place revilings of unsuccessful authors, and shewed, that if Lord Byron was dissatisfied, he had no reason to be so.

We attach no importance to this part of Capt. Medwin's book, which relates to Mr. Murray, except that, in this respect, it proves his reports of Lord Byron's conversations are not to be relied upon; or that, if he be correct, Lord Byron's own conversations were unworthy of a man' of honorable name.

But the most extraordinary circumstance is that which concludes Mr. Murray's statement. It appears that Capt. Medwin speaks of himself as witnessing a deed which he did not witness, and then mysteriously introduces asterisks in place of an obnoxious clause of the deed. But, on the demand of Mr. Murray, the blank has been filled up, and it now appears that no such clause exists in the deed. Probably, therefore, Lord Byron will stand acquitted; and the public have yet to learn the secret history of this publication, and of the literary cabal by which it was directed.

Under these circumstances, it would be trifling with our readers to introduce quotations from the original work, except on subjects perfectly neutral. The few which follow will at least gratify morbid curiosity.

His lordship's separation from his wife made so much noise, that his or Capt. Medwin's notice of the marriage, and of the separation, will at least amuse our readers. It seems that his first overtures were rejected, but

"Her refusal was couched in terms that could not offend me. I was, besides, persuaded, that, in declining my offer, she was governed by the influence of her mother; and was the more confirmed in this opinion, by her reviving the correspondence herself twelve months after. The tenour of the letter was, that, although she could not love me, she desired my friendship. Friendship is a dangerous word for young ladies. It is love full fledged, and waiting for a fine day to fly.

age to me.

"It had been predicted by Mrs. Williams, that twenty-seven was to be a dangerous The fortune-telling witch was right. It was destined to prove so. I shall never forget it. Lady Byron (BURN he pronounced it) was the only unconcerned person present. Lady Noel, her mother, cried. I trembled like a leaf-made the wrong responses, and after the ceremony called her Miss Milbanke. There is a singular history attached to the ring. The very day the match was concluded, a ring of my mother's that had been lost, was dug up by the gardener at Newstead. I thought it had been sent on purpose for the wedding: but my mother's marriage had not been a fortunate one, and this ring was doomed to be the seal of an unhappier union still.

"After the ordeal was over, we set off for a country seat of Sir Ralph's, and I was surprised at the arrangements for the journey; and somewhat out of humour to find a lady's maid stuck between me and my bride. It was rather too early to assume, the husband, and I was forced to submit, but with a very bad grace. Put yourself in my situation, and tell me whether I had not some reason to be in the sulks.'

The separation is thus spoken of:

"Our honey-moon was not all sunshine. It had its clouds; and Hobhouse has some letters which would serve to explain the rise and fall in the barometer; but it was never down at Zero. You tell me the world says I married Miss Milbanke for her fortune, because she was a great heiress. All I have ever received, or am likely to receive, was 10,000l. My own income at this period was small, and somewhat bespoke. Newstead was a very unprofitable estate, and brought me in a bare 1500 a-year. The Lancashire property was hampered with a law-suit, which has cost me 14,0001. and is not yet finished. We had a house in town, gave dinner parties, had separate carriages, and lanched into every sort of extravagance. This could not last long. My wife's 10,0001. soon melted away. I was beset by duns, and at length an execution was levied, and

Is it Capt. M. or Lord B. who lays this absurd emphasis on an impostor, even among astrologers?

the bailiffs put in possession of the very beds we had to sleep upon. This was no very agreeable state of affairs, no very pleasant scene for Lady Byron to witness; and it was agreed she should pay her father a visit till the storm had blown over, and some arrangements been made with my creditors. You may suppose on what terms we parted, from the style of a letter she wrote me on the road. You will think it begun ridiculously enough. Dear Duck,' &c. Imagine my astonishment to receive immediately on her arrival, a few lines from her father of a very unlike and very unaffectionate nature, beginning, Sir,' and ending with saying, that his daughter should never see me. again. In my reply, I disclaimed his authority as a parent over my wife; and told him I was convinced the sentiments expressed were his, not hers. Another post, however, brought me a confirmation, under her own hand and seal, of her father's sentence." There can be no doubt that the influence of her enemies prevailed over her affection for me. You ask me if no cause was assigned for this sudden resolution; if I formed no conjecture about the cause. I will tell you, I have prejudices about women, I do not like to see them eat. Rousseau makes Julie un peu gourmande, but that is not at all according to my taste. I do not like to be interrupted when I am writing. Lady Byron did not attend to these whims of mine. The only harsh thing I ever remember saying to her, was one evening shortly before our parting. I was standing before the fire, ruminating upon the embarrassments of my affairs and other annoyances, when Lady Byron came up to me, and said, 'Byron, am I in your way? To which I replied, • Damnably.' I was afterwards sorry, and reproached myself for the expression, but it escaped me unconsciously, involuntarily; I hardly knew what I said."

