Italian burlesque _genre_, Byron has few references. We have seen how
he was induced to revise his first opinion and to recognize in Pulci
“the precursor and model of Berni altogether.” In the advertisement
to the translation of the _Morgante_ he asserted that Berni, in his
_rifacimento_, corrected the “harsh style” of Boiardo. These meagre
data, however, furnish no clue to the possible influence of Berni’s
work upon _Don Juan_.
Francesco Berni (1496?-1535)[265] is important here chiefly because of
his _rifacimento_, or revision, of Boiardo’s _Orlando Innamorato_. In
accomplishing this task he completely made over Boiardo’s romance by
refining the style, polishing the verse-structure, inserting lengthy
digressions of his own and following a scheme instituted by Ariosto,
prefacing each canto with a sort of essay in verse. Berni’s purpose,
indeed, was to make the _Innamorato_ worthy of the _Furioso_. His
version, however, owing probably to the malice of some enemy, has
reached us only in a mutilated form. As it stands, nevertheless, it
possesses certain features which distinguish it from the work of Pulci
on the one hand and that of Casti on the other.
The influence which Berni may have had on Byron’s satires comes mainly
from two features of the former’s work: his introductions to separate
cantos, and his admirable style and versification. It was Berni’s
habit to soliloquize before beginning his story: thus Canto IX of
the _Innamorato_ commences with a philosophical disquisition on the
unexpected character of most human misfortunes, leading, by a natural
step, to the plot itself. So, in _Don Juan_, only one canto--the
second--begins with the tale itself; every other has a preliminary
discussion of one sort or another.[266] It was also Berni’s custom to
take formal leave of his readers at the end of each canto, and to add
a promise of what was to come.[267] This habit, all but universal with
the Italian narrative poets, Byron followed, although his farewell
occurs sometimes even before the very last stanza. A typical example
may be quoted:
“It is time to ease
This Canto, ere my Muse perceives fatigue.
The next shall ring a peal to shake all people,
Like a bob-major from a village steeple.”[268]
Berni’s style and diction are far superior to Pulci’s. Count Giammaria
Mazzuchelli, in the edition of Berni in _Classici Italiani_, says
of this feature of his work: “La, facilita della rima congiunta
alia naturallezza dell’ espressione, e la vivacita de’ pensieri
degli scherzi uniti a singolare coltura nello stile sono in lui si
maravigliose, che viene egli considerate come il capo di si fatta
poesia, la quale percio ha presa da lui la denominazione, e suol
chimarsi Bernesca.” He alone of the three Italian burlesque writers
considered, succeeded in creating a masterpiece of literary art.[269]
In this respect, then, his influence on Byron may have been salutary.
Henri Beyle (1783–1842), the self-styled M. Stendhal, is responsible
for the theory, since repeated by other critics, that Byron’s Italian
satires owe much to the work of the Venetian dialect poet, Pietro
Buratti (1772–1832). When Beyle was with Byron in Milan in November,
1816, he heard Silvio Pellico speak to Byron of Buratti as a charming
poet, who, every six months, by the governor’s orders, paid a visit to
the prisons of Venice. Beyle’s account of the ensuing events runs as
follows: “In my opinion, this conversation with Silvio Pellico gave
the tone to Byron’s subsequent poetical career. He eagerly demanded
the name of the bookseller who sold M. Buratti’s works; and as he
was accustomed to the expression of Milanese bluntness, the question
excited a hearty laugh at his expense. He was soon informed that if
Buratti wished to pass his whole life in prison, the appearance of
his works in print would infallibly lead to the gratification of his
desires; and besides, where could a printer be found hardy enough to
run his share of the risk?--The next day, the charming Contessina N.
was kind enough to lend her collection to one of our party. Byron, who
imagined himself an adept in the language of Dante and Ariosto, was at
first rather puzzled by Buratti’s manuscripts. We read over with him
some of Goldoni’s comedies, which enabled him at last to comprehend
Buratti’s satires. I persist in thinking, that for the composition
of _Beppo_, and subsequently of _Don Juan_, Byron was indebted to the
reading of Buratti’s poetry.”[270]
A statement so plain by a man of Beyle’s authority deserves some
attention. The first question which arises in connection with his
assertion is naturally, what work Buratti had done before 1817, when
Byron began the composition of _Beppo_.[271] After a dissipated
boyhood, Buratti had become a member of the _Corte dei Busoni_, a
pseudo-Academy which devoted its attention chiefly to satire. Although
he was the author of several early lampoons, his first political satire
was recited in 1813 among a party of friends at the home of Counsellor
Galvagna in Venice. It is, in substance, a lamentation over the fate of
Venice, with invective directed against the French army of occupation;
Malamani styles it “a masterpiece of subtle sarcasm.” Eventually,
through the treachery of apparent friends, the verses came to French
ears, and Buratti was imprisoned for thirty days, his punishment,
however, being somewhat lightened by powerful patrons. Shortly after
this episode, he circulated some quatrains of a scurrilous nature on
Filippo Scolari, a pedantic youth who had criticised contemporary
literary men in a supercilious way. For these insults, Scolari tried
to have Buratti apprehended again, but the latter, although he was
forced to sign an agreement to write no more satires, received only a
reprimand. During this period he had also directed several pasquinades
at an eccentric priest, Don Domenico Marienis, who seems to have been a
general object of ridicule in Venice.
Such, according to Malamani, was the extent of Buratti’s work up
to 1816. His masterpiece, the _Storia dell’ Elefante_, was not
written until 1819, too late to have been a strong influence even on
_Don Juan_. Of this early satiric verse, no one important poem was
composed in ottava rima. The poems, all short and of no especial value
as literature, used the Venetian dialect, as far removed from pure
Tuscan as Scotch is from English. Their most noticeable characteristic
is their prevailing irony, a method of satire of which Byron only
occasionally availed himself. With these facts in mind, and with the
additional knowledge that Byron was unquestionably influenced by the
burlesque writers, it is improbable that Beyle’s theory deserves
any credence. Beyle has made it clear that Byron, at one time, read
Buratti’s work with interest; but he has failed to show how the English
poet could have acquired anything, either in matter or in style, from
the Italian satirist.[272]
Of other Italian poems sometimes mentioned as possibly contributing
something to _Don Juan_, no one is worth more than a cursory notice.
_La Secchia Rapita_, by Tassoni (1565–1635), is a genuine mock-heroic,
the model for Boileau’s _Lutrin_ and, to some extent, for Pope’s _Rape
of the Lock_. So far as can be ascertained, Byron has no reference
either to the author or to his poem; and since _La Secchia Rapita_
preserves consistently the grand style, applying it to trivial
subjects, it has little in common with Byron’s satires.[273]
With _Il Ricciardetto_, by Forteguerri (1675–1735), Byron was better
acquainted. Indeed Foscolo, without giving proof for his conclusion,
suggested that it might have offered some ideas to the English writer.
The Italian poem, completed about 1715, after having been composed,
according to tradition, at the rate of a canto a day, contains thirty
cantos in ottava rima. It is an avowed burlesque, in which heroes of
Carolingian romance are degraded to buffoons, Rinaldo becoming a cook
and Ricciardetto a barber. In it, as Foffano says, “the marvellous
becomes absurd, the sublime, grotesque, and the heroic, ridiculous.”
Forteguerri’s design, however, was not directly satiric, and he was
seldom a destructive critic. His mission was solely to divert his
readers. Byron refers to Lord Glenbervie’s rendering of the first canto
of _Il Ricciardetto_ (1822) as most amusing,[274] but he seems to have
had no great interest in the original.
