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Title: Lord Byron as a satirist in verse
Author: Fuess, Claude Moore
Language: English
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COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN ENGLISH
AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
BYRON AS A SATIRIST IN VERSE
COLUMBIA
UNIVERSITY PRESS
SALES AGENTS
NEW YORK:
LEMCKE & BUECHNER
30–32 WEST 27TH STREET
LONDON:
HENRY FROWDE
AMEN CORNER, E.C.
TORONTO:
HENRY FROWDE
25 RICHMOND STREET, W.
LORD BYRON AS A SATIRIST IN VERSE
BY
CLAUDE M. FUESS
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, IN THE
FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
NEW YORK
1912
Copyright, 1912
BY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Printed from type, July, 1912
_All rights reserved_
_This Monograph has been approved by the Department of English and
Comparative Literature in Columbia University as a contribution to
knowledge worthy of publication._
A. H. THORNDIKE,
_Secretary_.
To
MY WIFE
PREFACE
This dissertation is an out-growth of some studies in English satire,
particularly in the eighteenth century, and the book is to be regarded
merely as a chapter in the history of English satiric poetry as a
whole. The initial suggestion for this special phase of the broader
subject came from Professor W. P. Trent, to whose wide scholarship
and suggestive comment I have been throughout under great obligation.
Professor A. H. Thorndike, who, with Professor Trent, read the work
in manuscript, contributed valuable advice regarding its arrangement
and contents; while Professor J. B. Fletcher was of much assistance
in criticising the sections dealing with Byron’s indebtedness to the
Italian poets. My colleague, Mr. A. W. Leonard, read the first two
chapters, and offered much aid in connection with their style and
structure. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the stimulus given by
my studies under various members of the Departments of English and
Comparative Literature at Columbia University, among them the late
Professor G. R. Carpenter, Professor W. A. Neilson, now at Harvard, Mr.
J. E. Spingarn, and Professors Krapp, Lawrence, and Matthews.
C. M. F.
PHILLIPS ACADEMY, ANDOVER,
_June 19, 1912_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--INTRODUCTORY 1
II.--ENGLISH SATIRE FROM DRYDEN TO BYRON 10
III.--BYRON’S EARLY SATIRIC VERSE 39
IV.--“ENGLISH BARDS, AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS” 48
V.--“HINTS FROM HORACE” AND “THE CURSE OF MINERVA” 77
VI.--THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION 93
VII.--THE ITALIAN INFLUENCE 113
VIII.--“DON JUAN” 163
IX.--“THE VISION OF JUDGMENT” 188
X.--“THE AGE OF BRONZE” AND “THE BLUES” 202
XI.--CONCLUSION 210
BIBLIOGRAPHY 219
INDEX 225
Lord Byron as a Satirist in Verse
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
Byron’s puzzling character and fascinating career have been tempting
themes for many biographers, little and great, from Sir Egerton Brydges
and Tom Moore to Professor Emil Koeppel and Mr. Richard Edgcumbe. His
literary product, too, has been, for the most part, so carefully and
exhaustively treated by the critics of many nationalities that there
is small excuse for adding one more volume to a bibliography already
so comprehensive. It happens, however, that though his contribution to
satiric poetry was extensive and important, his actual work in that
field has been made the subject of no intensive study. It is the object
of this essay to fill this gap by considering, so far as it is possible
in a brief treatise, the special qualities which distinguish Byron’s
satiric spirit, and by analyzing and classifying the modifications
of that spirit as they are shown in his poetry. The wide range of
material to be investigated naturally precludes any attention to the
events of his life, except when these throw light on the inception or
composition of particular satires. Nor is it practicable to devote
any space, except by way of illustration or reference, to his poetry
in general, or to his letters and prose pamphlets. The scope of the
dissertation will be restricted to include a discussion only of his
satire in verse.
The lamentable absence of any established body of criteria available
as a basis for the study of satire is a difficulty which must be
recognized and met at the very outset. First of all, therefore, it is
necessary to make clear just what matter is to be included under the
rather vague heading, satire. Broadly speaking, satire comprises any
manifestation of the satiric spirit in literature; but this statement
is really evasive, since the satiric spirit, like the romantic spirit,
is intangible and not susceptible to precise definition. In general, as
Professor Tucker has pointed out, the essential feature of the satiric
spirit, wherever found, is its disposition to tear down and destroy.
Variations in temper and aim may exist in different satirists; other
subservient emotions may appear and other feelings may operate, in
individual cases, to modify the underlying mood; but fundamentally the
satiric spirit is negative and pessimistic.[1] It furthers disillusion
by confronting romance with realism and fiction with fact. The satirist
thus perceives and exposes incongruity, the discrepancy between
profession and performance. He is actuated always by a destructive
motive, and it is his function to condemn and to reprove.
Humor is, of course, usually a concomitant of satire, but authorities
differ as to its value. Dryden, considering the question from the
standpoint of the literary artist, says:--“The nicest and most delicate
touches of satire consist in fine raillery.” Gifford, posing as a
moralist, takes another position:--“To raise a laugh at vice is not
the legitimate office of satire, which is to hold up the vicious, as
objects of reprobation and scorn, for the example of others, who may be
deterred by their sufferings.” When humor is wanting and the mood is
entirely vituperative, the result is invective, which some critics are
desirous of excluding arbitrarily from satire. But however advantageous
it may be, for practical reasons, to limit the application of the word
satire, it is difficult to neglect invective; and in this essay, since
a considerable part of Byron’s so-called satire is sheer abuse, failure
to treat that portion of his work would result in much confusion. An
additional argument for including invective is furnished by the fact
that to pass it over would mean relegating outside the domain of satire
a large proportion of the work of other authors who have always been
classed as satirists, among them Churchill and Gifford.
Nor is it possible to insist upon the reformatory purpose behind the
satiric spirit. Dryden’s dictum that the satirist “is bound, and
that is _ex officio_, to give his reader some one precept of moral
virtue,” commendable as it may be, has been by no means a universal
law for satire, and one is forced to admit that whatever emphasis
particular satirists may have given to this rule in theory, the common
practice has too often been at variance with it. Ultimately the single
indispensable element of the satiric spirit is the wish to deny,
rebuke, or destroy.
It is evident that the satiric spirit may show itself, to a certain
extent, in nearly every known type of literature, even at times in the
epic or the lyric, to say nothing of the prose essay or novel. The
specific term satire ought, however, to be applied solely to a work
in which the predominating motive is attack, whether on individuals,
on institutions, or on mankind in general. Thus we say that _Childe
Harold_ has satiric features; but it is not, like _The Age of Bronze_,
strictly a satire. For present purposes, too, it is desirable to narrow
the field definitely by discussing the satiric spirit only so far as
it has chosen verse for its medium, and by discarding the drama as
belonging to another department of research. The subject may be further
confined by neglecting poems which are obviously unliterary and make no
pretensions to constructive or stylistic merit. The title verse-satire
will be used loosely to fit any formal literary production in verse
devoted ostensibly to negative criticism, whether direct or indirect,
animated by sympathy or hatred; in short, to any non-dramatic poem,
whatever its method, which has for its principal or avowed object the
holding of vice, folly, or incapacity up to ridicule or reprobation. In
Byron’s work there are many poems containing slight satiric elements,
and others which are plainly satires in the narrower sense of the term;
some are conveniently labelled, while others must be tested with regard
to their intention and manner, and classified accordingly.
Our not altogether adequate definition has been intentionally made
broad that it may comprise any formal expression of the satiric spirit
in verse. The verse-satire as thus described may select its material
from every province of human activity: literature, society, politics,
and morals. It may range in tone from half-tolerant raillery, as in the
_Satires_ of Horace, to stern intolerant invective, as in the _Satires_
of Juvenal. Its method may be either direct or indirect: direct, as in
the formal classical satire, in which the purpose is distinctly stated;
indirect, or dramatic, as in the fable, where the same end is sought
through a more subtle or less obvious channel. Finally it may appear in
one of several specialized types, each with peculiar characteristics
of its own: the so-called formal or classical satire, based on Latin,
French, or Italian models, represented in English literature in the
poetry of Hall, Oldham, and Pope; the mock-heroic, sometimes directly
satiric as in Pope’s _Dunciad_, sometimes indirectly so, as in his
_Rape of the Lock_; the epigram and lampoon, used by Prior and Swift;
the political ballad or song, illustrated in the verse of Marvell and
Charles Hanbury Williams; the satiric fable, borrowed by Yalden, Gay,
Whitehead, and others from Æsop and La Fontaine; and the burlesque,
with its two subdivisions--parody, used in Philips’ _Splendid
Shilling_, which intentionally degrades the blank verse of Milton, and
travesty, illustrated in Byron’s _Vision of Judgment_, which gives
an inferior treatment to lofty material. It is hardly necessary to
add that these types, with others of less significance, continually
encroach upon each other, so that two or more are frequently mingled
in one poem. The single feature common to them all, however, is the
tendency to deride or assail; therefore, in spite of their many
superficial differences, they are classed together because of their
general tone of negation.
A consideration of Byron’s satiric spirit as it is shown in his verse
involves an investigation of the objects of his attack, whether
individuals, classes, or institutions, and a discussion of the relation
of his satire to contemporary life in literature, society, politics,
and morals. It also necessitates a study of the forms which he adopted,
the methods which he utilized, and the manner which he was inclined to
assume. Something ought also to be said of his indebtedness to other
satirists, Latin, English, and Italian, and of his place and influence
in the evolution of English satire. Lastly, a summary is required of
the peculiar characteristics which distinguish his satiric spirit and
make his work distinctive or unique.
Sir Walter Scott’s generous assertion that his rival “embraced every
topic in human life” is, of course, hyperbole; but one may be
permitted to suspect that the variety and compass of Byron’s genius
have not always been sufficiently dwelt upon. Even sympathetic critics
have been in the habit of forgetting that in all three of what are
ordinarily reckoned the chief divisions of poetry--the narrative, the
lyrical, and the dramatic--Byron achieved distinct success. The same
may be said of his attempts at poetry of a descriptive and meditative
sort. That _Manfred_ and _Beppo_, _Childe Harold_ and “_She walks in
beauty like the night_,” bear the same writer’s signature is convincing
proof not only of the fecundity but also of the diverseness of his
talent. What is true of his work as a whole is also true of his satire.
It is to be found in several forms: the satiric tale, the formal or
classical satire, the travesty, the epigram, and the mock-heroic. It
is sometimes scurrilous, sometimes didactic, and sometimes playful.
It carries its attack into many fields: into literature in _English
Bards_; into society in _The Waltz_; into politics in _The Age of
Bronze_; and into morals in _Don Juan_. Finally in _Don Juan_, his
longest and most important poem, the satiric spirit blends with other
elements, romantic, tragic, realistic, and colloquial, to produce
what Paul Elmer More calls “to many critics the greatest Satire ever
written.”
Professor Courthope traces throughout Byron’s poetry three main
currents of feeling: the romance of the dilettante, the indignation of
the satirist, and the lyrical utterance of the man himself. Of these
three emotions, continues the critic, one comes in turn to predominate
over the others at different periods, as external circumstances
affect the poet. This analysis is, on the whole, discerning and
uncontrovertible; but despite the fact that Byron so often ventured
into romantic and lyric poetry, there is good cause for maintaining
that his mind was primarily satiric in its observation of life. If we
accept the testimony of his nurse, May Gray, as it was taken down by
Moore, Byron’s first lisping in numbers was in the nature of satire,
being a short lampoon on an old lady who had irritated him by her
curious notions regarding the destination of the soul after death.[2]
These verses, according to May Gray, date from 1798, when the boy was
ten years old. During the ensuing years he engaged in writing satire,
without many intermissions, until his career closed in 1824 with _Don
Juan_ still unfinished. In no other branch of literature was he led
to undertake such a series of poems through so long a period. His
narrative poetry cannot be said to have begun before _Childe Harold_
(1812); as a dramatist he published nothing anterior to _Manfred_
(1817); and even his lyrics appeared at infrequent intervals and in no
great numbers. During most of his life, on the other hand, he engaged
in satire of one kind or another. _The Curse of Minerva_ was brought
back from his early travels, along with the first two cantos of _Childe
Harold_; _The Waltz_ is almost synchronous with the _Giaour_; and _The
Vision of Judgment_ was being planned while he was composing _Cain_.
Even in the period between the _Waltz_ (1813) and _Beppo_ (1818),
during which no long verse-satire of his was published, he wrote
_The Devil’s Drive_ (1813), _Windsor Poetics_ (1814), and _A Sketch_
(1816), besides other shorter epigrams. Thus Byron’s satiric spirit was
persistent and conspicuous from the date of _Fugitive Pieces_ (1806)
until his death eighteen years later.
The position which Byron occupies in the history of English satire is
especially important because he is, in many respects, the last of the
powerful satirists in verse. _English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers_,
published in March, 1809, is perhaps the last of the great English
satires in the heroic couplet measure. It is a final vigorous outburst
in the _genre_ which, originating possibly with Wyatt, and improved
by Donne and Hall, culminated in the satires of Dryden, and then
passing successively through the hands of Pope, Churchill, and
Gifford, underwent many modifications, and seemed, down to the end of
the eighteenth century, to be losing gradually in universality and
permanent value. The revival in which Byron took part, but which, as
we shall see, was not altogether occasioned by him, was spasmodic and
temporary; and in the hundred years since the appearance of _English
Bards_, our literature has produced no single satire in the same manner
worthy of being placed by the side of the _Dunciad_, the _Rosciad_, or
even the _Baviad_. Byron himself, though he continued to write this
sort of satire up to the time of _The Age of Bronze_, never equalled
his early success. Eventually he turned from his standard models, Pope
and Gifford, and under the inspiration of Italy and Italian authors,
made his chief original contribution to satire in _Beppo_, _Don Juan_,
and _The Vision of Judgment_. He thus, in a significant way, closes
and sums up the work of an old and passing school, at the same time
bringing into English satire the infusion of a new spirit and method.
With these facts in view, it is convenient and not illogical to arrange
the major part of Byron’s satiric verse into two distinct groups. The
one, deeply rooted in classical and English tradition, conforming to
established conventions and obeying precedents well understood in our
language, includes _English Bards_, _Hints from Horace_, _The Curse
of Minerva_, _The Waltz_, and _The Age of Bronze_, besides other
works shorter and less noteworthy. The other, retaining something
of the “sæva indignatio” of Juvenal and Swift, but embodying it in
what may be called, for want of a better term, the Italian burlesque
spirit--that mood which, varying in individual authors, but essentially
the same, prevails in the poetry of Pulci, Berni, and Casti--comprises
_Beppo_, _Don Juan_, and _The Vision of Judgment_. Generally speaking,
this division on the basis of sources corresponds to a difference in
metre: the classical satires employ, almost from necessity, the iambic
pentameter couplet, while those in the Italian manner adopt the exotic
ottava rima. This classification is also partly chronological, for
the English satires, with the exception of _The Age of Bronze_ and
some short epigrams, were written before 1817, and the Italian satires
appeared during the eight years following that date, while Byron was in
Italy and Greece.
The numerous ballads, political verses, and personal epigrams, some
printed in the daily newspapers, others sent in letters to his friends,
constitute another interesting group of satires, about which, however,
no very satisfactory generalizations can be made. There are also lines
and passages of a satiric nature in other poems, but these, casual
as they are, need to be mentioned only because of their connection
with ideas advanced in the genuine Verse-Satires, or because of some
especial interest attaching to them.
In taking up the separate poems included in this mass of material it
seems best to observe, as far as practicable, a chronological order,
for by so doing, we may observe the steady growth and broadening of
Byron’s ability as a satirist, and trace his connection with the events
of his time. However, before proceeding directly to an analysis of
the poet’s work and methods, it is necessary to say something of his
predecessors in English satire, from many of whom he derived so much.
CHAPTER II
ENGLISH SATIRE FROM DRYDEN TO BYRON
Enough has been said to hint that Byron’s qualities as a satirist in
verse are often best to be explained by a reference to the methods and
influence of those who went before him. So far as his connection with
English satire is concerned, Byron was indebted in part to a widespread
and somewhat conventional satiric tradition established by Pope and
in part also to the special characteristics of certain individual
satirists like Gifford. Unfortunately the field of English satire has
been investigated carefully only to the close of the Elizabethan era;
it is, therefore, imperative to present, as a working basis, a brief
outline of the course of satiric verse during the century or more
prior to Byron’s own age. Such a summary being of value here chiefly
as affording material for comparison, detailed treatment need be given
only to the more conspicuous figures, particularly to those to whom it
is possible Byron was under obligation.
The years between the accession of Charles II and the death of Pope saw
a remarkable advance in the quantity and quality of published satiric
work, in both prose and verse. For this development several causes may
be assigned. As the romantic enthusiasm of the Renaissance died away or
exhausted itself in fantastic extravagance and license, the new age, in
reaction, became gradually more reasonable and practical. Its general
tendencies were academic, introspective, and critical: literature began
to analyze itself and to frame laws for its own guidance; society found
amusement in laughing at its own follies and frivolities; moralists
were occupied in censuring misbehaviour and in codifying maxims for
the government of conduct. This critical spirit, whenever it became
destructive, naturally sought expression in satire. Party feeling,
too, grew violent in dealing with the complex problems raised by the
bloodless revolution of 1689 and its aftermath; moreover, most of the
prominent writers of the day, gathered as they were in London, allied
themselves with either Whigs or Tories and engaged vigorously in the
factional warfare. In the urban and gregarious life of the age of Anne,
the thinkers who sharpened their wits against one another in clubs
and coffee-houses esteemed logic and good sense higher than romantic
fancy. Their talk and writing dealt mainly with practical affairs, with
particular features of political and social life. It is not at all
surprising that this critical and practical period should have found
its most satisfactory expression in satire--a literary type which is
well fitted to treat of definite and concrete questions.
Before 1700 interest in English satire centres inevitably around
the name of Dryden. Among his contemporaries were, of course, other
satirists, some of them distinguished by originality and genius. The
true political satire, used so effectively against the Parliamentarians
by Cleveland (1613–1658), had been revived in the work of Denham
(1615–1669) and Marvell (1621–1678). Formal satire in the manner of
Juvenal and Boileau had been attempted by Oldham (1653–1683) in his
_Satires against the Jesuits_ (1678–9). Moreover, several new forms had
been introduced: Butler (1612–1680) in _Hudibras_ (1663) had created
an original variety of burlesque, with unusual rhymes, grotesque
similes, and quaint ideas; Cotton (1630–1687) in his _Scarronides_
(1664) had transplanted the travesty from the French of Scarron; and
Garth (1661–1719) had composed in the _Dispensary_ (1699) our earliest
classical mock-heroic. Marvell, Rochester, Sedley, Dorset, and others
had written songs and ballads of a satiric character, most of them
coarse and scurrilous. But the work of these men, like that of their
predecessors in satire, Lodge, Donne, Hall, Marston, Guilpin, Wither,
and Brome, is, as a whole, crude and inartistic, rough in metre and
commonplace in style. Dryden, who took up satire at the age of fifty,
after a long and thorough discipline in literary craftsmanship, avoided
these faults, and polished and improved the verse-satire, preserving
its vigor while lending it refinement and dignity.
Dryden’s satire is distinguished by clearness, good taste, and
self-control. The author was seldom in a rage, nor was he ever guilty
of indiscriminate railing. Seeking to make his victims ridiculous and
absurd rather than hateful, he drew them, not as monsters or unnatural
villains, but as foolish or weak human beings.[3] It is significant,
too, that he did not often mention his adversaries by their real names,
but referred to them, for the most part, by pseudonyms, a device
through which individual satire tends constantly to become typical
and universal. Although he asserted that “the true end of satire is
the amendment of vices by correction,” he rarely, except in poems
which were designedly theological, permitted a moral purpose to become
obtrusive.
Deliberately putting aside the octosyllabic metre of Butler as too
undignified for satire, Dryden chose what he called the “English
heroic,” or iambic pentameter couplet, as best suited to heroic poetry,
of which he considered satire to be properly a species. This measure,
already employed by Hall, Donne, and others as a medium for satire,
is, as Dryden perceived, admirably suited for concise and pointed
expression. Having used it successfully in his plays, he was already
familiar with its possibilities and skilful in its management, and in
his hands it became harmonious, varied, and incisive, a very different
measure from the couplet as handled by even so near a contemporary as
Oldham.
Excellent as Dryden’s satires are, they cannot be said to have had an
influence proportionate to their merit. Defoe’s _True-born Englishman_
(1701), probably the most popular satire between _Absalom and
Achitophel_ and the _Dunciad_, did undoubtedly owe much to Dryden’s
work; and it is also true that _MacFlecknoe_ suggested the plot of the
_Dunciad_. During the eighteenth century, however, Dryden’s satires
were not extensively imitated, chiefly because they were superseded as
models by the work of Pope. Of the satirists after Pope, only Churchill
seems to have preferred Dryden, and even he followed the principles of
Pope in practice. Thus historically Dryden is of less importance in the
history of satire than his successor and rival.
In the period between the death of Dryden and the death of Pope,
satirists labored assiduously for correctness. The importance of this
step can hardly be overestimated, for satire, more perhaps than any
other literary type, is dependent on style for its permanency. Its
subject matter is usually concerned with transitory events and specific
individuals, and when the interest in these subsides, nothing but
an excellent form can ensure the durability of the satire. Of this
endeavor for artistic perfection in satire, Pope is the completest
representative.
Pope boasted repeatedly that he had “moralized his song”; that is,
that he had employed his satire for definite ethical purposes. In an
invocation to Satire, he put into verse his theory of its proper use:--
“O sacred weapon! left for Truth’s defence,
Sole Dread of Folly, Vice, and Insolence!
To all but Heav’n directed hands deny’d,
The Muse may give thee, but the Gods must guide;
Rev’rent I touch thee! but with honest zeal,
To rouse the Watchmen of the public Weal.”[4]
The lofty tone of this address ought not, however, to obscure the fact
that Pope was primarily a personal satirist, actuated too often merely
by the desire to satisfy his private quarrels. His claim to being an
agent for the cause of public virtue is sometimes justified in his
work, but not infrequently it is but a thin pretence for veiling his
underlying malice and vindictiveness. What Pope really wanted, most of
all, in his satires, was to damage the reputation of his foes; and, it
must be added, he generally achieved his aim.
Pope was both less scrupulous and more personal than Dryden. He
appropriated Dryden’s method of presenting portraits of well-known
persons under type-names; but unlike Dryden, who had preserved a
semblance of fairness, Pope was too often merely vituperative and
savage. He seldom attained that high variety of satire which plans “to
attack a man so that he feels the attack and half acknowledges its
justice.”[5] Unlike Dryden, too, he rarely mastered the difficult art
of turning the individual objects of his scorn into representatives
of a broader class. His personal sketches do not, except in a few
instances like the celebrated _Atticus_, live as pictures of types.
Pope, moreover, was not always discreet enough to mask his opponents
under pseudonyms. Sometimes, following a device introduced into English
satire by Hall, he used an initial letter, with dashes or asterisks to
fill out the name. More often he printed the name in full.[6] He had
no scruples about making attacks on women, a practice not countenanced
by Dryden.[7] In his satire on personal enemies he was insolent and
offensive: however, he seldom gave vent to his rage, but kept cool,
revised and polished every epithet, and retorted in a calm, searching
dissection of character. In his methods he was unprincipled, never
hesitating to make the vilest charges if they served his purposes.
In matters of form and technique Pope’s art is unquestioned. He refined
and condensed the couplet until it cut like a rapier. The beauty of
his satire thus lies rather in small details than in general effect,
in clear-cut and penetrating phrasing rather than in breadth of
conception. With all this his work is marked by an air of urbanity,
ease, and grace, which connects him with Horace rather than with
Juvenal. His wit is constant and his irony subtle. He understood
perfectly the value of compression and of symmetry.
Finally he left behind him a heritage and a tradition. With all his
malice, his occasional pettiness and habitual deceit, he so transformed
the verse-satire that no imitator, following his design, has been able
to surpass it. The methods and the forms which he used became, for good
or for evil, those of most satire in the eighteenth century. From the
_Dunciad_ down to the days of Byron it was Pope’s influence chiefly
that determined the course of English satire in verse.
Byron was fond of associating himself with Pope. He paid homage to
him as a master, sustained, in theory at least, his principles of
versification, defended his character, and offered him the tribute of
quotation and imitation. Over and over again he repeated his belief
in “the Christianity of English poetry, the poetry of Pope.”[8] Only
in satire, however, did Pope’s influence become noticeable in Byron’s
poetry; but in satire this influence was important.
Pope’s chief contemporary in formal satire in verse was Young, whose
_Love of Fame, The Universal Passion_ was finished in 1727, before
the publication of the _Dunciad_. The seven satires which this work
contains comprise portrayals of type characters under Latin names,
diversified by allusions to living personages, the intention being to
ridicule evils in contemporary social life. The _Epistles to Pope_
(1730), by the same author, are more serious, especially in their
arraignment of Grub Street. Young’s comparatively lifeless work made
seemingly no strong appeal to Byron. The latter never mentions him as a
satirist, although he does quote with approval some favorite passages
from his work.
Lighter in tone and less rigidly formal in structure was the poetry
of a group of writers headed by Prior and Gay, both of whom were at
their best in a kind of familiar verse, lively, bantering, and worldly
in spirit. Prior managed with some skill the octosyllabic couplet of
Butler; Gay was successful in parody and the satiric fable.[9] The
connection of Prior and Gay with Byron is not a close one, although
the latter quoted from them both in his _Letters_, and composed some
impromptu parodies of songs from Gay’s _Beggar’s Opera_.[10]
With Swift Byron had, perhaps, more affinity. Swift’s cleverness
in discovering extraordinary rhymes undoubtedly influenced the
versification of _Don Juan_,[11] and his morbid hatred of human nature
and sordid views of life sometimes colored Byron’s satiric mood.[12]
Much lower in the literary scale are the countless ballads and lampoons
of the period which maintain the rough and ready aggressiveness of
Marvell, in a style slovenly, broken, and journalistic. Events like
the trial of Sacheverell and the South Sea Bubble brought out scores
of ephemeral satires which it would be idle to notice here. Of these
scurvy pamphleteers, three gained considerable notoriety: Tom Brown
(1663–1704), Thomas D’Urfey (1653–1723), and Ned Ward (1667–1731).
Defoe, in several long satires, especially in the formidable folio
_Jure Divino_, shows the results of a study of Dryden, although his
lines are rugged and his style is colloquial. The work of no one of
these men had any visible influence on Byron, but their production
illustrates the wide-spread popularity at this time of satire, even in
its transitory and unliterary phases.
The latter half of the eighteenth century, comparatively poor though
it is in poetry of an imaginative sort, is rich in satiric literature
of every variety. Nearly every able writer of verse--even including
Gray--tried his hand at satire, and the resulting product is enormous.
The heroic couplet as employed by Pope was recognized as the proper
measure for formal satire, and the influence of Pope appeared in the
diverse forms used: the mock-heroic, the personal epistle, the critical
verse-essay, and the moral or preceptive poem. At the same time no
small proportion of less formal satire took the manner of Gay and
Swift, in the octosyllabic couplet. The ballad and other less dignified
measures still continued popular for ephemeral satire. Finally there
was a body of work, including Cowper’s _Task_, the satiric poems of
Burns, and the early _Tales_ of Crabbe, which must be regarded as, in
some respects, exceptional.
Of the satirists of the school of Pope, the greater number seem to
have had Dr. Johnson’s conception of Satire as the son of Wit and
Malice, although, like Pope, they continued to pose as the upholders of
morality even when indulging in the most indiscriminate abuse.[13] They
borrowed the lesser excellencies of their master, but seldom attained
to his brilliance, keeping, as far as they were able, to his form and
method, but lacking the genius to reanimate his style.
The mock-heroic was exceedingly popular during the fifty years
following the death of Pope. The satires of one group, following
_The Rape of the Lock_, contain no personal invective, and are
satiric only in the sense that any parody of a serious _genre_ is
satiric.[14] Another class of mock-heroics, modelled particularly on
the _Dunciad_, make no pretence of refraining from personal satire, and
are often violently scurrilous.[15] A large number of poems imitate
the title of the _Dunciad_ without necessarily having any mock-heroic
characteristics.[16] In the field of personal, and especially of
political, satire, are many poems not corresponding exactly to any of
the above mentioned types.[17] The bitter party feeling aroused by the
rise to power of Lord Bute and by the resulting protests of Wilkes
in the _North Briton_ was the occasion of many broadsides during the
decade between 1760 and 1770.[18]
Several satires of the period, based particularly on Pope’s satiric
epistles, seem to maintain a more elevated tone, although they also are
frequently intemperate in their personalities.[19] An excellent example
is the very severe _Epistle to Curio_ by Akenside, praised for its
literary merits by Macaulay.[20] A small, but rather important class
of satires is made up of criticisms of literature or literary men in
the manner of either the _Essay on Criticism_ or the _Dunciad_.[21]
Still another group deal, like Young’s _Love of Fame_, with the
foibles and fads of society, using type figures and avoiding specific
references.[22] It is necessary, finally, to include under satire
many of the didactic and philosophic poems which seemed to infect
the century.[23] These Ethic Epistles, as they are styled in Bell’s
_Fugitive Pieces_, are often little more than verse sermons. Obviously
many poems of this nature hardly come within the scope of true satire.
Goldsmith’s _Deserted Village_ (1770), for instance, has some satirical
elements; yet it is, properly speaking, meditative and descriptive
verse. The same may be said, perhaps, of the so-called satires of
Cowper.
The body of work thus cursorily reviewed shows a wide diversity of
subject-matter combined with a consistent and monotonous uniformity of
style. In most of the material we find the same regular versification,
the same stock epithets, and the same lack of distinctive qualities;
indeed, were the respective writers unknown, it would be a difficult
task to distinguish between the verse of two such satirists as James
Scott and Soame Jenyns. During the fifty years between the death of
Pope and the appearance of Gifford’s _Baviad_ (1794) only four names
stand out above the rest as important in the history of English satire
in verse: Johnson, Churchill, Cowper, and Crabbe.
Of these writers, Johnson contributed but little to the mass of English
satire. His _London_ (1738) and _The Vanity of Human Wishes_ (1749)
are imitations of Juvenal, characterized by stateliness, dignity,
melancholy, and sonorous rhetoric, but with only a slight element of
personal attack. The latter poem received high praise from Byron.[24]
Churchill and Byron, who have often been compared because of their
quarrels with the reviewers and their denunciation of a conservative
and reactionary government, were much alike in their arrogant
independence, their fiery intensity, and their passionate liberalism.
Churchill, however, unlike Byron, was always a satirist, and undertook
no other species of poetry. In many respects he resembled Oldham, whose
career, like his, was short and tumultuous, and whose wit, like his,
usually shone “through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.”
All Churchill’s work is marked by vigor, effrontery, and earnestness,
and the ferocity and vindictiveness of much of it give force to Gosse’s
description of the author as “a very Caligula among men of letters.”
However, although he was responsible for two of the most venomous
literary assaults in English--that on Hogarth in the _Epistle to
William Hogarth_ (1763) and that on Lord Sandwich in _The Candidate_
(1764)--he did not stab from behind or resort to underhand methods.
Despite his obvious crudities, he is the most powerful figure in
English satire between Pope and Byron.
Churchill employed two measures: the heroic couplet, in the _Rosciad_
(1761) and several succeeding poems; and the octosyllabic couplet,
in _The Ghost_ (1763) and _The Duellist_ (1764). His versification
is seldom polished, but his lines have, at times, something of the
robustness and impetuous disregard of regularity which lend strength to
Dryden’s couplets. It was to Churchill that Byron attributed in part
what he was pleased to term the “absurd and systematic depreciation of
Pope,”[25] which, in his opinion, had been developing steadily towards
the end of the eighteenth century. Churchill frankly acknowledged his
preference of Dryden over Pope,[26] a partiality which he shared with
Voltaire and Dr. Johnson. The fact is, however, that, despite his
failure to attain smoothness and artistic finish, he owed more to Pope
than he realized or cared to admit.[27]
With Cowper, Byron had temperamentally little in common; yet Cowper
is interesting, if only for the reason that he proves, by contrast
with Churchill, the range in manner of which the classical satire is
capable. He was most successful in a kind of mildly moral reproof,
which has often ease, humor, and apt sententiousness, although it
rarely possesses energy enough to make it effective as satire. Cowper’s
familiar verse, often satirical in tone, is almost wholly admirable,
the best of its kind between Prior and Praed.
The satire of Crabbe is essentially realistic. It portrays things as
they are, dwelling on each sordid detail and sweeping away all the
illusions of romance. In _The Village_ (1783), for instance, Crabbe
describes life as he found it among the lower classes in a Suffolk
coast town--a life barren, humdrum, and dismal: thus the poem is an
antidote, possibly intentional, to the idyllic and sentimental picture
drawn by Goldsmith in _The Deserted Village_. The ethical element is
always present in Crabbe’s work, and thus he preserves the didacticism
of Pope and Cawthorn; but his homely phraseology, his sombre
portraiture, and his pitiless psychological analysis of character
connect him with a novelist like Hardy. Possibly some of the realism of
_Don Juan_ may be traced to the example of Crabbe, for whom Byron had
both respect and affection.[28]
Aside from that exercised by the work and heritage of Pope, the most
definite influence upon Byron’s satiric verse came from the satires of
William Gifford (1756–1826), which had appeared some years before Byron
began to write. Gifford, who early became the young lord’s model and
counsellor, and who later revised and corrected his poetry, continued
to the end to be one of the few literary friends to whom Byron referred
consistently with deference.[29]
Gifford’s reputation was established by the publication of two short
satires, the _Baviad_ (1794) and the _Mæviad_ (1795), printed together
in 1797. The _Baviad_ is an imitation of the first satire of Persius,
in the form of a dialogue between the poet and his friend; the _Mæviad_
paraphrases Horace’s tenth satire of the first book. Both are devoted
primarily to deserved, but often unnecessarily harsh, criticism of
some contemporary fads in literature, particularly of the “effusions”
of the so-called Della Cruscan School.[30] Gifford was a Tory in a
period when the unexpected excesses of the French revolutionists were
causing all Tories, and even the more conservative Whigs, to take a
stand against innovation, eccentricity, and individualism in any form.
Since the Della Cruscans were nearly all liberals,[31] it was natural
that Gifford should be enthusiastic in his project of ridiculing the
“metromania” for which they were responsible. Thus his satires are
protests against license, defending the conventional canons of taste
and reasserting the desirability of law and order in literature.
Undoubtedly Gifford performed a certain service to the cause of letters
by condemning, in a common-sense fashion, the silly sentimentality of
the Della Cruscans.[32] Unfortunately it was almost impossible for
him to compose satire without being scurrilous. Although he may have
possessed the virtue of sincerity with which Courthope credits him,
he invariably picked for his victims men who were too feeble to reply
effectually. Still the satires, appearing so opportunely, made Gifford
both famous and feared. The _Baviad_ and the _Mæviad_ were placed,
without pronounced dissent, beside the _Dunciad_. Mathias said of the
author, in all seriousness: “He is the most correct poetical writer
I have read since the days of Pope.” Even Byron, so immeasurably
Gifford’s superior in most respects, was dominated so far as to term
him “the last of the wholesome satirists”[33] and to refer to him as a
“Bard in virtue strong.”[34]
The plain truth is that Gifford is not always correct, seldom
wholesome, and never great. Something of his style at the worst may be
obtained from a single line,
“Yet not content, like horse-leeches they come,”
of which even the careless Churchill would have been ashamed.
Gifford wanted good-breeding, and he had no geniality; his irascible
nature made him intolerant and unjust. Moreover he lacked a sense of
discrimination and proportion; he used a sledge-hammer constantly,
often when a lighter weapon would have served his purpose. In him the
artistic satire of Pope seems to have degenerated into clumsy and crude
abuse.
Carrying to excess a practice probably begun by Pope, with the advice
of Swift, Gifford had accompanied his satires with copious and
diffuse notes, sometimes affixing a page or more of prose comment to
a single line of verse.[35] Mathias, whose _Pursuits of Literature_
was, according to De Quincey, the most popular book of its day, so
exaggerated this fashion that it is often a question in his work to
decide which is meant for an adjunct to the other--verse or prose
annotation.
Thomas James Mathias (1754–1835), like Gifford, a Tory, with a
bigoted aversion to anything new or strange, and a firm belief in
the infallibility of established institutions, published Dialogue I
of the _Pursuits of Literature_ in May, 1794, Dialogues II and III
in June, 1796, and Dialogue IV in 1797. In his theory of satire he
insisted on three essentials: notes, and full ones; anonymity in the
satirist; and a personal application for the attack. His chosen field
included “faults, vices, or follies, which are destructive of society,
of government, of good manners, or of good literature.” Mathias is
pedantic, ostentatious in airing his information, and indefatigable
in tracking down revolutionary ideas. His chief work is a curiosity,
discursive, disorderly, and incoherent, with a versification that is
lifeless and unmelodious.[36]
With the work of Mathias, this cursory summary of the strictly formal
satire in the eighteenth century comes to a natural resting-place. Only
a year or two after the _Pursuits of Literature_, the _Anti-Jacobin_
began, and in its pages we find a more modern spirit. It is now
necessary, reverting to an earlier period, to trace the progress of
satire along other less formal lines, and to deal with some anomalous
poems, which, although satiric in tone, are difficult to classify
according to any logical system.
The satiric fable had a considerable vogue throughout the century,
and collections appeared at frequent intervals.[37] Nearly all have
allegorical elements and contain little direct satire, their main
object being to point out and ridicule the weaknesses and follies of
human nature. The octosyllabic couplet, the favorite measure for
fables, was also a popular verse form in familiar epistles and humorous
tales, modelled on the work of Prior, Gay, and Swift.[38] Ephemeral
political satire continued to flourish in rough and indecorous
street-ballads, sometimes rising almost into literature in the
productions of men like Charles Hanbury Williams (1708–1759) and Caleb
Whitefoord (1734–1810). With the inception of the _Criticisms on the
Rolliad_, political verse assumes a position of distinct importance in
the history of satire.
The material represented under the title _Criticisms on the Rolliad_
was published in the Whig _Morning Herald_, beginning June 28, 1784,
shortly after the fall of the Fox-North coalition and the appointment
of the younger Pitt to the office of Prime Minister. It presents
extracts from a supposed epic, based on the deeds of the ancestors of
John Rolle, M. P., who had become the pet aversion of the Whigs. The
alleged verse excerpts, all of them short, are amalgamated by clever
prose comment. The editors included a group of young and ambitious Whig
statesmen: Dr. Lawrence, later Professor of Civil Law at Oxford, who
furnished the prose sections; Joseph Richardson (1755–1803); Richard
Tickell, already mentioned as the author of _The Wreath of Fashion_;
and two former cabinet ministers, General Fitzpatrick, the friend of
Fox, and Lord John Townshend. The object of these men was to belittle
and deride the more prominent Tories in both Houses, particularly
Rolle, Pitt, Dundas, and the Tory Bishops, by singling them out, one
by one, for ridicule. Their verse was a flippant and free form of the
heroic couplet. Although their main purpose was political, they dealt
only slightly with party principles, preferring rather to excite
laughter by their personal allusions.
The marked public approbation which attended their experiment led
the editors to continue their project in a series of _Probationary
Odes for the Laureateship_, comprising parodies of twenty-two living
poets. The odes follow the plan of the _Pipe of Tobacco_ (1734) of
Isaac Hawkins Browne (1705–1760), which burlesques the poetry of
Cibber, James Thomson, Swift, Young, and Ambrose Phillips.[39] The
plan of the contributors was further amplified in _Political Eclogues_
and _Political Miscellanies_, which keep to the original policy of
vituperation, at the same time showing a striking deterioration in the
quality of the verse. The first zest had grown languid, and in the last
collection, _Extracts from the Album at Streatham_ (1788), containing
poems purporting to be by several ministers of state, the verse had no
value as literature.
The complete product of these Whig allies is, as a rule, clever
and pointed, but it is too often coarse and scandalous in content.
Although it failed in reinstating the Whigs in office, it occupies an
important position in English political satire. Despite its irregular
versification and its frequently unedifying subject-matter, it contains
some brilliant sketches and many witty lines.[40]
A droll and impudent, but not altogether pleasing figure of this
same period was the Whig satirist, Rev. John Wolcot (1738–1819),
better known by his _nom-de-guerre_ of Peter Pindar, who, making
it his especial function to caricature George III and his court,
earned from Scott the title of “the most unsparing calumniator of his
time.” George, with his bourgeois habits and petty economies, made
a splendid subject, and Pindar drew him with the homely realism of
Hogarth or Gilray, pouring forth a long series of impertinent squibs
until the monarch’s dangerous illness in 1788 gained him the sympathy
of the nation and roused popular feeling against his lampooner.
Pindar also engaged in other quarrels, notably with the trio of Tory
satirists, Gifford, Mathias, and Canning.[41] His genius was that of
the caricaturist, and his vogue, like that of most caricaturists,
was soon over. However, the peculiar flavor of his verses, full as
they are sometimes of rich humor and grotesque descriptions, is still
delightful, and partly explains the merriment which greeted his work at
a time when his allusions were still fresh in people’s minds. It may
be added that Pindar shows few traces of Pope’s influence; he makes no
pretence of a moral purpose, and he seldom employs the heroic couplet.
Professor Courthope suggests that _Don Juan_ owes much in style to the
satires of Pindar. The question of a possible indebtedness will be
taken up more in detail in another chapter; it is sufficient here to
point out that Byron never refers to Wolcot by name, and makes only one
reference to his poetry.[42]
Some of the most powerful social and political satire of the century
was written, in defence of democracy and liberalism, by the vigorous
pen of Robert Burns.[43] His work, however, despite the fact that
it discussed many of the topics which were agitating the English
satirists, was not particularly influential at the time in England.
One peculiar work, significant in the evolution of satire because of
its undoubted influence on a succeeding generation, was the _New Bath
Guide; or Memoirs of the B--r--d Family_ (1766), written by Christopher
Anstey (1724–1805).[44] It consists of a series of letters, most of
them in an easy anapestic measure with curious rhymes, purporting to
be from different members of one family, and satirising life at the
fashionable watering-place made famous only a few years before by Beau
Nash. Anstey’s method of using letters for the purpose of satire was
followed by other authors,[45] but never, until Moore’s _Two-penny
Postbag_ and _Fudge Family_, with complete success. Other satires of
the century also employed the anapestic metre in a clever way.[46]
The Tory _Anti-Jacobin_, a weekly periodical which began on November
20, 1797, and printed its last number on July 9, 1798, appropriately
closes the satire of the century, for it includes examples of most
of the types of satiric verse which had been popular since the death
of Pope. Founded by government journalists, possibly at Pitt’s
instigation, it planned to “oppose papers devoted to the cause of
sedition and irreligion, to the pay and interests of France.” At a
critical period in English affairs, when the long struggle with France
and Napoleon was just beginning and many Whigs were still undecided
as to their allegiance, it was the purpose of the _Anti-Jacobin_, as
representative of militant nationalism, to oppose foreign innovations
and to uphold time-honored institutions. Each number of the paper
contained several sections: an editorial, or leader; departments
assigned to Finances, Lies, Misrepresentations, and Mistakes; and
some pages of verse, with a prose introduction. Gifford, who had been
chosen to superintend the publication, devoted himself entirely to
editorial management, so that the responsibility for the verse devolved
upon George Canning (1770–1827) and several assistants, among whom
were Ellis, now an adherent of the Tories, and John Hookham Frere
(1769–1846).
The _Anti-Jacobin_, then, planned first to revive the traditions of
English patriotism and to rally public opinion to the support of king
and country. As a secondary but essential element of its design, it
aimed, especially in its verse, to expose the falsity and fatuity
of the doctrines of Holcroft, Paine, Godwin, and other radical
philosophers and economists; to ridicule and parody the work of
authors of the revolutionary school, particularly of the English Lake
poets and the followers of the German romanticists; and incidentally
to satirise some of the social and literary follies of the age.[47]
Since the verse was submitted by many contributors, its tone was not
always homogeneous, and it varied from playful jocularity to stern
didacticism. On the whole, however, it had a definite ethical purpose,
and avowedly championed sound morality and conservative principles.
The poetry of the _Anti-Jacobin_ includes illustrations of many varied
satiric forms. _New Morality_ is a set, formal satire in conventional
couplets and balanced lines, superior in technique to the best work
of Gifford and Mathias, and not unworthy of comparison with many of
the satires of Pope. _Acme and Septimius, or the Happy Union_ is a
short informal verse tale, reminiscent in manner of the unedifying
personalities in the _Rolliad_. There are satiric imitations of
Horace and Catullus. There are parodies of many sorts: the _Needy
Knife Grinder_, an artistic parody of Southey’s sapphics; the _Loves
of the Triangles_, a burlesque of Darwin’s _Loves of the Plants_;
the _Progress of Man_, ridiculing the tedious didacticism of Payne
Knight; and _Chevy Chace_, a parody of the romantic ballad. Hudibrastic
couplets are used in _A Consolatory Address to his Gunboats, by
Citizen Muskein_; anapests, in the _Translation of a Letter_, in the
style of Anstey; and doggerel, in the _Elegy on the Death of Jean Bon
André_. The material of the satire comprehends events in politics, in
literature, in philosophy, and, to some extent, in society. Thus, in
small compass, the poetry of the _Anti-Jacobin_ offers a fruitful field
for study.
In more than one respect, too, it furnished suggestions for the
nineteenth century. _Ballynahinch_ and the _Translation of a Letter_
may have had some influence on the manner and versification of Moore
and Byron. Certain of the _Odes_, notably the imitation of Horace,
III, 25, have the delicate touch which was to mark the lighter satire
of the Smiths and Praed, and, later, of Calverley, Barham, and Locker.
