Paris et Londres,
1838), has in various places shown a far more comprehensive sense of
poetic truth than Chateaubriand. His sensibility, being originally
deeper and trained to move upon a larger compass, vibrates equally under
the chords of the Shakspearian music. Even he, however, has made a
serious mistake as to Wordsworth in his relation to Shakspeare. At p.
420 he says: 'Wordsworth qui (de meme que Byron) sympathise pen
cordialement avec Shakspeare, se prosterne cependant comme Byron devant
le _Paradis perdu_; Milton est la grande idole de Wordsworth; il ne
craint pas quelquefois de se comparer lui-meme a son geant;' (never
unless in the single accident of praying for a similar audience--'fit
audience let me find though few'); 'et en verite ses sonnets ont souvent
le meme esprit prophetique, la meme elevation sacree que ceux de
l'Homere anglais.' There cannot be graver mistakes than are here brought
into one focus. Lord Byron cared little for the 'Paradise Lost,' and had
studied it not at all. On the other hand, Lord Byron's pretended
disparagement of Shakspeare by comparison with the meagre, hungry and
bloodless Alfieri was a pure stage trick, a momentary device for
expressing his Apemantus misanthropy towards the English people. It
happened at the time he had made himself unpopular by the circumstances
of his private life: these, with a morbid appetite for engaging public
attention, he had done his best to publish and to keep before the public
eye; whilst at the same time he was very angry at the particular style
of comments which they provoked. There was no fixed temper of anger
towards him in the public mind of England: but he believed that there
was. And he took his revenge through every channel by which he fancied
himself to have a chance for reaching and stinging the national pride;
1st, by ridiculing the English pretensions to higher principle and
national morality; but _that_ failing, 2ndly, by disparaging Shakspeare;
3rdly, on the same principle which led Dean Swift to found the first
lunatic hospital in Ireland, viz.:

'To shew by one satiric touch
No nation wanted it so much.'

Lord Byron, without any _sincere_ opinion or care upon the subject one
way or other, directed in his will--that his daughter should not marry
an Englishman: this bullet, he fancied, would take effect, even though
the Shakspeare bullet had failed. Now, as to Wordsworth, he values both
in the highest degree. In a philosop