A point has now been reached where it is practicable to frame some
generalizations as to the extent and nature of Byron’s indebtedness
to the Italians. For his subject-matter, he owed them something. The
Catharine II episode in _Don Juan_ may have been suggested by _Il Poema
Tartaro_; an occasional unimportant incident or situation may have
been taken or modified from the work of Casti or Pulci. On the whole,
however, Byron’s material was either original or drawn from other
sources than the Italians. Even though Byron and Casti so frequently
satirize the same institutions and theories, it is improbable that this
is more than coincidence, the result of the natural opposition which
similar abuses aroused in men so alike in temperament and intellect.
In his manner, however, Byron was profoundly affected, so much so
that his own statement about _Beppo_--“The style is not English, it
is Italian”--[275] is in exact accordance with the impression which
_Beppo_, as well as _Don Juan_, makes on the reader. He learned,
in part from Casti, and later from Berni and Pulci, the use of
the burlesque method; he adopted their discursive style, with its
opportunities for digression and self-assertion, and made it a channel
for voicing his own beliefs as well as for speaking out against his
enemies. Accepting the hint offered by their tendency to colloquial
speech, he lowered the tone of his diction and addressed himself
often directly to his readers. Moreover, he acquired the habit of
shifting suddenly from seriousness to absurdity, from the pathetic to
the grotesque, in the compass of a single stanza. His wrath, at first
untempered, was now softened by a new attitude of skepticism which
turned him more to irony and mockery than to violent rage.
In utilizing the octave for his own satires, he gave it a freedom of
which it had never before been made capable in English; and, by a
clever employment of double and triple rhymes, and by the constant
use of run-on lines and stanzas, he adjusted the measure to the
conversational flow of his verse.
At a time, then, when his youthful narrowness was developing into the
maturity that comes only from experience, and when, therefore, he was
most susceptible to broadening influences, Byron, fortunately for his
satire, was brought into contact with the Italian spirit. The result
was that _Don Juan_ joined many of the most powerful features of
_English Bards_ with the lighter elements of Berni and Casti.
The beauty of Byron’s satire at its finest in _Don Juan_ and _The
Vision of Judgment_, lies in the welding of the direct and indirect
methods, in the interweaving of invective with burlesque, in such a way
that the poems seem to link the spirit of Juvenal with the spirit of
Pulci. The consequence is a variety of tone, a widening of scope, and
a considerable increase in effectiveness. Byron’s general attacks are
relieved from the charge of futility; his vindictiveness is mitigated
by humor and a touch of the ridiculous; and his aggressiveness, though
it does not disappear, is sometimes changed to a cynical tolerance.
CHAPTER VIII
“DON JUAN”
With the exception of _The Ring and the Book_, _Don Juan_, containing
approximately 16,000 lines, is probably the longest original poem
in English since the _Faerie Queene_; moreover, if we exclude the
_Canterbury Tales_, no other work in verse in our literature attempts
an actual “criticism of life” on so broad a scale. It is Byron’s
deliberate and exhaustive characterization of his age, the book in
which he divulges his opinions with the least reticence and the
most finality. With all their occasional brilliance and power, his
earlier satires had been essentially imitative and could be judged by
pre-existing standards. Later, in composing _Beppo_, Byron discovered
that he had found a kind of verse capable of free and varied treatment
and therefore especially suited to his improvising and discursive
genius; accordingly, in _Don Juan_, which is a longer and more
elaborate _Beppo_, he produced a masterpiece which, besides being an
adequate revelation of his complex personality, is unique in English,
anomalous in its manner and method.[276]
Because it reflects nearly every side of Byron’s variable
individuality, _Don Juan_, though satirical in main intent,
combines satire with many other elements. It is tragic, sensuous,
humorous, melancholy, cynical, realistic, and exalted, with words
for nearly every emotion and temper. It contains a romantic story,
full of sentiment and tenderness; it rises into passages of lyric
and descriptive beauty, evidently heart-felt; yet these serious
and imaginative details are imbedded in a sub-stratum of satire.
Furthermore, its range in substance and style is very great; it
discusses matters in politics, in society, in literature, and in
religion; it shifts in a stanza from grave to gay, from the commonplace
to the sublime. It is a poem of freedom; free in thought and free in
speech, unrestricted by the ordinary laws of metre. “The soul of such
writing is its license,” wrote Byron to Murray in 1819.
The plot of _Don Juan_, dealing, like the picaresque romances of
Le Sage and Smollett, with a series of adventures in the life of a
wandering hero, and interrupted constantly by the comments of the
author, has little real unity. Considered as a satire, however, the
poem becomes unified through the personality behind the stanzas. It
is a colossal monument of egotism; wherever we read, we meet the
inevitable “I.” The poet’s interest in the progress of his characters
is so obviously subordinated to his desire for gossiping with his
readers that the plot seems, at times, to be almost forgotten. Thus
_Don Juan_ is as subjective as Byron’s correspondence; indeed ideas
were often transferred directly from his letters to his verses. There
are lines in the poem which restate, sometimes in the same phraseology,
the confessions and the criticisms recorded by Lady Blessington in her
_Conversations with Lord Byron_. Autobiographical references are very
common, sometimes merely casual,[277] sometimes used as a text for
satire.[278] The powerful personality of the writer, expressed thus in
his work, furnishes it with a unity which is lacking in the plot.
It is probable that Byron himself had only a vague conception of the
structure and limits of his poem. His conflicting assertions, usually
half-jocular, concerning his plan or scheme are proof that he cared
little about adhering to a closely knit form. He is most to be trusted
when he says:
“Note or text,
I never know the word which will come next.”[279]
or when he confesses to Murray: “You ask me for the plan of Donny Juan:
I have no plan--I had no plan; but I had or have materials.”[280] The
inconsistent statements in the body of the poem are, of course, merely
quizzical: thus in the first canto Byron says decidedly,
“My poem’s epic, and is meant to be
Divided in twelve books”;[281]
when the twelfth canto is reached, he has an apology ready:
“I thought, at setting off, about two dozen
Cantos would do; but at Apollo’s pleading,
If that my Pegasus should not be foundered,
I hope to canter gently through a hundred.”[282]
As it lengthened _Don Juan_ developed more and more into a verse diary,
bound, from the looseness of its design, to remain uncompleted at
Byron’s death.
But whatever may have actuated Byron in beginning _Don Juan_ and
however uncertain he may have been at first about its ultimate purpose,
it soon grew to be primarily satirical. He himself perceived this
in describing it to Murray in 1818 as “meant to be a little quietly
facetious upon everything”[283] and in characterizing it in 1822 as
“a _Satire_ on _abuses_ of the present states of society.”[284]
Despite the intermingling of other elements, the poem is exactly what
Byron called it--an “Epic Satire.”[285] His remark “I was born for
opposition” indicates how much at variance with his age he felt himself
to be; and his inclination to pick flaws in existing institutions
and to indulge in destructive criticism of his time had become so
strong that any poem which expressed fully his attitude towards life
was bound to be satirical. Just as the cosmopolitan outlook of the
poem is due partly to Byron’s long-continued residence in a foreign
country, so its varied moods, its diverse methods, and its wide range
of subject matter are to be attributed, to a large extent, to the fact
that the composition of _Don Juan_ extended over several years during
a period when he was growing intellectually and responding eagerly to
new ideas.[286] The work is a fair representation of Byron’s theories
and beliefs during the period of his maturity, when he was developing
into an enlightened advocate of progressive and liberal doctrines.
