A little heavy but no less divine.
It will provide a conclusion conformed to a canon of ancient art in letters which forbade climax at the close, if now we present some lines from Byron, remarkable indeed, rather for ingenuity of adaptation than for high poetry, but still illustrative of the esteem compelled from their author for the sublime genius of Milton. The lines to be cited belong to Byron’s “Hints from Horace,” a work generally neglected, but certainly of notable merit, if not comparatively so good as Byron himself accounted it—who, I believe, preferred this satirical paraphrase of Horace to his “Childe Harold.” For the full appreciation of the passage following, one rather needs to have before him for comparison the corresponding text of Horace. Byron paraphrases and satirizes, the reins flung loose on the neck of his foaming Pegasus. Bowles and Southey have just been named for contempt, when, in contrast, the modesty and majesty of Milton’s opening is referred to:
Not so of yore awoke your mighty sire
The tempered warblings of his master lyre;
Soft as the gentle breathings of the lute
“Of man’s first disobedience and the fruit”
He speaks, but, as his subject swells along,
Earth, heaven and Hades echo with the song.
Still to the midst of things he hastens on,
As if we witnessed all already done;