The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1901-12-17
UNFAyORABLE AND FAVORABLE
ESTIMATES OF BYRON.


we would be glad to discuss Byron's
genius and art with care n elabora-
ton. To treat Of him in the least salts
factorily you must lave ten or twelve
pages in a magazine. So great a poet
can not be reasonably considered in less
space. 1t was mentioned in last Sum-
days Messenger h a some contempor-
airy critics assailed and discredited him,
and that in the last quarter Of a GEN.
fury it has been quite the vogue to play
havoc with his reputation both as a
man and a poet. The way has been to
say all of vile things about him
personally and then to damn him as an
when so capable a critic and so excel
lent a writer as Rev. DR.. Henry Van
Dyke writes-"I have lived too long with
Byron. The sun has e~xtinguished the
FREELY" And that is said of a poet
who has received the praise and admi-
ration of as great men of genius as have
lived in the nineteenth century. A
"fre-fy" indeed! His works show more
positive and higher genius than can be
found in all of the writings of the six
foremost verse writer's in New England.
What are they? This Is the deprecia-
ton Of one who fully appreciates Ten
nyson and has written a very delight
full volume upon him md who aspireS
TO be a writer of poetry himself. An
other northern critic of excellent parts
is Professor Woodberry,o of the Univer-
sity of New York, we believe. He is one
Of the best American critics, and is
ordinarily just Inc penetrating. But
he undertakes Byron as he showed in
his paper on the poets birthday centen-
NAL in 1883. He admits that he was a
poet. but says men now pass him by.
He adds that no one can love him. That
must refer to the man and not to his
greatest and noblest and sweetest po-
ems. But what nay have been partly
true in 1888, is not true in 1901. We
mentioned the two splendid editions Of
his works appearing in his native Eng
and now. Then there are dozens of
small editions of his works issued by
various book publishers. Many critics,
he 1t also mentioned, have lately prais-
ed him as his great and singular merits
so richly deserve. Among them the
fine critic Of The New York Tribune
quoted from in last Sundays article.
There is indeed something Of a Byron re-
vival. He was verify a great genius and
no dispraise can alter that fact. Byron
lived a bad. unhappy life, and so have
other poets of fame. Poetry is not
to be sanely appraised according to h
moral standing of the writer. Goethe
n a dozen other poets of renown did
not live sanity or fairly moral lives,
and yet the world reads their works
and accepts them as genuine. Wood
berry is constrained to say that Byron
wrote poems that confer Immortality"
His best poetry-and there is much OF
this class-abounds in passages of ex-
of imperishable substance. There are
many passages of ARE power. of noble
e%loquence. Of genuine pathos. of ex-
Quisite beauty and lustre.
When Byron died in Greece in 1924.
the greatest creative genius of Great
Britain in the last century. Sir Walter
Scott. IA in a brief article he publish
ed that cit seemed almost as il the sun
in heaven had been exiting shed" But,
presto. change. Van Dyke has discover
ed that it was but a freely" Lord
Macaulay, the great historian, critic, es-
sayist, builder Of admirable speeches.
and a writer of poetry Of excellence, but
not of the higher order. said that Byron
was "the most celebrated "a in Eu-
rope" and that too while Goethe, end
Coleridge and Wordsworth, were living.
He said also that "a man of Byron's
eminence would not come again." Has
that been set aside as yet? He ven
thought Byron "a greater man than
Milton-vast and widely varied" But
he was ga FREELY and now men pass
him by" quoth the two (northern critics
men like Stendhal, Sainte-Beuve
ORANGES greatest critic, as all literary
men know,) Castelar,. the eloquent and
unrivalled Spanish orator OF twenty
years ago-al these and others (includ-
ing as we hav said. Germany's greatest