“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.