author was seldom mentioned except with stern and
honest censure. It is perhaps fair to quote Murray's own words, throwing
the responsibility on the public: "They talked of his immoral writings;
but there is a whole row of sermons glued to my shelf. I hate the sight
of them. Why don't they buy those?" A fair enough retort; and yet, like
the newspaper purveyors of the records of vice in our own day, the
publisher was responsible for making the vile stuff accessible, and thus
debasing the public taste.

How different was Byron's painting of Spanish life from that of the
immortal Cervantes, whom Lowell places among the five master geniuses of
the world! In "Don Quixote" there is not a sentence which does not exalt
woman, or which degrades man. A lofty ideal of purity and chivalrous
honor permeates every page, even in the most ludicrous scenes. The whole
work blazes with wit, and with the wisdom of a proverbial philosophy,
uttered by the ignorant squire of a fanatical and bewildered knight; but
amidst the practical jokes and follies of all the characters in that
marvellous work of fiction, we see also a moral beauty, idealized of
course, such as was rivalled only in Spanish art in the Madonnas of
Murillo. I believe that in the imaginary sketches of Spanish life as
portrayed by Byron, slanders and lies deface the poem from beginning to
end. Who is the best authority for truthfulness in the description of
Spanish people, Cervantes or Byron? The spiritual loftiness portrayed in
the lives of Spanish heroes and heroines, mixed up as it was with the
most ludicrous pictures of common life, has made the Spaniard's work of
fiction one of the most treasured and enduring monuments of human fame;
whereas the insulting innuendoes of the English poet have gone far to
rob him of the glory which he had justly won in his earlier productions,
and to make his name a doubt. If, in the course of generations yet to
come, the evil which Byron did by that one poem alone shall be forgotten
in the services he rendered to our literature by other works, which
cannot die, then he may some day be received into the Pantheon of the
benefactors of mind.

I would speak with less vehemence in reference to those poems which are
generally supposed to be permeated with defiance, scorn, and
misanthropy. In "Manfred" and "Cain," it was with Byron a work of art to
describe the utterances of impious spirits against the sovereign rule of
God. Had he not fallen fro