so faithfully descriptive of the accidents to which an AEgean pirate is exposed as The Corsair.  Had Lord Byron never been out of England, the production of a work so appropriate in reflection, so wild in spirit, and so bold in invention, as in that case it would have been, would have entitled him to the highest honours of original conception, or been rejected as extravagant; considered as the result of things seen, and of probabilities suggested, by transactions not uncommon in the region where his genius gathered the ingredients of its sorceries, more than the half of its merits disappear, while the other half brighten with the lustre of truth.

The manners, the actions, and the incidents were new to the English mind; but to the inhabitant of the Levant they have long been familiar, and the traveller who visits that region will hesitate to admit that Lord Byron possessed those creative powers, and that discernment of dark bosoms for which he is so much celebrated; because he will see there how little of invention was necessary to form such heroes as Conrad, and how much the actual traffic of life and trade is constantly stimulating enterprise and bravery.  But let it not, therefore, be supposed, that I would undervalue either the genius of the poet, or the merits of the poem, in saying so, for I do think a higher faculty has been exerted in The Corsair than in Childe Harold.  In the latter, only actual things are described, freshly and vigorously as they were seen, and feelings expressed eloquently as they were felt; but in the former, the talent of combination has been splendidly employed.  The one is a view from nature, the other is a composition both from nature and from history.

Lara, which appeared soon after The Corsair, is an evident supplement to it; the description of the hero corresponds in person and character with Conrad; so that the remarks made on The Corsair apply, in all respects, to Lara.  The poem itself is perhaps, in elegance, superior; but the descriptions are not so vivid, simply because they are more indebted to imagination.  There is one of them, however, in which the lake and abbey of Newstead are dimly shadowed, equal in sweetness and solemnity to anything the poet has ever written.

It was the night, and Lara’s glassy stream
The stars are studding each with imaged beam: 
So calm, the waters scarcely seem to stray,
And yet they glide, like happiness, away;
Reflecting far and fairy-like from high
The immortal lights that live along the sky;
Its banks are fringed with many a goodly tree,
And flowers the fairest that may feast the bee: 
Such in her chaplet infant Dian wove,
And innocence would offer to her love;
These deck the shore, the waves their channel make
In windings bright and mazy, like the snake. 
All was so still, so soft in earth and air,
You scarce would start to meet a spirit there,
Secure that naught of evil could delight