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inexhaustible energy,

all this abides in Byron's masterpiece,

his chief claim to immortality.

Byron's place among the world poets

What is Byron's place among the world poets, the supreme few? Homer, Æschylus, Sophocles, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, perhaps one or two others, were poets of the highest architectonic power, and of unfailing art. Above all this, their great works show a "high seriousness" and a noble and consistent outlook on life. Among these poets of the first order it is doubtful if Byron can with any justice be ranked. Though Don Juan is an elaborate work of highly sustained art, it is deficient in characterization, in organism, and in a serious and consistent point of view. Thus, superb as it is, it yet can scarcely be placed among the world's supreme masterpieces of poetry.

English con

temporaries

We must, then, compare Byron with the poets of the second order, and, naturally, with those of England. Even here, as we have seen, reigns a variety of opinion. As a close and accurate student of nature and a portrayer of her more intimate and peculiar beauties, Byron cannot compare with Wordsworth. Neither has he the power to take a seemByron as com- ingly commonplace or prosaic subject and lift it pared with his into poetry by the magic of his treatment, as do Wordsworth and Arnold. He has nothing of the and successors haunting magic and rich melodies of Coleridge; the delicacy, the sensuous beauty, as well as the perfect expression, of Keats, are utterly beyond him. With Shelley, as a lyric poet and a master of music, he cannot for an instant be compared. Tennyson is an infinitely finer and more careful artist. Byron is lacking in the sound knowledge of life, the wide scholarship, the profound insight into the human soul, that render Browning so potent a force in poetry. What, then, remains?

-

The answer is easily found. Any one who reads the few selections in the present volume cannot fail to be impressed with the one trait that, above everything else, marks them as a whole, their fire, their vigor, their "exulting and abounding" energy. In this Byron takes his place second only to Shakespeare. Energy and strength are no small poetical assets. Byron is the greatest singer of the mountains and the sea. The Apostrophe to the Ocean, the stanzas on the Alps, the Some perma- Rhine, the Marble Cascade, in the energy and nent qualities sweep of their splendid verse, are worthy of their

of Byron's

poetry

theme. Byron, too, can make the dead past live again as can no other poet: he finds out the poetry in history and quickens it to life. We are swept along with him in the impetuous torrent of his verse, and inspired by the poet's own emotion.

art poet

It is idle to say that Byron is only too often a faulty artist, careless, sometimes even uncouth. He does not belong to the order of the poets of art. He worked on a large scale,-painted Byron not an on an immense canvas in vivid colors. To assert, furthermore, that Byron says only the thing that is obvious, is instantly to provoke the answer that he says that thing as no other could, and glorifies it while saying it. He is perhaps not a profoundly original thinker, yet he expressed, interpreted, and applied the thought of a whole continent. A definite philosophy of life and coherent teaching he never attempted, but he voiced universal hopes and aspirations in spirited and inspiring verse. His faults of technic, even his frequent lapses from good taste, are forgotten in his actual greatness. After reading all of his work, sincerity and unequal, disappointing, crude, as much of it we must finally say, with Mr. Swinburne, that "his is the splendid and imperishable excellence of sincerity and strength."

His essential greatness:

strength

is,

REFERENCES

The standard, and apparently definitive, edition of the complete works of Lord Byron is that published by Mr. John Murray of London. In this edition the prose works, in six volumes, are edited by Mr. R. W. Prothero; and the poetical works, in seven volumes, are edited by Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge. A one-volume edition, The Poetical Works of Lord Byron, is also published by Mr. John Murray, with introduction and notes by Mr. Coleridge. Both editions are imported into this country by Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons. An excellent one-volume edition is that edited by Mr. Paul Elmer More, and published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

For a further study of Byron and his poems the student will find the following critical and biographical books and articles helpful and interesting:

BYRON, by John Nichol, in the English Men of Letters Series.

LORD BYRON, by Hon. Roden Noel, in the Great Writers Series. ESSAY ON MOOre's Life of LORD BYRON, Macaulay.

BYRON, by Matthew Arnold, in Essays in Criticism, Second Series. THE BYRON REVIVAL, by W. P. Trent, in The Authority of Criticism. BYRON, by Theodore Watts-Dunton, in the revised edition of Chambers's Cyclopedia of English Literature.

Needless to say, the bibliography of Byron is almost endless. It is not so easy, however, to find estimates of his genius which err neither on the side of undue depreciation nor on that of excessive praise. There is only one way by which to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion, -and that is by a thorough and careful reading of Byron's works.

SELECTIONS FROM BYRON

LACHIN Y GAIR

This poem was first printed in Hours of Idleness, 1807. It is probably the best of Byron's juvenile poems.

“Lachin y Gair, or, as it is pronounced in the Erse, Loch na Garr, towers proudly preeminent in the northern Highlands, near Invercauld. One of our modern tourists mentions it as the highest mountain, perhaps, in Great Britain. Be this as it may, it is certainly one of the most sublime and picturesque amongst our 'Caledonian Alps.' Its appearance is of a dusky hue, but the summit is the seat of eternal snows. Near Lachin y Gair I spent some of the early part of my life, the recollection of which has given birth to these stanzas."— Byron's note

I

WAY, ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses!

AWAY

In you let the minions of luxury rove;

Restore me the rocks, where the snow-flake reposes,
Though still they are sacred to freedom and love:
Yet, Caledonia, belov'd are thy mountains,

Round their white summits though elements war; Though cataracts foam 'stead of smooth-flowing fountains, I sigh for the valley of dark Loch na Garr.

II

Ah! there my young footsteps in infancy wander'd :
My cap was the bonnet, my cloak was the plaid;
On chieftains, long perish'd, my memory ponder'd,
As daily I strode through the pine-cover'd glade;

I

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