It is an attack on political inertia and retrogression, on social
conventionality, on cant and sham and intolerance. The intermittent,
erratic, and somewhat imitative radicalism of a few of his earlier
poems has changed into a persistent hostility to all the reactionary
conservation of the time. _Don Juan_ is satiric, then, in that it is
a protest against all that hampers individual freedom and retards
national independence.
The pervasive satiric spirit of _Don Juan_ has varied manifestations.
In a few passages there are examples of rancor and spite, of direct
personal denunciation and furious invective, that recall the satire of
_English Bards_. The attacks on Castlereagh and Southey, on Brougham
and Lady Byron are in deadly earnest, with hardly a touch of mockery.
At the same time Byron relies mainly on the more playful and less
savage method which he had learned from the Italians and used in
_Beppo_. He himself expressed this alteration in mood by saying,
“Methinks the older that one grows,
Inclines us more to laugh than scold.”[287]
It is noticeable, too, that in _Don Juan_ petulant fury is much less
conspicuous than philosophic satire. Byron is assailing institutions
and theories as well as men and women. To some extent the poem is a
medium for satisfying a quarrel or a prejudice; but to a far greater
degree it is a summary of testimony hostile to the reactionary early
nineteenth century. The poet still prefers, in many cases, to make
specific persons responsible for intolerable systems; but he is
gradually forsaking petty aims and rising to a far nobler position as a
critic of his age.
The satire in _Don Juan_ is still more remarkable when we consider
the field which it surveys. Byron is no longer dealing with local
topics, but with subjects of momentous interest to all humanity. He
is assailing, not a small coterie of editors or an immodest dance,
but a bigoted and absolute government, a hypocritical society, and, a
false idealism, wherever they exist. More than this, he so succeeds
in uniting his satire, through the force of his personality, with the
eternal elements of realism and romance, that the combination, complex
and intricate though it is, seems to represent an undivided purpose.
Perhaps the loftiest note in Byron’s protest is struck in dealing
with the political situation of his day. Despite his noble birth and
his aristocratic tastes, he had become, partly through temperamental
inclination, partly through association with Moore and Hunt, a fairly
consistent republican, though he took care to make it clear, as Nichol
points out, that he was “for the people, not of them.” Impatient of
restraint on his own actions, he extended his belief in personal
liberty until it included the advocacy of any democratic movement. It
is to his credit, moreover, that he was no mere closet theorist; in
Italy he espoused the cause of freedom in a practical way by abetting
and joining the revolutionary _Carbonari_; and he died enrolled in the
ranks of the liberators of Greece. In _Don Juan_ he declares himself
resolutely opposed to tyranny in any form, asserting his hatred of
despotism in memorable lines:
“I will teach, if possible, the stones
To rise against earth’s tyrants. Never let it
Be said that we still truckle unto thrones.”[288]
Such doctrine was, of course, not new in Byron’s poetry. He had
already spoken eloquently and mournfully of the loss of Greek
independence[289]; he had prophesied the downfall of monarchs and the
triumph of democracy[290]; and he had inserted in _Childe Harold_ that
vigorous apostrophe to liberty:
“Yet, Freedom, yet thy banner, torn but flying,
Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind.”[291]
In _Don Juan_, however, Byron is less rhetorical and more direct. In
expressing his
“Plain sworn downright detestation
Of every despotism in every nation,”[292]
he does not hesitate to condemn all absolute monarchs; moreover he
displays a sincere faith in the ultimate success of popular government:
“I think I hear a little bird, who sings
The people by and by will be the stronger.”[293]
Such lines as these show a maturity and an earnestness that mark
the evolution of Byron’s satiric spirit from the hasty petulance of
_English Bards_ to the humanitarian breadth of his thoughtful manhood.
Like “Young Azim” in Moore’s _Veiled Prophet of Khorassan_, he is eager
to march and command under the banner on which is emblazoned “Freedom
to the World.”
It is characteristic of Byron’s later satire that he applied his theory
of liberty to the current problems of British politics by assailing the
obnoxious domestic measures instituted by the Tory ministry of Lord
Liverpool, by condemning the English foreign policy of acquiescence
in the legitimist doctrines of Metternich and the continental powers,
and by attacking the characters of the ministers whom he considered
responsible for England’s position at home and abroad. The England of
the time of _Don Juan_ was the country which Shelley so graphically
pictured in his _Sonnet: England in 1819_:--
“An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, ...
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, ...
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field.”
It was a nation exhausted by war, burdened with debt, and seething
with discontent. The Luddite outbreaks, the “Manchester Massacre,”
which so excited the wrath of Shelley, and the “Cato Street Conspiracy”
showed the temper of the poor and disaffected classes. Unfortunately
the cabinet saw the solution of these difficulties not in reform
but in repression, and preferred to put down the uprisings by force
rather than to remove their causes. For these conditions Byron blamed
Castlereagh, the Foreign Secretary.
Byron had never met Castlereagh and had never suffered a personal
injury from him; his rage, therefore, was directed solely at the
statesman, not at the man. The Secretary had long been detestable to
Irish Whigs like Moore[294] and English radicals like Shelley[295]; it
remained for Byron to track him through life with venomous hatred and
to pursue him beyond the grave with scathing epigrams. For anything
comparable aimed at a man in high position we must go back to Marvell’s
satires on Charles II and the Duke of York or to the contemporary
satire in 1762 on Lord Bute. Byron’s Castlereagh has no virtues; the
portrait, like Gifford’s sketch of Peter Pindar, is all in dark colors.
The satire is vehement and personal, without malice and without pity.
Byron also attacked Wellington, but in manner ironic and scornful, as a
leader who had lost all claim to the gratitude of the people by allying
himself with their oppressors. For George, who as Regent and King, had
done nothing to redeem himself with his subjects, Byron had little but
contempt. In satirizing these men, however, Byron was perhaps less
effective than Moore, over whose imitations of Castlereagh’s orations
and “best-wigged Prince in Christendom,” people smiled when Byron’s
tirades seemed too vicious.
Through the method commonly called dramatic, or indirect, Byron
assailed English politicians in his portrayal of Lord Henry
Amundeville, the statesman who is “always a patriot--and sometimes
a placeman,” and who is representative of the unemotional, just,
yet altogether selfish British minister. The type is drawn with
considerable skill and with much less rancor than would have been
possible with Byron ten years before. Indeed the satire resembles
Dryden’s in that it admits of a wide application and is not limited to
the individual described.
Nothing in Byron’s political creed redounds more to his credit than his
persistent opposition to all war except that carried on in the “defence
of freedom, country, or of laws.” Neglecting the pride and pomp of war,
he depicted the Siege of Ismail with ghastly realism, laying emphasis
on the blood and carnage of the battle and condemning especially
mercenary soldiers, “those butchers in large business.” Though this
attitude towards warfare was not original with him,[296] Byron spoke
out with a firmness and pertinacity that marked him as far ahead of his
age.
Though Byron, in _Don Juan_, was almost entirely a destructive critic
of the political situation in England and in Europe, his ideas were
exceedingly influential. In spite of the fact that he had no definite
remedy to offer for intolerable conditions, his daring championship
of oppressed peoples affected European thought, not only during his
lifetime, but also for years after his death. He was revered in Greece
as more than mortal; he was an inspiration for Mazzini and Cavour;
he seemed to Lamartine an apostle of liberty. It is probably to his
insistence on the rights of the people and to his sweeping indictment
of autocratic rule that he owes the greatest part of his international
recognition.
