which had no relationship with himself and through himself with
humanity.

A word as to Byron's hold upon the people. He was able to obtain a
hearing from ordinary men and women, who knew nothing even of
Shakespeare, save what they had seen at the theatre. Modern poetry is
the luxury of a small cultivated class. We may say what we like of
popularity, and if it be purchased by condescension to popular silliness
it is nothing. But Byron secured access to thousands of readers in
England and on the Continent by strength and loveliness, a feat seldom
equalled and never perhaps surpassed. The present writer's father, a
compositor in a dingy printing office, repeated verses from "Childe
Harold" at the case. Still more remarkable, Byron reached one of this
writer's friends, an officer in the Navy, of the ancient stamp; and the
attraction, both to printer and lieutenant, lay in nothing lower than
that which was best in him. It is surely a service sufficient to
compensate for many more faults than can be charged against him that
wherever there was any latent poetic dissatisfaction with the vulgarity
and meanness of ordinary life he gave it expression, and that he has
awakened in the PEOPLE lofty emotions which, without him, would have
slept. The cultivated critics, and the refined persons who have
schrecklich viel gelesen, are not competent to estimate the debt we owe
to Byron.



BYRON, GOETHE, AND MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD