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Book, page 81 / 101 couch of honour shall be no more mine: I am miserable, I am bent on my crutch. How evil was the lot allotted to Llywarch, the night when he was brought forth! sorrows without end, and no deliverance from his burden. There is the Titanism of the Celt, his passionate, turbulent, indomitable reaction against the despotism of fact; and of whom does it remind us so much as of Byron? The fire which on my bosom preys Is lone as some volcanic isle; No torch is kindled at its blaze; A funeral pile! Or, again:- Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, Count o'er thy days from anguish free, And know, whatever thou hast been, 'Tis something better not to be. One has only to let one's memory begin to fetch passages from Byron striking the same note as that passage from Llywarch Hen, and she will not soon stop. And all Byron's heroes, not so much in collision with outward things, as breaking on some rock of revolt and misery in the depths of their own nature; Manfred, self-consumed, fighting blindly and passionately with I know not what, having nothing of the consistent development and intelligible motive of Faust,--Manfred, Lara, Cain, what are they but Titanic? Where in European poetry are we to find this Celtic passion of revolt so warm-breathing, puissant, and sincere; except perhaps in the creation of a yet greater poet than Byron, but an English poet, too, like Byron,--in the Satan of Milton?
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