Though a tear dim his eyes at the sad separation, That fame and that memory still will he cherish, He vows that he ne'er will disgrace your renown; When decayed, may he mingle his dust with your own." Some of these lines, especially the last, bear marks of feebleness; but, considering that they proceeded from a youth of fifteen (they bear the date of 1803, and Byron was born in 1788), they merited a better reception than that accorded them by Brougham. With his coarsest horse-laugh, he took up the book and excoriated it, or thought he had done so, by the repetition of some old vulgarities about "the ungraciousness of looking a gift horse in the mouth." The attack was doubtless instigated by the fact that the young poet was a member of that peerage into the ranks of which Brougham himself afterwards so eagerly sought admission-an admission fatal to his abilities and his fame; and it was probably prompted also by the circumstance that the work was dedicated to one of the most mouthing and insufferable of all peers-the Earl of Carlisle who was supposed to belong to the Tory ranks. But nothing could justify the asperity with which the juvenile production was treated. The attack outraged all the rules of criticism, and justified, in great measure, the remark of Pope, in a letter to Swift, that "the mob of critics are always disposed to apply satire to those they envy for being above them." We are, indeed, aware of the danger arising from injudicious and undiscriminating critical admiration, especially on remembering the old remark by Le Sage, that, "when rashness ends in success, critics are silent." We have no sympathy with such trumpery and audacious dunces as those of the London Athenaum, who, often the most ignorant, and invariably the most pretentious of charlatans, still habitually have the effrontery and arrogance to affect superiority to every author they treat, and just as generally decry him unless he belongs to their own clique. There is more danger, perhaps, from excessive lenity than undue severity. But still, taking all these considerations into mind, there is no doubt that Brougham, on the present occasion, committed an error equally unpardonable in point of feeling, truth, and good taste. The whole article was marked by vulgarity, rashness, and want of due examination. The lines we have quoted were especially selected for abuse, and the reviewer, in a tone of imagined triumph, expressed his The astonishment why, "if a youth of fifteen chose to perpetrate such verses, a youth of nineteen should publish them." entire article was characterized by a tone of similar ribaldry; and though now justly deemed equally flippant, superficial, illinformed, and offensive, it was extolled by his own party as most crushing and triumphant at the moment. "It was thrown off at a heat," or completed at a sitting, vaunted the astonished Whigs; yet there is, perhaps, not a man connected with the modern press who does not produce a better article each day of his existence. Still, as we have remarked, it was expected to be most decisive and annihilating in its effects for the moment. Each of the party, ignorant that Byron was of liberal tendencies, and more disposed to rely on Nature's inherent nobility than on any trumpery or parchment creation, shouted out that a new Tory was crucified-that a young Lord was crushed. The sen timent was ungenerous; but the Whigs were never capable of generosity; and, for the moment, success attended its baseness. Every puny Whig adherent took up the insulting cause; every petty Whig journal re-echoed the jeering cry. Jeffrey himself, whose correcter taste must have taught him that the assault was unwarranted, was induced to assume the responsibility of the article; while Brougham, perhaps already ashamed of his triumph, was in no haste to assert its paternity. A reaction came; the public soon discerned the grossness of the attack; and an assault so unfair and opposed to all the higher dictates of criticism, had the effect of arousing the outraged poet, and producing the most vigorous satire in the language. Within a period incredibly short, Byron retorted by the publication of "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," in which almost every one was elaborately assailed except his own assailant. The Earl of Carlisle, who, supposing him crushed, had basely, though his guardian, deserted him, and every conspicuous member of either political party were attacked in the fiercest terms. Moore and Walter Scott were unjustifiably dragged into the quarrel; though the poor little editor of the "Edinburgh," of course, came in for the principal share of the abuse. The author of it all was the only one that comparatively escaped. Byron seems at this period to have been ignorant that Brougham was the writer of the article, and consequently alluded to him only in brief and passing terms. The lines, however, will long remain, the more especially as he seems at this early age to have discerned Brougham's tendency to rashness, and his proneness to commit blunders when under the impulse of his habitual arrogance and often overweening selfconceit. "Yet mark," he said, apostrophizing Jeffrey : "Yet mark one caution ere the next Review Spread its light wings of saffron and of blue; This was accompanied by a note which annoyed the reviewer infinitely more, intimating that Brougham had, in a recent article on Don Pedro de Cevallos, announced principles offensive to the citizens of Edinburgh-then the great self-imagined oracles of criticism—and exhibited that tendency to political truckling for which he afterwards became remarkable. Byron, when he subsequently became whiggish himself, affected to deplore the publication of this work; but it must be ever held in esteem as the most genuine expression of his feelings, and the most correct appreciation on the whole of the innumerable little nobodies on whom it treats, from "Illustrious HOLLAND! hard would be his lot, or the present Marquis of Lansdown, "HENRY PETTY at his back, The whipper-in and huntsman of the pack," down to or and that "Classic HALLAM, much renown'd for Greek," "Gay Italia's luckless votary LAMBE, The next great occasion which brought Brougham prominently before the public produced him a triumph more untarnished. In 1821 George the Fourth's provoked, though perhaps profligate, queen