The Sun.
London, England, 1824-06-04 00:00:00

FOR THE SUN.

MR. EDITOR—The' rational amalgam of lite-
rature with politics, which evinces your discri-
mination in the selection of several very pleasing
articles, peculiarly interesting to country readers
iu remote parts of the island, induces me to trouble
you with a few rapid observations on the recent
death of a great Poet, and, I apprehend, a most
unhappy man—the great and memorable Lord
ByaoN. My opinions may not be the less called
for, from the singular contempt and proud dis-
dain of the noble nature of the departed man of
genius, transcendant confessedly to all his con-
temporaries, and assuredly the most truly ori-
ginal writer since the days of SHAKSPEARE.
Lord BYRON was too proud to plagiarize, and
where a similitude of creative effort had been
perhaps anticipated by others, this great man
seemed painfully solicitous in his notes to dis-
avow the unmanliness of the theft; Not the less
interesting is the inquiry from the great faults in
style and composition, the " brave neglect" of
that vast creating and originating intellect, so
justly termed, from the Greek radix, poetical.
BYRON had his errors and foibles in the most
lofty aspirations of his godlike genius, as well
as in his commerce with that vile, ungrateful,fac-
titious biped—man, whom, in truth, he despised
with sufficient and well-merited asperity ; and
why should he not ? What had that vulgar rep-
tile in common with the Poet ?

Once in five centuries, for purposes of inscru-
table wisdom, Divine and presiding Omnipotence
sends down a mind to this nether and grosser
region, tainted with lofty and abnormal aspira-
tion ; his incomprehensible essence opens one
gleam in the vista of exalted ratiocination to
some finer nature fainting under the effort, and
punished for his daring presumption by years of
misery and sad retribution of a life, wasted in
apathy, despondence, and misanthropy. " Poor
Bynox," said a greater, because a better man,
" I know him intimately, and the lot of that
wretched hind that breaks stones for our road
to Melrose is that of a prince compared to him."
Let, then, the few amiable and virtuous na-
tures, who are shocked at the levity and unpar-
donable insolence of the departed peer, pause ere
they deal out anathemas to the memory of a
great genius, and an unfo'rtunate and unhappy
man. Shall I waste the time of your readers
by inculcating truisms? know they not that the
dazzling height of genius, that jealous and proud
eminence, where those whose names are dear" as
household words" to us, and will be so to our
children's children, that these favoured sons of
God's own ether, whose lofty and aspiring intel-
lect dare to originate hidden causation, and to
lift the veil of futurity and Divine attribute
that these are the beings to be punished for their
short-lived presumption by years of desolation,',
that noble mind who wandered after ideal excel-1
lencies amidst Alpine avalanches, amidst the 1
nameless themes of the frightful and solitary
skreech-horn—that lively creative fancy which
embodied new, unknown, and lonely animation '
; —is this the miserable unhappy being whose
heart and soul was so tensely toned, that he
spurned this grosser and material existence—is
this the mind lofty, proud, unconciliating, stung
with real or fancied poignancies—is this singular
being to be the but of ephemeral calumny, of
blue stocking and gossiping anecdote —every
chemical lady of the present day, r% ho takes notes
at Sir liumrußEY's, in Albemarle-street, is a self-
constituted critic on the high behests of mascu-
line genius.—The whole herd of Evangelists and
Fanatics are let loose, BYRON and BYSCHE
SHELLY, LEE HUNT and the Liberal, block up
the very avenues to dispassionate investigation ;
the softer sex are outraged and wounded by the
notorious contempt of the Noble Author for any
of the loftier and more useful of the feminine vir-
tues; his ladies are all soft, and fitted admirably
for reciprocation with ardent bravos, who use
women as men do a fiddle, and lay the cremona
on the shelf—what unfortunate elf induced the
departed poet to become a husband, factitious
and earthborn bondage was incompatible with the
sullen, the sensitive, the warm, the cold, the
kind, the cruel, the gentle, the ireful, BYRON.—
Let us, however, divide the censure : there are
really hearts amiable, virtuous, kind, and good,
to whose nature the metamorphosis from a
batchelor to a husband, is really formidable and
abundantly trying. Perhaps the being calculated
to impart happiness to such a mind was as rare
as the creation of that mind itself—certainly.
the female who lived with a poet and a philoso-
pher, or a pathetic migrator over Nature's vi-
sionary creations, must have evinced universal and
rare excellencies—let us not then, as we really
profess to be, admirers of the departed genius,
fly from the defiling spots which, like occa-
sional disks, may obscure the scintillations of a
planet, and retreat to leave its radiance the
brighter; let us look to this great man, whom,
in a few short days, the world has lost, and for
whose fall Greece shrieked in her agonizing
and impassioned fervour of grateful reminis-
cence for that heart whose fondest aspira-
tions were wound up in the godlike effort to
emancipate her enslaved children.

