登陆注册
4705400000619

第619章

To men thus sick of the languid manner of their contemporaries ruggedness seemed a venial fault, or rather a positive merit.

In their hatred of meretricious ornament, and of what Cowper calls "creamy smoothness," they erred on the opposite side.

Their style was too austere, their versification too harsh.

It is not easy, however, to overrate the service which they rendered to literature. The intrinsic value of their poems is considerable. But the example which they set of mutiny against an absurd system was invaluable. The part which they performed was rather that of Moses than that of Joshua. They opened the house of bondage; but they did not enter the promised land.

During the twenty years which followed the death of Cowper, the revolution in English poetry was fully consummated. None of the writers of this period, not even Sir Walter Scott, contributed so much to the consummation as Lord Byron. Yet Lord Byron contributed to it unwillingly, and with constant self-reproach and shame. All his tastes and inclinations led him to take part with the school of poetry which was going out against the school which was coming in. Of Pope himself he spoke with extravagant admiration. He did not venture directly to say that the little man of Twickenham was a greater poet than Shakspeare or Milton; but he hinted pretty clearly that he thought so. Of his contemporaries, scarcely any had so much of his admiration as Mr. Gifford, who, considered as a poet, was merely Pope, without Pope's wit and fancy, and whose satires are decidedly inferior in vigour and poignancy to the very imperfect juvenile performance of Lord Byron himself. He now and then praised Mr. Wordsworth and Mr. Coleridge, but ungraciously and without cordiality. When he attacked them, he brought his whole soul to the work. Of the most elaborate of Mr. Wordsworth's poems he could find nothing to say, but that it was "clumsy, and frowsy, and his aversion." Peter Bell excited his spleen to such a degree that he evoked the shades of Pope and Dryden, and demanded of them whether it were possible that such trash could evade contempt? In his heart he thought his own Pilgrimage of Harold inferior to his Imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry, a feeble echo of Pope and Johnson. This insipid performance he repeatedly designed to publish, and was withheld only by the solicitations of his friends. He has distinctly declared his approbation of the unities, the most absurd laws by which genius was ever held in servitude. In one of his works, we think in his letter to Mr. Bowles, he compares the poetry of the eighteenth century to the Parthenon, and that of the nineteenth to a Turkish mosque, and boasts that, though he had assisted his contemporaries in building their grotesque and barbarous edifice, he had never joined them in defacing the remains of a chaster and more graceful architecture. In another letter he compares the change which had recently passed on English poetry to the decay of Latin poetry after the Augustan age. In the time of Pope, he tells his friend, it was all Horace with us. It is all Claudian now.

For the great old masters of the art he had no very enthusiastic veneration. In his letter to Mr. Bowles he uses expressions which clearly indicate that he preferred Pope's Iliad to the original. Mr. Moore confesses that his friend was no very fervent admirer of Shakspeare. Of all the poets of the first class Lord Byron seems to have admired Dante and Milton most. Yet in the fourth canto of Childe Harold, he places Tasso, a writer not merely inferior to them, but of quite a different order of mind, on at least a footing of equality with them. Mr. Hunt is, we suspect, quite correct in saying that Lord Byron could see little or no merit in Spenser.

But Byron the critic and Byron the poet were two very different men. The effects of the noble writer's theory may indeed often be traced in his practice. But his disposition led him to accommodate himself to the literary taste of the age in which he lived; and his talents would have enabled him to accommodate himself to the taste of any age. Though he said much of his contempt for mankind, and though he boasted that amidst the inconstancy of fortune and of fame he was all-sufficient to himself, his literary career indicated nothing of that lonely and unsocial pride which he affected. We cannot conceive him, like Milton or Wordsworth, defying the criticism of his contemporaries, retorting their scorn, and labouring on a poem in the full assurance that it would be unpopular, and in the full assurance that it would be immortal. He has said, by the mouth of one of his heroes, in speaking of political greatness, that "he must serve who fain would sway"; and this he assigns as a reason for not entering into political life. He did not consider that the sway which he had exercised in literature had been purchased by servitude, by the sacrifice of his own taste to the taste of the public.

He was the creature of his age; and whenever he had lived he would have been the creature of his age. Under Charles the First Byron would have been more quaint than Donne. Under Charles the Second the rants of Byron's rhyming plays would have pitted it, boxed it, and galleried it, with those of any Bayes or Bilboa.

Under George the First, the monotonous smoothness of Byron's versification and the terseness of his expression would have made Pope himself envious.

