Part 8 (2/2)

A quiet life of song, _fallentis semita vitae_', was not to be yours.

Fate otherwise decreed it. The touch of a lettered society, the strife with the Kirk, discontent with the State, poverty and pride, neglect and success, were needed to make your Genius what it was, and to endow the world with 'Tam o' Shanter,' the 'Jolly Beggars,' and 'Holy Willie's Prayer.' Who can praise them too highly--who admire in them too much the humour, the scorn, the wisdom, the unsurpa.s.sed energy and courage? So powerful, so commanding, is the movement of that Beggars' Chorus, that, methinks, it unconsciously echoed in the brain of our greatest living poet when he conceived the Vision of Sin. You shall judge for yourself.

Recall:

Here's to budgets, bags, and wallets!

Here's to all the wandering train!

Here's our ragged bairns and callers!

One and all cry out, Amen!

A fig for those by law protected!

Liberty's a glorious feast!

Courts for cowards were erected!

Churches built to please the priest!

Then read this: Drink to lofty hopes that cool Visions of a perfect state: Drink we, last, the public fool, Frantic love and frantic hate.

......... Drink to Fortune, drink to Chance, While we keep a little breath!

Drink to heavy Ignorance Hob and n.o.b with brother Death!

Is not the movement the same, though the modern speaks a wilder recklessness?

So in the best company we leave you, who were the life and soul of so much company, good and bad. No poet, since the Psalmist of Israel, ever gave the world more a.s.surance of a man; none lived a life more strenuous, engaged in an eternal conflict of the pa.s.sions, and by them overcome--'mighty and mightily fallen.' When we think of you, Byron seems, as Plato would have said, remote by one degree from actual truth, and Musset by a degree more remote than Byron.

XX. To Lord Byron.

My Lord, (Do you remember how Leigh Hunt Enraged you once by writing _My dear Byron_?) Books have their fates,--as mortals have who punt, And _yours_ have entered on an age of iron.

Critics there be who think your satin blunt, Your pathos, fudge; such perils must environ Poets who in their time were quite the rage, Though now there's not a soul to turn their page.

Yes, there is much dispute about your worth, And much is said which you might like to know By modern poets here upon the earth, Where poets live, and love each other so; And, in Elysium, it may move your mirth To hear of bards that pitch your praises low, Though there be some that for your credit stickle, As--Glorious Mat,--and not inglorious Nichol.

This kind of writing is my pet aversion, I hate the slang, I hate the personalities, I loathe the aimless, reckless, loose dispersion, Of every rhyme that in the singer's wallet is, I hate it as you hated the _Excursion_, But, while no man a hero to his valet is, The hero's still the model; I indite The kind of rhymes that Byron oft would write.

There's a Swiss critic whom I cannot rhyme to, One Scherer, dry as sawdust, grim and prim.

Of him there's much to say, if I had time to Concern myself in any wise with him.

He seems to hate the heights he cannot climb to, He thinks your poetry a c.o.xcomb's whim, A good deal of his sawdust he has spilt on Shakspeare, and Moliere, and you, and Milton.

Ay, much his temper is like Vivien's mood, Which found not Galahad pure, nor Lancelot brave; Cold as a hailstorm on an April wood, He buries poets in an icy grave, His Essays--he of the Genevan hood!

Nothing so good, but better doth he crave.

So stupid and so solemn in his spite He dares to print that Moliere could not write!

Enough of these excursions; I was saying That half our English Bards are turned Reviewers, And Arnold was discussing and a.s.saying The weight and value of that work of yours, Examining and testing it and weighing, And proved, the gems are pure, the gold endures.

While Swinburne cries with an exceeding joy, the stones are paste, and half the gold, alloy.

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