ABSTRACT
A little while ago, by way of celebrating the centenary of Byron’s death, nearly every critic in England felt himself in honour bound to attempt to explain why that poet holds a higher place in Continental, than in English, estimation. It is a matter that has been canvassed again and again, and in the course of innumerable discussions some light, I think, has been thrown on the problem, which is one of the prettiest in all the theory of international literature. Byron was a great, and above all a typical figure: he did not so much invent Byronism as give it a name, and that because he was the first to isolate it in large and recognisable quantities from the confused emotional material of the age. His career was spectacular, and his end both spectacular and heroic. Moreover, what now makes us rank him somewhat lower than do Continental readers is something which is more apparent to us than to them, something which hides more from us than from them his none the less real virtues. The intolerable roughness and even shoddiness of his style are facts which do, for us, fight against his strength and originality: forforeigners, reading him whether in translation or in the original, they are necessarily facts of less weight.
