description. His accuracy in
Oriental costume was also a novelty at that time, when so little was
known of Oriental lore that even Mr. Murray 'doubted the propriety of
putting the name of Cain into the mouth of a Mohammedan.' With regard
to his characters, we may readily admit that in the _Giaour_ or the
_Bride of Abydos_ the heroes and heroines behave and speak after the
fashion of high-flying Western romance, and that their lofty
sentiments in love or death have nothing specifically Oriental about
them. But this was merely the romantic style used by all Byron's
contemporaries, and generally accepted by the taste of that day as
essential to the metrical rendering of a passionate love-story. It may
be argued, with Scott, that when a writer of fiction takes in hand a
distant age or country, he is obliged to translate ideas and their
expression into forms with which his readers are, to some extent,
familiar. Byron seasoned his Oriental tales with phrases and imagery
borrowed from the East; but whatever scenic or characteristic effects
might have thus been produced are seriously marred by the explanatory
notices and erudite references to authorities that are appended to the
text. This fashion of garnishing with far-fetched outlandish words, in
order to give the requisite flavour of time or place, was peculiar to
the new romantic school of his era; it was the poetical dialect of the
time, and Byron employed it too copiously. Yet, with all his faults,
he remains a splendid colourist, who broke through a limited mannerism
in poetry, and led forth his readers into an unexplored region of
cloudless sky and purple sea, where the serene aspect of nature could
be powerfully contrasted with the shadow of death and desolation cast
over it by the violence of man.

Undoubtedly this contrast, between fair scenery and foul barbarism,
had been presented more than once in poetry; yet no one before Byron
had brought it out with the sure hand of an eye-witness, or with such
ardent sympathy for a nation which had been for centuries trodden
under the feet of aliens in race and religion, yet still clung to its
ancient traditions of freedom. Throughout his descriptive poems, from
_Childe Harold_ to _Don Juan_, it is the true and forcible impression,
taken from sight of the thing itself, that gives vigour and animation
to his pictures, and that has stamped on the memory the splendid
opening of the _Giaour_, the meditations in Venice and Rome, t