Part 34

Byron, I say, cannot but be a gainer by this, just as Wordsworth is a gainer by a like proceeding. I esteem Wordsworth’s poetry so highly, and the world, in my opinion, has done it such scant justice, that I could not rest satisfied until I had fulfilled, on Wordsworth’s behalf, a long-cherished desire;—had disengaged, to the best of my power, his good work from the inferior work joined with it, and had placed before the public the body of his good work by itself. To the poetry of Byron the world has ardently paid homage; full justice from his contemporaries, perhaps even more than justice, his torrent of poetry received. His poetry was admired, adored, “with all its imperfections on its head,”—in spite of negligence, in spite of diffuseness, in spite of repetitions, in spite of whatever faults it possessed. His name is still great and brilliant. Nevertheless the hour of irresistible vogue has passed away for him; even for Byron it could not but pass away. The time has come for him, as it comes for all poets, when he must take his real and permanent place, no longer depending upon the vogue of his own day and upon the enthusiasm of his contemporaries. Whatever we may think of him, we shall not be subjugated by him as they were; for, as he cannot be for us what he was for them, we cannot admire him so hotly and indiscriminately as they. His faults of negligence, of diffuseness, of repetition, his faults of whatever kind, we shall abundantly feel and unsparingly criticise; the mere interval of time between us and him makes disillusion of this kind inevitable. But how then will Byron stand, if we relieve him too, so far as we can, of the encumbrance of his inferior and weakest work, and if we bring before us his best and strongest work in one body together? That is the question which I, who can even remember the latter years of Byron’s vogue, and have myself felt the expiring wave of that mighty influence, but who certainly also regard him, and have long regarded him, without illusion, cannot but ask myself, cannot but seek to answer. The present volume is an attempt to provide adequate data for answering it.

Byron has been over-praised, no doubt. “Byron is one of our French superstitions,” says M. Edmond Scherer; but where has Byron not been a superstition? He pays now the penalty of this exaggerated worship. “Alone among the English poets his contemporaries, Byron,” said M. Taine, “_atteint à la cîme_,—gets to the top of the poetic mountain.” But the idol that M. Taine had thus adored M. Scherer is almost for burning. “In Byron,” he declares, “there is a remarkable inability ever to lift himself into the region of real poetic art,—art impersonal and disinterested,—at all. He has fecundity, eloquence, wit, but even these qualities themselves are confined within somewhat narrow limits. He has treated hardly any subject but one,—himself; now the man, in Byron, is of a nature even less sincere than the poet. This beautiful and blighted being is at bottom a coxcomb. He posed all his life long.”

Our poet could not well meet with more severe and unsympathetic criticism. However, the praise often given to Byron has been so exaggerated as to provoke, perhaps, a reaction in which he is unduly disparaged. “As various in composition as Shakespeare himself, Lord Byron has embraced,” says Sir Walter Scott, “every topic of human life, and sounded every string on the divine harp, from its slightest to its most powerful and heart-astounding tones.” It is not surprising that some one with a cool head should retaliate, on such provocation as this, by saying: “He has treated hardly any subject but one, _himself_.” “In the very grand and tremendous drama of _Cain_,” says Scott, “Lord Byron has certainly matched Milton on his own ground.” And Lord Byron has done all this, Scott adds “while managing his pen with the careless and negligent ease of a man of quality.” Alas, “managing his pen with the careless and negligent ease of a man of quality,” Byron wrote in his _Cain_—

“Souls that dare look the Omnipotent tyrant in His everlasting face, and tell him that His evil is not good;”

or he wrote—

“... And _thou_ would’st go on aspiring To the great double Mysteries! the _two Principles_!”[39]

One has only to repeat to oneself a line from _Paradise Lost_ in order to feel the difference.

Footnote 39:

The italics are in the original.

Sainte-Beuve, speaking of that exquisite master of language, the Italian poet Leopardi, remarks how often we see the alliance, singular though it may at first sight appear, of the poetical genius with the genius for scholarship and philology. Dante and Milton are instances which will occur to every one’s mind. Byron is so negligent in his poetical style, he is often, to say the truth, so slovenly, slipshod, and infelicitous, he is so little haunted by the true artist’s fine passion for the correct use and consummate management of words, that he may be described as having for this artistic gift the insensibility of the barbarian;—which is perhaps only another and a less flattering way of saying, with Scott, that he “manages his pen with the careless and negligent ease of a man of quality.” Just of a piece with the rhythm of

“Dare you await the event of a few minutes’ Deliberation?”

or of

“All shall be void— Destroy’d!”

is the diction of

‘Which now is painful to these eyes, Which had not seen the sun to rise;

or of

“... there let him lay!”

or of the famous passage beginning

“He who hath bent him o’er the dead;”

with those trailing relatives, that crying grammatical solecism, that inextricable anacolouthon! To class the work of the author of such things with the work of the authors of such verse as

“In the dark backward and abysm of time”—

or as

“Presenting Thebes, or Pelops’ line, Or the tale of Troy divine”—

is ridiculous. Shakespeare and Milton, with their secret of consummate felicity in diction and movement, are of another and an altogether higher order from Byron, nay, for that matter, from Wordsworth also; from the author of such verse as

“Sol hath dropt into his harbour”—

or (if Mr. Ruskin pleases) as

“Parching summer hath no warrant”

as from the author of

“All shall be void— Destroy’d!”

