The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1875-12-22
CAsTRLAR'S LIFE OF BYRON.

TRANSLATION OF THE WORK.
AN ELABORATE REVIEW OF THE BOOK AS
TRANSLATED BY MRS. ARTHUR ARNOLD
AND REPUBLISHED IN LoNDoN-MORE
ABOUT THE MAID OF ATHENS.
The New York World has the following
review of the translation of Castelar's Lille
OF Byron: Here at last is the long heraIded
Csstelar's "Life of Byron" rendered into
English by q competent hand. To those
who have been expecting new revelations
concerning the world famous poet, his BIZ
ography, his suppressed memoirs or his
e.Work, this sketchy but brilliant volume
VIII bring only disappointment. But to
those who relish brilliant generalization,
eloquent and metaphorical touches and the
nlgn poetic treatment of a poetic theme
CastelSr's brief DOCK will be welcome, how
ever great misnomer it may be TO style il
biography. Out OF 346 pages
S OF the London edition less than
nall, or only l79 pages, are Occu-
pied with Lord Byron. The other materials,
ntly demonstrated ''sketches'-in the title
page, are brilliant transformations of four
eminent Frenchmen and one Italian trans
planted 20 Frsnce-Victor Hugo, Alexander
Dumas, Emile Girardin, Adolphe Theirs
and Daniel MANN. Passing over these es-
forms, let us come TO what CASTELAR, mas TO
say of Byron. His book is prefaced by
gTandiloquent introduction by Jose X. Leal,
Of Havana, which Mrs. Arnold has thought
proper to render from the original edition,
but which might better have been left out.
Castelar's preliminary sketch of the stormy
BIRTH, INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD OF BYRON
seizes the main points of his strange BIZ
ogrsphy and brings the picture before the
readers eye with great force of expression.
Witness the following: This stormy fire.
side; the rebellious BIRTH this spendthrift
father; this assassin uncle; this mother en-
FILTERED by disappointment, the sweetness
of whose sex had been pierced by the thorns
of her sorrow; this blood, boiling and agi-
tated like the troubled seas over which wan
dered the Normans; this cradle, rocked by
despair ana watered by tears; this decay OF
an illustrious line, which threatened ex-
tinction in its lost representative; this acct
dental lameness, 10 which the cruel shaft of
ridicule made him keenly sensitive; all
these influences, acting on a naturally
sensitive nature, inspired the eternal elegy
embodied In his verses, like the continu-
alton of the first bitter cry of his existence.
CASTELAR, himself, in his second chapter,
speaks modestly of the task he has under
taken, and claims no fuIlflment in it of
what the world has long looked for with
mpatience-namely, a work on the life of
the poet which shall be, so To speak, monu-
mental, ga book which would throw new
and greater light on this great mind, and
be for il almost a resurrection" Such q |
book, he thinks, had she been worthy, |
might have been written by the Countess |
Guicciol, that beautiful creature who so |
Byron in the last few years OF his |
existence, and whom he depicts in the fol- |
lowing language: And, indeed, that wo- |
man, who met the poet half way in his |
career, when almost
MADDENED BY WILD PASSIONS
and desperation, when faith and life were
nearly extinguished; she who smiled upon |
him like the moon between the clouds of
the tempest and soothed him with her tears,
as the gentle rain calms the stormy ocean, |
and inspired him with tender verses, whose |
sweetness and pathos are equalled by their |
grandeur; she who melted him to DEATH |
less actions, such as the struggle tor the |
OF the Greeks, the memory OF
whose deeds shall be cherished among the |
heroisms and the noblest sacrifices of his
tory; that woman is one of these sublime
Muses. who pass over the world sing
ing like a flock OF white mystic birds,
over its sorrows and terrors. After this
somewhat extravaganza compliment to the
countess, CASTELAR, contrasts her with
was of so much higher and finer quality
than that of Guiccioli for Byron. He finds
fault with the fair countess for having sur
vived the poet. Says he: "The countess
wronged her first husband for the sake of
Byron. Such fault could have but one
excuse-the eternity of her love. How did
the Countess Guiccioh wear her perpetual
mourning? Calling herself the Marquis de
Boissy, after the death of her husband, she
wrote an interminable book upon Byron,
wearisome apology, instead OF
the lyric poem which should
RMANATE FROM AN ENAMoRED HEART"
The few personal and felicitous touches
which are found in Castelar's book are
mingled with mass of philosophical
reflections which constantly interrupt the
narrative. CASTELAR,, as a literary artist,
belongs essentially to the class OF orators.
Rhetoric, not logic, is his forte, and long
episodes, brilliant but beside the subject,
continually divert the reader from his
.heme, which he has styled "The Life OF
Lord Byron" He DIVORCES from an |
account of Byron's boyhood into a long |
analysis of English society and
that of France and the south Of Europe. His
narrative of Byron's early poetic trials and
,ouabbles with Edinburgh reviewers is sup
piemented by long eulogy OF the poetic
genius in general. Byron in Venice prompts
4 personal Renaissance of the Grand Canal
and an apostrophe of Edgar Quinet's great