Produced by Paul Murray, Janet Blenkinship and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net CRITICAL MISCELLANIES BY JOHN MORLEY VOL. I. ESSAY 3: BYRON London MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1904 BYRON Byron's influence in Europe 203 In England 204 Criticism not concerned with Byron's private life 208 Function of synthetic criticism 210 Byron has the political quality of Milton and Shakespeare 212 Contrasted with Shelley in this respect 213 Peculiarity of the revolutionary view of nature 218 Revolutionary sentimentalism 220 And revolutionary commonplace in Byron 222 Byron's reasonableness 223 Size and difficulties of his subject 224 His mastery of it 224 The reflection of Danton in Byron 230 The reactionary influence upon him 232 Origin of his apparent cynicism 234 His want of positive knowledge 235 AEsthetic and emotional relations to intellectual positivity 236 Significance of his dramatic predilections 240 His idea of nature less hurtful in art than in politics 241 Its influence upon his views of duty and domestic sentiment 242 His public career better than one side of his creed 245 Absence of true subjective melancholy from his nature 246 His ethical poverty 249 Conclusion 250 BYRON.