they "made a prodigious sensation," but bitter-bad stuff has often done that; while often unheeded or unheard has been an angel's voice. Had they been suffered to stand alone, long ere now had they been pretty well forgotten; and had they been followed by other two cantos no better than themselves, then had the whole four in good time been most certainly damned. But, fortunately, the poet, in his pride, felt himself pledged to proceed; and proceed he did in a superior style; borrowing, stealing, and robbing, with a face of aristocratic assurance that must have amazed the plundered; but intermingling with the spoil riches fairly won by his own genius from the exhaustless treasury of nature, who loved her wayward her wicked, and her wondrous son. Is "Childe Harold," then, a Great Poem? What! with one-half of it little above mediocrity, one quarter of it not original in conception, and in execution swarming with faults, and the remainder glorious? As for his tales--the "Giaour," "Corsair," "Lara," "Bride of Abydos," "Siege of Corinth," and so forth--they are all spirited, energetic, and passionate performances--sometimes nobly and sometimes meanly versified--but displaying neither originality nor fertility of invention, and assuredly no wide range either of feeling or of thought, though over that range a supreme dominion. Some of his dramas are magnificent--and in many of his smaller poems pathos and beauty overflow. Don Juan exhibits almost every kind of talent; and in it the degradation of poetry is perfect.