leties of less popular writers.

To the student of literature the first half of the 19th century is the age
of Byron. He has failed to retain his influence over English readers. The
knowledge, the culture of which he was the immediate channel, were speedily
available through other sources. The politics of the Revolution neither
interested nor affected the Liberalism or Radicalism of the middle classes.
It was not only the loftier and wholesomer poetry of Wordsworth and of
Tennyson which averted enthusiasm from Byron, not only moral earnestness
and religious revival but the optimism and the materialism of commercial
prosperity. As time went on, a severer and more intelligent criticism was
brought to bear on his handiwork as a poet. It was pointed out that his
constructions were loose and ambiguous, that his grammar was faulty, that
his rhythm was inharmonious, and it was argued that these defects and
blemishes were outward and visible signs of a lack of fineness in the man's
spiritual texture; that below the sentiment and behind the rhetoric the
thoughts and ideas were mean and commonplace. There was a suspicion of
artifice, a questioning of the passion as genuine. Poetry came to be
regarded more and more as a source of spiritual comfort, if not a religious
exercise, yet, in some sort, a substitute for religion. There was little or
nothing in Byron's poetry which fulfilled this want. He had no message for
seekers after truth. Matthew Arnold, in his preface to _The Poetry of
Byron_, prophesied that "when the year 1900 is turned, and our nation comes
to recount the poetic glories in the century which has then just ended, her
first names with her will be those of Byron and Wordsworth."

That prophecy still waits fulfilment, but without doubt there has been a
reconsideration of Byron's place in literature, and he stands higher than
he did, say, in 1875. His quarrel with orthodoxy neither alarms nor
provokes the modern reader. Cynical or flippant turns of speech, which
distressed and outraged his contemporaries, are taken as they were meant,
for witty or humorous by-play. He is regarded as the herald and champion
_revolt_. He is praised for his "sincerity and strength," for his
single-mindedness, his directness, his audacity. A dispassionate criticism
recognizes the force and splendour of his rhetoric. The "purple patches"
have stood the wear and tear of time. Byron may have mismanaged the
Spenserian stanza, may have written u