Than all th' unmeaning protestations Had changed the place of declaration. (1) In the above little piece the author has been accused by some candid readers of introducing the name of a lady from whom he was some hundred miles distant at the time this was written; and poor Juliet, who has slept so long in" the tomb of all the Capulets," has been converted, with a trifling alteration of her name, into an English damsel, walking in a garden of their own creation, during the month of December, in a village where the author never passed a winter. Such has been the candour of some ingenious critics. We would advise these liberal commentators on taste and arbiters of decorum to read Shakspeare. In Italy I've no objection; Warm nights are proper for reflection ; But curse my OSCAR OF ALVA. (2) A TALE. How sweetly shines through azure skies, (1) Having heard that a very severe and indelicate censure has been passed on the above poem, I beg leave to reply in a quotation from an admired work, "Carr's Stranger in France."-" As we were contemplating a painting on a large scale, in which, among other figures, is the uncovered whole length of a warrior, a prudish-looking lady, who seemed to have touched the age of desperation, after having attentively surveyed it through her glass, observed to her party, that there was a great deal of indecorum in that picture. Madame S. shrewdly whispered in my ear, that the indecorum was in the remark.'" · (2) The catastrophe of this tale was suggested by the story of " Jeronyme VOL. VII, F Where Alva's hoary turrets rise, But often has yon rolling moon On Alva's casques of silver play'd; And view'd, at midnight's silent noon, Her chiefs in gleaming mail array'd: And on the crimson'd rocks beneath, While many an eye Once to those eyes the lamp of Love, Faded is Alva's noble race, And gray her towers are seen afar; No more her heroes urge the chase, Or roll the crimson tide of war. and Lorenzo," in the first volume of Schiller's "Armenian, or the GhostSeer." It also bears some resemblance to a scene in the third act of "Macbeth." But, who was last of Alva's clan? Why grows the moss on Alva's stone? Her towers resound no steps of man, They echo to the gale alone. And when that gale is fierce and high, Yes, when the eddying tempest sighs, No more his plumes of sable wave. Fair shone the sun on Oscar's birth, They feast upon the mountain deer, And they who heard the war-notes wild (1) Lord Byron falls into a very common error, that of mistaking pibroch, which means a particular sort of tune, for the instrument on which it is played, the bagpipe. Almost every foreign tourist, Nodier, for example, does the same. The reader will find this little slip noticed in the article from the Edinburgh Review appended to these pages. — E. Should play before the hero's child While he should lead the tartan train. Another year is quickly past, And Angus hails another son; His natal day is like the last, Nor soon the jocund feast was done. Taught by their sire to bend the bow, But ere their years of youth are o'er, Dark was the flow of Oscar's hair, But Oscar own'd a hero's soul, His dark eye shone through beams of truth; Allan had early learn'd control, And smooth his words had been from youth. Both, both were brave; the Saxon spear And Oscar's bosom scorn'd to fear, But Oscar's bosom knew to feel; |