In lyrical poetry, the comparison is still more to the disadvan-
tage of Wordsworth, who can hardly be said to have tried this
department of his art, in which Byron covered himself with
glory. In the sonnet and reflective poem, I confess Words-
worth's superiority; but these belong to a lower range of art than
the narrative, the lyrical, and dramatic sphere, in which Byron
infinitely distanced his competitor. As reflective poets, the
difference between Byron and Wordsworth, to the advantage of
the latter, is not half so great as the difference between them,
to the advantage of the former, in any of the departments in
which Byron pre-eminently excelled. That difference appears
to me to consist in this : that, whereas the reflections of Byron's
hero are desultory, springing out of the country which Harold
visits, and the scenery and monuments with which he is brought
in contact, those of Wordsworth's heroes are systematic and
introspective — the principles expounded deriving their elucida-
tion rather from the general world of man than from the narrow
specifications of time and place. Wordsworth's reflections are the
product of the mind reposing on the heights of abstract thought,
* " The White Doe of Rylstone."



ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 189

descending occasionally for illustration among the range of
material phenomena, upon which it habitually looks as from a
lofty eminence ; those of Byron have their mainspring in mate-
rial phenomena, though their flights are often so Titanic as
to seem to touch the threshold of heaven. They are, taken
singly, in point of artistic finish and glowing beauty, grander
than anything of a similar character in Wordsworth. But when
we consider their straggling nature, and their utter want of sub-
servience to a moral aim, the superiority of his rival becomes
manifest. Wordsworth moves through the regions of specula-
tion self-supporting, with his thoughts revolving on their own
axis, shaping his course with a fixed design, regulated by the
attraction of the moral law ; Byron, like a meteor which fre-
quently returns to its volcanic source to be replenished with
light, but shedding a, far fuller though a more erratic blaze than
his contemporary. 