But the letters to Clarinda would have been unwritten, and the thrush would have been untaught in ‘the style of the Bird of Paradise.’

Transliterated from Greek.

A quiet life of song, fallentis semita vitae’, was not to be yours.  Fate otherwise decreed it.  The touch of a lettered society, the strife with the Kirk, discontent with the State, poverty and pride, neglect and success, were needed to make your Genius what it was, and to endow the world with ‘Tam o’ Shanter,’ the ‘Jolly Beggars,’ and ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer.’  Who can praise them too highly—­who admire in them too much the humour, the scorn, the wisdom, the unsurpassed energy and courage?  So powerful, so commanding, is the movement of that Beggars’ Chorus, that, methinks, it unconsciously echoed in the brain of our greatest living poet when he conceived the Vision of Sin.  You shall judge for yourself.  Recall: 

   Here’s to budgets, bags, and wallets! 
   Here’s to all the wandering train! 
   Here’s our ragged bairns and callers! 
   One and all cry out, Amen!

   A fig for those by law protected! 
   Liberty’s a glorious feast! 
   Courts for cowards were erected! 
   Churches built to please the priest!

Then read this: 
   Drink to lofty hopes that cool
    Visions of a perfect state: 
   Drink we, last, the public fool,
    Frantic love and frantic hate.
......... 
   Drink to Fortune, drink to Chance,
    While we keep a little breath! 
   Drink to heavy Ignorance
    Hob and nob with brother Death! 
Is not the movement the same, though the modern speaks a wilder recklessness?

So in the best company we leave you, who were the life and soul of so much company, good and bad.  No poet, since the Psalmist of Israel, ever gave the world more assurance of a man; none lived a life more strenuous, engaged in an eternal conflict of the passions, and by them overcome—­’mighty and mightily fallen.’  When we think of you, Byron seems, as Plato would have said, remote by one degree from actual truth, and Musset by a degree more remote than Byron.

XX.

To Lord Byron.

My Lord,
  (Do you remember how Leigh Hunt
 Enraged you once by writing My dear Byron?)
  Books have their fates,—­as mortals have who punt,
 And yours have entered on an age of iron. 
  Critics there be who think your satin blunt,
 Your pathos, fudge; such perils must environ
 Poets who in their time were quite the rage,
 Though now there’s not a soul to turn their page.

 Yes, there is much dispute about your worth,
  And much is said which you might like to know
 By modern poets here upon the earth,
  Where poets live, and love each other so;
 And, in Elysium, it may move your mirth
  To hear of bards that pitch your praises low,
 Though there be some that for your credit stickle,
 As—­Glorious Mat,—­and not inglorious Nichol.