With a poetical gift and a poetical performance of the very highest order, the slovenliness and tunelessness of much of Byron’s production, the pompousness and ponderousness of much of Wordsworth’s are incompatible. Let us admit this to the full.

Moreover, while we are hearkening to M. Scherer, and going along with him in his faultfinding, let us admit, too, that the man in Byron is in many respects as unsatisfactory as the poet. And, putting aside all direct moral criticism of him,—with which we need not concern ourselves here,—we shall find that he is unsatisfactory in the same way. Some of Byron’s most crying faults as a man,—his vulgarity, his affectation,—are really akin to the faults of commonness, of want of art, in his workmanship as a poet. The ideal nature for the poet and artist is that of the finely touched and finely gifted man, the εὐφυής of the Greeks; now, Byron’s nature was in substance not that of the εὐφυής at all, but rather, as I have said, of the barbarian. The want of fine perception which made it possible for him to formulate either the comparison between himself and Rousseau, or his reason for getting Lord Delawarr excused from a “licking” at Harrow, is exactly what made possible for him also his terrible dealings in, _An ye wool_; _I have redde thee_; _Sunburn me_; _Oons, and it is excellent well_. It is exactly, again, what made possible for him his precious dictum that Pope is a Greek temple, and a string of other criticisms of the like force; it is exactly, in fine, what deteriorated the quality of his poetic production. If we think of a good representative of that finely touched and exquisitely gifted nature which is the ideal nature for the poet and artist,—if we think of Raphael, for instance, who truly is εὐφυής just as Byron is not,—we shall bring into clearer light the connection in Byron between the faults of the man and the faults of the poet. With Raphael’s character Byron’s sins of vulgarity and false criticism would have been impossible, just as with Raphael’s art Byron’s sins of common and bad workmanship.

Yes, all this is true, but it is not the whole truth about Byron nevertheless; very far from it. The severe criticism of M. Scherer by no means gives us the whole truth about Byron, and we have not yet got it in what has been added to that criticism here. The negative part of the true criticism of him we perhaps have; the positive part, by far the more important, we have not. Byron’s admirers appeal eagerly to foreign testimonies in his favor. Some of these testimonies do not much move me; but one testimony there is among them which will always carry, with me at any rate, very great weight,—the testimony of Goethe. Goethe’s sayings about Byron were uttered, it must however be remembered, at the height of Byron’s vogue, when that puissant and splendid personality was exercising its full power of attraction. In Goethe’s own household there was an atmosphere of glowing Byron-worship; his daughter-in-law was a passionate admirer of Byron, nay, she enjoyed and prized his poetry, as did Tieck and so many others in Germany at that time, much above the poetry of Goethe himself. Instead of being irritated and rendered jealous by this, a nature like Goethe’s was inevitably led by it to heighten, not lower, the note of his praise. The Time-Spirit, or _Zeit-Geist_, he would himself have said, was working just then for Byron. This working of the _Zeit-Geist_ in his favor was an advantage added to Byron’s other advantages, an advantage of which he had a right to get the benefit. This is what Goethe would have thought and said to himself; and so he would have been led even to heighten somewhat his estimate of Byron, and to accentuate the emphasis of praise. Goethe speaking of Byron at that moment was not and could not be quite the same cool critic as Goethe speaking of Dante, or Molière, or Milton. This, I say, we ought to remember in reading Goethe’s judgments on Byron and his poetry. Still, if we are careful to bear this in mind, and if we quote Goethe’s praise correctly,—which is not always done by those who in this country quote it,—and if we add to it that great and due qualification added to it by Goethe himself,—which so far as I have seen has never yet been done by his quoters in this country at all,—then we shall have a judgment on Byron, which comes, I think, very near to the truth, and which may well command our adherence.

