strength; for the one is not intelligible without the other. A human being is an indivisible unity, and his weakness _is_ his strength, and his strength _is_ his weakness. It is not my object now, however, to justify what Mr. Arnold calls the Byronic “superstition.” I hope I could justify a good part of it, but this is not the opportunity. I cannot resist, however, saying a word by way of conclusion on the manner in which Byron has fulfilled what seems to me one of the chief offices of the poet. Mr. Arnold, although he is so dissatisfied with Byron because he “cannot reflect,” would probably in another mood admit that “reflections” are not what we demand of a poet. We do not ask of him a rhymed book of proverbs. He should rather be the articulation of what in Nature is great but inarticulate. In him the thunder, the sea, the peace of morning, the joy of youth, the rush of passion, the calm of old age, should find words, and men should through him become aware of the unrecognised wealth of existence. Byron had the power above most poets of acting as a kind of tongue to Nature. His descriptions are on everybody’s lips, and it is superfluous to quote them. He represented things not as if they were aloof from him, but as if they were the concrete embodiment of his soul. The woods, the wilds, the waters of Nature are to him— “the intense Reply of _hers_ to our intelligence.” His success is equally marked when he portrays men or women whose character attracts him. Take, for example, the girl in “The Island”:— “The sunborn blood suffused her neck, and threw O’er her clear nutbrown skin a lucid hue, Like coral reddening through the darken’d wave, Which draws the diver to the crimson cave. Such was this daughter of the southern seas, _Herself a billow in her energies_. * * * * * Her smiles and tears had pass’d, as light winds pass O’er lakes to ruffle, not destroy, their glass, _Whose depths unsearch’d_, _and fountains from the hill_, _Restore their surface_, _in itself so still_.”