The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1880-06-26
LONDON LETTER.
From our regular Corrrsponaent. )

LONDON, May 25th, 1880.
The Byron statue in Hamilton gardens was
unveiled yesterday at one o'clock by Lord
lloushton, in the presence of small com
pany.
Five years have elapsed since, at meeting
of the enthusiastic promoters of memorial tc
Lord Byron, which meeting was held at WI
hiss Rooms, under the presidency of Lord Bea
Iconsfeld, IA stanza from the fourth canto OF
Chllde Harold's Pilgrimage" was quoted
with telling force by one speaker. Remind
ing his appreciative learners that the famous
poet to whose honor the meeting in question
had been convened was not without q con
seriousness of his own assured Immortality
Lord Rosslyn repeated the lines:
But have lived and have not lived in vain;
My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,
And my fame perish cen in conquerng pain
But there is that within me which shall tire
Fortune and Time, and breathe when expire
Something unearthly, which they deem not OF,
Like the remembered tone of mute Tyre,
Shall on their soften'd spirits sink, and move
In hearts all rocky now the late remorse OF love
As Lord Byron penned these lines from the
heart of the Eternal City, was there prophetic
toretaste in his mind that seven years after
his death, the greatest of English reviewers
would speak of him in his old enemy the
" Edinburgh Review" in the following terms
AT twenty-iour Lord Byron found himself on
the highest pinnacle of literary fame, with
Scott, Moore, Wordsworth, Southey, and a
crowd of other distinguished writers beneath
his feet. There is scarcely an instance in his
tory of so sudden rise to so dizzy an emf.
hence. From 1881, when Lord Macaulay's re.
view appeared in print, until the present hour
tie fame of the poet-whose statue will, from
its pedestal in Hamilton gardens this morning
salute the gay and fashionable throng of visi
tors to Hyde Park-has suffered neither abate
ment nor decline. Despite the lnsurrection
which has now and again burst forth against
the mysterious, unhappy Laralike heroes
of Lord Byron's pen, the reaction Of public
opinion, not only within these islands, but
wherever the English tongue is spoken and
especially IN the United States, has set 1.-The
most celebrated Englshman of the nineteenth
century" upon Il summit, where, If not "prt.
mas j"te, parcS," he is overtopped by none.
To conceive fitting statue for so minded
an author was no light task. The exlgencies
of sculpture forbid the expression of violent
action, and beckoned away by the necessities
of his art from the attempt to portray Byron
as he often painted himself
With swimmers stroke
Flnging the pillows back from his drench'd hair,
And laughing from his lip the audacious brine
Which kissed it like wine cup
Mr. r. d. Belt has represented the poet sitting
in deep rcpose, and, with the manuscript of
Childe Harold" upon his knee, contemplate
ing from the rock which supports his colossal
figure the ocean which was his delight At
hs feet crouches the Newfoundland dog Boat
swain, whose epitaph his noble master could
not write without a fling at his human breth-
rem and sisters for their inferior fidelity and
consistency. The yachting dress in which the
figure is clothed suggests the element upon
which the poets eyes are bent, and the entire
absence of alectation IN his mem and attitude
harmonizes with the well.knOwn antipathy to
the theatrical attitudes and pretentious ways.
1t Will, think, be the general opinion that IN
this colossal sitting figure Mr.. Belt has sur
passed his previous handiwork