ВЕРРО.

THE charm of this poem consists in the playfulness and gaiety of the style. There is little story, few incidents, and not much delineation of character in the actors. Of the latter, Laura is the most elaborated and the most amusing. She refutes too, by her individuality, the sweeping charge brought against all the female characters of Byron, of resemblance to each other. This poem, though published anonymously, rose immediately, from its talent and novelty, to a degree of popularity, precedented only by the success of Byron's earlier poems; though the scrupulous were, even then, scandalized at the levity with which the author spoke of some actions as follies, which they had been accustomed to consider as crimes.

Laura, a pretty woman of " a certain age," was wedded to a merchant trading to Aleppo, Beppo by name, to whom she made a tender and devoted wife, till, on one fatal voyage, his prolonged absence tried her patience beyond the bounds of feminine endurance.

"And Laura waited long, and wept a little,

And thought of wearing weeds, as well she might

She almost lost all appetite for victual,

And could not sleep with ease alone at night;

She deemed the window frames and shutters brittle

Against a daring house-breaker or sprite,

And so she thought it prudent to connect her

With a vice-husband, chiefly to protect her."

BEPPO.

The chosen cavalier is an "arbiter elegantiarum" amongst beaux and belles, a Venetian exquisite,

moreover one of

those

"Lovers of the good old school,

Who always grow more constant as they cool."

One evening, as Laura and the Count are enjoying the pleasures of the Carnival, the lady is both flattered and amused by the fixed gaze of a figure dressed as a Turk; and, on their return home, they find themselves preceded by the Mussulman, who, in reply to the haughty interrogatories of the Count, claims Laura as his wife! This occasions some little confusion at first; but nothing can be more amicably arranged than the conclusion for they all reside in perfect harmony, and though

"Laura sometimes put him in a passion,

I've heard the count and he were always friends."

The philosophy of this arrangement reminds us of the countryman, mentioned by Steele, who, when at the representation of the "Fatal Marriage," looked round with astonishment at the sympathy of the audience with the shame, grief, and agony of Isabella, on the return of her first husband: exclaiming, "Well! now let every man have his mare again !" A view of the question which would, doubtless, have saved much misery and bloodshed.