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    blaze around the shipwreck of our hopes , and exposes to view the naked bodies of human beings floating on the surge , a prey to the monsters of the deep , or tossed on the land , and consumed by the ravenous birds of the air and the devouring reptiles of the earth . Then , with a misanthropic sneer , pointing to the poor remains on which he has cast an unnatural and horrid glare , he exclaims in the triumphant language , rather of a demon than a creature possessing any sympathy with human beings ,

    ' * Bound to the earth , he lifts his jeye to heaven , " &c , to , * ' That little urn saith more than thousand homilies /* Childe Harold . In the midst , however , of the dark and dreadful pictures which Lord Byron delighted to draw , some of the brightest creations of female loveliness and affection are introduced : these are the sunbeams of his poems , and amidst the gloom in which they appear , the mind . loves to dwell upon them . But even they possess a seducing charm , for , without virtue , they are described

    as manifesting all the tenderness and fidelity of woman : and the evils arising from illicit love are consequently not painted in colours sufficiently strong . Amidst the brighter and better parts of Lord Byron's poems are those noble strains which breathe the soul of indignant feeling on contemplating the fallen condition of Greece and the tyranny of its oppressors : but the patriotism of his muse was too exclusively confined to classic ground , and his heart , apparently but little attached to his native land , and feeling na lively interest in the general liberties of mankind , was

    " Spell-bound amidst the Cyclades , " As a satirist—and he was a most bitter satirist , not only of the individual follies of man , but of the general imperfections and miseries of human nature— -Lord Byron was most unjust : not content with venting his spleen against the persons who had excited it , he attacked with indiscriminate

    bitterness every object , either intimately or remotely connected with his subject , however sacred , and every being , however innocent . In his " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers , " the inoffensive author of the " Farmer ' s Boy" ( a man of most unpresuming , though undoubted , genius , in those humble circumstances which should have sheltered him from the

    attack , if not the contempt , of titled insolence ) is most unjustly ridiculed : and in the " Vision of Judgment , " not only the understanding , but also the malady of our late venerable monarch is made the subject of unfeeling satire—a satire which , displaying no sympathy in the common sufferings and infirmities of human nature , derided the worst calamity that can befall a human being . Amongst the few things justly , as well as powerfully , ridiculed by Lord Byron , is that extravagant passion for military fame which leads men to sacrifice their own and their fellow-creatures' lives to obtain it

    — a passion which has been most fatal ^ lo the happiness of mankind . One great moral , notwithstanding the defects we have noticed , may be drawn from all Lord Byron has written—the wretchedness of guilt and the miseries of scepticism ; and those readers who are sufficiently attentive to this , as it is fearfully displayed in the feelings and destiny of his heroes , will

    find in it a sufficient antidote against whatever evil his poems are calculated to produce . This , indeed , is the triumph of religion , that , without a belief in . the existence of a benevolent Deity and a future state of being , accompanied by a virtuous course of conduct , which shall render him worthy of the favour of the one and the felicity of , the other , man , though placed on the highest

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    On the Poetif of Byron . 869

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1827, page 869, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1803/page/13/