We do not understand how moral it is to yield unreservedly
to enthusiasm, to the impression which great objects
would fain make upon us, and to embody that impression
in worthy language. It is rare to meet now even
with young people who will abandon themselves to a
heroic emotion, or who, if they really feel it, do
not try to belittle it in expression. Byron’s
poetry, above most, tempts and almost compels surrender
to that which is beyond the commonplace self.
It is not true that “The Corsair” is insincere.
He who hears a note of insincerity in Conrad and
Medora may have ears, but they must be those of the
translated Bottom who was proud of having “a
reasonable good ear in music.” Byron’s
romance has been such a power exactly because men
felt that it was not fiction and that his was one of
the strongest minds of his day. He was incapable
of toying with the creatures of the fancy which had
no relationship with himself and through himself with
humanity.
A word as to Byron’s hold upon the people.
He was able to obtain a hearing from ordinary men
and women, who knew nothing even of Shakespeare, save
what they had seen at the theatre. Modern poetry
is the luxury of a small cultivated class. We
may say what we like of popularity, and if it be purchased
by condescension to popular silliness it is nothing.
But Byron secured access to thousands of readers in
England and on the Continent by strength and loveliness,
a feat seldom equalled and never perhaps surpassed.
The present writer’s father, a compositor in
a dingy printing office, repeated verses from “Childe
Harold” at the case. Still more remarkable,
Byron reached one of this writer’s friends,
an officer in the Navy, of the ancient stamp; and the
attraction, both to printer and lieutenant, lay in
nothing lower than that which was best in him.
It is surely a service sufficient to compensate for
many more faults than can be charged against him that
wherever there was any latent poetic dissatisfaction
with the vulgarity and meanness of ordinary life he
gave it expression, and that he has awakened in the
people lofty emotions which, without him, would
have slept. The cultivated critics, and the
refined persons who have schrecklich viel gelesen,
are not competent to estimate the debt we owe to Byron.
(Reprinted, with corrections, by permission from the “Contemporary
Review,” August, 1881.)
Mr. Matthew Arnold has lately published a remarkable
essay {133} upon Lord Byron. Mr. Arnold’s
theory about Byron is, that he is neither artist nor
thinker—that “he has no light, cannot
lead us from the past to the future;” “the
moment he reflects, he is a child;” “as
a poet he has no fine and exact sense for word and
structure and rhythm; he has not the artist’s
nature and gifts.” The excellence of Byron
mainly consists in his “sincerity and strength;”