In its rare combination of refined raillery with subtle irony and
underlying seriousness, the satire of the _Anti-Jacobin_ anticipates
the brilliance of _Punch_ in the days when Thackeray was a contributor
to its pages. The dexterous and artistic humor of Canning and his
confederates did not drive out the cut-and-slash method of Gifford, but
it did succeed in teaching the lesson that mockery and wit are fully as
effectual as vituperation in remedying a public evil.
At the time of the subsidence of the _Anti-Jacobin_ in 1798,[48] the
boy Byron, just made a lord by the death of his great-uncle on May
19, 1798, was in his eleventh year. From this date on, therefore, it
is necessary to take account not only of the satiric literature which
may have influenced his work, but also of the events in politics and
society which were occurring around him and which determined in many
ways the course of his career as a satirist. From his environment and
his associations came often his provocation and his material.
No single verse-satire of note was produced during the ten years
just preceding _English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers_. It seemed,
indeed, for a time, as if satire, fallen into feeble hands, would
lose any claim to be considered as a branch of permanent literature.
The increasing power of the daily newspapers and their abuse of the
freedom of the press stimulated the composition of short satiric
ballads and epigrams, designed to be effective for the moment, but
most of them hastily conceived, carelessly executed, and speedily
forgotten. The laws against libel, not consistently enforced until
after the second conviction of Finnerty in 1811 and the imprisonment
of the Hunt brothers in 1812, were habitually disregarded or evaded,
and the utmost license of speech seems to have been tolerated, even
when directed at the royal family. The ethical standard which Pope
had set for satire and which had been kept in _New Morality_ was now
forgotten in the strife of faction and the play of personal spite. Pope
had laid emphasis on style and technique, and even Mathias and Gifford
had made some attempt to follow him; but the new school of satirists
cared little for art. No doubt this degradation of satire may be
partly attributed to the fact that the really capable writers of the
time--Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, and Southey--were engaged in poetry
of another sort; but the result was that satire became the property of
journalists and poetasters until Byron and Moore recovered for it some
of its former dignity.
It must not be inferred that there was a dearth of material for
destructive criticism. Few decades of English history have offered
a more tempting opportunity to a satirist.[49] The Napoleonic Wars,
renewed in May, 1803, after the brief Peace of Amiens (1802), were not,
in spite of an occasional naval victory, resulting advantageously for
England; the disgraceful Convention of Cintra (1808) and the Walcheren
fiasco of 1809 had detracted from British prestige; and the Peninsular
Campaign of 1808 seemed at the time to be a disastrous failure. The
wearisome conflict had accentuated class differences, since, as Byron
afterwards pointed out in _The Age of Bronze_, the landed interests
only increased their wealth as the struggle continued. Many reforms
were being agitated: Catholic Emancipation, opposed resolutely by
George III and not made a reality until Canning became supreme; the
abolition of negro slavery, championed persistently by Wilberforce; and
many improvements in the suffrage laws, planned by Sir Francis Burdett
and a small group of liberal statesmen. The older leaders, Pitt and
Fox, died in the same year (1806), leaving weaker and less trusted men
to fill their places; while political issues became confused until
the establishment of the Regency in 1811 opened the way for the long
Tory administration of Lord Liverpool. Some incidents of an unusually
scandalous character aroused a general spirit of dissatisfaction. The
impeachment of Melville in 1806 for alleged peculation of funds in the
naval office; the investigation in 1806 into the character of the giddy
Princess Caroline, instigated by the Prince of Wales, who had married
her in 1795 and deserted her within a year; the resignation of the
Duke of York from the command of the army, following a dramatic exposé
of his relations with Mrs. Clarke and her disposal of commissions for
bribes; the duel between Castlereagh and Canning (1809)--all these were
unsavory topics of the hour. The open profligacy of the heir to the
throne drew upon him ridicule and contempt, and the frequent recurrence
of the King’s malady left Englishmen in doubt as to the duration of his
reign. In such an age the ephemeral satires of the newspapers joined
with the cartoons of Gilray and Cruikshank in assailing evils and
expressing public indignation. It is, then, remarkable that no writer
of real genius should have been led to commemorate these events in
satire.
The formal satires of the decade are, for the most part, lifeless,
lacking in wit and art. The most readable of them is, perhaps, _Epics
of the Ton_ (1807), by Lady Anne Hamilton (1766–1846), divided into a
Male Book and a Female Book. It is a gallery of contemporary portraits,
in which some twenty women and seventeen men, all prominent personages,
are sketched by one familiar with most of the current scandal in
court and private life. Although it is written in the heroic couplet,
the versification is singularly crude and careless. Structurally the
work has little discernible unity, being merely a series of satiric
characterizations without connecting links, and each section might have
been printed as a separate lampoon. The introductory passage, however,
contains a running survey of contemporary poetry which was not without
influence on Byron. Lady Hamilton, clever retailer of gossip though she
was, belongs to the decadent school of Pope.
In 1808 Tom Moore published anonymously _Corruption_ and _Intolerance_,
following them in the next year with _The Skeptic, a Philosophical
Satire_. All three are satires in the manner and form of Pope; but in
spite of their fervid patriotism, they are dull and heavy, and Moore,
quick to recognize his failure, discreetly turned to a lighter variety
of satire for which his powers were better fitted. Of other political
satires of the same period, the best were excited by the notorious
ministry of “All the Talents,” formed by the Whigs after the death
of their leader, Fox, in 1806. In _All the Talents!_ (1807), Eaton
Stannard Barrett (1786–1820), under the name of Polypus, undertook
to undermine the ministry by assailing its members, following the
methods of the _Rolliad_ and using the diffuse notes which Mathias had
popularized. A Whig reply appeared shortly after in _All the Blocks!_
(1807) by the indefatigable W. H. Ireland (1777–1835), which attacked
the newly formed Tory ministry of Portland.
Among the nondescript formal satires of the time should be mentioned
Ireland’s _Stultifera Navis_ (1807), a spiritless, impersonal, and
general satire, which revives the form of Brandt’s _Narrenschiff_
(1494), introduced into English in Barclay’s _Ship of Fools_ (1508).
A later satire of Ireland’s, _Chalcographimania_ (1814), in feeble
octosyllabics, satirises collectors and bibliophiles. _The Children
of Apollo_ (1794), an anonymous satire of an earlier period, seems to
have afforded Byron more than a suggestion for his _English Bards_;
but he was influenced still more by the _Simpliciad_ (1808), published
anonymously, but actually written by Richard Mant (1776–1848), which is
dedicated to the three revolutionary poets, Wordsworth, Southey, and
Coleridge, and contains some unmerciful ridicule of their more absurd
poems. Mant’s work, the frank criticism of “a man of classical culture
and of some poetic impulse,”[50] merits attention as being an almost
contemporary outburst of the same general character as _English Bards_.
The ballad form reappeared in many satires arising from the troubled
condition of politics[51]; but the usual tone of this work is
scurrilous and commonplace, and dozens of such broadsides were composed
and forgotten in a day. That any one of them had any definite influence
on Byron, or on the course of satire in general, is highly improbable.
What is important is that the literary atmosphere for a few years
before 1809, although it produced no great satires, was surcharged
with the satiric spirit, and that Byron, in his youth, must have been
accustomed to the abusive personalities then common in the daily press.
Conditions in his day encouraged rather than repressed destructive
criticism.
This summary of English satiric verse between Dryden and Byron ends
naturally with the year 1809, when the latter poet first revealed his
true genius as a satirist. Something has been suggested of the wide
scope and varied character of satire from the death of Pope until the
end of the eighteenth century; the example of Pope has been traced
through its influence on satire to the time when it degenerated in the
work of Mathias and the minor rhymsters of the first decade of the new
century; and the lighter classes of satire have been followed until the
date when they became artistic in the poetry of the _Anti-Jacobin_.
With many of these English predecessors Byron had something in common;
from a few he drew inspiration and material. Although it will be
possible to point out only a few cases in which he was indebted to
them directly for his manner and phraseology, it was their work which
determined very largely the course which he pursued as a satirist in
verse.
With the appearance of _English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers_, English
satire regained something of the standing which it had once had in the
days of Pope and Swift. Men of the highest genius were soon to employ
satire as a weapon. Moore, the Smiths, Praed, Hood, and Hook were to
carry raillery and mockery almost to the point of perfection; Shelley
was to unite satire with idealism and a lofty philosophy; and Byron
himself, the last master in the school of Pope, was to introduce a
new variety of satire, borrowed from the Italians, and to gain for
himself the distinction of being perhaps the greatest of our English
verse-satirists.
CHAPTER III
BYRON’S EARLY SATIRIC VERSE
_Fugitive Pieces_, Byron’s first volume of verse, actually printed
in November, 1806, was almost immediately suppressed at the instance
of his elder friend and self-appointed mentor, Rev. J. T. Becher,
who somewhat prudishly expostulated with him on the sensuous tone
of certain passages. Of the thirty-eight separate poems which the
collection contains, eight, at least, may be classed as legitimate
satires. The arrangement of the different items is, however,
unsystematic and inconsistent. The lines _On a Change of Masters at a
Great Public School_, comprising a prejudiced and impulsive diatribe,
are followed by the _Epitaph on a Beloved Friend_, a sincere and
heartfelt elegy; while the conventionally sentimental _Lines to Mary,
On Receiving Her Picture_ are preceded and followed by satiric poems.
These unexpected juxtapositions, inexplicable even on the theory of
an adherence to chronology, suggest at once the curious way in which
Byron’s versatile and complex nature tended to show itself at various
times in moods apparently antithetical, permitting them often to
follow each other closely or even to exist at practically the same
moment. In his early book two characteristic moods, if not more, may
be recognized: the romantic, whether melancholy, sentimental, or
mysterious; and the satiric, whether savage or mocking. It is, of
course, only with the manifestations of the latter mood that we have
here to do.
The motives which urged Byron, at this early age, towards satire
arose chiefly from personal dislike, the wish to retaliate when some
one, by word or deed, had offended his vanity or his partialities.
His animosities, notoriously violent, were often, though not always,
hasty, irrational, and unjustified. His satire was occasioned by his
emotions, not by his reason, a fact which partly accounts for his
fondness for exaggeration and his incapacity for weighing evidence. As
to his choice of methods, it must be remembered that careful reading,
of a scope and diverseness remarkable for one of his years, had given
him a comprehensive acquaintance with the English poets, and notably
with Pope, for whom his preference began early and continued long.
From Pope, and from Pope’s literary descendant, Gifford, Byron derived
the models for much of his preliminary work in satire. He also knew
Canning and Mathias, Lady Hamilton, Mant, and E. S. Barrett, and, in
a different field, he was familiar with the lighter verse of Swift,
Prior, Anstey, the _Rolliad_, and the _Anti-Jacobin_. It was natural,
indeed almost inevitable, that these first exercises in satire should
reflect something of the style and manner of poems with which Byron had
an acquaintance and of which he had made a study.
The first printed satire of his composition was the poem entitled _On a
Change of Masters at a Great Public School_, dated from Harrow, July,
1805, when his period of residence there had almost closed. Dr. Drury,
Headmaster of Harrow, having resigned, Dr. Butler had been chosen to
fill the vacancy. Against Dr. Butler, Byron had no personal grievance;
but resenting an appointment which, passing over Dr. Drury’s son, Mark
Drury, had selected an utter stranger, the boy launched an invective
at a teacher whom he scarcely knew, and predicted the downfall of the
school under his administration. Characteristically enough he was
soon ready to avow his regret for his rash outburst. Referring to Dr.
Butler, he said in his Diary: “I treated him rebelliously, and have
been sorry ever since.” In the details of Byron’s conduct at this
time are exemplified several of his traits as a satirist: impetuous
judgment, energetic attack, and eventual repentance.
The use of the Latin type names, Probus and Pomposus, applied to Dr.
Drury and Dr. Butler, as well as a certain technical skill in the
management of the heroic couplet, indicates that Byron had perused Pope
to his own advantage. Already he had caught something of the tricks of
antithesis and repetition of which the elder poet had been so fond, and
he had derived from him the power of condensing acrimony into a single
pointed couplet. Such lines as:
“Of narrow brain, yet of a narrower soul,
Pomposus holds you in his harsh control;
Pomposus, by no social virtue sway’d,
With florid jargon, and with vain parade,”[52]
have a hint of the vigor and vehemence of Pope himself, while they
display, at the same time, the unfairness and exaggerated bitterness,
so rarely mitigated by good humor, which were to distinguish the longer
_English Bards_.
This poem, after all, was a mere scholastic experiment to be read
only by those in close touch with events at Harrow. _Fugitive Pieces_
contained also Byron’s earliest effort at political satire. An
_Impromptu_, unsigned, and derogatory to Fox, had appeared in the
_Morning Post_ for September 26, 1806, only a few months after the
death of the great Whig statesman, and the schoolboy, even then headed
toward liberalism, came to the Minister’s defence in a reply published
in the _Morning Chronicle_ in October of the same year. The opening
couplet:
“Oh, factious viper! whose envenomed tooth,
Would mangle still the dead, perverting truth,”
proved that he possessed, with Gifford, the singular faculty of
working himself, with very little cause, into a furious rage. When
once he had let his wrath master him, he was uncontrollable, and
he found satisfaction in nothing so much as in affixing scurrilous
epithets to those who had aroused him. Until he had studied the Italian
satirists, he was almost incapable of cool dissection of an enemy’s
faults or shortcomings, and even then he never acquired the virtue of
self-control.
This essay at political satire was not followed by other excursions
into politics, probably because of the poet’s temporary indifference to
the situation in England at the time. On January 15, 1809, in writing
his solicitor, Hanson, concerning his entrance into the House of Lords,
he said: “I cannot say that my opinion is strongly in favor of either
party.”[53] Not until after his return to England from his travels in
1811 and the beginning of his friendship with Moore, Hunt, and other
active Whigs, did his interest in politics revive and his pen become a
party weapon.
The last of the three classical satires in couplets to be found in
_Fugitive Pieces_ is _Thoughts Suggested by a College Examination_
(1806), composed at Cambridge. It opens with a burlesque sketch of
Magnus, a college tutor, but soon broadens into a general indictment
of pedantry and scholastic sycophancy. Byron himself had desired
to go to Oxford, and he never felt himself in sympathy with either
the instructors or the educational system of his Alma Mater. This
particular poem, however, is merely an outburst of boyish spleen,
remarkable for nothing except a kind of sauciness not unknown in the
university freshman.
_Fugitive Pieces_ had been privately printed, with the addition
of twelve poems, and with two poems omitted, as _Poems on Various
Occasions_ in January, 1807, and in the summer of the same year a new
collection, consisting partly of selections from the two previous
volumes and partly of hitherto unprinted work, was published under the
title _Hours of Idleness_. A final edition, called _Poems Original and
Translated_, appeared in 1808, comprising thirty-eight separate poems,
five of them new. Among the poems in these volumes, and other verses of
the same period, drawn from various sources and since gathered together
in Mr. Coleridge’s authoritative edition of Byron’s poetry, there are
several satires, many of them interesting in themselves and nearly all
illuminating in their relation to the author’s later production.
_Childish Recollections_ (1806),[54] a sentimental reverie, is satiric
in part, though it is devoted mostly to eulogies of Byron’s companions
at Harrow. In the couplet,
“Let keener bards delight in Satire’s sting,
My fancy soars not on Detraction’s wing,”
he disavows any satiric intent, but this does not prevent him from
indulging in some additional criticism of Dr. Butler. Regret for this
passage induced Byron to omit the entire poem from _Poems Original and
Translated_, and in ordering the excision he wrote Ridge: “As I am now
reconciled to Dr. Butler I cannot allow my satire to appear against
him.”
_Damoetas_, a short fragment of truculent characterization, may be a
morbid bit of self-portraiture, but is more probably a cynical sketch
of some acquaintance. The description is excessively bitter:--
“From every sense of shame and virtue wean’d,
In lies an adept, in deceit a fiend;--
Damoetas ran through all the maze of sin,
And found the goal, when others just begin.”
The poems so far mentioned as composed by Byron before 1809 have been
formal exercises in the manner of Pope, tentative efforts in the
_genre_ of which _English Bards_ was to be Byron’s best example. Even
in this early period, however, another phase of his satiric spirit
appears, which hints of the future _Don Juan_; it trifles in a lighter
vein, with less of invective and more of banter, and the style is lent
a humorous touch by the use of odd and uncommon rhymes. The half-genial
playfulness of these poems is decidedly different from the earnestness
and intensity of _Damoetas_, and makes them akin to the familiar verse
of Prior, Cowper, and Praed. One of the cleverer specimens is the
poem with the elaborate title _Lines to a Lady Who Presented to the
Author a Lock of Her Hair Braided with His Own, and Appointed a Night
in December to Meet Him in the Garden_, in which thirteen rhymes out
of twenty-two are double. These verses, printed first in _Fugitive
Pieces_, are possibly the earliest in which evidence may be found of
a sportive mood in Byron’s work. Their tone is both ironic and comic,
and possible romance is turned into something ridiculous by a satiric
use of realism. The poem is also one of the few examples of Byron’s
employment of octosyllabic couplets for satiric purposes.
_To Eliza_ (October 9, 1806), written to Elizabeth Pigot, Byron’s early
correspondent and confidante, contains some cynical observations on
marriage, with at least one line that might have fitted into _Don Juan_:
“Though women are angels, yet wedlock’s the devil.”
It is composed in stanzas made up of four anapestic lines. _Granta,
a Medley_, written October 28, 1806, in one of the bursts of rhyming
not uncommon with him at that period, treats, in a jocular fashion,
of college life at Cambridge. Its chief interest lies in some of its
peculiar rhymes, such as triangle-wrangle, historic use-hypothenuse,
before him-tore ’em, crude enough in themselves, but prophetic of
better skill to come, and in the fact that it uses the common quatrain
of four-stressed lines, with alternate rhymes, a measure seldom found
in Byron’s satire. _To the Sighing Strephon_, in a six-line stanza,
while occasionally serious, is actually the reflection of a frivolous
mood, and contains light satire. The trivial nature of these poems
as contrasted with the vehemence of some other of his early satires,
indicates that Byron’s satiric spirit even at that time was fickle and
changeable, dependent often on his environment and varying constantly
in response to alterations in his own temper. It is noticeable too that
he was experimenting with several metrical forms, and trying his hand
at extraordinary rhymes.
Byron’s path as an aspiring author was not always a smooth one, even
before his name became generally known. _Fugitive Pieces_ had been
harshly criticised by several of his acquaintances, and, as we have
seen, the objections of the hypercritical Becher had led to the
destruction of the entire edition. But the proud young lord was not
always tamely submissive to correction. In December, 1806, he wrote
in Hudibrastic couplets the verses _To a Knot of Ungenerous Critics_,
which express the same sort of injured pride and resentment that he
afterwards showed toward Jeffrey and the Edinburgh reviewers:
“Rail on, rail on, ye heartless crew!
My strains were never meant for you;
Remorseless rancour still reveal,
And damn the verse you cannot feel.”
Byron’s anger in these lines was directed apparently at certain ladies
of Southwell, the little town where most of his Harrow vacations were
spent; but though he mentioned one “portly female,” he had not yet
reached the point where he ventured to call his enemies by name. This
reserve, however, did not prevent him from breaking out in some caustic
personal satire, in the course of which he did not spare the characters
of the ladies in question. The same provocation led him to compose the
_Soliloquy of a Bard in the Country_ (1806), in heroic couplets, in
which he seems to pick three persons--“physician, parson, dame”--as
responsible for the adverse comment on _Fugitive Pieces_. In these
satires the occasional sharpness of single phrases does not conceal a
boyish timidity, which is evidence that Byron had not yet been stung
enough to make him realize or display his full power. Neither of the
poems was published during his lifetime, and they probably served only
to gratify his revenge in private among his friends.
Possibly the last, and certainly the most cynical, of these early
satires is the well-known _Inscription on the Monument of a
Newfoundland Dog_, dated by Byron from Newstead Abbey, October 30,
1808, though the animal did not die until November 18th. The twenty-six
lines of the poem are now carved on a monument at Newstead, with
an elaborate prose epitaph. Their misanthropy and savagery recall
the contempt which Swift expressed for humanity in such poems as
_The Beasts’ Confession_ and the _Lines on the Day of Judgment_. An
appropriate text for Byron’s verses might have been taken from Swift’s
letter to Pope, September 29, 1725: “I heartily hate and detest that
animal called man.” Doubtless Byron’s mood is due in part to an
affectation of cynicism which reappeared frequently throughout his
life; his hatred of mankind, if not actually assumed, was by no means
the deep-seated emotion that agitated Swift.
A retrospective survey of the material so far considered again fastens
our attention on the singular complexity of Byron’s satiric spirit.
In a body of work comparatively meagre in content, he had used both
invective and mockery, severity and humor. He had tried various
metrical forms, some dignified and some colloquial. There is less to
be said, however, for the intrinsic merit of the satires. No one of
them is brilliant, nor does any one suggest marked intellectual power.
The invective is too often mere indiscriminate ranting; the wit is, for
the most part, sophomoric; and the assumption of superiority in one so
young is, at times, exceedingly offensive. Here and there in single
lines and passages, there are indications of latent genius; but many
other young poets have shown as much.
These exercises, however, imitative and crude though they were, were
training him in style and giving him confidence. When his anger was
fully roused by the _Edinburgh Review_, he found himself prepared with
an instrument for his purposes. _English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers_,
with all its faults, is not the product of an amateur in satire, but of
a writer who, after much study of the methods of Pope and Gifford, has
learned how to express his wrath in virulent couplets.
CHAPTER IV
“ENGLISH BARDS, AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS”
_English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers_, Byron’s first long poem, is,
like the _Dunciad_ and the _Baviad_, a satire principally on literary
people. It was not, however, in its inception, planned to be either
so pretentious or so comprehensive as it afterwards came to be. In
a letter to Elizabeth Pigot, October 26, 1807, when Byron was still
an undergraduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, he referred casually
to “one poem of 380 lines, to be published (without my name) in a
few weeks, with notes,” and added, “The poem to be published is a
satire.”[55] The manuscript draft of the work as thus conceived
contained 360 lines.
The actual stimulus for the enlargement of the poem came, however,
from an external source. Injured vanity, the occasion of the earlier
_Soliloquy of a Bard in the Country_, was also responsible for the
completion of the half-formed satire of which Byron had written to Miss
Pigot. On February 26, 1808, he wrote Becher: “A most violent attack
is preparing for me in the next number of the _Edinburgh Review_.”[56]
The attack alluded to, a criticism of _Hours of Idleness_, unsigned but
probably contributed by Brougham, appeared in the _Edinburgh Review_
for January, 1807; but that number, in accordance with a practice not
then uncommon, was delayed for over a month in going through the press,
and was not actually on sale until March. The article itself, which
has since become notorious for its bad taste, began with the scathing
sentence: “The poetry of this young lord belongs to the class which
neither gods nor men are said to permit.” Its attitude was certainly
not calculated to encourage or soothe the youthful poet, and with his
usual impetuosity, he at once sought a means of redress. Adding an
introduction and a conclusion to his embryonic poem, and inserting an
attack on Jeffrey, whom he supposed to be his critic, he had the whole
privately printed, as _British Bards_, in the autumn of 1808. This
work, revised and enlarged, but with some excisions,[57] making a poem
of 696 lines, was published anonymously in March, 1809, under the title
_English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers_. A letter of January 25, 1809, to
Dallas proves that the poet had intended to conceal his authorship by
inserting a slighting reference to “minor Byron,”[58] but this ruse was
not retained in the published volume.
The satire, as Byron told Medwin, made a prodigious impression. A
second edition in October, 1809, was amplified by several interpolated
passages so that it comprised 1050 lines. A third and a fourth edition
were demanded while Byron was on his travels, and the fifth, including
the 1070 lines of the poem as it is ordinarily printed to-day, was
suppressed by him in 1811. In the second and succeeding editions his
name was on the title-page.
His friend, Dallas, who had been favored with the perusal of the
poem in manuscript, had suggested as a title, _The Parish Poor
of Parnassus_, but Byron, with some wisdom, rejected this as too
humorous,[59] and chose _English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers_. The
present title indicates clearly the double object of the satire;
for though it is, in one sense, an attempt at retaliation upon the
editors of the _Edinburgh Review_, it is, in another, an eager and
deliberate defence of the Popean tradition in poetry. It combines
the motives of Churchill’s _Apology_ and Gifford’s _Baviad_ in that
it aims, like the first, to castigate hostile critics, and like the
second, to ridicule contemporary poets. Personal spite urged him to
assail the “Scotch marauders,” Jeffrey, Horner, and their coterie;
but he had no individual grudge to pay in satirising the “Southern
dunces,” Wordsworth, Southey, Moore, and others. His attack upon them
was actuated by the same sort of narrow spirit which he had condemned
in his critics. The spectacle of Byron posing as an overthrower of
intolerant reviewers, and in the same poem outdoing them in unjust and
prejudiced criticism is not likely to leave the reader with an exalted
opinion of the author’s consistency.
Presumably influenced by the example of Gifford, Byron deluded himself
into believing that it was his mission to protest against the excesses
of romanticism in poetry, and to engage “the swarm of idiots” who were
infecting literature. He was to be “self-constituted judge of poesy”;
and in pursuance of his design, the satire became a gallery of many
figures, some sketched graphically, others merely limned in a line or
a phrase. It is to Byron’s credit that his chosen victims were not,
like those of Pope and Gifford, all poetasters. Doubtless there was a
certain amount of chance in the causes that led him to be the opponent
of men who have since been recognized as representative poets of their
age; but in spite of the fact that Wordsworth and Coleridge, Southey
and Moore, may not have been fully appreciated in 1809, they were,
nevertheless, authors of reputation whom it was not altogether discreet
to attack. As for Scott, he was the favorite writer of the period and
no mean antagonist. Herford points out the daring character of the
satire in saying: “It is a kind of inverted _Dunciad_; the novice
falls upon the masters of his day, as the Augustan Master upon the
nonentities of his.”
The originality of the satire was questioned as far back as 1822 in
_Blakwood’s Magazine_, which, in a _Letter to Paddy_, said: “_English
Bards_ is, even to the most wretched point of its rhyme, most grossly
and manifestly borrowed.”[60] That this is inexcusable exaggeration
hardly needs asserting; yet it is not detrimental to Byron to state
that he had been anticipated in many of his criticisms to such an
extent that his views could have offered little of novelty to his
readers, and that some of his lines are reminiscent of the work of
previous English satirists. He was no direct plagiarist, but he had
a tenacious memory, and he had read omnivorously in Pope, Churchill,
Gifford, and the minor satirists of his own time. It is not strange
that he occasionally repeats phrases which had become, by inheritance,
the common property of all English satirists.
Continuing a practice which, as we have seen, was instituted by Oldham
and adopted by Pope and Gifford, Byron evidently intended to follow the
general plan of the first satire of Juvenal. Pope, in the _Satires and
Epistles Imitated_, had printed the Latin poems of Horace in parallel
columns with his own verses.[61] Gifford, in the _Baviad_, had placed
sections of the text of Persius in notes at the bottom of the page, and
had adhered rather closely to the structure of his Latin model. Byron,
however, soon perceived the restrictions which such procedure would
entail, and after indicating three examples of imitation in the first
hundred lines, neglected Juvenal in order to pursue an independent
course.[62] Aside from these acknowledged imitations, it is interesting
to notice that one couplet from _English Bards_,
“I, too, can scrawl, and once upon a time
I poured along the town a flood of rhyme,”[63]
have some resemblance to two lines of Gifford’s translation of
Juvenal’s first satire,
“I, too, can write--and at a pedant’s frown,
Once poured my fustian rhetoric on the town.”
These few instances excepted, there is no evidence in the poem of
borrowing from the Latin satirists, nor is any one of them mentioned or
quoted in _English Bards_.
It is curious that Byron, instead of striking out for himself in
an original way, should have repeated complacently many of the
time-honored ideas which had become almost fixed conventions in
satire. It is customary, of course, for the satirist to complain of
contemporary conditions and to sigh for the good old days; indeed, it
would be possible to collate passages from satirists in an unbroken
line from Juvenal to William Watson, each making it clear that the age
in which the writer lives is decadent. As far back as 1523 we find in
the verse preface to _Rede Me and be nott wrothe_, a couplet full of
this lament:
“This worlde is worsse than evyr it was,
Never so depe in miserable decaye.”
Marvell, in _An Historical Poem_, wishes for the glorious period of
the Tudors; Dryden, in the _Epistle to Henry Higden, Esq._, cries
out against “our degenerate times”; and Pope, in the _Dunciad_, has
a familiar reference to “these degen’rate days.” The same strain is
repeated in Young,[64] in Johnson,[65] in Cowper,[66] in Gifford,[67]
and even in Barrett.[68] The tone of Byron’s jeremiad differs very
little from that of those which have been cited:
“Time was, ere yet in these degenerate days
Ignoble themes obtained mistaken praise,
When Sense and Wit with Poesy allied,
No fabled Graces, flourished side by side.”[69]
It is not inappropriate to point out that this ideal era to which Byron
refers had been termed by Pope, who lived in it, “a Saturnian Age of
lead.”[70] It required a maturer Byron to satirise this very satiric
convention as he did in the first line of _The Age of Bronze_:
“The ‘good old times’--all times when old are good.”
Another generally accepted custom for the satirist was the apologetic
formality of calling upon some supposedly more powerful censor to
revive and scourge folly. Thus Young had asked,
“Why slumbers Pope, who leads the tuneful train,
Nor hears the virtue which he loves complain.”[71]
Whitehead’s _State Dunces_ had opened with a similar invocation to
Pope. At the end of the eighteenth century it was Gifford who seemed
to have sunk into a torpor. Thus we find Canning in _New Morality_
attempting to rouse him:
“Oh, where is now that promise? why so long
Sleep the keen shafts of satire and of song?”
Hodgson, Byron’s friend, in his _Gentle Alterative_ had also appealed
to Gifford. In the preface to the second edition of _English Bards_,
Byron had, in his turn, regretted the listlessness of Gifford, and had
modestly professed himself a mere country practitioner officiating in
default of the regular physician; while in the satire itself he again
sounded the familiar note, repeating the interrogation of Canning:
“‘Why slumbers Gifford?’ once was asked in vain;
Why slumbers Gifford? let us ask again.”[72]
The emphatic language which he used elsewhere in admitting his
indebtedness and even his inferiority to Gifford is, however, proof of
the sincerity of this outburst.
A third convention, established if not originated in English by Pope,
is the obligation felt by the satirist to pose as a defender of public
morals and to insist upon his ethical purpose. Byron, partly affected
by this tradition, partly believing himself to be, like Gifford, a
champion of law and order in literature, tries to persuade his public
that he is instigated entirely by lofty motives in giving vent to his
anger:
“For me, who, thus unasked, have dared to tell
My country, what her sons should know too well,
Zeal for her honor bade me here engage
The host of idiots that infest her age.”[73]
It will not do, however, to take this assertion too seriously,
especially since incitements of a far different sort seem to have
occasioned several sections of the poem.
Besides conforming to the conventional practice of his predecessors in
these three important respects, Byron linked himself with them by so
many other ties that even in matters of minor detail _English Bards_
resembles the classical satires of Pope and Gifford. As a satire it
may justly be compared with the _Dunciad_ and the _Baviad_, and may be
judged by the standards which are applied to them.
An analysis of _English Bards_ is rendered difficult by the lack of
any coherent plan in the poem, and its consequent failure to follow
any logical order in treating its material. The author wanders from
his avowed theme to satirise the depravity of the Argyle Institution
and to ridicule the antiquarian folly of Aberdeen and Elgin, slipping,
moreover, easily from critics to bards and from bards to critics, as
a train of observations occurs to him. The same excuse may be pleaded
for him that Mathias advanced in his own behalf: that an informing
personality lends a kind of unity to the poem. It may be said, too,
that the classical satire, not aiming as a rule to be compact and close
in structure, is very likely to become a panorama in which figures pass
in long review. This impression is conveyed in _English Bards_ by the
use of stock phrases which serve to introduce each new character as if
he were appearing in a parade of celebrities.[74]
Under the false impression that Jeffrey was responsible for the
scornful review of _Hours of Idleness_, Byron singled him out for
violent abuse, though he did not neglect his colleagues, “the allied
usurpers on the throne of taste.” For his attack on critics as a class
Byron could have found much encouragement in previous English satire.
Dryden had expressed a common enough feeling of authors, in the lines:
“They who write ill, and they who ne’er durst write,
Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite.”[75]
Pope had condemned the “bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,” who knows
no method in his calling but censure.[76] Young had carried out rather
tamely in his third satire his boastful intention of falling upon
critics:
“Like the bold bird upon the banks of Nile,
That picks the teeth of the vile crocodile.”
Aside from these more or less incidental aspersions, at least two
entire satires had been written upon critics. Cuthbert Shaw, enraged by
what he thought an unfair account of his _Race_ (1762) in the _Critical
Review_, prefixed to the second edition of that poem an _Address to
the Critics_, in which he heaped vituperation on all the reviewers of
his time. Only a few months before this, Churchill in his _Apology
Addressed to the Critical Reviewers_ (1761) had constructed a satire
very similar in motive and plan to Byron’s _English Bards_. A fairly
close parallel may, in fact, be evolved between the two poems. Both are
replies to the severe comments of critics on an earlier work[77]; both
assail Scotch editors, the victim being, in the one case, Smollett,
in the other, Jeffrey; both digress from the main theme, the one to
renew the controversy with actors begun in the _Rosciad_, the other to
satirise a new movement in poetry.
It is characteristic of both Churchill and Byron that, instead of
attempting to defend their verses, they devote all their attention to
reviling their reviewers. Byron’s retaliation is less vigorous than
Churchill’s; indeed it may be said that _English Bards_ is weakest in
the place where it should have been most effective--in the passage
directed at Jeffrey. Byron compares his antagonist to the hangman
Jeffries, and describes in burlesque fashion the duel between him and
Moore; but he fastens on him no epithet worth remembering and abuses
him in lines which are neither incisive nor witty.
Churchill had made an especial point of the anonymous character of the
articles in the _Critical Review_, and had said of the editors:
“Wrapt in mysterious secrecy they rise,
And, as they are unknown, are safe and wise.”[78]
Hodgson, in his _Gentle Alterative_ (1809), had referred to a similar
custom of the _Edinburgh Review_, by attacking,
“Chiefly those anonymously wise,
Who skulk in darkness from Detection’s eyes.”
The allusion in _English Bards_ to “Northern Wolves, that still in
darkness prowl”[79] may be explained by Byron’s objection to this
practice, though he chooses to dwell on it very little.
_The Apology_ had accused the critics of dissimulation and had alleged
that their pages were full of misstatements--
“Ne’er was lie made that was not welcome there.”[80]
Byron made the same charge in advising contributors to the _Edinburgh
Review_ not to stick to the truth,
“Fear not to lie, ’twill seem a sharper hit.”[81]
It is quite apparent that the “self-elected monarchs” whom Churchill
treated so cavalierly in 1761 had no more popularity among sensitive
authors than did the body of critics whom Hodgson styled “self-raised
arbiters of sense and wit”[82] whom Gifford spoke of as “mope-eyed
dolts placed by thoughtless fashion on the throne of taste”[83] and
whom Byron, in much the same phraseology, scorned as,
“Young tyrants, by themselves misplaced,
Combined usurpers on the Throne of Taste.”
Churchill, rash though he was, was cautious enough not to print his
opponents’ names, and they are to be discovered only through definite
allusions. Byron, on the other hand, brought his satire into the open,
and ridiculed “smug Sydney,” “classic Hallam,” “paltry Pillans,”
“blundering Brougham,” and other contributors to the _Edinburgh_, never
hesitating to give a name in full. Even Lord and Lady Holland, later
Byron’s close friends, were included among the victims, as patrons of
the Whig _Review_.
These resemblances between _English Bards_ and some earlier satires
of a like nature do not prove Byron a mere imitator. Enough has been
shown, perhaps, to make it clear that his work belongs to a definite
school of poetry, and that his verses show no marked originality.
At the same time he never stoops to direct plagiarism, and whatever
similarities exist with other poems are largely those of style and
spirit, not of phraseology.
But there is much more in _English Bards_ than the outburst against
critics; dexterously Byron proceeded himself to don the garb of judge
and to pass sentence on men older and better known than he. He had
early adopted a conservative attitude towards the versification and
subject-matter of poetry, a position which he preserved in theory
throughout his life.[84] Having learned to use glibly the catchwords
of the Augustans, he ventured to praise Crabbe, Campbell, Rogers, and
Gifford for adhering tenaciously to the principles of Sense, Wit,
Taste, and Correctness established by Pope. Acting on this basis, he
was justified in condemning his own age for its disregard of what he
considered to be the standard models of poetic expression.[85] Under
the tutelage of Gifford, he had acquired a distaste for novelty which
led him to look upon the romanticists as Gifford looked upon the Della
Cruscans, and which induced him to carry his defence of custom and
tradition almost to the verge of bigotry.
Something must be allowed, too, for the operation of contemporary ideas
upon Byron. The leaders of the so-called Romantic Movement, partly
because many of them had associated themselves with the Jacobin party
in England, partly because their poetry seemed strange, were met from
the first with opposition in many quarters.[86] Language of a tenor
hostile to their work may be met with in Mathias, the _Anti-Jacobin_,
_Epics of the Ton_, the _Simpliciad_, and Hodgson’s _Gentle
Alterative_. The suggestions for many of the anti-romantic views since
attributed to Byron alone came doubtless from other satirists, whose
accusations Byron fitted into telling phrases.
An excellent illustration of this is to be found in Byron’s unprovoked
attack upon Scott, in which the younger poet, seizing upon the
well-known fact that Scott had received money for his verses, terms him
“hireling bard” and “Apollo’s venal son.” Perhaps Byron may have shared
with Young the snobbish notions about money expressed in the latter’s
couplet:
“His [Apollo’s] sacred influence never should be sold;
’Tis arrant simony to sing for gold.”[87]
It is more probable, however, that he had in mind a passage from _Epics
of the Ton_, in which Scott’s “well-paid lays” had been mentioned in
a contemptuous manner.[88] Even in his charge that the plot of the
_Lay of the Last Minstrel_ was “incongruous and absurd,” Byron had
been anticipated in a note to _All the Talents_.[89] The whole tirade
against Scott in _English Bards_ was particularly unfortunate because,
as was revealed later, that author had remonstrated with Jeffrey on the
“offensive criticism” of _Hours of Idleness_.
Byron’s antagonism to the so-called Lake School of poets, Wordsworth,
Coleridge, and Southey, began early and continued long. In 1809 it is
improbable that he had any acquaintance with any one of the three; yet
he placed them in a conspicuous and unenviable position in _English
Bards_. His primary motives in attacking them have already been
indicated. Considering them as faddists who were lowering the dignity
of the author’s calling and degrading poetic style, he followed the
_Simpliciad_ in condemning them for the contemptible nature of their
subject-matter, for their simple diction, for their fondness for the
wild and unnatural, and for their studied avoidance of conventionality.
Southey’s first verse had appeared in 1794; while Wordsworth and
Coleridge had been really introduced to the public through _Lyrical
Ballads_. Opposition to them and their theories had begun to be shown
almost immediately, allusions to Southey, in particular, being fairly
common in satiric literature before 1809. Mathias had said ironically
with reference to Southey’s first poem:
“I cannot ...
Quit the dull Cam, and ponder in the Park
A six-weeks Epick, or a Joan of Arc.”[90]
In the _Anti-Jacobin_ Southey’s poetry had been ludicrously parodied,
and the members of the Lake School had been branded as revolutionists.
_Epics of the Ton_ had ridiculed Southey and Wordsworth,[91] and the
_Simpliciad_ had accused all three of “childish prattle.”[92] Byron,
then, was no pioneer in his satire on the romanticists, nor did he
contribute anything original to the controversy. The frequency and
rapidity with which Southey had published long epics had impressed
others before Byron cried in _English Bards_:
“Oh, Southey! Southey! cease thy varied song!
A bard may chaunt too often and too long.”[93]
In this early satire Byron showed no personal animosity towards
Southey; he introduced him merely as a too prolific and too eccentric
scribbler, to be jeered at rather than hated. The fierce feud between
the two men was of a later growth.
Picking Southey as the leader of the romanticists, Byron treats
Wordsworth as merely a “dull disciple,” silly in his choice of subjects
and prosaic in his poetry, “the meanest object of the lowly group.”
Perhaps the most striking defect in the satire levelled at this poet is
the lack of any recognition of his ability, an omission all the more
noticeable because Byron, in the last two cantos of _Childe Harold_,
was influenced so strongly by Wordsworth’s conception of the relation
between man and nature. Coleridge receives even less consideration. He
is “the gentle Coleridge--to turgid ode and tumid stanza dear,” and is
ridiculed mainly because of his _Lines to a Young Ass_, a poem which
had previously excited the mirth of the _Simpliciad_.[94] The slashing
manner in which the boy satirist disposes of his great contemporaries
is almost unparalleled.[95]
Byron’s satire on the Rev. Samuel Bowles (1762–1850) illustrates one
phase of his veneration for Pope, and connects him with another Pope
enthusiast, Gifford. In the _Baviad_ Gifford had gone out of his way
to confront and refute Weston, who, in an article in the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_, had adduced evidence to prove that Pope’s moral character
was not above reproach. Gifford, unable to dispute the validity of the
facts, had contented himself with describing the critic as “canker’d
Weston,” and terming him in a note “this nightman of literature.”[96]
Bowles, whose early sonnets (1789) had attracted the admiration of
Coleridge, published in 1807 an edition of Pope’s _Works_ in ten
volumes, in which he followed Weston in not sparing the infirmities and
mendacities of the great Augustan. The effect of this work on Byron
was like that of Weston’s on Gifford, and the result was that Bowles
was pilloried in _English Bards_ as “the wretch who did for hate what
Mallet did for hire.” Nor did the quarrel end here. It grew eventually
into a heated controversy between Bowles and Byron, carried on while
the latter was in Italy, in the course of which Byron was provoked into
calling Pope “the great moral poet of all times, of all climes, of all
feelings, and of all stages of existence.”[97] So strongly did he feel
on the matter that he wrote, even as late as 1821, concerning _English
Bards_: “The part which I regret the least is that which regards Mr.
Bowles, with reference to Pope.”[98] Byron’s exaltation of Pope was
made a positive issue in the unreserved commendation which he gave to
Campbell, Rogers, and Crabbe, all three of whom were, in most respects,
firm in their allegiance to that master’s principles of poetry.
An odd freak of fancy led Byron to pose in _English Bards_ as a
watchful guardian of morality in literature, though even at that date
he was the author of verses which are not altogether blameless. That
he should upbraid Monk Lewis, Moore, and Strangford as “melodious
advocates of lust” may well seem extraordinary to the reader who
recalls the poem which Byron sent to Pigot, August 10, 1806, asking
that it be printed separately as “improper for the perusal of
ladies.”[99] The truth is that Byron was again treading in the steps
of others. The virtuous but somewhat prurient Mathias, excited by
Lewis’s novel _Ambrosio, or the Monk_ (1795), which has given the
writer notoriety and a nickname, had assailed the author in _Pursuits
of Literature_,[100] and the supposed voluptuousness of the story had
not escaped the notice of the _Anti-Jacobin_ and _Epics of the Ton_.
Byron had thus more than one precedent for his ironic reference to
Lewis’s “chaste descriptions.” Moore’s _Epistles, Odes, and other
Poems_ (1806) had been censured by the _Edinburgh Review_ in an article
which described Moore as “the most licentious of modern versifiers.”
_All the Talents_ had questioned Moore’s morality, and _Epics of the
Ton_ had mentioned a writer who,
“Like Tommy Moore has scratch’d the itching throng,
And tickled matrons with a spicy song.”
Byron had been a delighted reader of the Irish poet and had been
influenced by him in the more sentimental verses of _Hours of
Idleness_; nevertheless he repeated the imputations of the other
satirists in referring to him as
“Little! young Catullus of his day,
As sweet, but as immoral, as his lay.”
To Viscount Strangford (1780–1855), of whose translation of Camoëns he
had formerly been very fond, Byron offered advice:
“Be warm, but pure; be amorous, but be chaste.”
In the same vein as this grave admonition are the remarks which the
poet makes upon the Argyle Institution, founded by Colonel Greville as
a resort for gambling and dancing. Digressing for a while without any
logical reason, Byron proceeds to condemn social follies, especially
those fostered by “blest retreats of infamy and ease.” The passage
includes some lines on round dancing, which anticipate Byron’s attack
on that amusement in his later satire, _The Waltz_.
Gifford’s _Mæviad_, after making some final thrusts at the Della
Cruscans, had shifted its attack to contemporary actors and dramatists.
That satire upon them was justified may be gathered from Gifford’s
remark in his Preface: “I know not if the stage has been so low since
the days of Gammer Gurton as at this hour.”[101] During the fifteen
years following the date of this statement it cannot be averred that
circumstances made it any the less applicable to the theatrical
situation in England, and Byron, in 1809, in ridiculing the “motley
sight” which met his eyes on the stage of his time, had perhaps even
more justification than Gifford had had in 1794.[102]
Of the dramatists whom Gifford had mentioned with disfavor, only two,
Frederick Reynolds (1784–1841) and Miles Andrews (died 1814), were
selected for notice by Byron. What the _Mæviad_ had called “Reynolds’
flippant trash” was still enjoying some vogue, and _English Bards_ took
occasion to speak of the author as “venting his ‘dammes!’ ‘poohs!’
and ‘zounds!’”[103] Miles Andrews, whose “Wonder-working poetry”
had been laughed at in the _Baviad_, was barely mentioned by Byron
as a writer who “may live in prologues, though his dramas die.”
