TW

BYRON

the World.

WO obvious reasons why Byron has Byron and long been a prophet more honoured abroad than at home are his life and his work. He is the most romantic figure in the literature of the century, and his romance is of that splendid and daring cast which the people of Britain-' an aristocracy materialised and null, a middle class purblind and hideous, a lower class crude and brutal'-prefers to regard with suspicion and disfavour. He is the type of them that prove in defiance of precept that the safest path is not always midway, and that the golden rule is sometimes unspeakably worthless who set what seems a horrible example, create an apparently shameful precedent, and yet contrive to approve themselves an honour to their country and the race.

To

be a good Briton a man must trade profitably, marry respectably, live cleanly, avoid excess, revere the established order, and wear his

heart in his breeches pocket or anywhere but on his sleeve. Byron did none of these things, though he was a public character, and ought for the example's sake to have done them all, and done them ostentatiously. He lived hard, and drank hard, and played hard. He was flippant in speech and eccentric in attire. He thought little of the sanctity of the conjugal tie, and said so; and he married but to divide from his wife-who was an incarnation of the national virtue of respectability-under circumstances mysterious not to be discreditable. He was hooted into exile, and so far from reforming he did even worse than he had done before. After bewildering Venice with his wickedness and consorting with atheists like Shelley and conspirators like young Gamba, he went away on a sort of wild-goose chase to Greece, and died there with every circumstance of publicity. Also his work was every whit as abominable in the eyes of his countrymen as his life. It is said that the theory and practice of British art are subject to the influence of the British schoolgirl, and that he is unworthy the name of artist whose achievement is of a kind to call a blush to the cheek of youth. Byron was

contemptuous of youth, and did not hesitate to write-in Beppo and in Cain, in Manfred and Don Juan and the Vision-exactly as he pleased. In three words, he made himself offensively conspicuous, and from being infinitely popular became utterly contemptible. Too long had people listened to the scream of this eagle in wonder and in perturbation, and the moment he disappeared they grew ashamed of their emotion and angry with its cause, and began to hearken to other and more melodious voices-to Shelley and Keats, to Wordsworth and Coleridge and the 'faultless and fervent melodies of Tennyson.' In course of time Byron was forgotten, or only remembered with disdain; and when Thackeray, the representative Briton, the artist Philistine, the foe of all that is excessive or abnormal or rebellious, took it upon himself to flout the author of Don Juan openly and to lift up his heavy hand against the fops and fanatics. who had affected the master's humours, he did so amid general applause. Meanwhile, however, the genius and the personality of Byron had come to be vital influences all the world over, and his voice had been recognised as the most human and the least.

insular raised on English ground since Shakespeare's. In Russia he had created Pushkin and Lermontoff; in Germany he had awakened Heine, inspired Schumann, and been saluted as an equal by the poet of Faust himself; in Spain he had had a share in moulding the noisy and unequal talent of Espronceda; in Italy he had helped to develop and to shape the melancholy and daring genius of Leopardi ; and in France he had been one of the presiding forces of a great æsthetic revolution. To the men of 1830 he was a special and peculiar hero. Hugo turned in his wake to Spain and Italy and the East for inspiration. Musset, as Mr. Swinburne has said-too bitterly and strongly said-became in a fashion a Kaled to his Lara, 'his female page or attendant dwarf.' He was in some sort the grandsire of the Buridan and the Antony of Dumas. Berlioz went to him for the material for his Harold en Italie, his Corsaire overture, and his Episode. Delacroix painted the Barque de Don Juan from him, with the Massacre de Scio, the Marino Faliero, the Combat du Giaour et du Pacha, and many a notable picture more. Is it at all surprising that M. Taine should have found heart to say

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that alone among modern poets Byron 71 atteint à la cime'? or that Mazzini should 8888888ave reproached us with our unaccountable eglect of him and with our scandalous 370 forgetfulness of the immense work done by him in giving a European rôle . . . to English literature' and in awakening all over the Continent so much 'appreciation and sympathy for England'?

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H'

Wordsworth.

E had his share in the work of making Byron and Matthew Arnold possible, but he is the antipodes of those men of culture and contemplation-those artists pensive and curious and sedately self-contained—whom Arnold best loved and of whom the nearest to hand is Wordsworth. Byron and Wordsworth are like the Lucifer and the Michael of the Vision of Judgment. Byron's was the genius of revolt, as Wordsworth's was the genius of dignified and useful submission; Byron preached the dogma of private revolution, Wordsworth the dogma of private apotheosis; Byron's theory of life was one of liberty and self-sacrifice, Wordsworth's one of self-restraint and self-improvement; Byron's practice was dictated by a