Closely a.s.sociated with Wordsworth and Coleridge is Robert Southey; and the three, on account of their residence in the northern lake district, were referred to contemptuously as the "Lakers" by the Scottish magazine reviewers. Southey holds his place in this group more by personal a.s.sociation than by his literary gifts. He was born at Bristol, in 1774; studied at Westminster School, and at Oxford, where he found himself in perpetual conflict with the authorities on account of his independent views. He finally left the university and joined Coleridge in his scheme of a Pantisocracy. For more than fifty years he labored steadily at literature, refusing to consider any other occupation. He considered himself seriously as one of the greatest writers of the day, and a reading of his ballads--which connected him at once with the romantic school--leads us to think that, had he written less, he might possibly have justified his own opinion of himself. Unfortunately he could not wait for inspiration, being obliged to support not only his own family but also, in large measure, that of his friend Coleridge.
Southey gradually surrounded himself with one of the most extensive libraries in England, and set himself to the task of of writing something every working day. The results of his industry were one hundred and nine volumes, besides some hundred and fifty articles for the magazines, most of which are now utterly forgotten. His most ambitious poems are _Thalaba_, a tale of Arabian enchantment; _The Curse of Kehama_, a medley of Hindoo mythology; _Madoc_, a legend of a Welsh prince who discovered the western world; and _Roderick_, a tale of the last of the Goths. All these, and many more, although containing some excellent pa.s.sages, are on the whole exaggerated and unreal, both in manner and in matter. Southey wrote far better prose than poetry, and his admirable _Life of Nelson_ is still often read. Besides these are his _Lives of British Admirals_, his lives of Cowper and Wesley, and his histories of Brazil and of the Peninsular War.
Southey was made Poet Laureate in 1813, and was the first to raise that office from the low estate into which it had fallen since the death of Dryden. The opening lines of Thalaba, beginning,
How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air,
are still sometimes quoted; and a few of his best known short poems, like "The Scholar," "Auld Cloots," "The Well of St. Keyne," "The Inchcape Rock,"
and "Lodore," will repay the curious reader. The beauty of Southey"s character, his patience and helpfulness, make him a worthy a.s.sociate of the two greater poets with whom he is generally named.
WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832)
We have already called attention to two significant movements of the eighteenth century, which we must for a moment recall if we are to appreciate Scott, not simply as a delightful teller of tales, but as a tremendous force in modern literature. The first is the triumph of romantic poetry in Wordsworth and Coleridge; the second is the success of our first English novelists, and the popularization of literature by taking it from the control of a few patrons and critics and putting it into the hands of the people as one of the forces which mold our modern life. Scott is an epitome of both these movements. The poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge was read by a select few, but Scott"s _Marmion_ and _Lady of the Lake_ aroused a whole nation to enthusiasm, and for the first time romantic poetry became really popular. So also the novel had been content to paint men and women of the present, until the wonderful series of Waverley novels appeared, when suddenly, by the magic of this "Wizard of the North," all history seemed changed. The past, which had hitherto appeared as a dreary region of dead heroes, became alive again, and filled with a mult.i.tude of men and women who had the surprising charm of reality. It is of small consequence that Scott"s poetry and prose are both faulty; that his poems are read chiefly for the story, rather than for their poetic excellence; and that much of the evident crudity and barbarism of the Middle Ages is ignored or forgotten in Scott"s writings. By their vigor, their freshness, their rapid action, and their breezy, out-of-door atmosphere, Scott"s novels attracted thousands of readers who else had known nothing of the delights of literature. He is, therefore, the greatest known factor in establishing and in popularizing that romantic element in prose and poetry which has been for a hundred years the chief characteristic of our literature.
LIFE. Scott was born in Edinburgh, on August 15, 1771. On both his mother"s and father"s side he was descended from old Border families, distinguished more for their feuds and fighting than for their intellectual attainments.
His father was a barrister, a just man, who often lost clients by advising them to be, first of all, honest in their lawsuits. His mother was a woman of character and education, strongly imaginative, a teller of tales which stirred young Walter"s enthusiasm by revealing the past as a world of living heroes.