If Lord Byron imagined the possibility of the preceding ever meeting the light, he little contemplated such tittle-tattle as the following, in which he spoke of Miss Mary C. his first love :

"She was several years older than myself; but at my age, boys like something older than themselves, as they do younger, later in life.

"But the ardour was all on my side. I was serious-she was volatile she liked me as a younger brother, and treated and laughed at me as a boy. She, however, gave me her picture, and that was something to make verses upon. During the last years that I was at Harrow, all my thoughts were occupied with this love affair.

"Had I married Miss C., perhaps the whole tenour of my life would have been different. She jilted me, however; but her marriage proved any thing but a happy one. She was at length separated from Mr. M., and proposed an interview with me, but, by the advice of my sister, I declined it."

Capt. Medwin's account of Lord Byron's person is given with spirit, and, as a writer, entitles him to respect:

In criticising his features, it might perhaps be said that his eyes were placed too near his nose, and that one was rather smaller than the other; they were of a greyish brown, but of a peculiar clearness, and, when animated, possessed a fire which seemed to look through and penetrate the thoughts of others, while they marked the inspirations His teeth were small, regular, and white; these, I afterwards found, he took great pains to preserve. For this purpose, he used tobacco when he first went into the open air; and he told me he was in the habit of grinding his teeth in his sleep, to prevent which he was forced to put a napkin between them.

of his own.

seat.

"Lord Byron is an admirable horseman, combining grace with the security of his He prides himself much on this exercise. He conducted us for some miles till we came to a farm-house, where he practises pistol-firing every evening. This is his favorite amusement, and may indeed be called almost a pursuit. He always has pistols in his holster, and eight or ten pair by the first makers in London carried by his courier. We had each twelve rounds of ammunition, and, in a diameter of four inches, he put eleven out of twelve shots.

In the following passage, he makes Lord B. his own biographer:"I was not so young when my father died, but that I perfectly remember him; and had very early a horror of matrimony, from the sight of domestic broils: this feeling came over me very strongly at my wedding. Something whispered me that I was sealing my own death-warrant. I am a great believer in presentiments. Socrates' dæmon was no fiction. Monk Lewis had his monitor; and Napoleon many warnings. At the last moment I would have retreated, if I could have done so. I called to mind a friend of mine, who had married a young, beautiful, and rich girl, and yet was miserable. He had strongly urged me against putting my neck in the same yoke: and to shew you how firmly I was resolved to attend to his advice, I betted Hay fifty guineas

to one, that I should always remain single. Six years afterwards I sent him the money. The day before I proposed to Lady Byron, I had no idea of doing so.

"I lost my father when I was only six years of age. My mother, when she was in a rage with me, (and I gave her cause enough,) used to say, Ah, you little dog, you are a Byron all over; you are as bad as your father!' It was very different from Mrs. Malaprop's saying, Ah! good dear Mr. Malaprop, I never loved him till he was

dead.

“You have heard the unfortunate story of his (speaking of his uncle) duel with his relation and neighbour. After that melancholy event, he shut himself up at Newstead, and was in the habit of feeding crickets, which were his only companions. He had made them so tame as to crawl over him, and used to whip them with a whisp of straw, if too familiar. When he died, tradition says that they left the house in a body. I suppose I derive my superstition from this branch of the family; but, though I attend to none of these new-fangled theories, I am inclined to think that there is more in a chart of the skull than the Edinburgh reviewers suppose. However that may be, I was a wayward youth, and gave my mother a world of trouble,-as I fear Ada will her's, for I am told she is a little termagant. I had an ancestor, too, that expired laughing, (I suppose that my good spirits came from him,) and two whose affection was such for each other, that they died almost at the same moment. There seems to have been a flaw in my escutcheon there, or that loving couple have monopolized all the connubial bliss of the family.' ....

"He used to say there were three great men ruined in one year,- Brummel, himself, and Napoleon!....

"Women were there, (at Venice,) as they have ever been fated to be, my bane. Like Napoleon, I have always had a great contempt for women; and formed this opinion of them not hastily, but from my own fatal experience. My writings, indeed, tend to exalt the sex; and my imagination has always delighted in giving them a beau idéal likeness, but I only drew them as a painter or statuary would do,—as they should be. Perhaps my prejudices, and keeping them at a distance, contributed to prevent the illusion from altogether being worn out and destroyed as to their celestial qualities.

