Literature of travel.

"Don Juan."

poem, full of burning genius, pride, scorn, and anguish, and all hurling defiance at English public opinion. The third and fourth cantos of "Childe Harold,” 1816-18, were a great advance upon the first two, and contain the best of Byron's serious poetry. He has written his name all over the continent of Europe, and on a hundred memorable spots has made the scenery his own. On the field of Waterloo, on "the castled crag of Drachenfels," "by the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone," in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, in the Coliseum at Rome, and among the "isles of Greece," the tourist is compelled to see with Byron's eyes and under the associations of his pilgrimage. In his later poems, such as "Beppo," 1818, and "Don Juan," 1819-23, he passed into his second manner, a mocking cynicism gaining ground upon the somewhat stagy gloom of his early poetry-Mephistopheles gradually elbowing out Satan. "Don Juan," though morally the worst, is intellectually the most vital and representative of Byron's poems. It takes up into itself most fully the life of the time; exhibits most thoroughly the characteristic alternations of Byron's moods and the prodigal resources of wit, passion, and understanding, which—rather than imagination—were his prominent qualities as a poet. The hero, a graceless, amorous stripling, goes wandering from Spain to the Greek islands and Constantinople, thence to St. Petersburg, and finally to England. Everywhere his seductions are successful, and Byron uses him as a means of exposing the weakness of the human heart and the rottenness of society in all countries.

In 1823, breaking away from his life of selfish indulgence in Italy, Byron threw himself into the cause of Grecian liberty, which he had sung so gloriously in "The

He died at Missolonghi, in the follow

estimate of

Isles of Greece.”
ing year, of a fever contracted by exposure and overwork.
Byron was a great poet but not a great literary artist.
He wrote negligently and with the ease of assured Critical
strength, his mind gathering heat as it moved, and Byron.
pouring itself forth in reckless profusion. His work is
diffuse and imperfect; much of it is melodrama or
speech-making, rather than true poetry. But, on the
other hand, much, very much of it is unexcelled as
the direct, strong, sincere utterance of personal feeling.
Such is the quality of his best lyrics, like "When We
Two Parted," the "Elegy on Thyrza," "Stanzas to
Augusta," "She Walks in Beauty," and of innumer-
able passages, lyrical and descriptive, in his longer
poems. He had not the wisdom of Wordsworth, nor
the rich and subtle imagination of Coleridge, Shelley,
and Keats when they were at their best. But he had
greater body and motive force than any of them. He
is the strongest personality among English poets since
Milton, though his strength was wasted by want of
restraint and self-culture. In Milton the passion was
there, but it was held in check by the will and the
artistic conscience, made subordinate to good ends,
ripened by long reflection, and finally uttered in forms
of perfect and harmonious beauty.

Nature in

poetry.

Byron's love of nature was quite different in kind from Wordsworth's. Of all English poets he has sung most lyrically of that national theme, the sea; as wit- Byron's ness, among many other passages, the famous apostrophe to the ocean which closes "Childe Harold," and the opening of the third canto in the same poem, Once more upon the waters, etc.

He had a passion for night and storm, because they made him forget himself.

1

:

Thomas
Moore.

Shelley.

Most glorious night!

Thou wert not sent for slumber! Let me be

A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,

A portion of the tempest and of thee!

Byron's literary executor and biographer was the Irish poet, Thomas Moore, a born song-writer, whose "Irish Melodies," set to old native airs, are, like Burns's, genuine, spontaneous singing, and run naturally to music. Songs such as "The Meeting of the Waters," "The Harp of Tara," "Those Evening Bells, "The Light of Other Days," Araby's Daughter," and "The Last Rose of Summer" were, and still are, popular favorites. Moore's oriental romance, "Lalla Rookh," 1817, is overladen with ornament and with a sugary sentiment that clogs the palate. He had the quick Irish wit, sensibility rather than passion, and fancy rather than imagination.

Byron's friend, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), was also in fiery revolt against all conventions and institutions, though his revolt proceeded not, as in Byron's case, from the turbulence of passions which brooked no restraint, but rather from an intellectual impatience of any kind of control. He was not, like Byron, a sensual man, but temperate and chaste. He was, indeed, in his life and in his poetry, as nearly a disembodied spirit as a human creature can be. The German poet, Heine, said that liberty was the religion of this century, and of this religion Shelley was a worshiper. His rebellion against authority began early. He refused to fag at Eton, and was expelled from Oxford for publishing a tract on "The Necessity of Atheism.' At nineteen he ran away with Harriet Westbrook, and was married to her in Scotland. Three years later he deserted her for Mary Godwin, with