neither an affectation nor mere rhetoric, but the sincere and genuine expression of deep feeling.

As with his poems, so also with his plays. In the choice of the historical subjects which he dramatised Byron was not uninfluenced by the opportunities which they seemed to offer for personification of his own intellectual and emotional moods. A passage in his Journal (Jan. 28, 1821) bears on this point:

'Pondered the subjects of four tragedies to be written (life and circumstances permitting). . . . I am not sure that I would not try Tiberius. I think that I could extract something of my tragic, at least, out of the gloomy sequestration and old age of the tyrant-and even out of his sojourn at Caprea-by softening the details, and exhibiting the despair which must have led to those very vicious pleasures.'

The attraction of Tiberius was the adaptability to Byron's lyrical mood of self-expression. Self-absorbed minds are rarely endowed with dramatic gifts. It was a true perception of his own powers and purpose, rather than any critical preference for the classical over the romantic school, which prompted him to follow Corneille rather than Shakespeare. His choice relieved him from the effort to work out character through plot and action; it freed him to develop motives through speeches; it was the form best suited for plays which were written to be read, and not for scenic representation.

Fine passages occur in all Byron's historical dramas, especially in 'Sardanapalus,' with its hatred of war and thinly veiled reference to his Venetian life. But the most interesting of the plays are those which he himself called metaphysical-' Manfred' and Cain '-partly because they lent themselves most directly to his tragic.' Underlying the dramatic form, there is in both a passionate intensity of personal feeling. Manfred,' written within a few months after leaving England, is represented by Byron himself as a mere phantasy.' He may have hoped that it would be received as impersonal. But his own individuality is everywhere stamped on the poem, and the cry of remorse and the protest against the dominant creed of retribution are wrung from the depths of his own nature. Even more interesting is 'Cain' as a study, on the intellectual side, of Byron's

troubled soul. The tone of the voices of both the principal actors is his. In Cain speaks his inquiring, denying mind which can accept nothing without question; in Lucifer, his critical, defiant spirit of general revolt. A man, deeply interested in religious problems, yet so compounded, could not be silenced by the literal interpretation of the Bible, or satisfied by Paley's Evidences.' Yet, judged by public opinion in 1924, Byron's attack is neither blasphemous nor offensive. It was directed, not against the Bible, but against what he thought to be the narrow, illiberal and cruel theology of the day. His Lucifer is no mocking Mephistopheles. He is a solemn, serious spirit, who, in effect, argues that, assuming the orthodox interpretation of God's dealings with mankind to be accurate, his eternal antagonism to Omnipotence is justified by his superior morality.

'Cain' created a sensation. Byron knew what he risked. But it is difficult to realise the violence of the abuse which was showered on the poet. Mr Chew's specimens of the bitterness of written and published criticism afford some measure of the courage of the challenge to Protestant orthodoxy. Goethe, Walter Scott, and Shelley praised the poem warmly. But its champions were few, and it even alienated some of his friends. 'Cain,' however, had at least made a stir. The other plays had fallen flat. Byron was hurt by the coldness of their reception, and his disappointment confirmed his revolt from romance. 'I won't philosophise, and will be read.' He could not endure to be ignored. A touch of humour might succeed where melancholy failed, and, when his gaze was not turned inwards, no one had a quicker and deeper appreciation of the comedy of life than Byron. By accident, or by destiny, he found in the serio-comic Italian poets and in Whistlecraft' the models that he wanted. So, in spite of the advice and even pleading of his friends, he persisted in the work which has most incontestably perpetuated his genius. The new vein produced three masterpieces-a light story, a personal satire, an epic of humanity. 'Beppo' is, as Prof. Grierson truly says in his admirable Preface, 'our best and almost our only comic story in verse since Chaucer.' The same gaiety, blended with contemptuous scorn, makes 'The Vision of Judgment' the most effec

tive personal satire in the English language. But the richest product of the vein is Don Juan,' of which five Cantos had been finished before The Vision of Judgment' was begun.

