LORD BYRON (GEORGE NOEL GORDON BYRON) (1788-1824) ORD BYRON had a practice, unfortunately too common with poets, of doing his best only in verse. He did not polish his prose, but it is often so close to the highest excellence that if it were allowable to edit it with half the freedom some conscientious scholars allow themselves in bringing the Greek and Latin classics up to the modern standard of classical perfection, it might not be difficult to convert him into one of the great masters of English prose style, as he certainly was of English versification. Thus in the sentence: "The beautiful but barren Hymettus,—the whole coast of Attica, her hills and mountains, Pentelicus Anchesmus, Philopappus, etc., etc., are in themselves poetical and would be so if the name of Athens, of Athenians, and her very ruins were swept from the earth," we have almost at a stroke of the pen the suggestion of that memorable sweep of sea, plain, and mountain which inspired the highest imagination of Greece to the world's highest ideal of beauty. Why, then, did Byron use the deplorable "et cetera et cetera," which almost spoils it even for the few who can translate the double "et cetera» into all that it means for those who are most familiar with "the beautiful but barren Hymettus" and the coast of Attica? It can only be answered that such faults are allowable only to Byron, because no one else could have written such sentences. The "Defense of Pope," in which this occurs, was inspired by strong affection and deep admiration. Pope indeed was his master, and it is to Pope, more quoted than any English poet except Shakespeare, that he owes much of the art by virtue of which he ranks with Pope and Shakespeare at the head of the list of quotable poets. THE ART AND NATURE HE beautiful but barren Hymettus,- the whole coast of Attica, her hills and mountains, Pentelicus, Anchesmus, Philopappus, etc., etc., are in themselves poetical, and would be so if the name of Athens, of Athenians, and her very ruins, were swept from the earth. But am I to be told that the "nature" of Attica |