In general the satire on the stage in _English Bards_ consists of
uninteresting remarks on some mediocre dramatists, among them Theodore
Hook (1788–1841), Andrew Cherry (1762–1812), James Kenney (1780–1849),
Thomas Sheridan (1775–1817), Lumley Skeffington (1762–1850), and T. J.
Dibdin (1771–1841). It is a fair contention that this digression is the
dreariest portion of the poem. The interpolated lines on the Italian
Opera, sent to Dallas, February 22, 1809, after an evening spent at
a performance, attack that amusement on the ground of its indecency.
They are akin in spirit to similar passages in Young,[104] Pope,[105]
Churchill,[106] and Bramston.[107]
The satire on less-known poets is indiscriminate and not always
discerning. Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), who, in his _Botanic Garden_
(1789–92), was a decadent imitator of Pope, is contemptuously dismissed
as “a mighty master of unmeaning rhyme.” Another once popular bard,
William Hayley (1745–1820), still remembered as the friend and
biographer of Cowper, is branded with a stinging couplet:
“His style in youth or age is still the same,
Forever feeble and forever tame.”
The Delia Cruscans are passed over as already crushed by Gifford, and
“sepulchral Grahame,” “hoarse Fitzgerald,” the Cottles from Bristol,
Maurice, and the cobbler poets, Blackett and Bloomfield, get only a
fleeting sneer. H. J. Pye, the laureate, once a butt of Mathias, is
mentioned only once.
Two characterizations, however, are distinguished above the others
by their singular virulence. The first was a vicious onslaught on
Lord Carlisle, the friend of Fox, Byron’s relative and guardian,
who had been included among the sentimental rhymsters in Tickell’s
_Wreath of Fashion_. To him his ward had dedicated _Poems Original
and Translated_; but the peer’s carelessness about introducing Byron
into the House of Lords had irritated the young poet, and he changed
what had previously been a flattering notice in _English Bards_ into a
ferocious assault:
“The puny schoolboy and his early lay
Men pardon, if his follies pass away;
But who forgives the Senior’s ceaseless verse,
Whose hairs grow hoary as his rhymes grow worse.”
The sharpest satire in the poem was inserted merely to satisfy a
personal grudge. Hewson Clarke (1787–1832), editor of _The Satirist_, a
monthly magazine, had made sport of _Hours of Idleness_ in an issue for
October, 1807, and had harshly reviewed _Poems Original and Translated_
in August, 1808. Byron replied in a passage full of violent invective,
describing Clarke as
“A would-be satirist, a hired Buffoon,
A monthly scribbler of some low Lampoon.”[108]
These lines Byron never repudiated; he appended to them in 1816 the
note: “Right enough: this was well deserved and well laid on.”[109]
_English Bards_ closes with a defiance and a challenge. The poet, then
only twenty-one, repeating that his only motive has been “to sternly
speak the truth,” dares his opponents to meet him in the open and
declares his willingness to engage them. There is something amusing in
the pompous way in which Byron, throwing down the gauntlet, boasts of
his own indifference and callousness to criticism. He had, however,
achieved at least one of his two objects: he had answered hostile
reviewers in a manner which made it plain that he would not submit
unresistingly to supercilious comment on his work. Assuredly he had
turned the weapons of his critics against themselves.
Nothing was more natural than that Byron, his wrath for the most part
evaporated, should regret his bitterness in cases where his hasty
judgment had carried him too far. On his way home from Greece he wrote
Dallas: “At this period when I can think and act coolly, I regret
that I have written it.”[110] The story of the events leading to the
suppression of the fifth and last edition may be given in the words
of Byron to Leigh Hunt, October 22, 1815: “I was correcting the fifth
edition of E. B. for the press, when Rogers represented to me that
he knew Lord and Lady Holland would not be sorry if I suppressed any
further publication of that poem; and I immediately acquiesced, and
with great pleasure, for I had attacked them upon a fancied and false
provocation, with many others; and neither was, nor am, sorry to have
done what I could to stifle that furious rhapsody.”[111] The result
was that the whole impression of this edition was burned, only a few
copies being rescued, and when, in 1816, Byron left England forever, he
signed a Power of Attorney forbidding republication in any form.[112]
His mature opinion of the work is expressed in a comment written at
Diodati in 1816: “The greater part of this Satire I most sincerely wish
had never been written--not only on account of the injustice of some
of the critical and some of the personal part of it--but the tone and
temper are such as I cannot approve.”
It now remains to compare _English Bards_ with other examples of
English classical satire, if one may apply that title to poems which
use the heroic couplet and follow the methods employed by Pope. Byron’s
versification in his early satires shows the effect of a careful study
of Pope. It is singularly free from double rhymes, there being but
five instances of them in _English Bards_.[113] Byron was somewhat
more sparing than Pope in his use of the run-on line. Adopting as a
basis of judgment the conclusion of Mr. Gosse that “with occasional
exceptions, the presence or want of a mark of punctuation may be made
the determining element,” we find that, of the 1070 lines in _English
Bards_, approximately 101 are of the run-on variety, that is, about
ten out of every hundred. In Mr. Gosse’s collation of typical passages
from other poets, he estimates that Dryden has 11, Pope 4, and Keats
40 run-on lines out of every hundred. In the whole length of Byron’s
poem there is but one run-on couplet; in a hundred consecutive lines
selected by Mr. Gosse, Dryden has one such example and Pope none. Twice
Byron employs the triplet,[114] and he has two alexandrines.[115]
The medial cæsura after the 4th, 5th, or 6th foot of the line occurs
with great regularity as it does in Pope’s work. There are a few
minor peculiarities in rhyming,[116] but in general the rhymes are
pure. In summarizing, it is safe to say that Byron adhered closely to
the metrical principles established by Pope. Not until Hunt, Keats,
and Shelley introduced the looser and less monotonous system of
versification used in _Rimini_, _Endymion_, and _Epipsychidion_, was
the heroic couplet freed from the shackles with which Pope had bound it.
Byron’s candid acknowledgment that, in _English Bards_, he was
venturing “o’er the path which Pope and Gifford trod before” suggests
at once a comparison of his work with that of the two earlier authors.
Although the _Dunciad_ and _English Bards_ are alike in that they are
in the same metre and actuated by much the same motive, there are
many differences in execution between the poems. The _Dunciad_ is,
as the Preface of “Martinus Scriblerus” states, a true mock-heroic,
with a fable “one and entire” dealing with the Empire and the Goddess
of Dulness, with machinery setting forth a “continued chain of
allegories,” and with a succession of incidents and episodes imitated
from epic writers. _English Bards_, beginning as a paraphrase of
Juvenal, has no real action and is composed of a series of descriptions
and characterizations, joined by some necessary connective material.
Pope’s method of satire is frequently indirect: he involves his victims
in the plot, making them ridiculous through the situations in which he
places them. Instead of inveighing against Blackmore, Pope pictures him
as victor in a braying contest. Byron, on the other hand, uses this
method only once in _English Bards_--in burlesquing the duel between
Jeffrey and Moore. Instinctively he prefers taking up his adversaries
one by one and covering each with abuse. The _Dunciad_, with rare
exceptions, assails only personal enemies of the satirist, and these,
for the most part, men already despised and defenceless; Byron attacks
many prominent writers of whom he knows nothing except their work, and
against whom he has no grievance of a private nature. Thus in plan and
operation the two satires present some striking divergences.
So far as matters of detail are concerned, _English Bards_ is not
always in the manner of the _Dunciad_ and the other satires of Pope. It
has been observed of Dryden, and occasionally of Pope, that at its best
their satire, however much it may be aimed at particular persons, tends
to become universal in its application, just as had been the case with
the finest work of the Latin satirists. Horace’s Bore, for instance,
was doubtless once a definite Roman citizen; Dryden’s Buckingham has
a place in history: but the satire on them is pointed and effective
when applied to their counterparts in the twentieth century. The same
is true of Pope’s Atticus, who is described in language which is both
specific and general, fitted both to Addison and to a definite type of
humanity. The faculty of thus creating types was not part of Byron’s
art. For one thing, he seldom, except in some of his earliest satires,
employs type names, and he carefully prints in full, without asterisks
or blank spaces, the names of those whom he attacks. His accusations
are too precise to admit of transference to others, and his epithets,
even when they are unsatisfactory, cannot be dissevered from the one
to whom they apply. The satire on Wordsworth, illustrated as it is by
quotations and by references to that author’s poetry, is appropriate
to him alone, and would have soon been forgotten had it not been for
the eminence of the victim. It is otherwise with Pope’s description of
Sporus, which is often applied to others, even when it is forgotten
that the original Sporus was Lord Hervey.
In many respects Byron had more in common with Gifford than with Pope.
It is Gifford to whom, in _English Bards_, he refers so often as a
master; it is he whom he mentions in 1811 as his “Magnus Apollo”[117];
and it was of the _Baviad_ and the _Mæviad_ that he was thinking when
he conceived his plan of hunting down the “clamorous brood of Folly.”
Pope, preserving in his satire a calm deliberation which enabled him
both to conceal and to concentrate his inward wrath, was capable, even
when most in a rage, of a sustained analysis of those whom he hated,
and seldom let his temper sweep him off his feet. Gifford and Byron
prefer a more slashing and a less reserved method. Dallas once said of
Byron: “His feelings rather than his judgment guided his pen.”[118] The
same idea was also expressed by the poet himself:--“Almost all I have
written has been mere passion.”[119] These two statements, confirming
each other, explain the lack of poise and the want of a sense of
proportion which are apparent in _English Bards_, as they were apparent
in the _Baviad_. Unlike Dryden, neither Gifford nor Pope allows his
victims any merit; each paints entirely in sombre colors, without ever
perfecting a finished sketch or alleviating the black picture with
the admission of a single virtue. Their conclusions, naturally, are
unpleasantly dogmatic, founded as they are on prejudice and seldom
subjected to reason. Most satire is, of course, biassed and unjust,
but the careful craftsman takes good care that his charges shall have
a semblance of plausibility and shall not defeat their purpose by
arousing in reaction a sympathy for the defendant.[120] Satire written
in a rage is likely to be mere invective, and invective, even when
embodied in artistic form, is usually less effective than deliberate
irony. Byron in his later satire learned better than to portray an
enemy as all fool or all knave.
Gifford was, as he sedulously protested, fighting for a principle,
aiming at the extermination of certain forms of affectation and false
taste in poetry. There is no ground for suspecting his sincerity,
any more than there is for questioning Byron’s motive in his effort
to defend the classical standards against the encroachments of
romanticism. It so happened that Gifford was performing a genuine
service to letters, while Byron engaged himself in a struggle at once
unnecessary and hopeless. In their zeal and enthusiasm, however, both
satirists lost a feeling for values. Gifford delivered sledge-hammer
blows at butterflies; Byron classed together, without discernment, the
work of mediocrity and genius, and heaped abuse indiscriminately upon
poetaster and poet.
Gifford’s method, like Byron’s, was descriptive and direct, and his
satires have little action. The _Baviad_, with its dialogue framework,
is not unlike some of Pope’s _Epistles_, while the _Mæviad_ is more
akin to _English Bards_. Byron, following Mathias and Gifford, employed
prose notes to reinforce his verse, but he never, like Gifford, padded
them with quotations from the men whom he was attacking. In both the
_Mæviad_ and _English Bards_ names are printed in full. Gifford used no
type names, nor did he succeed in creating a type. In style and diction
Byron is Gifford’s superior. The latter was often vulgar and inelegant,
and his ear for rhythm and melody was poor. Byron’s instinctive good
taste kept him from blotting his pages with the language of the
streets. His study of Pope, moreover, had enabled him to acquire
something of the smoothness as well as of the vigor of that master.
It may be said in general of _English Bards_ that it owes most in
versification to Pope, and most in manner and structure to Gifford.
There are, however, other satirists to whom Byron may have been
slightly indebted. At the time when he was preparing _British Bards_,
Francis Hodgson (1781–1852), his close friend, irritated by some
severe criticism in the _Edinburgh Review_ on his translation of
Juvenal (1807), was planning his _Gentle Alterative prepared for the
Reviewers_, which appeared in _Lady Jane Grey; and other Poems_ (1809).
The fact that the provocation was the same as for _English Bards_
and that the two authors were acquaintances offers a curious case
of parallelism in literature. It is certain, however, that Byron’s
satire, which is much longer than the _Gentle Alterative_, is indebted
to it only in minor respects, if at all. Both satires mention the
ludicrous mistake of an _Edinburgh Review_ article in attributing to
Payne Knight some Greek passages really quoted from Pindar; but this
error had been discussed in a long note to _All the Talents_, and was
a favorite literary joke of the period. Both poets, too, call upon the
master, Gifford, to do his part in castigating the age. Beyond these
superficial similarities, it may safely be asserted that Byron borrowed
nothing from Hodgson.
It is curious that the striking simile of the eagle shot by an
arrow winged with a feather from his own plume used by Moore in
_Corruption_[121] should have been employed by Byron[122] in speaking
of the tragic death of Henry Kirke White (1785–1805), the religious
poet and protégé of Southey. The simile, which has been traced to
_Fragment 123_ of Æschylus, occurs also in Waller’s _To a Lady Singing
a Song of His Own Composing_. It is somewhat remarkable that two poets
in two successive years should have happened upon the same figure, each
working it out so elaborately. Aside from this one parallelism, Moore’s
early satires, almost entirely political, would seem to have had no
definite influence upon _English Bards_.
It has been shown, then, that Byron’s ideas in his satire were not
always entirely his own, and that he reflected, in many cases, the
views and sometimes the phraseology of other satirists, notably Pope,
Churchill, and Gifford. _English Bards_ belongs to the school of
English classical satire, and, as such, has the peculiarities and the
established features common to the different types of that _genre_.
In the preface to the second edition of his poem, Byron said: “I
can safely say that I have attacked none personally, who did not
commence on the offensive.”[123] To accept this literally would be to
misinterpret Byron’s whole theory of satire. Whether he admitted it or
not he was a great personal satirist--in _English Bards_, primarily
a personal satirist. Looking back at the time when his wrath was
fiercest, he said: “Like Ishmael, my hand was against all men, and all
men’s against me.”[124] Even when satirising a principle or a movement,
he was invariably led to attack the individuals who represented it.
Swift’s satiric code:
“Malice never was his aim;
He lash’d the vice, but spar’d the name;
No individual could resent,
Where thousands equally were meant,”
was exactly contrary to Byron’s practice. He sought always to
contend with persons, to decide questions, not by argument, but by a
hand-to-hand grapple.
The peculiar features of _English Bards_ are to be explained by the
author’s character. He did not let his reason rule. From notes and
letters we learn that he was often in doubt whether to praise or
censure certain minor figures: it was on the spur of the moment that
he changed “coxcomb Gell” to “classic Gell.” He was courageous and
aggressive, but he was also unfair and illogical. There is little real
humor in _English Bards_, so little that one is inclined to wonder
where Jeaffreson discovered the “irresistibly comic verse” of which he
speaks. When the satirist tries to be playful, the result is usually
brutality. He has not yet acquired the conversational railling mood
which he utilized so admirably in _Beppo_.
In spite of its crudities, its lack of restraint, and its manifest
prejudices, _English Bards_ shows many signs of power. In the light of
the greater satire of _Don Juan_, it seems immature and inartistic,
but it surpasses any work of a similar kind since the death of Pope. It
is Byron’s masterpiece in classical satire. To excel it he had to turn
for inspiration to another quarter, and to change both his method and
his style.
CHAPTER V
“HINTS FROM HORACE” AND “THE CURSE OF MINERVA”
On July 2, 1809, Byron, accompanied by his friend, John Cam Hobhouse,
sailed from Falmouth for Lisbon on a trip that was to take him to
Spain, Malta, Greece, and Turkey. When he returned to England in July,
1811, after two years of travel and adventure, he brought with him
“4000 lines of one kind or another,” including the first two cantos of
_Childe Harold_ and two satires, _Hints from Horace_ and _The Curse
of Minerva_. _Hints from Horace_, written in March, 1811, during the
poet’s second visit to Athens, is dated March 14, 1811, on the last
page of the most authentic manuscript. It was composed at the Capuchin
Convent in Athens, where he had met accidentally with a copy of
Horace’s epistle _Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica_, commonly known as the
_Ars Poetica_.
The history of the fortunes of this work is perhaps worth relating.
Byron, on his arrival, handed it over at once to Dallas, without giving
him a hint of _Childe Harold_; indeed, only the latter’s obvious
disappointment induced the poet to show him the _Pilgrimage_, which
then seemed of little importance to its author. On September 4, 1811,
Byron requested Dallas to aid him in correcting the proofs of _Hints
from Horace_, and “in adapting the parallel passages of the imitation
in such places to the original as may enable the reader not to lose
sight of the allusion.”[125] There is, however, no reason for thinking
that Dallas actually undertook the task, for on October 13th Byron
complained to Hodgson that the labor of editing was still hanging
fire, and begged the latter to assist him. Shortly after, owing partly
to the adverse criticism of Dallas, and partly to Murray’s wish not
to endanger the success of _Childe Harold_, the idea of immediate
publication was put aside for some years. In 1820, Byron, then resident
in Italy, was reminded of his unprinted satire, and wrote Murray to
inform him that the manuscript had been left, among various papers,
with Hobhouse’s father in England.[126] At intervals he expressed
anxiety about the proofs, which Murray, exercising his discretion,
delayed sending. From this revived project Byron was, for a time,
dissuaded by the wise counsel of Hobhouse, who suggested that the poem
would require much revision. Nevertheless on January 11, 1821, he
informed Murray that he saw little to alter,[127] and accused him of
having neglected to comply with his orders. A postscript to a letter
of February 16, 1821, indicates that he was contemplating printing the
_Hints_ with its Latin original.[128] After March 4, 1822, there is no
further allusion to the satire in his correspondence, and the question
of printing it seems to have been forgotten. Although a few selections,
amounting to 156 lines, were inserted in Dallas’s _Recollections_
(1824), the poem did not appear complete until the _Works_ were
published by Murray in 1831.
_Hints from Horace_, through a curious perversity of judgment, was
always a great favorite with Byron, and was estimated by him as one
of his finest performances. His mature opinion of it and a possible
cause for his preference are given in a letter to Murray, March 1,
1821: “Pray request Mr. Hobhouse to adjust the Latin to the English:
the imitation is so close that I am unwilling to deprive it of its
principal merit--its closeness. I look upon it and my Pulci as by far
the best things of my doing.”[129] On September 23, 1820, when he had
published portions of his masterpiece, _Don Juan_, he said, referring
to the period of _Hints from Horace_: “I wrote better then than
now.”[130] No intelligent reader will be likely to agree with Byron’s
preposterous verdict on his own work, for _Hints from Horace_, although
designed as a sequel to _English Bards_, is so much less vigorous and
brilliant that it suffers decidedly by a comparison with the earlier
satire. The poet, far from the scenes and associations where his rage
had been aroused, has lost the angry inspiration which raised _English
Bards_ above mere ranting, and the white heat of his passion has cooled
with the flight of time. The praise which Byron bestowed upon his poem
is additional testimony to the often repeated assertion that authors
are incompetent critics of their own productions.
Byron’s boastful claim for the accuracy of _Hints from Horace_ as a
version of the _Ars Poetica_ may possibly lead to some misconceptions.
Professor A. S. Cook, in his _Art of Poetry_, has pointed out some
particular passages in which the English poet imitated his model,
and has proved that he followed Horace, in places, with reasonable
closeness. But _Hints from Horace_ is far from being, like Byron’s
version of the first canto of Pulci’s _Morgante Maggiore_, a mere
translation. It must be remembered that Byron, in his secondary title,
defined the _Hints_ in three different ways in as many manuscripts, as
“an Allusion,” as an “Imitation,” and as a “Partial Imitation.” The
fact seems to be that the work conforms, in general, to the structure
and argument of the _Ars Poetica_, in many cases translating literally
the phrasing of the original, but altering and reorganizing the satire
to fit current conditions.
The idea of thus preserving the continuity of Horace’s poem, while
revising and readapting its text, was probably first conceived by
Oldham in his English version of the _Ars Poetica_. In his preface
Oldham stated his design as follows: “I resolved to alter the scene
from Rome to London, and to make Use of English Names of Men, Places,
and Customs, where the Parallel would decently permit, which I
conceived would give a kind of New Air to the Poem, and render it more
agreeable to the Relish of the Present Age.” Accordingly, while keeping
roughly to the text of Horace, he introduced plentiful references to
English poets. Byron also gives his satire a modern setting, but in
so doing, takes more liberties than Oldham. He substitutes Milton for
Homer as the classic example of the epic poet; he makes Shakspere
instead of Æschylus the standard writer of drama. He inserts many
passages, such as the remarks on the Italian Opera, on Methodism,
and on the versification of _Hudibras_, which have no counterparts
in the _Ars Poetica_. Oldham had refrained from satirising his
contemporaries; Byron improves every opportunity for assailing his old
antagonists. Allusions to “Granta” and her Gothic Halls, to “Cam’s
stream,” to Grub-street, and to Parliament make _Hints from Horace_
a thoroughly modern poem. We may apply to it Warburton’s comment on
Pope’s _Imitations_: “Whoever expects a paraphrase of Horace, or a
faithful copy of his genius, or manner of writing ... will be much
disappointed.” Byron restates, without much alteration, the critical
dicta which Horace had established as applicable to poetry in all times
and countries; he takes the plan of the _Ars Poetica_ as a rough guide
for his English adaptation; but he introduces so many digressions and
changes so many names that his satire is firmly stamped with his own
individuality.
There is no ground for supposing that any one of the scores of
translations and imitations of the _Ars Poetica_ had ever met Byron’s
eye[131]; the nearest prototypes in English poetry of _Hints from
Horace_ are probably Pope’s _Essay on Criticism_ and _Epistle to
Augustus_. Certain superficial resemblances have led critics to the
inference that Pope’s _Essay_ is accountable for much of Byron’s
_Hints_. It is remarkable that the two authors, born just a century
apart, should have attempted satires so similar in tone at ages
approximately the same. Pope’s _Essay on Criticism_, composed probably
in 1709, was printed in 1711, a hundred years before Byron wrote _Hints
from Horace_. In this work Pope tried to do for criticism what Horace
had done for poetry: that is, to codify and express in compact form
some generally accepted principles of the art. Pope, however, saw fit
to introduce incidentally some conventional precepts concerning the
subject-matter of literary criticism, borrowing them from Horace,
and Horace’s French imitator, Boileau. Thus in Pope’s _Essay_ are to
be found many of the maxims which Byron transferred into _Hints from
Horace_ from the Latin source. The correspondence between such passages
in the _Essay_ and their counterparts in _Hints from Horace_ has led
Weiser to conclude, from a study of parallel ideas, that Byron’s poem
is based, to a large extent, on Pope’s work.[132] His thesis, however,
has been all but conclusively refuted by Levy, who shows that in the
nine instances of parallelism adduced by Weiser as evidence, the
lines quoted from _Hints from Horace_ are really much closer to lines
from the _Ars Poetica_ than they are to the citations from the _Essay
on Criticism_.[133] Undoubtedly there are couplets in the _Hints_
that recall the _Essay_; but in view of Byron’s specific statement
of his obligation to Horace, it would be rash to assume that Pope’s
influence was more than a general one, the natural result of Byron’s
careful study of his style and manner. Pope’s _Epistle to Augustus_, a
paraphrase of Horace’s Book II, Epistle 1, is, in several respects, not
unlike _Hints from Horace_. It pursues the same method in substituting
English names for Greek and Roman ones, and in replacing classical
references by allusions to contemporary life. Moreover the _Epistle_,
with its judgment on English writers, its criticism of the drama, and
its estimate of the age, is structurally more akin to _Hints from
Horace_ than is ordinarily supposed.
It would be superfluous to attempt to add anything to Professor Cook’s
work in outlining the instances in which Byron merely translated
Horace. A single illustration will suffice to show how the same Latin
lines were treated by Pope, and, later, by Byron. Horace’s counsel:--
“Vos exemplaria Græca
Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna”[134]
is paraphrased roughly in the _Essay on Criticism_ as,
“Be Homer’s works your study and delight,
Read them by day and meditate by night.”[135]
In this case Byron’s version,
“Ye who seek finished models, never cease
By day and night to read the works of Greece,”[136]
is slightly more literal.
Horace’s treatise, technically an epistle, suffers from a want of
coherence. In plan it is merely a group of maxims, with illustrations
and amplifications. _Hints from Horace_ is even more muddled and
formless. It is like a collection of detached thoughts in verse, with
each single observation jotted down almost at haphazard without regard
to what comes before or after. It is no exaggeration to say that
whole sections of the satire might be lifted bodily from one page to
another without perceptibly affecting the continuity of thought. This
defect, obscured in Horace and Pope by the epigrammatic brilliancy of
separate phrases and the lift of “winged words,” has, in Byron’s poem,
few counterbalancing virtues. _Hints from Horace_ lacks the finished
perfection of style which distinguishes the _Ars Poetica_ and the
_Epistle to Augustus_. Its versification is, except in isolated lines,
feeble and careless, far inferior to that of _English Bards_, and even
sinking at times, as in the passage on _Hudibras_,[137] into bare
prosing. One finds in the poem confirmation of Byron’s confession to
Lord Holland in 1812:--“Latterly, I can weave a nine-line stanza faster
than a couplet, for which measure I have not the cunning.”[138] If the
dates furnished by the poet are correct, 722 lines, at least, of the
satire must have been composed in two weeks, a speed which may explain
some of the defects in execution. Certainly, even with due allowance
for Byron’s strange fondness, it must be considered one of his poorest
works in structure, diction, and versification.
Nor can it, viewed merely as a medium for satire, claim a high rank.
It is too obviously didactic in its purpose and too general in its
attacks. It does not even possess the special interest which attaches
to _English Bards_ because of the references to contemporary and famous
writers in the latter work. Only a few lines are devoted to personal
satire, and these seldom do more than repeat or amplify the criticism
embodied in the earlier poem. The result is that _Hints from Horace_,
taken as a satire only, is open to a charge of futility, in that its
motive is not definite and its satire is too scattered. It cannot go
straight to the mark, because it is aiming at no particular target.
As in _English Bards_, a large proportion of the satire is placed in
prose notes. The longest passage of satire in verse is that directed at
Jeffrey. The lines:--
“On shores of Euxine or Ægean sea,
My hate, untraveiled, fondly turned to thee,”
show that Byron’s rage at that critic was still smouldering. Repeating
the bombastic challenge uttered in the postscript to the second edition
of _English Bards_, the satirist taunts Jeffrey with disinclination
or inability to reply to the assault made upon him. It is probable
that the Scotchman never saw this passage in _Hints from Horace_; at
any rate he did not deign to answer Byron’s abuse, and maintained a
discreet silence during the period of the latter’s anger.
The lines on Southey reiterate in a commonplace fashion what Byron
had said before on the same subject, a long prose note dwelling on
the heaviness of Southey’s epics, particularly of _The Curse of
Kehama_ (1810), which had recently appeared. Another elaborate note
is aimed at the “cobbler-laureates,” Bloomfield and Blackett, whom
Byron still mentions with contempt. Scott and Bowles receive some
passing uncomplimentary remarks; Fitzgerald is referred to once as
“Fitz-scribble”; Wordsworth is barely alluded to, and Coleridge is not
spoken of at all. The review of the drama is uninteresting and dull.
Byron persists in his condemnation of the Opera on the ground of its
immorality, although, somewhat inconsistently, he defends plays against
the prudish censure of “Methodistic men.”
An occasional line suggests a similar passage from other English
satirists. Thus Byron’s couplet,
“Satiric rhyme first sprang from selfish spleen.
You doubt--see Dryden, Pope, St. Patrick’s Dean,”
recalls the words of Cowper,
“But (I might instance in St. Patrick’s Dean)
Too often rails to gratify his spleen.”[139]
The reference to Pitt’s skill in coining words may have been remembered
from many jests on the subject in the _Rolliad_ and the Works of Peter
Pindar. The scorn of “French flippancy and German sentiment” re-echoes
the violent opposition of the _Anti-Jacobin_ to the spread of foreign
ideas. A note on “the millennium of the black letter”[140] calls to
mind the hatred of Mathias for antiquaries and searchers for old
manuscripts[141] and another note[142] reinforces Gifford in abusing T.
Vaughan, Esq., the “last of the Cruscanti.”
The single striking feature of _Hints from Horace_ is its summary of
“Life’s little tale,” based upon a corresponding passage in the _Ars
Poetica_, in which Byron describes graphically the career of a young
nobleman under the Georges, from his “simple childhood’s dawning days”
to the time when “Age palsies every limb,” and he sinks into his grave
“crazed, querulous, forsaken, half-forgot.” Despite some obvious
exaggerations and some traces of affected pessimism, the poet was
undoubtedly drawing largely upon his own experience. The tone of the
lines is bitter, unrelieved by sympathy or humor, paralleled in Byron’s
work only in the _Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog_.
_The Curse of Minerva_, composed at approximately the same time as
_Hints from Horace_,--it is dated from the Capuchin Convent at Athens,
March 17, 1811--was actually printed in 1812, but not for public
circulation. The first edition, probably unauthorized, was brought
out in Philadelphia in 1815. Meanwhile the 54 introductory lines,
beginning:--
“Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run,
Along Morea’s hills the setting sun,”
had appeared in Canto III of the _Corsair_ (1814). A fragmentary
version of 111 lines, entitled _The Malediction of Minerva, or the
Athenian Marble-Market_, signed “Steropes” and published in the
_New Monthly Magazine_ for April, 1815, was disowned by Byron as a
“miserable and villanous copy.”[143] The stanzas on Lord Elgin in
_Childe Harold_[144] had already expressed Byron’s condemnation of the
conduct of that nobleman, and the poet doubtless believed that nothing
was to be gained by again airing his indignation. Possibly, too, as
Moore suggests,[145] a remonstrance from Lord Elgin or some of his
relatives may have been an inducement to sacrifice a work which could
add little to his reputation.
_The Curse_, unlike _Hints from Horace_, has the advantage of a
definite and undivided aim. It is an exposure and denunciation of
Lord Elgin, who, appointed in 1799 to the embassy from England at the
Porte, had interested himself in the remains of Greek architecture
and sculpture on the Acropolis and had secured the services of the
Neapolitan painter, Lusieri, to sketch the ruins. In 1801 he obtained
a firman from the Sultan allowing him to carry away “any pieces of
stone with old inscriptions or figures thereon,” and accepting this as
a guaranty against molestation in his project, he at once proceeded,
at his own expense, to dismantle the Parthenon and to ship the finest
specimens to England. Although he left Turkey in 1803, the work
continued through his agents until 1812. His collection, the cost of
accumulating which was estimated at 74,000 pounds, was purchased by the
nation for 35,000 pounds in 1816, and now forms part of the so-called
“Elgin Marbles” in the British Museum.
Although opinions as to the propriety of Elgin’s actions differed
widely at the time, it is now fairly well established that his
foresight prevented the ultimate destruction of the statuary by war
and the elements. Byron’s conclusions, formed on the spot where the
operations were being carried on, have, however, some justification. He
felt that it was the degradation of Greece at the hands of a foreign
despoiler, and he resented the intrusion as interference in the affairs
of a helpless people. In _English Bards_ he had mentioned Elgin, along
with Aberdeen, as fond of “misshaped monuments and maimed antiques,”
and had ridiculed him for making his house a mart,
“For all the mutilated works of art.”
When later he saw the havoc that had been caused at Athens, his mood
changed from raillery to seriousness, and he burst out with fury at
the man whom he considered a wanton plunderer and at the nation which
could tolerate his depredations. Under this stimulus he wrote the
stanzas on Elgin in _Childe Harold_, but his rage found a better outlet
in _The Curse of Minerva_. This satire contains only 312 lines, but
it goes straight to its goal, with a directness and a concentration
which distinguish it above any of the other early satires, even above
_English Bards_, superior as that poem is to it in more important
respects.
The satire has a narrative basis, with a plot which is simple and
unified. The beautiful opening description of an evening at Athens
precedes, and accentuates by contrast, the ensuing indictment by
Minerva of Elgin, the desecrator of all this loveliness. The poet’s
reply to the accusing goddess disclaims any responsibility for the
vandalism on England’s part, and lays the blame on Scotland, Elgin’s
fatherland. Minerva’s answering curse and prophecy extend the scope of
the satire beyond mere personal malice, and give it a broad application
to England’s policy as oppressor and devastator. Her speech ends
somewhat abruptly, and the poem closes.
Although Byron was, by his own admission, “half a Scot by birth, and
bred a whole one,”[146] he joined, in _The Curse of Minerva_, the long
line of satirists from the authors of _Eastward Ho!_ to Cleveland with
his grim couplet,
“Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom;
Not forced him wander but confined him home,”
and to Dr. Johnson, who have jeered at the Scotch and Scotland. Byron’s
antipathy for his early home evidently developed from his quarrel
with the Scotch reviewers. _English Bards_ had contained scattered
references to “Northern wolves” and to the “oat-fed phalanx” of the
critic clan, and had alluded scornfully to the children of Dun-edin
who “write for food--and feed because they write.” In _The Curse of
Minerva_, a new occasion for dislike having arisen, the attack on
the Scotch is more vicious and intolerant. Many passages have their
counterparts in portions of Churchill’s _Prophecy of Famine_ (1763),
a pastoral in the form of a dialogue, with the motto, “Nos patriam
fugimus,” ingeniously applied to the Scotch in the translation, “We
all get out of our country as fast as we can.” Churchill, who, it will
be remembered, hated the Scotch critic, Smollett, as ferociously as
Byron hated Jeffrey, had been aroused also by the growing influence
of Bute and other Scotchmen at the court of George III, and his
poem, accordingly, became a severe political invective, interspersed
with vilification of the Scotch climate and the Scotch people. It is
interesting to compare Churchill’s description of the barrenness and
dampness of Scotland with Byron’s picture of that country as “a land
of meanness, sophistry, and mist.” The former poet calls Scotchmen
“Nature’s bastards”; Byron refers to Scotland as “that bastard land.”
Both writers have caustic lines on the shrewdness, importunity, and
avarice of the Scotch people, wherever they settle. Although the
similarities between the satires warrant no deduction, there is a
possibility that Byron, who undoubtedly had read the _Prophecy of
Famine_, may have recollected certain passages in a poem the spirit of
which is very like his own.[147]
Basing his argument chiefly on the fact that a couplet of Pope[148] is
parodied in Byron’s lines,
“‘Blest paper-credit!’ who shall dare to sing?
It clogs like lead Corruption’s weary wing,”
Weiser has endeavored to prove that Byron borrowed something from
Pope’s _Epistle to Lord Bathurst_. A verbal comparison of the two
passages in question fails to bring out any striking resemblance.
Pope continues with a comment on the ease with which paper money may
be used in bribery; Byron, after quoting Pope, does not touch on this
point, and his lines seem to be merely a passing quotation, not closely
connected with what comes before or after. In no other place in _The
Curse of Minerva_ are there phrases which have even a remote likeness
to the language of Pope’s _Epistle_. On such grounds as Weiser advances
it might be shown that Byron, in _Beppo_, is imitating Cowper, because
he quotes a line from that poet.
Byron’s attack on Lord Elgin in _Childe Harold_ had been animated by a
love for Greece and a pity for her forlorn state among the nations, as
well as by resentment of England’s cold-blooded attitude in allowing
such depredations. In the passage Byron had covered Elgin with abuse:--
“Cold as the crags upon his native coast,
His mind as barren and his head as hard,
Is he whose head conceived, whose hand prepared,
Aught to displace Athena’s poor remains.”[149]
These lines were published in March, 1812. In 1813, James and Horace
Smith, famous through their _Rejected Addresses_, appeared again as
authors in _Horace in London_, a series of imitations of the first two
books of the _Odes_ of Horace. In this volume, Ode XV, _The Parthenon_,
modelled fairly closely in plot on Horace’s _Prophecy of Nereus_,
treats of the controversy concerning Elgin. A clear reference to Byron
in the poem makes it certain that the Smiths had read _Childe Harold_
and that they concurred with his expressed disapproval of Elgin’s
conduct.
_The Parthenon_, owing perhaps to mere coincidence, perhaps to the
possibility that the Smiths may have had access to _The Curse of
Minerva_ in manuscript, is in its outlines and especially in the
general features of Minerva’s curse, singularly like Byron’s satire.
The Smiths, following Horace, describe Elgin’s ship as hastening
homeward, laden with the “guilty prize.” Suddenly Minerva rises, like
Nereus, from the sea and, with the language of a prophet, pronounces a
curse on the destroyer, predicting that Elgin will suffer misfortunes
and go down through the ages remembered for his shamelessness. The
poem, like Byron’s, closes with Minerva speaking. Certain lines in _The
Parthenon_:--
“Goth, Vandal, Moslem, had their flags unfurl’d
Around my still unviolated fane,
Two thousand summers had with dews impearl’d
Its marble heights nor left a mouldering stain;
’T was thine to ruin all that all had spared in vain,”[150]
epitomize a longer passage in _The Curse of Minerva_.[151] In _Childe
Harold_ Byron had made no mention of the fact that Elgin’s marriage
had been dissolved by act of Parliament in 1818, but in _The Curse of
Minerva_ he made the goddess allude to the domestic scandal. A similar
passage is introduced into Minerva’s prophecy in _The Parthenon_. These
resemblances in structure and sometimes in phrasing may, of course,
have occurred independently, or may have arisen from the chance that
Byron, as well as the Smiths, was thinking of Horace’s _Ode_. On the
other hand, there is a possibility that the Smiths, already familiar
with the lines on Elgin in _Childe Harold_, may have read _The Curse of
Minerva_ in manuscript and have unconsciously reproduced some of its
features in their poem.
By a natural transition Minerva, in Byron’s satire, leaves Elgin and
turns to England in the words,
“Hers were the deeds that taught her lawless son
To do what oft Britannia’s self had done.”
This introduces a survey of England’s foreign affairs, designed to
expose that country’s despotic policy towards her weaker rivals and
dependents. The goddess treats briefly of England’s treachery to
Denmark in the battle of Copenhagen, of the recent uprisings of the
natives in India, and of the misfortunes of the Peninsular War in Spain
and Portugal, and finally, touching upon domestic matters, uncovers
the distress and misery of the laboring classes in England and the
inefficiency of the government in dealing with internal problems. She
ends with a picture of the Furies waving their kindled brands above the
distracted realm, while ascending fires shake their “red shadow o’er
the startled Thames.” Such a fate, says Minerva, and Byron with her, is
deserved by a nation which had lit pyres “from Tagus to the Rhine.”
This passage, commonplace enough in its style, is significant in that
it shows Byron almost for the first time taking a keen and active
interest in politics, and posing as an adverse critic of England’s
foreign policy. It was easy for the man who could condemn England’s
conduct towards Denmark and India to develop into an outspoken radical.
In neglecting and partly disowning _The Curse of Minerva_, Byron was
probably acting with good judgment. It is assuredly unworthy of the
author of _Childe Harold_. Only the opening passage is notable for
its genuine poetry, and the satire, except in structure, is inferior
to _English Bards_. It is equally true, however, that it is superior
in most respects to _Hints from Horace_ and _The Waltz_. _The Curse
of Minerva_, with its narrative basis, is a variation from the other
early classical satires; but it has the same elaborate machinery of
notes, the same method of direct attack--although in this instance
it is conveyed through the mouth of a third character--and the same
extravagance and bitterness of tone. In managing the heroic couplet,
Byron never surpassed his skill in _English Bards_. After 1811 his
acquired ability to handle other measures withdrew his attention from
the metre of Pope, with the result that his versification in the
ensuing classical satires shows signs of deterioration and weakness. It
is to this period of decline that _Hints from Horace_ and _The Curse of
Minerva_ belong.
CHAPTER VI
THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION
During the seven years between the completion of _The Curse of Minerva_
and the publication of _Beppo_, Byron’s contributions to satire were,
on the whole, sporadic, ephemeral, and unworthy of his genius. He
composed in this period only one long formal satire, _The Waltz_, and
that appeared anonymously, to be disowned by its author. The remaining
satiric product may be divided into three groups: political epigrams
and squibs, like _Windsor Poetics_, many of them printed in the
newspapers, others sent in letters to friends; jocular and fragmentary
_jeux d’esprit_, often, like _The Devil’s Drive_, semi-political; and
ironical and invective verses dealing with his domestic troubles,
illustrated by _A Sketch_. Nearly all are timely impromptus, to few of
which he gave careful revision. The period is plainly transitional,
for it marks the gradual change in Byron’s satiric method from the
formal vituperation of _English Bards_ to the colloquial raillery of
_Beppo_. Little by little he forsakes the heroic couplet for other
measures; more and more he diverges in practice from the principles
of his masters, Pope and Gifford. As he grows more experienced and
more mature, he tends to employ mockery as well as abuse, and in this
development is to be seen an approach to the manner and spirit of _Don
Juan_.
The causes for the comparative unproductivity in satire of this period
in Byron’s life are by no means difficult to discover. The years which
followed his return from abroad saw his dramatic entrance into London
society, his association with leaders in politics and literature, his
engagement to Miss Milbanke and eventual marriage to her on January
2, 1815, and his separation from her in 1816. Before 1812 he had been
a somewhat isolated author; now he was a prominent and much discussed
personage, busy with duties and engagements. It is true that even in
the midst of these exciting days he did not cease writing; but his
interest had been turned to the verse romance, popularized in England
by Scott, and his literary work resulted in _The Giaour_ and the
narrative poems which followed it in rapid succession. Engaged in so
many pleasurable pursuits, the poet had small inclination for sustained
effort, and contented himself with pouring forth, with astonishing
facility and fluency, these melodramatic Eastern tales. Possibly, too,
his circumstances were so fortunate up to 1816 that he did not resort
instinctively, as he did later, to satire as a means of voicing his
dissatisfaction with men and things. It was not until he had been
driven from his native land by the condemnation of his countrymen that
his satiric spirit became again a dominant mood.
To comprehend the development of Byron’s political views, it is
necessary to understand the conditions under which he formed them.
After two previous attacks of insanity, George III became permanently
demented in 1810, and the Regency Bill, making Prince George actual
ruler of the nation, was passed on February 5, 1810. His well-known
vicious propensities and illicit amours had made him unpopular, and
when, on February 23, 1812, he first appeared in public as sovereign,
he was coldly received. It had been generally supposed that with the
power in his hands, he would reward the Whigs who had stood by him so
faithfully through his many difficulties, but after vain efforts to
organize a coalition ministry, he appointed Lord Liverpool as Prime
Minister on June 9, 1812, and the Tories retained complete control
over affairs of state. This action, equivalent to treachery, made the
Regent a target for Whig abuse, and that party never ceased reviling
the ruler who had been disloyal to their cause.
Byron at Cambridge had rather lukewarmly supported Whig doctrines, and
when he took his seat in the House of Lords, he selected one of the
neutral benches. Undoubtedly the attack upon him by the Whig _Edinburgh
Review_ inclined him to look askance on the party of which he was
temperamentally a member; and it will be remembered that in _English
Bards_ he had assailed Lord Holland and other prominent Whigs. Once in
London, however, he allied himself with the opposition, and soon became
a regular visitor at Holland House. His three speeches in Parliament
were in advocacy of liberal measures, the first, on February 27, 1812,
being delivered in resistance to a bill instituting special penalties
against the frame-breakers of Nottingham, and the second being a plea
for Catholic emancipation. Scott’s suggestion that Byron’s liberalism
was due “to the pleasure it afforded him as a vehicle of displaying
his wit and satire against individuals in office” is not needed to
explain the latter’s preference for Whig policies, for the poet would
have joined himself inevitably to the more progressive and more radical
party. Although his political beliefs at this time were somewhat vague
and occasionally inconsistent, he was by nature an individualist and an
opponent of conservatism. His espousal of liberal views may, however,
have been assisted by his intimacy with Moore, Leigh Hunt, and other
radical writers.
In reply to Byron’s attack on him in _English Bards_, Moore had sent
the satirist a letter on January 1, 1810, preparatory to a challenge
unless reparation were offered. Fortunately the note did not reach
Byron until his landing in England, when the Irishman’s wrath had
cooled and he himself was in a repentant mood. A short correspondence
led to the meeting of the two, with Campbell and Rogers, at the house
of the latter in November, 1811, where the difference was amicably
adjusted. On December 11th Byron invited Moore to visit him at
Newstead, and though Moore found it impossible to accept, the poets
soon became good friends.[152] It was not until the formation of
this friendship that Byron began to take any active part in current
politics; during the rest of his life, however, he was linked with
Moore as a satirist on the Whig side and was, to a considerable extent,
influenced by the latter’s work.[153]
As we have seen, Moore had failed in his attempts at formal satire; but
in 1812, shortly after his acquaintance with Byron began, he commenced
his persistent and stinging gibes at the Regent and his coterie. On
February 13, 1812, the Prince sent his notorious letter to the Duke
of York, asking for Whig support, and Moore’s admirable verse parody
was soon in private circulation. This was one of the earliest, and
certainly one of the most delightful, of the many brilliant satires
with which Moore, for years, amused the town. In March, 1813, under
the pen-name of “Thomas Brown, the Younger,” he published _Intercepted
Letters; or the Two-penny Postbag_, in which he borrowed the structure
of the anonymous _Groans of the Talents_ by pretending to have
discovered a number of letters from various celebrated personages.
Moore’s letters, eight in all, are in rapid anapestic and octosyllabic
metres, and are unusually bright and piquant, full of allusions to the
scandalous gossip of court life. Although Moore continued his satires
in numerous verses of a similar type, he never excelled this first
success.