Sacred then be the dust of IhruoN, enshrined
in a young nation's love ; may the warm tears of
of the sensitive Albanian consecrate the memory,
by the late and unavailing tribute of posthumous
or sepulchral gratitude. To his friends and his
sister his reminscence will be entwined with the
most delightful and pleasing species of grief—it
will rest on his shrine amidst the cold tresses of
the inanimate Parian, but his name, his fame, his
heroism, and his talents will live while the Eng-
lish language shall preserve its habitude—his
writings will be placed in that confined, yet ex-
alted pitch of the great and the good, though
they too often forget the best purpose sf the
Poet and the Christian.
To the admirers of Lord BYRON'S writings,
it must he a subject of the deepest regret, that
in early life he frittered down his great genius,
in abstractive and occasional composition—a
Canto of Childe Harold was the longest a nd best
connected of any of his entire writings. sub-
sequent delightful and highly poetical fragments
descended even lower, and had humbler preten-
sions ; he was too idle to venture on even an out-

line of the machinery of an Epic, for which his
lofty genius so fully qualified him. One sole cha-
racter occupied his thoughts ; he was a weed
thrown on some savage rock by the ocean's
foam, and he delighted to revel in the sullen
despondence, or to be enlivened by the hap-
pier hours of the noble pilgrim—as fancy/
constitution, health, change of scene, tended to
promote or modify. One leading feature in
BYRON'S character was his noble and manly
avowal of all the vices and follies which other
and more contracted natures would have con-
cealed ; in his noble poem of Childe Harold we
see no attempt at effect, no deceit,--he tells us
plainly what a peccant, poor drivelling biped
man is in his undress of life—lie hides not the
secrets of the library; he opens the human heart,
and dares to explore and explain his own
strange and incomprehensible nature. This is the
being gifted with those higher aspirations of
pride which render nugatory and irrelevant the
meaner appreciations of self-love, and self-im-
portance; BYRON lays bare the foul cicatrices Of
humanity ; he spares not himself, and therefore
his writings will live, because he has dared to be
honest and manly.
No book in our language takes so strong a hold
of the youthful mind as the migrations of the
noble bard with his " scalloped shell." We see
the fox looking out of the deserted portal of
neglected Newstead; we follow the unhappy pil-
grim to the clear blue ocean—our heart is on
the waters with his, and we at that moment for-
get kindred and home, to follow a poor seared
apostate, where the heart bleeds with sorrows of
no mortal cast—who can coldly regard his noble
aspirations for mankind's emancipation from the
Despots, the very praise of one of the worst—the
most cold-hearted calculating butcher of the mo-
dern military slaughter-house—the unfeeling and
sullen despot of contemned Gaul—the exiled
Autocrat of Europe ; all this is natural and in-
structive—pride was common to BYRON and
BUONAPARTE ; both despised most heartily the
shapeless monster to which their genus belonged
in animal nature—positively in this they were
congenial spirits—but BYRON was imperfect, and
snsceptible of becoming the tool of the precious
and the foolish innovator who dreamed of ideal
liberty violated, of patriotism consecrated, or to
be consecrated by a moral regeneration of Ea-
rope, each perfectly Utopian, and incompatible
with the chequered associates which influence
Kings, Ministers, Nations, and Armies.
If you like this prommium, the pourtrait may/
at some leisure hour, be touched off more ill
detail.

COSMOPOLITOS.

THE BALOON.

MR. AND MRS. GRAHAM'S ACCOUNT OF THEIR
AERIAL VOYAGE.

Shortly after their ascension, Mr. GitanAg
found it necessary to rid himself of all the ballast from the car,
and indeed of every thing else of a weighty description. They
kept the city in their sight for full halt an hour, and they lost
all earthly views by the balloon entering a dense cloud, in which
they experienced much cold. They passed through several,.
others, and the effects of which completely deprived them 01
hearing. The thermometer, at this period, which was about
ten minutes past six o'clock, stood at the freezing point, and in
about a quarter of an hour after, it was as low as 20. The
thirst that they now experienced was unprecedented, which they
had no way of decreasing, having no liquid in the car but
brandy.
At length they reached a clear and serene atmosphere, and
the sun shone forth in its brightest rays, the clouds below hav-
ing their usual appearance—that of snow-mountains heaped to-
gether. The tendency of the balloon to ascend was very great,
and it was found necessary to open the valve a little, in order
to discharge a portion of gas, and to prevent the vehicle
ascending.
Having been in the air one hour and twenty minutes, they
began to descend, and threw out the grappling irons, which
were fastened to a rope 270 feet in length. Mrs. Graham looked
over the side of the car, and observed that the irons appeared
like a table knife. They now began as gradually to descend al
they had ascended, and having obtained a gravity, in ten
minutes they reached terra firma in a field belonging to Farmer
Brown, in the village of Cuckfield, about fourteen miles from
Brighton, in one of the most tremendous showers of rain eve':
remembered. The car slightly rebounded three times on touch-
ing the earth, but not to injure it, or the adventurers.
There being a club at the house of Mr. Webber, the Kin&
Head, in the village, upwards of 80 persons came running to
their assistance, and they were assisted out of the car, and eon'
veyed immeditely after to the above house, where they expe-
rienced the most hospitable treatment. J. Sudwin, Esq,, near
whose seat they descended, sent an invitation to them to hiS
house, but Mr., and Mrs. Graham wishing to get to town, de-
clined the offer. At half-past nine o'clock, they left Cuckfiel",
in a chaise and four, on the roof of which were the balloon and
car, and arrived, as we stated yesterday, safe at their house in
Poland-street, Oxford-street, at half-past two o'clock Jester;
day morning, where they were received amid the greetings ca
their friends and committee. It is Mr. Graham's intention to
make another ascent shortly.

SOPHIA, not, as generally stated, JANE STOCE9, has mob'
recovered from the effects of her late perilous Eerostatic excav
sion. She is expected to be in town in the course of a day 9,,
r
two, and it is hoped, through the medium of her friends, Will
soon be placed in some creditable situation. The report of her
having received 30 guineas from the gentleman who was to have
ascended with the unfortunate Mr. Harris, has no foundation-
A letter, evidently a hoax, without a signature, was forwarded
to the committee to that effect. The amount of the subscrir
tions received have been most ridiculously exaggerated. Tile
committee, aided by the strenuous exertions of Mr. Rouse, the
landlord of the Eagle Tavern, from whence the balloon ascend;
ed, have not been able to collect five pounds for the benefit 01
the parties concerned.