As a child, Scott was lame and delicate, and was therefore sent away from the city to be with his grandmother in the open country at Sandy Knowe, in Roxburghshire, near the Tweed. This grandmother was a perfect treasure- house of legends concerning the old Border feuds. From her wonderful tales Scott developed that intense love of Scottish history and tradition which characterizes all his work.
By the time he was eight years old, when he returned to Edinburgh, Scott"s tastes were fixed for life. At the high school he was a fair scholar, but without enthusiasm, being more interested in Border stories than in the text-books. He remained at school only six or seven years, and then entered his father"s office to study law, at the same time attending lectures at the university. He kept this up for some six years without developing any interest in his profession, not even when he pa.s.sed his examinations and was admitted to the Bar, in 1792. After nineteen years of desultory work, in which he showed far more zeal in gathering Highland legends than in gaining clients, he had won two small legal offices which gave him enough income to support him comfortably. His home, meanwhile, was at Ashestiel on the Tweed, where all his best poetry was written.
Scott"s literary work began with the translation from the German of Burger"s romantic ballad of _Lenore_ (1796) and of Goethe"s _Gotz von Berlichingen_ (1799); but there was romance enough in his own loved Highlands, and in 1802-1803 appeared three volumes of his _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, which he had been collecting for many years. In 1805, when Scott was 34 years old, appeared his first original work, _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_. Its success was immediate, and when _Marmion_ (1808) and _The Lady of the Lake_ (1810) aroused Scotland and England to intense enthusiasm, and brought unexpected fame to the author,--without in the least spoiling his honest and lovable nature,--Scott gladly resolved to abandon the law, in which he had won scant success, and give himself wholly to literature. Unfortunately, however, in order to increase his earnings, he entered secretly into partnership with the firms of Constable and the brothers Ballantyne, as printer-publishers,--a sad mistake, indeed, and the cause of that tragedy which closed the life of Scotland"s greatest writer.
The year 1811 is remarkable for two things in Scott"s life. In this year he seems to have realized that, notwithstanding the success of his poems, he had not yet "found himself"; that he was not a poetic genius, like Burns; that in his first three poems he had practically exhausted his material, though he still continued to write verse; and that, if he was to keep his popularity, he must find some other work. The fact that, only a year later, Byron suddenly became the popular favorite, shows how correctly Scott had judged himself and the reading public, which was even more fickle than usual in this emotional age. In that same year, 1811, Scott bought the estate of Abbotsford, on the Tweed, with which place his name is forever a.s.sociated. Here he began to spend large sums, and to dispense the generous hospitality of a Scotch laird, of which he had been dreaming for years. In 1820 he was made a baronet; and his new t.i.tle of Sir Walter came nearer to turning his honest head than had all his literary success. His business partnership was kept secret, and during all the years when the Waverley novels were the most popular books in the world, their authorship remained unknown; for Scott deemed it beneath the dignity of his t.i.tle to earn money by business or literature, and sought to give the impression that the enormous sums spent at Abbotsford in improving the estate and in entertaining lavishly were part of the dignity of the position and came from ancestral sources.
It was the success of Byron"s _Childe Harold_, and the comparative failure of Scott"s later poems, _Rokeby_, _The Bridal of Triermain_, and _The Lord of the Isles_, which led our author into the new field, where he was to be without a rival. Rummaging through a cabinet one day in search of some fishing tackle, Scott found the ma.n.u.script of a story which he had begun and laid aside nine years before. He read this old story eagerly, as if it had been another"s work; finished it within three weeks, and published it without signing his name. The success of this first novel, _Waverley_ (1814), was immediate and unexpected. Its great sales and the general chorus of praise for its unknown author were without precedent; and when _Guy Mannering, The Antiquary, Black Dwarf, Old Mortality, Rob Roy_, and _The Heart of Midlothian_ appeared within the next four years, England"s delight and wonder knew no bounds. Not only at home, but also on the Continent, large numbers of these fresh and fascinating stories were sold as fast as they could be printed.
