anastasius, " every stone, beast, and plant, on the surface of the earth, presumed most unwarrantably to meddle with our destiny. Nothing, animated or inanimate, could be named, which exerted not over our being a mysterious influence. From every occurrence, however trivial, some omen might be extracted, if one only knew the way." This is said in joke; but elsewhere, the author, Lord Byron, propounds the same idea seriously. Is it probable that any other but himself would have done so? But my paper leaves me, at present, no further room; perhaps, on some other occasion, I may resume the subject. Mean time, I remain, your OLD FRIEND WITH A NEW FACE. Gordon's Hotel, Albemarle Street, August 29, 1821. VOYAGES AND TRAVELS OF COLUMBUS SECUNDUS. CHAPTER XI. THE FISH MARKET. Fine partens! Fine rock-partens !-There's a pair ARE you a thrifty housewife, madam? Yes, sir, I flatter myself I attempt to be so.-Then go to the fishmarket. Are you partial to the luxuries of the table, sir?-Visit the fishmarket then by all means. Do you take pleasure in noticing the varieties of human character, and the display of human passions?-Go, buy, study, saunter, meditate in the fish-market of Edinburgh. There you will hear fi The Flowers of Edinburgh. gures of speech, which never entered into the heads of a Demosthenes or a Cicero,-of a Burke or an Erskine, and find similies in daily use, which neither Shakespeare nor Milton ever dreamt of. Are you a painter, and do you love to see the different costumes of this world's inhabitants? Take your pencil or your crayons, and study, reside, in the fish-market. In fine, do you wish at little expence to acquire |