the observer's purpose to espy,
And on himself roll back his scrutiny,
Lest he to Conrad rather should betray
Some secret thought, than drag that chief's to day.

There was a laughing devil in his sneer
That raised emotions both of rage and fear;
And where his frown of hatred darkly fell
Hope withering fled, and mercy sigh'd, farewell.

It will be allowed that, in this portrait, some of the darker
features and harsher lineaments of Byron himself are very evident,
but with a more fixed sternness than belonged to him; for it was only
by fits that he could put on such severity. Conrad is, however, a
higher creation than any which he had previously described. Instead
of the listlessness of Childe Harold, he is active and enterprising;
such as the noble pilgrim would have been, but for the satiety which
had relaxed his energies. There is also about him a solemnity
different from the animation of the Giaour--a penitential despair
arising from a cause undisclosed. The Giaour, though wounded and
fettered, and laid in a dungeon, would not have felt as Conrad is
supposed to feel in that situation. The following bold and terrific
verses, descriptive of the maelstrom agitations of remorse, could not
have been appropriately applied to the despair of grief, the
predominant source of emotion in The Giaour.

There is a war, a chaos of the mind
When all its elements convulsed combined,
Lie dark and jarring with perturbed force,
And gnashing with impenitent remorse.
That juggling fiend who never spake before,
But cries, "I warn'd thee," when the deed is o'er;
Vain voice, the spirit burning, but unbent,
May writhe, rebel--the weak alone repent.

The character of Conrad is undoubtedly finely imagined; as the
painters would say, it is in the highest style of art, and brought
out with sublime effect; but still it is only another phase of the
same portentous meteor, that was nebulous in Childe Harold, and fiery
in The Giaour. To the safe and shop-resorting inhabitants of
Christendom, The Corsair seems to present many improbabilities;
nevertheless, it is true to nature, and in every part of the Levant
the traveller meets with individuals whose air and physiognomy remind
him of Conrad. The incidents of the story, also, so wild and
extravagant to the snug and legal notions of England, are not more in
keeping with the character, than they are in accordance with fact and
reality. The poet suffers immeasurable injustice, when