In March, 1812, Byron joined Moore in assailing the Regent. In the Whig
_Morning Chronicle_ for March 7th was printed a short epigram without
a signature, called _A Sympathetic Address to a Young Lady_. The lines
read as follows:--
“Weep, daughter of a Royal line,
A Sire’s disgrace, a realm’s decay;
Ah! happy! if each tear of thine
Could wash a father’s fault away!
Weep--for thy tears are Virtue’s tears--
Auspicious to these suffering isles;
And be each drop, in future years,
Repaid thee by thy people’s smiles.”
The poem refers to an incident which had taken place at Carlton House
a few days before, when the Princess Charlotte had burst into tears
on learning that her royal father was intending to desert his Whig
adherents. No one, apparently, suspected that Byron was the author;
but in the second edition of the _Corsair_ (February, 1814) the verses
appeared as _Lines to a Lady Weeping_, publicly avowed by him. His
acknowledgment brought upon him a storm of abuse from Tory papers--the
_Courier_, the _Morning Post_, and the _Sun_--and a discussion ensued
entirely out of proportion to the merit of the epigram which had
excited it.[154] “How odd,” wrote Byron to Murray, “that _eight lines_
should have given birth, I really think, to _eight thousand_.”[155] It
is probable that no single production of Byron’s aroused more hostile
comment at the time of its appearance.
Byron’s attitude towards the Regent at this period exposes him to
a charge of double-dealing. In June, 1812, three months after the
composition of the epigram, he met the Prince at a ball in an interview
in which the two men conversed on Scott and his poetry. In relating the
talk to Scott, Byron mentions that the Regent’s opinions were conveyed
“with a tone and taste which gave me a very high idea of his abilities
and accomplishments, which I had hitherto considered as confined to
_manners_, certainly superior to those of any living _gentleman_.”[156]
It is probable that Byron was a little flattered by the Prince’s
condescension; but his own tactlessness in acknowledging his epigram
prevented any further intercourse, and he subsequently became the
Regent’s open enemy.
Jeaffreson suggests that Byron’s avowal of the _Lines to a Lady
Weeping_ may have been hastened by his sympathy with Leigh Hunt,[157]
who, with his brother, John Hunt, had been tried for a libel on the
Regent printed in their _Examiner_ for March 12, 1812, and sentenced to
two years’ imprisonment and a fine of 500 pounds. Byron saw a kindred
spirit in Hunt, and, after meeting him in prison in May, 1813, became
his close friend. Hunt, on his part, stood by Byron in his _Examiner_
at the time of the latter’s separation from his wife, and dedicated to
him his _Rimini_ (1816). Byron, after the unfortunate circumstances
connected with _The Liberal_, modified his lofty opinion of Hunt; but
in 1813 the latter was, to Moore and Byron, simply a martyr to liberal
principles, a man who had been unjustly persecuted and condemned.[158]
There is, however, no evidence to justify Jeaffreson’s conclusion.
In his satire on “the first gentleman of Europe,” Byron was both less
prolific and more savage than Moore. His satiric spirit, as usual, was
stimulated by particular incidents which offered an opportunity for
timely comment. It had been ascertained accidentally that Charles I
had been buried in the vault with Henry VIII; and on April 1, 1813,
the Regent was present at the opening of the coffins containing the
ashes of the two sovereigns. This episode Byron made the theme of two
short satires: _Windsor Poetics_, circulated in manuscript among his
friends, but not printed until 1819; and the lines _On a Royal Visit to
the Vaults_, published first in 1904. The point in both poems is the
same--that George combines the vices of his two predecessors:
“Charles to his people, Henry to his wife,--
In him the double tyrant starts to life.”
In mentioning _Windsor Poetics_, the better of the two poems, to Moore,
Byron confessed, with some discernment: “It is too _farouche_; but,
truth to say, my satires are not very playful.”[159]
The vindictive seriousness of Byron’s satire, as contrasted with
Moore’s playfulness, is nowhere better shown than in the _Condolatory
Address to Sarah, Countess of Jersey_, printed without his permission
in the _Champion_, July 31, 1814, after it had been sent to the lady
herself in a letter of May 29. Once a favorite of the Regent’s, Lady
Jersey had incurred his dislike by her kindness to the deserted
Princess of Wales, with the result that the Prince returned to Mrs.
Mee, the painter, a miniature of the Countess, and announced his
intention of ignoring her. Byron, who had been more than once the
guest of Lady Jersey, saw a chance to strike a blow in her defense by
assailing the Regent, and his lines on that ruler are scathing:
“If he, that Vain Old Man, whom truth admits
Heir of his father’s crown, and of his wits,
If his corrupted eye and withered heart,
Could with thy gentle image bear to part;
That tasteless shame be _his_, and ours the grief
To gaze on Beauty’s band without its chief.”
In satire of this sort there is nothing sportive or delicate; it is
sheer invective of the kind which Byron had used on Clarke and was to
employ against Castlereagh.
Byron never became reconciled to the Regent, not even when, as George
IV, the latter ascended the throne. Indeed what is probably the poet’s
most bitter estimate of his sovereign was sent in a letter to Moore on
September 17, 1821--the lines now entitled _The Irish Avatar_. Queen
Caroline had died on August 7, 1821, shortly after the failure of her
husband to secure a divorce, and not over a week later, the king was
feasted with regal pomp at Dublin by the servile Irish office-holders.
The combination of circumstances was fit material for satire, and Byron
spoke out in stanzas that ring with rage and contempt:--
“Shout, drink, feast, and flatter! Oh! Erin, how low
Wert thou sunk by misfortune and tyranny, till
Thy welcome of tyrants had plunged thee below
The depth of thy deep in a deeper gulf still.”
The satire in this poem is as spontaneous and sincere as any Byron ever
wrote; it is passionate, convincing, laden with noble scorn. The two
methods of irony and invective are admirably mingled, without a trace
of humor.
We have already noticed some early poems in which Byron had evinced
a liking for uncommon rhymes. In the humorous _Farewell to Malta_,
written May 26, 1811, and printed in 1816, he employed octosyllabics,
with such rhymes as: yawn sirs--dancers, fault’s in--waltzing, prate
is--gratis. _The Devil’s Drive_, an irregular and amorphous fragment,
broken off on December 9, 1813, also contains some extraordinary
rhymes; but it deserves attention especially because it anticipates,
to some extent, the thought and manner of _Don Juan_. It is styled a
sequel to _The Devil’s Walk_, a fanciful ballad composed by Southey
and Coleridge in 1799, but attributed by Byron to Porson, the great
Cambridge scholar. Byron’s poem, a rambling and discursive satire, is
crammed with allusions to current events, prophetic of the views which
he was to advocate during the remainder of his career. It describes
a night visit of the Devil to his favorites on earth, in the course
of which he pauses to survey the battle-field of Leipzig, and then,
passing on to England, investigates a Methodist chapel, the Houses of
Parliament, a royal ball, and other supposed resorts of his disciples.
Byron’s portrayal of the horrors of war is probably his first satiric
expression of what was to become a frequent theme in his later work,
and especially in _Don Juan_. As the Devil gazes down with glee at the
bloody plain of Leipzig, the satirist remarks:
“Not often on earth had he seen such a sight,
Nor his work done half so well:
For the field ran so red with the blood of the dead,
That it blushed like the waves of Hell!”[160]
The visit of the Devil to Parliament, with the poet’s comment on the
spectacle there, is reminiscent of some sections of the _Rolliad_. The
satire concludes with some caustic characterizations of Tory statesmen,
some observations on the immorality of round dancing, and a picture of
sixty scribbling reviewers, brewing damnation for authors.
The significant feature of _The Devil’s Drive_ is the mocking spirit
which animates the poem. Although the humor is sometimes clumsy and
cheap, and the style formless and crude, the underlying tone is no
longer ferocious, and the satire is no longer mere invective. The work
is practically the only satire of Byron’s before _Beppo_ in which are
mingled the cool scorn, the bizarre wit, and the grotesque realism
which were to be blended in _Don Juan_. The poem, too, is proof that
by 1814, at least, Byron was firmly fixed in most of his political
opinions. He had shown his dislike for Castlereagh and the Regent; he
had expressed himself as opposed to all war and bloodshed, except in a
righteous cause; and he had become an advanced liberal thinker, ready
to oppose all unprogressive measures.
After the publication of the _Corsair_ in January, 1814, Byron
announced his intention of quitting poetry.[161] His resolution,
however, was short-lived, for on April 10th he wrote Murray that he
had just finished an “ode on the fall of Napoleon.”[162] Byron had,
from the first, been interested in the career of Napoleon, with whom
he felt, apparently, an instinctive sympathy. The poet’s expressed
judgments of the Emperor seem, however, to indicate several changes in
sentiment. In _Childe Harold_ he had called him “Gaul’s Vulture,” and
had spoken of “one bloated chief’s unwholesome reign”; in his Journal
for November 17, 1813, he said: “He (Napoleon) has been a _Héros de
Roman_ of mine--on the Continent--I don’t want him here.”[163] The
_Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte_, composed in a single day after the news
of the abdication of Fontainebleau, is a severe attack on the fallen
Emperor, in which Byron, reproaching him for not having committed
suicide, terms him “ill-minded man,” “Dark Spirit,” and “throneless
homicide,” ending with an uncomplimentary contrast between him and
Washington. Nevertheless, when the report of Waterloo reached him,
Byron cried: “I am damned sorry for it.” In three poems written shortly
after--_Napoleon’s Farewell_, _Lines from the French_, and _An Ode from
the French_--he shows a kind of admiration for the Corsican. Finally
came the splendid stanzas on Napoleon in _Childe Harold_, III,[164]
ending with the personal reference, implying that Byron’s own faults
and virtues were those of the French emperor and exile.
The one long classical satire during this period is _The Waltz_, which
has to do primarily with society. On October 18, 1812, Byron wrote
Murray: “I have a poem on Waltzing for you, of which I make you a
present; but it must be anonymous. It is in the old style of _English
Bards, and Scotch Reviewers_.”[165] The satire was printed in the
spring of 1813, but was so coldly received that Byron, on April 21,
1813, begged Murray to deny the report that he was the author of “a
certain malicious publication on Waltzing.”[166] The whole affair
leaves Byron under the suspicion of duplicity.
The poem was published with a motto from the Aeneid:
“Qualis in Eurotæ ripis, aut per juga Cynthi,
Exercet Diana choros,”
and with a prefatory letter from “Horace Hornem, Esq.,” the professed
author. This imaginary personage is a country gentleman of a Midland
county, who has married a middle-aged Maid of Honor. During a winter in
town with his wife’s relative, the Countess of Waltzaway, Hornem sees
his spouse at a ball, waltzing with an hussar, and, after several vain
attempts to master the new dance himself, composes the satire in its
honor, “with the aid of William Fitzgerald, Esq.--and a few hints from
Dr. Busby.” In the poem, however, Byron apparently makes no effort to
fit the language or style to this fictitious figure.
Although the waltz, brought originally from Germany, was, in 1812,
steadily winning its way to acceptance by the more fashionable element
of society, its introduction was still meeting with opposition from
many quarters. Byron, as censor of the Italian Opera and of Little’s
_Poems_, was certainly not inconsistent in disapproving of the foreign
dance on the ground of its immodesty. Doubtless, too, his own lameness,
which prevented him from participating in the amusement, had some
influence on his attitude. He had denounced the dance in _English
Bards_ in the line,
“Now in loose waltz the thin-clad daughters leap,”
and in Section 25 of _The Devil’s Drive_, he had made the Devil’s
fairest disciples waltzers, and had quoted Satan’s words:
“Should I introduce these revels among my younger devils,
They would all turn perfectly carnal.”
Byron’s declaration that _The Waltz_ is in the style of _English Bards_
is not altogether exact, for though the metre of the two satires is the
same and the same machinery of prose notes is used in both poems, the
first-named work has a kind of jocularity which distinguishes it from
the more severe earlier production. _The Waltz_, moreover, has some
features of the mock-heroic, although the conventional structure of
that _genre_ is not made conspicuous. Thus it begins with an apostrophe
to “Terpsichore, Muse of the many-twinkling feet,” and later, in true
heroic manner, the author exclaims,
“O muse of Motion! say
How first to Albion found thy Waltz her way?”
The personification of “Waltz,” carried out for a time in such
phrases as “Nimble Nymph,” “Imperial Waltz,” “Endearing Waltz,” and
“Voluptuous Waltz,” is, however, often disregarded or forgotten. She
is described as a lovely stranger, “borne on the breath of Hyperborean
gales,” from Hamburg to England, and welcomed there by the “daughters
of the land.” At this point the mock-heroic element ceases to be
noticeable, and the rest of the poem is devoted to an exposure of the
iniquity which the new dance had brought into English high society.
It is in _The Waltz_ that Byron for the first time manifests the
ability to deal with political questions in a lighter vein, in a manner
something like that of Moore. He alludes, for instance, to the Regent’s
well-known preference for ladies of a mature age:
“And thou, my Prince! whose sovereign taste and will
It is to love the lovely beldames still.”
This topic Moore touched upon frequently, particularly in _Intercepted
Letters_, II, from Major M’Mahon, the Regent’s parasite and pander, and
in _The Fudge Family in Paris_, Letter X, in which Biddy Fudge says,
“The Regent loves none but old women you know.”
A note to line 162 of _The Waltz_ has a joking reference to the
Regent’s whiskers, an adornment which had excited Moore’s merriment,
especially in his “rejected drama,” _The Book_, appended to Letter VII
of _Intercepted Letters_. The fact that the dance is an importation
from Germany allows Byron to sum up ironically what England owes to
that country:
“A dozen dukes, some kings, a Queen--and Waltz.”
The body of the satire is occupied with a description of the dance
itself, given in lines which are too often more prurient and
suggestive than the waltz could possibly have been. Byron is here
surely not at his best, and his coarseness is not extenuated by his
alleged moral purpose. Weiser’s judgment that _The Waltz_ is the ripest
of Byron’s youthful poems will, to most critics, seem unwarranted.
There is barely a line of the satire which is either witty or
epigrammatic; the style is low and the language is cheap in tone; the
versification is lifeless and dull. The one thing for which it is to be
noted is the spirit of mockery sometimes displayed, and the tendency to
jest rather than to inveigh.
The competition for a suitable dedicatory address for the reopening
of Drury Lane Theatre in 1812,[167] memorable as the occasion for the
skilful parodies contained in the _Rejected Addresses_[168] of James
and Horace Smith, led Byron also to compose a rather extraordinary
satire. The genuine address of Dr. Busby (1755–1838) had been rejected,
along with those of the other competitors; but on October 14th, two
or three evenings after the formal opening of the theatre, Busby’s
son endeavored to recite his father’s poem from one of the boxes,
and nearly started a riot. Byron thereupon wrote a _Parenthetical
Address, by Dr. Plagiary_, which was printed in the _Morning Chronicle_
for October 23, 1812. This satire, which Byron called “a parody of
a peculiar kind,” is noteworthy only in that it selects lines and
phrases from Busby’s address, and connecting them by satiric comments,
manages to make the original seem ridiculous.
The story of Byron’s love affairs between 1812 and 1817 has been so
often related that any presentation of the details here is unnecessary,
especially since in only one case did his amours lead him to satire.
According to Medwin, Lady Caroline Lamb, the fickle and incorrigible
lady who so violently sought Byron for a lover, called one day at the
poet’s apartments, and finding him away, wrote in a volume of _Vathek_
the words “Remember me.” When Byron discovered the warning, he added to
it two stanzas of burning invective, concluding,
“Remember thee! Aye, doubt it not.
Thy husband too shall think of thee;
By neither shalt thou be forgot,
Thou false to him, thou fiend to me!”
Several theories have been advanced to explain the causes and results
of Byron’s unfortunate marriage, but the main facts seem to be simple
enough. In 1813 he proposed to Miss Milbanke, a cousin of Lady
Caroline Lamb’s by marriage, and was refused. The intimacy of the two
continued, however, and a second offer, made in 1814, was accepted.
The wedding, which took place on January 2, 1815, was accompanied by
some inauspicious omens, but the honeymoon, spent at Halnaby, was
apparently happy. Byron’s financial circumstances were straitened,
and, on his return to London, he was pursued by creditors. He himself
was irritable, unsuited for a quiet domestic life, and Lady Byron was
probably over-puritanical. At any rate, whoever may have been the
more at fault, his wife, soon after the opening of 1816, left him,
took steps to have his mental condition examined, and later demanded
a separation. In this crisis of his life, public opinion sided with
Lady Byron, and the poet became a social outcast.[169] The deed of
separation was signed on April 22, 1816, and on the 25th of the same
month, Byron left England forever.
During the arrangements for the separation Byron showed no resentment
towards his wife. Indeed he wrote Moore on March 8, 1816:--“I do not
believe--that there ever was a better, or even a brighter, a kinder,
or a more amiable and agreeable being than Lady Byron.”[170] His wrath
fell heavily, however, on Mrs. Clermont, Lady Byron’s old governess,
who had come to stay with her mistress when the trouble began. On
her Byron laid the responsibility for the events which followed. He
thought her a spy on his actions, accused her of having broken open
his desk in order to read his private papers, and considered her an
impudent meddler. As he signed the deed of separation, he muttered,
“This is Mrs. Clermont’s work.” His full rage against her burst out in
_A Sketch_, finished March 29, 1816, and published, through some one’s
indiscretion, in the Tory _Champion_ for April 14th. Fifty copies of
this satire were printed for private circulation, with Byron’s poem
_Fare Thee Well_, addressed to his wife. The appearance of these verses
in the newspapers started a violent controversy in the daily press,
carried out on party lines.
_A Sketch_, containing 104 lines in heroic couplets, is a coarse and
scurrilous attack on Mrs. Clermont, beginning with a short account of
her life,
“Born in the garret, in the kitchen bred,
Promoted thence to deck her mistress’ head,”
and closing with a terrible imprecation,
“May the strong curse of crush’d affections light
Back on thy bosom with reflected blight!
And make thee, in thy leprosy of mind,
As loathsome to thyself as to mankind!”
Perhaps no more savage satire was ever levelled at a woman; it is
even more venomous than Pope’s assault on Lady Montagu in what Mr.
Birrell calls “the most brutal lines ever written by man of woman.”
Murray wrote Byron, after showing the satire to Rogers, Canning, and
Frere:--“They have all seen and admired the lines; they agree that you
have produced nothing better; that satire is your forte; and so in each
class as you choose to adopt it.”[171] These men, however, were active
supporters of Byron, and their praise seems extravagant. Whatever his
provocation may have been--and it was probably great--Byron did not
enhance his fame by this barbarous tirade.
In the very midst of his anger the poet pauses in the poem to pay his
wife a tribute and to assert his love for her; but not long after he
turned to assail Lady Byron herself. Indeed he is said to have attached
an epigram to the deed of separation,
“A year ago you swore, fond she!
‘To love, to honour,’ and so forth:
Such was the vow you pledged to me,
And here’s exactly what ’tis worth.”
In September, 1816, when he was in Switzerland, he wrote the _Lines on
Hearing that Lady Byron Was Ill_, in which he fairly gloats over her in
her sickness. No one can mistake the meaning of the line,
“I have had many foes, but none like thee,”
or of the charge,
“Of thy virtues didst thou make a vice,
Trafficking with them in a purpose cold,
For present anger and for future gold.”
These stanzas, however, were not printed until 1832. In the meantime
Byron had continued the attack on his wife in _Childe Harold_, III,
117, and IV, 130–138, in _Don Juan_, and in an occasional short epigram
sent to friends in England. There can be no doubt that as the years
went by and his attempts at reconciliation were thwarted, he grew
thoroughly embittered against her.
Byron’s habits of thought were so frequently satirical that it was
natural for him to introduce satire even into poems which were
obviously of a different character. In his preface to _Childe Harold_
he announced his intention of following Beattie in giving full rein to
his inclination, and being “either droll or pathetic, descriptive or
sentimental, tender or satirical” as the mood came to him. In that poem
the moralizing and didactic elements often closely approach satire,
and there are some passages of genuine invective, a few of which have
already been indicated.
In the first canto a visit to Cintra leads Byron into an indictment of
the Convention of Cintra (1808), signed by Kellerman and Wellesley,
by the terms of which the French troops in Portugal were permitted to
evacuate with artillery, cavalry, and equipment. This agreement was
regarded by the home officials as equivalent to treason, and the men
responsible were subjected to some rigorous criticism. Byron took the
popular side of the question in saying,
“Ever since that martial synod met,
Brittannia sickens, Cintra, at thy name.”[172]
This patriotic mood seems, however, to have been a passing one. In
after years he was not inclined to take the part of his country. Of
a different sort are the stanzas on a London Sunday[173] which, in
Moore’s opinion, disfigure the poem. Canto I has also some satiric
animadversions upon women, notably the lines,
“Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,
And Mammon wins his way where Seraphs might despair.”[174]
In the final version of the first two cantos some stanzas of a satiric
tone were omitted, among them lines on Frere, Carr, and Wellesley in
Canto I, and passages on Elgin, Hope, Gell, and the “gentle Dilettanti”
in Canto II.
A few ephemeral verses of this period still remain unnoticed: an
occasional epistle in rhyme to Moore or Murray; four brief squibs on
Lord Thurlow’s poetry; and several unimportant epigrams on trivial
subjects. No one of them is significant as literature, and they may
well be passed by without comment.
In a last glance at Byron’s satiric production from 1811 to 1818 we
perceive that, with the single exception of _Hints from Horace_, an
avowed imitation, his work was directed towards definite ends. He was
little given to vague denunciation; on the contrary, in touch as he was
with current events and a keen observer of what was going on around
him, he aimed, in his satire, at specific evils and follies. It is
interesting, too, that most of his work after his return from abroad
was journalistic and transitory, hastily conceived and carelessly
composed. At the same time there are signs of a change in spirit.
Though he still continues to burst out into invective on provocation,
he is beginning to recognize the value of humor and mockery. More and
more he is employing new metrical forms, and neglecting the heroic
couplet for freer and more varied measures.
When Byron left England in 1816, he had been taught much by experience
and had acquired some maturity of judgment. To some extent, though
not entirely, he had outgrown the affectation and morbid pessimism of
his boyhood. In a stern school he had learned many lessons, and, as a
result, his satire from the time of his voluntary exile until his death
displays a different spirit. When at last he discovered an artistic
form and style in which to embody it, it showed a decided gain in merit
and originality over _English Bards_, which, in 1817, was still the
best satire he had written.
CHAPTER VII
THE ITALIAN INFLUENCE
Shortly after the momentous year 1816, an extraordinary development
took place in the form and spirit of Byron’s satiric work in verse. Up
to this date, as we have seen, his satires of any literary value had
followed, as a rule, the general plan and manner used by the authors
of such typical productions as the _Dunciad_, the _Rosciad_, and the
_Baviad_. In some ephemeral verses, it is true, he had shown signs
of breaking away from the English classical tradition; but few, if
any, of these unimportant occasional poems had been printed in book
form. They had appeared in newspapers or in letters to correspondents,
and Byron himself would have made no claim for their permanence. His
published satires, then, had deviated little from the standard set by
Pope and Gifford, a fact all the more remarkable because his work in
the other branches of literature in which he had distinguished himself
had revealed a wide discrepancy between his utterances as a critic and
his practice as a poet. The enthusiastic and often extravagant eulogist
of Pope had been the author of the romantic _Childe Harold_ and _The
Giaour_. In one field of letters, however, Byron had preserved some
consistency; before 1818, considered as a satirist, he must be classed
as one of the numerous disciples of the great Augustan.
The publication of _Beppo_, February 28, 1818, may serve roughly
to denote the visible turning-point between the old era and the
new one to come. It is significant that this poem is written,
not in the characteristically English heroic couplet, but in the
thoroughly foreign ottava rima. Responsive to an altered and agreeable
environment, Byron found in Italy and its literature an inspiration
which affected him even more profoundly than it had Goethe only a few
decades before. The results of this influence, shown to some extent
in his dramas though more decidedly in his satires, justify terming
the years from 1817 until his death his Italian period. A mere mention
of its contribution to satire indicates its importance: it produced
_Beppo_, _The Vision of Judgment_, and _Don Juan_. Of these poems,
_Beppo_ is, strictly speaking, a satiric novella; _The Vision of
Judgment_ is a travesty; and _Don Juan_ is an “epic satire.” They
are, however, all three closely related: first, in that, unlike most
of the earlier satires, they are narrative in method; second, in that
they are infused with what we may call, for want of a better phrase,
the Italian spirit. What this spirit is we may well leave for future
discussion. It is enough here to point out that it is characterized by
a kind of playfulness, half gayety and half mockery, often tinged with
irony and reflecting a cynical tolerance, and that it adopts a style
informal and colloquial, in which the satirist unbends to his readers
and feigns to let them into his confidence. The bare outlining of these
features alone proves how far Byron departed from the usually serious,
dignified, and formal satire of Pope and Gifford.
It would, of course, be erroneous to assume that Byron, before he first
touched Italian soil in 1816, was unfamiliar with the language. If, as
Moore says, he had read little of it up to 1807, he still must have
gained some acquaintance with it on his early travels, for on January
14, 1811, he wrote his mother from Athens:--“Being tolerably master
of the Italian and Modern Greek languages--I can order and discourse
more than enough for a reasonable man.”[175] In a letter of August
24, 1811, he used Italian words,[176] and in 1812 he criticized with
much intelligence the “Italian rhymes” of W. R. Spencer.[177] There are
several references in his Diary to his study of Italian writers.[178]
In his library, sold in 1816 to satisfy his creditors, were many
Italian books; indeed Fuhrman computes that by that date he had gone
through Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Boiardo, Bandello, Ariosto,
Alfieri, Monti, and Goldoni, besides many minor historians, essayists,
and poets.[179] Finally when he actually set foot in Italy, he was able
to assure Murray:--“As for Italian, I am fluent enough.”[180] Nothing
up to this time, however, had induced him to become an imitator of the
Italians. Although he had commended Hunt’s _Rimini_ for having two
excellent features, “originality and Italianism,” he had, apparently,
no idea of emulating Hunt in seeking for a stimulus from Italian
sources.
In mid-October, 1816, Byron arrived in Italy from Switzerland, making
his first halt at Milan. From then on until he set out for Greece on
July 23, 1823, he was a continuous dweller in the peninsula, settling
for a time at and near Venice, in the meanwhile making an excursion
to Florence and Rome, going later to Ravenna, and at last residing at
Pisa and Genoa. The interesting details of his life in these places
are sufficiently well known through his own letters and the records
given to the world by Hunt, Medwin, the Countess of Blessington,
Trelawney, Moore, and others. His reputation as the author of _Childe
Harold_ served as a means of introduction to men of letters; his noble
birth procured him admission into social circles; and naturally he
acquired an intimate knowledge of Italian customs, as well as a wide
acquaintance with the literature of the country, both mediæval and
modern. He engaged in several liaisons in Venice, and in 1819 became
the accepted _cicisbeo_ of the Countess Guiccioli. By aiding the secret
organization of the Carbonari, he enrolled himself in the struggle
for Italian independence and made himself an object of suspicion
to the police. It is no wonder that he wrote to Moore in 1820:--“I
suspect I know a thing or two of Italy--I have lived in the heart
of their houses, in parts of Italy freshest and least influenced by
strangers--have seen and become (_pars magna fui_) a portion of their
hopes, and fears, and passions.”[181] The immediate consequences of
this assimilation may be recognized in _Beppo_, composed in 1817,
which, slight and inconsiderable though it seems, is nevertheless the
prelude to the fuller voice of _Don Juan_, the product of Byron’s
ripest genius.
The problem is to determine, as far as it is possible, in what way
and to what extent Byron is indebted to Italy and Italian writers in
_Beppo_, _The Vision of Judgment_, and _Don Juan_. The process of
arriving at a satisfactory answer to these queries cannot be an easy
one, because it so often necessitates dealing with qualities of style
which are somewhat intangible. We may set aside at once any supposition
that Byron stole habitually from the Italian satirists by translating
their phrases or transferring their ideas, unacknowledged, to his
own pages. He was rarely a plagiarist in the sense that he conveyed
the words of others bodily into his own stanzas, and when, as in
sections of _Don Juan_, he paraphrased the prose of historians, he
frankly admitted his obligation. But his creative impulse was likely
to be affected by any book which had recently aroused his admiration.
Moore, who knew the operations of Byron’s mind as no one else did,
said:--“There are few of his poems that might not ... be traced to
the strong impulse given to his imagination by the perusal of some
work that had just before interested him.”[182] Obviously, when a
particular poem was composed under such inspiration, we shall find it
difficult to measure the extent of Byron’s dependence upon the book
which offered him a stimulus. Now and then, it is true, there are
passages in his satires which recall at once similar lines in Italian
writers, and occasionally we find him using a trick of theirs which it
seems improbable he could have learned elsewhere: in such cases the
relationship is clear enough. On the other hand, we may feel convinced
that Byron drew from the Italian satirists something of their general
tone, and yet be unable to clarify our reasons for this belief or to
frame them into an effective argument. Of such a sort, indeed, is
much of the influence which Pulci, Berni, and Casti had on Byron. It
is vague and evasive, but it undoubtedly exists. Perhaps at bottom
it is little more than the habit of thinking in a peculiar way or of
surveying objects from an unusual point of view. But whatever is the
basis of this satiric manner, it influenced Byron’s work, and made his
later satires almost unique in English.
It is in _Beppo_, as has been said, that this new mood first has
full expression. Yet, curiously enough, we are at once forced into
the paradox that Byron may have been taught something of the Italian
spirit in _Beppo_ through the medium of an English poem, to which he
explicitly turns our attention. In 1817 a book was published by Murray
with the odd title, _Prospectus and Specimen of an Intended National
Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Slowmarket, in Suffolk,
Harness and Collar Makers, Intended to Comprise the Most Interesting
Particulars Relating to King Arthur and his Round Table_. The volume
contained only two short cantos in ottava rima, the whole making up,
with the eleven stanzas of introduction, 99 stanzas, exactly the length
of _Beppo_. Early in 1818 two more cantos were added, and in the
same year the entire poem was printed as _The Monks, and the Giants_.
Although no author’s signature was attached, credit was rightfully
bestowed upon John Hookham Frere (1769–1846), already mentioned as a
brilliant contributor to the poetry of the _Anti-Jacobin_.[183] Like
Mathias, Roscoe, Rose, and others among his contemporaries, Frere had
been an assiduous student of Italian, and had read extensively in
the Italian romantic and burlesque poets from Pulci to Casti. It was
doubtless interest in this literature that led him to the composition
of _The Monks, and the Giants_, for which work he borrowed from the
Italians their octave stanza, an occasional episode, and as much of
their manner as his nature could absorb.[184]
Byron’s first mention of _Beppo_ occurs in a letter of October 12,
1817, to Murray:--“I have written a poem (of 84 octave stanzas),
humourous, in or after the excellent manner of Mr. Whistlecraft (whom
I take to be Frere), on a Venetian anecdote which amused me.”[185]
On October 23d he repeats this assertion:--“Mr. Whistlecraft has no
greater admirer than myself. I have written a story in 89 stanzas, in
imitation of him, called _Beppo_.”[186] Although the definiteness of
these statements is unquestionable, it is, nevertheless, essential to
ascertain just how literally we are to accept Byron’s confession that
_Beppo_ is “in the excellent manner of Mr. Whistlecraft.”
The problem has been discussed in detail by Albert Eichler in his
treatise, _John Hookham Frere, Sein Leben und seine Werke, Sein
Einfluss auf Lord Byron_ (1905), and his conclusions are, in many
respects, trustworthy. After comparing _Beppo_ with Frere’s poem,
Dr. Eichler maintains that Byron’s inspiration may be traced to _The
Monks, and the Giants_, and makes the following assertion regarding
the sources of Byron’s work:--“Die Italien duerfen wir als Quellen
hiebei mit Recht nach des Dichters eigenen Auesserungen und auch aus
zeitlichen Gruenden ausschliessen.” This statement, which is certainly
stronger than the evidence warrants, may be controverted on two
grounds: first, that, in spite of some superficial resemblances between
the two poems, there is much in _Beppo_ that Byron could not have
gained from Frere, indeed which he could have learned only from a close
study of the Italian poets; secondly, that Byron actually knew the work
of Casti well at the time when he composed _Beppo_.
The likeness in stanza form and Byron’s own acknowledgment of his model
have, in all probability, been somewhat over-emphasized. So much do the
two works differ in plot that there is no single case in which Byron
could have adopted a situation or an incident from Frere. The story of
_The Monks, and the Giants_ is told by an imaginary personage, Robert
Whistlecraft, just as _The Waltz_ is supposed to have been composed by
the fictitious “Horace Hornem, Esq.,” and the language of the poem is
fitted to the station and education of this figure, who is thoroughly
British and entirely Frere’s creation. The poem itself, fragmentary
and amorphous even in its final state, is a jumble of poorly organized
themes. Beginning in Canto I with a description of Arthur’s court and
of his three valorous knights, Lancelot, Tristram, and Gawain, it
proceeds to treat in Canto II of an attack of the banded Arthurian
chivalry on the castle of the Giants, a race who resemble, in some
respects, the giants in Pulci’s _Morgante Maggiore_. At this point the
knights disappear from the story, Arthur being mentioned only once
during the rest of the tale, and Frere, imitating in part the first
canto of the _Morgante Maggiore_, takes a monastery for his scene and
a siege of the religious brethren by the Giants for his main action.
Friar John’s quarrel with the Tintinabularians, his enforced leadership
after the death of the venerable abbot, the assault of the Giants,
the successful defence of the Monks, and the eventual retreat of the
assailing party:--these are the significant incidents in the second
half of a work which obviously depends little on the unity of its plot.
_Beppo_ is also a narrative, founded on a rather unimpressive anecdote.
The merchant, Beppo, departed on a trading trip, fails to return to his
wife, Laura, and she, thinking him dead, consoles herself with a Count
for her lover. After some years, Beppo comes back, to meet his wife and
her cavalier at a ball. She is reconciled to her husband, the Count
becomes Beppo’s friend, and the story ends. Since these main features
of the plot differ so widely from the incidents in _The Monks, and the
Giants_, we are forced to seek, therefore, for similarities in manner
and style between the two poems.
Unquestionably the fact that Frere’s work was written in ottava
rima[187] did affect Byron. It is true that the latter poet had
selected the octave stanza for his _Epistle to Augusta_, composed near
Geneva in 1816, before he had entered Italy and before Frere’s poem had
come to his attention; but the _Epistle_ had been serious and romantic,
without a touch of humor or of satire. Byron had also been familiar
with the use of the octave stanza in Ariosto’s _Orlando Furioso_, and,
as we shall see, in Casti’s _Novelle_. But of its employment in English
for humorous purposes there had been few examples, and Byron made no
reference to any such experiments by English poets.
In managing the octave, Frere had resorted to a somewhat free and
loose versification, diversified by frequent run-on lines and many
novel rhymes. Probably this unconstrained metrical structure appealed
greatly to Byron; but it must be remembered that since 1811 he had been
avoiding the heroic couplet and practising in some less restricted
measures. In _Childe Harold_ he had used a true stanzaic form,
occasionally with humorous effect. He had also, even in his first
published volume, shown facility in the rhyming of extraordinary words
and combinations of syllables, an art in which he had as guides Butler,
Swift, and Moore, all of whom were more skilful than Frere. Granting
that Frere did suggest to Byron the possibility of making the octave a
colloquial stanza, we cannot escape the conclusion that the latter went
beyond his model. For one thing, he was less careful about accuracy in
rhyming. Eichler, after a detailed examination of _The Monks, and the
Giants_ and _Beppo_, estimates that in the former poem only one rhyme
out of thirty is humorously inexact, in the latter, one out of six.
Frere’s entire work, more than double the length of _Beppo_, has only
eleven examples of “two-word rhymes,” while _Beppo_ has fifty-one.
Eichler’s tables show conclusively that Byron employed for rhymes many
more foreign words and proper names than Frere, and that he discovered
more odd combinations of English words. In addition he utilized the
enjambement in a more daring fashion. Certainly, in nearly every
respect, Byron was more lax in his versification than Frere had been in
his.[188]
Another uncommon feature of _The Monks, and the Giants_ is its
adoption of a vocabulary drawn from the language of every-day life.
Whistlecraft, the imaginary author, is, we are led to understand, a
rather talkative bourgeois. In fitting his diction to this middle-class
artisan, Frere introduced many expressions which seem unpoetic, and
consciously avoiding any effort at elevated speech, aimed at a kind of
colloquial talk, illustrated in such contractions as, “I’ll” and “I’ve”
and slang phrases like “play the deuce.” The vigor and picturesqueness
of this conversational style impressed Byron and doubtless had some
influence in leading him, in _Beppo_, to sink into street-jargon, well
adapted to the tone of his poem. To some extent, as Eichler indicates,
this informal diction coaxed him away from the correctness of Pope, and
enabled him to give freer rein to his shifting moods.
The fictitious Whistlecraft has a habit, corresponding somewhat to a
peculiarity of the Italian burlesque poets, of digressing from the main
thread of the story in order to gossip about himself or his opinions.
The first lines in the poem,
“I’ve often wished that I might write a book
Such as all English people might peruse,”[189]
set a conversational key. The introduction of eleven stanzas is
devoted to a prefatory monologue, and in the body of the work there
are digressions in the same vein, never long continued, and each in
the nature of a brief aside to the reader. Sometimes they are merely
interpolations having reference to the narrator’s method:
“We must take care in our poetic cruise,
And never hold a single tack too long.”[190]
In other cases, they are comments suggested by a turn in the plot.
With this feature of _The Monks, and the Giants_ Byron was, of course,
familiar through his reading in one or more of the Italian writers
from whom Frere had partly borrowed it, and when he adopted it in
_Beppo_, he reverted to them rather than to the Englishman. The
element of digression does not become conspicuous in Frere’s poem
until the last two cantos, which could not have influenced Byron in
_Beppo_.[191] Again Frere, who was deficient in aggressiveness, had
not wished to employ the digression as a means of introducing personal
satire. Since he himself remained anonymous and did not pretend to
make his poem a polemic, he refused to utilize these opportunities for
advancing his particular whims or prejudices. Byron, however, seeing
the possibilities latent in the discursive method and recalling its
importance in Italian satire, used it for the promulgation of his
ideas, interesting himself more in his chat with the reader than he did
in the story. In _Beppo_ he constantly wanders from the tale to pursue
varied lines of thought, returning to the plot more from a sense of
duty than from desire.[192] In these talks with his audience, full of
satiric references to English manners and morals, and tinctured with
mocking observations on his contemporaries, Byron follows Casti rather
than Frere.
These resemblances in outward form seem to indicate along what lines
Byron was affected by Frere’s poem. The differences in spirit and
motive between the two men are indeed striking. _The Monks, and the
Giants_ belongs unmistakably to the burlesque division of satire:
it is, said Frere, “the burlesque of ordinary rude uninstructed
common sense--the treatment of lofty and serious subjects by a
thoroughly common, but not necessarily low-minded man--a Suffolk
harness maker.”[193] The poem is, for the most part, satiric only
in an indirect and impersonal way, and there is in it very little
straightforward destructive criticism, like that in _English Bards_.
Nor is there any underlying bitterness or indignation; it would be
futile to seek, in these verses so marked by mildness, geniality, and
urbanity, for any purpose beyond that of amusing, in a quiet way, a
cultivated circle of friends. Even in the gossipy introduction there
are few allusions to current events, and if, as has been claimed, the
knights of the Round Table are intended to represent prominent living
personages, no one uninitiated could have discovered the secret.
Frere himself said of it: “Most people who read it at the time it was
published would not take the work in a merely humorous sense; they
would imagine it was some political satire, and went on hunting for
a political meaning.” When we recall that Byron spoke of _Beppo_ as
“being full of political allusions,”[194] we comprehend the gap which
separates the two works.
The real divergence between the poems--and it is a wide one--is due,
as Eichler intimates, to the characters of the authors. Whistlecraft’s
words:--
“I’m strongly for the present state of things:
I look for no reform or innovation,”[195]
summarize Frere’s conservative position. He was a Tory, and Byron
was a radical. Frere approached his theme from the standpoint of a
scholar; Byron, from that of a man of the world. The former, actuated
by antiquarian interest, built up a background in a fabulous age and
took his characters from legend; the latter, urged by a desire for
vividness and reality, laid his action in a city which he knew well and
placed his men and women in modern times. The Tristram and Gawain of
_The Monks, and the Giants_ are puppets and abstractions; Laura and the
Count, on the other hand, are drawn from life and consequently seem to
throb with warmth and passion. There are no women in Frere’s poem who
receive more than cursory notice; in _Beppo_ the central figure is a
woman, and the atmosphere vibrates with love and intrigue. One result
of these contrasts is that _The Monks, and the Giants_, unexceptionable
in morality, lacks charm and is somewhat chastely cold; while _Beppo_,
sensuous and frequently sensual, is never dull. It is obvious,
then, that the two poems, however much they may resemble each other
superficially, have fundamentally little in common.
What, then, did Byron take from Frere to substantiate his assertion
that _Beppo_ is “in the excellent manner of Mr. Whistlecraft”? He may
have learned from him some lessons in the management of the English
octave, particularly as employed in humorous verse; he probably
accepted a hint concerning the use of the language of every-day life;
and he may have drawn a suggestion as to the value of the colloquial
and discursive method. In each of these features, as we have seen, he
surpassed his predecessor. Specifically in the matter of direct satire
he could have gained little from Frere, for the latter was but a
feeble satirist. Eichler sums up the logical conclusion: “Die _Monks
and Giants_, eine amuesante Burleske, haben in Beppo eine moralische
Satire gezeugt.”[196] The same idea is brought out by the anonymous
writer of a _Letter to Lord Byron, by John Bull_ (1820), in comparing
Frere’s poem with _Don Juan_;--“Mr. Frere writes elegantly, playfully,
very like a gentleman, and a scholar, and a respectable man, and his
poem never sold, nor ever will sell. Your _Don Juan_, again, is written
strongly, lasciviously, fiercely, laughingly--and accordingly the _Don_
sells, and will sell, until the end of time.” In habits of mind and in
temperament, Byron was more akin to Frere’s Italian masters than he
was to Frere himself; and therefore, in his knowledge of Casti, later
of Berni and Pulci, and possibly of Ariosto, Forteguerri, Tassoni, and
Buratti, we shall be more likely to discover the sources of the spirit
of _Beppo_ and _Don Juan_.
Of these men it is probable that Giambattista Casti (1721–1804) is the
nearest congener of Byron in the satiric field. The fact that his work
has never been subjected to careful scrutiny by critics in either Italy
or England accounts possibly for the general ignoring of Casti as an
inspiration for Byron’s Italian satires.[197] In spite of Eichler’s
positive statement that the Italians “aus zeitlichen Gruenden” may be
neglected as sources for Byron’s work,[198] it is certain that Byron
had read Casti before he wrote _Beppo_; for in 1816 he said to Major
Gordon, referring to a copy of Casti’s _Novelle_ which the latter had
presented to him at Brussels: “I cannot tell you what a treat your gift
of Casti has been to me: I have got him almost by heart. I had read
his _Animali Parlanti_, but I think these _Novelle_ much better. I long
to go to Venice to see the manners so admirably described.”[199] Not
until March 25, 1818, does he mention Berni, and he does not refer to
Pulci until November, 1819. There is, then, presumptive evidence for
maintaining that Byron, coming in 1816 or before in contact with the
work of Casti, found in him some inspiration for the satiric method of
_Beppo_, a method somewhat modified in _Don Juan_ after a perusal of
Berni and Pulci.
The _Novelle_, praised so highly by Byron, consist of forty-eight
tales in ottava rima, printed together in 1804, although at least
eighteen had been completed by 1778. Their author, a sort, of itinerant
rhymester,[200] had acquired notoriety through his attacks on the
reigning sovereigns of Europe, especially on Catharine II, whom he had
assailed in _Il Poema Tartaro_, a realistic and venomous portrayal
of Russian society and politics, containing a violent assault on
the Empress. Although Casti’s poems are now forgotten, their vogue
during his lifetime was considerable. His greatest work, _Gli Animali
Parlanti_, was translated into several languages, including English,
and Casti, as an apostle of revolt, was recognized as energetic and
dangerous. His coarseness and vulgarity, however, combined with his
slovenly verse structure and his neglect of art, prevented him from
reaching a high position as a poet, and his literary importance was
thus only temporary, occasioned principally by the popular interest in
his timely satiric allusions. He, like Byron, was at heart a rebel, and
in his own uncultivated way, he anticipated the spirit of the English
poet. Indeed it is curious how often the two pursue the same general
plan of attack on their respective ages.
The _Novelle Amorose_ are verse tales of the type which Boccaccio,
and after him, Bandello, Straparola, and their imitators, had made
popular in prose. Dealing in a laughing and lenient fashion with the
indiscretions of gallants, usually monks and priests, they are marred
by grossness and indecency in plot and language. The cynical immorality
of the stories has subjected Casti to much unfavorable criticism.
Foscolo, his countryman, speaks of him as “spitting his venom at virtue
and religion, as the sole expedient by which he can palliate his own
immorality.”[201] However, the coarse tone of the _Novelle_ is hardly
unique with Casti; he is merely adhering to the standard of the earlier
prose novelists.
The likeness between _Beppo_, which is an English novella in verse, and
some of Casti’s _Novelle_, is one in manner and spirit rather than in
plot and style.[202] Byron’s story, taken as it was from an episode
with which he had met in his own experience, has no exact parallel in
Casti’s collection, but his method of handling it is not unlike that
followed by the Italian in treating of themes not greatly dissimilar.
