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.