During the seventeen years which followed the appearance of _Waverley_, Scott wrote on an average nearly two novels per year, creating an unusual number of characters and ill.u.s.trating many periods of Scotch, English, and French history, from the time of the Crusades to the fall of the Stuarts.
In addition to these historical novels, he wrote _Tales of a Grandfather, Demonology and Witchcraft_, biographies of Dryden and of Swift, the _Life of Napoleon_, in nine volumes, and a large number of articles for the reviews and magazines. It was an extraordinary amount of literary work, but it was not quite so rapid and spontaneous as it seemed. He had been very diligent in looking up old records, and we must remember that, in nearly all his poems and novels, Scott was drawing upon a fund of legend, tradition, history, and poetry, which he had been gathering for forty years, and which his memory enabled him to produce at will with almost the accuracy of an encyclopedia.
For the first six years Scott held himself to Scottish history, giving us in nine remarkable novels the whole of Scotland, its heroism, its superb faith and enthusiasm, and especially its clannish loyalty to its hereditary chiefs; giving us also all parties and characters, from Covenanters to Royalists, and from kings to beggars. After reading these nine volumes we know Scotland and Scotchmen as we can know them in no other way. In 1819 he turned abruptly from Scotland, and in _Ivanhoe_, the most popular of his works, showed what a mine of neglected wealth lay just beneath the surface of English history. It is hard to realize now, as we read its rapid, melodramatic action, its vivid portrayal of Saxon and Norman character, and all its picturesque details, that it was written rapidly, at a time when the author was suffering from disease and could hardly repress an occasional groan from finding its way into the rapid dictation. It stands to-day as the best example of the author"s own theory that the will of a man is enough to hold him steadily, against all obstacles, to the task of "doing what he has a mind to do." _Kenilworth, Nigel, Peveril_, and _Woodstock_, all written in the next few years, show his grasp of the romantic side of English annals; _Count Robert_ and _The Talisman_ show his enthusiasm for the heroic side of the Crusaders" nature; and _Quentin Durward_ and _Anne of Geierstein_ suggest another mine of romance which he discovered in French history.
For twenty years Scott labored steadily at literature, with the double object of giving what was in him, and of earning large sums to support the lavish display which he deemed essential to a laird of Scotland. In 1826, while he was blithely at work on _Woodstock_, the crash came. Not even the vast earnings of all these popular novels could longer keep the wretched business of Ballantyne on its feet, and the firm failed, after years of mismanagement. Though a silent partner, Scott a.s.sumed full responsibility, and at fifty-five years of age, sick, suffering, and with all his best work behind him, he found himself facing a debt of over half a million dollars.
The firm could easily have compromised with its creditors; but Scott refused to hear of bankruptcy laws under which he could have taken refuge.
He a.s.sumed the entire debt as a personal one, and set resolutely to work to pay every penny. Times were indeed changed in England when, instead of a literary genius starving until some wealthy patron gave him a pension, this man, aided by his pen alone, could confidently begin to earn that enormous amount of money. And this is one of the unnoticed results of the popularization of literature. Without a doubt Scott would have accomplished the task, had he been granted only a few years of health. He still lived at Abbotsford, which he had offered to his creditors, but which they generously refused to accept; and in two years, by miscellaneous work, had paid some two hundred thousand dollars of his debt, nearly half of this sum coming from his _Life of Napoleon_. A new edition of the Waverley novels appeared, which was very successful financially, and Scott had every reason to hope that he would soon face the world owing no man a penny, when he suddenly broke under the strain. In 1830 occurred a stroke of paralysis from which he never fully recovered; though after a little time he was again at work, dictating with splendid patience and resolution. He writes in his diary at this time: "The blow is a stunning one, I suppose, for I scarcely feel it. It is singular, but it comes with as little surprise as if I had a remedy ready, yet G.o.d knows I am at sea in the dark, and the vessel leaky."
