No More Learning

F. R. S. L.




LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
1901.




PREFACE TO THE FIFTH VOLUME.

The plays and poems contained in this volume were written within the
space of two years--the last two years of Byron's career as a poet. But
that was not all. Cantos VI. -XV. of _Don Juan_, _The Vision of
Judgment_, _The Blues_, _The Irish Avatar_, and other minor poems,
belong to the same period. The end was near, and, as though he had
received a warning, he hastened to make the roll complete.

Proof is impossible, but the impression remains that the greater part of
this volume has been passed over and left unread by at least two
generations of readers.
Old play-goers recall Macready as "Werner," and
many persons have read _Cain_; but apart from students of literature,
readers of _Sardanapalus_ and of _The Two Foscari_ are rare; of _The Age
of Bronze_ and _The Island_ rarer still. A few of Byron's later poems
have shared the fate of Southey's epics; and, yet, with something of
Southey's persistence, Byron believed that posterity would weigh his
"regular dramas" in a fresh balance, and that his heedless critics
would kick the beam. But "can these bones live"? Can dramas which
excited the wondering admiration of Goethe and Lamartine and Sir Walter
Scott touch or lay hold of the more adventurous reader of the present
day? It is certain that even the half-forgotten works of a great and
still popular poet, which have left their mark on the creative
imagination of the poets and playwrights of three quarters of a century,
will always be studied by the few from motives of curiosity, or for
purposes of reference; but it is improbable, though not impossible, that
in the revolution of taste and sentiment, moribund or extinct poetry
will be born again into the land of the living. Poetry which has never
had its day, such as Blake's _Songs of Innocence_, the _Lyrical
Ballads_, or Fitzgerald's _Omar Khayyam_, may come, in due time, to be
recognized at its full worth; but it is a harder matter for a poem which
has lost its vogue to recapture the interest and enthusiasm of the many.

Byron is only an instance in point. Bygone poetry has little or no
attraction for modern readers. This poem or that drama may be referred
to, and occasionally examined in the interests of general culture, or in
support of a particular belief or line of conduct, as a classical or
quasi-scriptural authority; but, with the rarest exceptions, plays and
narrative poems are not read spontaneously or with any genuine
satisfaction or delight. An old-world poem which will not yield up its
secret to the idle _reader_ "of an empty day" is more or less "rudely
dismissed," without even a show of favour or hospitality.

And yet these forgotten works of the imagination are full of hidden
treasures! There is not one of Byron's "impressionist studies" of
striking episodes of history or historical legend, flung, as it were,
with a "Take it or leave it" in the face of friend or foe, which does
not transform names and shadows into persons and substance, which does
not contain lines and passages of unquestionable beauty and distinction.

But some would have it that Byron's plays, as a whole, are dull and
uninspiring, monotonous harpings on worn-out themes, which every one has
mastered or wishes to forget. A close study of the text, together with
some knowledge of the subject as it presented itself to the author and
arrested _his_ attention, may compel these impatient critics to a
different conclusion. Byron did not scruple to refer the reader to his
"sources," and was at pains to publish, in the notes and appendices to
his dramas and poems, long extracts from old chronicles, from Plutarch's
_Lives_, from French and Italian histories, which he had read himself,
and, as he fondly believed, would be read by others, who were willing to
submit themselves to his guidance. He expected his readers to take some
trouble and to display some intelligence.