first place he appealed by virtue of his subject-matter--the
desultory wanderings of _Childe Harold_ traversed ground every mile of
which was memorable to men who had watched the struggle which had been
going on in Europe with scarcely a pause for twenty years. Descriptive
journalism was then and for nearly half a century afterwards unknown,
and the poem by its descriptiveness, by its appeal to the curiosity of
its readers, made the same kind of success that vividly written special
correspondence would to-day, the charm of metre super-added. Lord Byron
gave his readers something more, too, than mere description. He added to
it the charm of a personality, and when that personality was enforced by
a title, when it proclaimed its sorrows as the age's sorrows, endowed
itself with an air of symbolism and set itself up as a kind of scapegoat
for the nation's sins, its triumph was complete. Most men have from time
to time to resist the temptation to pose to themselves; many do not even
resist it. For all those who chose to believe themselves blighted by
pessimism, and for all the others who would have loved to believe it,
Byron and his poetry came as an echo of themselves. Shallow called to
shallow. Men found in him, as their sons found more reputably in
Tennyson, a picture of what they conceived to be the state of their own
minds.

But he was not altogether a man of pretence. He really and passionately
loved freedom; no one can question his sincerity in that. He could be a
fine and scathing satirist; and though he was careless, he had great
poetic gifts.

(3)

The age of the Romantic Revival was one of poetry rather than of prose;
it was in poetry that the best minds of the time found their means of
expression. But it produced prose of rare quality too, and there is
delightful reading in the works of its essayists and occasional writers.
In its form the periodical essay had changed little since it was first
made popular by Addison and Steele. It remained, primarily, a vehicle
for the expression of a personality, and it continued to seek the
interests of its readers by creating or suggesting an individuality
strong enough to carry off any desultory adventure by the mere force of
its own attractiveness. Yet there is all the difference in the world
between Hazlitt and Addison, or Lamb and Steele. The _Tatler_ and the
_Spectator_ leave you with a sense of artifice; Hazlitt and Lamb leave
you with a grip of a real personality