We couple these two books together, not because of their likeness, for they are as dissimilar as books can be, nor on account of the eminence of their authors, for in general two great authors are too much for one essay, but because they are the best possible illustration of something we have to say upon poetical art--because they may give to it life and freshness. The accident of contemporaneous publication has here brought together two books, very characteristic of modern art, and we want to show how they are characteristic. Neither English poetry nor English criticism have ever recovered the _eruption_ which they both made at the beginning of this century into the fashionable world. The poems of Lord Byron were received with an avidity that resembles our present avidity for sensation novels, and were read by a class which at present reads little but such novels. Old men who remember those days may be heard to say, ‘We hear nothing of poetry nowadays; it seems quite down.’ And ‘down’ it certainly is, if for poetry it be a descent to be no longer the favourite excitement of the more frivolous part of the ‘upper’ world. That stimulating poetry is now little read. A stray schoolboy may still be detected in a wild admiration for the _Giaour_ or the _Corsair_ (and it is suitable to his age, and he should not be reproached for it), but the _real_ posterity--the quiet students of a past literature--never read them or think of them. A line or two linger in the memory; a few telling strokes of occasional and felicitous energy are quoted, but this is all. As wholes, these exaggerated stories were worthless; they taught nothing, and, therefore, they are forgotten. If nowadays a dismal poet were, like Byron, to lament the fact of his birth, and to hint that he was too good for the world, the _Saturday Review_ would say that ‘they doubted if he _was_ too good; that a sulky poet was a questionable addition to a tolerable world; that he need not have been born, as far as they were concerned.’ Doubtless, there is much in Byron besides his dismal exaggeration, but it was that exaggeration which made ‘the sensation’, which gave him a wild moment of dangerous fame. As so often happens, the cause of his momentary fashion is the cause also of his lasting oblivion. Moore’s former reputation was less excessive, yet it has not been more permanent. The prettiness of a few songs preserves the memory of his name, but as a poet to _read_ he is forgotten. There is nothing to read in him; no exquisite thought, no sublime feeling, no consummate description of true character. Almost the sole result of the poetry of that time is the harm which it has done. It degraded for a time the whole character of the art. It said by practice, by a most efficient and successful practice, that it was the aim, the _duty_ of poets, to catch the attention of the passing, the fashionable, the busy world. If a poem ‘fell dead’, it was