The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-03-20

dandy" he despised man whose literary
vice of misanthropy was lees odiously
manifest than his own, and whose literary
virtues included many of splendid and en-
during quality.
Emerson's criticism that Byron had
nothing to say but said it magnifcently,
is more kindly and just than that of Car
LYLE and yet it is but half truth, for
dropping all the misanthropic and vicious
poetic utterances of Byron, as descriptive
poet he has left behind him mass of most
exquisitely beautiful work which is sure
to keep him in the first rank of English
poets so long as England has literature.
The enduring test of the poet is his sue
cess in endowing his own and succeeding
generations with fresh modes of express
sion. Shakespeare surpasses all poets in
this respect, Milton comes next, and
after Milton, Byron and Coleridge
are the most fertile. Emerson's test of po-
etry is not a true one; that is it is not COM
plete test, since he finds fault with Byron's
art because it did not seem instinct with
any definite moral purpose. This standard
would make Wordsworth greater poet
than Shakespeare, for Wordsworth had
something to say and was always didactic,
but this fact does not make him greater
poet than Byron or Coleridge, who sang,
not because they thought it was right; be-
cause it was a duty, but because they
must sing, and for this reason, and chiefly
for this reason, their songs to the common
air continue to make their way.
Walter Scott never failed to recognize
Byron and Burns as standing for far
higher type of poetic genius than was
represented by Wordsworth or himself.
That greatest of modern painters. Turner,
had no more veracity in his art than
Byron, and far less moral purpose or
conscience in his private life and conduct,
for he was a miser, churlish, licentious,
drunken, even to periodical indulgence in
the most degrading debauchery. He was
a great artist, but he had no more
yeraeity in his art than he had moral
purpose in his life, and so Byron
was great poet, despite the fact
that he often painted morbid subjects
and that there was no more deliberate
moral purpose in the expression of his art
than there was in the expression of his
life. And yet, with all his imperfections,
he is a nobler more attractive literary :
artist than Carlyle, for Carlyle hoped and
prayed for return to 1.-THE brutal, barren
field OF absolutism" while Byron, often
false to himself was never false to human
ity or freedom in deed or thought. He be-
lieved sincerely in the sanctity of that
eternal spirit of the chainless mind" he
celebrated with noble verse. The real
foundation of the hate of church and
court for Byron was far less because of
his excuses than it was because of his
democratic and revolutionary political
opinions and his contempt for
state and church. Byron was full
of bad blood, full of bad pas
sions, full of morbid but powerful
genius, streaked with moral insanity. He
became embittered and unsettled by trials
that ennoble many men, but seem to make
social pirates and .desperadoes of other
natures. He illustrated how independent
the purely intellectual side of great genius
seems to be of its capacity for moral &C
ton as separated from purely moral per-
ception. Byron, viewed through the
majestic lines of his Ocean," of MAN
fred" and certain descriptive passages in
"Childe Harold" is a poetic genius
of such splendid quality that no
names save those of Shakespeare and
Milton stand above his in the roll of great
poets. Byron, viewed as man, is a
melancholy spectacle, wasting his hours
OF recreation with frivolous women and
feeding the lamp of his genius so con-
stantly with gin and water that ii burned
with a lurid Santsnic flame and finally
went out with sputter like splendid
rocket bursting in the sky and raining
down its brilliant fires into the foul waters
OF sickly marsh.
man of mighty genius for verse, he
was in private life at the last wretched
figure sucking gin and water at Venice,
one day writing noble stanzas, like THE
Isles of Greece" and the next penning
verses instinct with ribald jests and i'm
moral insinuations.