‘Denkt Ihr an mich ein Augenblickchen nur,’ or ‘Es war ein König in Thule,’ or ‘Heiss mich nicht reden, heiss mich schweigen,’ and the world agrees that when he writes like this he is ‘grand comme le monde.’ Nobody disputes the fact because he wrote masses and masses of inferior work. The point is that only a very great poet could have written ‘Ueber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh,’ and the rest. “I maintain that only a great poet could have written the ‘Dying Gladiator’; that only a great poet could have written the song that begins-- ‘She walks in beauty like the night;’ and the song that ends ‘In silence and tears;’ the stanzas beginning ‘The moon is up, and yet it is not night’ (not a bad line?) The stanzas on Waterloo and Rome, or, to take a slighter instance, I contend that only a great poet could have written this little song-- I ‘So we’ll go no more a-roving So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving And the moon be still as bright. II For the sword outwears its sheath, And the soul wears out the breast, And the heart must pause to breathe, And love itself have rest. III Though the night was made for loving, And the day returns too soon, Yet we’ll go no more a-roving By the light of the moon.’ “But to do justice to Byron one must take a deep draught of his foaming beverage, and to refresh your memory just listen to these stanzas. Don’t stop to pause and criticise line by line, but drink the whole thing in at a draught-- CLXXXIII ‘It was the cooling hour, just when the rounded Red sun sinks down behind the azure hill, Which then seems as if the whole earth it bounded, Circling all nature, hush’d, and dim, and still, With the far mountain-crescent half surrounded On one side, and the deep sea calm and chill Upon the other, and the rosy sky With one star sparkling through it like an eye. CLXXXIV And thus they wander’d forth, and hand in hand, Over the shining pebbles and the shells, Glided along the smooth and harden’d sand, And in the worn and wild receptacles Work’d by the storms, yet work’d as it were plann’d In hollow halls, with sparry roofs and cells, They turned to rest; and, each clasp’d by an arm, Yielded to the deep twilight’s purple charm. CLXXXV