Seward, you may likewise give him a Knight. As bad as can be. For there is an incredible confusion of tormented and tormentor. They howl, and hiss, and boil in endless torture--they are suffering the Pains of Hell--they are in Hell. "But the sweat of their great agony is wrung out from this their Phlegethon." Where is this their Phlegethon? Why, this their Phlegethon is--themselves! Look down--there is no other river--but the Velino. BULLER. Hear Virgil-- "Moenia lata, videt, triplici circumdata muro, Quæ rapidus flammis ambit torrentibus amnis Tartareus Phlegethon, torquetque sonantia saxa." No Phlegethon with torrents of fire surrounding and shaking Byron's Hell. I do not understand it--an unaccountable blunder. NORTH. In next stanza, what is gained by "How profound The gulf! and how the giant element From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound"? Nothing. In the First Stanza, we had the "abyss," "the gulf," and the agony--all and more than we have here. SEWARD. Check-mate. TALBOYS. Confound the board!--no, not the board--but Hurwitz himself could not play in such an infernal clatter. NORTH. Buller has not got to the word "infernal" yet, Phillidor--but he will by-and-by. "Crushing the Cliffs"-crushing is not the right word--it is the wrong one--for not such is the process--visible or invisible. "_Downward_ worn" is silly. "Fierce footsteps," to my imagination, is tame and out of place--though it may not be to yours;--and I thunder in the ears of the Chess-players that the first half of the next stanza--the third--is as bad writing as is to be found in Byron. TALBOYS. Or in North. NORTH. Seward--you may give him likewise a Bishop-- "Look back: Lo! where it comes like an Eternity!" I do not say that is not sublime. If it is an image of Eternity--sublime it must be--but the Poet has chosen his time badly for inspiring us with that thought--for we look back on what he had pictured to us as falling into hell--and then flowing diffused "only thus to be parents of rivers that flow gushingly with many windings through the vale"--images of Time. "As if to sweep down all things in its track," is well enough for an ordinary cataract, but not for a cataract that comes "like an Eternity." TALBOYS. "Charming the eye with dread--a matchless cataract, Horribly beautiful." SEWARD. One game each. TALBOYS. Let us go to the Swiss Giantess to play out the Main. NORTH. In Stanza Fourth--"But _on the verge_," is very like nonsense-- TALBOYS. Not at all. NORTH. The Swiss Giantess is expecting you--good-bye, my dear Talboys. Now, Buller, I wish you, seriously and calmly, to think on this image-- "An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge, Like Hope upon a death-bed."