Byron’s iconoclastic tendencies showed themselves also in his attack
on English society, in which he aimed to expose the selfishness,
stupidity, and affectation of the small class that represented the
aristocratic circle of the nation. In dealing with this subject he knew
of what he was speaking, for he had been a member and a close observer
of “that Microcosm on stilts yclept the Great World.” His picture of
this upper class is humorous and ironic, but seldom vehement. In a
series of vivid and often brilliant character sketches he delineates
the personages that Juan, Ambassador of Russia, meets in London,
touching cleverly on their defects and vices, and unveiling the
sensuality, jealousy, and deceit which their outward decorum covers.
Though the figures are types rather than individuals, they were in many
cases suggested by men and women whom Byron knew. Possibly the most
effective satire occurs in the description of the gathering at Lady
Adeline’s country-seat, Norman Abbey, where some thirty-three guests,
“the Brahmins of the Ton,” meet at a fashionable house party.[297]
For these social parasites and office seekers Byron felt nothing but
contempt. His advice to Juan moving among them is:
“Be hypocritical, be cautious, be
Not what you _seem_, but always what you _see_.”[298]
He describes their life as dull and uninteresting, a gay masquerade
which palls when all its delights have been tried. Its prudery conceals
scandal, treachery, and lust; its great vices are hypocrisy and
cant--“cant political, cant religious, cant moral.”[299] Indeed the
satire of _Don Juan_, from Canto XI to the point where the poem is
broken off, is an attack on pretence and sham, and a vindication of the
free and natural man. Byron’s motive may have been, in part, the desire
for revenge on the circle which had cast him out; but certainly he was
disgusted with the narrowness and conventionality of his London life,
and his newly acquired jesting manner found in it a suitable object for
satire.
While Byron’s liberalism and democracy were doing effective service
in pointing out flaws in existing political and social systems, he
was still maintaining, not without many inconsistencies, his old
conservative doctrines in literature, and doggedly insisting on the
virtue of his literary commandments:
“Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope;
Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey.”[300]
While he was being hailed as a leader of the romantic school of poetry,
he was still defending the principles of Pope, praising the work of
Crabbe, Rogers, and Campbell, and disapproving of the verses of the
members of the Lake School. He dedicated _Don Juan_, in a mocking and
condescending fashion, to Southey, and described him in the sketch of
the bard “paid to satirise or flatter” who sang to Haidée and Juan
the beautiful lyric, _The Isles of Greece_.[301] He ridiculed _The
Waggoner_ and _Peter Bell_, treating Wordsworth with an hostility which
is almost inexplicable in view of Byron’s indebtedness in _Childe
Harold_, III and IV to the older poet’s feeling for nature. Only in
minor respects had Byron’s position changed; he was more appreciative
of Scott and less vindictive towards Jeffrey; and he had found at least
one new literary enemy in the poetaster, William Sotheby. In general
there was little for him to add to what he had already said in _English
Bards_. His otherwise progressive spirit had not extended into the
field of literary criticism.
It is not at all surprising that a large portion of _Don Juan_ should
be devoted to two subjects in which Byron had always been deeply
interested--woman and love. Nor is it at all remarkable, in view of his
singularly complex and variable nature, that the poem should contain
not only the exquisite idyll of Haidée but also line after line of
cynical satire on her sex. Though Byron’s opinion of women was usually
not complimentary, sentiment, and even sentimentality of a certain
sort, had a powerful attraction for him. If many of his love affairs
were followed and even accompanied by cynicism, it was because the
passion in such cases was sensual, and in reaction, he went to the
other extreme. The influence of the Guiccioli, however, manifest in
his descriptions of Haidée and Aurora Raby, was beneficial to Byron’s
character, and his ideas of love were somewhat altered through his
relations with her. At the same time the conventional assertions of
woman’s inconstancy and treachery so common in his earlier work recur
frequently in _Don Juan_.
Love, according to Byron’s philosophy, can exist only when it is free
and untrammelled. The poet’s too numerous amours and the general laxity
of Italian morals had joined in exciting in him a prejudice against
English puritanism; while his own unfortunate marital experience had
convinced him that “Love and Marriage rarely can combine.”[302] The
remembrance of his married life and his observation in the land of his
adoption were both instrumental in forming his conclusion:
“There’s doubtless something in domestic doings,
Which forms, in fact, true love’s antithesis.”[303]
When marriage, then, is so unalluring, the logical refuge is an
honest friendship with a married lady, “of all connections the most
steady.”[304] When Byron does speak of women with apparent respect, it
is always well to search for irony behind. If he says, evidently with
emotion:
“All who have loved, or love, will still allow
Life has nought like it. God is love, they say,
And love’s a god,”[305]
he qualifies his ecstacy elsewhere by asserting that Love is “the very
God of evil.”[306] Although he protests that he loves the sex,[307]
he must add that they are deceitful,[308] hypocritical,[309] and
fickle.[310]
Nothing in the first two cantos of _Don Juan_ was more offensive to
Hobhouse and the “Utican Senate” to which Murray submitted them than
the poorly disguised portrayal of Lady Byron in the character of Donna
Inez. Though Byron explicitly disavowed all intention of satirising
his wife directly, no one familiar with the facts could possibly have
doubted that this lady “whose favorite science was the mathematical,”
who opened her husband’s trunks and letters, and tried to prove her
loving lord mad, and who acted under all circumstances like “Morality’s
prim personification” was intended to represent the former Miss
Milbanke and present Lady Byron.
Doubtless there is something artificial and affected in much of Byron’s
cynical comment on women and love; but if we are inclined to distrust
this man of many amours who delights in flaunting his past before
the eyes of his shocked compatriots, we must remember that there is
probably no conscious insincerity in his words. Byron frequently
deludes not only his readers but himself, and his satire on women, when
it is not a kind of bravado, is merely part of his worldly philosophy.
The philosophical conceptions on which _Don Juan_ rests are, in their
general trend, not uncommonly satirical; that is, they are destructive
rather than constructive, skeptical rather than idealistic, founded on
doubt rather than on faith. It is the object of the poem to overturn
tottering institutions, to upset traditions, and to unveil illusions.
Byron’s attitude is that so often taken by a thorough man of the world
who has tasted pleasure to the point of satiety, and who has arrived
at early middle age with his enthusiasms weakened and his faith sunk
in pessimism. This accounts for much of the realism in the poem.
Sometimes the poet, in the effort to portray things as they are, merely
transcribes the prose narratives of others into verse,[311] just as
Shakspere borrowed passages from North’s _Plutarch_ for _Julius Cæsar_.