It is good to remember that governments are not always ungrateful, and to record that, when it became known that a voyage to Italy might improve Scott"s health, the British government promptly placed a naval vessel at the disposal of a man who had led no armies to the slaughter, but had only given pleasure to mult.i.tudes of peaceable men and women by his stories. He visited Malta, Naples, and Rome; but in his heart he longed for Scotland, and turned homeward after a few months of exile. The river Tweed, the Scotch hills, the trees of Abbotsford, the joyous clamor of his dogs, brought forth the first exclamation of delight which had pa.s.sed Scott"s lips since he sailed away. He died in September of the same year, 1832, and was buried with his ancestors in the old Dryburgh Abbey.
WORKS OF SCOTT. Scott"s work is of a kind which the critic gladly pa.s.ses over, leaving each reader to his own joyous and uninstructed opinion. From a literary view point the works are faulty enough, if one is looking for faults; but it is well to remember that they were intended to give delight, and that they rarely fail of their object. When one has read the stirring _Marmion_ or the more enduring _Lady of the Lake_, felt the heroism of the Crusaders in _The Talisman_, the picturesqueness of chivalry in _Ivanhoe_, the n.o.bleness of soul of a Scotch peasant girl in _The Heart of Midlothian_, and the quality of Scotch faith in _Old Mortality_, then his own opinion of Scott"s genius will be of more value than all the criticisms that have ever been written.
At the outset we must confess frankly that Scott"s poetry is not artistic, in the highest sense, and that it lacks the deeply imaginative and suggestive qualities which make a poem the n.o.blest and most enduring work of humanity. We read it now, not for its poetic excellence, but for its absorbing story interest. Even so, it serves an admirable purpose.
_Marmion_ and _The Lady of the Lake_, which are often the first long poems read by the beginner in literature, almost invariably lead to a deeper interest in the subject; and many readers owe to these poems an introduction to the delights of poetry. They are an excellent beginning, therefore, for young readers, since they are almost certain to hold the attention, and to lead indirectly to an interest in other and better poems.
Aside from this, Scott"s poetry is marked by vigor and youthful abandon; its interest lies in its vivid pictures, its heroic characters, and especially in its rapid action and succession of adventures, which hold and delight us still, as they held and delighted the first wondering readers.
And one finds here and there terse descriptions, or s.n.a.t.c.hes of song and ballad, like the "Boat Song" and "Lochinvar," which are among the best known in our literature.
In his novels Scott plainly wrote too rapidly and too much. While a genius of the first magnitude, the definition of genius as "the infinite capacity for taking pains" hardly belongs to him. For details of life and history, for finely drawn characters, and for tracing the logical consequences of human action, he has usually no inclination. He sketches a character roughly, plunges him into the midst of stirring incidents, and the action of the story carries us on breathlessly to the end. So his stories are largely adventure stories, at the best; and it is this element of adventure and glorious action, rather than the study of character, which makes Scott a perennial favorite of the young. The same element of excitement is what causes mature readers to turn from Scott to better novelists, who have more power to delineate human character, and to create, or discover, a romantic interest in the incidents of everyday life rather than in stirring adventure.[225]
Notwithstanding these limitations, it is well--especially in these days, when we hear that Scott is outgrown--to emphasize four noteworthy things that he accomplished.
(1) He created the historical novel[226]; and all novelists of the last century who draw upon history for their characters and events are followers of Scott and acknowledge his mastery.
(2) His novels are on a vast scale, covering a very wide range of action, and are concerned with public rather than with private interests. So, with the exception of _The Bride of Lammermoor_, the love story in his novels is generally pale and feeble; but the strife and pa.s.sions of big parties are magnificently portrayed. A glance over even the t.i.tles of his novels shows how the heroic side of history for over six hundred years finds expression in his pages; and all the parties of these six centuries--Crusaders, Covenanters, Cavaliers, Roundheads, Papists, Jews, Gypsies, Rebels--start into life again, and fight or give a reason for the faith that is in them.
No other novelist in England, and only Balzac in France, approaches Scott in the scope of his narratives.