"They are in an unnatural state of society. The Turks and Eastern people manage these matters better than we do. They lock them up, and they are much happier. Give a woman a looking-glass and a few sugar-pluns, and she will be satisfied.'"

Of his lordship's weakness on points where education and philosophy ought to make a man strong, we have the following lamentable instances, if the reporter is to be depended on. If Rousseau did as is related, it must have been in his childhood, for Lord Byron's faith is that of a child, and beneath the lowest manly intellect in the age.

“This is Ada's birthday, and might have been the happiest day of my life: as it is -!' He stopped, seemingly ashamed of having betrayed his feelings. He tried in vain to rally his spirits, by turning the conversation; but he created a laugh in which he could not join, and soon relapsed into his former reverie. It lasted till we came within a mile of the Argive gate. There our silence was all at once interrupted by shrieks that seemed to proceed from a cottage by the side of the road. We pulled up our horses, to inquire of a contadino standing at the little garden-wicket. He told us that a widow had just lost her only child, and that the sounds proceeded from the wailings of some women over the corpse. Lord Byron was much affected; and his superstition, acted upon by a sadness that seemed to be presentiment, led him to augur

some disaster.

"I shall not be happy,' said he, till I hear that my daughter is well. I have a great horror of anniversaries: people only laugh at, who have never kept a register of them. I always write to my sister on Ada's birthday. I did so last year; and, what was very remarkable, my letter reached her on my wedding-day, and her answer reached me at Ravenna on my birthday! Several extraordinary things have happened to me en my birthday; so they did to Napoleon; and a more wonderful circumstance still occurred to Marie Antoinette.'

"I was convinced something very unpleasant hung over me last night: I expected to hear that somebody I knew was dead;-so it turns out! Poor Polidori is gone!.... "I told you I was not oppressed in spirits last night without a reason. Who can help being superstitious? Scott believes in second-sight. Rousseau tried whether he was to be d-d or not, by aiming at a tree with a stone: I forgot whether he hit or Crit. Gaz. Vol. 1. No. 7. 4 F

missed. Goëthe trusted to the chance of a knife's striking the water, to determine whether he was to prosper in some undertaking. The Italians think the dropping of oil very unlucky. Pietro (Count Gamba) dropped some the night before his exile, and that of his family, from Ravenna. Have you ever had your fortune told? Mrs. Williams told mine. She predicted that twenty-seven and thirty-seven were to be dangerous ages in my life. One has come true.' "Yes,' added I, and did she not prophesy that you were to die a monk and a miser? I have been told so.' "I don't think these two last very unlikely; but it was part of her prediction. But there are lucky and unlucky days, as well as years and numbers too. Lord was dining at a party, where observed that they were thirteen. Why don't you make us twelve?' was the reply; and an impudent one it was-but he could say those things. You would not visit on a Friday, would you? You know you are to introduce me to Mrs. -. It must not be to-morrow, for it is a Friday."

We shall conclude with an account of his lordship's Italian chere amie:

"He dined (says Capt. M.) at half an hour after sun-set, (at twenty-four o'clock ;) they drove to Count Gamba's, the Countess Guiccioli's father, passed several hours in her society, returned to his palace, and either read or wrote till two or three in the morning; occasionally drinking spirits diluted with water as a medicine, from a dread of a nephritic complaint, to which he was, or fancied himself, subject.

"The Countess Guiccioli is twenty-three years of age, though she appears no more than seventeen or eighteen. Unlike most of the Italian women, her complexion is delicately fair. Her eyes, large, dark, and languishing, are shaded by the longest eyelashes in the world; and her hair, which is ungathered on her head, plays over her falling shoulders in a profusion of natural ringlets of the darkest auburn. Her figure is, perhaps, too much embonpoint for her height, but her bust is perfect; her features want little of possessing a Grecian regularity of outline; and she has the most beautiful mouth and teeth imaginable. It is impossible to see without admiring-to hear the Guiccioli speak without being fascinated. Her amiability and gentleness show themselves in every intonation of her voice, which, and the music of her perfect Italian, give a peculiar charm to every thing she utters. Grace and elegance seem component parts of her

nature.

'Extraordinary pains (said Lord Byron one day) were taken with the education of Teresa. Her conversation is lively, without being frivolous; without being learned, she has read all the best authors of her own and the French language. She often conceals what she knows, from the fear of being thought to know too much; possibly because she knows I am not fond of blues. To use an expression of Jeffrey's, If she has blue stockings, she contrives that her petticoats shall hide them.'"