In his judicious and interesting Life of Byron, Professor Nichol quotes Goethe as saying that Byron “is undoubtedly to be regarded as the greatest genius of our century.” What Goethe did really say was “the greatest _talent_,” not “the greatest _genius_.” The difference is important, because, while talent gives the notion of power in a man’s performance, genius gives rather the notion of felicity and perfection in it; and this divine gift of consummate felicity by no means, as we have seen, belongs to Byron and to his poetry. Goethe said that Byron “must unquestionably be regarded as the greatest talent of the century.”[40] He said of him moreover: “The English may think of Byron what they please, but it is certain that they can point to no poet who is his like. He is different from all the rest, and in the main greater.” Here, again, Professor Nichol translates: “They can show no (living) poet who is to be compared to him;”—inserting the word _living_, I suppose, to prevent its being thought that Goethe would have ranked Byron, as a poet, above Shakespeare and Milton. But Goethe did not use, or, I think, mean to imply, any limitation such as is added by Professor Nichol. Goethe said simply, and he meant to say, “_no_ poet.” Only the words which follow[41] ought not, I think, to be rendered, “who is to be compared to him,” that is to say, “_who is his equal as a poet_.” They mean rather, “who may properly be compared with him,” “_who is his parallel_.” And when Goethe said that Byron was “in the main greater” than all the rest of the English poets, he was not so much thinking of the strict rank, as poetry, of Byron’s production; he was thinking of that wonderful personality of Byron which so enters into his poetry, and which Goethe called “a personality such, for its eminence, as has never been yet, and such as is not likely to come again.” He was thinking of that “daring, dash, and grandiosity,”[42] of Byron, which are indeed so splendid; and which were, so Goethe maintained, of a character to do good, because “everything great is formative,” and what is thus formative does us good.

Footnote 40:

“Der ohne Frage als das grösste Talent des Jahrhunderts anzusehen ist.”

Footnote 41:

“Der ihm zu vergleichen wäre.”

Footnote 42:

“Byron’s Kühnheit, Keckheit und Grandiosität, ist das nicht alles bildend?—Alles Grosse bildet, sobald wir es gewahr werden.”

The faults which went with this greatness, and which impaired Byron’s poetical work, Goethe saw very well. He saw the constant state of warfare and combat, the “negative and polemical working,” which makes Byron’s poetry a poetry in which we can so little find rest; he saw the _Hang zum Unbegrenzten_, the straining after the unlimited, which made it impossible for Byron to produce poetic wholes such as the _Tempest_ or _Lear_; he saw the _zu viel Empirie_, the promiscuous adoption of all the matter offered to the poet by life, just as it was offered, without thought or patience for the mysterious transmutation to be operated on this matter by poetic form. But in a sentence which I cannot, as I say, remember to have yet seen quoted in any English criticism of Byron, Goethe lays his finger on the cause of all these defects in Byron, and on his real source of weakness both as a man and as a poet. “The moment he reflects, he is a child,” says Goethe;—“_sobald er reflectirt ist er ein Kind_.”

Now if we take the two parts of Goethe’s criticism of Byron, the favorable and the unfavorable, and put them together, we shall have, I think, the truth. On the one hand, a splendid and puissant personality—a personality “in eminence such as has never been yet, and is not likely to come again”; of which the like, therefore, is not to be found among the poets of our nation, by which Byron “is different from all the rest, and in the main greater.” Byron is, moreover, “the greatest talent of our century.” On the other hand, this splendid personality and unmatched talent, this unique Byron, “is quite too much in the dark about himself;”[43] nay, “the moment he begins to reflect, he is a child.” There we have, I think, Byron complete; and in estimating him and ranking him we have to strike a balance between the gain which accrues to his poetry, as compared with the productions of other poets, from his superiority, and the loss which accrues to it from his defects.

Footnote 43:

“Gar zu dunkel über sich selbst.”

A balance of this kind has to be struck in the case of all poets except the few supreme masters in whom a profound criticism of life exhibits itself in indissoluble connection with the laws of poetic truth and beauty. I have seen it said that I allege poetry to have for its characteristic this: that it is a criticism of life; and that I make it to be thereby distinguished from prose, which is something else. So far from it, that when I first used this expression, _a criticism of life_, now many years ago, it was to literature in general that I applied it, and not to poetry in especial. “The end and aim of all literature,” I said, “is, if one considers it attentively, nothing but that: _a criticism of life_.” And so it surely is; the main end and aim of all our utterance, whether in prose or in verse, is surely a criticism of life. We are not brought much on our way, I admit, towards an adequate definition of poetry as distinguished from prose by that truth; still a truth it is, and poetry can never prosper if it is forgotten. In poetry, however, the criticism of life has to be made conformably to the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty. Truth and seriousness of substance and matter, felicity and perfection of diction and manner, as these are exhibited in the best poets, are what constitute a criticism of life made in conformity with the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty; and it is by knowing and feeling the work of those poets, that we learn to recognize the fulfilment and non-fulfilment of such conditions.

