mas, but they are not acting plays. He lacked the dramatic
instinct, and it is safe to say that his plays, except in certain
passages, add little to his great reputation.

In the opinion of many critics, Byron's genius was more fully displayed
in 'Don Juan' than in 'Childe Harold.' Byron was Don Juan, mocking,
satirical, witty, pathetic, dissolute, defiant of all conventional
opinion. The ease, the grace, the _diablerie_ of the poem are
indescribable; its wantonness is not to be excused. But it is a
microcosm of life as the poet saw it, a record of the experience of
thirty years, full of gems, full of flaws, in many ways the most
wonderful performance of his time. The critics who were offended by its
satire of English hypocrisy had no difficulty in deciding that it was
not fit for English readers. I wonder what would be the judgment of it
if it were a recovered classic disassociated from the personality of any
writer.

Byron was an aristocrat, and sometimes exhibited a silly regard for his
rank; but he was a democrat in all the impulses of his nature. His early
feeling was that as a peer he condescended to authorship, and for a time
he would take no pay for what he wrote. But later, when he needed
money, he was keen at a bargain for his poetry. He was extravagant in
his living, generous to his friends and to the popular causes he
espoused, and cared nothing for money except the pleasure of spending
it. It was while he was living at Ravenna that he became involved in the
intrigues for Italian independence. He threw himself, his fortune and
his time, into it. The time has come, he said, when a man must do
something--writing was only a pastime. He joined the secret society of
the Carbonari; he showed a statesmanlike comprehension of the situation;
his political papers bear the stamp of the qualities of vision and
leadership. When that dream faded under the reality of the armies of
despotism, his thoughts turned to Greece. Partly his restless nature,
partly love of adventure carried him there; but once in the enterprise,
he gave his soul to it with a boldness, a perseverance, a good sense, a
patriotic fervor that earn for him the title of a hero in a good cause.
His European name was a tower of strength to the Greek patriots. He
mastered the situation with a statesman's skill and with the perception
of a soldier; he endured all the hardships of campaigning, and waited in
patience to bring some order to the wrangling factio