430 
having one common reference to the 
idea of claim, or holding. 
Spencer seems to have been suffi- 
ciently observant of the abuses ‘and 
mischiefs arising out of the old barba- 
rous Scythian customs and habits of the 
natives; buttohavehad littleregard tothe 
oppressions and misgovernment of their 
English masters. ‘The misfortune of 
Treland has been that little has been 
done (if any thing), to give the mass of 
the people, or even of the proprietors, 
a common interest with the general 
Government. They have been left, 
and still are left, a prey to the anarchy 
of petty interests and local factions. 
The new proprietors of certain holds 
or districts, or the narrow confederacies 
or corporations established in them, 
having no sympathy with the popula. 
tion, on the one hand, and being held 
in no graduated subordination to the 
Government, on the other, constitute 
a sort of anarchic tyranny, or an anar- 
chy of separate tyrannies; yielding, by 
tacit compact, a sort of conditional 
obedience to the higher functionaries of 
the state, so long, and so far, as, accord- 
ing to their humour and _ prejudices, 
they may deem it consistent with the 
interests of their own factious and op- 
pressive mastery over the population of 
their vicinage. The individual, or the 
family, which has become seized of a 
monopolized interest in a particular cor- 
poration or district, finds and exercises 
a sort of arbitrary sovereignty in that 
monopoly ; and the same love of power 
which renders him a tyrant over the 
people, renders him an anarchist with 
respect to the general sovereignty of 
Laws and Constitution: whose provi- 
sions he is perpetually outstepping with 
respect to those who are at his mercy ; 
and as perpetually evading or pervert- 
ing in every thing that affects himself. 
The new settler, or proprietor, soon falls 
into these habits, as well as the old, and 
becomes, by a few years of naturaliza- 
tion, as very a Scythian as the best of 
them. Lawless habits are congenial to 
lawless rapacity and power; and the 
master seldom takes much pains to im- 
prove the civilization of his slaves. As 
for the population at large, what sym- 
pathy with the English Government 
can they have—or reverence for it? 
Tt does nothing for them. Their land- 
lords, their tythe proctors, or the cor- 
porations that oppress them, are the 
only governors they can look to, or know 
any. thing about. Their attachments 
and their resentments—their obedience 
Extracts from the Journal of a Miscellaneous Reader. 
[Dec. I, 
or their rebellions look no higher. 
There is little to remind them whether 
it is the King of England or the Cham 
of Tartary that claims the general sove- 
reignty of the realm. 
Lorp Byron’s Doce of Venice. 
Some splendid passages, and several 
nervous and sententious lines—but.a 
very bad, tedious, prosing play, with a 
great deal of what is’ called plagiary, in 
phrase, in thought, and in situation. 
Venice Preserved is constantly brought 
to one’s recollection. Much of the ver- 
sification is very bad indeed. ‘In read- 
ing it aloud one is every now and then 
throttled, as it were, by the balk put 
upon the voice and organs through the 
perpetual transitions of rythmus, and 
the vain struggle to read it either. as 
verse or as prose. The last scene is 
puerile and ridiculous to the last degree, 
and occupies precisely the same point 
of time with the preceding—so that if 
acted, the stage ought to be divided by a 
party wall, and the two scenes should 
be performed at the same time: for 
surely the drama can admit of no retro- 
spective action. The character of An- 
giolina is finely conceived ;; but it is not 
supported with any dramatic effect. 
When the deepest pathos would be ex- 
pected, she gives Steno and the Senate 
a long historical and philosophical lec- 
ture; and in the parting scene between 
her and the Doge, previous to his exe- 
cution, there is nothing touching and 
natural but his last speech. In short, 
“the Doge of Venice” is equally de- 
fective as a play, and as a dramatic 
poem. It is interspersed, as might be 
expected, with a sufficient portion of 
Lord Byron’s moral scepticism, and of 
his aristocratical jacobinism : — some 
portions of which display all the power 
and energy of his style. 
The Proruecy of Dante. 
“ The measure adopted is the terza 
rima of Dante” — the peculiarity of 
which is that the alternating rhymes 
are so dovetailed one into the other 
that the series is never closed, or inter- 
rupted from the beginning to the end of 
the canto. The first rhymes with the 
third; the second with the fourth and 
sixth; the fifth with the seventh and 
ninth; the eighth with the tenth and 
twelfth, and so on—so that the chain is 
never broken for 150, or nearly 200 
lines together— or whatever number of 
lines the canto may contain. There is, 
however, some fine poetry in the Pro- 
phecy. 
