CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE. Byron's 'Childe Harold,' despite diversity of critical opinion and the fact that it has become hackneyed through use in guidebooks and school *readers,* still remains the most famous descriptive poem in English. It was written, says Byron, *as a mark of respect for what is venerable and of feeling for what is glorious.' The poem is divided into four parts, or *cantos,* aggregating 4,500 lines; its metre is the nine line stanza of Spenser's 'Fairy Queen.' Though usually termed a *descriptive* poem, 'Childe Harold' is really a series of descriptive, re flective and lyrical stanzas strung on a slender thread of narrative formed by the wanderings of its eponymous hero through the countries described. But Harold figures only slightly even in the first canto, still less in the second, is scarcely mentioned in the third, and disappears entirely in the fourth. He was, in spite of Byron s too strenuous denial, never other than the poet himself.
Byron's travels through Spain, Portugal, Albania and Greece, in 1809 and 1810, furnish the subject-matter for cantos and II, which upon their publication in 1812, caused their author to exclaim, *I awoke one morning and found myself famous.* Their popularity, such as few poems have ever attained, was due largely to their posing, their showy rhetoric, and their satire, which exactly suited the taste of the age. Except for the fine stanzas on Greece (II3-90), however, they contain little B of value. But the third and fourth cantos, pub lished in 1816 and 1818, respectively, belong to a higher order. Within the intervening years Byron had written copiously, had grown famous, had become for a time the darling of English society, had met the great people of his day, had married — unhappily; and, finally, under a storm of unmerited abuse, had quitted England forever. His earlier poses and affectations are now laid aside, and his style is direct and ma ture. Canto III is devoted to Waterloo, the Rhine and Switzerland; canto IV, to Italy ; with their landscapes, historical associations, great men and great events, cities, buildings and works of art. But not one half of the matter is de
scriptive; for the poet usually passes from description into reflection, and from this into the purely lyrical. In Italy his wanderings are easily traced, from Venice, through Ferrara and Florence, southward to Rome; but 'Childe Harold' is far from being a guidebook. Byron selects only what arouses his emotions, and presents objects only as colored and interpreted by his own personality. Yet so essentially just and adequate are many of his descriptions, such as those of Venice, Rome, the Pantheon, the gladiator, that they have become identified with the objects they describe. The contemporary popularity of 'Childe Harold,' however, was not due solely to the splendor and energy of these descriptive passages. The spirit of the age spoke in its pleas forjustice and liberty, and for social, political and religious reform; and contemporary interest was quickened by the reflections on the French Revolution and Na poleon, and by political allusions and prophecies. Added to all this was the daring revelation of the poet's own complex and brilliant person ality.
Despite the diversity of critical opinion, it may safely be said that 'Childe Harold' con tains much poetry of a high order. Byron's passion for the grander aspects of nature finds expression in verse that fairly rises to the sub limity of his themes (on the Rhine, III, 50-56; on Night and Storm on Lake Geneva, III, 85 97; on the Marble Cascade, IV, 69-72- oh the Ocean, IV, 178-84). Again, as no other poet, Byron possesses the historic imagination, can summon °the glory that was Greece, the grand eur that was Rome,* and make the reader feel the desolation of once great and now fallen states (on Athens, II, 73-90; on Venice, IV, 1-19; an Rome, IV, 78-82). With all its lapses into empty rhetoric, its moral platitudes, its too ostentatious parade of the poet's Ibleediag heart,' Harold' still possesses, as Svent burn has said, °the splendid and imperishable excellence of sincerity and strength.°