a little investigation will teach us not to regret these monstrous mummeries of the middle ages.

I now leave "Childe Harold" to live his day, such as he is; it had been more agreeable, and certainly more easy, to have drawn an amiable character. It had been easy to varnish over his faults, to make him do more and express less, but he never was intended as an example, further than to show, that early perversion of mind and morals leads to satiety of past pleasures and disappointment in new ones, and that even the beauties of nature, and the stimulus of travel (except ambition, the most powerful of all excitements) are lost on a soul so constituted, or rather misdirected. Had I proceeded with the poem, this character would have deepened as he drew to the close; for the outline which I once meant to fill up for him was, with some exceptions, the sketch of a modern Timon,* perhaps a poetical Zeluco.† London, 1813.

*[In one of his early poems. -"Childish Recollections,". Byron compares himself to the Athenian misanthrope;

"Weary of Love, of Life, devoured with spleen,

I rest a perfect Timon, not nineteen," etc.]

† [It was Dr. Moore's object, in this powerful romance, to trace the fatal effects resulting from a fond mother's unconditional compliance with the humors and passions of an only child. With high advantages of person, birth, fortune, and ability, Zeluco is represented as miserable, through every scene of life, owing to the spirit of unbridled self-indulgence thus pampered in infancy.]

TO IANTHE.*

NOT in those climes where I have late been

straying,

Though Beauty long hath there been matchless deemed;

Not in those visions to the heart displaying

Forms which it sighs but to have only dreamed, Hath aught like thee in truth or fancy seemed: Nor, having seen thee, shall I vainly seek

To paint those charms which varied as they beamed

To such as see thee not my words were weak; To those who gaze on thee what language could they speak?

Ah! may'st thou ever be what now thou art,
Nor unbeseem the promise of thy spring,
As fair in form, as warm yet pure in heart,
Love's image upon earth without his wing,

* [Lady Charlotte Harley, afterwards Lady Charlotte Bacon, second daughter of the Earl of Oxford, in the autumn of 1812, when these lines were addressed to her, had not completed her eleventh year. Her juvenile beauty has been preserved in a portrait which Westall painted at Byron's request.]

And guileless beyond Hope's imagining! And surely she who now so fondly rears Thy youth, in thee, thus hourly brightening, Beholds the rainbow of her future years, Before whose heavenly hues all sorrow disappears.

Young Peri of the West! -'tis well for me
My years already doubly number thine;
My loveless eye unmoved may gaze on thee,
And safely view thy ripening beauties shine;
Happy, I ne'er shall see them in decline;

Happier, that while all younger hearts shall bleed,
Mine shall escape the doom thine eyes assign
To those whose admiration shall succeed,

But mixed with pangs to Love's even loveliest hours decreed.

Oh! let that eye, which, wild as the Gazelle's,
Now brightly bold or beautifully shy,

Wins as it wanders, dazzles where it dwells,
Glance o'er this page, nor to my verse deny
That smile for which my breast might vainly sigh,
Could I to thee be ever more than friend:

This much, dear maid, accord; nor question why
To one so young my strain I would commend,
But bid me with my wreath one matchless lily blend.

Such is thy name with this my verse entwined;
And long as kinder eyes a look shall cast
On Harold's page, Ianthe's here enshrined
Shall thus be first beheld, forgotten last:

My days once numbered, should this homage past Attract thy fairy fingers near the lyre

Of him who hailed thee, loveliest as thou wast, Such is the most my memory may desire; Though more than Hope can claim, could Friendship less require?