310 Mr. Laurence Binyon [May 31, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 

 Friday, May 31, 1918. 



Sir Chakles Nicholson, Bart., M.P. M.A. LL.B., Vice-President, 



in the Chair. 



Laurence Binyon. 



Poetry and Modern Life. 



Shelley, in a letter to his wife, tells her that Byron has been 

 reading to him at Ravenna one of the unpublished cantos of " Don 

 Juan." He praises the "incredible ease and power" with which it is 

 written, and he goes on to make an interesting comment. " It ful- 

 fils," he says, *' in a certain degree, what I have long preached of 

 producing — something wholly new and relative to the age, and yet 

 surpassingly beautiful." 



Byron is out of fashion to-day, and more decried perhaps than 

 read. Whatever Time has taken from his poetry, anyone who takes 

 up his works must still marvel at the incredible power and ease, in 

 Shelley's just phrase, of his best and most characteristic writing. 

 But what precisely did Shelley mean when he wrote of the desired 

 poem as "something wholly new and relative to the age, and yet 

 surpassingly beautiful " ? What was in his mind 'i And what was 

 it in " Don Juan " which could make him think that Byron had 

 there, if only in a " certain degree," fulfilled the desired conditions ? 



Some men only admire what is akin to their own natures ; others 

 give their fullest admiration to qualities which they themselves do 

 not possess. Shelley, with his native generosity and modesty, was 

 always impelled to appreciate, and often to over-estimate, achieve- 

 ments of which he knew himself to be incapable. He admired, no 

 doubt, in " Don Juan " the amazing power with which Byron poured 

 out his thoughts and feelings, swerving off from his story and then 

 returning to it, changing his mood on every other page, restless but 

 always alive, witty, reckless, buoyant and abounding. Here was the 

 modern world reflected in a modern mind, failing, no doubt, of sur- 

 passing beauty, but at any rate surpassingly vigorous and brilliantly 

 various — something which might be called " wholly new and relative 

 to the age." 



Shelley is not the only poet who has cherished this dream of 

 creating a poem on an adequate scale which should draw its material 

 or its inspiration from the life of his own day. His phrase " relative 



