which, as in the above passage, he mates with the sublime and terrible
'natural' phenomena he meets in his voyage--the gathering of the
storm--the treacherous lull of the sea, breathing itself like a tiger
for its fatal spring--the ship, now walking the calm waters of the
glassy sea, and now wrestling like a demon of kindred power and fury
with the angry billows--the last fearful onset of the maddened
surge--and the secret stab given by the assassin rock from below, which
completes the ruin of the doomed vessel, and scatters its fragments o'er
the tide, growling in joy--these, as the poet describes them, constitute
the poetical glory of "The Shipwreck," and these have little connexion
with art, and much with nature.

Lord Byron was better at emulating than at criticising Falconer's
'chef-d'oeuvre'. We have already once or twice alluded to 'his'
Shipwreck--surely the grandest and most characteristic effort of his
genius, in its demoniac force, and demoniac spirit. As we have elsewhere
said, "he describes the horrors of a shipwreck, like a fiend who had,
invisible, sat amid the shrouds, choked with laughter--with immeasurable
glee had heard the wild farewell rising from sea to sky--had leaped into
the long-boat as it put off with its pale crew--had gloated o'er the
cannibal repast--had leered, unseen, into the 'dim eyes of those
shipwreck'd men'--and with a loud and savage burst of derision had seen
them at length sinking into the waves." The superiority of his picture
over Falconer's, lies in the simplicity and strength of the style, in
the ease of the narrative, in the variety of the incidents and
characters, and in certain short masterly touches, now of pathos, now of
infernal humour, and now of description, competent only to Byron and to
Shakspeare. Such are,--