— 14—

The Giaour from which Herrigs gives an extract next,— and a most beautiful passage it is,— is even much more formless and planless: disjointed, unconnected fragments, a series of dissolving views, all colour without an outline. The material indeed grew and accumulated under the author’'s hands, both in printing and through successive editions, from 400 lines in its first copy to 1500.„I have not yet fixed the place of insertion for the following lines“, he writes to his editor when sending one of those additions. The consequence of thus proceeding is such a confusion that the real connection of the facts and events which flit before our eyes is scarcely to be gathered or guessed from a perusal of the whole: a string of puzzles not to be unravelled. The descriptions of scenery, the reflections on human passion, on the fate of that„fair clime“, on death and its horrors and„what may be beyond“, are really splendid. And yet some of the most admired are scarcely intelligible— perhaps only the more admired on that account. Read, for instance, the passage beginning:

„He who hath bent him o'er the dead“.

You will receive a deep and truly poetical impression, and if you read on, it will be as if you just had heard the melancholy wailings of the wind through the wires of an Eolian harp, all sound and harmony, but there is neither melody nor measure in the music. Or can you tell me what has been said of„Him who hath bent him o'er the dead“? For twenty lines we have a string of incidental phrases one loosely tacked to the other or incased in each other, and not a principal sentence for them to hang on, and when at last it comes:„He still might doubt....“, we do not know who is„He“. Such constructions Byron is led into by the„ignis fatuus“ of imagination, following up an image or a comparison for its own sake and far beyond what the actual circumstances would require or warrant.(We might have quoted another example from the„Prisoner of Chillon“:„He was beautiful as day“ etc. with the description of a„polar day“ which indeed has nothing to do with the comparison itself.)

The last part of the Giaour— among the monks— which, some critics think, ought to have formed a second canto, is decidedly too„long drawn out;“ nor is the verbosity of the singular penitent well in keeping with his character.

The story of the„Bride of A5 dos“ is much better told; still there are some rather unaccountable scenes and situations, and the many additions made during its progress through the press, though beautiful in themselves, are mostly mere superfetations.

Serious objections are likewise to be urged against the Corsair.“) Medora is decidedly too shadowy an apparition, and though the pirates are satisfied with Conrad's name being„famed and feared on every shore“, still the reader will ask„Who that chief?“ and want to„know more“,— particularly what has made Conrad one of those„who are sick of life, who are at

²) The Corsair. Herausgegeben, erläutert und mit Wörterbuch versehen von Dr. O. Kutschera. Berlin, L. Simion 1885.(Rauch's English Readings, Heft 23.)