The moment, however, that we leave the small band of the very best poets, the true classics, and deal with poets of the next rank, we shall find that perfect truth and seriousness of matter, in close alliance with perfect truth and felicity of manner, is the rule no longer. We have now to take what we can get, to forego something here, to admit compensation for it there; to strike a balance, and to see how our poets stand in respect to one another when that balance has been struck. Let us observe how this is so.

We will take three poets, among the most considerable of our century: Leopardi, Byron, Wordsworth. Giacomo Leopardi was ten years younger than Byron, and he died thirteen years after him; both of them, therefore, died young—Byron at the age of thirty-six, Leopardi at the age of thirty-nine. Both of them were of noble birth, both of them suffered from physical defect, both of them were in revolt against the established facts and beliefs of their age; but here the likeness between them ends. The stricken poet of Recanati had no country, for an Italy in his day did not exist; he had no audience, no celebrity. The volume of his poems, published in the very year of Byron’s death, hardly sold, I suppose, its tens, while the volumes of Byron’s poetry were selling their tens of thousands. And yet Leopardi has the very qualities which we have found wanting to Byron; he has the sense for form and style, the passion for just expression, the sure and firm touch of the true artist. Nay, more, he has a grave fulness of knowledge, an insight into the real bearings of the questions which as a sceptical poet he raises, a power of seizing the real point, a lucidity, with which the author of _Cain_ has nothing to compare. I can hardly imagine Leopardi reading the

“... And _thou_ would’st go on aspiring To the great double Mysteries! the _two Principles_!”

or following Byron in his theological controversy with Dr. Kennedy, without having his features overspread by a calm and fine smile, and remarking of his brilliant contemporary, as Goethe did, that “the moment he begins to reflect, he is a child.” But indeed whoever wishes to feel the full superiority of Leopardi over Byron in philosophic thought, and in the expression of it, has only to read one paragraph of one poem, the paragraph of _La Ginestra_, beginning

“Sovente in queste piagge,”

and ending

“Non so se il riso o la pietà prevale.”

In like manner, Leopardi is at many points the poetic superior of Wordsworth too. He has a far wider culture than Wordsworth, more mental lucidity, more freedom from illusions as to the real character of the established fact and of reigning conventions; above all, this Italian, with his pure and sure touch, with his fineness of perception, is far more of the artist. Such a piece of pompous dulness as

“O for the coming of that glorious time,”

and all the rest of it, or such lumbering verse as Mr. Ruskin’s enemy,

“Parching summer hath no warrant”—

would have been as impossible to Leopardi as to Dante. Where, then, is Wordsworth’s superiority? for the worth of what he has given us in poetry I hold to be greater, on the whole, than the worth of what Leopardi has given us. It is in Wordsworth’s sound and profound sense

“Of joy in widest commonalty spread;”

whereas Leopardi remains with his thoughts ever fixed upon the _essenza insanabile_, upon the _acerbo, indegno mistero delle cose_. It is in the power with which Wordsworth feels the resources of joy offered to us in nature, offered to us in the primary human affections and duties, and in the power with which, in his moments of inspiration, he renders this joy, and makes us, too, feel it; a force greater than himself seeming to lift him and to prompt his tongue, so that he speaks in a style far above any style of which he has the constant command, and with a truth far beyond any philosophic truth of which he has the conscious and assured possession. Neither Leopardi nor Wordsworth are of the same order with the great poets who made such verse as

Τλητὸν γὰρ Moῖραι θυμὸν θέσαν ὰνθρώποισιν·

or as

“In la sua volontade e nostra pace;”

or as

“... Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither; Ripeness is all.”

But as compared with Leopardi, Wordsworth, though at many points less lucid, though far less a master of style, far less of an artist, gains so much by his criticism of life being, in certain matters of profound importance, healthful and true, whereas Leopardi’s pessimism is not, that the value of Wordsworth’s poetry, on the whole, stands higher for us than that of Leopardi’s, as it stands higher for us, I think, than that of any modern poetry except Goethe’s.

Byron’s poetic value is also greater, on the whole, than Leopardi’s; and his superiority turns in the same way upon the surpassing worth of something which he had and was, after all deduction has been made for his shortcomings. We talk of Byron’s _personality_, “a personality in eminence such as has never been yet, and is not likely to come again;” and we say that by this personality Byron is “different from all the rest of English poets, and in the main greater.” But can we not be a little more circumstantial, and name that in which the wonderful power of this personality consisted? We can; with the instinct of a poet Mr. Swinburne has seized upon it and named it for us. The power of Byron’s personality lies in “the splendid and imperishable excellence which covers all his offences and outweighs all his defects: _the excellence of sincerity and strength_.”