"Dear Nature is the kindest mother still, Though always changing in her aspect mild; From her bare bosom let me take my fill, Her never-weaned, though not her favoured child. O she is fairest in her features wild, Where nothing polished dares pollute her path; To me by day or night she ever smiled, Though I have marked her when none other hath, And sought her more and more, and loved her most in wrath." p. 79.
Our author having re-landed upon his native shores, his first deed is to present to his country the work before us, as the fruits of his travels. It is a kind of poetical journal of journeys and voyages through Spain and Portugal, along the shores of the Mediterranean and Archipelago, and through the states of ancient Greece. When we speak of journal, we mean rather to designate the topics of the work than the manner of its execution; for it is highly poetical. Most contrary to the spirit of those less fanciful records, his Lordship sublimely discards all facts and histories; all incidents; A.M. and P.M.; and bad inns and worse winds; and battles and feasts. Seizing merely upon the picturesque features in every object and event before him, he paints and records them with such reflections, moral or immoral, as arise in his ardent mind.
The "Childe Harolde" is the traveller; and as he is a mighty surly fellow, neither loves nor is loved by any one; "through sin's long labyrinth had run, nor made atonement when he did amiss;" as, moreover, he is licentious and sceptical; Lord Byron very naturally, and creditably to himself, sets out in his Preface with disclaiming any connection with this imaginary personage. It is somewhat singular, however, that most of the offensive reflections in the poem are made, not by the "Childe," but the poet.
[Here follows a summary of the two cantos, with extensive quotations.]
Having by these extracts endeavoured to put our readers in possession of some of the finest parts of this poem, and also of those passages which determine its moral complexion, we shall proceed to offer a few remarks upon its character and pretensions in both points of view.
The poem is in the stanza of Spenser--a stanza of which we think it difficult to say whether the excellencies or defects are the greatest. The paramount advantage is the variety of tone and pause of which it admits. The great disadvantages are, the constraint of such complicated rhymes, and the long suspension of the sense, especially in the latter half of the stanza. The noblest conception and most brilliant diction must be sacrificed, if four words in one place, and three in another cannot be found rhyming to each other. And as to the suspension of the sense, we are persuaded that no man reads a single stanza without feeling a sort of strain upon the intellect and lungs--a kind of suffocation of mind and body, before he can either discover the lingering meaning, or pronounce the nine lines. To us, we confess that the rhyming couplets of Mr. Scott, sometimes deviating into alternate rhymes, are, on both accounts, infinitely preferable. One of the ends of poetry is to relax, and the artificial and elaborate stanza of Spenser costs us too much trouble, even in the reading, to accomplish this end. To effect this, the sense should come to us, instead of our going far and wide in quest of the sense. In our conception also, the heroic line of ten syllables, though favourable to the most dignified order of poetry, appears to limp when forced into the service of sonneteers: and poems in the metre before us, are, after all, little better than a string of sonnets; of which it is the constituent principle to be rather pretty than grand--rather tender than martial--rather conceited than wise--to keep the sense suspended for eight lines, and to discharge it with a point in the ninth. These observations are by no means designed to apply especially to the author--the extreme gravity of whose general manner and matter, in a measure covet the dignity of the heroic line. But it is this discordancy of measure and subject, together with the obviously laboured rhymes and the halting of the sense, which in general, we think, have shut out the Spenserian school from popular reading, and have caused a distinguished critic[J] to say, that the "Faiery Queen will not often be read through;" and that, although it maintains its place upon the shelf, it is seldom found on the table of the modern library.