More often he undertakes to detect and reveal the incongruity between
actuality and pretence, and to expose weakness and folly under its mask
of sham. The realism of this sort closely resembles the more modern
work of Zola, attributing as it does even good actions to low motives
and degrading deliberately the better impulses of mankind. In Byron’s
case it seems to be the result partly of a wish to avoid carrying
sentiment and romance to excess, partly of a distorted or partial view
of life. Whatever romance there is in _Don Juan_--and the amount is
not inconsiderable--is invariably followed by a drop into bathos or
absurdity. The deservedly famous “Ave Maria,”[312] with its exquisite
sentiment and melody, is closed by a stanza harsh and grating, which
calls the reader with a shock back to a lower level. This juxtaposition
of tenderness and mockery, tending by contrast to accentuate both
moods, is highly characteristic of the spirit of the poem. Juan’s
lament for Donna Julia is interrupted by sea-sickness,[313] and his
rhetorical address on London, “Freedom’s chosen station,” is broken off
by “Damn your eyes! your money or your life.”[314] Byron never overdoes
the emotional element in _Don Juan_; he draws us back continually to
the commonplace, and sometimes to the mean and vulgar.[315]
Byron’s materialistic and skeptical habit of mind is often put into
phraseology that recalls the “Que sais-je?” of Montaigne. Rhetorical
disquisitions on the vanity of human knowledge and of worldly
achievement had appeared in _Childe Harold_[316]; in _Don Juan_ the
poet dismisses the great problems of existence with a jest:
“What is soul, or mind, their birth and growth,
Is more than I know--the deuce take them both.”[317]
In the words of the British soldier, Johnson, to Juan, we have,
perhaps, a summary of the position which Byron himself had reached:
“There are still many rainbows in your sky,
But mine have vanished. All, when Life is new,
Commence with feelings warm and prospects high;
But Time strips our illusions of their hue,
And one by one in turn, some grand mistake
Casts off its bright skin yearly like the snake.”[318]
As a corollary to this recognition of the futility of human endeavor,
the doctrine of mutability, so common in Shelley’s poetry, appears
frequently in _Don Juan_,[319] ringing in the note of sadness which
Byron would have us believe was his underlying mood. Curiously enough,
though he cynically classed together “rum and true religion” as calming
to the spirit,[320] he was chary of assailing Christian theology or
orthodox creeds. He preserved a kind of respect for the Church; and
even Dr. Kennedy was obliged to admit that on religious questions Byron
was a courteous and fair, as well as an acute, antagonist. Perhaps
the half-faith which led him to say once “The trouble is I do believe”
may account for the fact that, at a time when William Hone and other
satirists were making the Church of England a target for their wit,
_Don Juan_ contained no reference to that institution.
Byron, then, refused to accept any of the creeds and idealisms of his
day. His own position, however, was marked by doubt and vacillation,
and he took no positive attitude towards any of the great problems
of existence. Experience led him to nothing but uncertainty and
indecision, with the result that he became content to destroy, since he
was unable to construct.
This is no place for discussing the fundamental morality or immorality
of _Don Juan_. The British public of Byron’s day, basing their judgment
largely upon the voluptuousness of certain love scenes and upon some
coarse phrases scattered here and there through the poem, charged him
with “brutally outraging all the best feeling of humanity.” There can
be no doubt that Byron did ignore the ordinary standards of conduct
among average people; though he asserted “My object is Morality,”[321]
no one knew better than he that he was constantly running counter to
the conventional code of behavior. Nor can any one doubt, after a study
of his letters to Murray and Moore, that he felt a sardonic glee in
acting as an agent of disillusion and pretending to be a very dangerous
fellow. This spirit led him to employ profanity in _Don Juan_ until his
friend Hobhouse protested: “Don’t swear again--the third ‘damn.’”[322]
By assailing many things that his time held sacred, by calling love
“selfish in its beginning as its end,”[323] and maintaining that the
desire for money is “the only sort of pleasure that requites,”[324]
Byron drew upon himself the charge of immorality. The poem, however,
does not attempt to justify debauchery or to defend vicious practices;
Byron is attacking not virtue, but false sentiment, false idealism, and
false faith. His satiric spirit is engaged in analyzing and exposing
the strange contradictions and contrasts in human life, in tearing down
what is sham and pretence and fraud. Judged from this standpoint, _Don
Juan_ is profoundly moral.
Fortunately, in this poem the design of which was to exploit the
doctrine of personal freedom, Byron had discovered a medium through
which he could make his individuality effective, in which he could
speak in the first person, leave off his story when he chose, digress
and comment on current events, and voice his every mood and whim. The
colloquial tone of the poem strikes the reader at once. He censures
himself in a jocular way for letting the tale slip forever through his
fingers, and confesses with mock humility,
“If I have any fault, it is digression.”[325]
The habit of calling himself back to the narrative becomes almost
as much of an idiosyncrasy as Mr. Kipling’s “But that is another
story.”[326] Obviously Byron’s words are really no more than
half-apologetic; he knew perfectly well what he was doing and why
he was doing it. Without insisting too much on the value of a
mathematical estimate it is still safe to say that _Don Juan_ is fully
half-concerned with that sort of gossipy chat with which Byron’s
visitors at Venice or Pisa were entertained,[327] and as the poem
lengthened, his tendency was to neglect the plot more and more.
Indeed the justification for treating _Don Juan_ as a satire lies
mainly in these side-remarks in which Byron discloses his thoughts
and opinions with so little reserve. The digressions in the poem
are used principally for two purposes: to satirize directly people,
institutions, or theories; to gossip about the writer himself. In
either case we may imagine Byron as a monologist, telling us what he
has done and what he is going to do, what he has seen and heard, what
he thinks on current topics, and illustrating points here and there by
a short anecdote or a compact maxim. In such a series of observations,
extending as they do over a number of years and written as they were
under rapidly shifting conditions, it is uncritical to demand unity. We
might as well expect to find a model drama in a diary. The important
fact is that we have in these digressions a continuous exposition of
Byron’s satire during the most important years of his life.
The peculiar features of the octave stanza, with its opportunity for
double and triple rhymes and the loose structure of its sestette,
made it more suited to Byron’s genius than the more compact and less
flexible heroic couplet. At the same time the concluding couplet of the
octave offered him a chance for brief and epigrammatic expression. In
general it may be said that no metrical form lends itself more readily
to the colloquial style which Byron preferred than does the octave.
In utilizing this stanza, Byron, accepting the methods of Pulci
and Casti, allowed himself the utmost liberties in rhyming and
verse-structure. We have already seen that in several youthful poems,
and, indeed, in some later ephemeral verses, he had shown a fondness
for remarkable rhymes. By the date of _Beppo_ he had broken away
entirely from the rigidity of the Popean theory of poetry, and had
confessed that he enjoyed a freer style of writing:
“I--take for rhyme, to hook my rambling verse on,
The first that Walker’s lexicon unravels,
And when I can’t find that, I put a worse on,
Not caring as I ought for critics’ cavils.”[328]
In _Don Juan_ this employment of uncommon rhymes had become a genuine
art. Byron once declared to Trelawney that Swift was the greatest
master of rhyming in English; but Byron is as superior to Swift as
the latter is to Barham and Browning in this respect. Indeed Byron’s
only rival is Butler, and there are many who would maintain, on
good grounds, that Byron as a master of rhyming is greater than the
author of _Hudibras_. When we consider the length of _Don Juan_, the
constant demand for double and triple rhymes, and the fact that Byron
seldom repeated himself, we cannot help marvelling at the linguistic
cleverness which enabled him to discover such unheard-of combinations
of syllables and words. Some of the most extraordinary have become
almost classic,[329] _e.g._:--
“But--Oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,
Inform us truly, have they not hen-pecked you all?”[330]
“Since in a way that’s rather of the oddest, he
Became divested of his native modesty.”[331]
Naturally in securing such a variety of rhymes he was forced to draw
from many sources. Foreign languages proved a rich field, and he
obtained from them some striking examples of words similar in sound,
sometimes rhyming them with words from the same language, sometimes
fitting them to English words and phrases. Some typical specimens are
worthy of quotation:
Latin--in medias res, please, ease.[332]
Greek--critic is, poietikes.[333]
French--seat, tête-à-tête, bete.[334]
Italian--plenty, twenty, “mi vien in mente.”[335]
Spanish--Lopé, copy.[336]
Russian--Strokenoff, Chokenoff, poke enough.[337]
Byron also resorts to the uses of proper names, borrowed from many
tongues:
Dante’s--Cervantes.[338]
Hovel is--Mephistophelis.[339]
Tyrian--Presbyterian.[340]
Avail us--Sardanapalus.[341]
Pukes in--Euxine.[342]
It may be added, too, that he was seldom over-accurate or
careful in making his rhymes exact. In one instance he rhymes
certainty--philosophy--progeny.[343] Most stanzas have either double or
triple rhymes, but there are occasional stanzas in which all the rhymes
are single.[344]
In _Don Juan_ run-on lines are the rule rather than the exception.
