The Crown of Wild Olive also Munera Pulveris;...

Maps many have we, now-a-days clear in display of earth constituent, air current, and ocean tide. Shall we ever engrave the map of meaner research, whose shadings shall content themselves in the task of showing the depth, or drought,—the calm, or trouble, of Human Compassion?

Not altogether so; but indeed the Vocal piety seemed conclusively to have retired (or excursed?) into that mossy hermitage, above Little Langdale. The Unvocal piety, with the uncomplaining sorrow, of Man, may have had a somewhat wider range, for aught we know: but history disregards those items; and of firmly proclaimed and sweetly canorous religion, there really seemed at that juncture none to be reckoned upon, east of Ingleborough, or north of Criffel. Only under Furness Fells, or by Bolton Priory, it seems we can still write Ecclesiastical Sonnets, stanzas on the force of Prayer, Odes to Duty, and complimentary addresses to the Deity upon His endurance for adoration. Far otherwise, over yonder, by Spezzia Bay, and Ravenna Pineta, and in ravines of Hartz. There, the softest voices speak the wildest words; and Keats discourses of Endymion, Shelley of Demogorgon, Goethe of Lucifer, and Bürger of the Resurrection of Death unto Death—while even Puritan Scotland and Episcopal Anglia produce for us only these three minstrels of doubtful tone, who show but small respect for the 'unco guid,' put but limited faith in gifted Gilfillan, and translate with unflinching frankness the Morgante Maggiore.[184]

Dismal the aspect of the spiritual world, or at least the sound of it, might well seem to the eyes and ears of Saints (such as we had) of the period—dismal in angels' eyes also assuredly! Yet is it possible that the dismalness in angelic sight may be otherwise quartered, as it were, from the way of mortal heraldry; and that seen, and heard, of angels,—again I say—hesitatingly—is it possible that the goodness of the Unco Guid, and the gift of Gilfillan, and the word of Mr. Blattergowl, may severally not have been the goodness of God, the gift of God, nor the word of God: but that in the much blotted and broken efforts at goodness, and in the careless gift which they themselves despised,[185] and in the sweet ryme and murmur of their unpurposed words, the Spirit of the Lord had, indeed, wandering, as in chaos days on lightless waters, gone forth in the hearts and from the lips of those other three strange prophets, even though they ate forbidden bread by the altar of the poured-out ashes, and even though the wild beast of the desert found them, and slew.

This, at least, I know, that it had been well for England, though all her other prophets, of the Press, the Parliament, the Doctor's chair, and the Bishop's throne, had fallen silent; so only that she had been able to understand with her heart here and there the simplest line of these, her despised.

Well, I don't know; Mr. Wordsworth certainly did, and observed, with truth, that its clouds took a sober colouring in consequence of his experiences. It is much if, indeed, this sadness be unselfish, and our eyes have kept loving watch o'er Man's Mortality. I have found it difficult to make any one now-a-days believe that such sobriety can be; and that Turner saw deeper crimson than others in the clouds of Goldau. But that any should yet think the clouds brightened by Man's Immortality instead of dulled by his death,—and, gazing on the sky, look for the day when every eye must gaze also—for behold, He cometh with the clouds—this it is no more possible for Christian England to apprehend, however exhorted by her gifted and guid.

'Just now behaved as in the Holy Land.' How did Carnage behave in the Holy Land then? You have all been greatly questioning, of late, whether the sun, which you find to be now going out, ever stood still. Did you in any lagging minute, on those scientific occasions, chance to reflect what he was bid stand still for? or if not—will you please look—and what, also, going forth again as a strong man to run his course, he saw, rejoicing?

'Then Joshua passed from Makkedah unto Libnah—and fought against Libnah. And the Lord delivered it and the king thereof into the hand of Israel, and he smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein.' And from Lachish to Eglon, and from Eglon to Kirjath-Arba, and Sarah's grave in the Amorites' land, 'and Joshua smote all the country of the hills and of the south—and of the vale and of the springs, and all their kings; he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed—as the Lord God of Israel commanded.'