(3) Scott was the first novelist in any language to make the scene an essential element in the action. He knew Scotland, and loved it; and there is hardly an event in any of his Scottish novels in which we do not breathe the very atmosphere of the place, and feel the presence of its moors and mountains. The place, morever, is usually so well chosen and described that the action seems almost to be the result of natural environment. Perhaps the most striking ill.u.s.tration of this harmony between scene and incident is found in _Old Mortality_, where Morton approaches the cave of the old Covenanter, and where the spiritual terror inspired by the fanatic"s struggle with imaginary fiends is paralleled by the physical terror of a gulf and a roaring flood spanned by a slippery tree trunk. A second ill.u.s.tration of the same harmony of scene and incident is found in the meeting of the arms and ideals of the East and West, when the two champions fight in the burning desert, and then eat bread together in the cool shade of the oasis, as described in the opening chapter of _The Talisman_. A third ill.u.s.tration is found in that fascinating love scene, where Ivanhoe lies wounded, raging at his helplessness, while the gentle Rebecca alternately hides and reveals her love as she describes the terrific a.s.sault on the castle, which goes on beneath her window. His thoughts are all on the fight; hers on the man she loves; and both are natural, and both are exactly what we expect under the circ.u.mstances. These are but striking examples of the fact that, in all his work, Scott tries to preserve perfect harmony between the scene and the action.
(4) Scott"s chief claim to greatness lies in the fact that he was the first novelist to recreate the past; that he changed our whole conception of history by making it to be, not a record of dry facts, but a stage on which living men and women played their parts. Carlyle"s criticism is here most pertinent: "These historical novels have taught this truth ... unknown to writers of history: that the bygone ages of the world were actually filled by living men, not by protocols, state papers, controversies, and abstractions of men." Not only the pages of history, but all the hills and vales of his beloved Scotland are filled with living characters,--lords and ladies, soldiers, pirates, gypsies, preachers, schoolmasters, clansmen, bailiffs, dependents,--all Scotland is here before our eyes, in the reality of life itself. It is astonishing, with his large numbers of characters, that Scott never repeats himself. Naturally he is most at home in Scotland, and with humble people. Scott"s own romantic interest in feudalism caused him to make his lords altogether too lordly; his aristocratic maidens are usually bloodless, conventional, exasperating creatures, who talk like books and pose like figures in an old tapestry. But when he describes characters like Jeanie Deans, in _The Heart of Midlothian_, and the old clansman, Evan Dhu, in _Waverley_, we know the very soul of Scotch womanhood and manhood.
Perhaps one thing more should be said, or rather repeated, of Scott"s enduring work. He is always sane, wholesome, manly, inspiring. We know the essential n.o.bility of human life better, and we are better men and women ourselves, because of what he has written.
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON (1788-1824)
There are two distinct sides to Byron and his poetry, one good, the other bad; and those who write about him generally describe one side or the other in superlatives. Thus one critic speaks of his "splendid and imperishable excellence of sincerity and strength"; another of his "gaudy charlatanry, blare of bra.s.s, and big bow-wowishness." As both critics are fundamentally right, we shall not here attempt to reconcile their differences, which arise from viewing one side of the man"s nature and poetry to the exclusion of the other. Before his exile from England, in 1816, the general impression made by Byron is that of a man who leads an irregular life, poses as a romantic hero, makes himself out much worse than he really is, and takes delight in shocking not only the conventions but the ideals of English society. His poetry of this first period is generally, though not always, shallow and insincere in thought, and declamatory or bombastic in expression. After his exile, and his meeting with Sh.e.l.ley in Italy, we note a gradual improvement, due partly to Sh.e.l.ley"s influence and partly to his own mature thought and experience. We have the impression now of a disillusioned man who recognizes his true character, and who, though cynical and pessimistic, is at least honest in his unhappy outlook on society. His poetry of this period is generally less shallow and rhetorical, and though he still parades his feelings in public, he often surprises us by being manly and sincere. Thus in the third canto of _Childe Harold_, written just after his exile, he says:
In my youth"s summer I did sing of one, The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind;
and as we read on to the end of the splendid fourth canto--with its poetic feeling for nature, and its stirring rhythm that grips and holds the reader like martial music--we lay down the book with profound regret that this gifted man should have devoted so much of his talent to describing trivial or unwholesome intrigues and posing as the hero of his own verses. The real tragedy of Byron"s life is that he died just as he was beginning to find himself.
