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Goethe, it is true, did say this; but the interpretation of the saying
depends upon the context, which Mr. Arnold omits. I give the whole
passage, quoting from Oxenford's translation of the Eckermann
Conversations, vol. i. p. 198 (edition 1850):-

"'Lord Byron,' said Eckermann, 'is no wiser when he takes 'Faust' to
pieces and thinks you found one thing here, the other there.' 'The
greater part of those fine things cited by Lord Byron,' Goethe replied,
'I have never even read; much less did I think of them when I was
writing "Faust." But Lord Byron is only great as a poet; as soon as he
reflects he is a child. He knows not how to help himself against the
stupid attacks of the same kind made upon him by his own countrymen. He
ought to have expressed himself more strongly against them. 'What is
there is mine,' he should have said, 'and whether I got it from a book
or from life is of no consequence; the only point is, whether I have
made a right use of it.' Walter Scott used a scene from my 'Egmont,'
and he had a right to do so; and because he did it well, he deserves
praise.'"

Goethe certainly does not mean that Byron was unable to reflect in the
sense in which Mr. Arnold interprets the word. What was really meant we
shall see in a moment.

We will, however, continue the quotations from the Eckermann:-

"We see how the inadequate dogmas of the Church work upon a free mind
like Byron's and how by such a piece ('Cain') he struggles to get rid of
a doctrine which has been forced upon him" (vol. i. p. 129).

"The world to him was transparent, and he could paint by way of
anticipation" (vol. i. p. 140).

"That which I call invention I never saw in any one in the world to a
greater degree than in him" (vol. i. p. 205).

"Lord Byron is to be regarded as a man, as an Englishman, and as a great
talent. His good qualities belong chiefly to the man, his bad to the
Englishman and the peer, his talent is incommensurable. All Englishmen
are, as such, without reflection properly so-called; distractions and
party-spirit will not permit them to perfect themselves in quiet. But
they are great as practical men. Thus, Lord Byron could never attain
reflection on himself, and on this account his maxims in general are not
successful. . . . But where he will create, he always succeeds; and we
may truly say that, with him, inspiration supplies the place of
reflection. He was always obliged to go on poetizing, and then
everything that came from the man, especially from his heart, was
excellent. He produced his best things, as women do pretty children,
without thinking about it, or knowing how it was done. He is a great
talent, a born talent, and I never saw the true poetical power greater
in any man than in him. In the apprehension of external objects, and a
clear penetration into past situations, he is quite as great as
Shakespeare. But as a pure individuality, Shakespeare is his superior"
(vol. i. p. 209).

We see now what Goethe means by "reflection." It is the faculty of
self-separation, or conscious CONSIDERATION, a faculty which would have
enabled Byron, as it enabled Goethe, to reply successfully to a charge
of plagiarism. It is not thought in its widest sense, nor creation, and
it has not much to do with the production of poems of the highest order-
-the poems that is to say, which are written by the impersonal thought.

But again--

"The English may think of Byron as they please; but this is certain,
that they can show no poet who is to be compared to him. He is
different from all the others, and for the most part, greater" (vol. i.
p. 290).

This passage is one which Mr. Arnold quotes, and he strives to diminish
its importance by translating der ihm zu vergleichen ware, by "who is
his parallel," and maintains that Goethe "was not so much thinking of
the strict rank, as poetry, of Byron's production; he was thinking of
that wonderful personality of Byron which so enters into his poetry."
It is just possible; but if Goethe did think this, he used words which
are misleading, and if the phrase der ihm zu vergleichen ware simply
indicates parallelism, it has no point, for in that sense it might have
been applied to Scott or to Southey.

"I have read once more Byron's 'Deformed Transformed,' and must say that
to me his talent appears greater than ever. His devil was suggested by
my Mephistopheles; but it is no imitation--it is thoroughly new and
original; close, genuine, and spirited. There are no weak passages--not
a place where you could put the head of a pin, where you do not find
INVENTION AND THOUGHT [italics mine]. Were it not for his
hypochondriacal negative turn, he would be as great as Shakespeare and
the ancients" (vol. i. p. 294).

