ate, and how conscious of his public. In the first, we
sit sadly on the ground in some veritable Place of a Skull; in the
second, we assist at tragical distress after the manner of the Italian
opera. We should be disposed to call the first a peculiarly German
quality, until we remember Pascal. With Novalis, or with Pascal, as with
all those whom character, or the outer fates, or the two together, have
drawn to dwell in the valley of the shadow, gloom and despondency are
the very stuff of their thoughts. Material energy could have done
nothing for them. Their nerves and sinews were too nearly cut asunder.
To know the quality of Byron's melancholy, and to recognise how little
it was of the essence of his character, we have only to consider how far
removed he was from this condition. In other words, in spite of morbid
manifestations of one sort and another, he always preserved a salutary
and vivid sympathy for action, and a marked capacity for it.

* * * * *

It was the same impetuous and indomitable spirit of effort which moved
Byron to his last heroic exploit, that made the poetry inspired by it so
powerful in Europe, from the deadly days of the Holy Alliance onwards.
Cynical and misanthropical as he has been called, as though that were
his sum and substance, he yet never ceased to glorify human freedom, in
tones that stirred the hearts of men and quickened their hope and upheld
their daring, as with the voice of some heavenly trumpet. You may, if
you choose, find the splendour of the stanzas in the Fourth Canto on the
Bourbon restoration, on Cromwell, and Washington, a theatrical
splendour. But for all that, they touched the noblest parts of men. They
are alive with an exalted and magnanimous generosity, the one high
virtue which can never fail to touch a multitude. Subtlety may miss
them, graces may miss them, and reason may fly over their heads, but the
words of a generous humanity on the lips of poet or chief have never
failed to kindle divine music in their breasts. The critic may censure,
and culture may wave a disdainful hand. As has been said, all such words
'are open to criticism, and they are all above it.' The magic still
works. A mysterious and potent word from the gods has gone abroad over
the face of the earth.

This larger influence was not impaired by Byron's ethical poverty. The
latter was an inevitable consequence of his defective discipline. The
triteness of his moral c