neither sulky in their manner, nor full of hatred against the English, nor utterly abandoned to vice and folly, as he had been told; but, on the contrary, civil, gay, and ingenuous; nay, he found tolerable farmers and honest fathers of families, fewer paupers than in England, and much good effected by the Revolution. He imputed the old quarrels of his nation with theirs to the Government, and recommends to the people to give each other the right hand of friendship. This man is improved and will improve others.

No one can read this passage without mentally making an addition to the category. The man who can so write is one of those who are improved by travel.

Lord John Russell, however, cannot claim to take high rank as an essayist. His ambition, at this period of his life, was probably poetry, and the pieces which he has left in print, as well as those which he has left in manuscript, show that he had much facility in verse. Yet in this, as in other matters, he stands at a disadvantage. The critic can hardly forget that his author rose to be Prime Minister, and tries him by a higher standard than he applies to other men. Prime Ministers are not required to write poetry; but, if they write at all, they are expected to excel.

Whether he excelled or not, Lord John certainly displayed variety in his poetry. 'Don Carlos' is written in blank verse; the imitation of Juvenal in decasyllabic couplets; the translation of the 'Odyssey' in the metre of 'Don Juan.' The second of these pieces was suggested by Mr. Moore's misfortunes.

Yes, Moore, the debt of sympathy is paid

To worth deceived, and artless faith betrayed;
And still we hope, for thee and us remain

Mines of thy fancy, ingots of thy brain,1

Smooth and easy verses, which have, however no special interest for us now.

'Don Carlos or Persecution, a Tragedy in five Acts,' is a much more ambitious performance. It has been, perhaps, 1 The Epistle was anonymous, only fifty copies being printed for distribution anicng Mr. Moore's friends. (Moore's Memoirs, ii. 356.)

more unfavourably criticised than any tragedy in the language. It was an obvious and easy occupation, for those who were opposed to the author's political principles, to raise a laugh against him as the pretentious rival of Schiller. Yet, if any one will read the tragedy through, he will probably understand why it went through five editions during the year in which it was published. The tragedy may not be an acting play; it was never put on the stage; but it contains dramatic situations, and passages of power.

The drama, too, has a biographical interest, because it points to the moral which Lord John was never tired of enforcing. Don Carlos represents the cause of religious liberty.

I do remember well-too well, alas!

My age but scarce fourteen, your royal self
Absent in Flanders-I was bid preside
At the great act of faith to be performed
In fair Valladolid; at that green age
Quite new to life, nor yet aware of death,
The solemn pomp amused my careless mind.
But when the dismal tragedy began,

How were my feelings changed and clouded.

He describes the horrors of an auto-da-fé, and adds—

I should have told

That, ere the hecatomb began, Valdéz,
As Great Inquisitor, tendered an oath,
Which I, unwilling, took. I thereby swore
If ever I should see, or hear, or know,
By any means, of aught concerned the faith
Of friend or stranger, parent, brother, son,
I should reveal the same without delay
Unto the Holy Office: that dark oath

I took; but, thanks to Heaven, I broke.

But it is unnecessary to pursue the narrative. Don Carlos is brought before Valdéz, and his friend, his friend's wife, and Philip himself are summoned to bear witness against him. Don Carlos admits the charge.

All that your witnesses have sworn I swear,
And pledge my honour for its truth. Think not
That I will stoop or crouch beneath your feet,
Unsay my words, and creep away dishonoured:
What I have done I own, that I have spoken
I speak again: yet I deny my guilt,

All that I did was innocent.

There are probably ten people alive who have read 'Don Carlos' for every person who has read the translation of the fifth book of the 'Odyssey.' Yet those who are acquainted with both these performances may possibly be inclined to rate the translation above the tragedy. Lord John indeed told Mr. Moore that Lord Holland declared against it 'because he likes Homer so much he thinks nobody can do him justice. All that I could get him to say was that, if the "Odyssey were translated in a different metre from mine, and by a different person, it might do.' What Lord Holland probably meant was that Lord John's scholarship was hardly equal to the task which he had set himself, and that he had needlessly increased his difficulties by his choice of a metre.

