undoubtedly the
greatest genius[1] of our century." Again: "Tasso's epic has maintained
its fame, but Byron is the burning bush, which reduces the cedar of
Lebanon to ashes.... The English may think of him as they please; this is
certain, they can show no (living) poet who is comparable to him.... But
he is too worldly. Contrast _Macbeth_, and _Beppo_, where you are in a
nefarious empirical world." On Eckermann's doubting "whether there is a
gain for pure culture in Byron's work," Goethe conclusively replies,
"There I must contradict you. The audacity and grandeur of Byron must
certainly tend towards culture. We should take care not to be always
looking for it in the decidedly pure and moral. Everything that is great
promotes cultivation, as soon as we are aware of it."

[Footnote 1: Mr. Arnold wrongly objects to this translation of the
German "talent."]

This verdict of the Olympian as against the verdict of the Titan is
interesting in itself, and as being the verdict of the whole continental
world of letters. "What," exclaims Castelar, "does Spain not owe to Byron?
From his mouth come our hopes and fears. He has baptized us with his
blood. There is no one with whose being some song of his is not woven. His
life is like a funeral torch over our graves." Mazzini takes up the same
tune for Italy. Stendhal speaks of Byron's "Apollonic power;" and Sainte
Beuve writes to the same intent, with some judicious caveats. M. Taine
concludes his survey of the romantic movement with the remark: "In this
splendid effort, the greatest are exhausted. One alone--Byron--attains the
summit. He is so great and so English, that from him alone we shall learn
more truths of his country and his age than from all the rest together."
Dr. Elze, ranks the author of _Harold_ and _Juan_ among the four greatest
English poets, and claims for him the intellectual parentage of Lamartine
and Musset in France, of Espronceda in Spain, of Puschkin in Russia, with
some modifications, of Heine in Germany, of Berchet and others in Italy.
So many voices of so various countries cannot be simply set aside: unless
we wrap ourselves in an insolent insularism, we are bound at least to ask
what is the meaning of their concurrent testimony. Foreign judgments can
manifestly have little weight on matters of form, and not one of the
above-mentioned critics is sufficiently alive to the egregious
shortcomings which Byron himself recognized. That he loses almost no