ble to God, unless under the direction of the
Royal Society: then, note the estimate of height and depth in poetry,
swept in an instant, "high lyric to low rational." Pindar to Pope
(knowing Pope's height, too, all the while, no man better); then, the
poetic power of France--resumed in a word--Beranger; then the cut at
Marmion, entirely deserved, as we shall see, yet kindly given, for
everything he names in these two stanzas is the best of its kind; then
'Romance in Spain on--the _last_ war, (_present_ war not being to
Spanish poetical taste,) then, Goethe the real heart of all Germany, and
last, the aping of the Trecentisti which has since consummated itself in
Pre-Raphaelitism! that also being the best thing Italy has done through
England, whether in Rossetti's "blessed damozels" or Burne Jones's "days
of creation." Lastly comes the mock at himself--the modern English
Greek--(followed up by the "degenerate into hands like mine" in the song
itself); and then--to amazement, forth he thunders in his
Achilles-voice. We have had one line of him in his clearness--five of
him in his depth--sixteen of him in his play. Hear now but these, out of
his whole heart:--

"What,--silent yet? and silent _all_?
Ah no, the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent's fall,
And answer, 'Let _one_ living head,
But one, arise--we come--we come:'
--'Tis but the living who are dumb."

Resurrection, this, you see like Buerger's; but not of death unto death.

61. "Sound like a distant torrent's fall." I said the _whole_ heart of
Byron was in this passage. First its compassion, then its indignation,
and the third element, not yet examined, that love of the beauty of this
world in which the three--unholy--children, of its Fiery Furnace were
like to each other; but Byron the widest-hearted. Scott and Burns love
Scotland more than Nature itself: for Burns the moon must rise over
Cumnock Hills,--for Scott, the Rymer's glen divide the Eildons; but,
for Byron, Loch-na-Gar _with Ida_, looks o'er Troy, and the soft murmurs
of the Dee and the Bruar change into voices of the dead on distant
Marathon.

Yet take the parallel from Scott, by a field of homelier rest:--

"And silence aids--though the steep hills
Send to the lake a thousand rills;
In summer tide, so soft they weep,
The sound but lulls the ear asleep;
Your horse's hoof-tread sounds too rude,
So stilly is the solitude.

Nought living meets the eye or