spread into literature. In criticising Byron's poetry we have to bear
in mind that he came in on the first wave of this flood, which
overflowed the exhausted and arid field of poetry at the end of the
last century, fertilising it with colour and emotion. The comparison
between Byron in England and Chateaubriand in France must have been
often drawn. The similarity in their style, their moody, melancholy
outlook upon common humanity, their aristocratic temper, their
self-consciousness, their influence upon the literature of the two
countries, the enthusiasm that they excited among the ardent spirits
of the generation that reached manhood immediately after them, and the
vain attempts of the elder critics to resist their popularity and deny
their genius--form a remarkable parallel in literary history. As
Jeffrey failed at first to discern the promise of Byron, so Morellet
could only perceive the obviously weak points of Chateaubriand, laying
stress on his affectations, his inflated language, his sentimental
exaggeration, upon all the faults which were common to these two men
of genius, the defects of their qualities, the energetic rebound from
the classic level of orderly taste and measured style. It was the
ancient _regime_ contending against a revolutionary uprising, and in
poetry, as in politics, the leaders of revolution are sure to be
excessive, to force their notes, to frighten their elders, and to
scandalise the conservative mind. Yet just as Chateaubriand, after
passing through his period of depression, is now rising again to his
proper place in French literature, so we may hope that an impartial
survey of Byron's verse will help to determine the rank that he is
likely to hold permanently, although the high tide of Romance in
poetry has at this moment fallen to a low ebb, and the spell which it
laid upon our forefathers may have lost its power in an altered world.

It must be counted to the credit of these Romantic writers that at any
rate they widened and varied the sphere and the resources of their
art, by introducing the Oriental element, so to speak, into the
imaginative literature of modern Europe. They brought the lands of
ancient civilisation again within the sphere of poetry, reviving into
fresh animation the classic glories of Hellas, reopening the gates of
the mysterious East, and showing us the Greek races still striving, as
they were twenty-two centuries earlier, for freedom against the
barbarous strengt