Eckermann expressed his surprise. "Yes," said Goethe, "you may believe
me, I have studied him anew and am confirmed in this opinion." The
position which Byron occupies in the Second Part of "Faust" is well
known. Eckermann talked to Goethe about it, and Goethe said, "I could
not make use of any man as the representative of the modern poetical era
except him, who undoubtedly is to be regarded as the greatest genius of
our century" (vol. i. p. 425). Mr. Arnold translates this word "genius"
by "talent." The word in the original is TALENT, and I will not dispute
with so accomplished a German scholar as Mr. Arnold as to what is the
precise meaning of TALENT. In both the English translations of
Eckermann the word is rendered "genius," and after the comparison
between Byron, Shakespeare, and the ancients just quoted, we can hardly
admit that Goethe meant to distinguish scientifically between the two
orders of intellect and to assign the lower to Byron.

But, last of all, I will translate Goethe's criticism upon "Cain." So
far as I know, it has not yet appeared in English. It is to be found in
the Stuttgart and Tubingen edition of Goethe, 1840, vol. xxxiii. p. 157.
Some portions which are immaterial I have omitted:-

"After I had listened to the strangest things about this work for almost
a year, I at last took it myself in hand, and it excited in me
astonishment and admiration; an effect which will produce in the mind
which is simply susceptible, everything good, beautiful, and great. . .
. The poet who, surpassing the limit of all our conceptions, has
penetrated with burning spiritual vision the past and present, and
consequently the future, has now subdued new regions under his limitless
talent, but what he will accomplish therein can be predicted by no human
being. His procedure, however, we can nevertheless in a measure more
closely determine. He adheres to the letter of the Biblical tradition,
for he allows the first pair of human beings to exchange their original
purity and innocence for a guilt mysterious in its origin; the
punishment which is its consequence descending upon all posterity. The
monstrous burden of such an event he lays upon the shoulders of Cain as
the representative of a wretched humanity, plunged for no fault of its
own into the depths of misery.

"To this primitive son of man, bowed down and heavily burdened, death,
which as yet he has not seen, is an especial trouble; and although he
may desire the end of his present distress, it seems still more hateful
to exchange it for a condition altogether unknown. Hence we already see
that the full weight of a dogmatic system, explaining, mediating, yet
always in conflict with itself, just as it still for ever occupies us,
was imposed on the first miserable son of man. These contradictions,
which are not strange to human nature, possessed his mind, and could not
be brought to rest, either through the divinely-given gentleness of his
father and brother, or the loving and alleviating co-operation of his
sister-wife. In order to sharpen them to the point of impossibility of
endurance, Satan comes upon the scene, a mighty and misleading spirit,
who begins by unsettling him morally, and then conducts him miraculously
through all worlds, causing him to see the past as overwhelmingly vast,
the present as small and of no account, and the future as full of
foreboding and void of consolation.

"So he turns back to his own family, more excited, but not worse than
before; and finding in the family circle everything as he has left it,
the urgency of Abel, who wishes to make him offer a sacrifice, becomes
altogether insupportable. More say we not, excepting that the
motivation of the scene in which Abel perishes is of the rarest
excellence, and what follows is equally great and priceless. There now
lies Abel! That now is Death--there was so much talk about it, and man
knows about it as little as he did before.

"We must not forget, that through the whole piece there runs a kind of
presentiment of a Saviour, so that the poet at this point, as well as in
all others, has known how to bring himself near to the ideas by which we
explain things, and to our modes of faith.

"Of the scene with the parents, in which Eve at last curses the
speechless Cain, which our western neighbour lifts into such striking
prominence, there remains nothing more for us to say: we have to
approach the conclusion with astonishment and reverence.

"With regard to this conclusion, an intelligent and fair friend, related
to us through esteem for Byron, has asserted that everything religious
and moral in the world was put into the last three words of the piece."
{143}

We have now heard enough from Goethe to prove that Mr. Arnold's
interpretation of "so bald er reflectirt ist er ein Kind" is not
Goethe's interpretation of Byron. It is to be remembered that Goethe
was not a youth overcome by Mr. Arnold's "vogue" when he read Byron. He
was a singularly self-possessed old man.

