ers; and few have put him very much lower.
Acceptance of the former estimate certainly--perhaps even of the
latter--depends however upon the extent to which people can also accept
recognition in Byron of the qualities of "Sincerity and Strength." That
he was always a great though often a careless craftsman, and sometimes a
great artist in literature, nobody possessed of the slightest critical
ability can deny or doubt. But there are some who shake their heads over
the attribution of anything like "sincerity" to him, except very
occasionally: and who if they had to translate his "strength" into Greek
would select the word _Bia_ ("violence") and not the word _Kratos_
(simple "strength") from the _dramatis personae_ of the _Prometheus
Vinctus_. Now "sincerity" of a kind--even of that kind which we found in
Walpole and did not find in Pope--has been contended for here as a
necessity in the best, if not in all good, letters; and "violence" is
almost fatal to them. Of a certain kind of letter Byron was no doubt a
skilful practitioner.[26] But to some it will or may always seem that
the vital principle of his correspondence is to that of the real "Best"
as stage life to life off the stage. These two can sometimes approach
each other marvellously: but they are never the same thing.

[Sidenote: SHELLEY]

When Mr. Matthew Arnold expressed the opinion that Shelley's letters
were more valuable than his poetry it was, of course, as Lamb said of
Coleridge "only his fun." In the words of another classic, he "did it to
annoy, because he knew it teased" some people. The absurdity is perhaps
best antagonised by the perfectly true remark that it only shows that
Mr. Arnold understood the letters and did not understand the poetry. But
it was a little unfortunate, not for the poetry but for the letters,
against which it might create a prejudice. They are so good that they
ought not to have been made victims of what in another person the same
judge would have called, and rightly, a _saugrenu_[27] judgment. Like
all good letters--perhaps all without exception according to Demetrius
and Newman--they carry with them much of their author's idiosyncrasy,
but in a fashion which should help to correct certain misjudgments of
that idiosyncrasy itself. Shelley _is_ "unearthly," but it is an entire
mistake to suppose that his unearthliness can never become earthly to
such an extent as is required. The beginning of _The Recollection_ ("We
wandered to t