The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-02-11
AN AMERICAN VIEW OF LORD
 BYRON.
Exchange.

of his age, who holds the place in
 modern English letters that Saint
 Beuve did in the recent literature of
 France, had pronounced Byron "only
 second to Wordsworth among the
 poets of the Georgian era" contrib
 utor to the Nation uttered himself as
 follows:
 "The time has gone by for praising
 or condemning Byron; the problem
 is now to understand him, and the
 first step towards understanding him
 IS to know all the political and social
 movements of Europe for twenty
 years. Which one of us has such
 knowledge? Certainly not Matthew
 Arnold, who speaks of Byron as if he
 were mere writer of English verse.
 like Wordsworth, and has yet to learn
 the patent fact that Byron was, and
 in a measure still is, the mouthpiece
 of revolutionary Europe"
 This IS putting the case strongly,
 but correctly. Byron, the romantic
 pessimist, fades in significance to the
 modern mind before Byron the polit-
 ical enthusiast. And Matthew Ar
 mold utterly fails to note this. For
 when he characterizes Byron as the "dauntless soldier of forlorn hope. who, ignorant of the future, and un- consoled by it's promises, nevertheless
 battles against the conservatism of the old impossible world, battles with such splendid and imperishable excel fence of sincerity and strength, pit is Swinburne's praise that the critic is quoting here; for it is here, and hardly anywhere else, that Swim burne gives Byron any eulogy. "On the day." he says, "when it shall be- come accepted as canon of criticism that the political work and the po- litical opinions of poet are to weigh nothing in the balance which sus- pends his reputation, on that day the best part of Byron will fly up and vanish into air." Wordsworth. Southey, and Coleridge had all sung the dawn of liberty in the French rev olution, and the greatest of these three = Wordsworth = had never ceased during the Naooleonic usurpations to sound the trumpet tones of freedom. But he grew at length strangely silent and apathetic, as Shelly had indig- nantly observed, and it was left for a younger race of poets, participants in that new revolutionary wave that passed over Europe after 1915. Shell ley spoke out loud and bold, to find an echo only ill few kindred hearts. This rare and subtitle spirit could not hope to reach the general ear. Byron spoke, and all Europe listened. The influence of Byron's political verse can be distinctly traced as it fired the rev. spirits of Italy's greatest modern bard, Leopardi, in his noble poem "All Italia," saturated as it is with all the passion of ardent and hopeless patriotism, owes a great deal to his English contemporary. In France whole school-the romantic and revolutionary poets, the last of whom was the late Victor Hugo,- made Byron their prototype and prophet. In Germany the great Gethe acknowledged Byron's power, his daring, dash, and grandiosity :" while Heinrich Muller, Max Muller's father, sang his requiem in the "Lays of Greece"
 No doubt Byron's personal partic- ipation in the revolutionary move ments of Italy and Greece greatly en- hanced his political influence, as ex- ample unreservedly seconding the power of verse. Byron, after the failure of the Neapolitans, concluded that the work of Italy's redemption had been retarded perhaps for five hundred years,-yet in less than half a century the miracle was accom- plished. His faith in this ultimate future never failed him. But he asked, "Who is to direct them? No matter; out of such times heroes sprang. Difficulties are the hotbeds of high spirits, and freedom the mother of the few virtues incident to human nature." The heroes that Byron looked for were indeed in the world then. The future king of Italy was babe one year old; Cavour, ,Mazzini and Garibaldi were, in 1921, boys of eleven, twelve and fourteen years, all of their destiny. Nichol, in his life of Byron, says: "The en- couragement and countenance of the English poet and peer helped to keep alive the smoulderiDg fire that Mag zini famed into flame, till Cavour turned it to practical purpose, and the dreams of the ideslists of 1920 were finally realized" And to Greece, to which Byron had dedicated so much noble poetry, to this "land of lost gods and godlike men," this sol- dier of forlorn hopes was to give, as it proved, all that was left him of life and song.
 The idol of our grandfathers, says Swinburne, became simply the clever men of our fathers. How is it with this wise generation? Will it return