This vein exhausted, we come to the "Ave Maria," one of the most
musical, and seemingly heartfelt, hymns in the language. The close of the
ocean pastoral (in c. iv.) is the last of pathetic narrative in the book;
but the same feeling that "mourns o'er the beauty of the Cyclades," often
re-emerges in shorter passages. The fifth and sixth cantos, in spite of
the glittering sketch of Gulbeyaz, and tho fawn-like image of Dudu, are
open to the charge of diffuseness, and the character of Johnson is a
failure. From the seventh to the tenth, the poem decidedly dips, partly
because the writer had never been in Russia; then it again rises, and
shows no sign of falling off to the end.
No part of the work has more suggestive interest or varied power than some
of the later cantos, in which Juan is whirled through the vortex of the
fashionable life which Byron knew so well, loved so much, and at last
esteemed so little. There is no richer piece of descriptive writing in his
works than that of Newstead (in c. xiii.); nor is there any analysis of
female character so subtle as that of the Lady Adeline.
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