A History of English Literature
A History of English Literature
A History of English Literature
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omantic melancholy and mystery. Like Childe Harold, this impossible and<br />
grandiose figure <strong>of</strong> many incarnations was well understood by every one to<br />
be meant for a picture <strong>of</strong> Byron himself, who thus posed for and received in<br />
full measure the horrified admiration <strong>of</strong> the public. But in spite <strong>of</strong> all<br />
this melodramatic clap-trap the romances, like 'Childe Harold,' are filled<br />
with the tremendous Byronic passion, which, as in 'Childe Harold,' lends<br />
great power alike to their narrative and their description.<br />
Byron now made a strangely ill-judged marriage with a Miss Milbanke, a<br />
woman <strong>of</strong> the fashionable world but <strong>of</strong> strict and perhaps even prudish moral<br />
principles. After a year she left him, and 'society,' with characteristic<br />
inconsistency, turned on him in a frenzy <strong>of</strong> superficial indignation. He<br />
shortly (1816) fled from England, never to return, both his colossal vanity<br />
and his truer sensitive self stung by the injustice to fury against the<br />
hypocrisy and conventionalities <strong>of</strong> <strong>English</strong> life, which, in fact, he had<br />
always despised. He spent the following seven years as a wanderer over<br />
Italy and central Europe. He <strong>of</strong>ten lived scandalously; sometimes he was<br />
with the far more fine-spirited Shelley; and he sometimes furnished money<br />
to the Italians who were conducting the agitation against their tyrannical<br />
foreign governments. All the while he was producing a great quantity <strong>of</strong><br />
poetry. In his half dozen or more poetic dramas he entered a new field. In<br />
the most important <strong>of</strong> them, 'Manfred,' a treatment <strong>of</strong> the theme which<br />
Marlowe and Goethe had used in 'Faust,' his real power is largely thwarted<br />
by the customary Byronic mystery and swagger. 'Cain' and 'Heaven and<br />
Earth,' though wretchedly written, have also a vaguely vast imaginative<br />
impressiveness. Their defiant handling <strong>of</strong> Old Testament material and<br />
therefore <strong>of</strong> Christian theology was shocking to most respectable <strong>English</strong>men<br />
and led Southey to characterize Byron as the founder <strong>of</strong> the 'Satanic<br />
School' <strong>of</strong> <strong>English</strong> poetry. More significant is the longest and chief <strong>of</strong> his<br />
satires, 'Don Juan,' [Footnote: Byron entirely anglicized the second word<br />
and pronounced it in two syllables--Ju-an.] on which he wrote<br />
intermittently for years as the mood took him. It is ostensibly the<br />
narrative <strong>of</strong> the adventures <strong>of</strong> a young Spaniard, but as a story it rambles<br />
on formlessly without approaching an end, and its real purpose is to serve<br />
as an utterly cynical indictment <strong>of</strong> mankind, the institutions <strong>of</strong> society,<br />
and accepted moral principles. Byron <strong>of</strong>ten points the cynicism by lapsing<br />
into brilliant doggerel, but his double nature appears in the occasional<br />
intermingling <strong>of</strong> tender and beautiful passages.<br />
Byron's fiery spirit was rapidly burning itself out. In his uncontrolled<br />
zest for new sensations he finally tired <strong>of</strong> poetry, and in 1823 he accepted<br />
the invitation <strong>of</strong> the European committee in charge to become a leader <strong>of</strong><br />
the Greek revolt against Turkish oppression. He sailed to the Greek camp at<br />
the malarial town <strong>of</strong> Missolonghi, where he showed qualities <strong>of</strong> leadership<br />
but died <strong>of</strong> fever after a few months, in 1824, before he had time to<br />
accomplish anything.<br />
It is hard to form a consistent judgment <strong>of</strong> so inconsistent a being as<br />
Byron. At the core <strong>of</strong> his nature there was certainly much genuine<br />
goodness--generosity, sympathy, and true feeling. However much we may<br />
discount his sacrifice <strong>of</strong> his life in the cause <strong>of</strong> a foreign people, his<br />
love <strong>of</strong> political freedom and his hatred <strong>of</strong> tyranny were thoroughly and<br />
passionately sincere, as is repeatedly evident in such poems as the sonnet<br />
on 'Chillon,' 'The Prisoner <strong>of</strong> Chillon,' and the 'Ode on Venice.' On the<br />
other hand his violent contempt for social and religious hypocrisy had as<br />
much <strong>of</strong> personal bitterness as <strong>of</strong> disinterested principle; and his<br />
persistent quest <strong>of</strong> notoriety, the absence <strong>of</strong> moderation in his attacks on<br />
religious and moral standards, his lack <strong>of</strong> self-control, and his indulgence<br />
in all the vices <strong>of</strong> the worser part <strong>of</strong> the titled and wealthy class require