'He does not sufficiently take into consideration the peculiar strength evolved by such writers as Byron and Shelley, who, however mistaken they may be, did yet give the world another heart, and a new pulse, and so we are kept going. Blessed be those who grease the wheels of the old world.'
This is the large-hearted, far-seeing judgment of one who could survey the whole line and evolutionary succession of English verse, being himself destined to close the long list of nineteenth-century poets, which was opened by Byron and his contemporaries. The time has surely now come when we may leave discussing Byron as a social outlaw, and cease groping after more evidence of his misdeeds. The office of true criticism is to show that he made so powerful an impression on our literature as to win for himself permanent rank in its annals, and that his work, with all its shortcomings, does yet mark and illustrate an important stage in the connected development of our English poetry.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] The Works of Lord Byron: a New, Revised, and Enlarged Edition.—'Letters and Journals.' Edited by Rowland E. Prothero, M. A. 'Poetry.' Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge, M. A. London, John Murray, 1898.—Edinburgh Review, October 1900.
[25] Preface to the Corsair.
[26] The Deformed Transformed (part I. scene i.).
[27] Sardanapalus (act V. scene i.).