bsence of true subjective melancholy from his nature 246

His ethical poverty 249

Conclusion 250

BYRON.

It is one of the singular facts in the history of literature, that the
most rootedly conservative country in Europe should have produced the
poet of the Revolution. Nowhere is the antipathy to principles and ideas
so profound, nor the addiction to moderate compromise so inveterate, nor
the reluctance to advance away from the past so unconquerable, as in
England; and nowhere in England is there so settled an indisposition to
regard any thought or sentiment except in the light of an existing
social order, nor so firmly passive a hostility to generous aspirations,
as in the aristocracy. Yet it was precisely an English aristocrat who
became the favourite poet of all the most high-minded conspirators and
socialists of continental Europe for half a century; of the best of
those, that is to say, who have borne the most unsparing testimony
against the present ordering of society, and against the theological and
moral conceptions which have guided and maintained it. The rank and file
of the army has been equally inspired by the same fiery and rebellious
strains against the order of God and the order of man. 'The day will
come,' wrote Mazzini, thirty years ago, 'when Democracy will remember
all that it owes to Byron. England, too, will, I hope, one day remember
the mission--so entirely English yet hitherto overlooked by her--which
Byron fulfilled on the Continent; the European role given by him to
English literature, and the appreciation and sympathy for England which
he awakened amongst us. Before he came, all that was known of English
literature was the French translation of Shakespeare, and the anathema
hurled by Voltaire against the "drunken savage." It is since Byron that
we Continentalists have learned to study Shakespeare and other English
writers. From him dates the sympathy of all the true-hearted amongst us
for this land of liberty, whose true vocation he so worthily represented
among the oppressed. He led the genius of Britain on a pilgrimage
throughout all Europe.'[1]

[Footnote 1: See also George Sand's Preface to _Obermann_, p. 10. _'En
meme temps que les institutions et les coutumes, la litterature anglaise
passa le detroit, et vint regner chez nous. La poesie britannique nous
revela