But, for all that, though it is not an easy thing to put into words, there is a certain grandiose and sonorous beauty, fresh and free and utterly unaffected, about these verses, and many others in "Childe Harold." As for those long plays of Byron's, and those still longer narrative poems, nothing will induce me to read a line of them again. They have a singularly dusty smell to me; and when I think of them even, I suffer just such a withering sensation of ineffable boredom as I used to experience waiting in a certain ante-room in Tunbridge Wells where lived an aged retired general. I associate them with illustrated travels in Palestine. How Goethe could read "Manfred" with any pleasure passes my comprehension. "Cain" has a certain charm, I admit; but of all forms of all literature the thing which is called Poetic Drama seems to me the most dreary. If poets cannot write for the stage they had better confine themselves to honest straightforward odes and lyrics. But it is no use complaining. There is a sort of fate which drives people into this arid path. I sometimes feel as though both Imagination and Humour fled away from the earth when a modern poet takes pen to compose Poetic Drama! The thing is a refuge for those to whom the gods have given a "talent for literature," and have stopped with that gift. The Poetic Drama flourishes in Anglo-Saxon Democracies. It lends itself to the babbling of extreme youth and to the pompous moralising of extreme middle-age. The odious thing is an essentially modern creation; created, as it is, out of thin vapour, and moulded by melancholy rules of thumb. Drama was Religion to the Greeks, and in the old Elizabethan days great playwrights wrote great poetry. I suppose if, by some fairy-miracle, _sheep_--the most modern of animals--were suddenly endowed with the privileges of culture, they would browse upon nothing else than Poetic Drama, from All Fools' Day to Candlemas. But even Manfred cannot be blamed for this withering sterility, this dead-sea of ineptitude. There must be some form of literature found, loose and lax enough to express the Moral Idealism of the second-rate mind; and Poetic Drama lends itself beautifully to this. Putting aside a few descriptive passages in "Childe Harold" and some score of superb lyrics sprinkled through the whole of the volume, what really is there in Byron at this hour--beyond the irresistible _idea_ of his slashing and crimson-blooded figure--to arrest us and hold us, who can read over and over again Christopher Marlowe and John Keats? Very little--singularly little--almost nothing. Nothing--except "Don Juan"! This indeed is something of a poem. This indeed has the old authentic fire about it and the sweet devilry of reckless youth.