PREFATORY NOTE ALTHOUGH literature is mere spirit, and its truths must be spiritually discerned, yet there are two avenues of approach which are likely to prove the most alluring and satisfactory to the student, the chronological and that of correlation. In the case of some poets, like Tennyson, the same results may be reached by either approach, but others are more distinctly suited to one or the other of these. Where the mind and art of a poet have developed naturally from the simple to the complex, as in the case of Keats and Burns, the chronological order seems most helpful and appropriate; but when, as with Byron, we find midway in a poet's career a work which is both history and prophecy, a work which reveals the method and spirit of the past and contains the potency of the future, — it may well serve as a point around which other poems may be gathered; and the method of correlation will be found the most suggestive. It follows from this that the method of annotation in each of these cases should be different. In the chronological, the eye is upon the past, and every principle hitherto evolved by the poet is made use of in the treatment of each successive poem; while in that of correlation the eye looks before and after in a study of those elements which may be considered as fundamental in the life and art of the poet. I have illustrated one method in my selections from Wordsworth, Milton, and Burns, and the other in The Princess, The Ancient Mariner, and Childe Harold. Byron has not received the recognition which is his due. The reason for this is that the tragedy of his life has interested us more than the triumph of his art. A careful study of Childe Harold as revealing his life on the one hand and his art on the other will do much toward creating that kind of recognition which such an artist deserves. By frequent quotation from his other works, and those of the poets who have contributed to the great revolutionary movement in our century, I have tried to furnish the general reader with sufficient material for understanding the poem, and to place the student in a position of perspective which will naturally lead him to extend his view. I wish to express my gratitude to the distinguished scholar, critic, and teacher, Professor Edward Dowden of the University of Dublin, not only for generous recognition of my gleanings in the great harvestfield of English literature, but also for kindly permission to associate his name with this masterpiece of a poet of whom he has written with rare insight, magnanimity, and eloquence. A. J. G. BROOKLINE, MASS., January 1, 1899. INTRODUCTION THE history of the world must be interpreted in terms of personality; for it is through the lives of great men that great events are revealed. In the crises of history, periods of revolt against a low conception of God and man, - from the time of Job and Prometheus, to that of Newman and Arnold, men have arisen whose trumpet notes have been a call to more serious thought and more determined action. They have been misunderstood in proportion as their message was a summons to sacrifice cherished ideas and habitual modes of action; but time, the great revealer of truth, has evolved reverent criticism which on its moral side is a study of conduct, and on its æsthetic a perception of beauty. A right perspective is thus attained by which justice, though late, is done to the past. In one of these crises we come upon the strange personality we call Byron, by whose ironical laughter on the one hand and imperious disdain on the other, English literature became European; and we are at once challenged for an opinion upon one who presents such marked contrast to some other great leaders of our century, notably Wordsworth and Tennyson. In his admirable lectures on The French Revolution and English Literature delivered at Princeton University in 1897, Professor Dowden said: "To acquire a right feeling for Byron and his poetry is a discipline in equity. It is easy to yield to a sense of his power, to the force and sweep of his genius; it is xi easy to be repelled by his superficial insincerity, his license, his cynicism, his poverty of thought, his looseness of construction, his carelessness in execution. To know aright the evil and the good is difficult. It is difficult to feel justly toward this dethroned idol, presently, perhaps, to be re-enthroned, an idol in whose composition iron and clay are mingled with fine gold. But what interests us in Byron and in Byron's work is precisely this mingling of noble and ignoble, of gold and a base alloy. We must take him or leave him as he is, the immortal spoilt by his age, great and petty, weak and strong, exalted and debased. In its mingled elements Byron's poetry represents at once the mind and character of the writer and the temper of his age." In order to understand the spirit and method of Byron's works, we must understand the elements which came to him from his ancestry-heredity, and those influences which belonged to the age in which he lived his environment. Legend traces Byron's ancestry to the Norse Buruns who settled in Normandy, descendants of whom came over with the Conqueror. Ralph de Burun, who had estates in Nottinghamshire, is unquestionably the poet's ancestor. Thence the line passes through Sir John, knighted by Henry V., to a descendant of whom in the reign of Henry VIII. was granted Newstead Abbey. From him came in turn Sir John, first Lord created Baron Byron. There were seven Byrons at the battle of Edgehill. The fourth Lord Byron had two sons, the eldest of whom was William, fifth Lord, and Admiral John, the poet's grandfather. His son John, the poet's father, married for his first wife the Countess of Carmarthen, by whom he had a daughter Augusta ; he married for his second wife Miss Gordon of Gight, a descendant of James I., of whom was born George, the poet. Although the poet was proud of his descent, his immediate ancestors were hardly such men as a boy should admire. His grandfather, known as "the wicked lord," led an irregular and vicious life. "Mad Jack," the poet's father, was a worthless adventurer, wicked and immoral. When he married Catherine Gordon of Gight, the union suggested the lines of an old Scotch balladist, "Oh, where are ye gaen, bonny Miss Gordon, Oh, where are ye gaen, sae bonny and braw? not long A prophecy which was soon proved true; for in 1788, after the birth of the poet, being pressed by creditors, he abandoned mother and child and fled to Valenciennes, where he died in 1791. If Byron had had a mother such as that of Wordsworth or Tennyson, he would have received kind and wise guidance. But, alas! the mother's milk was mingled with gall. Mrs. Byron was a woman of violent temper, hysterical, and lacking in steadiness and depth of affection. At one moment she would fondle him, and at another would chase him around the room, exclaiming, "You lame brat!" Such was the atmosphere in which was reared this lad, sensitive as a girl, proud as Lucifer, and beautiful as Apollo, "With none to check, and few to point in time The thousand paths that slope the way to crime." The age in which Byron lived was one of renewed revolutionary activity, owing to the results of the French Revolution. A reaction began on the part of the believers in the principles of the Revolution, "when, finally to close And seal up all the gains of France, a Pope France now began to oppress the feebler nations about her, and Napoleon was becoming master of Europe. His grand |