Two national achievements of punishing a king with death and
emancipating our slaves, just as unimpressive and semi-efficacious a
performance in this country, as the more affrontingly hollow and
halt-footed transactions of the sixteenth century. Just because it was
wonderful that England should have produced Byron, it would have been
wonderful if she had received any permanently deep impression from him,
or preserved a lasting appreciation of his work, or cheerfully and
intelligently recognised his immense force. And accordingly we cannot
help perceiving that generations are arising who know not Byron. This is
not to say that he goes unread; but there is a vast gulf fixed between
the author whom we read with pleasure and even delight, and that other
to whom we turn at all moments for inspiration and encouragement, and
whose words and ideas spring up incessantly and animatingly within us,
unbidden, whether we turn to him or no. For no Englishman now does Byron
hold this highest place; and this is not unnatural in any way, if we
remember in what a different shape the Revolution has now by change of
circumstance and occasion come to present itself to those who are most
ardent in the search after new paths. An estimate of Byron would be in
some sort a measure of the distance that we have travelled within the
last half century in our appreciation of the conditions of social
change. The modern rebel is at least half-acquiescence. He has developed
a historic sense. The most hearty aversion to the prolonged reign of
some of the old gods does not hinder him from seeing, that what are now
frigid and unlovely blocks were full of vitality and light in days
before the era of their petrifaction. There is much less eagerness of
praise or blame, and much
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