izing beyond even
the wide licence he took in the three preceding parts; but it bears
the impression of more reading and observation. Though not superior
in poetical energy, it is yet a higher work than any of them, and
something of a more resolved and masculine spirit pervades the
reflections, and endows, as it were, with thought and enthusiasm the
aspect of the things described. Of the merits of the descriptions,
as of real things, I am not qualified to judge: the transcripts from
the tablets of the author's bosom he has himself assured us are
faithful.

"With regard to the conduct of the last canto, there will be found
less of the pilgrim than in any of the preceding, and that little
slightly, if at all, separated from the author speaking in his own
person. The fact is, that I had become weary of drawing a line,
which every one seemed determined not to perceive: like the Chinese,
in Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, whom nobody would believe to be
a Chinese, it was in vain that I asserted and imagined that I had
drawn a distinction between the author and the pilgrim; and the very
anxiety to preserve this difference, and the disappointment at
finding it unavailing, so far crushed my efforts in the composition,
that I determined to abandon it altogether--and have done so."

This confession, though it may not have been wanted, gives a pathetic
emphasis to those passages in which the poet speaks of his own
feelings. That his mind was jarred, and out of joint, there is too
much reason to believe; but he had in some measure overcome the
misery that clung to him during the dismal time of his sojourn in
Switzerland, and the following passage, though breathing the sweet
and melancholy spirit of dejection, possesses a more generous vein of
nationality than is often met with in his works, even when the same
proud sentiment might have been more fitly expressed:

I've taught me other tongues--and in strange eyes
Have made me not a stranger; to the mind
Which is itself, no changes bring surprise,
Nor is it harsh to make or hard to find
A country with--aye, or without mankind.
Yet was I born where men are proud to be,
Not without cause; and should I leave behind
Th' inviolate island of the sage and free,
And seek me out a home by a remoter sea?

Perhaps I lov'd it well, and should I lay
My ashes in a soil which is not mine,
My spirit shall resume it--if we may,
Unbodied, choose a