BYRON’S PLACE AMONG POETS
NEWSTEAD ABBEY
Byron’s Home.
BYRON’S MOTHER
From the painting by Thomas Stewardson in possession of John Murray.
What ground was there for an estimate which gave Byron a place by himself among English poets? “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” was a telling satire written by a confident boy of genius, effective in “hits” which the time understood, but defective in critical insight; “Childe Harold,” the early stanzas of which appeared after travel had inspired him, was a splendid piece of rhetoric which often attains a very noble eloquence. “The Giaour” (jow´-er), “Manfred,” the “Corsair,” “Lara” (lah´-rah), stirred an age which was in revolt against rigid and often artificial conventions. “Don Juan” (hoo-ahn´), like “Childe Harold,” is a poetic journal which lacks dramatic unity, but contains descriptions of compelling beauty. Some of the shorter pieces, like the “Prisoner of Chillon,” “When We Two Parted,” “She Walks in Beauty,” have the power of deep feeling when it becomes eloquent; while such stanzas as “The Isles of Greece,” scattered through “Childe Harold,” make history as moving as poetry.
LADY BYRON
The wife of the poet.
LORD BYRON
From the engraving by Lupton after the painting by Thomas Phillips.
Byron had richness of imagination rather than wealth of thought; he had a full-throated, operatic voice rather than purity of tone; he had splendor rather than clarity of mind; he had great natural force of genius rather than command of the resources of art. He was generous in impulse, enthusiastic in temper, and he loved liberty. It was the presence of these qualities in his nature, and his spirit of revolt, that led Mazzini (maght-see´-nee), to predict, “The day will come when Democracy will remember all that it owes to Byron.”