SOURCE: "Cities and Harvests," in Daylight and Champaign, revised edition, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1948, pp. 28-34.

In the following essay, Young praises Byron's display of insight and adept prose style in The Road to Oxiana.

A diary is not to be judged like other books, because in real life incidents will not happen in the right order, or observe their proper artistic balance. Mr. Byron's objective was the Oxus: his route was by Cyprus, Jerusalem, and Damascus into Persia; and thence by Afghanistan and the Khyber to Peshawar. But though his appeal to the Minister of the Interior of Turkestan might have melted a stone—a stone being assumed to have no appreciation of irony—he was not allowed to see the stream which, as he gracefully informed His Excellency, had been celebrated by the sacred pen of Matthew Arnold. So it was not the Oxus but Mr. Byron that...