Probably no translator can do Homer justice. But, in our own time, it is fashionable to attempt the task of translating the Iliad' and 'Odyssey.' Lord John is neither the only statesman nor the only Prime Minister who has made the attempt. Yet there is no gainsaying the force of Lord Holland's criticism. When an author translates κέληθ ̓ ἵππον 'an untrained horse,' it is reasonable to suspect the deficiencies of his scholarship. When we compare such a passage as

Dismiss him straight, nor brave the chastening hand
Of mighty Jove

with Pope's epigrammatic line

Dismiss the man, nor irritate the god,

we begin to suspect the difficulties of the metre. Yet, when all this has been said, it must be added that the translation. has fidelity and force, and that the translator has triumphed in a signal manner over the difficulties of his subject.

Take, for instance, the famous passage near the beginning of the book describing the flight of Mercury :

The golden sandals on his feet he tied,

Wing'd and immortal, by whose aid he darts,
Swift as the gale, o'er lands and oceans wide :
Then grasp'd the wand, whose magic power imparts
Sleep to the eyes of men: or, if applied

With other aim, the weary mortal starts
From deepest slumber. Bearing in his hand
This rod, he lighted on the Pierian land.

When Lord John wrote 'wing'd,' he was probably thinking more of Virgil's version, or of John of Bologna's statue, than of Homer's language; and, when he threw in the addition 'if applied with other aim,' he was sacrificing force to the exigencies of his metre. But in all other respects the passage is surely an admirable rendering of the original.

Or take Ulysses' speech in the storm :

Ah me! what woes are now to close my care?
Divine Calypso was too truly skill'd

When she predicted I had much to bear :—
'Tis now, alas! too fatally fulfill'd!

What clouds portentous fill the darken'd air!

What waves the sea! my death the gods have will'd.
Thrice happy Greeks, who met a warrior's doom,
And found at once a trophy and a tomb.

Would I had perish'd in that happier hour

When, as I shielded Peleus' dying son,

The Trojans round me, mustering all their power,
Pour'd thick their brazen spears: then had I won

Funeral honours, and the deathless dower

Of glorious fame: but now my day is done.
For what a mournful end have I been kept,
My corse unhonour'd, and my fate unwept.

Here, again, the last four lines have been unduly expanded; but the passage, as a whole, is rendered with remarkable force and fidelity.

It is, of course, impossible in a few extracts to give an idea of a poem; but it is equally impossible, in a concise memoir,

to afford space for a more detailed description. The reader who wishes to test Lord John's capacity as dramatist and translator must turn from this passage to Lord John's own writings. But Lord John was not merely a poet, he was also an historian. Before closing this chapter it is necessary to allude briefly to his qualities in this respect.

The four works, composed before 1832, on which Lord. John Russell's claim to rank as an historian must rest, are: (1) the History of the English Constitution; (2) the 'Life of William, Lord Russell;' (3) the 'Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe,' with its supplement the 'Essay on the Causes of the French Revolution;' and (4) the 'Historical Discourse on the Establishment of the Turks in Europe.'

The best known of these works is the Essay on the English Government and Constitution.' It has gone through many editions; it has been translated into a foreign language; and, after a lapse of nearly seventy years, is still occasionally read and sold. Few books, even among those which succeed, can claim equal vitality.

Lord John, in his original edition, avowed that the book was a fragment.

It was my object [so he wrote in the preface] to illustrate, by an analysis of the history of the governments of modern Europe, from the commencement of the fifteenth century, two very plain but somewhat neglected truths. The first is, that the monarchies of the Continent of Europe have been, generally speaking, so illadapted to make their subjects virtuous and happy that they require, or required, complete regeneration. The second is that the government of England ought not to be included in this class: that it is calculated to produce liberty, worth, and content among the people, whilst its abuses easily admit of reforms consistent with its spirit, capable of being effected without injury or danger, and mainly contributing to its preservation.

Lord John went on to say that the latter part of the work was the only part that he had finished. But, before the second edition was called for, he seems to have seen that the work, which he had regarded as a fragment, was, or was capable of being made, a complete whole. He consequently.