ve to the
world of greater value as a moral agency than all the intellectual
reflections that Leopardi contrived to utter. After examining this and
that opinion and doubting over and deprecating them all, Arnold touched
firm ground at last in a dictum of Mr. Swinburne's, the most pertinent
and profound since those of Goethe, to the effect that in Byron there is
a 'splendid and imperishable excellence which covers all his offences and
outweighs all his defects: the excellence of sincerity and strength.'
With this 'noble praise' our critic agreed so vigorously that it became
the key-note of the latter part of his summing up, and in the end you
found him declaring Byron the equal of Wordsworth, and asserting of this
'glorious pair' that 'when the year 1900 is turned, and the nation comes
to recount her poetic glories in the century which has just then ended,
the first names with her will be these.' The prophecy is as little like
to commend itself to the pious votary of Keats as to the ardent
Shelleyite: there are familiars of the Tennysonian Muse, the Sibyl of
_Rizpah_ and _Vastness_ and _Lucretius_ and _The Voyage_, to whom it must
seem impertinent beyond the prophet's wont; there are--(but _they_ scarce
count)--who grub (as for truffles) for meanings in Browning. But it was
not uttered to please, and in truth it has enough of plausibility to
infuriate whatever poet-sects there be. Especially the Wordsworthians.

HUGO

His Critics.

To many Hugo was of the race of AEschylus and Shakespeare, a world-poet
in the sense that Dante was, an artist supreme alike in genius and in
accomplishment. To others he was but a great master of words and
cadences, with a gift of lyric utterance and inspiration rarely surpassed
but with a personality so vigorous and excessive as to reduce its
literary expression--in epic, drama, fiction, satire and ode and song--to
the level of work essentially subjective, in sentiment as in form, in
intention as in effect. The debate is one in which the only possible
arbiter is Time; and to Time the final judgment may be committed. What
is certain is that there is one point on which both dissidents and
devout--the heretics who deny with Matthew Arnold and the orthodox who
worship with Mr. Swinburne and M. de Banville--are absolutely agreed.
Plainly Hugo was the greatest man of letters of his day. It has been
given to few or none to live a life so full of effort and achievement, so
rich