For passions linked to forms so fair And stately, needs must have their share Of noble sentiment." It is worthy of remark that Byron's moral perversion never paralyzed or obscured his intellectual powers, though it might lower their aims. With regard to the plan and style of his works, he showed strong good sense and clear judgment. The man who indulged such narrowing egotism, such irrational scorn, would prune and polish without mercy the stanzas in which he ' uttered them; and this bewildered Idealist was a very bigot in behoof of the commonsensical satirist, the almost peevish Realist -Pope. Historically these poems are valuable as records of that strange malady, that sickness of the soul, which has, in our day, cankered so visibly the rose of youth. It is common to speak of the Byronic mood as morbid, false, and foolish; it is the two former, and, if it could be avoided, would most assuredly be the latter also. But how can it always be avoided? Like as a fever rages in the blood before we are aware, even so creeps upon the soul this disease, offspring of a moral malaria, an influence im. palpable till we feel its results within ourselves. Since skilful physicians are not always at hand, would it not be better to purify the atmosphere than to rail at the patient? Those who have passed through this process seem to have wondrous little pity for those who are still struggling with its horrors, and very little care to aid them. Yet if it be disease, does it not claim pity, and would it not be well to try some other remedy than hard knocks for its cure? What though these sick youths do mourn and la. ment somewhat wearisomely, and we feel vexed, on bright May mornings, to have them try to persuade us that this beautiful green earth, with all its flowers and bird-notes, is no better than a vast hospital? Consider, it is a relief to the delirious to rave audibly, and few, like Professor Teufelsdrock, have strength to keep a whole Satanic school in the soul from spouting aloud. What says the benign Uhland? "If our first lays too piteous have been, And you have feared our tears would never cease, If we too gloomily life's prose have seen, Nor suffered Man nor Mouse to dwell in peace, Yet pardon us for our youth's sake. The vine Not without pain the precious beverage flows; Thus joy and power may yet spring from the woes There is no getting rid of the epidemic of the season, however You cannot cough down an annoying and useless it may seem. influenza; it will cough you down. Why young people will just now profess themselves so very miserable, for no better reason than that assigned by the poet to some "inquiring friends," "Nought do I mourn I c'er possessed, I grieve that I cannot be blessed;" I have here no room to explain. Enough that there has for some time prevailed a sickliness of feeling, whose highest water-mark may be found in the writings of Byron. He is the "power man" (as the Germans call him, meaning perhaps the power-loom!) who has woven into one tissue all those myriad threads, tearstained and dull-gray, with which the malignant spiders of specu lation had filled the machine shop of society, and by so doing has, though I admit, unintentionally, conferred benefits upon us incalculable for a long time to come. He has lived through this experience for us, and shown us that the natural fruits of indulgence in such a temper are dissonance, cynicism, irritability, and all uncharitableness. Accordingly, since his time the evil has les sened. With this warning before them, let the young examine that world, which scems at times so deformed by evils and end. less contradictions, "Control them and subdue, transmute, bereave Of their bad influence, and the good receive." Grief loses half its charm when we find that others have endured the same to a higher degree, and lived through it. Nor do I be. lieve that the misanthropy of Byron ever made a single misan. thrope; that his scepticism, so uneasy and sorrowful beneath its thin mask of levity, ever made a single sceptic. I know those whom it has cured of their yet half-developed errors. I believe it has cured thousands. As supplying materials for the history of opinion, then, Byron's poems will be valuable. And as a poet, I believe posterity will assign him no obscure place, though he will probably be classed far beneath some who have exercised a less obvious or immediate influence on their own times; beneath the noble Three of whom I am yet to speak, whose merits are immortal, because their tendencies are towards immortality, and all whose influence must be a growing influence; beneath Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. Before proceeding to discuss these last, for which there is hardly room in the present paper, I would be allowed to conclude this division of my subject with a fine passage in which Shelley speaks of Byron. I wish to quote it, because it is of kindred strain with what Walter Scott and Rogers (in his "Italy") have written about their much abused compeer. It is well for us to see great men judging so gently, and excusing so generously, faults from which they themselves are entirely free; faults at which men of less genius, and less purity too, found it so easy and pleasant to rail. I quote it in preference to any thing from Scott and Rogers, because I presume it to be less generally known. In apostrophizing Venice, Shelley says, "Perish! let there only be Floating o'er thy hearthless sea, As the garment of thy sky Of the songs of Albion, By the might of evil dreams, Which through Albion winds for ever As the ghost of Homer clings As divinest Shakspeare's might As the love from Petrarch's urn A quenchless lamp by which the heart The city that did refugo thee.” |