returned, from a luxurious exile on the continent of Europe, to assert her rights in England. There was no doubt of this unfortunate lady's wrongs, and there was just as little concerning her guilt. Originally destined for another, on whom she had bestowed her early affections, she was, in accordance with the provisions of the vile Royal Marriage Act, dragged from her home in Germany and wedded to a stranger, also devoted to another, if not to several, from whose bed she was driven on the first morning, never to return. There can be no question that she was the victim of an infamous plot, devised by the Jerseys and other demireps of the Prince's court; and in the first violation of the marriage vow, seemingly with Sir Sydney Smith, to which she resorted in turn, she was taken under the protection of the Tories, just as readily as her cause was now espoused by the Whigs. But a change had taken place in the interval. The Prince of Wales then professed to be a political adherent of Mr. Fox's party, agreeably to that policy in England which arrays the heir-apparent against the father, or in conformity with that expediency which prompts his seeming adoption of popular measures, in order the more effectually to delude the credulous natives. At a later period, when he came into office with full powers as Regent, he showed his inherent taste by espousing the policy of the Tories, and abjuring that of the Whigs. Great, therefore, was the indignation of the latter. They assailed and covered with vituperation every act of the life of a man who seems to have been not a whit more sensual, and infinitely more refined, than others of his race, and perhaps all of his order. George the Fourth, in fact, appears to have possessed abilities superior to any other member of the House of Brunswick, and had the art, which few of them have, of concealing his grossness under an aspect of courtesy. He never, as in the instance of preceding and subsequent sovereigns, offended those around by coarseness of address, nor outraged their feelings by violence of deportment. He was unquestionably, like all his family, intensely selfish, and there is little doubt that, like them, he was also grossly sensual; but his faults arose in great measure from his position-his original want of education; and, however the claim be derided or denied him now, he was indubitably, so far as external appearance and elegance of address were concerned, entitled to that designation of "the first gentleman in Europe," on which he apparently set a value superior to his crown. Had he adhered to Whig policy, there is little doubt this would have been unanimously accorded him; and the populace, who then followed the dictates of that party, would have cheered him as heartily as they hissed him on the rare occasions when he made his appearance in public. But he had early found out the hollowness of the Whigs, or was too indolent in 1812 to shake the Tories off, and hence the former hated him with a fervor as intense as that with which they flatter every living and submissive sovereign, and invariably make up for it by vituperating him when dead. The servility of the party is thus, they imagine, artfully concealed; the present flattery, they suppose, is rendered more agreeable to the actual recipient by its contrast with the calumnies heaped on the preceding monarch, who is doubtless regarded by the successor with feelings of envy or dislike. And, truth to say, the nation readily falls into the snare, as well as the adoption of a course equally servile and base; the English being conspicu ous above all others for their gross vociferations in favor of existing monarchy, and their still viler vituperation of departed royalty. But, chiefly in consequence of his own exclusiveness, the privacy in which he loved to dwell and luxuriate, with a few chosen associates, in the interior of his palace, the reluctance which he felt to present himself before a people whose vulgarity he detested and whose vileness he despised, but, above all, by the artifices of the Whigs, who at this period professed to be the "People's Friends," this feeling was in some degree now reversed, and the wretched bigot George the Third, though insane, being still alive, a due share of calumny was reserved for the prince who filled his place. Vituperation of the dead would have been considered complimentary to the living, though in fact George the Third, being hopelessly defunct, so far as mental powers were concerned, was already coming in for his own share of these slanders. The principles on which the Regent commenced his government were identical with those of the lunatic King. To praise the one was therefore not yet an act of ungraciousness to the other, any more than to abuse him was an ingenious refinement of flattery; and as they could not well change their course immediately upon the poor mad and irresponsible sovereign's death, George the Fourth, on his accession, found himself involved in a fierce tide of unpopularity. There can be little doubt, however, that, had he not previously cast them off with such utter contempt, the Whigs would have lauded and supported just as warmly as they now abused and assailed him. In the early part of the century, when his conduct to his wife was not less gross than at present, they had shown as vigorous a disposition to denounce her as the saintly Percival then did to defend her; and all her subsequent acts had been far more inconsistent with innocence. Of her guilt, in fact, no reasonable doubt could now be entertained. Yet Brougham's defence of her does him immortal honor. Her conduct had been justified by still greater and undenied licentiousness on the part of her husband, and there is every reason to believe it would have been pardoned, had she not insisted on returning home, and being crowned as Queen of England. George the Fourth, proud, like all his family, resisted this; and, like them too, when his enmity was once aroused, he became equally vindictive and implacable. Had the Bill of Pains and Penalties which he now caused his ministry to bring in against Queen Caroline, been carried with anything like unanimity, he would doubtless have ordered her to be executed with just as little reluctance as did Henry the Eighth any of his numerous wives. But the efforts of Brougham and her counsel, |