One alone--Byron--attains the
summit. He is so great and so English, that from him alone we shall learn
more truths of his country and his age than from all the rest together."
Dr. Elze, ranks the author of _Harold_ and _Juan_ among the four greatest
English poets, and claims for him the intellectual parentage of Lamartine
and Musset in France, of Espronceda in Spain, of Puschkin in Russia, with
some modifications, of Heine in Germany, of Berchet and others in Italy.
So many voices of so various countries cannot be simply set aside: unless
we wrap ourselves in an insolent insularism, we are bound at least to ask
what is the meaning of their concurrent testimony. Foreign judgments can
manifestly have little weight on matters of form, and not one of the
above-mentioned critics is sufficiently alive to the egregious
shortcomings which Byron himself recognized. That he loses almost nothing
by translation is a compliment to the man, a disparagement to tho artist.
Very few pages of his verse even aspire to perfection; hardly a stanza
will bear the minute word-by-word dissection which only brings into
clearer view the delicate touches of Keats or Tennyson; his pictures with
a big brush were never meant for the microscope.
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