In Don Juan,' Byron took as his master Pulci, the 'sire of the half-serious rhyme.' The 'Morgante Maggiore' has had an illustrious history. Written to amuse the mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent, recited before such an audience as Ficino, Politian, and Michaelangelo, it had been one of the inspirations of Ariosto. It had given hints to Milton. Now it offered suggestions for 'Don Juan.' Apart from the humorous gravity with which the tale is told of Charlemagne and his Paladins, of wars and adventures, of giants, devils, and enchantments, Byron was fascinated by the medley of conflicting feeling. Digressing from his story in every direction, Pulci passes in a moment from pathos to laughter, from seriousness to drollery, from simplicity of faith to banter, from tender passion to cynical mockery, from piety to ribaldry. To men of the Italian Renaissance the poem was intelligible enough; but it is not surprising that to later critics it has been a riddle. Each of the twentyeight Cantos of the 'Morgante Maggiore' begins with a pious invocation, and ends with an intimation to the audience that there is more to come. After his own fashion Byron follows his model, though at will he reduces the invocation to 'Hail, Muse! et cetera. At the close of each Canto he drops his curtain so skilfully as to leave the reader expectant. Thus, Canto VI closes with the sack, and the Bosphorus, as the imminent doom of Juan and Dudu, and Canto XVI leaves Juan clasping the Duchess of Fitz-Fulke disguised as a ghostly Friar. The metre is also that of Pulci. But Byron has made the ottava rima his own. He handles it with consummate mastery and with an amazing facility of rhyming. In stanza after stanza of clear idiomatic English, as colloquial as metrical style will allow, the rhymes fall into their place without unnatural involutions of the sentences. In 'Don Juan,' at any rate, Byron shows a very high degree of that skill in prosody in which he is sometimes alleged to be wanting.

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To the contents of Don Juan,' Pulci, it need scarcely be said, contributed nothing. No one but Byron could

have written it, and even he at no other period. It expresses many sides of the man; it represents also the most important characteristic of the age. Of Byron himself the poem gives the least incomplete portrait. In it meet the vivacity, versatility, and amazing cleverness of the gay letter-writer; the knowledge and experience of the travelled, observant, loose-living, yet studious, man of the world; the firm grasp of actualities, the clear vision, merciless candour, and indignation of the satirist of contemporary life; the passionate intensity of feeling, tender as well as scornful, of the poet. It also represents a reactionary age which was chiefly remarkable for the accumulation of those destructive forces which prepared the way for reconstruction. Europe was settling down on its former foundations; rulers and politicians of the old school threatened once again to strangle the spirit of individual liberty. Byron's moral critics, Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, were either dumb or they supported the governing classes. He himself took a bolder and less obsequious course. In 'Don Juan,' as in many other passages in his poems, he satirises and ridicules the hypocrisies of aristocratic society, at home and abroad, the insincerity of their conventions, the sycophancy of their hireling supporters, the type of human nature which was moulded by their standards, fashions, and preoccupations. His outspoken protest is a finer record than the silence of his poetic rivals. For his service to the cause of liberty foreign nations forget his faults and reverence his name.

The poem is amazing in its intense vitality, vibrating with life in its multitudinous variety, as Byron saw it with clear disillusioned eyes. Without any vision of the future beyond the ideal of liberty, he knew no meaning or purpose in existence. With infinite art he conveys his own impression of the irrelevance of life by the rapidity of his shifting scenes and emotional changes, his sudden transitions, his digressions, musings, and reflexions, his juxtaposition of incongruous feelings. From this medley of apparent inconsequence stand out passages of exquisite beauty and of poetic power in many fields. They are made more effective by their setting. Detached from their context they lose much of their power. Imagine the diary of a citizeness of Paris during the

Revolution, the record of her visits and her ailments, the purchase of her salads, cosmetics, and stockings, and, in the midst of the trifling details of commonplace life, the bare uncommented entry, La veuve Capétienne à la guillotine. The tragic force of such an entry is accentuated by the triviality of its surroundings. So in 'Don Juan' the clash of contrast is skilfully used to heighten the effects, as when the tender scene of Haidée bending over the unconscious Juan on the shore follows hard on the grim almost revolting realism of the shipwreck; or as when the song of the Isle of Greece' soars above the fiddling and dancing, chatter and irresponsible gaiety of the feast in the garden and house of the pirate Lambro; or as when the solemnising beauty of the Ave Maria strikes across and interrupts the gay mockery of a brilliant literary digression.

Byron was at work on 'Don Juan' three weeks before his death at Missolonghi. In the manner of his end he proved the falseness of the sophistry of his own Lucifer. It is not by self-will but by self-sacrifice that a soul is ransomed.

Critics rightly prize artistic perfection, and Byron frequently falls below its highest standard. But he had, to an almost unrivalled degree, passion, strength, and energy. A great theologian would once have given all his learning for a tinker's power of reaching the heart. So too, perhaps, in the century that has passed since 1824, there may have been literary craftsmen who would have gladly exchanged their exquisiteness of artistic skill for Byron's power of swaying the feelings of ordinary men. The fastidious taste of cultivated minds might have been impoverished in the sources of its gratification. But the emotional life of the nation would have been beyond measure enriched.

ERNLE.