jail. Even at his sunset his own familiar friend, unintentionally, we may be sure, was the cause of the fastening upon him of an odious character in fiction. A delightful writer both in prose and verse, he never was visited by a gleam of prosperity. The public cared little for one who had no message of his own to deliver, not even an agreeable rancour to wreak. Had he, like the proverbial worm, been given to turning, he might at least have excited interest, if not compassion. As it was, he simply went on with his singing, not admiringly remarked in life, and scarcely at all since. He was and is, I dare say, one of the poets the world can do without, though I think it a pity it should. In any case it may be hoped and believed that to him, singing as a bird sings, because it must, so pleasure came from his song, as it comes to a bird, because to the singer of a sweet song pleasure must. The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt. E. Moxon, 1844. (Stories in Verse: by Leigh Hunt. G. Routledge & Co., 1855.) 1 Paulo and Francesca (Stories in Verse). 2 Hero and Leander, Canto i (The Poetical Works), pp. 1-35. 3 Chorus of the Flowers (ibid.). To the Infant Princess Royal (ibid.). 5 Mahmoud (ibid.). Captain Sword and Captain Pen (ibid.). 8 An Angel in the House (ibid.). To the Grasshopper and the Cricket (ibid.). GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON 1788-1824 WHAT of this torrent of verse, myrrh and gall, poured forth in some fifteen years-is it a living stream, or unfiltered surface-water? Is it the cursing epitaph on Timon's tomb by the wild sea-waves, or the shower of gold accompanying imprecations on his age and fellow men, as the misanthrope stands, a prophet of evil, at the mouth of his forlorn cave? If a voice from the grave, it is at any rate a mighty voice, as of a Titan buried alive under Etna. Such modern criticism as is prone to deny present active existence to Byron, will not dispute that he lived once, and issued royal proclamations. He stood for force, movement, perturbation. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats were more radical revolutionists in poetry. Byron never ceased to profess himself a disciple of Dryden and Pope. But the most fervent admirers of the first four would not pretend to compare the contemporary innovating influence of the whole of them in literature with Byron's. He did as much towards extending the sway of England as the victories of Nelson and Wellington, or the despotic will of Pitt. The personality, in its weaknesses as in its strength, fascinated. His pilgrimage of passion and remorse marked its course as with red-hot lava on the heart of Europe. Now, when the rush of molten matter has cooled and stiffened, it is easy to analyse its aberrations and impurities. Its extravagances are monstrous. Whatever the crimes of Castlereagh against freedom, the cause of liberty is polluted by sneers at the 'tinkering slave-maker', by insults to his corpse: He has cut his throat at last! He! Who ? So with the scream at the Poet-Laureate, as shuffling Southey, that incarnate lie; and at Wordsworth's principal work, as : A drowsy frowzy poem, call'd the 'Excursion', The egotism passes all bounds. The quality is a foible dear to the poetic temperament to the highest, and the lowest— to any but Shakespeare's as a dramatist—and he takes his revenge in the Sonnets. The temptation to indulgence in it is so eager, that, according to a subtle poet-critic in the early nineteenth century, sensitive bards, conscious, and ashamed, of its power over them, have chosen themes alien to their taste to be able, under cover of them, to stray, as if by accident, into scenes enshrining themselves. That was not Byron's way. He makes no disguise of his intention never to be off the stage. The result is that his favourite moods, cynicism in Don Juan, satiety in Childe Harold, have an air of cheapness. Sceptical readers experience a general impression of insincerity. They suspect a want of spontaneity everywhere, in the pathos, as in the disgust. The texture they see often is threadbare, as it could not but be, with a heart dried up by sensual licence, and obliged to trust frequently to the brain to do the creative work of both. He rebelled against law and order because he had not set them in motion; not, as his companion Shelley, from a generous rage against a narrow-minded despotism. Nobody now believes in the genuineness of his indignation against tyranny. A Lord, with the self-indulgence of the Prince Regent, preaching Socialism is a ridiculous figure to the present generation. The admiration he gained for his errors has itself ruined his posthumous renown. He is punished by the taunts of the new age for having hypnotized its predecessor into adoring his follies. With all the mimicry, all the flattery, all the absurdity, it is the more wonderful that a real poet, a seer of visions, should remain recognizable beneath. We may pass by much that he wrote. A majority of the occasional pieces would probably have been smothered by himself had he foreseen the celebrity of Childe Harold and Don Juan. Satire, though vigorous and scathing as in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, The Vision of Judgement, and The Curse of Minerva, naturally is short-lived. The Plays are too poetical for dramas, too dramatic for poems. As the eye glances over the titles of many of the published works, scarcely even an emotion of curiosity stirs. Others there are on which we pause for a moment, and with delight, whenever accident recalls them. We cannot help recognizing power, for instance, in The Destruction of Sennacherib: Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green, and in the contrast, in the Ode to Napoleon, between his submissive abdication and Sulla's : The Roman, when his burning heart He dared depart in utter scorn His only glory was that hour Of self-upheld abandon'd power.2 A mist of blood and tears mitigates the hectic hues of The Dream.3 There is music for us still in : and : She walks in beauty, like the night 4 Oh could I feel as I have felt, or be what I have been, We admire we do not spontaneously reopen the volume. It is the same with compositions of ancient renown, like The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, Lara, The Prisoner of Chillon, Parisina, The Siege of Corinth. Echoes rise, and insist on rising, from them. The glowing west continually reminds how, Slow sinks more lovely ere his race be run, |