,
the sleeper had awakened, the eyes saw. It was easy then to sing the
heroism of rebellious sorrow. But afterwards, while an issue was still
doubtful, while the cry of freedom was rising amid the obscurity, the
dust, and uncertainty of actual combat, with how blind a scorn did that
great poet of freedom pour upon Irishman and Boer a poison as virulent
as he had once poured upon the priests and kings of Italy!

Let us emerge from the depression of such common blindness, and recall
the memory of one whose vision never failed even in the midst of present
gloom to detect the spark of freedom. A few great names stand beside
his. Shelley, Landor, the Brownings, all gave the cause of Italy great
and, in one case, the most exquisite verse, while the conflict was
uncertain still. Even the distracted and hesitating soul of Clough, amid
the dilettante contemplation of the arts in Rome, was rightly stirred.
The poem that declared, "'Tis better to have fought and lost than never
to have fought at all," displayed in him a rare decision, while, even
among his hideous hexameters, we find the great satiric line--fit motto
for spectators at the bull-fights of freedom--"So that I 'list not,
hurrah for the glorious army of martyrs!" But the name of Byron rises
above them all, not merely that he alone showed himself capable of deed,
but that the deed gave to his words a solidity and concrete power such
as deeds always give. First of Englishmen, as Mr. Trevelyan says, Byron
perceived that a living Italy was struggling beneath the outward
semblance of Metternich's "order"; and as early as 1821 he prepared to
join the Carbonari of Naples in their revolt for Italian liberty:

"I suppose that they consider me," he wrote, "as a depot
to be sacrificed, in case of accidents. It is no great matter,
supposing that Italy would he liberated, who or what is sacrificed.
It is a grand object--the very _poetry_ of politics. Only
think--a free Italy!"

That was written in freedom's darkest age, between Waterloo and the
appearance of Mazzini, and that grand object was not to be reached for
forty years. In the meantime, true to his guiding principle:

"Then battle for freedom whenever you can,
And, if not shot or hang'd, you'll get knighted,"

Byron had sacrificed himself for Greece as nobly as he was prepared to
sacrifice himself for Italy. It was a time of darkness hardly visible.
In the very year when Byron witnessed the collapse of the