Page:Under the Microscope - Swinburne (1899).djvu/50

 parler; et songez qu'en ne disant mot on croira peut-être que vous êtes d'habiles gens." Such another critic as Mr. Austin is Herr Elze, the German biographer, who has been sent among us after many days to inform our native ignorance that Byron was the greatest lyric poet of England. A few more such examples should have been vouchsafed us of things not generally known; "such as these for instance: that our greatest dramatic poet was Dr. Johnson, our greatest comic poet was Sir Isaac Newton, our best amatory poet was Lord Bacon, our best religious poet was Lord Rochester, our best narrative poet was Joseph Addison, and our greatest epic poet was Tom Moore. Add to these the facts that Shakespeare's fame rests on his invention of gunpowder, and Milton's on his discovery of vaccination, and the student thus prepared and primed with useful knowledge will in time be qualified to match our instructor himself for accurate science of English literature, biographical or critical. It is a truth neither more nor less disputable than these that Byron was a great lyric poet; if the statements proposed above be true, then that also is true; if they be not, it also is not. He could no more have written a thoroughly good and perfect lyric, great or small, after the fashion of Hugo or after the fashion of Tennyson, than he could have written a page of Hamlet or of Paradise Lost. Even in the "Isles of Greece," excellent