Either for fighting or for drudging:
When it had stabb'd, or broke a head,
It would scrape trenchers or chip bread,
Toast cheese or bacon, though it were
To bait a mouse-trap, 'twould not care:
'Twould make clean shoes, and in the earth
Set leeks and onions, and so forth:
It had been 'prentice to a brewer,
Where this, and more, it did endure;
But left the trade, as many more
Have lately done, on the same score.

LORD BYRON

(1788-1824)

BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

Goethe, in one of his conversations with Henry Crabb Robinson about
Byron, said "There is no padding in his poetry" ("Es sind keine
Flickwoerter im Gedichte"). This was in 1829, five years after Byron
died. "This, and indeed every evening, I believe, Lord Byron was the
subject of his praise. He compared the brilliancy and clearness of his
style to a metal wire drawn through a steel plate." He expressed regret
that Byron should not have lived to execute his vocation, which he said
was "to dramatize the Old Testament. What a subject under his hands
would the Tower of Babel have been!" Byron's views of nature he declared
were "equally profound and poetical." Power in all its forms Goethe had
respect for, and he was captivated by the indomitable spirit of Manfred.
He enjoyed the 'Vision of Judgment' when it was read to him, exclaiming
"Heavenly!" "Unsurpassable!" "Byron has surpassed himself." He equally
enjoyed the satire on George IV. He did not praise Milton with the
warmth with which he eulogized Byron, of whom he said that "the like
would never come again; he was inimitable."

Goethe's was the Continental opinion, but it was heightened by his
conception of "realism"; he held that the poet must be matter-of-fact,
and that it was the truth and reality that made writing popular: "It is
by the laborious collection of facts that even a poetical view of nature
is to be corrected and authenticated." Tennyson was equally careful for
scientific accuracy in regard to all the phenomena of nature. Byron had
not scientific accuracy, but with his objectivity Goethe sympathized
more than with the reflection and introspection of Wordsworth.

Byron was hailed on the Continent as a poet of power, and the judgment
of him was not influenced by his disregard of the society conventions
of England, nor by his personal eccentricities, nor because he
was not approved by the Tory party and the Tory writers. Perhaps
unconscio