LIFE. Byron was born in London in 1788, the year preceding the French Revolution. We shall understand him better, and judge him more charitably, if we remember the tainted stock from which he sprang. His father was a dissipated spendthrift of unspeakable morals; his mother was a Scotch heiress, pa.s.sionate and unbalanced. The father deserted his wife after squandering her fortune; and the boy was brought up by the mother who "alternately petted and abused" him. In his eleventh year the death of a granduncle left him heir to Newstead Abbey and to the baronial t.i.tle of one of the oldest houses in England. He was singularly handsome; and a lameness resulting from a deformed foot lent a suggestion of pathos to his make-up.
All this, with his social position, his pseudo-heroic poetry, and his dissipated life,--over which he contrived to throw a veil of romantic secrecy,--made him a magnet of attraction to many thoughtless young men and foolish women, who made the downhill path both easy and rapid to one whose inclinations led him in that direction. Naturally he was generous, and easily led by affection. He is, therefore, largely a victim of his own weakness and of unfortunate surroundings.
At school at Harrow, and in the university at Cambridge, Byron led an unbalanced life, and was more given to certain sports from which he was not debarred by lameness, than to books and study. His school life, like his infancy, is sadly marked by vanity, violence, and rebellion against every form of authority; yet it was not without its hours of n.o.bility and generosity. Scott describes him as "a man of real goodness of heart, and the kindest and best feelings, miserably thrown away by his foolish contempt of public opinion." While at Cambridge, Byron published his first volume of poems, _Hours of Idleness_, in 1807. A severe criticism of the volume in the _Edinburgh Review_ wounded Byron"s vanity, and threw him into a violent pa.s.sion, the result of which was the now famous satire called _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, in which not only his enemies, but also Scott, Wordsworth, and nearly all the literary men of his day, were satirized in heroic couplets after the manner of Pope"s _Dunciad_. It is only just to say that he afterwards made friends with Scott and with others whom he had abused without provocation; and it is interesting to note, in view of his own romantic poetry, that he denounced all masters of romance and accepted the artificial standards of Pope and Dryden. His two favorite books were the Old Testament and a volume of Pope"s poetry. Of the latter he says, "His is the greatest name in poetry ... all the rest are barbarians."
In 1809 Byron, when only twenty-one years of age, started on a tour of Europe and the Orient. The poetic results of this trip were the first two cantos of _Childe Harold"s Pilgrimage_, with their famous descriptions of romantic scenery. The work made him instantly popular, and his fame overshadowed Scott"s completely. As he says himself, "I awoke one morning to find myself famous," and presently he styles himself "the grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme." The worst element in Byron at this time was his insincerity, his continual posing as the hero of his poetry. His best works were translated, and his fame spread almost as rapidly on the Continent as in England. Even Goethe was deceived, and declared that a man so wonderful in character had never before appeared in literature, and would never appear again. Now that the tinsel has worn off, and we can judge the man and his work dispa.s.sionately, we see how easily even the critics of the age were governed by romantic impulses.
The adulation of Byron lasted only a few years in England. In 1815 he married Miss Milbanke, an English heiress, who abruptly left him a year later. With womanly reserve she kept silence; but the public was not slow to imagine plenty of reasons for the separation. This, together with the fact that men had begun to penetrate the veil of romantic secrecy with which Byron surrounded himself and found a rather bra.s.sy idol beneath, turned the tide of public opinion against him. He left England under a cloud of distrust and disappointment, in 1816, and never returned. Eight years were spent abroad, largely in Italy, where he was a.s.sociated with Sh.e.l.ley until the latter"s tragic death in 1822. His house was ever the meeting place for Revolutionists and malcontents calling themselves patriots, whom he trusted too greatly, and with whom he shared his money most generously. Curiously enough, while he trusted men too easily, he had no faith in human society or government, and wrote in 1817: "I have simplified my politics to an utter detestation of all existing governments." During his exile he finished _Childe Harold, The Prisoner of Chillon_, his dramas _Cain_ and _Manfred_, and numerous other works, in some of which, as in _Don Juan_, he delighted in revenging himself upon his countrymen by holding up to ridicule all that they held most sacred.
