If the object of poetry is to instruct by pleasing, then every poetical effort has a double claim upon the attention of the Christian observer. For we are anxious that the world should be instructed at all rates, and that they should be pleased where they innocently may. We are, therefore, by no means among those spectators who view the occasional ascent of a poetic luminary upon the horizon of literature, as a meteoric flash which has no relation to ourselves; but we feel instantly an eager desire to find its altitude, to take its bearings, to trace its course, and to calculate its influence upon surrounding bodies. When especially it is no more an "oaten reed" that is blown; or a "simple shepherd" who blows it; but when the song involves many high and solemn feelings, and a man of rank and notoriety strikes his golden harp, we feel, at once, that the increased influence of the song demands the more rigid scrutiny of the critic. Lord Byron is the author, beside the book before us, of a small volume of poems, which gave little promise, we think, of the present work; and of a satyrical poem, which, as far as temper is concerned, did give some promise of it. It had pleased more than one critic to treat his Lordship's first work in no very courtier-like manner; and especially the Lion of the north had let him feel the lashing of his angry tail. Not of a temperament to bear calmly even a "look that threatened him with insult," his Lordship seized the tomahawk of satire, mounted the fiery wings of his muse, and, like Bonaparte, spared neither rank, nor sex, nor age, but converted the republic of letters into one universal field of carnage. The volume called English Bards and Scotch Reviewers is, in short, to be considered, among other works, as one of those playful vessels which are said to have accompanied the Spanish armada, manned by executioners, and loaded with nothing but instruments of torture.