同类推荐
热门推荐
  • 乡村最强小神医

    乡村最强小神医

    仙帝被害,重生为小农民罗阳,能透视,懂医术,会武功,自带装逼光环。人生漫漫,万般皆下品,唯有装逼高,且看小农民一路装逼如风,扶摇直上,势要装逼装破苍穹。
  • 寂寞不染半边愁

    寂寞不染半边愁

    在一个小城里发生的一些不是扯淡的故事,这不是阴谋也许是隐晦。
  • 嗜血公主的暗夜冷王子

    嗜血公主的暗夜冷王子

    “不要,不要死,不要离开我。”女孩儿捧着男孩儿的脸,泪一滴一滴的滑落。“傻瓜,我会永远陪着你。”男孩儿支撑着站起身,将女孩儿搂入怀中,张开嘴,对着女孩儿的脖颈咬下……
  • 古寺钟鼓声

    古寺钟鼓声

    知名作家张记书的作品集《古寺钟鼓声》知识性、新闻性的因素较多,作家是靠一种机智的构思来展示一种小小说的理性,进而启迪读者的。《古寺钟鼓声》所收录的小小说,尽管也有意蕴深厚,余味悠长的作品,但多数作品给人一种泾渭分明的感觉,要么直截了当,作家的态度在作品中一目了然;要么作家把无解的生活原生态地放到读者面前,交给读者由读者自己定夺。小说艺术本就是一种留白艺术,是由作者与读者来共同完成的一种艺术。
  • 那个上仙不太好撩

    那个上仙不太好撩

    【简介废、cp较多、不坑...吧?隔壁新坑—公主嫁到:影帝老公,请接驾!来看九公主和影帝谈恋爱~】很久很久以前,他们是叱咤风云的神仙,后来,某云恋上了某仙君,再后来...他们出了意外转世了。赵云以为,他以为神格觉醒之后就可以好好谈恋爱了,万万没想到总有妖魔鬼怪想打扰他谈恋爱,再然后,一不小心挂了再转世。仙君还是那个仙君,就是有点高冷不理人。那什么,仙君我看你骨骼惊奇是个练武奇才...不是不是,我想说“仙君请留步!我看你面若冠玉极像我梦中之人,谈个恋爱怎么样?亲亲~性感对象顺丰包邮哦,考虑一下撒?”
  • 流年梦苧罗

    流年梦苧罗

    净水无痕,却已经年累月,她,从小跟他生活在一块,但她清冷,孤独却又执拗,但却总是给人一种悲伤的感觉。因为心里背负得太多。他,从小陪着她,她的孤独与艰辛让他像是冬日的暖阳一般,为了她,从没有畏惧过任何事,一直守在她身边。直到风雪交加的那天晚上,“抱歉,我不爱你,我一直爱的都是另外一个男人,”她紧握着手说道。他满身是血地躺在雪地上,笑着看着她说完这句话,直到夜色将整个天空吞噬掉。“小呆子,鬼才信你的话呢,收了司空家的东西,别想跑掉,总有一天我会再把你拐回来的。”
  • 千面桃花姬

    千面桃花姬

    "七年前,少女季梓桃遭遇灭门之灾,她侥幸活了下来,却因饮下“桃花姬”而面容尽毁。幸好,有天下第一的易容师收她为徒,为她制作面具,与她相依为命。七年后,小桃学成下山,去皇宫中寻找传说中能助她恢复容貌的神药“莲香玉龙饮”,这次,师父给她的这张“脸”却惹来大祸——她被误认为是逃婚的兰陵公主,不得已卷入变幻莫测的宫廷之争。随着兰陵公主逃婚的真相逐渐显现,更大的阴谋向小桃袭来,让她难以招架……她在进宫途中巧遇的所谓“师父的儿子”易凌风是敌是友?她一直苦苦追寻的灭族仇人究竟是谁?最终,她真的能够恢复容貌吗?
  • 相见枝头离别绪

    相见枝头离别绪

    “姚翊雨,谁准你亲本捕头的。”某捕头恼羞成怒道“哟,黄景儒,明明是你自己把脸放到本姑娘面前的,还恶人先告状。”姚翊雨说完做了一个鬼脸便踏风而去了。“我一定要把你捉拿归案!”……………“我爱你啊!姚姚““可是就在当初你放弃我的时候,我就不爱你了。”“姚姚……”“不要再找我了”以后,相见即是陌路……
  • 苍皇

    苍皇

    身为倾天魔王,他本拥着至高无上的地位,为红颜,他与众界之主反目成仇,也因此失去所有,他怎么也想不到自己竟然堕入凡间,一切皆要重头,曾经叱咤天下的王者成了无修无为的凡夫俗子,重返天界成为遥不可及的冀望,但这无法动摇王者之心,奈何凡间心机攻防,斗破大陆,危机重重,他是倾天王,即使道路再坎坷,他也必会踏上王者之路!
  • 快乐心灵的名家散文(青少年快乐阅读系列)

    快乐心灵的名家散文(青少年快乐阅读系列)

    本书以青少年能够理解和接受的方式让他们熟悉和了解散文的内涵,吸收其中的精髓,进而学到更多的知识,懂得更多的做人道理。……本书精选了最优美的精彩故事,这些故事和其中阐释的哲理,让青少年的心灵受到鼓舞和升华,让青少年更有信心和勇气地去梦想与憧憬,活得更有激情;让青少年在面临挑战、遭受挫折和感到绝望时,从中汲取力量;让青少年在惶惑、烦恼、痛苦和失落时,从中获取慰藉;让青少年在面对一切感到木然时,心中涌起无限的亮色;让青少年在青春的冷淡与叛逆情绪中,被生活的真善美所感动……