The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 262, July 7, 1827

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Various. The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 262, July 7, 1827

HIS MAJESTY'S PONEY PHAETON

BYRON AND OTHER POETS COMPARED

THE SONG OF THE WIDOWED MOTHER TO HER CHILD

PAY OF THE JUDGES IN FORMER TIMES

THE SELECTOR AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS

SIR WALTER SCOTT'S LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

THE EPICUREAN

THE FALLS OF NIAGARA

THE GUILLOTINE

THE HEIR PRESUMPTIVE

THE MONTHS

JULY

ASTRONOMICAL OCCURENCES

THE SKETCH BOOK

No. XLI. THE AUTHOR AND HIS COAT

THE NOVELIST

No. CIV. THE COTTER'S DAUGHTER

ORIGINS AND INVENTIONS

No. XXVII. VAUXHALL GARDENS

FINE ARTS

THE CHIEF CAUSES OF THE SUCCESS OF PAINTING AND SCULPTURE IN GREECE AND ROME

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

LOVE'S VICTIM.7

THE GATHERER

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There is a natural stimulus in man to offer adoration at the shrine of departed genius.—

But, when a transcendant genius is checked in its early age—when its spring-shoots had only began to open—when it had just engaged in a new feature devoted to man, and man to it, we cannot rest

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As comparison is a medium through which we are enabled to obtain most accurate judgment, let us use it in the present instance, and compare Lord Byron with the greatest poets that have preceded him, by which means the world of letters will see what they have really lost in Lord Byron. To commence with the great Shakspeare himself, to whom universal admiration continues to be paid. Had Shakspeare been cut off at the same early period as Byron, The Tempest, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, and several others of an equal character, would never have been written. The high reputation of Dryden would also have been limited—his fame, perhaps, unknown. The Absalom and Achitophel is the earliest of his best productions, which was written about his fiftieth year; his principal production, at the age of Byron, was his Annus Mirabilis; for nearly the whole of his dramatic works were written at the latter part of his life. Pope is the like situated; that which displayed most the power of his mind—which claims for him the greatest praise—his Essay on Man, &c. appeared after his fortieth year. Windsor Forest was published in his twenty-second or twenty-third year, both were the labour of some years; and the immortal Milton, who published some few things before his thirtieth year, sent not his great work, Paradise Lost, to the world until he verged on sixty.

Few words are wanted to show that Byron was not depraved at heart; no man possessed a more ready sympathy, a more generous mind to the distressed, or was a more enthusiastic admirer of noble actions. These feelings all strongly delineated in his character, would never admit, as Sir Walter Scott has observed, "an imperfect moral sense, nor feeling, dead to virtue." Severe as the

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