tly
shameful precedent, and yet contrive to approve themselves an honour to
their country and the race. To be a good Briton a man must trade
profitably, marry respectably, live cleanly, avoid excess, revere the
established order, and wear his heart in his breeches pocket or anywhere
but on his sleeve. Byron did none of these things, though he was a
public character, and ought for the example's sake to have done them all,
and done them ostentatiously. He lived hard, and drank hard, and played
hard. He was flippant in speech and eccentric in attire. He thought
little of the sanctity of the conjugal tie, and said so; and he married
but to divide from his wife--who was an incarnation of the national
virtue of respectability--under circumstances too mysterious not to be
discreditable. He was hooted into exile, and so far from reforming he
did even worse than he had done before. After bewildering Venice with
his wickedness and consorting with atheists like Shelley and conspirators
like young Gamba, he went away on a sort of wild-goose chase to Greece,
and died there with every circumstance of publicity. Also his work was
every whit as abominable in the eyes of his countrymen as his life. It
is said that the theory and practice of British art are subject to the
influence of the British school-girl, and that he is unworthy the name of
artist whose achievement is of a kind to call a blush to the cheek of
youth. Byron was contemptuous of youth, and did not hesitate to write--in
_Beppo_ and in _Cain_, in _Manfred_ and _Don Juan_ and the
_Vision_--exactly as he pleased. In three words, he made himself
offensively conspicuous, and from being infinitely popular became utterly
contemptible. Too long had people listened to the scream of this eagle
in wonder and in perturbation, and the moment he disappeared they grew
ashamed of their emotion and angry with its cause, and began to hearken
to other and more melodious voices--to Shelley and Keats, to Wordsworth
and Coleridge and the 'faultless and fervent melodies of Tennyson.' In
course of time Byron was forgotten, or only remembered with disdain; and
when Thackeray, the representative Briton, the artist Philistine, the foe
of all that is excessive or abnormal or rebellious, took it upon himself
to flout the author of _Don Juan_ openly and to lift up his heavy hand
against the fops and fanatics who had affected the master's humours, he
did so amid general applause. Meanwhile,