GEORGE GORDON, sixth Baron Byron of Rochdale, was born in London in 1788. Much of his youth was passed in Scotland, where he acquired the love of mountain scenery that appears so constantly in his poems. Harrow and Cambridge seem to have done little for him save to excite in him a loathing for the pedantry of the schools. The Hours of Idleness (1807) being savagely condemned by the Edinburgh Review, Byron consoled himself by drinking three bottles of claret at a sitting and by writing English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, -a satire that contains some lines not unworthy of Pope. Two years on the continent (1809-1811) furnished the material for the first and second cantos of Childe Harold, wherein he showed for the first time his great powers of idealistic description. Seven editions were sold within a month. Then followed a long list of lurid Oriental romances in verse, concerning which we must agree with the author when he declares they show his own want of judgment in publishing and the public's in reading. The same public made itself equally ridiculous by treating Byron as the object of a persistent lionism; this period of heroic vacuity in the poet's life, was brought to an abrupt close by differences arising from an unhappy marriage; in 1816 he wisely left England for Italy, never to return. The third and fourth cantos of Childe Harold (1816 and 1818) give us those splendid pictures of the Rhine, Switzerland and Italy upon which Byron's reputation as a poet must largely rest. His numerous dramas, though containing magnificent lyrical passages, are all lacking in the first essentials of a good play-Action and Contrast of Character. Just what it is Byron has given us in Don Juan the critics seem unable to agree upon: Watkins has called it the 'Odyssey of Immorality;' Shelley declares it to be 'Something wholly new and relative to the age and yet surpassingly beautiful.' However this may be, certain it is that the varying moods of this poem, with its wonderful range of humor, passion and imagination, come straight from Byron's soul, which he has here exposed- -as he was too fond of doing -to the gaze of the world. The revolt of Greece against Turkey enlisted his ardent sympathies; in 1823 he left Italy for Greece, where he unselfishly devoted his money, his talents and his health to the cause of Hellenic independence. Had he lived, he bid fair to become the Cavour of his age; this glorious prospect was eclipsed by death, which came to him untimely, at Mesolonghi, on the 19th of April, 1824. No English poet is so well known on the Continent of Europe as Byron, nor has any foreigner ever exercised such an influence as he on the poetry of modern France, Germany and Italy. FRIENDS. Scott, Moore, Sheridan, Shelley, Hobhouse, Trelawny. BIBLIOGRAPHY. LIFE AND TIMES. Of the innumerable Lives of Byron, few add anything worth knowing to Moore's. Byron's Letters, contained therein, are, it seems to me, the very best letters in English. Shelley's Julian and Maddalo is inestimably precious as a portrait by the contemporary who understood Byron best and loved him most. Of the shorter Lives, Nichol's (E. M. L.) is greatly superior both in appreciation and in arrangement to Noel's (Gt. Wr.); the latter, indeed, is written in a style that can be called English only by courtesy, and reminds one of Walt Whitman at his worst. Irving's Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey gives a charming account of his visit to Byron's ancestral home. For the History, see Green, Cap. X. Sec. 4; also, Spencer Walpole's History of England, Cap. i-vi. The last mentioned author is at home in political and social questions; when he wanders into Literature (Cap. iv.) he is in a foreign country whose features he is able to sketch but crudely and superficially. CRITICISM.