Alexandria gazette & daily advertiser. [volume] (Alexandria [Va.]) 1817-1822, 1818-03-14

broil.
As in that crimson food where mo-
narchs fail'd
And Hapsburg's princes Gailick toes
bewail'd.
When the author arrives at Pavia he
forgets that Francis I. there yielded to
the " Star of the house of Austria" and
every thing else but that Boethius is there
buried.
No mortal sees the monumental stone
That decks Boethius, thy sacred dust,
ALBEIT his own dark deeds have hun IN
done)
Who freleth not that Heaven is always
just.
| And of our toes our fellow mans the
worst:
Gould dungeon terrors move thine ar
lent soul,
Or deadly threats Of monkish hate ac-
curst
Yon starry gem that gilds the southern
pole
Shed not a milder beam than virtues
soft control
OF the rhythm Of this canto we regret
| to say that it is considerably less bar
monious than that + the two first. This
species Of metre, as used by Spenser and
Waller, was much more rugged and
dragging than it has been subsequently
to the alterations made in it by Thon-
son, Beat,ie and Campbell. But BY far
the greatest Improvement it has received
| IS from lord Byron himself, who increas-
ed the proportion Of long syllables, and
aggravated very gradually the quantity
of the lines, as they approach the full,
sonorous Alexandrine which terminates
the stanza,
The sudden unnatural passage from
! quick to slow which so incoRmoted the
lines Of the earliest users Of this mea.
sure, was thus avoided. The mind be-
held with atisfaction the regular rhyth-
mical pyramid (if we maybe allowed the
iliusratlon) exhibited by each stauza,
and the ear dwelt luxuriOusly on its fine
y toned melody. With unsccountable
fckIeness of taste, his lordship in the Sd
ianto. studied to demolish the tabrick he
hal reared, and Though he may have
gratfied his own waywardness, dis
| D eased every reader who had any, mu-
sick in his soul' by PEI petually throwing
the pause in the middle OF the line, and
causing the close OF one verse to run into
the next. The abrupt haltiDg motion
thus given to the measure, is indeed not
so obvious in the pre.ent canto, but it has
yielded place to improprieties equally Of
fensive. The writer has taken the more
than poetical license Of using the old
Spenserian stanZa, and the modern one
alternately. This vicissitude, though
analogous to the comparatively venial
one which characterizes the dancing,
babi,h verses of MIR. Scott, is wholly in
admissible in the majestick rhythm in
which lord Byron has immortaIized his
travels. Of these structures on his ver,i-
6cation every reader will admit the just
ness who compares the nine introducto-
~ stanzas to the I'd canto of Harold, with
the Hrst page which he opens in the Sd
and with those OF the 18th which we cited
in the outset. Let him also read the fol-
lowing stanza taken at random:
I well consider all that We have said,
Aud find that all thing stedfastness
do hate
And changed be; yet, being rightly
weigh'd,
They are not altered from their first
estate,
But by their change their beingdo dilate;
And turning TO themselves at length
again,
Do work their ewn perfection so by tate:
Then over these change doth not rule
and reign;
But they ie,gu over change, and do
their states maintain.
This quotation also illustrates the no
BILE authors tondness for abstract disqui.
sition. Remainder TO morror.
The Rev. Rowland Hill, in converse
ton on the powers OF the letter II, where