Many persons will be inclined to think that Goethe, so far from putting
Byron on a lower level than that usually assigned to him, has over-
praised him, and will question the "burning spiritual vision" which the
great German believed the great Englishman to possess. But if we
consider what Goethe calls the "motivation" of Cain; if we reflect on
what the poet has put into the legend; on the exploration of the
universe with Lucifer as a guide; on its result, on the mode in which
the death of Abel is reached; on the doom of the murderer--the limitless
wilderness henceforth and no rest; on the fidelity of Adah, who, with
the true instinct of love, separates between the man and the crime; on
the majesty of the principal character, who stands before us as the
representative of the insurgence of the human intellect, so that, if we
know him, we know a whole literature; if we meditate hereon, we shall
say that Goethe has not exaggerated. It is the same with the rest of
Byron's dramas. Over and above the beauty of detached passages, there
is in each one of them a large and universal meaning, or rather meaning
within meaning, precisely the same for no reader, but none the less
certain, and as inexhaustible as the meanings of Nature. This is one
reason why the wisdom of a selection from Byron is so doubtful. The
worth of "Cain," of "Sardanapalus," of "Manfred," of "Marino Faliero,"
is the worth of an outlook over the sea; and we cannot take a sample of
the scene from a cliff by putting a pint of water into a bottle. But
Byron's critics and the compilers tell us of failures, which ought not
to survive, and that we are doing a kindness to him if we suppress these
and exhibit him at his best. No man who seriously cares for Byron will
assent to this doctrine. We want to know the whole of him, his weakness
as well as his strength; for the one is not intelligible without the
other. A human being is an indivisible unity, and his weakness IS his
strength, and his strength IS his weakness.

It is not my object now, however, to justify what Mr. Arnold calls the
Byronic "superstition." I hope I could justify a good part of it, but
this is not the opportunity. I cannot resist, however, saying a word by
way of conclusion on the manner in which Byron has fulfilled what seems
to me one of the chief offices of the poet. Mr. Arnold, although he is
so dissatisfied with Byron because he "cannot reflect," would probably
in another mood admit that "reflections" are not what we demand of a
poet. We do not ask of him a rhymed book of proverbs. He should rather
be the articulation of what in Nature is great but inarticulate. In him
the thunder, the sea, the peace of morning, the joy of youth, the rush
of passion, the calm of old age, should find words, and men should
through him become aware of the unrecognised wealth of existence. Byron
had the power above most poets of acting as a kind of tongue to Nature.
His descriptions are on everybody's lips, and it is superfluous to quote
them. He represented things not as if they were aloof from him, but as
if they were the concrete embodiment of his soul. The woods, the wilds,
the waters of Nature are to him -

"the intense
Reply of HERS to our intelligence."

His success is equally marked when he portrays men or women whose
character attracts him. Take, for example, the girl in "The Island":-

"The sunborn blood suffused her neck, and threw
O'er her clear nutbrown skin a lucid hue,
Like coral reddening through the darken'd wave,
Which draws the diver to the crimson cave.
Such was this daughter of the southern seas,
HERSELF A BILLOW IN HER ENERGIES.

* * * * *

Her smiles and tears had pass'd, as light winds pass
O'er lakes to ruffle, not destroy, their glass,
WHOSE DEPTHS UNSEARCH'D, AND FOUNTAINS FROM THE HILL,
RESTORE THEIR SURFACE, IN ITSELF SO STILL."

Passages like these might be quoted without end from Byron, and they
explain why he is and must be amongst the immortals. He may have been
careless in expression; he may have been a barbarian and not a e?f???,
as Mr. Matthew Arnold affirms, but he was GREAT. This is the word which
describes him. He was a mass of living energy, and therefore he is
sanative. Energy, power, is the one thing after which we pine in this
sickly age. We do not want carefully and consciously constructed poems
of mosaic. Strength is what we need and what will heal us. Strength is
true morality, and true beauty. It is the strength in Byron that
falsifies the accusation of affectation and posing, which is brought
against him. All that is meant by affectation and posing was a mere
surface trick. The real man, Byron, and his poems are perfectly
unconscious, as unconscious as the wind. The books which have lived and
always will live have this unconsciousness in them, and what is
manufactured, self-centred, and self-contemplative will perish. The
world's literature is the work of men, who, to use Byron's own words -

"Strip off this fond and false identity;"

who are lost in their object, who write because they cannot help it,
imperfectly or perfectly, as the case may be, and who do not sit down to
fit in this thing and that thing from a commonplace book. Many
novelists there are who know their art better than Charlotte Bronte, but
she, like Byron--and there are more points of resemblance between them
than might at first be supposed--is imperishable because she speaks
under overwhelming pressure, self-annihilated, we may say, while the
spirit breathes through her. The Byron "vogue" will never pass so long
as men and women are men and women. Mr. Arnold and the critics may
remind us of his imperfections of form, but Goethe is right after all,
for not since Shakespeare have we had any one der ihm zu vergleichen
ware.