Choosing practically at random among the _Novelle_--for Casti’s plan
was much the same in all--we may discover certain peculiarities which
have their counterparts in _Beppo_. Novella IX, _Lo Spirito_, has, like
_Beppo_, a humorous introduction, in which the narrator, speaking,
like Byron, in the first person, analyzes what is meant by “spirit” in
man or woman. He then proceeds with the adventure of the Lady Amalia
and her two lovers, describing each of the three in a rather clever
character sketch, not unlike the pictures which Byron gives of Laura
and the Count. The rival suitors pursue different tactics in their
struggles to win the lady’s favors and in dwelling on their actions,
Casti often pauses to indulge in a chuckling aside to the reader,
never so long continued as Byron’s digressions, but in very much the
same vein. Finally one of the wooers meets with success, and the tale
concludes with a bantering moral.
Doubtless this summary of _Lo Spirito_ fails to bring out any
convincing parallelisms between it and _Beppo_; and it must be granted
at once that the alleged relationship is somewhat elusive. But there
are some features common to the two poems: an easy-going tolerance
towards gallantry and the social vices; a pretence of taking the reader
into the author’s confidence; a general lack of formality and rigidity
in stanza structure; and a witty and burlesque manner of turning
phrases. Although one or two of these characteristics had appeared
singly in Byron’s work before 1818, they had appeared in conjunction
in no poem of his previous to _Beppo_, with the possible exception
of _The Devil’s Drive_, which was not in ottava rima. Obviously he
could not have learned the secret of this new mood from Frere. Thus,
when we consider that until Byron’s acquaintance with Casti’s work,
this specific quality of mockery had not existed in his satire, we
have reason for thinking that he was indebted to some extent to the
Italian poet. Somehow the English writer, once a pretended defender of
clean morals, began to take a tolerant attitude towards lapses from
virtue; he changed from formal and dignified discourse to a style easy
and colloquial; and he partly abandoned savage invective for scornful
and ironic mockery. In _Beppo_ we realize the full purport of the
transformation which had been taking place in Byron’s satiric mood
ever since his return from Greece. Credit for this development must be
given partly to Moore and partly to Frere; but it must be assigned even
more to Casti, who first put Byron in touch directly with the Italian
burlesque spirit.
If only the _Novelle_ were considered, however, Byron’s obligation
to Casti would be confined chiefly to _Beppo_, for in his tales the
Italian seldom leaves his theme, as Byron does in _Don Juan_, to assail
individuals or institutions. He touches lightly on the weaknesses of
human nature, on the frailties and illicit indulgences of full-blooded
men and women, but he is swayed by no impelling purpose, and he wants
the fundamental seriousness of the genuine satirist. Byron, on the
other hand, in _Beppo_, and still more in _Don Juan_, never quite
forgot the vituperative vigor which he had shown in _English Bards_.
But before he had seen the _Novelle_, Byron had read _Gli Animali
Parlanti_, a mammoth work which, in its scope, in its antipathies, and
in its manner, has some likeness to _Don Juan_. Published first in
Paris in 1802, it was pirated in a London edition a year later, and
before long had been translated into several languages. An English
version in a greatly abridged paraphrase appeared in 1816 under the
title _The Court of Beasts_, in seven cantos, without the translator’s
name.[203] The same volume, with revisions and additions, was reprinted
in 1819 as _The Court and Parliament of Beasts_,--freely translated, by
Wm. St. Rose.
The Italian poem in three parts and twenty-six cantos is written, not,
as has been often taken for granted, in the ottava rima, but in the
less common sesta rima, a stanza of six endecasyllabic lines, rhyming
ababcc. As its title suggests, it is a beast epic, an elaboration of
the fables of Æsop and La Fontaine; but the allegory veils deliberate
and continuous satire. In his prose preface, Casti explains his object
as being the presentation, with talking animals as actors, of “un
quadro generale delle costumanze, delle opinioni, e dei pregiudizi dal
pubblico adottati, riguardo al governo, all’ amministrazione ed alla
politica degli Stati, come delle passioni dominanti di coloro, che in
certe eminenti e pubbliche situazioni collocati si trovano, colorandolo
con tinte forti, ed alquanto caricate, le quali facilmente ne relevino
l’expressione--un quadro in somma della cosa, e non delle persone.”
Casti, then, planned a comprehensive satire on his own age, and despite
his assertion that his poem is “a picture of things, and not of
persons,” his real object was, like Byron’s, to “play upon the surface
of humanity.”
The actual plot of _Gli Animali Parlanti_ may be briefly told. The
animals gather to organize a scheme of government, and, deciding on
an hereditary monarchy, choose the lion for their king. At his death,
a regency, headed by the lioness, is established for his son, and
conspiracy and corruption develop. The dog, the first Prime Minister,
is superseded by the wolf, and becomes a rebel. Civil war ensues, and
when, at length, all the conflicting parties unite for a conference,
they are destroyed by a terrible storm. This, of course, is the barest
outline of the story; the framework is filled out by argument and
criticism by the various protagonists, many of whom, notably the dog,
the horse, and the bear, represent political factions, conservative,
moderate, and progressive. No small amount of satire lies in the
actions and speeches of the beasts, who are intended to represent
different types of humanity; their court is a mirror of the courts
of western Europe, and the abuses which pervade it are those which
Casti had seen on his travels. The animals are, in all save external
appearances, like men.
Not enough of a reformer to evolve remedies, Casti was, nevertheless,
alert in detecting faults in the inert institutions of his time and
daring in his methods of assailing them. His poem, thus, is a hostile
picture of politics and society in the Europe of the latter half of
the eighteenth century, painted by a man who had studied his subject
from a cosmopolitan standpoint. _Gli Animali Parlanti_ is a radical
document, designed to expose the flaws in existing systems. Even fads
and foibles are not beneath its notice. It jeers at the academies so
popular in Italy in Casti’s youth, especially the notorious Accademia
dell’ Arcadia[204]; it makes sport of pedants and antiquaries[205]; it
scorns literary and political sycophants[206]; it is bitter against
theological quibbles, against monks,[207] and against superstitious
practices.[208] Throughout it all runs Casti’s hatred of despotism,
and his dislike of hypocrisy and cant. It is not, indeed, unfair to
Byron to declare that the scope of _Gli Animali Parlanti_ is, in some
respects, as broad and comprehensive as that of _Don Juan_.
It is interesting, as far as the material of Casti’s poem is concerned,
to notice that Casti is an advocate of what were to be some of Byron’s
pet theories. For both men liberty is a favorite watchword. The horse,
who seems to be spokesman for Casti himself, cries out,
“Noi d’ogni giogo pria liberi, e sciolti,”[209]
an assertion exactly in the spirit of Byron’s words,
“I wish men to be free
As much from mobs as kings--from you as me.”[210]
A similar mood led them both to lay an emphasis on the seamy and
gruesome side of war, and to condemn it as unnecessary and degrading.
Casti, after picturing all the horrors of a battle-field, exclaims,
“Crudelissime bestie! O bestie nate
Per lo sterminio della vostra spezie.”[211]
This is in the same tone as Byron’s remark about the futility of war:
“Oh, glorious laurel! since for one sole leaf
Of thine imaginary deathless tree,
Of blood and tears must flow the unending sea.”[212]
Again and again in the two poems we meet with marked coincidences in
the manifestations of the revolt of the two poets against the laws and
customs of their respective periods.
_Don Juan_, moreover, has many of the peculiar methods which, partly
the product of tradition in Italian burlesque poetry, and occasionally
the idiosyncrasies of Casti himself, are used regularly in _Gli
Animali Parlanti_. Casti, for instance, protests continually in
humorous fashion that he is dealing only with facts:
“Poeta son io, non son causidico,
E mio difetto è sol d’esser veridico.”[213]
His unfailing insistence on this point gives his repeated professions
an air of stock conventionality. Byron also employs this mocking manner
of calling attention to the verisimilitude of his own work:
“My muse by no means deals in fiction;
She gathers a repertory of facts.”[214]
More significant, perhaps, is the colloquial tone which Casti
habitually adopts towards his readers, turning to them constantly to
speak about himself, his plans, and his difficulties, sometimes to
apologize, sometimes to make a confession:--
“M’attengo a ciò che tocco, a ciò che vedo,
Ne mi diverto a far castella in aria.”[215]
This sort of intimate gossip is also characteristic of _Don Juan_;
indeed Byron has elucidated his theory of procedure:
“I rattle on exactly as I’d talk
With anybody in a ride or walk.”[216]
At the end of cantos this affectation of taking the public into
confidence often becomes in _Gli Animali Parlanti_ a kind of sham
humility, coupled usually with the poet’s promise to return another
day, if encouraged. Thus Casti closes a canto in this fashion:
“Ma spossatello omai mi sento e roco,
Ne in grado più proseguire il canto,
Permettetemi dunque, almen per poco,
Ch’io prenda fiato, e mi riposi alquanto.
Che poi, qualor vi piaccia, io sarò pronto
A riprendere il fil del mio racconto.”[217]
There is space for quoting only one of several similar endings from
_Don Juan_:
“But, for the present, gentle reader! and
Still gentler purchaser! the Bard--that’s I--
Must, with your permission, shake you by the hand,
And so--‘your humble servant, and Good-bye!’”[218]
These asides recall the personal paragraphs and short essays which
Fielding, and after him, Thackeray, were accustomed to insert in their
novels. Their importance in _Don Juan_ cannot be overestimated, for, as
it will be necessary to emphasize later, the satiric element in that
poem is brought out chiefly through these digressions, in which the
author gives free vent to his personality. Some traces of this method
had appeared even in the first two cantos of _Childe Harold_[219];
and, to some degree, it had been utilized in several of Byron’s short
verse epistles to friends. However the discursive style is not common
in the poet’s work before _Beppo_, and after that, at least in his
satires, it comes to be conspicuous. Even Frere, familiar as he was
with the Italians, did not realize the full value of the digression
until he wrote the last two cantos of _The Monks and the Giants_,
and, moreover, he never used it as an instrument for satire. It is,
therefore, reasonable to suppose that Byron found a pattern for his
procedure in the burlesque writers themselves and particularly in
Casti. There are, however, some variations in Byron’s employment of
this device. He extended the colloquial aside until it verged almost
into a prolonged monologue or satirical sermon; and whereas Casti,
in _Gli Animali Parianti_, seldom made use of the digression as an
opportunity for personal satire, Byron improved the chance to speak
out directly, in the first person, against his enemies. Casti advanced
his destructive criticism largely through his narrative, by allusion,
insinuation, and irony, in a manner quite indirect, keeping himself, as
far as open satire was concerned, very much in the background. In _Don
Juan_, on the contrary, as the poem lengthened into the later cantos,
Byron tended more and more to neglect the plot and to reveal himself as
a commentator on life.
In many respects, Casti’s third poem, _Il Poema Tartaro_, which has
never been mentioned in connection with Byron and which was never
referred to by the English poet, is even more closely akin than _Gli
Animali Parlanti_ to _Don Juan_. It is possible that it may have
offered a suggestion for a portion of the plot of _Don Juan_--the
episode of Catharine II. It shows Casti speaking, for once, directly
against great personages, bestowing upon them fictitious titles, but
not at any pains to conceal the significance of his allusions. As _Il
Poema Tartaro_ is little known, it is essential to dwell somewhat upon
its plot and general character.
The poem, which is made up of twelve cantos in ottava rima, treats
mainly of the Russia of the Empress Catharine II. Most of the
important actors are historical figures, disguised under pseudonyms:
thus Catharine is called Cattuna or Turrachina; Potemkin, her famous
minister, is Toto; and Joseph II, who receives his share of adulation,
is Orenzebbe. No one of these characters is drawn with any effort at
secrecy; indeed, in most editions, a complete key is provided.
In its chief features the narrative element of _Il Poema Tartaro_ is
not unlike that of some sections of _Don Juan_. The hero, a wandering
Irishman, Tomasso Scardassale, like Juan a child of pleasure and
fortune unembarrassed by moral convictions, joins a pilgrimage to
the Holy Land. Eventually he is captured by the infidels, falls
into the hands of the Caliph of Bagdad, and while a prisoner at his
court, engages in a liaison with Zelmira, a member of the harem. An
appointment to the office of Chief Eunuch having been forced upon him,
he flees with his inamorata and, after some escapades, arrives at St.
Petersburg, where he has the good luck to please the Empress. Soon,
without any manifest reluctance on his part, he occupies the position
of official favorite, is loaded with money and honors, and becomes,
for a time, the second highest personage in the realm. After various
incidents, including a rebellion against the empress suppressed only
with difficulty, and visits of many contemporary monarchs to the
capital, Potemkin, Catharine’s former lover, jealous of Tomasso’s rise
to power, succeeds in bringing about his downfall, and the discarded
Irishman, suffering the usual penalty of the Empress’s caprices, is
exiled to a far corner of Russia. At this point, Casti’s poem, becoming
prophetic, diverges entirely from history. There is an uprising led by
the Grand Duke; Catharine and Potemkin are seized and banished; and
the Grand Duke is declared emperor. Somewhat dramatically the poet
describes the meeting between the dethroned Catharine and Tomasso.
Finally the latter, recalled to St. Petersburg, dies in the arms of
his earlier love, Zelmira, and is buried with elaborate ceremony.
The Catharine II episode in _Don Juan_ begins with Canto IX, 42,
and ends with Canto X, 48. That, there is a superficial resemblance
between the adventures of the two heroes, Tomasso and Juan, is
sufficiently obvious. Both are modern picaresque knights at the sport
of circumstances. Each comes to St. Petersburg from Turkey, bringing
with him a Turkish girl; each is installed as a favorite at the court
and attains, at one bound, nobility and riches; each falls from his
lofty state, and is sent away. It is evident, of course, that Byron
in no sense borrowed from Casti’s plot as he did from other writers
in his description of the shipwreck. However, since Casti’s poem is
probably the only one of the period dealing with the court of Catharine
II, and since Byron was well acquainted with the other two long works
of the Italian, there are grounds for surmising that he took _Il Poema
Tartaro_, in its general scheme, as a model for a part of _Don Juan_.
This supposition is strengthened by some resemblances in details
between the two poems. Catharine II is portrayed by both authors in
much the same way. Casti says of her that,
“Per uso e per natura
Ne’ servigi d’amor troppo esigea,”[220]
and Byron echoes precisely the same idea:
“She could repay each amatory look you lent
With interest, and, in turn, was wont with rigor
To exact of Cupid’s bills the full amount
At sight, nor would permit you to discount.”[221]
She is generous to her favorites: Casti makes her confess,
“Amare e premiar l’amato ogetto
Sole è per me felicita e diletto,”[222]
And Byron refers particularly to her Kindness:
“Love had made Catharine make each lover’s fortune.”[223]
Tomasso himself is described in language which might apply to Juan:
“Éra grande e bel giovine,--
Forte, complesso, capel biondo, e un paio
D’occhi di nobilita pieni e di fuoco;
Un carattere franco, un umor gaio,
E colle donne avea sempre un buon giucco.”[224]
The scene in which Tomasso has just been especially favored by the
Empress and is receiving congratulations from courtiers is paralleled
by that in which Juan is being flattered after a warm greeting by
Catharine.[225] Another curious coincidence occurs in the efforts
of the court physician to cure the apparent debility of Tomasso
and Juan.[226] These similarities are striking enough to furnish
some probability that Byron was familiar with the plot of _Il Poema
Tartaro_, and, consciously or unconsciously, reproduced some of its
features in _Don Juan_.
Casti’s satire in this poem, as in _Gli Animali Parlanti_, is
comprehensive. Like Byron, he ridicules the Russian language,[227]
attacks literary fads, criticises customs-duties,[228] and enters into
a vigorous denunciation of war. In speaking of soldiers who clash in
civil strife, he says, with bitter truth:
“Non è nobil coraggio e valor vero
Con queste schiere e quello incontro mena,
Ma l’impunito di ladron mestiero
Cui legge alcuna, alcun poter non frena.”[229]
Byron makes a charge of the same kind in portraying mercenary warriors
as,
“Not fighting for their country or its crown,
But wishing to be one day brigadiers;
Also to have the sacking of a town.”[230]
The whole of Canto VI in _Il Poema Tartaro_ may be compared with
Byron’s description of the siege of Ismail in _Don Juan_, VII and VIII.
Both scenes are presented with grim and graphic realism, without any
softening of the horrors and disgusting incidents of warfare.
In _Il Poema Tartaro_, more than in his other productions, Casti
ventured to resort to genuine personal satire. He assailed not only
Catharine, but also Potemkin, Prince Henry of Prussia, Gustavus III
of Sweden, the Sultan of Egypt, and the king of Denmark, to mention
only figures who have a prominent place in history. His method being
still usually indirect and dramatic, Casti seldom lets himself appear
as accuser, but puts criticism of these sovereigns into the mouths of
his characters, especially Tomasso’s friend, Siveno, who acts as the
favorite’s mentor and guide. A whole race may arouse Casti’s anger--
“Contro il mogol superbo, e vile
Mi sento in sen esaltar la bile”--
but he is too wise to let himself be entangled in any controversy. This
discretion does not, necessarily, imply cowardice or fear, for his
indirect attacks are often as malignant as any of Byron’s more direct
invectives, and their victims cannot be mistaken. Byron, however,
always wished to meet his enemies face to face, while Casti preferred
to reach his in a less open way.
In general, the methods employed in _Il Poema Tartaro_ are those used
in _Gli Animali Parlanti_. There are the same short digressions,
illustrated in such passages as,
“Ciò di Toto piccar dovea la boria
E con ragion; ma proseguiam la storia,”[231]
in which the author pulls himself away in order to continue his
narrative, and which have frequently almost the same phraseology as
Byron’s “Return we to our story.” Sometimes the digressions take the
form of philosophical reflections on various abstract subjects such as
death, mutability, or love:
“Amor, la bella passion che i petti
Empie si soavissima dolcezza.”[232]
We meet often with the familiar insistence on the veracious character
of the author’s writing.[233] Irony occurs intermittently, mingled at
times with sarcasm.
One peculiarity of Casti’s manner deserves particular attention,
although it is not unique with him and is derived originally from the
earlier burlesque poets. This is his habit of shifting the mood from
the serious to the ludicrous by the use of unexpected phrases. Examples
of this sudden turn in thought are numerous in _Il Poema Tartaro_.
When the report of rebellion arrives at the Russian court, the
description of terrible alarm ends with the couplet,
“Costernata è la corte epicurea
E venne a Toctabei la diarrea.”[234]
The exiled Empress, coming upon her old favorite, Tomasso, cries,
“Ah, non m’inganno no, quegli è Tomasso
Mel dice il core e lo cognosco al naso.”[235]
No reader of _Don Juan_ needs to be reminded how often Byron cuts short
a sentimental passage with a remark which makes the entire situation
ridiculous. The secret of this continual interplay between gravity and
absurdity had never been mastered by Frere; undoubtedly it is one of
the tricks for which Byron was particularly indebted to Casti and to
Casti’s predecessors, Pulci and Berni.
Casti’s style and language is usually flat and insipid, undistinguished
by beauty or rhythm. “His diction,” says Foscolo, “is without grace
or purity.” He is often coarse and unnecessarily obscene. These
considerations make it improbable that Byron could have been affected
by Casti’s poetic style, for, despite the sensuousness of some portions
of _Don Juan_, the English poet rarely allowed himself to sink into the
positive indecencies so common in Casti’s work.
On the other hand, the two men are united by their aims and motives.
With all that is petty and offensive in Casti’s satire, there is
mingled a real love of liberty and an unswerving hatred of despotism.
No other poet in English or Italian literature of the latter eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries attempted an indictment of his age, at
once so hostile and so comprehensive as those which Casti and Byron
tried to make. More significant still, Casti, unlike Pulci, Berni, and
Frere, was modern in spirit, and played with vital questions in society
and government. He was close to Byron’s own epoch, and the objects of
his wrath, as far as systems and institutions are concerned, were the
objects of Byron’s satire. Up to a certain point, too, Byron followed
Casti’s methods: he is colloquial, discursive, and gossipy; he cares
little for plot structure; he employs irony and mockery, as well as
invective; and he skips, in a single stanza, from seriousness to
absurdity. The differences between the two poets are to be attributed
chiefly to the Englishman’s genius and powerful personality. He was
more of an egotist than Casti, more vehement, more straightforward,
more impulsive, and was able to fill _Don Juan_ with his individuality
as Casti was never able to do with _Gli Animali Parlanti_ and _Il Poema
Tartaro_.
Certain facts in the relationship between Casti and Byron seem, then,
to be clear. At a period before the composition of _Beppo_, Byron
had read and enjoyed in the original Italian, the _Novelle_ and _Gli
Animali Parlanti_. Numerous features in _Beppo_ and _Don Juan_ which
resemble characteristics of Casti’s poems had, apparently, existed
combined in no English work before Byron’s time. In addition, internal
evidence makes it a possibility that Byron was familiar with _Il Poema
Tartaro_, and that he borrowed from it something of its material and
its spirit. The probability is that Byron was influenced, to an extent
greater than has been ordinarily supposed, by the example and the
methods of Casti.
Byron’s acquaintance with Pulci and Berni did not, apparently, begin
until after the publication of _Beppo_. On March 25, 1818, he wrote
Murray, in speaking of _Beppo_: “Berni is the original of all--Berni is
the father of that kind of writing, which, I think, suits our language,
too, very well.”[236] On February 21, 1820, while he was busy with
his translation of Pulci’s _Morgante Maggiore_, he said of Pulci’s
poem, to Murray: “It is the parent, not only of _Whistlecraft_, but of
all jocose Italian poetry.”[237] These assertions indicate that Byron
classed _Beppo_ and _Don Juan_ with the work of the Italian burlesque
writers, eventually coming to recognize Pulci as the founder of the
school.
Luigi Pulci (1432–1484), a member of the literary circle which gathered
at the court of Lorenzo de’ Medici in the latter half of the sixteenth
century and which included, among others, Poliziano, Ficino, and
Michelangelo, composed the _Morgante Maggiore_, “the first romantic
poem of the Renaissance.” Designed probably to be read or recited at
Lorenzo’s table, it was finally completed in February, 1483, as a
poem in ottava rima, containing twenty-eight cantos and some 30,000
lines.[238] Although the plotting and consummation of Gan’s treason
against Charlemagne lends a crude unity to the romance, it is actually
a series of battles, combats, and marvellous adventures loosely strung
together. The titular hero, Morgante, dies in the twentieth canto. The
matter is that of the Carolingian legend, now so well-known in the work
of Pulci’s successors.
Historically, as the precursor of Berni, Ariosto, and the other singers
of Carolingian romance, Pulci occupies the position of pioneer. For
our purposes, however, the significance of his work lies less in the
incidents of his narrative, the greater part of which he purloined,
than in the poet’s personality and the transformation which his
grotesque and fanciful genius accomplished with its material. Through
much humorous and ironic digression, through some amusing interpolated
episodes, through a balancing of the serious and the comic elements of
the story, through a style popular in origin and humorous in effect,
and through the creation of two new characters, the giant Margutte and
the demon Astarotte, he made his poem a reflection of his own bourgeois
individuality, clever, tolerant, and irrepressible in its inclination
to seize upon the burlesque possibilities in men or events.
That the _Morgante Maggiore_ is a burlesque poem is due not so much to
deliberate design on Pulci’s part as to the unconscious reflection of
his boisterous, full-blooded, yet at the same time, meditative nature.
It is unwise to attribute to him any motive beyond that of amusing
his audience. In spite of its apparent irreverence, the _Morgante_
was probably not planned as a satire on chivalry or on the church,
Pulci--“the lively, affecting, hopeful, charitable, large-hearted Luigi
Pulci,” as Hunt called him--was at bottom kindly and sympathetic,
and his work displays a robust geniality and good-humor which had
undoubtedly some influence on _Don Juan_. We rarely find Pulci in a
fury; at times his merriment is not far from Rabelaisian, however
always without a trace of indignation, for his levity and playfulness
seem genuine. This very tolerance is perhaps the product of Renaissance
skepticism, which viewed both dogmatism and infidelity with suspicion.
Deep emotion, tragedy, and pathos are all to be met with in the
_Morgante_, but each is counter-balanced by mockery, comedy, or
realism. It is this recurring antithesis, this continual introduction
of the grotesque into the midst of what is, by itself, dignified and
serious, that is the distinctive peculiarity of Pulci’s manner. The
mere turn of a phrase makes a situation absurd. There is no intensity
about this Florentine; he espouses no theories and advocates no creeds;
he is content to have his laugh and to set others chuckling.
This summary may be of service in suggesting one reason why, in the
later cantos of _Don Juan_, we sometimes are met with a tolerance
almost sympathetic, widely differing from the passionate narrowness of
_English Bards_. Pulci, unlike Byron, was not a declared satirist; his
theme was in the past, steeped in legend and myth; but something of
his spirit, difficult to analyze as that spirit may be, tempered and
modified the satire of the older Byron.
Byron’s first definite reference to Pulci occurs in a portion of _Don
Juan_ written in November, 1819:
“Pulci was sire of the half-serious rhyme,
Who sang when chivalry was not Quixotic,
And revelled in the fancies of the time,
True knights, chaste dames, huge giants, Kings despotic.”[239]
However, _Don Juan_, III, 45, presenting a possible parallelism with
the _Morgante_, XVIII, 115, would indicate that Byron was familiar
with Pulci’s poem at least some months before.[240] On February 7,
1820, he wrote Murray: “I am translating the first canto of Pulci’s
_Morgante Maggiore_, and have half done it.”[241] In speaking of the
completion of the translation, of which he was very proud, he told
Murray, February 12, 1820: “You must print it side by side with the
original Italian, because I wish the reader to judge of the fidelity;
it is stanza for stanza, and often line for line, if not word for
word.”[242] In the Preface to the translation, printed with it in
_The Liberal_, July 30, 1823, Byron uttered his final word on the
Italian writer: “Pulci may be regarded as the precursor and model
of Berni altogether.... He is no less the founder of a new style of
poetry lately sprung up in England. I allude to that of the ingenious
Whistlecraft.” It is evident, then, that Byron estimated Pulci’s
work very highly, that he was acquainted, probably, with the entire
_Morgante Maggiore_ and had studied the first canto, at least, in
detail, and that he considered him the original model of Berni and
Frere.
It remains to point out specific qualities in manner and style which
link the two poets together.[243] Towards the narrative portion of the
_Morgante_, Byron seems to have been indifferent. In _Don Juan_ there
is but one clear allusion to the Carolingian legend:
“Just now, enough; but bye and bye I’ll prattle
Like Roland’s horn in Roncesvalles’ battle.”[244]
There is a fairly close parallel already pointed out between the
response of a servant to Lambro in _Don Juan_, III, 45, and Margutte’s
speech in the _Morgante_, XVIII, 115. There are, however, no other
incidents in _Don Juan_ which resemble any part of the earlier poem.
Pulci’s realism, a quality which is usually in itself burlesque when
it is applied to a romantic subject, is shown in his fondness for
homely touches and minute details, in his use of words out of the
street and proverbs from the lips of the populace. The interjection of
the lower-class spirit into the poem helped to make the _Morgante_
in actuality what Frere had tried to produce in _The Monks, and the
Giants_--a treatment of heroic characters and deeds by a bourgeois
mind. The spectacle of the common vulgar details in the every-day life
of men supposedly great naturally somewhat degrades the heroes. When
Byron portrays General Suwarrow as
“Hero, buffoon, half-demon, and half-dirt,”[245]
he is following the methods of Pulci, who made his giants gluttons and
his Rinaldo a master of Billingsgate.[246] In the _Morgante_ warriors
are continually being put into ludicrous situations: Morgante fights
his battles with a bell-clapper; Rinaldo knocks a Saracen into a bowl
of soup[247]; and the same noble, turned robber, threatens to steal
from St. Peter and to seize the mantles of St. Ursula and the Angel
Gabriel.[248] Pulci compares Roncesvalles to a pot in much the same
spirit that Byron likens a rainbow to a black eye.[249] Pulci is fond
of cataloguing objects, especially the varieties of food served at
banquets; and Byron shows the same propensity in describing in detail
the viands provided for the feast of Haidée and Juan, and the dinner
at Norman Abbey. Pulci’s realism is also manifest in his use of slang
and the language of low life. In this respect, too, Byron is little
behind him: Juan fires his pistol “into one assailant’s pudding”;
slang phrases are frequently introduced into _Don Juan_, and elevated
poetic style is made more vivid by contrast with intentionally prosaic
passages.
Another peculiarity of Pulci is his tendency to make use of many Tuscan
proverbs and to coin sententious apothegms of his own. The framework of
the octave lends itself easily to compact maxims in the final couplet,
and perhaps it is due to this fact that _Don Juan_ and the _Morgante_
are both crammed with epigrams. In Pulci’s poetry one meets on nearly
every page with such apt sayings as
“La fede è fatta, come fa il solletico”[250]
and
“Co’ santi in chiesa, e co’ ghiotti in taverna.”[251]
One example out of the many in _Don Juan_ will suffice for quotation:--
“Adversity is the first path to truth.”[252]
Possibly the fact that the _Morgante_ was first recited to the members
of Lorenzo’s circle is chiefly responsible for Pulci’s habit of turning
often to his listeners, inviting them, as it were, to draw nearer and
share his confidence. Thus he confesses:
“Non so se il vero appunto anche si disse;
Accetta il savio in fin la veria gloria;
E cosi seguirem la nostra storia.”[253]
Byron speaks repeatedly in this sort of mocking apology:
“If my thunderbolt not always rattles,
Remember, reader! you have had before,
The worst of tempests and the best of battles.”[254]
Both poets assume, at times, an affected modesty: thus at the very end
of the _Morgante_ Pulci asserts that he is not presumptuous:
“Io non domando grillanda d’alloro,
Di che i Greci e i Latini chieggon corona....
Anzi non son prosuntuoso tanto,
Quanto quel folle antico citarista
A cui tolse gia Apollo il vivo ammanto;...
E cio ch’ io penso colla fantasia,
Di piacere ad ognuno e ’l mio disegno.”[255]
So Byron refers to his own lack of ambition:
“I perch upon an humbler promontory,
Amidst Life’s infinite variety;
With no great care for what is nicknamed Glory.”[256]
At the end of nearly every canto of the _Morgante_ is a promise of
continuation, so phrased as to seem conventional: _e. g._,
“Come io diro ne l’altro mio cantare.”
The same custom became common with Byron, in such lines as,
“Let this fifth canto meet with due applause,
The sixth shall have a touch of the sublime.”[257]
There is, however, one important distinction between the two poets
in their use of the digression: Pulci employs it for cursory comment
on his story, or for chat about himself; Byron utilizes it not only
for these purposes, but also for the expression of satire. It is in
his digressions that he speaks out directly against individuals,
institutions, and society in general. The _Morgante_ is a tale, with an
occasional remark by the author; _Don Juan_ is a monologue, sustained
by a narrative framework.
Pulci’s comparison of his poetry to a boat is introduced so frequently
that it may possibly have suggested the figure to Byron. A typical
instance of its usage may be quoted in the lines:--
“Io me n’andro con la barchetta mia,
Quanto l’acqua comporta un picciol legno.”[258]
Byron’s employment of the metaphor is also somewhat frequent:--
“At the least I have shunned the common shore,
And leaving land far out of sight, would skim
The Ocean of Eternity: the roar
Of breakers has not daunted my slight, trim,
But _still_ seaworthy skiff; and she may float,
Where ships have foundered, as doth many a boat.”[259]
It should be added that the brief “grace before meat,” so apparently
truely devotional in phraseology, which Pulci prefixed to each of
his cantos, and the equally orthodox epilogues in which he gave
a benediction to his readers, are his own peculiarity, borrowed
unquestionably from the street improvisatori. There is nothing
corresponding to them in _Don Juan_.
Both Pulci and Byron were men of wide reading, and not averse to
displaying and making use of their information. Pulci treats the older
poets without reverence: he quotes Dante’s “dopo la dolorosa rotta”
without acknowledgment[260]; he burlesques the famous phrase about
Aristotle by having Morgante call Margutte “il mæstro di color che
sanno”; and he alludes to Petrarch with a wink:--
“O sommo amore, o nuova cortesia!
Vedi che forse ognun si crede ancora,
Che questo verso del Petrarca fa:
Ed è gia tanto, e’ lo disse Rinaldo;
Ma chi non ruba è chiamato rubaldo.”[261]
This recalls Byron’s exhortation at the end of _Don Juan_, I, when,
after quoting four lines from Southey, he adds:
“The first four rhymes are Southey’s every line:
For God’s sake, reader! take them not for mine.”
In a similar way Byron gives four lines from Campbell’s _Gertrude of
Wyoming_, and comments upon them in _Don Juan_, I, 88–89.
This discussion would be incomplete if it did not mention Pulci’s
fondness for philosophical reflection, meditations on life and death,
on joy and sorrow. Volpi has attempted to demonstrate that Pulci, like
many so-called humorists, was really, under the mask, a sad man. In
making good this thesis he takes such lines as these as indicative of
Pulci’s true attitude towards the problems of existence:--
“Questa nostra mortal caduca vista
Fasciata ē sempre d’un oscuro velo;
E spesso il vero scambia alia menzogna;
Poi si risveglia, come fa chi sogna.”[262]
However this may be, it is certain that Pulci, in his more thoughtful
moods, inclined to pessimism and intellectual scepticism.
“Pulci’s versification,” says Foscolo, “is remarkably fluent; yet he
is deficient in melody.” Another critic, the author of the brief note
in the _Parnaso Italiano_, mentions his rapidity and his compression:
“Tu troverai pochi poeti, che viaggino so velocemente, come il Pulci,
il qualo in otti versi dice spesso piu di otte cose.” For this fluency
and its corresponding lack of rhythm, the conversational tone of the
_Morgante_ is largely responsible. The many colloquial digressions
and the use of common idioms hinder any approach to a grand style.
Pulci’s indifference to the strict demands of metre, his employment of
abrupt and disconnected phrases, and his frequent sacrifice of melody
to vigor and compactness, are also characteristic of Byron’s method
in his Italian satires. Although _Don Juan_ contains some of Byron’s
most musical passages, it nevertheless gives the impression of having
been, like the _Morgante_, composed for an audience, the speaker
being, perhaps, governed by rough notes, but tempted from his theme
into extemporaneous observations, and caring so little for regularity
or unity of structure that he feels no compunction about obeying the
inclination of the moment. It is not without some acuteness that he
alludes to,
“Mine irregularity of chime,
Which rings what’s uppermost of new or hoary,
Just as I feel the _Improvvisatore_.”[263]
Specifically in the field of satire, Pulci’s work, important though it
was in some features of style and manner,[264] exercised its greatest
influence on Byron’s mood. The chastening effect of Byron’s life on
his poetic genius had made him peculiarly receptive to the spirit of
Pulci’s poem; and accordingly the Italian poet taught him to take life
and his enemies somewhat less seriously, to be more tolerant and more
genial, to make playfulness and humor join with vituperation in his
satire. Byron’s satiric spirit, through his contact with Pulci, became
more sympathetic, and therefore more universal.
To Berni, whom he, at one time, considered to be the true master of the
Italian burlesque _genre_, Byron has few references. We have seen how
he was induced to revise his first opinion and to recognize in Pulci
“the precursor and model of Berni altogether.” In the advertisement
to the translation of the _Morgante_ he asserted that Berni, in his
_rifacimento_, corrected the “harsh style” of Boiardo. These meagre
data, however, furnish no clue to the possible influence of Berni’s
work upon _Don Juan_.
Francesco Berni (1496?-1535)[265] is important here chiefly because of
his _rifacimento_, or revision, of Boiardo’s _Orlando Innamorato_. In
accomplishing this task he completely made over Boiardo’s romance by
refining the style, polishing the verse-structure, inserting lengthy
digressions of his own and following a scheme instituted by Ariosto,
prefacing each canto with a sort of essay in verse. Berni’s purpose,
indeed, was to make the _Innamorato_ worthy of the _Furioso_. His
version, however, owing probably to the malice of some enemy, has
reached us only in a mutilated form. As it stands, nevertheless, it
possesses certain features which distinguish it from the work of Pulci
on the one hand and that of Casti on the other.
The influence which Berni may have had on Byron’s satires comes mainly
from two features of the former’s work: his introductions to separate
cantos, and his admirable style and versification. It was Berni’s
habit to soliloquize before beginning his story: thus Canto IX of
the _Innamorato_ commences with a philosophical disquisition on the
unexpected character of most human misfortunes, leading, by a natural
step, to the plot itself. So, in _Don Juan_, only one canto--the
second--begins with the tale itself; every other has a preliminary
discussion of one sort or another.[266] It was also Berni’s custom to
take formal leave of his readers at the end of each canto, and to add
a promise of what was to come.[267] This habit, all but universal with
the Italian narrative poets, Byron followed, although his farewell
occurs sometimes even before the very last stanza. A typical example
may be quoted:
“It is time to ease
This Canto, ere my Muse perceives fatigue.
The next shall ring a peal to shake all people,
Like a bob-major from a village steeple.”[268]
Berni’s style and diction are far superior to Pulci’s. Count Giammaria
Mazzuchelli, in the edition of Berni in _Classici Italiani_, says
of this feature of his work: “La, facilita della rima congiunta
alia naturallezza dell’ espressione, e la vivacita de’ pensieri
degli scherzi uniti a singolare coltura nello stile sono in lui si
maravigliose, che viene egli considerate come il capo di si fatta
poesia, la quale percio ha presa da lui la denominazione, e suol
chimarsi Bernesca.” He alone of the three Italian burlesque writers
considered, succeeded in creating a masterpiece of literary art.[269]
In this respect, then, his influence on Byron may have been salutary.
Henri Beyle (1783–1842), the self-styled M. Stendhal, is responsible
for the theory, since repeated by other critics, that Byron’s Italian
satires owe much to the work of the Venetian dialect poet, Pietro
Buratti (1772–1832). When Beyle was with Byron in Milan in November,
1816, he heard Silvio Pellico speak to Byron of Buratti as a charming
poet, who, every six months, by the governor’s orders, paid a visit to
the prisons of Venice. Beyle’s account of the ensuing events runs as
follows: “In my opinion, this conversation with Silvio Pellico gave
the tone to Byron’s subsequent poetical career. He eagerly demanded
the name of the bookseller who sold M. Buratti’s works; and as he
was accustomed to the expression of Milanese bluntness, the question
excited a hearty laugh at his expense. He was soon informed that if
Buratti wished to pass his whole life in prison, the appearance of
his works in print would infallibly lead to the gratification of his
desires; and besides, where could a printer be found hardy enough to
run his share of the risk?--The next day, the charming Contessina N.
was kind enough to lend her collection to one of our party. Byron, who
imagined himself an adept in the language of Dante and Ariosto, was at
first rather puzzled by Buratti’s manuscripts. We read over with him
some of Goldoni’s comedies, which enabled him at last to comprehend
Buratti’s satires. I persist in thinking, that for the composition
of _Beppo_, and subsequently of _Don Juan_, Byron was indebted to the
reading of Buratti’s poetry.”[270]
A statement so plain by a man of Beyle’s authority deserves some
attention. The first question which arises in connection with his
assertion is naturally, what work Buratti had done before 1817, when
Byron began the composition of _Beppo_.[271] After a dissipated
boyhood, Buratti had become a member of the _Corte dei Busoni_, a
pseudo-Academy which devoted its attention chiefly to satire. Although
he was the author of several early lampoons, his first political satire
was recited in 1813 among a party of friends at the home of Counsellor
Galvagna in Venice. It is, in substance, a lamentation over the fate of
Venice, with invective directed against the French army of occupation;
Malamani styles it “a masterpiece of subtle sarcasm.” Eventually,
through the treachery of apparent friends, the verses came to French
ears, and Buratti was imprisoned for thirty days, his punishment,
however, being somewhat lightened by powerful patrons. Shortly after
this episode, he circulated some quatrains of a scurrilous nature on
Filippo Scolari, a pedantic youth who had criticised contemporary
literary men in a supercilious way. For these insults, Scolari tried
to have Buratti apprehended again, but the latter, although he was
forced to sign an agreement to write no more satires, received only a
reprimand. During this period he had also directed several pasquinades
at an eccentric priest, Don Domenico Marienis, who seems to have been a
general object of ridicule in Venice.
Such, according to Malamani, was the extent of Buratti’s work up
to 1816. His masterpiece, the _Storia dell’ Elefante_, was not
written until 1819, too late to have been a strong influence even on
_Don Juan_. Of this early satiric verse, no one important poem was
composed in ottava rima. The poems, all short and of no especial value
as literature, used the Venetian dialect, as far removed from pure
Tuscan as Scotch is from English. Their most noticeable characteristic
is their prevailing irony, a method of satire of which Byron only
occasionally availed himself. With these facts in mind, and with the
additional knowledge that Byron was unquestionably influenced by the
burlesque writers, it is improbable that Beyle’s theory deserves
any credence. Beyle has made it clear that Byron, at one time, read
Buratti’s work with interest; but he has failed to show how the English
poet could have acquired anything, either in matter or in style, from
the Italian satirist.[272]
Of other Italian poems sometimes mentioned as possibly contributing
something to _Don Juan_, no one is worth more than a cursory notice.
_La Secchia Rapita_, by Tassoni (1565–1635), is a genuine mock-heroic,
the model for Boileau’s _Lutrin_ and, to some extent, for Pope’s _Rape
of the Lock_. So far as can be ascertained, Byron has no reference
either to the author or to his poem; and since _La Secchia Rapita_
preserves consistently the grand style, applying it to trivial
subjects, it has little in common with Byron’s satires.[273]
With _Il Ricciardetto_, by Forteguerri (1675–1735), Byron was better
acquainted. Indeed Foscolo, without giving proof for his conclusion,
suggested that it might have offered some ideas to the English writer.
The Italian poem, completed about 1715, after having been composed,
according to tradition, at the rate of a canto a day, contains thirty
cantos in ottava rima. It is an avowed burlesque, in which heroes of
Carolingian romance are degraded to buffoons, Rinaldo becoming a cook
and Ricciardetto a barber. In it, as Foffano says, “the marvellous
becomes absurd, the sublime, grotesque, and the heroic, ridiculous.”
Forteguerri’s design, however, was not directly satiric, and he was
seldom a destructive critic. His mission was solely to divert his
readers. Byron refers to Lord Glenbervie’s rendering of the first canto
of _Il Ricciardetto_ (1822) as most amusing,[274] but he seems to have
had no great interest in the original.
A point has now been reached where it is practicable to frame some
generalizations as to the extent and nature of Byron’s indebtedness
to the Italians. For his subject-matter, he owed them something. The
Catharine II episode in _Don Juan_ may have been suggested by _Il Poema
Tartaro_; an occasional unimportant incident or situation may have
been taken or modified from the work of Casti or Pulci. On the whole,
however, Byron’s material was either original or drawn from other
sources than the Italians. Even though Byron and Casti so frequently
satirize the same institutions and theories, it is improbable that this
is more than coincidence, the result of the natural opposition which
similar abuses aroused in men so alike in temperament and intellect.
In his manner, however, Byron was profoundly affected, so much so
that his own statement about _Beppo_--“The style is not English, it
is Italian”--[275] is in exact accordance with the impression which
_Beppo_, as well as _Don Juan_, makes on the reader. He learned,
in part from Casti, and later from Berni and Pulci, the use of
the burlesque method; he adopted their discursive style, with its
opportunities for digression and self-assertion, and made it a channel
for voicing his own beliefs as well as for speaking out against his
enemies. Accepting the hint offered by their tendency to colloquial
speech, he lowered the tone of his diction and addressed himself
often directly to his readers. Moreover, he acquired the habit of
shifting suddenly from seriousness to absurdity, from the pathetic to
the grotesque, in the compass of a single stanza. His wrath, at first
untempered, was now softened by a new attitude of skepticism which
turned him more to irony and mockery than to violent rage.
In utilizing the octave for his own satires, he gave it a freedom of
which it had never before been made capable in English; and, by a
clever employment of double and triple rhymes, and by the constant
use of run-on lines and stanzas, he adjusted the measure to the
conversational flow of his verse.
At a time, then, when his youthful narrowness was developing into the
maturity that comes only from experience, and when, therefore, he was
most susceptible to broadening influences, Byron, fortunately for his
satire, was brought into contact with the Italian spirit. The result
was that _Don Juan_ joined many of the most powerful features of
_English Bards_ with the lighter elements of Berni and Casti.
The beauty of Byron’s satire at its finest in _Don Juan_ and _The
Vision of Judgment_, lies in the welding of the direct and indirect
methods, in the interweaving of invective with burlesque, in such a way
that the poems seem to link the spirit of Juvenal with the spirit of
Pulci. The consequence is a variety of tone, a widening of scope, and
a considerable increase in effectiveness. Byron’s general attacks are
relieved from the charge of futility; his vindictiveness is mitigated
by humor and a touch of the ridiculous; and his aggressiveness, though
it does not disappear, is sometimes changed to a cynical tolerance.
CHAPTER VIII
“DON JUAN”
With the exception of _The Ring and the Book_, _Don Juan_, containing
approximately 16,000 lines, is probably the longest original poem
in English since the _Faerie Queene_; moreover, if we exclude the
_Canterbury Tales_, no other work in verse in our literature attempts
an actual “criticism of life” on so broad a scale. It is Byron’s
deliberate and exhaustive characterization of his age, the book in
which he divulges his opinions with the least reticence and the
most finality. With all their occasional brilliance and power, his
earlier satires had been essentially imitative and could be judged by
pre-existing standards. Later, in composing _Beppo_, Byron discovered
that he had found a kind of verse capable of free and varied treatment
and therefore especially suited to his improvising and discursive
genius; accordingly, in _Don Juan_, which is a longer and more
elaborate _Beppo_, he produced a masterpiece which, besides being an
adequate revelation of his complex personality, is unique in English,
anomalous in its manner and method.[276]
Because it reflects nearly every side of Byron’s variable
individuality, _Don Juan_, though satirical in main intent,
combines satire with many other elements. It is tragic, sensuous,
humorous, melancholy, cynical, realistic, and exalted, with words
for nearly every emotion and temper. It contains a romantic story,
full of sentiment and tenderness; it rises into passages of lyric
and descriptive beauty, evidently heart-felt; yet these serious
and imaginative details are imbedded in a sub-stratum of satire.
