against this the most unhappy and perverse example on record of a pernicious exactitude in the collection and preservation of all that an author would desire to efface from his own and all men's memory. The first such protest, if I mistake not, was expressed in earnest and weighty words by Miss Mathilde Blind, whose admirable essay on Shelley was one of the earliest and most notable signs of the impulse given to the critical study of the poet by the appearance of this edition. That essay, full as it was of eloquent commentary and fervent thought, is yet more precious for its many contributions to the pure and perfect text of Shelley which we hope before long to see; no pedagogic emendations or professorial conjectures, but restorations supplied from the poet's own manuscript; and, more than all, for the completion of that faultless poem called "The Question" by one long-lost line of final loveliness.

It would be a pleasanter task than that of fault-finding or protesting, to pass once more through the glorious gallery of Shelley's works in the company of his first critical editor, and note down what points of consent or dissent might occur to us in the process of comparing opinions as to this poem or that. But time and space forbid me to do more than register my own opinion as to the respective value of two among the latest, and express the surprise which I share with Miss Blind at the station assigned by Mr. Rossetti to the "Witch of Atlas," which he deliberately ranks above the "Epipsychidion." It is indeed an exquisite exercise of sunny and flowery fancy, which probably was designed to cover or convey no such elaborate allegoric significance as the

editor seems willing to seek in it; the "lady witch being simply an incarnation of ideal beauty and beneficence, in her relations to man a spiritual patroness of free thought and free love, in her relations to nature a mistress or an adept of her secret rites or forces. Nor does it seem to me that Mr. Rossetti has touched on the one point where the "Epipsychidion" might be plausibly represented as open to attack. Its impalpable and ethereal philosophy of love and life does not prevent it from being "quite a justifiable sort of poem to write; " the questionable element in it is the apparent introduction of such merely personal allusions as can only perplex and irritate the patience and intelligence of a loyal student, while they may not impossibly afford an opening for preposterous and even offensive interpretations. In all poetry as in all religions, mysteries must have place, but riddles should find none. The high, sweet, mystic doctrine of this poem is apprehensible enough to all who look into it with purged eyes and listen with purged ears ; but the passages in which the special experience of the writer is thrust forward under the mask and muffler of allegoric rhapsody are not in any proper sense mysterious; they are simply puzzling; and art should have nothing to do with puzzles. This, and this alone, is the fault which in my opinion may be not unreasonably found with some few passages of the “" Epipsychidion ;" and a fault so slight and partial as merely to affect some few passages here and there, perceptible only in the byways and outskirts of the poem, can in no degree impair the divine perfection of its charm, the savour of its heavenly quality. By the depth and exaltation of its dominant

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idea, by the rapture of the music and the glory of the colour which clothe with sound and splendour the subtle and luminous body of its thought, by the harmony of its most passionate notes and the humanity of its most godlike raptures, it holds a foremost place in the works of that poet who has now for two generations ruled and moulded the hearts and minds of all among his countrymen to whom the love of poetry has been more than a fancy or a fashion; who has led them by the light of his faith, by the spell of his hope, by the fire of his love, on the way of thought which he himself had followed in the track of the greatest who had gone before him-of Eschylus, of Lucretius, of Milton; who has been more to us than ever was Byron to the youth of his own brief day, than ever was Wordsworth to the students of the day succeeding; and of whom, whether we class him as second or as third among English poets, it must be in either case conceded that he holds the same rank in lyric as Shakespeare in dramatic poetry-supreme, and without a second of his race. I would not pit his name against the sacred name of Milton; to wrangle for the precedence of this immortal or of that can be but futile and injurious; it is enough that our country may count among her sons two of the greatest among those great poets who have also been prophets and evangelists of personal and national, social and spiritual freedom; but it is equally certain that of all forms or kinds of poetry the two highest are the lyric and the dramatic, and that as clearly as the first place in the one rank is held among us by Shakespeare, the first place in the other is held and will never be resigned by Shelley.

238

BYRON.

[PREFATORY NOTE.-This, like the following essay, was prefixed to a small volume of selections from the poems of the author whose genius is the subject of discussion. To the work of Coleridge this process of selection, if adequately carried out, must have been, as Leigh Hunt long since suggested, a real and great service; for his work is distinctly divisible into good and bad, durable and perishable; and it would be a clear gain to have the priceless parts of that work detached from the worthless; but to Byron, who rarely wrote anything either worthless or faultless, it could not be otherwise than injurious. He can only be judged or appreciated in the mass; the greatest of his works was his whole work taken altogether; and to know or to honour him aright he must be considered with all his imperfections and with all his glories on his head.]

THE most delicate and thoughtful of English critics has charged the present generation of Englishmen with forgetfulness of Byron. It is not a light charge: and it is not ungrounded. Men born when this century was getting into its forties were baptized into another church

than his with the rites of another creed. Upon their ears, first after the cadences of elder poets, fell the faultless and fervent melodies of Tennyson. To them, chief among the past heroes of the younger century, three men appeared as predominant in poetry; Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley. Behind these were effaced, on either hand, the two great opposing figures of Byron and Wordsworth. No man under twenty can just now be expected to appreciate these. The time was when all boys and girls who paddled in rhyme and dabbled in sentiment were wont to adore the presence or the memory of Byron with foolish faces of praise. It is of little moment to him or to us that they have long since ceased to cackle and begun to hiss. They have become used to better verse and carefuller workmen ; and must be forgiven if after such training they cannot at once appreciate the splendid and imperishable excellence which covers all his offences and outweighs all his defects the excellence of sincerity and strength. Without these no poet can live; but few have ever had so much of them as Byron. His sincerity indeed is difficult to discover and define; but it does in effect lie at the root of all his good works: deformed by pretension and defaced by assumption, masked by folly and veiled by affectation; but perceptible after all, and priceless.

It is no part of my present office to rewrite the history of a life in which every date and event that could be given would now seem trite and stale to all possible readers. If, after so many promises and hints, something at once new and true shall at length be unearthed