p to or anticipated the guide-book,
but the spectacle of the bull-fight at Cadiz is "for ever warm," the "sound
of revelry" on the eve of Waterloo still echoes in our ears, and Marathon
and Venice, Greece and Italy, still rise up before us, "as from the stroke
of an enchanter's wand." It was, however, in another vein that Byron
achieved his final triumph. In _Don Juan_ he set himself to depict life as
a whole. The style is often misnamed the mock-heroic. It might be more
accurately described as humorous-realistic. His "plan was to have no plan"
in the sense of synopsis or argument, but in the person of his hero to
"unpack his heart," to avenge himself on his enemies, personal or
political, to suggest an apology for himself and to disclose a criticism
and philosophy of life. As a satirist in the widest sense of the word, as
an analyser of human nature, he comes, at whatever distance, after and yet
next to Shakespeare. It is a test of the greatness of _Don Juan_ that its
reputation has slowly increased and that, in spite of its supposed immoral
tendency, in spite of occasional grossness and voluptuousness, it has come
to be recognized as Byron's masterpiece. _Don Juan_ will be read for its
own sake, for its beauty, its humour, its faithfulness. It is a "hymn to
the earth," but it is a human sequence to "its own music chaunted."

[v.04 p.0905] In his own lifetime Byron stood higher on the continent of
Europe than in England or even in America. His works as they came out were
translated into French, into German, into Italian, into Russian, and the
stream of translation has never ceased to flow. The _Bride of Abydos_ has
been translated into ten, _Cain_ into nine languages. Of _Manfred_ there is
one Bohemian translation, two Danish, two Dutch, two French, nine German,
three Hungarian, three Italian, two Polish, one Romaic, one Rumanian, four
Russian and three Spanish translations. The dictum or verdict of Goethe
that "the English may think of Byron as they please, but this is certain
that they show no poet who is to be compared with him" was and is the
keynote of continental European criticism. A survey of European literature
is a testimony to the universality of his influence. Victor Hugo,
Lamartine, Delavigne, Alfred de Musset, in France; Boerne, Mueller and Heine
in Germany; the Italian poets Leopardi and Giusti; Pushkin and Lermontov
among the Russians; Michiewicz and Slowacki among the Poles--more or less,
as eulogists or