Thus 'it is written:' though you perhaps do not so often hear these texts preached from, as certain others about taking away the sins of the world. I wonder how the world would like to part with them! hitherto it has always preferred parting first with its Life—and God has taken it at its word. But Death is not His Begotten Son, for all that; nor is the death of the innocent in battle carnage His 'instrument for working out a pure intent' as Mr. Wordsworth puts it; but Man's instrument for working out an impure one, as Byron would have you to know. Theology perhaps less orthodox, but certainly more reverent;—neither is the Woolwich Infant a Child of God; neither does the iron-clad 'Thunderer' utter thunders of God—which facts, if you had had the grace or sense to learn from Byron, instead of accusing him of blasphemy, it had been better at this day for you, and for many a savage soul also, by Euxine shore, and in Zulu and Afghan lands.

It was neither, however, for the theology, nor the use, of these lines that I quoted them; but to note this main point of Byron's own character. He was the first great Englishman who felt the cruelty of war, and, in its cruelty, the shame. Its guilt had been known to George Fox—its folly shown practically by Penn. But the compassion of the pious world had still for the most part been shown only in keeping its stock of Barabbases unhanged if possible: and, till Byron came, neither Kunersdorf, Eylau, nor Waterloo, had taught the pity and the pride of men that

Such pacific verse would not indeed have been acceptable to the Edinburgh volunteers on Portobello sands. But Byron can write a battle song too, when it is his cue to fight. If you look at the introduction to the Isles of Greece, namely the 85th and 86th stanzas of the 3rd canto of Don Juan,—you will find—what will you not find, if only you understand them! 'He' in the first line, remember, means the typical modern poet.

'Thus usually, when he was asked to sing, He gave the different nations something national. 'Twas all the same to him—"God save the King" Or "Ça ira" according to the fashion all; His muse made increment of anything From the high lyric down to the low rational: If Pindar sang horse races, what should hinder Himself from being as pliable as Pindar?

'In France, for instance, he would write a chanson; In England a six-canto quarto tale; In Spain, he'd make a ballad or romance on The last war—much the same in Portugal; In Germany, the Pegasus he'd prance on Would be old Goethe's—(see what says de Staël) In Italy he'd ape the 'Trecentisti;' In Greece, he'd sing some sort of hymn like this t' ye.

Note first here, as we did in Scott, the concentrating and foretelling power. The 'God Save the Queen' in England, fallen hollow now, as the 'Ça ira' in France—not a man in France knowing where either France or 'that' (whatever 'that' may be) is going to; nor the Queen of England daring, for her life, to ask the tiniest Englishman to do a single thing he doesn't like;—nor any salvation, either of Queen or Realm, being any more possible to God, unless under the direction of the Royal Society: then, note the estimate of height and depth in poetry, swept in an instant, 'high lyric to low rational.' Pindar to Pope (knowing Pope's height, too, all the while, no man better); then, the poetic power of France—resumed in a word—Béranger; then the cut at Marmion, entirely deserved, as we shall see, yet kindly given, for everything he names in these two stanzas is the best of its kind; then Romance in Spain on—the last war, (present war not being to Spanish poetical taste), then, Goethe the real heart of all Germany, and last, the aping of the Trecentisti which has since consummated itself in Pre-Raphaelitism! that also being the best thing Italy has done through England, whether in Rossetti's 'blessed damozels' or Burne Jones's 'days of creation.' Lastly comes the mock at himself—the modern English Greek—(followed up by the 'degenerate into hands like mine' in the song itself); and then—to amazement, forth he thunders in his Achilles voice. We have had one line of him in his clearness—five of him in his depth—sixteen of him in his play. Hear now but these, out of his whole heart:—

'Sound like a distant torrent's fall.' I said the whole heart of Byron was in this passage. First its compassion, then its indignation, and the third element, not yet examined, that love of the beauty of this world in which the three—unholy—children, of its Fiery Furnace were like to each other; but Byron the widest-hearted. Scott and Burns love Scotland more than Nature itself: for Burns the moon must rise over Cumnock Hills,—for Scott, the Rymer's glen divide the Eildons; but, for Byron, Loch-na-Gar with Ida, looks o'er Troy, and the soft murmurs of the Dee and the Bruar change into voices of the dead on distant Marathon.

Naught living meets the eye or ear, But well I ween the dead are near; For though, in feudal strife, a foe Hath laid our Lady's Chapel low, Yet still beneath the hallowed soil, The peasant rests him from his toil, And, dying, bids his bones be laid Where erst his simple fathers prayed.'

As you read, one after another, these fragments of chant by the great masters, does not a sense come upon you of some element in their passion, no less than in their sound, different, specifically, from that of 'Parching summer hath no warrant'? Is it more profane, think you—or more tender—nay, perhaps, in the core of it, more true?