Furthermore, its range in substance and style is very great; it
discusses matters in politics, in society, in literature, and in
religion; it shifts in a stanza from grave to gay, from the commonplace
to the sublime. It is a poem of freedom; free in thought and free in
speech, unrestricted by the ordinary laws of metre. “The soul of such
writing is its license,” wrote Byron to Murray in 1819.
The plot of _Don Juan_, dealing, like the picaresque romances of
Le Sage and Smollett, with a series of adventures in the life of a
wandering hero, and interrupted constantly by the comments of the
author, has little real unity. Considered as a satire, however, the
poem becomes unified through the personality behind the stanzas. It
is a colossal monument of egotism; wherever we read, we meet the
inevitable “I.” The poet’s interest in the progress of his characters
is so obviously subordinated to his desire for gossiping with his
readers that the plot seems, at times, to be almost forgotten. Thus
_Don Juan_ is as subjective as Byron’s correspondence; indeed ideas
were often transferred directly from his letters to his verses. There
are lines in the poem which restate, sometimes in the same phraseology,
the confessions and the criticisms recorded by Lady Blessington in her
_Conversations with Lord Byron_. Autobiographical references are very
common, sometimes merely casual,[277] sometimes used as a text for
satire.[278] The powerful personality of the writer, expressed thus in
his work, furnishes it with a unity which is lacking in the plot.
It is probable that Byron himself had only a vague conception of the
structure and limits of his poem. His conflicting assertions, usually
half-jocular, concerning his plan or scheme are proof that he cared
little about adhering to a closely knit form. He is most to be trusted
when he says:
“Note or text,
I never know the word which will come next.”[279]
or when he confesses to Murray: “You ask me for the plan of Donny Juan:
I have no plan--I had no plan; but I had or have materials.”[280] The
inconsistent statements in the body of the poem are, of course, merely
quizzical: thus in the first canto Byron says decidedly,
“My poem’s epic, and is meant to be
Divided in twelve books”;[281]
when the twelfth canto is reached, he has an apology ready:
“I thought, at setting off, about two dozen
Cantos would do; but at Apollo’s pleading,
If that my Pegasus should not be foundered,
I hope to canter gently through a hundred.”[282]
As it lengthened _Don Juan_ developed more and more into a verse diary,
bound, from the looseness of its design, to remain uncompleted at
Byron’s death.
But whatever may have actuated Byron in beginning _Don Juan_ and
however uncertain he may have been at first about its ultimate purpose,
it soon grew to be primarily satirical. He himself perceived this
in describing it to Murray in 1818 as “meant to be a little quietly
facetious upon everything”[283] and in characterizing it in 1822 as
“a _Satire_ on _abuses_ of the present states of society.”[284]
Despite the intermingling of other elements, the poem is exactly what
Byron called it--an “Epic Satire.”[285] His remark “I was born for
opposition” indicates how much at variance with his age he felt himself
to be; and his inclination to pick flaws in existing institutions
and to indulge in destructive criticism of his time had become so
strong that any poem which expressed fully his attitude towards life
was bound to be satirical. Just as the cosmopolitan outlook of the
poem is due partly to Byron’s long-continued residence in a foreign
country, so its varied moods, its diverse methods, and its wide range
of subject matter are to be attributed, to a large extent, to the fact
that the composition of _Don Juan_ extended over several years during
a period when he was growing intellectually and responding eagerly to
new ideas.[286] The work is a fair representation of Byron’s theories
and beliefs during the period of his maturity, when he was developing
into an enlightened advocate of progressive and liberal doctrines.
It is an attack on political inertia and retrogression, on social
conventionality, on cant and sham and intolerance. The intermittent,
erratic, and somewhat imitative radicalism of a few of his earlier
poems has changed into a persistent hostility to all the reactionary
conservation of the time. _Don Juan_ is satiric, then, in that it is
a protest against all that hampers individual freedom and retards
national independence.
The pervasive satiric spirit of _Don Juan_ has varied manifestations.
In a few passages there are examples of rancor and spite, of direct
personal denunciation and furious invective, that recall the satire of
_English Bards_. The attacks on Castlereagh and Southey, on Brougham
and Lady Byron are in deadly earnest, with hardly a touch of mockery.
At the same time Byron relies mainly on the more playful and less
savage method which he had learned from the Italians and used in
_Beppo_. He himself expressed this alteration in mood by saying,
“Methinks the older that one grows,
Inclines us more to laugh than scold.”[287]
It is noticeable, too, that in _Don Juan_ petulant fury is much less
conspicuous than philosophic satire. Byron is assailing institutions
and theories as well as men and women. To some extent the poem is a
medium for satisfying a quarrel or a prejudice; but to a far greater
degree it is a summary of testimony hostile to the reactionary early
nineteenth century. The poet still prefers, in many cases, to make
specific persons responsible for intolerable systems; but he is
gradually forsaking petty aims and rising to a far nobler position as a
critic of his age.
The satire in _Don Juan_ is still more remarkable when we consider
the field which it surveys. Byron is no longer dealing with local
topics, but with subjects of momentous interest to all humanity. He
is assailing, not a small coterie of editors or an immodest dance,
but a bigoted and absolute government, a hypocritical society, and, a
false idealism, wherever they exist. More than this, he so succeeds
in uniting his satire, through the force of his personality, with the
eternal elements of realism and romance, that the combination, complex
and intricate though it is, seems to represent an undivided purpose.
Perhaps the loftiest note in Byron’s protest is struck in dealing
with the political situation of his day. Despite his noble birth and
his aristocratic tastes, he had become, partly through temperamental
inclination, partly through association with Moore and Hunt, a fairly
consistent republican, though he took care to make it clear, as Nichol
points out, that he was “for the people, not of them.” Impatient of
restraint on his own actions, he extended his belief in personal
liberty until it included the advocacy of any democratic movement. It
is to his credit, moreover, that he was no mere closet theorist; in
Italy he espoused the cause of freedom in a practical way by abetting
and joining the revolutionary _Carbonari_; and he died enrolled in the
ranks of the liberators of Greece. In _Don Juan_ he declares himself
resolutely opposed to tyranny in any form, asserting his hatred of
despotism in memorable lines:
“I will teach, if possible, the stones
To rise against earth’s tyrants. Never let it
Be said that we still truckle unto thrones.”[288]
Such doctrine was, of course, not new in Byron’s poetry. He had
already spoken eloquently and mournfully of the loss of Greek
independence[289]; he had prophesied the downfall of monarchs and the
triumph of democracy[290]; and he had inserted in _Childe Harold_ that
vigorous apostrophe to liberty:
“Yet, Freedom, yet thy banner, torn but flying,
Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind.”[291]
In _Don Juan_, however, Byron is less rhetorical and more direct. In
expressing his
“Plain sworn downright detestation
Of every despotism in every nation,”[292]
he does not hesitate to condemn all absolute monarchs; moreover he
displays a sincere faith in the ultimate success of popular government:
“I think I hear a little bird, who sings
The people by and by will be the stronger.”[293]
Such lines as these show a maturity and an earnestness that mark
the evolution of Byron’s satiric spirit from the hasty petulance of
_English Bards_ to the humanitarian breadth of his thoughtful manhood.
Like “Young Azim” in Moore’s _Veiled Prophet of Khorassan_, he is eager
to march and command under the banner on which is emblazoned “Freedom
to the World.”
It is characteristic of Byron’s later satire that he applied his theory
of liberty to the current problems of British politics by assailing the
obnoxious domestic measures instituted by the Tory ministry of Lord
Liverpool, by condemning the English foreign policy of acquiescence
in the legitimist doctrines of Metternich and the continental powers,
and by attacking the characters of the ministers whom he considered
responsible for England’s position at home and abroad. The England of
the time of _Don Juan_ was the country which Shelley so graphically
pictured in his _Sonnet: England in 1819_:--
“An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, ...
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, ...
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field.”
It was a nation exhausted by war, burdened with debt, and seething
with discontent. The Luddite outbreaks, the “Manchester Massacre,”
which so excited the wrath of Shelley, and the “Cato Street Conspiracy”
showed the temper of the poor and disaffected classes. Unfortunately
the cabinet saw the solution of these difficulties not in reform
but in repression, and preferred to put down the uprisings by force
rather than to remove their causes. For these conditions Byron blamed
Castlereagh, the Foreign Secretary.
Byron had never met Castlereagh and had never suffered a personal
injury from him; his rage, therefore, was directed solely at the
statesman, not at the man. The Secretary had long been detestable to
Irish Whigs like Moore[294] and English radicals like Shelley[295]; it
remained for Byron to track him through life with venomous hatred and
to pursue him beyond the grave with scathing epigrams. For anything
comparable aimed at a man in high position we must go back to Marvell’s
satires on Charles II and the Duke of York or to the contemporary
satire in 1762 on Lord Bute. Byron’s Castlereagh has no virtues; the
portrait, like Gifford’s sketch of Peter Pindar, is all in dark colors.
The satire is vehement and personal, without malice and without pity.
Byron also attacked Wellington, but in manner ironic and scornful, as a
leader who had lost all claim to the gratitude of the people by allying
himself with their oppressors. For George, who as Regent and King, had
done nothing to redeem himself with his subjects, Byron had little but
contempt. In satirizing these men, however, Byron was perhaps less
effective than Moore, over whose imitations of Castlereagh’s orations
and “best-wigged Prince in Christendom,” people smiled when Byron’s
tirades seemed too vicious.
Through the method commonly called dramatic, or indirect, Byron
assailed English politicians in his portrayal of Lord Henry
Amundeville, the statesman who is “always a patriot--and sometimes
a placeman,” and who is representative of the unemotional, just,
yet altogether selfish British minister. The type is drawn with
considerable skill and with much less rancor than would have been
possible with Byron ten years before. Indeed the satire resembles
Dryden’s in that it admits of a wide application and is not limited to
the individual described.
Nothing in Byron’s political creed redounds more to his credit than his
persistent opposition to all war except that carried on in the “defence
of freedom, country, or of laws.” Neglecting the pride and pomp of war,
he depicted the Siege of Ismail with ghastly realism, laying emphasis
on the blood and carnage of the battle and condemning especially
mercenary soldiers, “those butchers in large business.” Though this
attitude towards warfare was not original with him,[296] Byron spoke
out with a firmness and pertinacity that marked him as far ahead of his
age.
Though Byron, in _Don Juan_, was almost entirely a destructive critic
of the political situation in England and in Europe, his ideas were
exceedingly influential. In spite of the fact that he had no definite
remedy to offer for intolerable conditions, his daring championship
of oppressed peoples affected European thought, not only during his
lifetime, but also for years after his death. He was revered in Greece
as more than mortal; he was an inspiration for Mazzini and Cavour;
he seemed to Lamartine an apostle of liberty. It is probably to his
insistence on the rights of the people and to his sweeping indictment
of autocratic rule that he owes the greatest part of his international
recognition.
Byron’s iconoclastic tendencies showed themselves also in his attack
on English society, in which he aimed to expose the selfishness,
stupidity, and affectation of the small class that represented the
aristocratic circle of the nation. In dealing with this subject he knew
of what he was speaking, for he had been a member and a close observer
of “that Microcosm on stilts yclept the Great World.” His picture of
this upper class is humorous and ironic, but seldom vehement. In a
series of vivid and often brilliant character sketches he delineates
the personages that Juan, Ambassador of Russia, meets in London,
touching cleverly on their defects and vices, and unveiling the
sensuality, jealousy, and deceit which their outward decorum covers.
Though the figures are types rather than individuals, they were in many
cases suggested by men and women whom Byron knew. Possibly the most
effective satire occurs in the description of the gathering at Lady
Adeline’s country-seat, Norman Abbey, where some thirty-three guests,
“the Brahmins of the Ton,” meet at a fashionable house party.[297]
For these social parasites and office seekers Byron felt nothing but
contempt. His advice to Juan moving among them is:
“Be hypocritical, be cautious, be
Not what you _seem_, but always what you _see_.”[298]
He describes their life as dull and uninteresting, a gay masquerade
which palls when all its delights have been tried. Its prudery conceals
scandal, treachery, and lust; its great vices are hypocrisy and
cant--“cant political, cant religious, cant moral.”[299] Indeed the
satire of _Don Juan_, from Canto XI to the point where the poem is
broken off, is an attack on pretence and sham, and a vindication of the
free and natural man. Byron’s motive may have been, in part, the desire
for revenge on the circle which had cast him out; but certainly he was
disgusted with the narrowness and conventionality of his London life,
and his newly acquired jesting manner found in it a suitable object for
satire.
While Byron’s liberalism and democracy were doing effective service
in pointing out flaws in existing political and social systems, he
was still maintaining, not without many inconsistencies, his old
conservative doctrines in literature, and doggedly insisting on the
virtue of his literary commandments:
“Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope;
Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey.”[300]
While he was being hailed as a leader of the romantic school of poetry,
he was still defending the principles of Pope, praising the work of
Crabbe, Rogers, and Campbell, and disapproving of the verses of the
members of the Lake School. He dedicated _Don Juan_, in a mocking and
condescending fashion, to Southey, and described him in the sketch of
the bard “paid to satirise or flatter” who sang to Haidée and Juan
the beautiful lyric, _The Isles of Greece_.[301] He ridiculed _The
Waggoner_ and _Peter Bell_, treating Wordsworth with an hostility which
is almost inexplicable in view of Byron’s indebtedness in _Childe
Harold_, III and IV to the older poet’s feeling for nature. Only in
minor respects had Byron’s position changed; he was more appreciative
of Scott and less vindictive towards Jeffrey; and he had found at least
one new literary enemy in the poetaster, William Sotheby. In general
there was little for him to add to what he had already said in _English
Bards_. His otherwise progressive spirit had not extended into the
field of literary criticism.
It is not at all surprising that a large portion of _Don Juan_ should
be devoted to two subjects in which Byron had always been deeply
interested--woman and love. Nor is it at all remarkable, in view of his
singularly complex and variable nature, that the poem should contain
not only the exquisite idyll of Haidée but also line after line of
cynical satire on her sex. Though Byron’s opinion of women was usually
not complimentary, sentiment, and even sentimentality of a certain
sort, had a powerful attraction for him. If many of his love affairs
were followed and even accompanied by cynicism, it was because the
passion in such cases was sensual, and in reaction, he went to the
other extreme. The influence of the Guiccioli, however, manifest in
his descriptions of Haidée and Aurora Raby, was beneficial to Byron’s
character, and his ideas of love were somewhat altered through his
relations with her. At the same time the conventional assertions of
woman’s inconstancy and treachery so common in his earlier work recur
frequently in _Don Juan_.
Love, according to Byron’s philosophy, can exist only when it is free
and untrammelled. The poet’s too numerous amours and the general laxity
of Italian morals had joined in exciting in him a prejudice against
English puritanism; while his own unfortunate marital experience had
convinced him that “Love and Marriage rarely can combine.”[302] The
remembrance of his married life and his observation in the land of his
adoption were both instrumental in forming his conclusion:
“There’s doubtless something in domestic doings,
Which forms, in fact, true love’s antithesis.”[303]
When marriage, then, is so unalluring, the logical refuge is an
honest friendship with a married lady, “of all connections the most
steady.”[304] When Byron does speak of women with apparent respect, it
is always well to search for irony behind. If he says, evidently with
emotion:
“All who have loved, or love, will still allow
Life has nought like it. God is love, they say,
And love’s a god,”[305]
he qualifies his ecstacy elsewhere by asserting that Love is “the very
God of evil.”[306] Although he protests that he loves the sex,[307]
he must add that they are deceitful,[308] hypocritical,[309] and
fickle.[310]
Nothing in the first two cantos of _Don Juan_ was more offensive to
Hobhouse and the “Utican Senate” to which Murray submitted them than
the poorly disguised portrayal of Lady Byron in the character of Donna
Inez. Though Byron explicitly disavowed all intention of satirising
his wife directly, no one familiar with the facts could possibly have
doubted that this lady “whose favorite science was the mathematical,”
who opened her husband’s trunks and letters, and tried to prove her
loving lord mad, and who acted under all circumstances like “Morality’s
prim personification” was intended to represent the former Miss
Milbanke and present Lady Byron.
Doubtless there is something artificial and affected in much of Byron’s
cynical comment on women and love; but if we are inclined to distrust
this man of many amours who delights in flaunting his past before
the eyes of his shocked compatriots, we must remember that there is
probably no conscious insincerity in his words. Byron frequently
deludes not only his readers but himself, and his satire on women, when
it is not a kind of bravado, is merely part of his worldly philosophy.
The philosophical conceptions on which _Don Juan_ rests are, in their
general trend, not uncommonly satirical; that is, they are destructive
rather than constructive, skeptical rather than idealistic, founded on
doubt rather than on faith. It is the object of the poem to overturn
tottering institutions, to upset traditions, and to unveil illusions.
Byron’s attitude is that so often taken by a thorough man of the world
who has tasted pleasure to the point of satiety, and who has arrived
at early middle age with his enthusiasms weakened and his faith sunk
in pessimism. This accounts for much of the realism in the poem.
Sometimes the poet, in the effort to portray things as they are, merely
transcribes the prose narratives of others into verse,[311] just as
Shakspere borrowed passages from North’s _Plutarch_ for _Julius Cæsar_.
More often he undertakes to detect and reveal the incongruity between
actuality and pretence, and to expose weakness and folly under its mask
of sham. The realism of this sort closely resembles the more modern
work of Zola, attributing as it does even good actions to low motives
and degrading deliberately the better impulses of mankind. In Byron’s
case it seems to be the result partly of a wish to avoid carrying
sentiment and romance to excess, partly of a distorted or partial view
of life. Whatever romance there is in _Don Juan_--and the amount is
not inconsiderable--is invariably followed by a drop into bathos or
absurdity. The deservedly famous “Ave Maria,”[312] with its exquisite
sentiment and melody, is closed by a stanza harsh and grating, which
calls the reader with a shock back to a lower level. This juxtaposition
of tenderness and mockery, tending by contrast to accentuate both
moods, is highly characteristic of the spirit of the poem. Juan’s
lament for Donna Julia is interrupted by sea-sickness,[313] and his
rhetorical address on London, “Freedom’s chosen station,” is broken off
by “Damn your eyes! your money or your life.”[314] Byron never overdoes
the emotional element in _Don Juan_; he draws us back continually to
the commonplace, and sometimes to the mean and vulgar.[315]
Byron’s materialistic and skeptical habit of mind is often put into
phraseology that recalls the “Que sais-je?” of Montaigne. Rhetorical
disquisitions on the vanity of human knowledge and of worldly
achievement had appeared in _Childe Harold_[316]; in _Don Juan_ the
poet dismisses the great problems of existence with a jest:
“What is soul, or mind, their birth and growth,
Is more than I know--the deuce take them both.”[317]
In the words of the British soldier, Johnson, to Juan, we have,
perhaps, a summary of the position which Byron himself had reached:
“There are still many rainbows in your sky,
But mine have vanished. All, when Life is new,
Commence with feelings warm and prospects high;
But Time strips our illusions of their hue,
And one by one in turn, some grand mistake
Casts off its bright skin yearly like the snake.”[318]
As a corollary to this recognition of the futility of human endeavor,
the doctrine of mutability, so common in Shelley’s poetry, appears
frequently in _Don Juan_,[319] ringing in the note of sadness which
Byron would have us believe was his underlying mood. Curiously enough,
though he cynically classed together “rum and true religion” as calming
to the spirit,[320] he was chary of assailing Christian theology or
orthodox creeds. He preserved a kind of respect for the Church; and
even Dr. Kennedy was obliged to admit that on religious questions Byron
was a courteous and fair, as well as an acute, antagonist. Perhaps
the half-faith which led him to say once “The trouble is I do believe”
may account for the fact that, at a time when William Hone and other
satirists were making the Church of England a target for their wit,
_Don Juan_ contained no reference to that institution.
Byron, then, refused to accept any of the creeds and idealisms of his
day. His own position, however, was marked by doubt and vacillation,
and he took no positive attitude towards any of the great problems
of existence. Experience led him to nothing but uncertainty and
indecision, with the result that he became content to destroy, since he
was unable to construct.
This is no place for discussing the fundamental morality or immorality
of _Don Juan_. The British public of Byron’s day, basing their judgment
largely upon the voluptuousness of certain love scenes and upon some
coarse phrases scattered here and there through the poem, charged him
with “brutally outraging all the best feeling of humanity.” There can
be no doubt that Byron did ignore the ordinary standards of conduct
among average people; though he asserted “My object is Morality,”[321]
no one knew better than he that he was constantly running counter to
the conventional code of behavior. Nor can any one doubt, after a study
of his letters to Murray and Moore, that he felt a sardonic glee in
acting as an agent of disillusion and pretending to be a very dangerous
fellow. This spirit led him to employ profanity in _Don Juan_ until his
friend Hobhouse protested: “Don’t swear again--the third ‘damn.’”[322]
By assailing many things that his time held sacred, by calling love
“selfish in its beginning as its end,”[323] and maintaining that the
desire for money is “the only sort of pleasure that requites,”[324]
Byron drew upon himself the charge of immorality. The poem, however,
does not attempt to justify debauchery or to defend vicious practices;
Byron is attacking not virtue, but false sentiment, false idealism, and
false faith. His satiric spirit is engaged in analyzing and exposing
the strange contradictions and contrasts in human life, in tearing down
what is sham and pretence and fraud. Judged from this standpoint, _Don
Juan_ is profoundly moral.
Fortunately, in this poem the design of which was to exploit the
doctrine of personal freedom, Byron had discovered a medium through
which he could make his individuality effective, in which he could
speak in the first person, leave off his story when he chose, digress
and comment on current events, and voice his every mood and whim. The
colloquial tone of the poem strikes the reader at once. He censures
himself in a jocular way for letting the tale slip forever through his
fingers, and confesses with mock humility,
“If I have any fault, it is digression.”[325]
The habit of calling himself back to the narrative becomes almost
as much of an idiosyncrasy as Mr. Kipling’s “But that is another
story.”[326] Obviously Byron’s words are really no more than
half-apologetic; he knew perfectly well what he was doing and why
he was doing it. Without insisting too much on the value of a
mathematical estimate it is still safe to say that _Don Juan_ is fully
half-concerned with that sort of gossipy chat with which Byron’s
visitors at Venice or Pisa were entertained,[327] and as the poem
lengthened, his tendency was to neglect the plot more and more.
Indeed the justification for treating _Don Juan_ as a satire lies
mainly in these side-remarks in which Byron discloses his thoughts
and opinions with so little reserve. The digressions in the poem
are used principally for two purposes: to satirize directly people,
institutions, or theories; to gossip about the writer himself. In
either case we may imagine Byron as a monologist, telling us what he
has done and what he is going to do, what he has seen and heard, what
he thinks on current topics, and illustrating points here and there by
a short anecdote or a compact maxim. In such a series of observations,
extending as they do over a number of years and written as they were
under rapidly shifting conditions, it is uncritical to demand unity. We
might as well expect to find a model drama in a diary. The important
fact is that we have in these digressions a continuous exposition of
Byron’s satire during the most important years of his life.
The peculiar features of the octave stanza, with its opportunity for
double and triple rhymes and the loose structure of its sestette,
made it more suited to Byron’s genius than the more compact and less
flexible heroic couplet. At the same time the concluding couplet of the
octave offered him a chance for brief and epigrammatic expression. In
general it may be said that no metrical form lends itself more readily
to the colloquial style which Byron preferred than does the octave.
In utilizing this stanza, Byron, accepting the methods of Pulci
and Casti, allowed himself the utmost liberties in rhyming and
verse-structure. We have already seen that in several youthful poems,
and, indeed, in some later ephemeral verses, he had shown a fondness
for remarkable rhymes. By the date of _Beppo_ he had broken away
entirely from the rigidity of the Popean theory of poetry, and had
confessed that he enjoyed a freer style of writing:
“I--take for rhyme, to hook my rambling verse on,
The first that Walker’s lexicon unravels,
And when I can’t find that, I put a worse on,
Not caring as I ought for critics’ cavils.”[328]
In _Don Juan_ this employment of uncommon rhymes had become a genuine
art. Byron once declared to Trelawney that Swift was the greatest
master of rhyming in English; but Byron is as superior to Swift as
the latter is to Barham and Browning in this respect. Indeed Byron’s
only rival is Butler, and there are many who would maintain, on
good grounds, that Byron as a master of rhyming is greater than the
author of _Hudibras_. When we consider the length of _Don Juan_, the
constant demand for double and triple rhymes, and the fact that Byron
seldom repeated himself, we cannot help marvelling at the linguistic
cleverness which enabled him to discover such unheard-of combinations
of syllables and words. Some of the most extraordinary have become
almost classic,[329] _e.g._:--
“But--Oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,
Inform us truly, have they not hen-pecked you all?”[330]
“Since in a way that’s rather of the oddest, he
Became divested of his native modesty.”[331]
Naturally in securing such a variety of rhymes he was forced to draw
from many sources. Foreign languages proved a rich field, and he
obtained from them some striking examples of words similar in sound,
sometimes rhyming them with words from the same language, sometimes
fitting them to English words and phrases. Some typical specimens are
worthy of quotation:
Latin--in medias res, please, ease.[332]
Greek--critic is, poietikes.[333]
French--seat, tête-à-tête, bete.[334]
Italian--plenty, twenty, “mi vien in mente.”[335]
Spanish--Lopé, copy.[336]
Russian--Strokenoff, Chokenoff, poke enough.[337]
Byron also resorts to the uses of proper names, borrowed from many
tongues:
Dante’s--Cervantes.[338]
Hovel is--Mephistophelis.[339]
Tyrian--Presbyterian.[340]
Avail us--Sardanapalus.[341]
Pukes in--Euxine.[342]
It may be added, too, that he was seldom over-accurate or
careful in making his rhymes exact. In one instance he rhymes
certainty--philosophy--progeny.[343] Most stanzas have either double or
triple rhymes, but there are occasional stanzas in which all the rhymes
are single.[344]
In _Don Juan_ run-on lines are the rule rather than the exception.
Certain stanzas are really sentences in which the thought moves
straight on, disregarding entirely the ordinary restrictions of
versification.[345] In more than one case the idea is even carried
from one stanza to another without a pause.[346] In one extraordinary
instance a word is broken at the end of a line and finished at
the beginning of the next,[347] following the example set by the
Anti-Jacobin in Rogero’s song in _The Rovers_. Like a public speaker,
Byron at times neglects coherence in order to keep the thread of his
discourse or to digress momentarily without losing grip on his audience.
Much of the humor of _Don Juan_ is due to the varied employment of
many forms of verbal wit: puns, plays upon words, and odd repetitions
and turns of expression. The puns are not always commendable for
their brilliance, though they serve often to burlesque a serious
subject. In at least one stanza Byron uses a foreign language in
punning.[348] In general it is noticeable that puns become more common
in the later cantos of the poem.[349] There are also many curious
turns of expression, comparable only to some of the quips of Hood and
Praed.[350] Frequently, they are exceedingly clever in the suddenness
with which they shift the thought and give the reader an unexpected
surprise, _e.g._:
“Lambo presented, and one instant more
Had stopped this canto and Don Juan’s breath.”[351]
Repetitions of words or sounds often convey the effect of a pun, _e.g._:
“They either missed, or they were never missed,
And added greatly to the missing list.”[352]
The witty line,
“But Tom’s no more--and so no more of Tom,”[353]
is an excellent example of Byron’s verbal artistry.
It should be added here, also, that Byron displayed a singular capacity
for coining maxims and compressing much worldly wisdom into a compact
form. Some of his sayings have so far passed into common speech that
they are almost platitudes, _e.g._:
“There is no sterner moralist than pleasure.”[354]
As has been pointed out, this kind of sententious utterance in the form
of a proverb or an epigram was very common with the Italian burlesque
writers, especially with Pulci.
Something of the universality of Don Juan, of its appeal, not only to
particular countries and peoples, but also to the world at large, may
be indicated by the number of translations of it which exist.[355] It
appeared in French in 1827, in Spanish in 1829, in Swedish in 1838, in
German in 1839, in Russian in 1846, in Roumanian in 1847, in Italian
in 1853, in Danish in 1854, in Polish in 1863, and in Servian in 1888.
Since these first versions appeared, other and more satisfactory ones
have been published in most of the countries named. It was chiefly
through _Don Juan_ that Byron became, what Saintsbury calls him, “the
sole master of young Russia, young Italy, young Spain, in poetry.” In
these days when Byron’s defence of the rights of the people is less
necessary, when his opposition to despotism would find few tyrants
to oppose, and when his condemnation of war has developed into a
widespread movement for universal peace, the powerful impetus which his
satire gave to the progress of democracy is likely to be overlooked.
His attitude of defiance furnished an illustrious example to struggling
nations, and gave them hope of better things.[356]
Within this limited space it has been possible to touch only upon one
or two phases of the many which this poem, perhaps the greatest in
English since _Paradise Lost_, presents to the reader. Byron’s satire,
in assuming a wider scope and a greater breadth of view, in growing
out of the insular into the cosmopolitan, has also blended itself with
romance and realism, with the lyric, the descriptive, and the epic
types of poetry until it has created a new literary form and method
suitable only to a great genius. His satiric spirit, in assailing not
only individuals, but also institutions, systems, and theories of life,
in concerning itself less with literary grudges and personal quarrels
than with momentous questions of society, in progressing steadily from
the specific to the universal, has undergone a striking evolution.
The tone of his satire has become less formal and dignified, and more
colloquial, while a more frequent use of irony, burlesque, and verbal
wit makes the poem easier and more varied. Byron joins mockery with
invective, raillery with contempt, so that _Don Juan_, in retaining
certain qualities of the old Popean satire, seems to have tempered
and qualified the acrimony of _English Bards_. The inevitable result
of this development was to make _Don Juan_ a reflection of Byron’s
personality such as no other of his works had been. _Don Juan_ is
Byron; and in this fact lies the explanation of its strength and
weakness.
CHAPTER IX
“THE VISION OF JUDGMENT”
Byron’s _Vision of Judgment_, printed in the first number of _The
Liberal_, October 15, 1820, was the climax of his long quarrel with
Southey, the complicated details of which have been related at length
by Mr. Prothero in his edition of the _Letters and Journals_.[357]
Byron’s hostility to Southey was due apparently to several causes,
some personal, some political, and some literary. He believed that
Southey had spread malicious reports about the alleged immorality of
his life in Switzerland with Jane Clermont, Mary Godwin, and Shelley;
he considered the laureate to be an apostate from liberalism and a
truckler to aristocracy; and he had no patience with his views on
poetry and his lack of respect for Pope. The two men were, in fact,
fundamentally incompatible in temperament and opinions, Southey being
firmly convinced that Byron was a dissipated and dangerous debauchee,
while Byron thought Southey a dull, servile, and somewhat hypocritical
scribbler.
Since _The Vision of Judgment_ was Byron’s only attempt at genuine
travesty, it may be well to differentiate between the travesty and
other kindred forms of satire, all of which are commonly grouped under
the generic heading, burlesque. Broadly speaking, a burlesque is any
literary production in which there is an absurd incongruity in the
adjustment of style to subject matter or subject matter to style,
humor being excited by a continual contrast between what is high and
what is low, what is exalted and what is commonplace.[358] The peculiar
effect of burlesque is ordinarily dependent upon its comparison with
some form of literature of a more serious nature. Of the subdivisions
of burlesque, the parody aims particularly at the humorous imitation
of the style and manner of another work, the original characters and
incidents being displaced by incidents of a more trifling sort. The
parody has been a popular variety of satire, and examples of it may
be discovered in the productions of any sophisticated or critical
age.[359] The travesty, in the narrow sense of the term, is a humorous
imitation of another work, the subject matter remaining substantially
the same, being made ridiculous, however, by a grotesque treatment and
a less imaginative style. A serious theme is thus deliberately degraded
and debased. The commonest subjects of travesty have been derived, as
one might expect, from mythology or from the great epic poems. Its
popularity, except in certain limited periods, has never equalled that
of the parody.[360]
Considered simply as a travesty, Byron’s _Vision_ is remarkable
in two respects: first, in that it burlesques a contemporary poem,
while most other travesties ridicule works of antiquity, or at least
of established repute; second, in that it has an intrinsic merit of
its own far surpassing that of the poem which suggested it. Thus the
general dictum that a travesty is valuable chiefly through the contrast
which it presents to some nobler masterpiece is contradicted by Byron’s
satire, which is in itself an artistic triumph.
Southey’s _Vision of Judgment_, of which Byron’s _Vision_ is a
travesty, was written in the author’s function as poet-laureate shortly
after the death of George III. on January 29, 1820. Certainly in many
ways it lent itself readily to burlesque.[361] It was composed in the
unrhymed dactyllic hexameter, a measure in which Southey was even less
successful than Harvey and Sidney had been. It was full of adulation of
a king, who, however much he may have been distinguished for domestic
virtues, was surely, in his public activities, no suitable subject for
encomium. It was dedicated, moreover, to George IV. in language which
seems to us to-day the grossest flattery.[362] The poem itself, divided
into twelve sections, deals with the appearance of the old King at the
gate of heaven, his judgment and beatification by the angels, and his
meeting with the shades of illustrious dead--English worthies, mighty
figures of the Georgian age, and members of his own family.
Many special features of Southey’s poem were disagreeable to Byron. It
was a vindication and a eulogy of the existing system of government in
England, George III, whom Byron despised, being described as an ideal
sovereign. Southey had made a contemptuous reference to what he was
pleased to call the watchwords of Faction, “Freedom, Invaded Rights,
Corruption, and War, and Oppression,” a summary which must have been
distasteful to a man who had been raising his voice in resistance
to political tyranny. Southey had also carefully omitted Dryden and
Pope from the list of great writers whom George III met in heaven.
On the whole Southey’s poem was pervaded by a tone of arrogance and
self-satisfaction which was exceedingly offensive to Byron.
Byron had begun his travesty on May 7, 1821, and had sent it to Murray
from Ravenna on October 4th.[363] Unconscious of the fact that this
satire was in Murray’s hands, Southey meanwhile had published his
_Letter to the Courier_, January 5, 1822, vindictively personal, and
containing one unlucky paragraph: “One word of advice to Lord Byron
before I conclude. When he attacks me again, let it be in rhyme. For
one who has so little command of himself, it will be a great advantage
that his temper should be obliged to keep tune.” When this _Letter_
came to Byron’s notice, his anger boiled over; he sent Southey a
challenge, which through the discretion of Kinnaird, was never
delivered[364]; and he decided immediately to publish his _Vision_,
which he had almost determined to suppress. Murray, however, delayed
the proof, and on July 3, 1822, Byron, irritated by this tardiness and
enthusiastic over his newly planned periodical, _The Liberal_, sent a
letter by John Hunt,[365] the proprietor of the magazine, requesting
Murray to turn the satire over to Hunt. In the first number of _The
Liberal_, then, the _Vision_ was given the most conspicuous position,
printed, however, without the preface, which Murray, either ignorantly
or unfairly, had withheld from Hunt. A vigorous letter from Byron
recovered the preface, which was inserted in a second edition of the
periodical.[366] The consequences of publication somewhat justified
Murray’s apprehensions. John Hunt was prosecuted by the Constitutional
Association, and on July 19, 1824, only three days after Byron’s body
had been buried in the church of Hucknall Torkard, was convicted,
fined one hundred pounds, and compelled to enter into securities
for five years. In fairness to Byron, it must be added that he had
offered to come to England in order to stand trial in Hunt’s stead,
and had desisted only when he found that such procedure would not be
allowed.[367]
In his _Vision_, Byron had at least four objects for his satire. He
wished to ridicule Southey’s poem by burlesquing many of its absurd
elements; he aimed to proceed more directly against Southey by exposing
the weak points in his character and career; he desired to present
a true picture of George III, in contrast to Southey’s idealized
portrait; and he intended to make a general indictment of all illiberal
government and particularly of the policy then being pursued by the
English Tory party. He seized instinctively upon the weaknesses of the
panegyric, and while preserving the general plan and retaining many of
the characters, freely mocked at its cant and smug conceit. Through a
style purposely grotesque and colloquial, he turned Southey’s pompous
rhetoric into absurdity; by touches of realism and caricature he made
the solemn angels and demons laughable; while, occasionally rising to a
loftier tone suggestive of the spirit of _Don Juan_, he reasserted his
love of liberty and hatred of despotism.
In executing his project, Byron deliberately neglected a large part
of Southey’s _Vision_ and confined himself almost exclusively to
the scene at the trial of the King. He began actually with the
situation represented in Section IV of Southey’s poem, omitting all
the preliminary matter, and ended with Southey’s Section V, avoiding
entirely the meeting of George with the English worthies. So far as
subject matter is concerned, Byron travestied only two of the twelve
divisions of the earlier work. He concentrated his attention on the
judgment of the King, and then deserted formal travesty in order to
introduce his attack on Southey.
It was part of Byron’s scheme that angels and demons, serious
characters in Southey’s poem, should be made the objects of mirth. By
a dexterous application of realism, he changed the New Jerusalem of
Southey into a very earthly place, where angels now and then sing out
of tune and hoarse, and where six angels and twelve saints act as a
business-like Board of Clerks. These creatures of the spiritual realm
are very substantial beings, not at all immune from mortal infirmities
and passions. Saint Peter is a dull somnolent personage who grumbles
over the leniency of heaven’s Master towards earth’s kings, and sweats
through his apostolic skin at the appalling sight of Lucifer and demons
pursuing the body of George to the very doors of heaven. Satan salutes
Michael,
“as might an old Castilian
Poor noble meet a mushroom rich civilian,”
and the archangel, in turn, greets the fallen Lucifer superciliously as
“my good old friend.” It is probable that in this practice of treating
with ridicule those beings who are commonly spoken of with reverence,
Byron is imitating Pulci, whose angels and devils are also, in their
attributes, more human than divine.
Byron’s trial scene, in which Lucifer and Michael dispute for the
possession of George III, is an admirable travesty of Southey’s
representation of the same episode. The glorified monarch of Southey’s
_Vision_ meets in Byron’s satire with scant courtesy from Lucifer, who
acts as attorney for the prosecution. Lucifer admits the king’s “tame
virtues” and grants that he was a “tool from first to last”; but he
charges him with having “ever warr’d with Freedom and the free,” with
having stained his career with “national and individual woes,” with
having resisted Catholic emancipation, and with having lost a continent
to his country. Wilkes and Junius, the two shamefaced accusers of
Southey’s _Vision_, now act in a different manner. Wilkes scornfully
extends his forgiveness to the king, and Junius, while reiterating
the truth of his original accusations, refuses to be enlisted as
an incriminating witness. This section of the satire is splendidly
managed. The whole assault on the king tends to show him as more
misguided than criminal. The lines,
“A better farmer ne’er brush’d dew from lawn,
A worse king never left a realm undone!”
create a kind of sympathy for George in that they portray him as a man
placed in a position for which he was manifestly unfitted.
Southey’s name is mentioned only once before the 35th stanza of Byron’s
poem, but from that point until the conclusion the work deals entirely
with him. These stanzas constitute what is probably Byron’s happiest
effort at personal satire. For once he did not act in haste, but
carefully matured his project, studied its execution, and permitted his
first impulsive anger to moderate into scorn. With due attention to
craftsmanship, he surveyed and annihilated his enemy, laughing at him
contemptuously and making every stroke tell. It should be observed too
that he chose a method largely indirect and dramatic. He did not, as
in _English Bards_, merely apply offensive epithets; rather he placed
Southey in a ridiculous situation and made him the sport of other
characters. The satire, is, therefore, exceedingly effective since it
allows the victim no chance for a reply.[368] By turning the laugh on
Southey, Byron closed the controversy by attaining what is probably the
most desirable result of purely personal satire--the making an opponent
seem not hateful but absurd.
Byron’s poem, however, was something more than a chapter in the
satisfaction of a private quarrel. It is also a liberal polemic,
assailing not only the whole system of constituted authority in
England, but also tyranny and repression wherever they operate. The
indictment of George III, which at times approaches sublimity, is in
reality directed against the entire reactionary policy of contemporary
European statesmen and rulers. The doctrines of the revolutionary
Byron, already familiar to us in _Don Juan_, are to be found in the
ironic stanzas upon the sumptuous funeral of the king, a passage
admired by Goethe; respect for monarchy itself had died out in a
nobleman who could say of George’s entombment:
“It seemed the mockery of hell to fold
The rottenness of eighty years in gold.”
With all its broad humor, the satire is aflame with indignation. In
this respect the poem performed an important public service. In place
of stupid content with things as they were, it offered critical comment
on existing conditions, comment somewhat biassed, it is true, but
nevertheless in refreshing contrast to the conventional submission of
the great majority of the British public.
Much of what has already been pointed out with regard to the sources
and inspiration of _Don Juan_ may be applied without alteration to
_The Vision of Judgment_, which is, as Byron told Moore, written “in
the Pulci style, which the fools in England think was invented by
Whistlecraft--it is as old as the hills in Italy.”[369] The _Vision_,
being shorter and more unified, contains few digressions which do
not bear directly upon the plot; but it has the same colloquial and
conversational style, the same occasional rise into true imaginative
poetry with the inevitable following drop into the commonplace, the
same fondness for realism, and the same broad burlesque.[370] Hampered
as it is by the necessity of keeping the story well-knit, Byron’s
personality has ample opportunity for expression.
It is probable that Byron’s description of Saint Peter and the angels
owes much to his reading of Pulci.[371] In at least one instance there
is a palpable imitation. Saint Peter in the _Vision_, who was so
terrified by the approach of Lucifer that,
“He patter’d with his keys at a great rate,
And sweated through his apostolic skin,”[372]
suffered as did the same saint in the _Morgante Maggiore_ who was weary
with the duty of opening the celestial gate for slaughtered Christians:
“Credo che molto quel giorno s’affana:
E converrà ch’egli abbi buono orecchio,
Tanto gridavan quello anime Osanna
Ch’eran portate dagli angeli in cielo;
Sicchè la barba gli sudava e ’l pelo.”[373]
In employing the realistic method in depicting the angels, Byron seems
to have caught something of Pulci’s grotesque spirit.
One line of the _Vision_,
“When this old, blind, mad, helpless, weak, poor worm,”
seems to imitate the opening of Shelley’s powerful _Sonnet_; _England
in 1819_, already quoted,
“An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king.”
Professor Courthope has suggested that Byron’s _Don Juan_ owes
something to the work of Peter Pindar.[374] The evidence for the
relationship seems, however, to be very scanty. Wolcot never employed
the octave stanza, nor, indeed, did he ever show evidences of true
poetic power. The two men were, of course, alike in that they were both
liberals, both avowedly enemies of George III, and both outspoken in
their dislikes. But Byron seldom except in parts of the _Vision_ used
the method of broad caricature so characteristic of Pindar. In the
_Vision_, too, occurs the only obvious reference on Byron’s part to
Pindar’s satire. He describes the effect of Southey’s dactyls on George
III, in the lines:
“The monarch, mute till then, exclaim’d, ‘What! What!
Pye come again? No more--No more of that.’”[375]
The couplet recalls Pindar’s delightful imitations of that king’s
eccentric habit of repeating words and phrases. However, Byron’s style
in both _Don Juan_ and the _Vision_ is drawn more from Italian than
from English models.
_The Vision of Judgment_ is, if we exclude _Don Juan_ as being more
than satire, the greatest verse-satire that Byron ever wrote. It is
only natural then to compare the poem with other English satires
which have high rank in our literature. A practically unanimous
critical decision has established Dryden’s _Absalom and Achitophel_ as
occupying the foremost position in English satire before the time of
Byron. Unquestionably this work of Dryden’s is admirable; it is witty,
pointed, and direct, embellished with masterly character sketches and
almost faultless in style. It does, however, suffer somewhat from a
lack of unity, due primarily to the fact that the narrative element
in the poem is subordinate to the description. Byron’s _Vision_, on
the other hand, has a single plot, which is carefully carried out to a
climax and a conclusion. Action joins with invective and description
in forming the satire. Thus the two poems, approximately the same
length if we consider only Part I of _Absalom and Achitophel_, give a
decidedly different impression. Dryden’s satire seems a panorama of
figures, while Byron’s has the coherence and clash of a drama.
_Absalom and Achitophel_ is witty but seldom humorous; while Byron
joins caricature and burlesque to wit. The best lines in Dryden’s poem,
such as:
“Beggar’d by fools, whom still he found too late;
He had his jest, and they had his estate,”
excite admiration for the author’s cleverness, but rarely arouse a
smile; the _Vision_, the contrary, is full of buffoonery. Dryden’s
sense of the dignity of the satirist’s office did not permit him to
lower his style, and he never became familiar with his readers; the
very essence of Byron’s satire is its colloquial character.
Dryden kept his personality always in the background, while the
egotistical Byron could not refrain from letting his individuality
lend fire and passion to whatever he wrote. Thus the _Vision_, despite
the fact that it is the most cool of Byron’s satires, cannot be called
calm and restrained. Self-control, the will to subdue and govern his
impulses and prejudices, was beyond his reach. Fortunately in the
_Vision_ he did take time to exercise craftsmanship, but he never
attained the polished artistry and firm reserve of his predecessor.