In 1824 Byron went to Greece to give himself and a large part of his fortune to help that country in its struggle for liberty against the Turks.
How far he was led by his desire for posing as a hero, and how far by a certain vigorous Viking spirit that was certainly in him, will never be known. The Greeks welcomed him and made him a leader, and for a few months he found himself in the midst of a wretched squabble of lies, selfishness, insincerity, cowardice, and intrigue, instead of the heroic struggle for liberty which he had antic.i.p.ated. He died of fever, in Missolonghi, in 1824. One of his last poems, written there on his thirty-sixth birthday, a few months before he died, expresses his own view of his disappointing life:
My days are in the yellow leaf, The flowers and fruits of love are gone: The worm, the canker, and the grief Are mine alone.
WORKS OF BYRON. In reading Byron it is well to remember that he was a disappointed and embittered man, not only in his personal life, but also in his expectation of a general transformation of human society. As he pours out his own feelings, chiefly, in his poetry, he is the most expressive writer of his age in voicing the discontent of a mult.i.tude of Europeans who were disappointed at the failure of the French Revolution to produce an entirely new form of government and society.
One who wishes to understand the whole scope of Byron"s genius and poetry will do well to begin with his first work, _Hours of Idleness_, written when he was a young man at the university. There is very little poetry in the volume, only a striking facility in rime, brightened by the devil-may- care spirit of the Cavalier poets; but as a revelation of the man himself it is remarkable. In a vain and soph.o.m.oric preface he declares that poetry is to him an idle experiment, and that this is his first and last attempt to amuse himself in that line. Curiously enough, as he starts for Greece on his last, fatal journey, he again ridicules literature, and says that the poet is a "mere babbler." It is this despising of the art which alone makes him famous that occasions our deepest disappointment. Even in his magnificent pa.s.sages, in a glowing description of nature or of a Hindoo woman"s exquisite love, his work is frequently marred by a wretched pun, or by some cheap buffoonery, which ruins our first splendid impression of his poetry.
Byron"s later volumes, _Manfred_ and _Cain_, the one a curious, and perhaps unconscious, parody of _Faust_, the other of _Paradise Lost_, are his two best known dramatic works. Aside from the question of their poetic value, they are interesting as voicing Byron"s excessive individualism and his rebellion against society. The best known and the most readable of Byron"s works _Mazeppa, The Prisoner of Chillon_, and _Childe Harold"s Pilgrimage_.
The first two cantos of _Childe Harold_ (1812) are perhaps more frequently read than any other work of the same author, partly because of their melodious verse, partly because of their descriptions of places along the lines of European travel; but the last two cantos (1816-1818) written after his exile from England, have more sincerity, and are in every way better expressions of Byron"s mature genius. Scattered through all his works one finds magnificent descriptions of natural scenery, and exquisite lyrics of love and despair; but they are mixed with such a deal of bombast and rhetoric, together with much that is unwholesome, that the beginner will do well to confine himself to a small volume of well-chosen selections.[227]
Byron is often compared with Scott, as having given to us Europe and the Orient, just as Scott gave us Scotland and its people; but while there is a certain resemblance in the swing and dash of the verses, the resemblance is all on the surface, and the underlying difference between the two poets is as great as that between Thackeray and Bulwer-Lytton. Scott knew his country well,--its hills and valleys which are interesting as the abode of living and lovable men and women. Byron pretended to know the secret, unwholesome side of Europe, which generally hides itself in the dark; but instead of giving us a variety of living men, he never gets away from his own unbalanced and egotistical self. All his characters, in _Cain, Manfred, The Corsair, The Giaour, Childe Harold, Don Juan_, are tiresome repet.i.tions of himself,--a vain, disappointed, cynical man, who finds no good in life or love or anything. Naturally, with such a disposition, he is entirely incapable of portraying a true woman. To nature alone, especially in her magnificent moods, Byron remains faithful; and his portrayal of the night and the storm and the ocean in _Childe Harold_ are unsurpa.s.sed in our language.
PERCY BYSSHE Sh.e.l.lEY (1792-1822)
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own!