the malarial town of Missolonghi, where he showed qualities of leadership
but died of fever after a few months, in 1824, before he had time to
accomplish anything.

It is hard to form a consistent judgment of so inconsistent a being as
Byron. At the core of his nature there was certainly much genuine
goodness--generosity, sympathy, and true feeling. However much we may
discount his sacrifice of his life in the cause of a foreign people, his
love of political freedom and his hatred of tyranny were thoroughly and
passionately sincere, as is repeatedly evident in such poems as the sonnet
on 'Chillon,' 'The Prisoner of Chillon,' and the 'Ode on Venice.' On the
other hand his violent contempt for social and religious hypocrisy had as
much of personal bitterness as of disinterested principle; and his
persistent quest of notoriety, the absence of moderation in his attacks on
religious and moral standards, his lack of self-control, and his indulgence
in all the vices of the worser part of the titled and wealthy class require
no comment. Whatever allowances charity may demand on the score of tainted
heredity, his character was far too violent and too shallow to approach to
greatness.

As a poet he continues to occupy a conspicuous place (especially in the
judgment of non-English-speaking nations) through the power of his volcanic
emotion. It was this quality of emotion, perhaps the first essential in
poetry, which enrolled among his admirers a clear spirit in most respects
the antithesis of his own, that of Matthew Arnold. In 'Memorial Verses'
Arnold says of him:


He taught us little, but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder's roll.