Certainly in urbanity, in dignity, and in justice Dryden is the
superior, just as he is undoubtedly less imaginative, less varied, and
less spirited than Byron.
The two satires are, then, radically different in their methods. One
is a masterpiece of the Latin classical satire in English, formal and
regular, and using the standard English couplet; the other is our
finest example of the Italian style in satire--the mocking, grotesque,
colloquial, and humorous manner of Pulci and Casti. Both are effective;
but one is inclined to surmise that the purple patches in _Absalom
and Achitophel_ will outlast the more perfect whole of _The Vision of
Judgment_.
The probable results of the publication of a work of such a sensational
character had been foreseen by both Murray and Longman. When the first
number of _The Liberal_ appeared containing not only _The Vision
of Judgment_ but also three epigrams of Byron’s on the death of
Castlereagh, it was received by a torrent of hostile criticism from
the Tory press. The _Literary Gazette_ for October 19, 1822, called
Byron’s work “heartless and beastly ribaldry,” and added on November
2, that Byron had contributed to the _Liberal_ “impiety, vulgarity,
inhumanity, and heartlessness.” The _Courier_ for October 26 termed him
“an unsexed Circe, who gems the poisoned cup he offers us.” On the
Whig side, in contrast, Hunt’s _Examiner_ for September 29 spoke of it
as “a Satire upon the Laureate, which contains also a true and fearless
character of a grossly adulated monarch.”
Byron himself described it to Murray as “one of my best things.”[376]
Later critical opinion has also tended to rank it very high. Goethe
called the verses on George III “the sublime of hatred.” Swinburne,
himself a revolutionist but no partisan of Byron’s, exhausts
superlatives in commenting on it: “This poem--stands alone, not in
Byron’s work only, but in the work of the world. Satire in earlier
times had changed her rags for robes; Juvenal had clothed with fire,
and Dryden with majesty, that wandering and bastard muse. Byron gave
her wings to fly with, above the reach even of these. Others have
had as much of passion and as much of humor; Dryden had perhaps as
much of both combined. But here, and not elsewhere, a third quality
is apparent--the sense of a high and clear imagination.--Above all,
the balance of thought and passion is admirable; human indignation
and divine irony are alike understood and expressed; the pure and
fiery anger of men at the sight of wrong-doing, the tacit inscrutable
derision of heaven.” Nichol, in his life of Byron, says:--“Nowhere in
so much space, save in some of the prose of Swift, is there in English
so much scathing satire.”
Two figures in Byron’s poem have been made the basis of a shrewd
comparison by Henley. He says: “Byron and Wordsworth are like the
Lucifer and Michael of _The Vision of Judgment_. Byron’s was the
genius of revolt, as Wordsworth’s was the genius of dignified and
useful submission; Byron preached the doctrine of private revolution,
Wordsworth the dogma of private apotheosis--Byron was the passionate
and dauntless ‘soldier of a forlorn hope,’ Wordsworth a kind of
inspired clergyman.” Byron’s sympathies in the _Vision_, as in _Cain_,
were undoubtedly with Lucifer, the rebel and exile, and his poem will
live as a satiric declaration of the duty of active resistance to
despotism and oppression.
CHAPTER X
“THE AGE OF BRONZE” AND “THE BLUES”
Byron’s _Monody on the Death of Sheridan_, written at Diodati on
July 17, 1816, and recited in Drury Lane Theatre on September 7, was
followed by a period of several years in which he ceased to employ the
heroic couplet in poetry of any sort. The reasons for this temporary
abandonment of what had been, hitherto, a favorite measure, are not
altogether clear, although his action may be ascribed, in part, to his
renunciation of things English and to the influence upon him of his
study of the Italians. During his residence in Italy, Byron used many
metrical forms: the Spenserian stanza, ottava rima, terza rima, blank
verse, and other measures in some shorter lyrics and ephemeral verses.
Not until _The Age of Bronze_, which he began in December, 1822, did he
return to the heroic couplet of _English Bards_.
On January 10, 1823, Byron, then living in Genoa, wrote a letter to
Leigh Hunt, in which, among other things, he said: “I have sent to
Mrs. S[helley], for the benefit of being copied, a poem of about
seven hundred and fifty lines length--_The Age of Bronze_--or _Carmen
Seculare et Annus haud Mirabilis_, with this Epigraph--‘Impar
_Congressus_ Achilli’.” By way of description, he added: “It is
calculated for the reading part of the million, being all on politics,
etc., etc., etc., and a review of the day in general,--in my early
_English Bards_ style, but a little more stilted, and somewhat too full
of ‘epithets of war’ and classical and historical allusions.”[377]
The work as revised and completed contains 18 sections and 778 lines.
Originally destined for _The Liberal_, it was eventually published
anonymously by John Hunt, on April 1, 1823.
_The Age of Bronze_ is, then, entirely a political satire, intended
chiefly as a counterblast to the recent stringent regulations of the
reactionary Congress of Verona (1822). It comprises, however, other
material: an introductory passage on the great departed leaders, Pitt,
Fox, and Bonaparte; frequent digressions treating of the struggles
for constitutional government then taking place in Europe; and some
lines attacking the landed proprietors in England for their luke-warm
opposition to foreign war. It is, in nearly every sense, a timely poem,
although the note of “Vanitas Vanitatum” sounded in the early sections
gives the satire a universal application.
For a comprehension of Byron’s motives in writing _The Age of Bronze_,
it is necessary to understand something of the situation in Europe
at the time. Following the numerous insurrections of 1820–22 in
Spain, Portugal, Naples, Greece, and the South American States, the
European powers, guided by the three members of the Holy Alliance,
Russia, Prussia, and Austria, sent delegates to meet at Verona on
October 20, 1822, for a consideration of recent developments in
politics. The leading figure at the conference was Metternich, the
Austrian statesman, although Francis of Austria, Alexander of Russia,
and Frederick William of Prussia were among the monarchs present.
Montmorenci, representing an ultra-royalist ministry under Villiele,
was there to look after the interests of France; while England,
deprived at the last moment of Castlereagh’s services by his suicide,
sent Wellington. The gathering finally resolved itself into a conclave
for the purpose of discussing the right of France to interfere in
the affairs of Spain, by restoring Ferdinand VII, a member of the
House of Bourbon, to the throne of which he had been deprived by the
Constitutionalists. Wellington, after protesting against the agreement
reached by the other envoys to permit the interference of France,
left the Congress,[378] by Canning’s instructions, in December.
His withdrawal, however, did not affect the ultimate decision of
the Congress to stamp out revolt whenever it assailed the precious
principle of Legitimacy. War between France and Spain broke out in
1823; Ferdinand VII was replaced upon his tottering throne; and the
despotic policy of Metternich triumphed, for a time, over democracy.
Canning’s only reply was to recognize the independence of the
rebellious colonies of Spain, and to assert the belligerency of the
Greeks, then fighting for their liberty against the Turks.
It is to the year which saw the work of the Congress of Verona that
Byron’s secondary title, _Annus haud Mirabilis_, obviously refers. In
a striking passage in the beginning of the poem, he pays a tribute
to the mighty dead, contrasting, by implication, the leaders of the
Congress with the departed heroes: Pitt and Fox, buried side by side in
Westminster Abbey; and Napoleon,
“Who born no king, made monarchs draw his car.”
The summary which Byron presents of Napoleon’s career is full of
admiration for the fallen emperor’s genius, and of resentment at the
indignities which, according to contemporary gossip, he had been
compelled to undergo on St. Helena. The man “whose game was empires and
whose stakes were thrones” was forced, says the poet, to become the
slave of “the paltry gaoler and the prying spy.” The passage is both an
appreciation and a judgment, wavering, as it does, between sympathy and
condemnation for the conqueror who burst the chains of Europe only to
renew,
“The very fetters which his arm broke through.”
The reference to these giants of the past leads Byron naturally to a
glorification of such liberators as Kosciusko, Washington, and Bolivar,
and to a joyful heralding of revolutions in Chili, Spain, and Greece:
“One common cause makes myriads of one breast,
Slaves of the east, or helots of the west;
On Andes’ and on Athos’ peaks unfurl’d,
The self-same standard streams o’er either world.”
Under the influence of this enthusiasm he prophecies a liberal outburst
which will end in the regeneration of Europe.
Contrasted with the optimism of this aspiring idealism is Byron’s gloom
over the deeds of the Congress of Verona. The measures advocated by
this gathering, as we have seen, were reactionary and autocratic; and
Byron’s description of it, tinged with liberal sentiment, is vigorously
satirical. In the conference headed by Metternich, “Power’s foremost
parasite,” he can see nothing but a body of tyrants,
“With ponderous malice swaying to and fro,
And crushing nations with a stupid blow.”
Many of the allusions in Byron’s sketches of the members recall the
language used by Moore in his _Fables for the Holy Alliance_. Moore’s
views of the situation in Europe agreed substantially with those of
Byron. Byron’s reference to the “coxcomb czar,”
“The autocrat of waltzes and of war,”
recalls Moore’s mention of that sovereign in _Fable I_:
“So, on he capered, fearless quite,
Thinking himself extremely clever,
And waltzed away with all his might,
As if the Frost would last forever.”
Byron accuses Louis XVIII, who was not present at the Congress, of
being a gourmand and a hedonist,
“A mild Epicurean, form’d at best
To be a kind host and as good a guest.”
The same idea is conveyed in Moore’s description of that king as,
“Sighing out a faint adieu
To truffles, salmis, toasted cheese.”
Especially painful to Byron was the report that Marie Louise
(1791–1849), Napoleon’s widow, who had been secretly married to her
chamberlain, Adam de Neipperg, had attended the Congress, and had
become reconciled to her first husband’s captors. One section of the
satire paints a picture of her leaning on the arm of the Duke of
Wellington, “yet red from Waterloo,” before her husband’s ashes have
had time to chill.
The most bitter, and, at the same time, the most just satire in the
poem is directed at the English landed gentry:
“The last to bid the cry of warfare cease,
The first to make a malady of peace.”
The rise in prices due to the long-continued war had fattened the
purses of the farmers and land-holders in England, and led them to wish
secretly for the continuance of the struggle. Byron attacks severely
their grudging assent to proposals of peace, and, in a succession
of rhymes on the word “rent,” points out the selfishness of their
position. The diatribe contains some of Byron’s most passionate lines:
“See these inglorious Cincinnati swarm,
Farmers of war, dictators of the farm;
_Their_ ploughshare was the sword in hireling hands,
_Their_ fields manured by gore of other lands;
Safe in their barns, these Sabine tillers sent
Their brethren out to battle--why? for rent!”
Although an occasional touch of mockery reminds us of _Don Juan, The
Age of Bronze_, in method, shows a reversion to the invective manner of
_English Bards_. It can hardly be said, however, that this later satire
is any advance over the earlier poem. Its allusions are now unfamiliar
to the average reader, and the names once so pregnant with meaning have
faded into dim memories. Although _The Age of Bronze_ has sagacity and
practicality, it lacks unity and concentration. Without the vehement
sweep of _English Bards_, it is also too rhetorical and declamatory.
Most readers, despite the flash of spirit which now and then lights its
pages, have found the satire dull.
_The Blues_, so little deserving of attention in most respects, is
unique among Byron’s satires for two reasons: it is written in the form
of a play, and it employs the anapestic couplet metre, used by Anstey
and later by Moore. Byron’s first reference to it occurs in a letter
to Murray from Ravenna, August 7, 1821: “I send you a thing which I
scratched off lately, a mere buffoonery, to quiz _the Blues_, in two
literary eclogues. If published, it must be _anonymously_--don’t let
_my_ name out for the present, or I shall have all the old women in
London about my ears, since it sneers at the solace of their ancient
Spinsterstry.”[379] On September 20, 1821, he calls it a “mere
buffoonery, never meant for publication.”[380] Murray, following his
usual custom with literature which was likely to get him into trouble,
cautiously delayed publication, and the poem was turned over to John
Hunt and printed in _The Liberal_, No. III (pages 1–24), for April 26,
1823. It was not attributed to Byron by contemporary critics, most of
them giving Leigh Hunt credit for the authorship.
There is nothing in Byron’s letters to explain the immediate motive
which led the poet to scribble a work so unworthy of his genius. In
his journal kept during his society life in London there are several
references to the “blues,” and later he made some uncomplimentary
allusions to them in _Beppo_ and _Don Juan_. In a sense his efforts
to ridicule them seem to parallel the attacks of Gifford on a coterie
equally harmless and inoffensive.
In form the satire is a closet drama in two acts, each containing
approximately 160 lines. The characters represented are intended, in
many instances, for living persons. Thus, in the first act, which takes
place before the door of a lecture room, Inkel, who is apparently
Byron, converses with Tracy, who may be Moore. Within, Scamp, probably
Hazlitt, is delivering a discourse to a crew of “blues, dandies,
dowagers, and second-hand scribes.” Among the subjects for discussion
between the two men is Miss Lilac, a spinster, and heiress, and a
Blue, who is doubtless a caricature of Miss Milbanke, the later Lady
Byron. References to “Renegado’s Epic,” “Botherby’s plays,” and “the
_Old Girl’s Review_” indicate that Byron has returned to some favorite
subjects for his satire.
The second act is located at the home of Lady Bluebottle, who resembles
closely Lady Holland, the well-known Whig hostess and one of Byron’s
friends. Sir Richard Bluebottle, in a monologue, complains of the crowd
of,
“Scribblers, wits, lecturers, white, black, and blue,”
who invade his house and who are provided for at his expense. In the
scene which ensues, Inkel acts as a sort of interlocutor, with the
others as a chorus. Wordsworth, the “poet of peddlers,” is satirized in
the old fashion of _English Bards_ as the writer who,
“Singing of peddlers and asses,
Has found out the way to dispense with Parnassus.”
Southey is referred to as “Mouthy.” Of the other figures, Lady Bluemont
is, perhaps, Lady Beaumont, and Miss Diddle, Lydia White, “the
fashionable blue-stocking.” When the party breaks up, Sir Richard is
left exclaiming,
“I wish all these people were damned with my marriage.”
On May 6, 1823, Byron finished Canto XVI of _Don Juan_. The fourteen
extant stanzas of Canto XVII are dated May 8th. Shortly after he made
preparations for his expedition to Greece, and, on July 23, 1823,
sailed in the _Hercules_, with Gamba and Trelawney, for Cephalonia.
From this time on, his work in poetry practically ceased. He wrote
Moore from Missolonghi, March 4, 1824: “I have not been quiet in an
Ionian Island but much occupied with business.... Neither have I
continued _Don Juan_, or any other poem.”[381] He devoted himself
to drilling Greek troops, holding conferences with leaders, and
corresponding with the patriot parties. A fever, brought on by
over-exposure, attacked him on April 11th, on the 19th, he died. His
remains were brought to England, and buried in the little church of
Hucknall Torquard, only a few miles from Newstead Abbey.
CONCLUSION
Mr. Augustine Birrell, in an illuminating essay on the writings of
Pope, brings forward, with reference to satire, a standard of judgment
which merits a wider application. “Dr. Johnson,” says Mr. Birrell, “is
more to my mind as a sheer satirist than Pope, for in satire character
tells more than in any other form of verse. We want a personality
behind--a strong, gloomy, brooding personality; soured and savage if
you will--nay, as sour and savage as you like, but spiteful never.”
Without subscribing unreservedly to Mr. Birrell’s preference of Johnson
over Pope, we may still point out that the most conspicuous feature
of Byron’s satire, as, indeed, of most of his other poetry, is the
underlying personality of the author, too powerful and aggressive to
be obscured or hidden. There have been satirists who, in assuming to
express public opinion, have succeeded in partly or entirely effacing
themselves, and who have thus acted in the rôle of judicial censors,
self-appointed to the task of voicing the sentiments of a party. In the
poetry of the _Anti-Jacobin_, it is by no means easy to detect where
the work of one Tory satirist leaves off and that of another begins.
So in Dryden’s work we are seldom confronted directly by the emotions
or partialities of the writer himself; _Absalom and Achitophel_ gives
the impression of a cool impersonal commentary on certain episodes
of history, prejudiced perhaps, but carried on with real or feigned
calmness. Byron’s satire is of a different sort; we can read scarcely a
page without recognizing the potency of the personality that produced
it. Just as in _Childe Harold_ the hero usually represents Byron
himself in some of the phases of his complex individuality; just as the
Lara and the Corsair of his verse romances and the Cain and Manfred
of his dramas are reflections of the misanthropical, theatrical and
skeptical poet; so, in the satires, no matter what method he uses, it
is always Byron who criticises and assails.
Most of the characteristics which make up this personality accountable
for Byron’s satiric spirit have been brought out and discussed in
previous chapters. The most important of all, probably, is the haste
and impetuosity with which he was accustomed to act. In this respect
he may be again contrasted with Dryden, who proceeded to satirize an
enemy after due preparation, without apparent agitation or excitement,
much as a surgeon performs a necessary operation. Even Pope, sensitive
and irritable though he was, did not usually strike when his temper
was beyond his control. Byron, on the other hand, was, in most cases,
feverish and impulsive; what he thought to be provocation was followed
at once by a blow. He did not adopt a position of unmoved superiority,
but, both too proud and too impatient to delay, sought instinctively to
settle a dispute on the spot. Except in some instances notable because
of their rarity, Byron seems to have had no understanding of the
method of toying with a prospective victim; he planned to close with
his opponent, to meet him in a grapple, and to overwhelm him by sheer
energy and intrepidity.
This want of restraint had, of course, some favorable results on his
satire; the work was indisputably vigorous, effective because of the
ungoverned passion which sustained it. At the same time this hasty
action was detrimental to Byron’s art, and accounts, in part, for the
frequent lack of subtlety in his satire. We may be roused temporarily
by the fury of the lines; but when, in less enthusiastic moods, we
examine the details, we miss the technique and the transforming
craftsmanship of the supreme artist. Only in _The Vision of Judgment_
did he devote himself to devising means for gaining his end in the most
dexterous fashion; and the consequence is that poem is the finest of
his satires. In the earlier satires we have Byron, the man, talking
out spontaneously, angrily, unguardedly, without second thought or
reconsideration, like Churchill, a mighty wielder of the bludgeon but a
poor master with the rapier.
Byron’s satiric spirit was always combative rather than argumentative
or controversial. He preferred to assail men rather than principles.
When he disliked an institution or a party, his invariable custom was
to select some one as its representative and to proceed to call him to
account. It is this desire to war with persons and not with theories
that explains his attacks on Castlereagh, whom he never knew, but whom
he singled out as the embodiment of England’s repressive policy. By
nature Byron was much more ready to quarrel with the Foreign Minister
as an individual than he was to discuss the prudence and expediency of
that statesman’s measures.
The characteristics so far mentioned could belong only to a daring and
fearless man. Byron never hesitated to avow his ideas, nor did he ever
retract his invective except in cases in which he had been convinced
that he was unjust. He published the _Lines to a Lady Weeping_ under
his own name at a time when no one suspected his authorship. For years
he satirized European sovereigns without showing the slightest sign
of trepidation. He espoused unpopular causes, and often, of his own
choice, ran close to danger, when mere silence would have assured him
security.
But despite the fact that Byron’s hatreds were seldom disguised and
that he was, on the whole, open and manly in his satire, there is
another side to his nature which cannot be left unnoticed. He was,
unfortunately, implicated in certain incidents which leave him under
the suspicion of a kind of treachery towards his friends. His lampoon
on Samuel Rogers, beginning,
“Nose and chin would shame a knocker;
Wrinkles that would puzzle Cocker;”
and ending,
“For his merits, would you know ’em?
Once he wrote a pretty Poem,”
unpublished during his lifetime, was nevertheless a malicious squib
directed at a man who had been one of his closest companions. There
can be no doubt, too, that Byron’s satiric ballad on Hobhouse, “My boy
Hobbie, O,” sent secretly to England, was a true stab in the back,
administered to the man who had been his loyal friend. Byron, moreover,
was not always accurate in his charges. Like most satirists, he
exaggerated to gain his point, and made claims which the evidence did
not justify. Nor is it in his favor that he chose to attack his wife in
public lampoons, and wrote scurrilous epigrams upon dead statesmen.
This lack of delicacy aside, however, it must be recognized that
Byron’s satire was often exerted in condemning real evils, and that
he performed a definite service to humanity. More than any other man
of his time he insisted on liberty of speech and action in a period
when reactionary politicians were in the ascendant. He combated the
perennial forms of hypocrisy and cant which appear constantly in
England. Neither Dryden nor Pope had been the consistent champion of
great causes; but Byron so often employed his satire for beneficial
purposes that, despite the vituperation with which it was greeted by
conservatives, it became a powerful influence for good.
It may be said, in general, of the substance of Byron’s satires, that
he devoted very little attention to the faults and foibles of mankind,
taken as a whole. He was usually moved to satire by some contemporary
person, event, or controversy, and his criticism was definite, levelled
at some specific abuse or evil. In his youth he showed a disposition
to take a lofty moral stand, and to preach against vice; but he was
ill-suited to didacticism, and soon forsook it altogether. After 1812,
his satire had a very intimate connection with the life around him
in politics, society, and literature, and reflected the manners and
moods of the age. It is to be noted, too, that Byron was, in theory at
least, in opposition to the spirit of his time. His belief in liberal
doctrines led him to resist much that seemed safe and solid to those in
his own class of life. He was not, in his later days, in sympathy with
the situation in Europe; and he died too soon to see his progressive
ideas bear fruit in the revolutions of 1830 and the Reform Bill of 1832.
In literature Byron satirized, throughout his career, the
representatives of the older romantic school: Wordsworth, Coleridge,
and Southey. He did this mainly on the ground that their principles of
poetry were subversive of the rules handed down by his avowed masters,
Pope and Gifford. In thus defending the name and doctrines of Pope,
Byron was consistent during his literary lifetime, although he himself
wandered from the path which he persistently asserted to be the only
right one. In inveighing against Southey, he was, of course, animated
largely by personal spite. For minor poetasters, scribblers who might
have been made the puppets of a modern _Dunciad_, Byron had little but
silent contempt. In literary satire, then, he presents the strange
spectacle of a radical striving desperately to support a losing cause,
and that cause a conservative one. Progressive in nearly every other
respect, Byron persisted in opposing any attempt to deviate from the
standard established by Pope.
Byron’s satire on society was partly the result of pique. He who
had been for some time its idol, found himself expelled from English
society, and, in retaliation, exposed its absurdities and follies.
At the same time it is unquestionable that he furthered a reform in
ridiculing the cant and sham of English high life. It was in his last
saner days that he wrote the cantos of _Don Juan_ which treat of the
all-pervasive hypocrisy of fashionable circles, and the satire, even
to-day, rings true. It is noticeable that he seldom satirizes fads or
fashions, and that he rarely, after 1812, attacks private immorality.
His zeal is devoted to unveiling pretence, and to describing this
outwardly brilliant gathering as it really is.
Since Byron was a radical and a rebel, his satire was devoted, so far
as it concerned itself with political questions, to the glorification
of liberty in all its forms, and to the vigorous denunciation of
everybody and everything that tended to block or discourage progressive
movements. In defence of freedom and in resistance to oppression, his
satire found its fullest mission and its amplest justification. When
continental Europe of the middle nineteenth century thought of Byron,
it pictured him as a nobleman who had assailed tyrannical monarchy, who
had aided Italy and Greece in their struggles for independence, and who
had been willing to fight for the sake of the principles in which he
believed. The words of Byron’s political creed have a noble ring: “The
king-times are fast finishing. There will be blood shed like water, and
tears like mist; but the peoples will conquer in the end. I shall not
live to see it, but I foresee it.”
The broader philosophical satire on humanity in which he was more
and more inclined to indulge as he reached maturity is essentially
shallow and cynical. As soon as Byron became indefinite, as soon as he
undertook to preach, he grew unsatisfactory, for he had no lesson to
teach beyond the pessimism of _Ecclesiastes_.
All these objects for satire afforded Byron an opportunity for
expressing some much-needed criticism. The most unworthy sections of
his satire are those devoted to mere revenge: the unchivalric lines on
Lady Byron and Mrs. Clermont; the violent abuse of Southey and Jeffrey;
and the treacherous thrusts at Rogers and Hobhouse. In these passages
the satirist descends to the lower level of Churchill and Gifford.
It remains to say a word of Byron’s methods, a word merely of
recapitulation. Preferring directness always, he was inclined by nature
to go straight to his goal, to speak his mind out without pausing to
devise subtle or devious plans of attack. Except in his Italian satires
his procedure was simple enough: he hurled epithets, made scandalous
and scurrilous charges, and thought out offensive comments, writing
usually in the first person and meeting his enemies face to face in the
good old way of his eighteenth century predecessors. It is, perhaps,
unsafe, with _Don Juan_ and _The Vision of Judgment_ before us, to
assert that he was incapable of finesse and cunning; but, for the most
part, even in these poems, he was more fond of abuse than he was of
innuendo and crafty insinuation. His impetuosity and irrepressible
impulsiveness, to which we have had occasion so often to refer, did not
allow him to dwell scrupulously on artistic effects.
He had, however, two distinct satiric moods: the one, savage, stern,
and merciless; the other, mocking, scornful, and humorous. The one
resulted in invective, the other, in ridicule and burlesque. One came
to him from Juvenal, Pope, and Gifford; the other he learned from
Moore, Frere, and the Italians. Thanks to his versatility, he was
successful in using both; but his real genius was shown more in the
contemptuous mirth of _The Vision of Judgment_ than in the fury of
_English Bards_.
Unlike Pope, Byron was no adept at framing pointed phrases. The
beauty of Pope’s satire lies in the single lines, in the details and
the finish of an epithet. Byron’s work, on the other hand, should be
estimated with regard to the general effect. Few recall particular
lines from the passage on Southey in _The Vision of Judgment_; yet
every one remembers the complete caricature of the laureate. Pope
manipulated a delicate and fine stencil; Byron painted on the canvas
with broad sweeping strokes.
Byron was the last of the great English satirists in verse, and he
has had no imitators who have been able to approach his unique style
and manner. It is a curious fact that his influence after his death
on nineteenth-century English satire has been almost negligible. The
causes of this decline in satire since Byron’s day are not altogether
easy to explain. Perhaps it may be accounted for as accompanying the
general lack of interest in poetry of any sort so common to-day.
Possibly it may be due to the stringency of the laws against libel,
which has resulted in the situation described by Sir George Trevelyan
in his _Ladies in Parliament_:
“But now the press has squeamish grown, and thinks invective rash:
And telling hits no longer lurk ’neath asterisk and dash;
And poets deal in epithets as soft as skeins of silk,
Nor dream of calling silly lords a curd of ass’s milk.”
In the twentieth century great political problems are usually fought
out in the newspapers or in prose pamphlets; the editorials of our
daily journals take the place of satires like _The Age of Bronze_.
Doubtless, too, we have grown somewhat refined in our sensibilities
and fastidious in our speech, so that we shrink from the cut-and-slash
method in poetry. At any rate our English satire since 1830 has
inclined toward raillery and humor, wholly unlike the ardent
vindictiveness of the men under the Georges. The old régime died away
with Byron; and in its stead we have had the polished cleverness of
Praed, the gentle cynicism of Thackeray, the mild sentimentality
of Looker and Dobson. Not until very recently have flashes of the
invective spirit appeared in the work of William Watson and Rudyard
Kipling. The great issues of the twentieth century have stimulated no
powerful English satirist in verse.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The standard edition of Byron’s _Poetical Works_ is that by Ernest
Hartley Coleridge in seven volumes (London, 1904), which contains an
exhaustive bibliography of the successive editions and translations
of different poems. The most complete collection of the _Letters and
Journals_ is that by Rowland E. Prothero in six volumes (London,
1902). Any study of Byron must be largely based on these comprehensive
and scholarly works. A fairly detailed list of critical articles on
Byron was compiled by Roden Noel in his _Life of Lord Byron_; this,
however, needs to be supplemented and revised in the light of recent
investigation.
The following list includes only the more important sources of
information for this treatise.
ACKERMANN, R. _Lord Byron_, Heidelberg, 1901.
_Anti-Jacobin, Poetry of the_, edited by Charles Edmonds, London,
1890.
ARMSTRONG, J. L. _Life of Lord Byron_, London, 1858.
ARNOLD, MATTHEW. _Byron_ (In his _Essays in
Criticism_, Second Series,
London, 1903).
AUSTIN, ALFRED. _A Vindication of Lord Byron_,
London, 1869.
_Byron and Wordsworth_ (In his
_Bridling of Pegasus_, London,
1910.)
BELL, JOHN. _Fugitive Poetry_, London, 1790. 18
vols. in 9.
BEYLE, HENRI. _Lord Byron en Italie_ (In his
_Racine_, Paris, 1854).
BLEIBTREU, K. _Byron der Uebermensch, Sein Leben
und sein Dichten_, Jena, 1897.
BLESSINGTON, LADY. _Conversations with Lord Byron_,
London, 1834.
BRANDES, G. _Main Currents in 19th Century
Literature_, London, 1905.
BRYDGES, SIR SAMUEL E. _Letters on the Character and
Poetical Genius of Lord Byron_,
London, 1824.
_An Impartial Portrait of Lord Byron,
as a Poet and a Man_, Paris, 1825.
BURATTI, P. _Poesie_, Venezia, 1864. 2 vols.
CASTELAR, E. _Life of Lord Byron, and Other
Sketches_, London, 1875.
CASTI, G. B. _Gli Animali Parlanti_, Londra, 1803.
2 Tome.
_Novelle_, Parigi, 1804. 3 volumi.
_Il Poema Tartaro_, Milano, 1871.
CHASLES, V. E. P. _Vie et influence de Byron sur son
époque_ (In his _Études sur
l’Angleterre au XIX siècle_,
1850.)
CHESTERTON, G. K. _The Optimism of Byron_ (In his
_Twelve Types_, London, 1903.)
CHURCHILL, C. _Poetical Works_, Boston, 1854. (Ed.
by Tooke.)
CLINTON, G. _Memoirs of the Life and Writings of
Lord Byron_, London, 1825.
COLLINS, J. C. _Studies in Poetry and Criticism_,
London, 1905.
COURTHOPE, W. J. _The Liberal Movement in English
Literature_, London, 1885.
_A History of English Poetry_,
London, 1895–1910. 6 vols.
DALLAS, R. C. _Recollections of the Life of Lord
Byron, 1808–1814_, London, 1824.
EDGCUMBE, R. _Byron, the Last Phase_, New York,
1909.
EICHLER, A. _John Hookham Frere; Sein Leben und
seine Werke; Sein Einfluss auf
Lord Byron_, Wien und Leipsig,
1905.
ELZE, KARL. _Lord Byron: A Biography_, London,
1872.
ESTEVE. _Byron et le Romantisme français_,
Paris, 1907.
FRERE, J. H. _Works_, London, 1872. 2 vols.
FUHRMAN. _Die Belesenheit des jungen Byron._
GALT, JOHN. _The Life of Lord Byron_, London,
1830.
GAMBA, P. _A Narrative of Lord Byron’s Last
Journey to Greece_, London, 1825.
GIFFORD, W. The _Baviad_ and the _Mæviad_,
London, 1797.
GILFILLAN, G. _A Second Gallery of Literary
Portraits_, London, 1850.
GUICCIOLI, COUNTESS. _Lord Byron jugé par les temoins de
sa vie_, Paris, 1868.
HANCOCK, A. E. _The French Revolution and the
English Poets_, New York, 1899.
HANNAY, J. _Satire and Satirists_, London, 1854.
HAZLITT, W. _The Spirit of the Age_, London, 1825.
HUNT, L. _Lord Byron, and Some of his
Contemporaries_, London, 1828. 2
vols.
JACK, A. A. _Poetry and Prose_, London, 1912.
JEAFFRESON, J. C. _The Real Lord Byron_, Leipsig, 1883.
3 vols.
KENNEDY, JAMES. _Conversations on Religion, with Lord
Byron and Others_, London, 1830.
KOEPPEL, E. _Lord Byron_, Berlin, 1903.
MEDWIN, T. _Journal of the Conversations of Lord
Byron_, London, 1824.
MOORE, THOMAS. _Letters and Journals of Lord Byron,
with Notices of his Life_,
London, 1830.
_Memoirs, Journal, and
Correspondence_, London, 1856. 8
vols.
MORE, P. E. _The Wholesome Revival of Byron._
(In the _Atlantic_. Vol. 82,
December, 1898.)
NICHOL, J. _Byron_, London, 1908. (Eng. Men of
Letters Series.)
PARRY, W. _The Last Days of Lord Byron_,
London, 1825.
POPE, A. _Poetical Works_, London, 1895. 10
vols.
PREVITE-ORTON, C. W. _Political Satire in English Poetry_,
Cambridge, 1910.
PULCI, L. _Morgante Maggiore_, Venezia, 1784.
PYRE, J. F. A. _Byron in our Day._ (In the
_Atlantic_, Vol. 99, April, 1907.)
ROEVER. _Lord Byrons Gedanken ueber Alexander
Pope’s Dichtkunst_, Hanover, 1886.
STEPHEN, L. _Byron_ (In _Dict. of Nat. Biog._,
Vol. viii., pp. 132–155).
SWINBURNE, A. C. _Essays and Studies_, London, 1875.
_Miscellanies_, London, 1886.
TRELAWNEY, E. J. _Recollections of the Last Days of
Shelley and Byron_, London, 1858.
_Records of Shelley, Byron, and the
Author_, London, 1878.
TRENT, W. P. _The Byron Revival._ (In the _Forum_,
Vol. 26, October, 1898.)
TUCKER, S. M. _Verse Satire in England before the
Renaissance_, New York, 1906.
WEDDIGEN, O. _Lord Byrons Einfluss auf die
europaischen Litteraturen der
Neuzeit_, Hannover, 1884.
FOOTNOTES
[1] That satire is primarily destructive criticism was asserted by
Heinsius in a familiar passage quoted approvingly by Dryden in his
_Essay on Satire_:--“Satire is a kind of poetry--in which human vices,
ignorance, and errors, and all things besides, which are produced
from them in every man, are severely reprehended.” The same theory is
expressed by De Gubernatis in his _Storia della Satira_:--“La satira è,
sovra ogni cosa, una negazione.”
[2] See _Poetry_, VII, 1.
[3] In the Preface to _Absalom and Achitophel_, Dryden is inclined to
take pride in his fairness:--“I have but laughed at some men’s follies,
when I could have declaimed against their vices; and other men’s
virtues I have commended, as freely as I have taxed their crimes.”
[4] _Epilogue to the Satires_, Dialogue II., 212–217.
[5] See Chesterton’s _Pope and the Art of Satire_.
[6] Both methods are illustrated in a line of the _Dunciad_:--
“My H--ley’s periods, or my Blackmore’s numbers.”
[7] In the Dramatis Personæ of _Absalom and Achitophel_ only two women
appear, and they are spoken of in the poem in a complimentary way.
[8] Byron particularly emphasizes the correctness and moral tone of
Pope: he is “the most perfect of our poets and the purest of our
moralists” (_Letters_, v., 559); “his moral is as pure as his poetry is
glorious” (_Letters_, v., 555); “he is the only poet that never shocks”
(_Letters_, v., 560).
[9] Gay’s _Alexander Pope, his safe Return from Troy_ (1720) is
interesting as being one of the rare examples of the use of the English
octave stanza between _Lycidas_ and _Beppo_.
[10] _Letters_, v., 252.
[11] In speaking of the art of rhyming to Trelawney, Byron said:--“If
you are curious in these matters, look in Swift. I will send you a
volume; he beats us all hollow, his rhymes are wonderful.”
[12] Cf. Swift’s _The Puppet Show_ with Byron’s _Inscription on the
Monument of a Newfoundland Dog_.
[13] For a contemporary characterization of the unscrupulous satirists
of the period see Cowper’s _Charity_, 501–532, in the passage beginning,
“Most satirists are indeed a public scourge.”
[14] Examples are _The Thimble_ (1743) by William Hawkins (1722–1801)
and the _Scribleriad_ (1752) by Richard Owen Cambridge (1717–1802).
[15] _State Dunces_ (1733) and _The Gymnasiad_ (1738) by Paul Whitehead
(1710–1744); _The Toast_ (1736) by William King (1685–1763); and a
succession of anonymous poems, _The Battle of the Briefs_ (1752),
_Patriotism_ (1765), _The Battle of the Wigs_ (1763), _The Triumph of
Dulness_ (1781), _The Rape of the Faro-Bank_ (1797), and _The Battle of
the Bards_ (1799).
[16] The most important is Churchill’s _Rosciad_ (1761), with the
numerous replies which it elicited: the _Churchilliad_ (1761), the
_Smithfield Rosciad_ (1761), the _Anti-Rosciad_ (1761), by Thomas
Morell (1703–1784), and _The Rosciad of Covent Garden_ (1761) by
H. J. Pye (1745–1813). Among other satires of the same class may be
mentioned the _Smartiad_ (1752) by Dr. John Hill (1710–1775), with its
answer, the severe and effective _Hilliad_ (1752) by Christopher Smart
(1722–1771); the _Meretriciad_ (1764) by Arthur Murphy (1727–1806); the
_Consuliad_ (1770), a fragment by Chatterton; the _Diaboliad_ (1777),
with its sequel, the _Diabolady_ (1777) by William Combe (1741–1823);
and finally the _Criticisms on the Rolliad_, Gifford’s _Baviad_ and
_Mæviad_, the _Simpliciad_, and the _Alexandriad_ (1805).
[17] _The Scandalizade_ (1750); _The Pasquinade_ (1752) by William
Kenrick (1725–1779); _The Quackade_ (1752); _The Booksellers_ (1766);
_The Art of Rising in the Church_ (1763) by James Scott (1733–1814);
_The Senators_ (1772); and _The Tribunal_ (1787).
[18] A few typical controversial satires of this decade are: _The
Race_ (1762) by Cuthbert Shaw (1739–1771); _The Tower_ (1763); _The
Demagogue_ (1764) by William Falconer (1732–1769); _The Scourge_
(1765); and _The Politician_ (1766) by E. B. Greene (1727–1788).
[19] Some characteristic examples are the _Epistle to Cornbury_ (1745)
by Earl Nugent (1702–1788); the _Epistle to William Chambers_ (1773)
and the _Epistle to Dr. Shebbeare_ (1777) by William Mason (1724–1797);
and the _Epistle to Dr. Randolph_ (1796), as well as numerous other
epistles, by T. J. Mathias.
[20] See Macaulay’s _Essay on Horace Walpole_, page 35.
[21] _An Essay on the Different Styles of Poetry_ (1713) by Thomas
Parnell (1679–1718); _The Danger of Writing Verse_ (1741) by William
Whitehead (1715–1785); _A Prospect of Poetry_ (1733); _The Perils of
Poetry_ (1766); and _The Wreath of Fashion_ (1780) by Richard Tickell
(1751–1793).
[22] The anonymous _Manners of the Age_ (1733); _Manners_ (1738)
by Paul Whitehead; _The Man of Taste_ (1733) by James Bramston
(1694–1744); the _Modern Fine Gentleman_ (1746) and the _Modern Fine
Lady_ (1750) by Soame Jenyns (1703–1787); _Fashion_ (1748) by Joseph
Warton (1722–1800); and _Newmarket_ (1751) by Thomas Warton (1728–1790).
[23] Examples are the _Essay on Reason_ (1733) by Walter Harte
(1709–1774); the _Vanity of Human Enjoyments_ (1749) by James Cawthorn
(1718–1761), the most slavish of all Pope’s imitators; _Honour_
(1737) by John Brown; _Advice_ and _Reproof_ (1747) by Smollett;
_Of Retired and Active Life_ (1735) by William Helmoth (1710–1799);
_Ridicule_ (1743) by William Whitehead; _Taste_ (1753) by John
Armstrong (1709–1779); _An Essay on Conversation_ (1748) by Benjamin
Stillingfleet (1702–1771).
[24] _Letters_, v., 162.
[25] _Letters_, iv., 485.
[26] See _An Apology_, 376–387.
[27] In his _Letters_, Byron refers once to Churchill’s _Times_
(_Letters_, ii., 148). His _Churchill’s Grave_ (1816), a parody of
Wordsworth’s style, contains a reference to Churchill as “him who
blazed the comet of a season.” Otherwise Churchill’s actual influence
on Byron was not great.
[28] Byron praised Crabbe in _English Bards_ as “Nature’s sternest
painter, but her best.” In a letter to Moore, February 2, 1818, he
termed Crabbe and Rogers “the fathers of present Poesy,” and in his
_Reply to Blackwood’s_ (1819) he said publicly: “We are all wrong
except Crabbe, Rogers, and Campbell.” Crabbe, whom Horace Smith called
“Pope in worsted stockings,” seemed, to Byron, to represent devotion to
Pope.
[29] Byron said of Gifford in 1824: “I have always considered him as
my literary father, and myself as his ‘prodigal son’” (_Letters_, vi.,
329).
[30] The movement represented by this clique, _Gli Oziosi_, originated
in Florence with a coterie of dilettanti, among whom were Robert Merry
(1755–1799), Mrs. Piozzi (1741–1831), Bertie Greathead (1759–1826),
and William Parsons (fl. 1785–1807). They published two small volumes,
_The Arno Miscellany_ (1784) and _The Florence Miscellany_ (1785), both
marred by affectation, obscurity, tawdry ornamentation, and frantic
efforts at sublimity. The printing of Merry’s _Adieu and Recall to
Love_ started a new series of sentimental verses, in the writing of
which other scribblers took part: Hannah Cowley (1743–1809), Perdita
Robinson (1752–1800), and Thomas Vaughan (fl. 1772–1820). Their
combined contributions were gathered in Bell’s _British Album_ (1789).
[31] Merry had written a _Wreath of Liberty_ (1790) in praise of
revolutionary principles.
[32] Scott said of Gifford: “He squashed at one blow a set of humbugs
who might have humbugged the world long enough.” _New Morality_ has
a reference to “the hand which brushed a swarm of fools away.” Byron
inserted a similar passage in _English Bards_, 741–744.
[33] _Letters_, iv., 485.
[34] _English Bards_, 701.
[35] Moore speaks sarcastically of this custom in the Preface to
_Corruption and Intolerance_ (1808): “The practice which has been
lately introduced into literature, of writing very long notes upon
very indifferent verses, appears to me a very happy invention, as it
supplies us with a mode of turning dull poetry to account.”
[36] Byron said of the _Pursuits of Literature_: “It is notoriously, as
far as the poetry goes, the worst written of its kind; the World has
long been of but one opinion, viz., that it’s [sic] sole merit lies in
the notes, which are indisputably excellent” (_Letters_, ii., 4).
[37] Examples are the _Fables of Æsop_ (1692) of Roger L’Estrange
(1616–1704); _Æsop at Court, or Select Fables_ (1702) by Thomas Yalden
(1671–1736); _Æsop’s Fables_ (1722) by Samuel Croxall (1680–1752);
_Fables_ (1744) by Edward Moore (1711–1757); and collections by
Nathaniel Cotton (1707–1788) and William Wilkie (1721–1772).
[38] See the _Spleen_ (1737) by Matthew Green (1696–1737); _Variety, a
Tale for Married People_ (1732); and the poems of Isaac Hawkins Browne
(1705–1760), James Bramston (1694–1744), George Colman, the elder
(1732–1794), John Dalton (1709–1763), David Garrick (1717–1779). John
Duncombe (1729–1763), and many other poetasters.
[39] _Probationary Odes_ also anticipate the more famous _Rejected
Addresses_ (1812), and the _Poetic Mirror_ (1816) of James Hogg, the
Ettrick Shepherd.
[40] For less reserved praise of the _Rolliad_, see Trevelyan’s _Early
History of Charles James Fox_, page 285.
[41] In _A Postscript_ he speaks of “the unmeaning and noisy lines
of two things called _Baviad_ and _Mæviad_”; while in a note to _Out
at Last, or the Fallen Minister_, he presents a sketch of Gifford’s
life, accusing him of heinous crimes, and speaking of the “awkward and
obscure inversions and verbose pomposity” of the _Baviad_. Gifford
replied in the _Epistle to Peter Pindar_ (1800). Mathias and Canning
invariably treated Pindar with contempt.
[42] _Vision of Judgment_, 92.
[43] See _A Dream_ (1786), a bitterly satirical address to George III,
and the _Lines Written at Stirling_, attacking the Hanoverians.
[44] Byron knew the _New Bath Guide_ well, and admired it. In one of
his youthful poems, an _Answer to Some Elegant Verses sent by a Friend
to the Author_ he uses four lines of Anstey’s poem as a motto. He also
quotes from it not infrequently in his letters.
[45] See _Letters from Simpson the Second to his Dear Brother in Wales_
(1788) and _Groans of the Talents_ (1807), both of which deliberately
appropriate Anstey’s scheme. Both are anonymous.
[46] See the _Epistle to my Sisters_ (1734) by Thomas Lisle; _The
’Piscopade, a Panegyri-Satiri-Serio-Comical Poem_ (1748) by “Porcupinus
Pelagius”; and Goldsmith’s three graceful satires, _Retaliation_
(1774), _The Haunch of Venison_ (1776), and the _Letter to Mrs.
Bunbury_ (1777).
[47] The attitude of the _Anti-Jacobin_ was almost precisely that
already adopted by Gifford and Mathias; that is, it represented extreme
Tory feeling, and therefore was resolutely opposed to any movement in
literature which seemed new or strange.
[48] The _Anti-Jacobin_ was deserted by its original editors, largely
because it was becoming too dangerous a weapon for aspiring statesmen
to handle. A new journal, under the same name, was less successful.
[49] It was the era described by Wordsworth in his sonnets _Written in
London, 1802_, and _London, 1802_, the last beginning,
“Milton! thou should’st be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters! Altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men.”
