y mediaevalism or
paganism, intrinsically meaningless and issueless, of another.

More attention is now paid to the mysteries of Byron's life than to the
merits of his work, and criticism and morality are equally injured by
the confusion between the worth of the verse he wrote, and the virtue or
wickedness of the life he lived. The admirers of his poetry appear
sensible of some obligation to be the champions of his conduct, while
those who have diligently gathered together the details of an accurate
knowledge of the unseemliness of his conduct, cannot bear to think that
from this bramble men have been able to gather figs. The result of the
confusion has been that grave men and women have applied themselves to
investigate and judge Byron's private life, as if the exact manner of
it, the more or less of his outrages upon decorum, the degree of the
deadness of his sense of moral responsibility, were matter of minute and
profound interest to all ages. As if all this had anything to do with
criticism proper. It is right that we should know the life and manners
of one whom we choose for a friend, or of one who asks us to entrust him
with the control of public interests. In either of these two cases, we
need a guarantee for present and future. Art knows nothing of
guarantees. The work is before us, its own warranty. What is it to us
whether Turner had coarse orgies with the trulls of Wapping? We can
judge his art without knowing or thinking of the artist. And in the same
way, what are the stories of Byron's libertinism to us? They may have
biographical interest, but of critical interest hardly the least. If the
name of the author of _Manfred_, _Cain_, _Childe Harold_, were already
lost, as it may be in remote times, the work abides, and its mark on
European opinion. '_Je ne considere les gens apres leur mort_,' said
Voltaire, '_que par leurs ouvrages; tout la reste est aneanti pour
moi_.'

There is a sense in which biographical detail gives light to criticism,
but not the sense in which the prurient moralist uses or seeks it. The
life of the poet may help to explain the growth and prominence of a
characteristic sentiment or peculiar idea. Knowledge of this or that
fact in his life may uncover the roots of something that strikes, or
unravel something that perplexes us. Considering the relations between a
man's character and circumstance, and what he produces, we can from this
point of view hardly know too much as to the person