has often been directed to the fact that, above all other literatures, that produced by the English race has been conspicuous for its moral purpose. The makers of our literature have been almost without exception men who took a serious view of life, who felt it to be a responsible burden. But like the men of the Restoration period, Byron never took upon himself this burden of duty, never felt called upon to remain at some post alloted by the gods. If he were possessed of any moral purpose, that purpose had little effect upon his course of life, and it does not appear in his poetry. There is not to be found even the calm stoicism of such a sentiment as this

'Men must endure

Their going hence even as their coming hither;
Ripeness is all.'

Much less the serene patience of

'They also serve who only stand and wait;'

or the sublime confidence in moral ends of Plato-'This then must be our notion of the just man that, even when he is in poverty or sickness, or any other seeming misfortune, all things will in the end work together for good to him in life or death; for the gods have a care of anyone whose desire is to become just and to be like God, as far as man can attain the divine likeness by the pursuit of virtue.' These are messages of cheer to the human race, but Byron does not encourage us by the music of any such strain towards higher spiritual attainments. How far does the absence of this strain of moral purpose militate against the greatness of his poetry, and how is it to be accounted for? It is to be accounted for by his attitude of

revolt. The cause of the absence of spiritual or moral tone from the poetry of the Restoration lay in the fact that the attitude of the minds of that era was one of revolt-revolt against the absurd and unnatural strictness, the cramping influences of the Puritan creed. The reaction against Puritanism went too far, as is the tendency of reactions. But such a reaction as that of the Restoration, although productive of a season of spiritual unfruitfulness, is in the end salutary, helpful to the nation and to the individual. The case of Byron is a parallel one. In the society of his day he met with the formalities of religion but little real faith, hope and charity; abundance of pretence and of falsehood, abundance of insincerity, of shallow thinking and selfish living. He found a society fettered by self-imposed rules and restrictions, which were without meaning or rationality, and against this slavery he revolted. His attitude, as was natural, was made more determined by the treatment the society he despised accorded him. The estrangement became open war. In his poems Byron waged war without truce or discrimination against the conventional religion, the conventional political opinions, the conventional social views of his age. Fierce against these shams, in the vehemence of his hatred he was carried away to excesses more violent than wise. The reaction intensified by his own sufferings-for Byron truly sufferedcarried him too far, and much of the divine fire of his genius expended itself in consuming with ridicule all that the age felt or pretended to feel most sacred. Not in his poems only but in his life Byron maintained his defiant port, making a derision of all the rules sanctioned by the traditions and experience of preceeding generations. He lived fast and recklessly, and wrote poems glorifying a fast

and reckless life. From such a poet no hand is stretched in the service of an upward toiling humanity. There is then no positive moral purpose in Byron. But is it therefore to be said that his work is vain, a hindrance rather than a gain to the generations that come after him? Such

conclusion would be unwarrantable. There is a negative | moral purpose. The prophets of God were not seldom in wrathful mood, filled with holy indignation at the wickedness and the idolatries of the people. The moral purpose to be seen in Byron is moral purpose in a destructive, in a wrathful mood. The endeavour to purify heart and mind must begin with the eradication of the tendencies in human nature to self-deceit, to a blinding self-complaisance. Byron saw clearly enough that the England of his day was in the strong prison of an invincible or almost invincible ignorance; and because he shook the citadel of that ignorance to its foundations, a portion of the prophetic revealing gift, which has belonged to the poets by divine right, is his also.

In speaking of Byron reference should never be omitted to the service he rendered not to his own nation alone but to Europe in drawing all eyes to English literature. Shakespere excepted, there is no other with an equal European reputation. In the eloquent phrase of Mazzini, 'He led the genius of Britain on a pilgrimage throughout all Europe.' His splendid name, coupled with the celebrity that attached to it when he joined the Greek army of independence, an act productive of unbounded enthusiasm, were the sufficient causes of his European renown.

Among the poets of Revolution the name of Ebenezer Elliott, the corn-law rhymer cannot be passed over, and he may be mentioned with Byron for two reasons. Elliott's

poetry deals with large subjects with a like passion, and his imagination never leaves earth, but is always in touch. with concrete fact. When his soul is in arms he has something of the same voice, the voice of Tyrtæus.

'Day, like our souls, is fiercely dark,

What then? 'tis day!

We sleep no more; the cock crows-hark!

To arms, away!'

In his shorter poems, when he attempted condensation, Byron was not always successful; rarely happy, indeed, except when free to range over great tracts; but he has left a few masterpieces in a more restrained style. We must always remember that, like his contemporaries, Shelley and Keats, he died a very young man, at the age of thirty-six. Crowded and vigorous as that life was, and crowned with marvellous poetic achievement, we may be sure that had he lived his poetry would have gained, if not in strength, certainly in other and even greater qualities. To anyone who doubts that it would have been so no better answer can be given than the last poem written on the completion of his thirtysixth birthday at Missolonghi, three months before the end came. It marks the dawn of a nobler resolution than ever before beautified his life.

'The sword, the banner, and the field,
Glory and Greece, around me see !
The Spartan borne upon his shield,
Was not more free.

Awake! (not Greece-she is awake!)

Awake, my spirit! Think through whom

Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake,

And then strike home.

Tread those reviving passions down,

Unworthy manhood; unto thee
Indifferent should the smile or frown
Of beauty be.

If thou regrett'st thy youth, why live?
The land of honourable death

Is here:-up to the field, and give
Away thy breath!

Seek out-less often sought than found-
A soldier's grave, for thee the best ;

Then look around, and choose thy ground

And take thy rest.'

In that 'land of honourable death' he died on the 19th

of April 1824.