LORD BYRON'S INFLUENCE OVER FOREIGN LITERA TURES. It might have been imagined at the first view that the poetry of Byron must needs have found a more decided echo among the Romanic nations, with whom, in more than one respect, he had close affinities; but this was the case only with the French. To the nations of the south of Europe, who take life so easily, his world-sorrow was scarcely intelligible-nay, even repulsive; the Don Juan of the Romanic nations never reflects, but enjoys all things with perfect naïveté. Yet the political side in Byron's poetry was not without its effect in the revolutionary movements of Spain and Italy. The secret society of the Numantinos in Spain betrays the magnetic attraction of his influence, and Don José de Espronceda (1810-1842), perhaps the most important Spanish poet of recent times, who is called the Byron of Spain, shows, not only in his poetry, but also in his life, a remarkable affinity with the poet whose works he diligently and thoroughly studied. In Italy the celebrated Giovanni Berchet (1790-1851) was conspicuous among the revolutionary Byronic school. We have already had occasion to remark that at Venice Byron's works were much studied and often translated. In France the influences of Byron were far more profound and widely ramified. Among all the poets of England no one was so congenial to the French as Byron. In the development of the so-called Romantic School, his influence and that of Shakespeare were coincident; here they lent strength to each other, and were blended together in this movement. Victor Hugo, like Byron, full of genius and passion, but, also like Byron, unstable, vain, and greedy of fame, took up and continued in his spirit both the political and literary conflict; he declared romanticism to be synonymous with liberalism in poetry - he might have said, with more truth, with radicalism in poetry; he even accepted the name of the Satanic School as an epithet of honor. Lamartine was the representative of the senti mental side of world-sorrow, called forth by "Childe Harold;" Musset of its cynical side, generated by "Don Juan;" while Delavigne, in his "Messeniennes," became the inspired singer of freedom. In Germany, Byron, like almost all English poets, found a second fatherland. His influence on our literature was confined, indeed, to one period only, nor has his poetry been interwoven, like Shakespeare's, forever with our own; but if limited in duration, it was widely propagated and intense during its reign. The powerful effect of the writings of Byron on the Slavonic East is a phenomenon pregnant with results. Hitherto it had been the literature of France only which enlisted the sympathies of these nations; no other English poet before Byron had been studied or understood. Gervinus has explained very clearly how Poland and Russia presented a fruitful soil, in which the seed scattered by Byron necessarily yielded an abundant crop. The state of contradiction between Asiatic barbarism and the desire for the civilization of Western Europe; the despotic repression of all political aspirations which drove the youth of these countries into secret leagues, like that of the Carbonari in Italy; the circumstance that the aristocracy, who from its social position felt the attraction of Byron, was the focus, not only of intelligence, but of all the movements for liberty-all this excited the deepest interest in the poet, whose works they had in the first instance learned to know from French translations. His excellencies of style, his mastery over the powers of his own language, weighed mightily with a people which was striving to render its own language capable of poetical composition. The glow of Byron's passion was also sympathetically answered in the Slaves, who are themselves so given to feeling and passion. It was his "Tales" especially which found imitators, who ventured at first to give vent in them to political thought only in feeble hints and indications. First in Puschkin's "Ode to Liberty" did political thought strike in a fuller tone; and henceforward the name of this Russian Byron has become the watchword of the ardent youth of Russia. The most celebrated of his works, the metrical romance of "Onegin," is constructed after the type of "Don Juan." "Don Juan" has recently been translated into Russian by Markewicz, while Nekrassow and Nicolaus Gerbel have published a translation of his entire works.-Karl Elze. BOOKS OF REFERENCE. bey." Biographies of Byron: By Thomas | Washington Irving's "Newstead Ab- Essays: By Macaulay, H. A. Taine, Mrs. Oliphant's "Literary History of Harrison's "Italian Haunts of Lord Trelawny's "Recollections of Shelley Countess Guiccioli's "Recollections of Thomas Medwin's "Conversation of Lady Blessington's "Conversations Countess Albrizzi's "Sketches of Eminent Men." X. VICTORIAN AGE. A.D. 1837 SUPREMACY OF SCIENCE.-DARWIN, HUXLEY, JOHN STUART MILL. UNIVERSALITY OF THE NOVEL.-THACKERAY, DICKENS, GEORGE ELIOT. GREAT ACTIVITY IN HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL RESEARCH.-T. B. MACAULAY, THOMAS CARLYLE. CULMINATION OF ARTISTIC POETRY UNDER ALFRED TENNYSON. PSYCHOLOGICAL POETRY OF ROBERT BROWNING. HIGHEST DEVELOPMENT OF FEMININE POETIC GENIUS IN ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. FOUNDATION OF ART CRITICISM BY JOHN RUSKIN. THE POETIC RENAISSANCE.-ARNOLD, ROSSETTI, MORRIS, SWINBURNE. PREVALENCE OF GERMAN INFLUENCE. |