"Lord Byron is certainly very much attached to her, without being actually in love. His description of the Georgioni in the Manfrini palace at Venice is meant for the Countess. The beautiful sonnet prefixed to the Prophecy of Dante was addressed to her; and I cannot resist copying some stanzas written when he was about to quit Venice to join her at Ravenna, which will describe the state of his feelings at that time."

The Count Guiccioli, (said his lordship,) who is the richest man in Romagna, was sixty when he married Teresa; she sixteen. From the first they had separate apartments, and she always used to call him Sin. What could be expected from such a preposterous connexion? For some time she was an Angiolina, and he a Marino Faliero, a good old man; but young women, and your Italian ones too, are not satisfied with your good old men. Love is not the same dull, cold, calculating feeling here as in the North. It is the business, the serious occupation of their lives; it is a want, a necessity. Somebody properly defines a woman, a creature that loves.' They die of love; particularly the Romans: they begin to love earlier, and feel the passion later than the Northern people. When I was at Venice, two dowagers of sixty made love to me.-But to return to the Guiccioli. The old Count did not object to her availing herself of the privileges of her country; an Italian would have reconciled him to the thing: indeed, for some time he winked at our intimacy, but at length made an exception against me, as a foreigner, a heretic, an Englishman, and, what was worse than all, a liberal.

"He insisted-the Guiccioli was as obstinate; her family took her part. Catholics cannot get divorces. But, to the scandal of all Romagna, the matter was at length referred to the Pope, who ordered her a separate maintenance, on condition that she should reside under her father's roof. All this was not agreeable, and at length I was

forced to smuggle her out of Ravenna, having disclosed a plot laid with the sanction of the Legate for shutting her up in a convent for life, which she narrowly escaped.'

"I found him (on the day after Shelley's funeral,) sitting in the garden under the shade of some orange-trees, with the Countess. They are now always together, and he is become quite domestic. He calls her Piccinina, and bestows on her all the pretty diminutive epithets that are so sweet in Italian. His kindness and attention to the Guiccioli have been invariable. A three years' constancy proves that he is not altogether so unmanageable by a sensible woman as might be supposed."

For our parts, we think quite enough, if not too much, has been written about this young nobleman. His life can be no example, for it was filled with a series of follies and extravagancies: it illustrates no part of the public history of his times, for it was passed in egotistical indulgence and personal sensuality; and, if the last months of it were indeed useful to the Greeks by the countenance of his name, yet his visit was rather an adventure to divert ennui, than an enterprize founded on any settled principles of action. Had he been a poet, without being a noble, he would probably have perished in the stews of St. Giles's; and, if a noble without being a poet, he would quite as likely have lived and died a counterpart of Lord Barrymore.

The Cambrian Plutarch: comprising Memoirs of some of the most eminent Welshman, from the earliest Times to the present. By John H. Parry, Esq.-8vo. 10s. 6d. boards.

A REMARKABLE degree of ignorance prevails respecting the literature and history of that portion of our island, in which such of the aboriginal race as had survived the repeated shocks of foreign invasion, sought their last asylum from the swords of their enemies. While the national peculiarities, whether in manners or literature, of Scotland and Ireland, have been industriously explored, and, in many instances, successfully developed, Wales has been regarded with an indifference not easily to be reconciled with that spirit of enterprise by which the literary republic of Great Britain is known to be animated. Some efforts, it is true, have been made to describe the peculiar habits and customs of the Welsh; but, in most instances, these, instead of being faithful portraits, have been mere idle caricatures.

It is not sufficient that Welchmen have at last learned to appreciate the value of their ancient literary remains, whether of history or of poetry. In order to do full justice to their national literature, in order to make it an object of interest to others, they should divest it of its native garb, and present it to the world in a form more qualified to allure the general reader. At present, Englishmen have few or no means of estimating the justice of that enthusiasm with which the names of Taliesin, Hywel Dda, or Llywelyn, are hailed on the soil of their birth; and they may well be excused if they continue sceptical in a cause, of which they are not placed in a situation to judge.

Independently of the avowed historical resources, of which use has been made in this volume, there are others that may not appear quite so obvious to the general reader. Of these, the chief are the ancient Welsh poems and Triads. Some observations on the more remarkable features of the former will be found in the Life of Aneurin; and from these it will be seen, that, as historical documents, where they are connected with the events of the times, the effusions of the ancient bards