[50] See the _Nation_, volume xciv., No. 2436, March 7, 1912.
[51] Examples are _Elijah’s Mantle_ (1807) by James Sayer (1748–1823),
with its answer, the anonymous _Elijah’s Mantle Parodied_ (1807); the
_Uti Possidetis and Status Quo_ (1807), _The Devil and the Patriot_
(1807), and Canning’s famous ballad _The Pilot that Weathered the
Storm_.
[52] _Poetry_, i., 17.
[53] _Letters_, i., 209.
[54] It is probable that Byron’s verses are modelled somewhat on the
_Epistle on His Schoolfellows at Eton_ (1766) by his relative and
guardian, Lord Carlisle (1748–1825).
[55] _Letters_, i., 47.
[56] _Letters_, i., 183.
[57] _Letters_, i., 167.
[58] _Letters_, i., 211.
[59] _Letters_, i., 212.
[60] _Blackwood’s_, ix., 461.
[61] This practice was ridiculed by his enemy, Lady Montagu, in the
lines:
“On the one side we see how Horace thought,
And on the other how he never wrote.”
[62] The opening couplet of _English Bards_ is a paraphrase of the
first two lines of Juvenal, I. Other imitations occur in lines 87–88
(Juvenal, I., 17–18) and lines 93–94 (Juvenal, I., 19–21).
[63] _English Bards_, 47–48.
[64] _Satires_, iii., 15–18.
[65] _London_, 35–36.
[66] _Table Talk_, 571–572.
[67] _Baviad_, 215 ff.
[68] _All the Talents_, ii., 46–47.
[69] _English Bards_, 103–106.
[70] _Dunciad_, i., 28.
[71] _Satires_, i., 35–36.
[72] _English Bards_, 819–820.
[73] _English Bards_, 991–994.
[74] See _English Bards_, 144–145, 165–166, 202, 235, etc.
[75] Prologue to the second part of the _Conquest of Granada_, 1–2.
[76] _Essay on Criticism_, 610–630.
[77] _The Apology_ was written in response to a scathing article on
the _Rosciad_, printed in the _Critical Review_ for March, 1761. This
periodical, ultra-Tory in its principles, made a point of decrying, any
work which was by a Whig author, or expressed any sympathy with liberal
ideas. Though the editor, Tobias Smollett, was able to exculpate
himself from the charge, Churchill deemed him accountable for the
uncomplimentary review and, without naming him, described him in his
satire as “alien from God, and foe to all mankind.”
[78] _The Apology_, 110–111.
[79] _English Bards_, 429.
[80] _The Apology_, 44.
[81] _English Bards_, 71.
[82] _Gentle Alterative._
[83] _Baviad_, 200–201.
[84] It is curious that Byron’s views on poetry were not very different
from those held by Jeffrey. Both men believed in maintaining the
common-sense traditions of the eighteenth century.
[85] “There can be no worse sign for the taste of the times than the
depreciation of Pope” (_Letters_, v, 559).
[86] W. Tooke, in his edition of Churchill’s _Works_ (1804), expresses
one phase of contemporary opinion in speaking of “the simplicity of a
later school of poetry, the spawn of the lakes, consisting of a mawkish
combination of the nonsense verse of the nursery with the rhodomontade
of German Mysticism and Transcendentalism” (i., 189).
[87] _Epistles to Pope_, ii., 165.
[88] To this utterly unjust stricture Scott made a calm reply in his
Preface to _Marmion_ (1830): “I never could conceive how an arrangement
between an author and his publishers, if satisfactory to the persons
concerned, could afford matter of censure to any third party.”
Certainly Byron came to be a gross offender in this respect himself,
and when, in 1819, he was haggling with Murray over the price of _Don
Juan_, these boyish censures, if they met his eye, must have roused a
smile.
[89] “The plot is absurd, and the antique costume of the language is
disgusting, because it is unnatural” (_All the Talents_, page 68).
[90] _Pursuits of Literature_, iv., 397–398.
[91]
“Then still might Southey sing his crazy Joan,
To feign a Welshman o’er the Atlantic flown,
Or tell of Thalaba the wondrous matter,
Or with clown Wordsworth, chatter, chatter, chatter.”
(_Epics of the Ton_, 31–34.)
[92] After some praise of the three poets, the dedication of the
_Simpliciad_ closes with the words: “I lament the degradation of your
genius, and deprecate the propagation of your perverted taste.”
[93] Pope, in the _Dunciad_, had bantered Sir Richard Blackmore, author
of epics, in the lines:--
“All hail him victor in both gifts of song,
Who sings so loudly, and who sings so long.”
(_Dunciad_, ii., 267–268.)
The possibility that Byron may have had this passage in mind is
increased by his note to his lines in _English Bards_: “Must he
[Southey] be content to rival Sir Richard Blackmore in the quantity as
well as the quality of his verse?”
[94] _Simpliciad_, 212–213.
[95] It must be remembered, however, that practically every charge
that Byron brings against the “Lakists” has a counterpart in Mant’s
_Simpliciad_, printed only a year before Byron’s poem.
[96] _Baviad_, 248–261.
[97] _Letters_, v., 590.
[98] _Letters_, v., 539.
[99] _Letters_, i., 104.
[100] Mathias had asserted that Moore “had neither scrupled nor
blushed to depict, and to publish to the world, the arts of systematic
seduction, and to thrust upon the nation the most open and unqualified
blasphemy against the very code and volume of our religion” (_Pursuits
of Literature_, Preface to Dialogue IV.).
[101] Preface to _Mæviad_, page 59, Note.
[102] See the account of this period in Thorndike’s _Tragedy_, chapter
x.
[103] Byron may have taken a suggestion from some lines of _Children of
Apollo_:
“But in his diction Reynolds grossly errs;
For whether the love hero smiles or mourns,
’Tis oh! and ah! and oh! by turns.”
[104] _Satires_, iii., 197.
[105] _Dunciad_, iv., 45–70.
[106] _Rosciad_, 723–728.
[107] _The Man of Taste._
[108] One line of Byron’s attack,
“Himself a living libel on mankind,”
recalls Murphy’s address to Churchill,
“Thy look’s a libel on the human race.”
[109] In the _Scourge_, a new venture of Clarke’s begun in 1810, that
editor published another scurrilous attack on Byron, involving also the
poet’s mother. An action for libel which Byron intended to bring was
for some reason abandoned, though not without some caustic words from
him about “the cowardly calumniator of an absent man and a defenceless
woman” (_Letters_, i., 324).
[110] _Letters_, i., 314. See also _Letters_, ii., 312; iii., 192.
[111] _Letters_, ii., 326.
[112] _Letters_, v., 539.
[113] _English Bards_, 209–210; 231–232; 239–240; 253–254; 909–910.
[114] _Ibid._, 415–417; 684–686.
[115] _Ibid._, 417, 1022.
[116] _Ibid._, 608–609; 624–625; 656–657.
[117] _Letters_, ii., 27.
[118] _Recollections of Lord Byron_, page 31.
[119] _Letters_, iv., 488.
[120] See _Pope and the Art of Satire_, by G. K. Chesterton.
[121] _Corruption_, 93–98.
[122] _English Bards_, 841–848.
[123] _Poetry_, i., 291.
[124] _Letters_, ii., 330.
[125] _Letters_, ii., 24.
[126] _Letters_, iv., 425.
[127] _Letters_, v., 221.
[128] _Letters_, v., 245.
[129] _Letters_, v., 255.
[130] _Letters_, v., 77.
[131] There have been many actual translations of the _Ars Poetica_
into English. T. Drant published, in 1567, the first complete
version. Queen Elizabeth left a fragmentary version of 194 lines in
her _Englishings_ (1598). Ben Jonson’s excellent _Horace, of the Art
of Poetry_ was printed after his death. Of other translations, from
that of Roscommon (1680) in blank verse, to that of Howes (1809) in
heroic couplets, it is unnecessary to speak, except to say that they
mount into the hundreds. In such works as _The Art of Preaching_ by
Christopher Pitt (1699–1748) and _The Art of Politicks_ (1731) by
James Bramston (1694–1744) the title and method of Horace had been
transferred to other fields. _Harlequin-Horace; or the Art of Modern
Poetry_ by James Miller (1706–1744) is an ironical parody of the _Ars
Poetica_.
[132] See his treatise, _Ueber das Verhaltnis von Byrons Hints from
Horace zu Horaz und Pope_.
[133] See his article in _Anglia_, ii., 256.
[134] _Ars Poetica_, 269–270.
[135] _Essay on Criticism_, 124–125.
[136] _Hints from Horace_, 423–424.
[137] _Hints from Horace_, 399–412.
[138] _Letters_, ii., 150.
[139] _Charity_, 420–500.
[140] _Poetry_, i., 396.
[141] _Pursuits of Literature_, page 93.
[142] _Poetry_, i., 444.
[143] _Letters_, iii., 271.
[144] _Childe Harold_, II., 10–15.
[145] _Life of Byron_, ii., 145.
[146] _Don Juan_, x., 17.
[147] Churchill’s poem ends with a prophecy from the Goddess of Famine
just as Byron’s ends with Minerva’s curse.
[148]
“Blest paper-credit! last and best supply!
That lends Corruption lighter wings to fly!”
(_Epistle to Lord Bathurst, On the Use of Riches_, 40–41.)
[149] _Childe Harold_, II., 12.
[150] _The Parthenon_, stanza 3.
[151] _The Curse of Minerva_, 95–116.
[152] Byron expressed his esteem for his new friend in his Journal,
December 10, 1813:--“I have just had the kindest letter from Moore.
I _do_ think that man is the best-hearted, the only _hearted_ being
I ever encountered; and then, his talents are equal to his feelings”
(_Letters_, ii., 371).
[153] See Byron’s impromptu lines to Moore in a letter of May 19, 1812,
in which he says, speaking of a projected visit to Hunt in prison:--
“Pray Phœbus at length our political malice
May not get us lodgings within the same palace.”
(_Letters_, ii., 204–209.)
[154] See _Letters_, ii., 463–492 (Appendix vii.).
[155] _Letters_, iii., 61.
[156] _Letters_, ii., 134.
[157] _The Real Lord Byron_, ii., 51.
[158] On December 2, 1813, Byron wrote Hunt:--“I have a thorough esteem
for that independence of spirit which you have maintained with sterling
talent, and at the expense of some suffering” (_Letters_, ii., 296).
[159] _Letters_, iii., 58.
[160] Byron’s attitude towards war recalls the sardonic passage on the
same subject in _Gulliver’s Travels_, Part IV.
[161] _Letters_, iii., 64.
[162] _Letters_, iii., 66.
[163] _Letters_, ii., 324.
[164] _Childe Harold_, III., 36–52.
[165] _Letters_, ii., 176.
[166] _Letters_, ii., 202.
[167] Byron himself was asked to compete, but resolved not to risk his
reputation in such a contest. Although 112 poems were submitted, all
were adjudged unsatisfactory, and Byron was eventually requested by
Lord Holland to save the situation. His verses were recited on October
10, 1812, but met with small commendation.
[168] This little volume, published in 1812, after having been
refused by Murray and others, proved an overwhelming success. Byron
was delighted with _Cui Bono?_ a clever imitation of the gloomy and
mournful portions of _Childe Harold_, in the same stanzaic form. Among
the other writers parodied were Wordsworth, Crabbe, Moore, Coleridge,
and Lewis. Byron said:--“I think the _Rejected Addresses_ by far the
best thing of the kind since the _Rolliad_” (_Letters_, ii., 177).
[169] Byron himself said of this period:--“I felt that, if what was
whispered and murmured was true, I was unfit for England; if false,
England was unfit for me” (_Reply to Blackwood’s_, _Letters_, iv., 479).
[170] _Letters_, iii., 272.
[171] _Letters_, iii., 278.
[172] _Childe Harold_, I., 26.
[173] _Childe Harold_, I., 69–70.
[174] _Childe Harold_, I., 9.
[175] _Letters_, i., 308.
[176] _Letters_, ii., 5.
[177] See _Letters_, ii., 413 (Appendix i.).
[178] _Letters_, ii., 379; ii, 403.
[179] See Fuhrman’s _Die Belesenheit des jungen Byron_, Berlin, 1903.
[180] _Letters_, iii., 19.
[181] _Letters_, v., 70.
[182] _Life of Byron_, iv., 237.
[183] Frere was well known in 1817 as a prominent London wit. His
career as a diplomat, which apparently promised him high preferment,
had been cut short by some unlucky transactions leading to his being
held partly responsible for the failure of the Peninsular campaign, and
he had been recalled in 1809 from his position as envoy to Ferdinand
VII. of Spain. The incident drew upon him Byron’s lines on “blundering
Frere” in some expunged stanzas of _Childe Harold_, I. Piqued by the
action of the government and constitutionally inclined to inactivity,
Frere had since led an indolent and self-indulgent existence as scholar
and clubman.
[184] Dr. Eichler finds that Frere drew something from Aristophanes
and Cervantes, but more from Pulci, Berni, and Casti. For Frere’s
indebtedness to the Italians, see Eichler’s _Frere_, 115.
[185] _Letters_, iv., 172.
[186] _Letters_, iv., 176.
[187] While it is undisputed that the ottava rima is a native Italian
stanza, its origin has never been satisfactorily determined. That
it was a common measure before the time of Boccaccio is easily
demonstrable; but it is equally probable that he, in his _Teseide_, was
the earliest writer to employ it consciously for literary purposes.
With him it assumed the form which it was to preserve for centuries:
eight endecasyllabic lines, rhyming abababcc. In Pulci’s _Morgante
Maggiore_ it became freer and less dignified, without losing any of its
essential characteristics. Pulci made ottava rima the standard measure
for the Italian romantic epic and burlesque, and it was used by men
differing so greatly in nature and motive as Boiardo, Berni, Tasso,
Marino, Tassoni, Forteguerri, and Casti. To the Italian language, rich
in double and triple rhymes, it is especially well suited; and its
elasticity is proved by its effective employment in both the lofty epic
of Tasso and the vulgar verse of Casti.
In English the borrowed ottava rima has had strange vicissitudes.
Transferred to our literature, along with other Italian metrical
forms, by Wyatt and Surrey, it was managed by them crudely, but still
with some success. At least nineteen short poems by Wyatt are in
this stanza. A typical illustration of its state at this period may
be examined in Surrey’s _To His Mistresse_. In Elizabethan days the
octave had a sporadic popularity. Although Spenser made choice of his
own invented stanza for his _Faerie Queen_, he tried ottava rima in
_Virgil’s Gnat_. Daniel in _The Civille Warres_ and Drayton in _The
Barrons’ Warres_ associated it with tedium and dulness. It was, of
course, natural that Fairfax, in his fine version of Tasso, should
adopt the stanza of his original; and Harington translated Ariosto in
the same measure, giving it, probably for the first time in English,
a little of the burlesque tone which was typical of the Italians.
Milton, in the epilogue to _Lycidas_, used the octave with reserved
stateliness; while Gay, in _Mr. Pope’s Welcome from Greece_, made it a
vehicle for quiet merriment.
During the eighteenth century the predominance of the heroic couplet
hindered the spread of exotic verse forms--and the octave was still
exotic. In 1812, William Tennant (1786–1846), an obscure Scotch
schoolmaster, revived it in his burlesque epic, _Anster Fair_,
modifying the structure by changing the last line to an alexandrine.
Then came Merivale, Byron, Rose, Procter, and Keats, who settled the
measure as a standard form in modern English literature.
[188] For a detailed comparison of the versification of _Beppo_ with
that of _The Monks, and the Giants_, see Eichler’s _Frere_, 170–184.
[189] _The Monks, and the Giants_, Introduction, 1.
[190] _The Monks, and the Giants_ I., 9.
[191] Dr. Eichler has neglected to notice the important fact that at
the time of the composition of _Beppo_, Byron could have been familiar
with only the first two cantos of _The Monks, and the Giants_. A brief
comparison of dates will establish this point. Cantos I. and II. of
Frere’s poem were published in 1817; _Beppo_, written in the autumn
of 1817 (_Letters_, iv., 172), was sent to Murray on January 19, 1818
(_Letters_, iv., 193), and given out for sale on February 28 of the
same year. Not until later in 1818 were the last two cantos of Frere’s
work printed, and the full edition of four cantos came out some months
later. On July 17, 1818, Byron wrote Murray, “I shall be glad of
Whistlecraft,” referring doubtless to the newly issued complete edition
of _The Monks, and the Giants_.
[192] Only 36 of the 99 stanzas in _Beppo_ are devoted entirely to the
plot. The greater portion of the poem is occupied with digressions
upon many subjects, containing some personal satire, some comment on
political and literary topics, and much discursive chat upon social
life and morals. The plot serves only as a frame for the satire.
[193] See _Memoir of Frere_, i., 166.
[194] _Letters_, iv., 193.
[195] _The Monks, and the Giants_, III., 59.
[196] Eichler’s _Frere_, 184.
[197] In his _Studies in Poetry and Criticism_ (London, 1905), Churton
Collins pointed out Byron’s indebtedness to Casti, but mentioned only
Casti’s _Novelle_. See Collins’s volume, pp. 96–98.
[198] Eichler’s _Frere_, 163.
[199] _Letters_, iv., 217.
[200] Born in 1721 in Italy, Casti had been a precocious student at
the seminary of Montefiascone, where he became Professor of Literature
at the age of sixteen. In 1764 he moved, with the musician, Guarducci,
to Florence, where he was created Poeta di Corte by the Grand Duke
Leopold. Here he came to the attention of Joseph II., who invited
him to Vienna and bestowed upon him several posts of honor. A lucky
friendship with Count Kaunitz enabled him to visit most of the capitals
of Europe in company with that Prime Minister’s son, and he gained in
this way an inside knowledge of court life in several countries. In
1778 he took up his residence in St. Petersburg, where Catharine II.
received him cordially. Later he returned to Vienna and was crowned
Court Poet by the Emperor Leopold. The attraction of the French
Revolution drew him to Paris in 1796, where he lived until his death,
February 16, 1804.
[201] _Quarterly Review_, April, 1819.
[202] Churton Collins, however, makes the statement that “_Don Juan_
is full of reminiscences of the _Novelle_,” and points out definite
parallelisms between Novella IV., _La Diavolessa_, and the plot of
_Don Juan_. He adds: “To Casti, then, undoubtedly belongs the honour
of having suggested and furnished Byron with a model for _Don Juan_.”
(_Studies in Poetry and Criticism_, pp. 97–98.) It seems probable,
however, that Byron took even more from _Il Poema Tartaro_ than he
did from the _Novelle_. Casti’s _Gli Animali Parlanti_ and _Il Poema
Tartaro_ are not mentioned in Collins’s study.
[203] To this work Byron refers in a letter to Murray, March 25,
1818: “Rose’s _Animali_ I never saw till a few days ago,--they are
excellent.” (_Letters_, iv., 217.)
[204] _Gli Animali Parlanti_, VII., 6 ff.
[205] _Ibid._, III., 37.
[206] _Ibid._, III., 32.
[207] _Ibid._, XX., 69.
[208] _Ibid._, XIV., 47; XVII., 36, 56.
[209] _Gli Animali Parlanti_, I., 52.
[210] _Don Juan_, X., 25.
[211] _Gli Animali Parlanti_, XVIII., 33.
[212] _Don Juan_, VII., 68.
[213] _Gli Animali Parlanti_, IV., 13.
[214] _Don Juan_, XIV., 13. See also _Gli Animali Parlanti_, X., 1;
XVIII., 32, and _Don Juan_, VII., 26, 41; VIII., 124.
[215] _Gli Animali Parlanti_, IV., 73.
[216] _Don Juan_, XV., 19. See also _Gli Animali Parlanti_, III., 95;
VII., 38; _Don Juan_, VI., 8; VIII., 89; _The Vision of Judgment_, 34.
[217] _Gli Animali Parlanti_, IV., 107.
[218] _Don Juan_, I., 231. See also _Gli Animali Parlanti_, XX., 126,
and _Don Juan_, IV., 117; V., 159; VI., 120; VII., 35; IX., 85; XV., 98.
[219] In _Childe Harold_ the digression had been used, not for satire,
but for personal reminiscences, eulogy, and philosophical meditation;
see Canto I., 91–92, with its tribute to Wingfield, and Canto I., 93,
with its promise of another canto to come.
[220] _Il Poema Tartaro_, II., 8.
[221] _Don Juan_, IX., 62.
[222] _Il Poema Tartaro_, IV., 76.
[223] _Don Juan_, IX., 81. See also _Don Juan_, IX., 80.
[224] _Il Poema Tartaro_, I., 5.
[225] See _Il Poema Tartaro_, IV., 54–55, and _Don Juan_, IX., 82.
[226] See _Il Poema Tartaro_, V., 32 ff., and _Don Juan_, X., 39.
[227] See _Il Poema Tartaro_, VIII., 85, and _Don Juan_, VII., 14–15.
[228] See _Il Poema Tartaro_, III., 81, and _Don Juan_, III., 20; X.,
69.
[229] _Il Poema Tartaro_, VI., 98.
[230] _Don Juan_, VII., 18.
[231] _Il Poema Tartaro_, VIII., 12.
[232] _Ibid._, III., 68.
[233] _Ibid._, IV., 69.
[234] _Il Poema Tartaro_, VI., 47.
[235] _Ibid._, XII., 79.
[236] _Letters_, iv., 217.
[237] _Letters_, iv., 407.
[238] In structure, the _Morgante Maggiore_, is made up of the
_rifacimenti_ of two earlier works: one, the _Orlando_, rather
commonplace and monotonous in tone, was the basis of the first
twenty-three cantos; the other, _La Spagna_, in prose, loftier and more
stately, gave a foundation for the last five cantos.
[239] _Don Juan_, IV., 6.
[240] It is probable that Byron had read Merivale’s poem, _Orlando
in Roncesvalles_ (1814), for in the advertisement to his translation
of Pulci he refers to “the serious poems on Roncesvalles in the
same language [English]--and particularly the excellent one of Mr.
Merivale.” Merivale’s work, based though it is upon the _Morgante_,
is without humor, and could have given Byron nothing of the spirit of
Pulci.
[241] _Letters_, iv., 402.
[242] _Letters_, iv., 407.
[243] Cantos III. and IV. of _Don Juan_ were written in the winter
of 1819–1820, while Byron was at work on his translation of the
_Morgante_; hence it is certain that the influence of Pulci may be
looked for at least as early as Canto III. It is probable, moreover,
that Byron became acquainted with Pulci’s work before, or soon after,
the beginning of _Don Juan_ in September, 1818.
[244] _Don Juan_, X., 87.
[245] _Don Juan_, VII., 55.
[246] _Morgante Maggiore_, XIV., 7.
[247] _Ibid._, III., 51.
[248] _Ibid._, XI., 21.
[249] _Don Juan_, II., 92.
[250] _Morgante Maggiore_, XVIII., 117.
[251] _Ibid._, XVIII., 144.
[252] _Don Juan_, XII., 50.
[253] _Morgante Maggiore_, XXIV., 83.
[254] _Don Juan_, XII., 88.
[255] _Morgante Maggiore_, XXVIII., 138–9.
[256] _Don Juan_, XV., 19.
[257] _Ibid._, V., 159.
[258] Other examples occur in the _Morgante Maggiore_, I., 4; II., 1;
XIV., 1; XVI., 1; XXI., 1; XXIV., 1; XXVIII., 1.
[259] _Don Juan_, X., 4.
[260] _Morgante Maggiore_, I., 8.
[261] _Morgante Maggiore_, XXV., 283.
[262] _Ibid._, XXVIII., 35.
[263] _Don Juan_, XV., 20.
[264] It is significant that Byron was able to make his translation
of the first canto of the _Morgante_ so faithful to the original. On
September 28, 1820, he wrote Murray:--“The Pulci I am proud of; it is
superb; you have no such translation. It is the best thing I ever did
in my life” (_Letters_, i., 83). It is obvious that there were features
in Pulci’s style which appealed to Byron.
[265] Berni was a priest, who became, with Molza, La Casa, Firenzuola,
and Bini, a member of the famous Accademia della Vignajuoli in Rome,
in which circle he was accustomed to recite his humorous poetry. He
died under suspicious circumstances, perhaps poisoned by one of the
Medicean princesses. He was the bitter enemy of Pietro Aretino, the
most scurrilous satirist of the age.
[266] See, _Don Juan_, XII., 1–22, with its discussion of avarice.
[267] See, for example, the _Innamorato_, II., 70:
“Ma s’io dicesse ogni cosa al presente
Da dire un’ altra volta non aria;
Pero tornate, e s’attenti starete,
Sempre piu belle cose sentirete.”
[268] _Don Juan_, VII., 85.
[269] Many characteristics of the _Innamorato_, however, are like those
of the work of Pulci and Casti. There are the same equivocal allusions
and obscenities, the same pervasive skepticism and pessimism, and the
same colloquial style that are to be met with in the _Morgante_ and the
_Novelle_. Berni was perhaps greater as a craftsman and artist, but
otherwise had the virtues and the faults of the other burlesque poets.
[270] _Letters_, iii., 444–445.
[271] Buratti’s career is treated at length in Vittorio Malamani’s
monograph, _Il Principe dei satirici Veneziani_ (1887). An edition of
his poetry, in two volumes, was printed in 1864.
[272] Buratti’s after-life brought him once into relation with Byron.
On the birth of a son to Hoppner, the British Consul at Venice, Byron
presented the father with a short madrigal:--
“His father’s sense, his mother’s grace,
In him, I hope, will always fit so;
With--still to keep him in good case--
The health and appetite of Rizzo.”
The Count Rizzo Pattarol, named in the last line, had the verses
translated into several languages, in the Italian version changing the
word “appetite” to “buonomore.” This piece of vanity so excited the
mirth of Buratti that he commemorated the affair in an epigram. Byron,
however, seems to have paid no attention to the incident.
[273] There is less of the mock-heroic in _Don Juan_ than is ordinarily
supposed. It has little in common with the classical Mock-Epic,
represented in English by the _Dunciad_, the _Scribleriad_, and the
_Dispensary_, poems which use the epic machinery of gods and goddesses,
ridiculing the manner of the Greek and Roman epics through the method
of parody. _Don Juan_, on the other hand, is unrelated to the work
of either Homer or Virgil. Nor does it burlesque the Italian epics:
its characters, modern and unconventional as they are, are not, even
in a humorous sense, heroic, and the matter dealt with is borrowed
from none of the Italian romances. The fact that exalted emotions are
made absurd, or that fine feelings are jeered at does not warrant us
in classing _Don Juan_ with the mock-heroic poems. Indeed, the mere
absence of the typical addresses to the Muse--they occur only twice in
_Don Juan_ (II., 7; III., 1)--indicates that Byron did not imitate the
epic form.
[274] _Letters_, vi., 50.
[275] _Letters_, iv., 217.
[276] “This poem [_Don Juan_] carries with it at once the stamp of
originality and defiance of imitation.” (Shelley, Letter to Byron, Oct.
21, 1821).
[277] _Don Juan_, II., 105; II., 166; V., 4; VI., 5–6.
[278] Ibid., V., 33–39.
[279] _Don Juan_, IX., 41.
[280] _Letters_, iv., 342.
[281] _Don Juan_, I., 200.
[282] _Don Juan_, XII., 55.
[283] _Letters_, iv., 260.
[284] _Letters_, vi., 155.
[285] _Don Juan_, XIV., 99.
[286] It was begun at Venice, September 6, 1818, and the first two
cantos were published anonymously, July 15, 1819, by Murray. Despite
much hostile comment, and the reluctance and eventual refusal of Murray
to print the work, Byron continued with his project, entrusting the
publication of the poem, after Canto V., to John Hunt. Canto XVI. was
completed May 6, 1823, and appeared with Canto XV. on March 26, 1824.
Fourteen stanzas of an unfinished Canto XVII. were among his papers at
the time of his death.
[287] _Beppo_, 79.
[288] _Don Juan_, VIII., 135.
[289] _Childe Harold_, II., 74–76.
[290] _Ode to the French_, 91–104.
[291] _Childe Harold_, IV., 92.
[292] _Don Juan_, IX., 24.
[293] _Don Juan_, VIII., 50.
[294] Many details of Byron’s satire may be traced to corresponding
passages in the works of Moore, whose _Fudge Family in Paris_ (1818)
was familiar to him, and whose _Fables for the Holy Alliance_ (1823),
many of which were written while the two poets were together in Venice,
was dedicated to Byron. Moore denounced Castlereagh as a despot, a
bigot, and a time-server, ridiculing him especially for the absurdity
of his speeches, which were notorious for their mixed metaphors and
poorly chosen phrasing.
[295] Shelley in many short squibs, and particularly in the _Mask of
Anarchy_ (1819), had assailed the ministry. He had compared Castlereagh
and Sidmouth, the Home Secretary, to “two vultures, sick for battle”
and “two vipers tangled into one” (_Similes for Two Political
Characters of 1819_).
[296] Young had condemned war in _Satire VII._, 55–68; Cowper had
spoken against it in the _Task_, in the lines:--
“War is a game which, were their subjects wise,
Kings would not play at.”
Leigh Hunt and Shelley held exactly Byron’s opinions, and expressed
them repeatedly.
[297] It is possible that Byron, in his description of this assemblage,
was influenced to some extent by T. L. Peacock, the friend of Shelley,
who had published _Headlong Hall_ (1816) and _Nightmare Abbey_ (1818).
In these books Peacock had created a sort of prose Comedy of Humors by
forming groups of curious eccentrics, each one obsessed by a single
passion or hobby, and by giving each figure a name suggestive of his
peculiar folly.
[298] _Don Juan_, XI., 86.
[299] _Letters_, v., 542.
[300] _Don Juan_, I., 205.
[301] _Don Juan_, III., 78–87.
[302] _Don Juan_, III., 5.
[303] _Ibid._, III., 3.
[304] _Ibid._, III., 25.
[305] _Ibid._, VI., 6.
[306] _Ibid._, II., 205.
[307] _Ibid._, VI., 27.
[308] _Ibid._, I., 178; XI., 36.
[309] _Ibid._, VI., 14.
[310] _Ibid._, VI., 2.
[311] In Canto II., the entire shipwreck episode is a symposium
of accounts of other wrecks taken from Dalzell’s _Shipwrecks and
Disasters at Sea_ (1812), _Remarkable Shipwrecks_ (1813), Bligh’s _A
Narrative of the Mutiny of the Bounty_ (1790), and _The Narrative of
the Honourable John Byron_ (1768), the last named work being the story
of the adventures of Byron’s grandfather. His account of the siege and
capture of Ismail in Cantos VII. and VIII. is based, even, in minute
details, on Decastelnau’s _Essai sur l’histoire ancienne et moderne de
la Nouvelle Russie_.
[312] _Don Juan_, III., 101–109.
[313] _Ibid._, II., 17–23.
[314] _Ibid._, XI., 10.
[315] Byron attributed the unpopularity of _Don Juan_ with the ladies,
and particularly with the Countess Guiccioli, to the fact that it
is the “wish of all women to exalt the _sentiment_ of the passions,
and to keep up the illusion which is their empire” and that the poem
“strips off this illusion, and laughs at that and most other things”
(_Letters_, v., 321). It was the opposition of the Countess which
induced him to promise to leave off the work at the fifth canto, a
pledge which he fortunately disregarded after keeping it for several
months.
[316] _Childe Harold_, II., 7.
[317] _Don Juan_, VI., 22. See also I., 215; III., 35.
[318] _Ibid._, V., 21.
[319] _Ibid._, XI., 82, 86.
[320] _Ibid._, II., 34.
[321] _Don Juan_, XII., 86.
[322] _Poetry_, VI., 79.
[323] _Don Juan_, IX., 73.
[324] _Ibid._, XIII., 100.
[325] _Don Juan_, III., 96.
[326] See _Ibid._, I., 9; II., 8; III., 110; IV., 113; VI., 57, and
numerous other instances.
[327] Only in Canto II. does the story begin at once; every other canto
has a preliminary disquisition. Canto IX., containing eighty-five
stanzas, uses forty-one of them before the narrative begins, and of the
entire number, forty-six are clearly made up of extraneous material. Of
the ninety stanzas in Canto XI., over fifty are occupied with Byron’s
satire on English society and contemporary events. Canto II. is, of
course, filled largely with the shipwreck and the episode of Haidée;
but in Canto III., over forty of the entire one hundred and eleven
stanzas are discursive, and many others are partly so.
[328] _Beppo_, 52.
[329] For other rhymes of exceptional peculiarity, see _Don Juan_, I.,
102; II., 206; II., 207; V., 5.
[330] _Ibid._, I., 22.
[331] _Ibid._, II., 1.
[332] _Don Juan_, I., 6.
[333] _Ibid._, III., 111.
[334] _Ibid._, XIII., 94.
[335] _Ibid._, I., 62.
[336] _Ibid._, I., 11.
[337] _Ibid._, VII., 15.
[338] _Ibid._, VII., 3.
[339] _Ibid._, XIII., 8.
[340] _Ibid._, XV., 91.
[341] _Ibid._, II., 207.
[342] _Ibid._, V., 5.
[343] _Ibid._, XIV., I. See also I., 25; I., 67; XVI., 4.
[344] _Ibid._, I., 154; II., 13, 22, 38.
[345] A characteristic example is _Ibid._, IX., 34.
[346] _Don Juan_, I., 123–124; V., 8–9; V., 18–19; VIII., 109–110.
[347] _Ibid._, I., 120.
[348] _Ibid._, XV., 72.
[349] _Ibid._, VI., 64; VII., 21; VIII., 30; XIII., 75; XIV., 29, 63;
XVI., 60, 94, 98.
[350] _Ibid._, I., 34; VI., 47; VIII., 32.
[351] _Ibid._, IV., 42.
[352] _Ibid._, VII., 27.
[353] _Don Juan_, XI., 20.
[354] _Ibid._, III., 6. See also I., 63, 65, 72; II., 172, 179; IX.,
15, 59; XIII., 6, 19.
[355] Many imitations and parodies of _Don Juan_ were printed during
Byron’s lifetime, and afterwards; among them were Canto XVII. of _Don
Juan_, by One who desires to remain a very great Unknown (1832); _Don
Juan Junior_, a Poem, by Byron’s Ghost (1839); _A Sequel to Don Juan_
(1843); _The Termination of the Sixteenth Canto of Lord Byron’s Don
Juan_ (1864), by Harry W. Wetton.
[356] Byron’s influence upon the literature of the nineteenth century
may be studied in Otto Weddigen’s treatise _Lord Byron’s Einfluss auf
die Europaischen Litteraturen der Neuzeit_ and in Richard Ackermann’s
_Lord Byron_ (pp. 158–182). Collins numbers among his disciples in
Germany, Wilhelm Mueller, Heine, Von Platen, Adalbert Chamisso, Karl
Lebrecht, Immermann, and Christian Grabbe; among his French imitators,
Lamartine, Hugo, de la Vigne, and de Musset; among his followers in
Russia, Poushkin and Lermontoff. To these should be added Giovanni
Berchet in Italy, and José de Espronceda in Spain. No other English
poet, except Shakspere, has impressed his personality so strongly upon
foreign countries.
[357] _Letters_, vi., 377–399.
[358] Thus in the _Batrachomyomachia_ the elevated manner of epic
poetry is used in depicting a warfare between frogs and mice; while in
Voltaire’s _La Pucelle_, the French national heroine is made to behave
like a daughter of the streets.
[359] Some examples of the parody are _The Splendid Shilling_ (1701)
by John Philips (1676–1709); _The Pipe of Tobacco_ (1734) by Isaac
Hawkins Browne (1760); _Probationary Odes_; _Rejected Addresses_; and
Swinburne’s _Heptalogia_.
[360] The travesty flourished especially during the 17th century in the
work of Paul Scarron (1610–1660) and his followers in France, and of
Charles Cotton (1630–1687), John Philips (1631–1706), and Samuel Butler
(1612–1680) in England. During this period Virgil and Ovid were popular
subjects for travesty. Several travesties of Homer were published in
England during the 18th century, one of which, by Bridges, was read by
Byron (_Letters_, v., 166).
[361] Charles Lamb said of it that it deserved prosecution far more
than Byron’s _Vision_; and Nichol has styled it “the most quaintly
preposterous panegyric ever penned.”
[362] In his dedication Southey called George IV. “the royal and
munificent patron of science, art, and literature,” and praised the
monarch’s rule as Regent and King as an epoch remarkable for perfect
integrity in the administration of public affairs and for attempts to
“mitigate the evils incident to our state of society.”
[363] _Letters_, v., 387.
[364] _Ibid._, vi., 10.
[365] _Ibid._, vi., 93.
[366] _Letters_, vi., 129.
[367] _Ibid._, vi., 159.
[368] In the only public retort which Southey undertook, a _Letter
to the Courier_, December 8, 1824, he could do little more than make
charges of misrepresentation, and repeat his accusation that Byron
was one “who played the monster in literature, and aimed his blows at
women.” Southey unwittingly had engaged with too powerful an antagonist
and only his want of a sense of humor kept him from appreciating the
fact.
[369] _Letters_, v., 385.
[370] The recurrence in the _Vision_ of many familiar devices of
_Don Juan_ reminds us that the _Vision_ marks Byron’s resumption of
the ottava rima, which he had left off on December 27, 1820, at the
completion of _Don Juan_, Canto V., because of the request of the
Countess Guiccioli that he discontinue the work. In the meantime he
turned his attention to the drama, and _Cain_, _The Two Foscari_, and
_Sardanapalus_ were published in December, 1821. The _Vision_ then was
his only work in the octave stanza between December 27, 1820, and June,
1822, when he began Canto VI. of _Don Juan_.
[371] Byron had finished his translation of the first canto of the
_Morgante_ in February, 1820.
[372] _The Vision of Judgment_, 25.
[373] _Morgante Maggiore_, XXVI., 91.
[374] _History of English Poetry_, v., 250.
[375] _The Vision of Judgment_, 92.
[376] _Letters_, vi., 77.
[377] _Letters_, vi., 160–161.
[378] (this footnote was missing from the original book.)
[379] _Letters_, v., 338.
[380] _Letters_, v., 369.
[381] _Letters_, vi., 336.
INDEX
Ackermann, Richard, 186 (note)
_Age of Bronze, The_, 4, 6, 8, 53, 202–207.
Anstey, Christopher, 30, 32, 40.
_Anti-Jacobin_, 30–33, 37, 59, 61, 64, 85
Barrett, E. S., 36, 40
Becher, Rev. J. T., 39, 45, 48
_Beppo_, 6, 7, 8, 93, 113–127, 129–131, 144, 145, 161, 163, 182
Berni, Francesco, 8, 118 (note), 121 (note), 127, 144, 155–157, 161
Birrell, Augustine, Mr., 103, 209
_Blackwood’s Magazine_, 51
Blessington, Countess of, 115, 164.
_Blues, The_, 207–209
Bowles, Rev. Samuel, 62–63
Brougham, Lord, 48, 167
Burns, Robert, 29
Butler, Samuel, 11, 16, 122, 182
Butler, Dr., 40–41
Buratti, 157–159
Byron, Lady, 107–110, 175–176
Byron, Lord: place among English satirists, 7;
divisions of his satire, 8–9;
early satiric verse, 39–47;
position in 1798;
travels in Spain and Greece, 77;
life in London, 94;
his political beliefs, 95, 143, 168–172, 204;
life in Italy, 115–116;
death and burial, 208;
influence, 185, 186 (note)
Canning, George, 31, 32, 34, 35, 40, 203, 204
Carlisle, Lord, 43 (note), 66–67
Casti, Giambattista, 8, 117, 118–119, 127–144, 161, 162, 181
Castlereagh, Lord, 102, 170–171
Chesterton, G. K., 14
_Childe Harold_, 6, 7, 77, 78, 110–111, 122, 136 (note)
Churchill, Charles, 3, 21–22, 25;
_Apology Addressed to the Critical Reviewers_, 56–58;
_Prophecy of Famine_, 66, 88–89
Clarke, Hewson, 67
Clermont, Mrs., 108–109, 215
Cleveland, John, 11, 88
Coleridge, S. T., 60–62, 63, 84, 173
Collins, J. C., 127 (note), 129 (note)
_Corsair, The_, 97
Courthope, W. J., 6, 29
Cowper, 22, 66
Crabbe, 22–23
_Critical Review_, 56–57
_Curse of Minerva, The_, 7, 77, 86–92
Dallas, R. C., 49, 68, 77, 78
_Devil’s Drive, The_, 93, 101–102
_Don Juan_, 6, 8, 93, 114, 116, 127, 128, 133–144, 147–154, 158,
159, 161, 162, 163–187, 198, 208, 216
Dryden, 3, 7, 11–13, 14, 15, 17, 37, 52;
comparison of _Absalom and Achitophel_ and _The Vision of
Judgment_, 198–199; 210, 211, 212
_Edinburgh Review_, 48–58
_English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers_, 7–8, 33, 36, 37, 38, 47,
48–76, 79, 92, 95, 112, 162, 167, 169, 174, 187, 201, 215
Forteguerri, 160
Frere, J. H., 31, 118 (note);
_The Monks, and the Giants_, 117–127;
_Fugitive Pieces_, 39, 41, 42
George III, 34, 94, 190, 191, 192, 193, 195, 196, 200
George IV, 94, 96–98, 100, 105, 171
_Giaour, The_, 7, 94
Gifford, 8, 10, 23–25, 29, 31, 40, 42, 47, 50, 53, 54, 65;
comparison of Gifford and Byron, 71–73; 74, 85, 93, 113, 170, 213
Goethe, 195
Goldsmith, 20, 30 (note)
Guiccioli, Countess, 116, 174, 177 (note)
Hamilton, Lady Anne, 35–36, 40;
_Epics of the Ton_, 59–60, 61, 64
Henley, W. E., 200
_Hints from Horace_, 8, 77–85, 92
Hobhouse, J. C., 77, 78, 179, 216
Hodgson, F., 57, 59, 73, 78
Holland, Lord, 58, 68, 106 (note)
Hunt, Leigh, 68, 69, 95, 98, 115, 146, 202
Ireland, W. H., 36
Jeaffreson, 75, 98
Jeffrey, 45, 50, 55, 56, 84, 216
Johnson, Samuel, 21
Juvenal, 21, 51
Lamb, Lady Caroline, 107
Lewis, M. G., 63, 64
_Liberal, The_, 98, 148, 188, 191, 199, 201, 206
_Lines to a Lady Weeping_, 97, 98
Mant, Richard, 36–37, 40;
his _Simpliciad_, 59, 60, 61, 62
Mathias, T. J., 19 (note), 25–26, 29, 33, 37, 40;
his _Pursuits of Literature_, 26 (note); 118
Moore, Thomas, 1, 30, 32, 36, 38;
attacked in _English Bards_, 63–64; 74;
his quarrel and reconciliation with Byron, 95–97; 98, 99, 105, 111
Murray, John, 78, 97, 102, 109, 111, 115, 118, 147, 154 (note), 164,
165, 166 (note), 175, 179, 191, 200
Ottava rima, 9, 114, 120–121 (note);
Byron’s management of, 122, 161, 181, 202
Parody, 5, 32, 189 and note
Peacock, T. L., 172 (note)
Pigot, Elizabeth, 44, 48
Pope, 5, 7, 10;
work as a satirist, 13–16; 18, 22, 33, 36, 37, 40, 41, 53, 54, 55,
59, 62, 63;
comparison of Byron and Pope, 69–72; 74;
_Essay on Criticism_, 81–82;
_Epistle to Lord Bathurst_, 89; 93, 113, 173, 191, 214
Pulci, Luigi, 8, 117, 120, 144;
life, and influence on Byron, 145–155; 156, 161, 196–197, 199
_Rejected Addresses_, 28 (note), 106–107 and note
_Rolliad_, 27–28, 32, 40
Satire, 2–5
Scott, Walter, Sir, 5, 59–60 and note, 98
Shelley, 38, 171 (note), 178, 188
_Sketch, A_, 93, 108–109
Southey, 60–62, 84, 173;
Byron’s quarrel with him, 188, ff.;
his _Vision of Judgment_, 190–191
Swift, 16–17, 27, 122, 182
Swinburne, 200
Travesty, 5, 189 and note
Trelawney, 17 (note), 115, 182
_Vision of Judgment, The_, 7, 8, 114, 116, 162, 188–201
_Waltz, The_, 6, 7, 8, 65, 93, 103–106
_Windsor Poetics_, 93, 99
Wordsworth, 34, 36, 60–62, 71, 84, 174, 208
Young, 16, 20, 28
VITA
CLAUDE MOORE FUESS, the author of this dissertation, was born at
Waterville, New York, January 12, 1885, and prepared for college at the
Waterville High School, graduating in 1901. He took the full course of
four years at Amherst College, graduating with the degree of B. A. in
1905. During 1905–1907, he was in residence at Columbia University,
where he took courses in English and Comparative Literature under
Professors G. R. Carpenter, W. A. Neilson, W. P. Trent, J. B. Fletcher,
J. E. Spingarn, Brander Matthews, J. W. Cunliffe, G. P. Krapp, and
W. W. Lawrence. He received the degree of M. A. from Columbia in 1906,
and in 1906–7 was University Fellow in English and Editor of the
_English Graduate Record_. In 1907–8, he was Head of the Department
of English in George School, George School, Pa., and from 1908–10 was
Instructor in English at Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., studying
abroad at Oxford during the summer of 1910. After a third year of
residence at Columbia in 1910–11, he returned to Phillips Academy,
where he is at present Instructor in English.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
Footnotes, originally at the bottoms of the pages that referenced them,
have been collected, sequentially renumbered, and placed just before
the Index.
Footnote 378 (referenced on page 204) was missing from the original
book.
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