His greatness as
well as his weakness lay, in the fact that from boyhood battle was the
breath of his being. To tell him not to fight, was like telling Wordsworth
not to reflect, or Shelley not to sing. His instrument is a trumpet of
challenge; and he lived, as he appropriately died, in the progress of an
unaccomplished campaign. His work is neither perfect architecture nor fine
mosaic; but, like that of his intellectual ancestors, the elder
Elizabethans whom he perversely maligned, it is all animated by the spirit
of action and of enterprise.
In good portraits his head has a lurid look, as if it had been at a higher
temperature than that of other men. That high temperature was the source
of his inspiration, and the secret of a spell which, during his life,
commanded homage and drew forth love. Mere artists are often mannikins.
Byron's brilliant though unequal genius was subordinate to the power of
his personality; he
Had the elements
So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world--"This was a man."
We may learn much from him still, when we have ceased to disparage, as our
fathers ceased to idolize, a name in which there is so much warning and so
much example.
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