A SACRIFICE

A fatal plague devastated the city. The god had said that it would
continue to rage until atonement for a crime had been offered by the
sacrifice of a man. He was to be perfect in body; he must not desire to
die because he no longer loved life, or because he wished for fame. A
statue must not be erected to his memory; no poem must be composed for
him; his name must not appear in the city's records.

A few volunteers presented themselves, but none of them satisfied all
the conditions. At last a young man came who had served as the model
for the image of the god in his temple. There was no question,
therefore, of soundness of limb, and when he underwent the form of
examination no spot nor blemish was found on him. The priest asked him
whether he was in trouble, and especially whether he was disappointed in
love. He said he was in no trouble; that he was betrothed to a girl to
whom he was devoted, and that they had intended to be married that
month. "I am," he declared, "the happiest man in the city." The priest
doubted and watched him that evening, but he saw him walking side by
side with this girl, and the two were joyous as a youth and a maiden
ought to be in the height of their passion. She sat down and sang to
him he played to her, and they embraced one another tenderly at parting.

The next morning was the day on which he was to be slain. There was an
altar in front of the temple, and a great crowd assembled, ranked round
the open space. At the appointed hour the priest appeared, and with him
was the youth, holding his beloved by the hand, but she was blindfolded.
He let go her hand, knelt down, and in a moment the sacrificial knife
was drawn across his throat. His body was placed upon the wood, and the
priest was about to kindle it when a flash from heaven struck it into a
blaze with such heat that when the fire dropped no trace of the victim
remained. The girl, too, had disappeared, and was never seen again.

In accordance with the god's decree, no statue was erected, no poem was
composed, and no entry was made in the city records. But tradition did
not forget that the saviour of the city was he who survived in the great
image on which the name of the god was inscribed.

THE AGED TREE

An aged tree, whose companions had gone, having still a little sap in
its bark and a few leaves which grew therefrom, prayed it might see yet
another spring. Its prayer was granted: and spring came, but the old
tree had no leaves save one or two near the ground, and a great fungus
fixed itself on its trunk. It had a dull life in its roots, but not
enough to know that its moss and fungus were not foliage. It stood
there, an unlovely mass of decay, when the young trees were all
bursting. "That rotten thing," said the master, "ought to have been cut
down long ago."

CONSCIENCE

"Conscience," said I, "her conscience would have told her."

"Yes," said my father. "The strongest amongst the many objections to
the Roman Catholic doctrine of confession is that it weakens our
dependence on the conscience. If we seek for an external command to do
what ought to be done in obedience to that inward monitor, whose voice
is always clear if we will but listen, its authority will gradually be
lost, and in the end it will cease to speak."

"Conscience," said my grandmother musingly (turning to my father). "You
will remember Phyllis Eyre? She was one of my best friends, and it is
now two years since she died, unmarried. She was once governess to the
children of Sir Robert Walsh, but remained in the house as companion to
Lady Walsh long after her pupils had grown up. She was, in fact, more
than a companion, for Lady Walsh trusted her and loved her. She was by
birth a lady; she had been well educated, and, like her mistress, she
was devoutly and evangelically pious. She was also very handsome, and
this you may well believe, for, as you know, she was handsome as an old
woman, stately and erect, with beautiful, undimmed eyes. When Evelina
Walsh, the eldest daughter, was about one and twenty, Charles Fysshe,
the young heir to the Fysshe property, came to stay with her brother,
and Phyllis soon discovered, or thought she discovered, that he was in
love with Evelina. He seemed to court her society, and paid her
attentions which could be explained on one hypothesis only. Phyllis was
delighted, for the match in every way was most suitable, and must
gladden the hearts of Evelina's parents. The young man would one day be
the possessor of twenty thousand acres; he had already taken a position
in the county, and his soul was believed to be touched with Divine
grace. Evelina certainly was in love with him, and Phyllis was not
backward in urging his claims. She congratulated herself, and with
justice, that if the marriage should ever take place, it would be
acknowledged that she had had a hand in it. It might even be doubted
whether Evelina, without Phyllis's approval, would have permitted
herself to indulge her passion, for she was by nature diffident, and so
beset with reasons for and against when she had to make up her mind on
any important matter, that a decision was always most difficult to her.

