are at all times, and especially nowadays, expensive amusements, and
often require a good private fortune--rare among poets. They have,
therefore, been wisely abandoned as ideals, except among a few young
persons, who used to wear turn-down collars, and are now attempting
moustaches and Mazzini hats. But even among them, and among their
betters--rather their more-respectables--nine-tenths of the bad
influence which is laid at Byron's door really is owing to Shelley.
Among the many good-going gentlemen and ladies, Byron is generally
spoken of with horror--he is "so wicked," forsooth; while poor
Shelley, "poor dear Shelley," is "very wrong, of course," but "so
refined," "so beautiful," "so tender"--a fallen angel, while Byron is
a satyr and a devil. We boldly deny the verdict. Neither of the two
are devils; as for angels, when we have seen one, we shall be better
able to give an opinion; at present, Shelley is in our eyes far less
like one of those old Hebrew and Miltonic angels, fallen or unfallen,
than Byron is. And as for the satyr; the less that is said for
Shelley, on that point, the better. If Byron sinned more desperately
and flagrantly than he, it was done under the temptations of rank,
wealth, disappointed love, and under the impulses of an animal
nature, to which Shelley's passions were


As moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.


At all events, Byron never set to work to consecrate his own sin into
a religion and proclaim the worship of uncleanness as the last and
highest ethical development of "pure" humanity. No--Byron may be
brutal; but he never cants. If at moments he finds himself in hell,
he never turns round to the world and melodiously informs them that