Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/807

1868.] Such is a faint picture of one of the terrible fires which raged in this country during the memorable dry, hot year of 1825.

O affectation in modern times ever raged with such fury and lived so long as did Byronism. It came up somewhere about the latter part of the life of the noble poet from whom it took its name, possessed more than a third of the young Englishmen then living, and it was fully a half-dozen years after the publication of Mr. Moore's Biography before it began to go down, and even as late as the commencement of the present decade there were quite a number of persons writing demoniac poetry and wandering about with the old misanthropic sneer. Now, however, the thing seems to have completely disappeared. There are no more poems issuing on the subject, and the people of this generation, somehow or other, appear to be physically and otherwise incapable of keeping perpetually gloomy and wretched, as their immediate progenitors once did.

At the moment "Childe Harold" was put forth, and its author was noised about as having pictured himself in his hero, it is needless to describe here how quickly both composition and author sprang into popularity. He awoke and found himself famous. More than that, he was made a kind of god for a certain portion of society to worship. So was the way of his countrymen. He knew it, and was glad to be the deity of such a number of fine people. He used the sarcastic reply of the Lacedæmonians to Alexander, and said, "if they wished him to be divine he must, in consequence, be divine." And with what mad ardor and reckless devotion he was worshipped, no one can possibly be ignorant.

Why came all this about?

Simply because the story was new. Nothing like it had ever been heard of before. The fashionable novel was then in vogue. All the heroes were noblemen who were perpetually debauching, drinking, fighting duels, talking small talk and ending their delightful careers by marriage. All the heroines were young persons of quality, whose fortunes were small in consequence of having been severely dipped by their fathers in electioneering; or amiable creatures of good connections, who, by some preposterous mistake, were born without any title; but who were sure, in justice, to marry one at the end of the book. People, now-a-days, would be apt to yawn over such superior compositions, and even then some were beginning to consider them bores. This is proved by the fact that Mr. Dallas went a-begging and Lady Caroline Lamb's "Glenarvon" was popular.

When "Childe Harold" was published it was, as has been said, something entirely new. For the first time the public were treated to a hero who was not exactly a choice spirit. He was this time young and noble, but wretched—completely sick of life, and just kept from suicide because it was tiresome to shoot one's self and might annoy somebody. There was also the advantage, by living, of unlimited indulgence in the luxury of woe. He captivated all at once, and naturally, when people began to find out, in the course of events, that the author