Certain stanzas are really sentences in which the thought moves
straight on, disregarding entirely the ordinary restrictions of
versification.[345] In more than one case the idea is even carried
from one stanza to another without a pause.[346] In one extraordinary
instance a word is broken at the end of a line and finished at
the beginning of the next,[347] following the example set by the
Anti-Jacobin in Rogero’s song in _The Rovers_. Like a public speaker,
Byron at times neglects coherence in order to keep the thread of his
discourse or to digress momentarily without losing grip on his audience.
Much of the humor of _Don Juan_ is due to the varied employment of
many forms of verbal wit: puns, plays upon words, and odd repetitions
and turns of expression. The puns are not always commendable for
their brilliance, though they serve often to burlesque a serious
subject. In at least one stanza Byron uses a foreign language in
punning.[348] In general it is noticeable that puns become more common
in the later cantos of the poem.[349] There are also many curious
turns of expression, comparable only to some of the quips of Hood and
Praed.[350] Frequently, they are exceedingly clever in the suddenness
with which they shift the thought and give the reader an unexpected
surprise, _e.g._:
“Lambo presented, and one instant more
Had stopped this canto and Don Juan’s breath.”[351]
Repetitions of words or sounds often convey the effect of a pun, _e.g._:
“They either missed, or they were never missed,
And added greatly to the missing list.”[352]
The witty line,
“But Tom’s no more--and so no more of Tom,”[353]
is an excellent example of Byron’s verbal artistry.
It should be added here, also, that Byron displayed a singular capacity
for coining maxims and compressing much worldly wisdom into a compact
form. Some of his sayings have so far passed into common speech that
they are almost platitudes, _e.g._:
“There is no sterner moralist than pleasure.”[354]
As has been pointed out, this kind of sententious utterance in the form
of a proverb or an epigram was very common with the Italian burlesque
writers, especially with Pulci.
Something of the universality of Don Juan, of its appeal, not only to
particular countries and peoples, but also to the world at large, may
be indicated by the number of translations of it which exist.[355] It
appeared in French in 1827, in Spanish in 1829, in Swedish in 1838, in
German in 1839, in Russian in 1846, in Roumanian in 1847, in Italian
in 1853, in Danish in 1854, in Polish in 1863, and in Servian in 1888.
Since these first versions appeared, other and more satisfactory ones
have been published in most of the countries named. It was chiefly
through _Don Juan_ that Byron became, what Saintsbury calls him, “the
sole master of young Russia, young Italy, young Spain, in poetry.” In
these days when Byron’s defence of the rights of the people is less
necessary, when his opposition to despotism would find few tyrants
to oppose, and when his condemnation of war has developed into a
widespread movement for universal peace, the powerful impetus which his
satire gave to the progress of democracy is likely to be overlooked.
His attitude of defiance furnished an illustrious example to struggling
nations, and gave them hope of better things.[356]
Within this limited space it has been possible to touch only upon one
or two phases of the many which this poem, perhaps the greatest in
English since _Paradise Lost_, presents to the reader. Byron’s satire,
in assuming a wider scope and a greater breadth of view, in growing
out of the insular into the cosmopolitan, has also blended itself with
romance and realism, with the lyric, the descriptive, and the epic
types of poetry until it has created a new literary form and method
suitable only to a great genius. His satiric spirit, in assailing not
only individuals, but also institutions, systems, and theories of life,
in concerning itself less with literary grudges and personal quarrels
than with momentous questions of society, in progressing steadily from
the specific to the universal, has undergone a striking evolution.
The tone of his satire has become less formal and dignified, and more
colloquial, while a more frequent use of irony, burlesque, and verbal
wit makes the poem easier and more varied. Byron joins mockery with
invective, raillery with contempt, so that _Don Juan_, in retaining
certain qualities of the old Popean satire, seems to have tempered
and qualified the acrimony of _English Bards_. The inevitable result
of this development was to make _Don Juan_ a reflection of Byron’s
personality such as no other of his works had been. _Don Juan_ is
Byron; and in this fact lies the explanation of its strength and
weakness.
CHAPTER IX
“THE VISION OF JUDGMENT”
Byron’s _Vision of Judgment_, printed in the first number of _The
Liberal_, October 15, 1820, was the climax of his long quarrel with
Southey, the complicated details of which have been related at length
by Mr. Prothero in his edition of the _Letters and Journals_.[357]
Byron’s hostility to Southey was due apparently to several causes,
some personal, some political, and some literary. He believed that
Southey had spread malicious reports about the alleged immorality of
his life in Switzerland with Jane Clermont, Mary Godwin, and Shelley;
he considered the laureate to be an apostate from liberalism and a
truckler to aristocracy; and he had no patience with his views on
poetry and his lack of respect for Pope. The two men were, in fact,
fundamentally incompatible in temperament and opinions, Southey being
firmly convinced that Byron was a dissipated and dangerous debauchee,
while Byron thought Southey a dull, servile, and somewhat hypocritical
scribbler.
Since _The Vision of Judgment_ was Byron’s only attempt at genuine
travesty, it may be well to differentiate between the travesty and
other kindred forms of satire, all of which are commonly grouped under
the generic heading, burlesque. Broadly speaking, a burlesque is any
literary production in which there is an absurd incongruity in the
adjustment of style to subject matter or subject matter to style,
humor being excited by a continual contrast between what is high and
what is low, what is exalted and what is commonplace.[358] The peculiar
effect of burlesque is ordinarily dependent upon its comparison with
some form of literature of a more serious nature. Of the subdivisions
of burlesque, the parody aims particularly at the humorous imitation
of the style and manner of another work, the original characters and
incidents being displaced by incidents of a more trifling sort. The
parody has been a popular variety of satire, and examples of it may
be discovered in the productions of any sophisticated or critical
age.[359] The travesty, in the narrow sense of the term, is a humorous
imitation of another work, the subject matter remaining substantially
the same, being made ridiculous, however, by a grotesque treatment and
a less imaginative style. A serious theme is thus deliberately degraded
and debased. The commonest subjects of travesty have been derived, as
one might expect, from mythology or from the great epic poems. Its
popularity, except in certain limited periods, has never equalled that
of the parody.[360]
Considered simply as a travesty, Byron’s _Vision_ is remarkable
in two respects: first, in that it burlesques a contemporary poem,
while most other travesties ridicule works of antiquity, or at least
of established repute; second, in that it has an intrinsic merit of
its own far surpassing that of the poem which suggested it. Thus the
general dictum that a travesty is valuable chiefly through the contrast
which it presents to some nobler masterpiece is contradicted by Byron’s
satire, which is in itself an artistic triumph.