- - Sir Walter Scott: Quarterly Review, XVI. 172, and XIX. 215. Over-generous reviews of Childe Harold, Cantos iii. and iv., and of some of the minor poems. Macaulay: Moore's Life of Lord Byron. Macaulay was twenty-four when Byron died, and this Essay is written with the sincerity and force of a man who had experienced the poetical effects he describes. Yet it is chiefly objective in its descriptions and seldom gets at the heart of things. Morley: Critical Miscellanies, Vol. i.; Byron. A study of Byron as the spiritual exponent of the revolutionary spirit. Swinburne: Essays and Studies; Byron. Shows a sympathetic insight into the high qualities of Byron's poetry such as only a poet could display. Swinburne: Nineteenth Century; XV.583 and 764. Wordsworth and Byron. The first of these articles is a lamentable exhibition of bad taste and bad temper; it deluges Byron with a flood of literary abuse (drawn forth by Matthew Arnold's preference for Byron over Shelley). The second article is devoted chiefly to Wordsworth and contains some sound criticism mixed with assumptions of critical authority that are equally offensive and ridiculous. Matthew Arnold: Essays in Criticism, Second Series; Byron. This is the article which roused Mr. Swinburne's ire - although it judiciously praises Byron, in Mr. Swinburne's own words, for 'the excellence of sincerity and strength.' Andrew Lang: Letters to Dead Authors; Lord Byron. A caustic review (in verse) of the Arnold-Swinburne controversy. Courthope: The Liberal Movement in English Literature, Essays i., iv. and vi. Shows conclusively that the Arnold-Swinburne controversy is internecine; that Byron's permanence is due to reality in description, feeling and style; that the final test of classic poetry is not 'high seriousness' (Arnold) nor 'imagination and harmony' (Swinburne), but is the extent and quality of the pleasure it produces for the imagination by means of metrical language. For Continental criticism, see Goethe; Conversations with Eckermann: Oct. 19, 1823; Feb. 22, 1824; May 18, 1824: Jan. 10, 1825; Dec. 25, 1825; March 26, 1826; Nov. 8, 1826; June 20, 1827; Dec. 16, 1828. Taine; History of English Literature: Book iv. Cap. 2. Castelar; Vida de Lord Byron (translated by Mrs. Arthur Arnold; London, 1875). Mazzini; Byron and Goethe (in Vol. VI. of Mazzini's Life and Writings; London, 1891). CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE. In his Preface to the First and Second Cantos Byron wrote: 'A fictitious character is introduced for the sake of giving some connection to the piece, which, however, makes no pretension to regularity. It has been suggested to me by friends, on whose opinion I set a high value, that in the fictitious character, Childe Harold, I may incur the suspicion of having intended some real personage: this I beg leave once for all to disclaim; Harold is the child of imagination, for the purpose I have stated. . . It is almost superfluous to mention that the appellation 'Childe,' as 'Childe Waters,' 'Childe Childers,' etc., is used as more consonant with the old structure of versification [Spenserian stanza] which I have adopted.' Childe; in Middle English ballads = a noble youth, a squire. Com pare Childe Roland to the dark tower came, in King Lear, iii. 4, and Browning's poem with the same title. I-27. na's cliff Tritonia = MODERN GREECE. Colon olive. Hymet Apollo Athene. Cl. Myths, pp. 416-417. Sunium, the most southerly point of Attica. The olive was fabled to be the gift of Athene (Minerva). tus; a mountain near Athens famed for marble and honey. the sun. For interpretation of the sun-myth, see Cl. Myths, p. 419. Mendeli; a corruption of 'Pentelicus,' a mountain about twelve miles from Athens. Here are situated the quarries whence came the marble for the temples of the city. 28-54. Athena's tower. This must mean the Parthenon, but it would be difficult to find a more inappropriate word than tower. Marathon. See a History of Greece under the year 490 B.C.; compare also Byron's Isles of Greece, p. 152 of this book. distant Glory = glory to which we look back through a long distance of time. The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow; a slovenly construction not justified by the gain in rhetorical emphasis. With line 49 compare lines 60-62 of Gray's Bard. the violated mound, on the field of Marathon, where the Greeks who fell there are said to have been buried. Stanza xc. closely resembles Stanza xvii. of the Third Canto of Childe Harold. 55-81. voyager with th' Ionian blast Ionian Sea (the West). Muse = Poetry (for the bards). Pallas = he who comes from the - Wisdom (for the sages); Delphi; the oracle of Apollo, in VENICE. For the history of Venice as interpreted by her art, see Ruskin's St. Mark's Rest; for the Ducal Palace in particular, see his Stones of Venice, Vol. ii. Cap. 8. I-27. The Bridge of Sighs; too well known by means of photographs to need description here. The palace (2) is the Ducal Palace; the prison, the state prison, just across the Rio del Palazzo. 