"Charles stayed for about six weeks, and was then called home. He
promised that he would pay another visit of a week in the autumn, when
Sir Robert was to entertain the Lord Lieutenant and there were to be
grand doings at the Hall. Conversation naturally turned upon him during
his absence, and Phyllis, as usual, was warm in his praise. One
evening, after she had reached her own room and had lain down to sleep,
a strange apparition surprised her. It was something more than a
suspicion that she herself loved Charles. She strove to rid herself of
this intrusion: she called to mind the difference in their rank; that
she was five years his senior, and that if she yielded she would be
guilty of treachery to Evelina. It was all in vain; the more she
resisted the more vividly did his image present itself, and she was
greatly distressed. What was the meaning of this outbreak of emotion,
not altogether spiritual, of this loss of self-possession, such as she
had never known before? Her usual remedies against evil thoughts failed
her, and, worst of all, there was the constant suggestion that these
particular thoughts were not evil. Hitherto, when temptation had
attacked her, she was sure whence it came, but she was not sure now. It
might be an interposition of Providence, but how would it appear to
Evelina? I myself, my dears, have generally found that to resist the
devil is not difficult if I am quite certain that the creature before me
is the devil, but it does tax my wits sometimes to find out if he is
really the enemy or not. When Apollyon met Christian he was not in
doubt for an instant, for the monster was hideous to behold: he had
scales like a fish, wings like a dragon, feet like a bear, out of his
belly came fire and smoke, and his mouth was as the mouth of a lion.
After some parleying he cast his dreadful dart, but Christian, without
more ado, put up his shield, drew his sword, and presently triumphed.
If Satan had turned himself, from his head to his ankles, into a man,
and had walked by Christian's side, and had talked with him, and had
agreed with him in everything he had to say, the bear's claws might have
peeped out, but Christian, instead of fighting, would have begun to
argue with himself whether the evidence of the face or the foot was the
stronger. He would have been just as likely to trust the face, and in a
few moments he would have been snapped up and carried off to hell. To
go on with my story: the night wore on in sophistry and struggle, and
no inner light dawned with the sun. Phyllis was much agitated, for in
the afternoon Charles was to return, and although amidst the crowd of
visitors she might be overlooked, she could not help seeing him. She
did see him, but did not speak to him. He sat next to Evelina at
dinner, who was happy and expectant. The next day there was a grand
meet of the hounds, and almost all the party disappeared. Phyllis
pleaded a headache, and obtained permission to stay at home. It was a
lovely morning in November, without a movement in the air, calm and
cloudless, one of those mornings not uncommon when the year begins to
die. She went into the woods at the outer edge of the park, and had
scarcely entered them, when lo! to her astonishment, there was Charles.
She could not avoid him, and he came up to her.

"'Why, Miss Eyre, what are you doing here?'

"'I had a headache; I could not go with the others, and came out for a
stroll.'

"'I, too, was not very well, and have been left behind.'

"They walked together side by side.

"'I wanted to speak to you, Miss Eyre. I wonder if you have suspected
anything lately.'

"'Suspected? I do not quite comprehend: you are very vague.'

"'Well, must I be more explicit? Have you fancied that I care more for
somebody you know than I care for all the world besides? I suppose you
have not, for I thought it better to hide as much as possible what I
felt.'

"'I should be telling an untruth if I were to say I do not understand
you, and I trust you will pardon me if I tell you that a girl more
worthy of you than Evelina, and one more likely to make you happy, I
have never seen.'

"'Gracious God! what have I done? what a mistake! Miss Eyre, it is you
I mean; it is you I love.'

"There was not an instant's hesitation.

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