Lord Byron: A Biography with a Critical Essay on His Place in Literature (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Lord Byron: A Biography With a Critical Essay on His Place in Literature

It is undeniable that, partly from the fluctuations to which taste especially in poetry is exposed, and partly from the rise of new poetic schools, the vast influence, once exercised by the works of Byron, had to a certain extent waned among us. But various signs may be discerned which seem to point to a revival of the old interest, not indeed in the fervour, hardly admitting of calm and thoughtful appreciation, which greeted the appearance of Childe Harold, ' but in a more chastened and intelligent fashion, which will lead us, after all abatements are made, to see in Byron the most vigor ous, the most original, poetical genius which England has produced since Milton. The attempts to darken the shadows that lay on some portions of his life may, perhaps, have contributed to produce this revulsion of feeling; but, even apart from this, it would have been an ill sign of the vigour and manliness of our own minds, if the fire, the force, the passion, the intense vitality, of Byron's poetry should have remained for any long period of time unknown or unrecognised. Another biography, coming from a nation standing at the head of the culture of Europe, written, if not with new materials yet from a somewhat different point of view, and which is not only narrative but critical, will, we trust, be as welcome to English readers as it seems to be Opportune.

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