always cause
difference of opinion: and something like a full century has
established the fact that Byron is one of them. As far as
his poetry is concerned we have nothing to do with this
difference or these differences. They affect his letters
less, inasmuch as almost everybody admits them to be
remarkably good of their kind. But when the further
questions are raised, "What _is_ that kind?" and "Is it the
best, or even a very good kind?" the old division manifests
itself again. That they are extraordinarily _clever_ is
again more or less matter of agreement. That they make some
people dislike him more than they otherwise might is perhaps
not a fatal objection: for the people may be wrong. Besides,
as a matter of fact, they sometimes make other people _like_
him more than they would have done without these letters: so
the two things at least cancel each other. The chief
objection to them, which is hardly removable, is their too
frequent artificiality. Byron did not play the tricks that
Pope played: for, he was not, like Pope, an invalid with an
invalid's weaknesses and excuses. But almost more than in
his poems, where the "dramatic" excuse is available, (_i.e._
that the writer is speaking not for himself but for the
character) the letters provoke the question, "Is this what
the man thought, felt, did, or what he wished to seem to
feel, think, do?" In other words, "Is this _persona_ or
_res_?" The following shows Byron in perhaps as favourable a
light as any that could be chosen, and with as little of the
artificiality as is anywhere to be found. It is true that
even here Moore, his biographer and letter-giver, at first
included, though he afterwards cut out, some attacks on Sir
Samuel Romilly, whom Byron thought guilty of causing or
abetting dissension between Lady Byron and himself. But the
letter loses nothing by the omission and does not even gain
unfairly by it. There is nothing _false_ in the contrast of
comedy and sentiment concerning the cemetery. His impression
by the epitaphs Byron gave in more letters than one. Nor is
there any affectation in his remarks about his own burial,
about his children, or any other subject. They did "pickle
him and bring him home" (a quotation, not quite literal,
from Sheridan's _Rivals_),