Southey’s _Vision of Judgment_, of which Byron’s _Vision_ is a
travesty, was written in the author’s function as poet-laureate shortly
after the death of George III. on January 29, 1820. Certainly in many
ways it lent itself readily to burlesque.[361] It was composed in the
unrhymed dactyllic hexameter, a measure in which Southey was even less
successful than Harvey and Sidney had been. It was full of adulation of
a king, who, however much he may have been distinguished for domestic
virtues, was surely, in his public activities, no suitable subject for
encomium. It was dedicated, moreover, to George IV. in language which
seems to us to-day the grossest flattery.[362] The poem itself, divided
into twelve sections, deals with the appearance of the old King at the
gate of heaven, his judgment and beatification by the angels, and his
meeting with the shades of illustrious dead--English worthies, mighty
figures of the Georgian age, and members of his own family.
Many special features of Southey’s poem were disagreeable to Byron. It
was a vindication and a eulogy of the existing system of government in
England, George III, whom Byron despised, being described as an ideal
sovereign. Southey had made a contemptuous reference to what he was
pleased to call the watchwords of Faction, “Freedom, Invaded Rights,
Corruption, and War, and Oppression,” a summary which must have been
distasteful to a man who had been raising his voice in resistance
to political tyranny. Southey had also carefully omitted Dryden and
Pope from the list of great writers whom George III met in heaven.
On the whole Southey’s poem was pervaded by a tone of arrogance and
self-satisfaction which was exceedingly offensive to Byron.
Byron had begun his travesty on May 7, 1821, and had sent it to Murray
from Ravenna on October 4th.[363] Unconscious of the fact that this
satire was in Murray’s hands, Southey meanwhile had published his
_Letter to the Courier_, January 5, 1822, vindictively personal, and
containing one unlucky paragraph: “One word of advice to Lord Byron
before I conclude. When he attacks me again, let it be in rhyme. For
one who has so little command of himself, it will be a great advantage
that his temper should be obliged to keep tune.” When this _Letter_
came to Byron’s notice, his anger boiled over; he sent Southey a
challenge, which through the discretion of Kinnaird, was never
delivered[364]; and he decided immediately to publish his _Vision_,
which he had almost determined to suppress. Murray, however, delayed
the proof, and on July 3, 1822, Byron, irritated by this tardiness and
enthusiastic over his newly planned periodical, _The Liberal_, sent a
letter by John Hunt,[365] the proprietor of the magazine, requesting
Murray to turn the satire over to Hunt. In the first number of _The
Liberal_, then, the _Vision_ was given the most conspicuous position,
printed, however, without the preface, which Murray, either ignorantly
or unfairly, had withheld from Hunt. A vigorous letter from Byron
recovered the preface, which was inserted in a second edition of the
periodical.[366] The consequences of publication somewhat justified
Murray’s apprehensions. John Hunt was prosecuted by the Constitutional
Association, and on July 19, 1824, only three days after Byron’s body
had been buried in the church of Hucknall Torkard, was convicted,
fined one hundred pounds, and compelled to enter into securities
for five years. In fairness to Byron, it must be added that he had
offered to come to England in order to stand trial in Hunt’s stead,
and had desisted only when he found that such procedure would not be
allowed.[367]
In his _Vision_, Byron had at least four objects for his satire. He
wished to ridicule Southey’s poem by burlesquing many of its absurd
elements; he aimed to proceed more directly against Southey by exposing
the weak points in his character and career; he desired to present
a true picture of George III, in contrast to Southey’s idealized
portrait; and he intended to make a general indictment of all illiberal
government and particularly of the policy then being pursued by the
English Tory party. He seized instinctively upon the weaknesses of the
panegyric, and while preserving the general plan and retaining many of
the characters, freely mocked at its cant and smug conceit. Through a
style purposely grotesque and colloquial, he turned Southey’s pompous
rhetoric into absurdity; by touches of realism and caricature he made
the solemn angels and demons laughable; while, occasionally rising to a
loftier tone suggestive of the spirit of _Don Juan_, he reasserted his
love of liberty and hatred of despotism.
In executing his project, Byron deliberately neglected a large part
of Southey’s _Vision_ and confined himself almost exclusively to
the scene at the trial of the King. He began actually with the
situation represented in Section IV of Southey’s poem, omitting all
the preliminary matter, and ended with Southey’s Section V, avoiding
entirely the meeting of George with the English worthies. So far as
subject matter is concerned, Byron travestied only two of the twelve
divisions of the earlier work. He concentrated his attention on the
judgment of the King, and then deserted formal travesty in order to
introduce his attack on Southey.
It was part of Byron’s scheme that angels and demons, serious
characters in Southey’s poem, should be made the objects of mirth. By
a dexterous application of realism, he changed the New Jerusalem of
Southey into a very earthly place, where angels now and then sing out
of tune and hoarse, and where six angels and twelve saints act as a
business-like Board of Clerks. These creatures of the spiritual realm
are very substantial beings, not at all immune from mortal infirmities
and passions. Saint Peter is a dull somnolent personage who grumbles
over the leniency of heaven’s Master towards earth’s kings, and sweats
through his apostolic skin at the appalling sight of Lucifer and demons
pursuing the body of George to the very doors of heaven. Satan salutes
Michael,
“as might an old Castilian
Poor noble meet a mushroom rich civilian,”
and the archangel, in turn, greets the fallen Lucifer superciliously as
“my good old friend.” It is probable that in this practice of treating
with ridicule those beings who are commonly spoken of with reverence,
Byron is imitating Pulci, whose angels and devils are also, in their
attributes, more human than divine.
Byron’s trial scene, in which Lucifer and Michael dispute for the
possession of George III, is an admirable travesty of Southey’s
representation of the same episode. The glorified monarch of Southey’s
_Vision_ meets in Byron’s satire with scant courtesy from Lucifer, who
acts as attorney for the prosecution. Lucifer admits the king’s “tame
virtues” and grants that he was a “tool from first to last”; but he
charges him with having “ever warr’d with Freedom and the free,” with
having stained his career with “national and individual woes,” with
having resisted Catholic emancipation, and with having lost a continent
to his country. Wilkes and Junius, the two shamefaced accusers of
Southey’s _Vision_, now act in a different manner. Wilkes scornfully
extends his forgiveness to the king, and Junius, while reiterating
the truth of his original accusations, refuses to be enlisted as
an incriminating witness. This section of the satire is splendidly
managed. The whole assault on the king tends to show him as more
misguided than criminal. The lines,
“A better farmer ne’er brush’d dew from lawn,
A worse king never left a realm undone!”
create a kind of sympathy for George in that they portray him as a man
placed in a position for which he was manifestly unfitted.
Southey’s name is mentioned only once before the 35th stanza of Byron’s
poem, but from that point until the conclusion the work deals entirely
with him. These stanzas constitute what is probably Byron’s happiest
effort at personal satire. For once he did not act in haste, but
carefully matured his project, studied its execution, and permitted his
first impulsive anger to moderate into scorn. With due attention to
craftsmanship, he surveyed and annihilated his enemy, laughing at him
contemptuously and making every stroke tell. It should be observed too
that he chose a method largely indirect and dramatic. He did not, as
in _English Bards_, merely apply offensive epithets; rather he placed
Southey in a ridiculous situation and made him the sport of other
characters. The satire, is, therefore, exceedingly effective since it
allows the victim no chance for a reply.[368] By turning the laugh on
Southey, Byron closed the controversy by attaining what is probably the
most desirable result of purely personal satire--the making an opponent
seem not hateful but absurd.