'This Rio, or canal, is usually looked upon by the traveller with great respect, or even horror, because it passes under the Bridge of Sighs. It is, however, one of the principal thoroughfares of the city; and the bridge and its canal together occupy, in the mind of a Venetian, very much the position of Fleet Street and Temple Bar in that of a Londoner, at least, at the time when Temple Bar was occasionally decorated with human heads. The two buildings closely resemble each other in form.' — Ruskin : Stones of Venice, ii. 8. when many a subject land: in the fifteenth century. the wingéd lion (of St. Mark); the emblem of Venice. Cybele; pronounced here according to the Italian method, with the accent on the second syllable; the classic form requires Cyb'ele. Hinc mater cultrix Cybeli Corybantiaque aera In Eneid vi. 785, we read of her, Eneid iii. 111-113. Invehitur curru Phrygias turrita per urbes, suggesting Byron's tiara of proud towers. In the Prado of Madrid there is a beautiful statue of Cybele and her lions, embodying the Vergilian conceptions quoted above. For the attributes of the goddess, see Cl. Myths, § 45a. Tasso (d. 1595), author of Jerusalem Delivered, the epic of the Crusades. Passages from this famous poem took such a strong hold upon the imagination of even the common people, that the gondoliers used to recite them as they rowed. For the Gondolier's Cry, see Stones of Venice, Vol. ii. Appendix 1. 28-45. Dogeless. 'Doge' was the title of the chief magistrate of the Venetian Republic. This office was established in the seventh century, and was abolished by Napoleon when he overthrew the Venetian Republic in 1797. 'Doge' and 'Duke' are both from the Latin dux.' Rialto; The best building raised in the time of the Grotesque Renaissance; very noble in its simplicity, in its proportions and its masonry. . . The bridge was built by Antonio da centre. Ponte in 1588. It was anciently of wood, with a drawbridge in the the traveller should observe that the interesting effect both of this and the Bridge of Sighs depends in great part on their both being more than bridges; the one a covered passage, the other a row of shops, sustained on an arch.' — Venetian Index to the Stones of Venice, article 'Rialto.' See, also, Merchant of Venice, iii. Pierre; the heroic character in Otway's Venice Preserved. See note on Pope's Epistle to Augustus, 278. which bright and cheerful thoughts. ideal creations of the imagination. hard, dull lot of commonplace existence. this passage compare that these spirits = these what we hate; i.e., the With the sentiment of Such harmony is in immortal souls; Merchant of Venice, v. 1. 46-63. The spouseless Adriatic. The prosperity of Venice was based upon her commerce; this fact was symbolized by the ceremony known as The Marriage of the Adriatic, wherein the Doge cast a ring into the sea. The vessel in which he was conveyed to the appointed place was called the Bucentaur. St. Mark yet sees his lion stand, where he stands to-day, in the Piazetta west of the Ducal Palace. ‘... that noble winged lion, one of the grandest things produced by mediæval art, which all men admire and none can draw. I have never yet seen a faithful representation of his firm, fierce and fiery strength.'— Ruskin: Stones of Venice, iii. Appendix 10. Emperor (52); Suabian (55): Frederick Barbarossa, who attempted to enforce his authority over the cities of northern Italy (the Lombard League), but was defeated by them at the battle of Legnano (1176). Sismondi calls this the first and most noble struggle ever maintained by the nations of modern Europe against despotism.' The Pope, Alexander III., had sided with the League, and to him the Emperor made submission in Venice, the year after the battle. the Austrian. Venice was under Austrian rule from 1797 to 1805, and from 1814 to 1866. For the condition of Venetian society during the last days of the Austrian occupation, see Howells' delightful Venetian Days. lauwine (German) = avalanche. Dandolo. There were several distinguished Doges of this name; the one here referred to is Enrico Dandolo, who, though old and blind, led the men of the fourth Crusade to the capture of Constantinople in 1204. |