The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1881-03-17
Matthew Arnold on Byron.
[Macmillan's Magazine. j


Now if we take the two parts of Goethe's
criticism of Byron, the favorable and the un-
favorable. and put them together, we shall
have, 1 think, the truth. On the one hand
splendid and puissant personality, a personality
"in eminence such as has never been yet, and
is not likely to come again." of which the like,
therefore, is not to be found among the poets
of our nation, by which Byron sis different
from all the rest and, in the main, greater"
Bvrou is, moreover, ''the greatest talent of our
century" On the other hand, this splendid
personality and unmatched talent, this unique
Byron, sis quite too much in the dark about
himself" nay, 'the moment he begins to re-
fleet he is child" There we have, think,
Byron complete. In spite of his pro-
digious vogue, Byron has never yet, perhaps,
had the serious admiration which he deserves.
Society read him and talked about him, as it
reads and talks about "Endymion' to-day; and
with the same sort of result 1t looked in By
ron's glass as it looks in Lord Beaconsfeld's,
and sees, or fancies that it sees, its own face
there; and then it goes its way, and straight
way forgets what manner of man it saw. Even
of his passionate admirers, how many never
got beyond the theatrical Byron, from whom
they caught the fashion of deranging their
hair, or of knotting their eck-handkerchief,
or of leaving their shirt collar unbuttoned;
how few profoundly felt his vital, influence the
the influence of his splendid and imperishable
excellence of sincerity and strength
His own aristocratic class, whose cynical
make-believe drove him to fury; the great
middle-class, on whose impregnable Philistin-
ism he shattered himself to pieces,-how little
have either of these felt Byron's vital infiu-
ence! As the inevitable breakup of the old
order comes, as the English middle-class slowly
awakens from its intellectual sleep of two CEN
turies, as our actual present world, to which
this sleep has condemned us, shows itself more
clearly,-our world of an aristocracy material
lied and null, middle-class purblind and hid
eous, lower CLASSY 3crude and brntal,-we
shall turn our eyes again, and to more purpose,
upon this passionate and dauntless soldier of
forlorn hope, who, Ignorant of the future and
unconsoled by its promises, nevertheless waged
against the conservation of the old impossible
world so fiery battle; waged it till he fell
waged it with such splendid and imperishable
excellence of sincerity and strength.
Wordsworth's value is of another kind.
Wordsworth has an insight into permanent
sources of Joy and consolation for mankind
which Byron has not; his poetry gives us more
which we may rest upon than Byron's, more
which we can rest upon now, and which men
may rest upon always. 1 place his poetry,
therefore, above Byrons on the whole, al
though in some points he was greatly Byron's
inferior. But these two, Wordsworth and By
ron, stand, it seems to me, first and pre-emi-
nent in actual performance, a glorious pair,
among the English poets of this century.
Keats had, probably, indeed, more consum.
mate poetic gift than either of them; but he
died having produced too little and being as
yet too immature to rival them. I for my
part can never even think of equalling with
them any other of their contemporaries-eith-
er Coleridge, poet and philosopher wrecked in
mist of opium, or Shelley, beautiful and in
effectual angel beating in the void his lumi-
nous wings in vain. Wordsworth and Byron
stand out by themselves. When the year 1900
is turned, and our nation comes to recount her
poetic glories in that century which has then
Just ended, the first names with her will be
these.