The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-07-26
STUDY OF A GREAT POET
SECOND PAPER ON LORD BYRON
DIR. Kingsbury Byrons Letters. His Intense Per-
sonality, UnrivaIled Vitality, Homeric
Vgor, Marvellous Genius,

~
excellence. and neither the last two or
three years have been very much lauded
in England. after so long a silence or
such an age of depreciation. Two new
and elaborate editions of Byron's entire
works, including all of his prose, have
been issued in England in some eight or
ten volumes, each fully and carefully edit
ed, and the prose has made a decided I'M
preston upon the English mind. l have
seen praise of the highest kind bestowed
upon the letters and journal by writers
Of ability and reputation. In Moores Life
of Byron" read half century since by
me, there are many letters from the
great poet that are admirable specimens
of that kind of writing. l have met with
nothing better in the letters of Southey,
Cowper, Horace Walpole, or any of the
more famous epistoary writers in our
tongue. You must go TO the Continent
OF Europe, II you would find anything
finer, richer, of more consummate effects.
He must have been indeed a very great
man to have written so much in verse
and prose, and to have done 1t SO we'll
with such mastery and with such super
latlve richness and vlvldness. In defam-
ing Byron as a poet, and denying him the
great qualities of high genius, his per-
sCnal character has been assailed with
intense sverity. 1t must be acknowledged
with candor that his life was sadly de-
bauched, and that he not only shortened
it by his vicious and protracted satur-
nalias of wickedness and dissipation.
but he undermined his poetical powers
also. So, at any rate, Taine thinks, and
points IN. evidence to the last part of his
greatest work, Don Juan But, how
ever degrading his life in Europe, it Is
not believed by Tom Moore, Hobhouse
and bis other intimate friends, that he
was really a "bad-hearted man" His
greatest contemporary genius. Sir Walter
Scott. described him las being a man of
real goodness of heart, and the kindest
and best feelings, miserably thrown away
by his foolish contempt OF public opinion"
Lockhart's Life of Scott, volume wi
1923 pages. Sir Walter was SO noble, gra-
cious, unselfish, without tinge or faint
o. jealousy of any rival, that we may well
trust his opinion of the author who prac-
tIcally at the time superseded him in
holding the ear of the world as a poet
when Byron began to send forth in con-
tinual streams his marvellous poems.
Byron's own heart became tempestuous,
"a whirling gulf of phantasy and
flame to quote from himself He was
good hater enough he had great powers
OF sarcasm, he was master of an eagle
scream Of defiance, and produced the
highest expressions of contempt objur-
cation, onslaught and lnfuriated dislike
that belong to English literature. The
revilment and hootings he received from
home but aroused his anger, and set
in furious motion his flood of tempestu-
GUS ridicule and avalanches of sarcasm
and disgust.
l referred to the marvellous power and
popularity he had in Europe. To the read
ers of this time this fact is not well
know /. 1t is certainly true that his in
tense personality, his unrivalled vitality,
his Homeric vigor his marvellous genius
had affected European writer's of parts as
no other modern had affected them Mr.
Henley sees this with his observant, ap-
prehensive eye, and writes that Byron's
voice and genius had been recognized as
the most human and the least insular
raised on English ground since Shakes
peare's." He says: 'In Russia he had
created Pushkin and LermontoH in
Germany he had awakened Heine, inspired
Schumann, and been saluted as an equal
by the poet of Faust (Goethe) himself;
In Spain he had a share IN moulding the
noisy and unequal talent of Espronceda:
IN Italy he had helped to develop and 10
shape the melancholy and daring genius
of Leopardi and in France he had been
one of the presiding forces of a great
aesthetic revolution. To the men of 1880,
he was a special and peculiar hero" 1t
appears thai most of the greater writer's
OF France shared in the Byronic taste and
inf1uenee-Hugo, Musset Berlioz, Della
croix, and possibly others, were fascinated,
and injected with the Byronic enthusiasm
and life and strength His great influ-
ence is recognized by Taine and Mazzlnl
The latter cauterized the English for their
neglect of their great poet, and wrote OF
their 'scandalous forgetfulness of the i'm
mense work done by him in giving
European role . to English litera-
ture and awakening all over the Cont
nent so much appreciation and sympathy
for England" / quote from Henley. 1t
is really curious that Swinburne, who so
scorned and derided Byron. should have
admitted later that in him after all there
is Enthusiastically a Splendid and imperish-
able excellence of sincerity and strength"
Matthew Arnold, superior poet and a
critic of the highest rank in English lit
terature, possibly only second to Sainte
Reauve in his day, the unrivaled French
critic, was a steadfast, most earnest ad-
mirer of Wordsworth. After Dantes,
Shakespeare, Moliere, Milton and Goethe
Arnold declared he did not know where
else, among the moderns we are to find
his superiors." Without stopping to ex-
press wonder at the great company, 1.-The
larger and more splendid luminaries in
the poetical heaven than Wordsworth,
with which the French playwright,
Moliere is associated, l mention here that
Arnold actually admitted that Byron
was the equal of Wordsworth, and assert
ed of ''this glorious pair" and please mark
it that when the year 1900 is turned
and the ((English) nation comes to- re-
count her poetic glories in the century
which had just then ended" the first
names with her will be these-the great
names of William Wordsworth and George
Gordon Byron.
Reviewing "Childe Harolds Pilgrim
IL To- n flv C,,n