The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1900-05-24

1t was not, indeed. till the blow fell
upon him which broke off his relations
with a society that first pampered and
then pelted him, that his genuine ma
ture appeared. There is hardly hand
full of sincere verses in his work be-
fore the Domestic Pieces of 1916 and
we have only to compare the latter with
the earlier cantOs of "Childe Harold"
to see what an immense gain has been
made by discaTding the STACEY figure
OF he nominal hero and allowing the
poet to speak for himself From this
time on his imperishable excellence of
sincerity revealed itself more and more
clearly. Byron was sincere in his love
for nature. especially in her wilder and
stOrmier aspects; he was sincere in his
love for liberty, and even more sin
cere in his hatred of the oppression in
the name of order and religion, which
was then all-pOwerful III Europe And
he hated with a fiery personal hatred
the sham and can't that spread a thin
veneer of morality over the deep cor
ruptiOn Of English society. And the
last cantOs of "Childe Harold" and
Manfred" the Prisoner of ChillOn"
and the Vision of Judgment and
Don Juan" are everlasting memorials
Of the sincerity of his lore and Of his
hatred
Byron's strength was intermittent,
but II was none the less real. He was
incapable of prolonged or steady effort,
only too apt TO sink into a cynical pes
simism, but always capable Of rally
ing to noble action. Perhaps the source
of his weakness and his strength alike
is found in that superb egotism-Titan-
ism, Arnold calls it-whch led him to
nil u oil inc Sc
not a little man nor a weak one who
can play the part of Manfred and utter
without becoming ridiculous such a
burst as the famous apostrophe-
'oh, Rome! my country: city of the
soult''
To Byron the ruins of his own life
We're quite as much d matter for con-
Germ as the ruins of the Eternal city,
and SO great is the power of his ex-
preston that as We read we share BIS
conviction.
And the strength of Byron express IS
itself in the simplest passions and with
the greatest simplicity and directness
of utterance. There is nothing ideal
or super-subtle in the work of this
great earth born Titan, nothing of the
peculiar 'heightening effect of style"
in his verse. All the more on this ac-
count do his OutbUrsts seem to come
from and speak to the heart. The cry
of Manfred
"AstaTtei my beloved, speak to me-"
the lines which served as a motto and
an inspiration for one of Shelley's no.
bIest odes,
yet. Freedom, yet, thy banner torn
Streams like a thunder storm against
the wind
the summons to Greece to rise for lib
erty and the call to his own heart to
shake off its unworthy shackles and
seek an honorable end--au these move
US with the grand force of an utter
ance of nature.
Since his death Byrons fame has
been greater upon the continent than
in England. This is partly because his
eXcellencies are universal, and his de-
fects in dictiOn and meter such as only
native would detect. But there is
more potent cause than this. Byron is
identified with the cause of revolution
and the struggle for national liberty
At the darkest hour Of the cause he
flung his splendid personality into the
scales, and it was worth an army of
lesser men. He was deep in the coun-
ellis of the revOlutionists in Italy; he
gave his life for the liberation of
Greece. The poets of revolution for
fifty years to cOme-Leopardi, Heine
Pushhn, HugO-loolIed up to him as
their master Byron is in no sense one
of the peculiar giories of English lit
erature. he is in a very real sense one
OF the makers OF TIE modern world.
j h, R~u75