Byron’s poem, however, was something more than a chapter in the
satisfaction of a private quarrel. It is also a liberal polemic,
assailing not only the whole system of constituted authority in
England, but also tyranny and repression wherever they operate. The
indictment of George III, which at times approaches sublimity, is in
reality directed against the entire reactionary policy of contemporary
European statesmen and rulers. The doctrines of the revolutionary
Byron, already familiar to us in _Don Juan_, are to be found in the
ironic stanzas upon the sumptuous funeral of the king, a passage
admired by Goethe; respect for monarchy itself had died out in a
nobleman who could say of George’s entombment:
“It seemed the mockery of hell to fold
The rottenness of eighty years in gold.”
With all its broad humor, the satire is aflame with indignation. In
this respect the poem performed an important public service. In place
of stupid content with things as they were, it offered critical comment
on existing conditions, comment somewhat biassed, it is true, but
nevertheless in refreshing contrast to the conventional submission of
the great majority of the British public.
Much of what has already been pointed out with regard to the sources
and inspiration of _Don Juan_ may be applied without alteration to
_The Vision of Judgment_, which is, as Byron told Moore, written “in
the Pulci style, which the fools in England think was invented by
Whistlecraft--it is as old as the hills in Italy.”[369] The _Vision_,
being shorter and more unified, contains few digressions which do
not bear directly upon the plot; but it has the same colloquial and
conversational style, the same occasional rise into true imaginative
poetry with the inevitable following drop into the commonplace, the
same fondness for realism, and the same broad burlesque.[370] Hampered
as it is by the necessity of keeping the story well-knit, Byron’s
personality has ample opportunity for expression.
It is probable that Byron’s description of Saint Peter and the angels
owes much to his reading of Pulci.[371] In at least one instance there
is a palpable imitation. Saint Peter in the _Vision_, who was so
terrified by the approach of Lucifer that,
“He patter’d with his keys at a great rate,
And sweated through his apostolic skin,”[372]
suffered as did the same saint in the _Morgante Maggiore_ who was weary
with the duty of opening the celestial gate for slaughtered Christians:
“Credo che molto quel giorno s’affana:
E converrà ch’egli abbi buono orecchio,
Tanto gridavan quello anime Osanna
Ch’eran portate dagli angeli in cielo;
Sicchè la barba gli sudava e ’l pelo.”[373]
In employing the realistic method in depicting the angels, Byron seems
to have caught something of Pulci’s grotesque spirit.
One line of the _Vision_,
“When this old, blind, mad, helpless, weak, poor worm,”
seems to imitate the opening of Shelley’s powerful _Sonnet_; _England
in 1819_, already quoted,
“An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king.”
Professor Courthope has suggested that Byron’s _Don Juan_ owes
something to the work of Peter Pindar.[374] The evidence for the
relationship seems, however, to be very scanty. Wolcot never employed
the octave stanza, nor, indeed, did he ever show evidences of true
poetic power. The two men were, of course, alike in that they were both
liberals, both avowedly enemies of George III, and both outspoken in
their dislikes. But Byron seldom except in parts of the _Vision_ used
the method of broad caricature so characteristic of Pindar. In the
_Vision_, too, occurs the only obvious reference on Byron’s part to
Pindar’s satire. He describes the effect of Southey’s dactyls on George
III, in the lines:
“The monarch, mute till then, exclaim’d, ‘What! What!
Pye come again? No more--No more of that.’”[375]
The couplet recalls Pindar’s delightful imitations of that king’s
eccentric habit of repeating words and phrases. However, Byron’s style
in both _Don Juan_ and the _Vision_ is drawn more from Italian than
from English models.
_The Vision of Judgment_ is, if we exclude _Don Juan_ as being more
than satire, the greatest verse-satire that Byron ever wrote. It is
only natural then to compare the poem with other English satires
which have high rank in our literature. A practically unanimous
critical decision has established Dryden’s _Absalom and Achitophel_ as
occupying the foremost position in English satire before the time of
Byron. Unquestionably this work of Dryden’s is admirable; it is witty,
pointed, and direct, embellished with masterly character sketches and
almost faultless in style. It does, however, suffer somewhat from a
lack of unity, due primarily to the fact that the narrative element
in the poem is subordinate to the description. Byron’s _Vision_, on
the other hand, has a single plot, which is carefully carried out to a
climax and a conclusion. Action joins with invective and description
in forming the satire. Thus the two poems, approximately the same
length if we consider only Part I of _Absalom and Achitophel_, give a
decidedly different impression. Dryden’s satire seems a panorama of
figures, while Byron’s has the coherence and clash of a drama.
_Absalom and Achitophel_ is witty but seldom humorous; while Byron
joins caricature and burlesque to wit. The best lines in Dryden’s poem,
such as:
“Beggar’d by fools, whom still he found too late;
He had his jest, and they had his estate,”
excite admiration for the author’s cleverness, but rarely arouse a
smile; the _Vision_, the contrary, is full of buffoonery. Dryden’s
sense of the dignity of the satirist’s office did not permit him to
lower his style, and he never became familiar with his readers; the
very essence of Byron’s satire is its colloquial character.
Dryden kept his personality always in the background, while the
egotistical Byron could not refrain from letting his individuality
lend fire and passion to whatever he wrote. Thus the _Vision_, despite
the fact that it is the most cool of Byron’s satires, cannot be called
calm and restrained. Self-control, the will to subdue and govern his
impulses and prejudices, was beyond his reach. Fortunately in the
_Vision_ he did take time to exercise craftsmanship, but he never
attained the polished artistry and firm reserve of his predecessor.
Certainly in urbanity, in dignity, and in justice Dryden is the
superior, just as he is undoubtedly less imaginative, less varied, and
less spirited than Byron.
The two satires are, then, radically different in their methods. One
is a masterpiece of the Latin classical satire in English, formal and
regular, and using the standard English couplet; the other is our
finest example of the Italian style in satire--the mocking, grotesque,
colloquial, and humorous manner of Pulci and Casti. Both are effective;
but one is inclined to surmise that the purple patches in _Absalom
and Achitophel_ will outlast the more perfect whole of _The Vision of
Judgment_.
The probable results of the publication of a work of such a sensational
character had been foreseen by both Murray and Longman. When the first
number of _The Liberal_ appeared containing not only _The Vision
of Judgment_ but also three epigrams of Byron’s on the death of
Castlereagh, it was received by a torrent of hostile criticism from
the Tory press. The _Literary Gazette_ for October 19, 1822, called
Byron’s work “heartless and beastly ribaldry,” and added on November
2, that Byron had contributed to the _Liberal_ “impiety, vulgarity,
inhumanity, and heartlessness.” The _Courier_ for October 26 termed him
“an unsexed Circe, who gems the poisoned cup he offers us.” On the
Whig side, in contrast, Hunt’s _Examiner_ for September 29 spoke of it
as “a Satire upon the Laureate, which contains also a true and fearless
character of a grossly adulated monarch.”
Byron himself described it to Murray as “one of my best things.”[376]
Later critical opinion has also tended to rank it very high. Goethe
called the verses on George III “the sublime of hatred.” Swinburne,
himself a revolutionist but no partisan of Byron’s, exhausts
superlatives in commenting on it: “This poem--stands alone, not in
Byron’s work only, but in the work of the world. Satire in earlier
times had changed her rags for robes; Juvenal had clothed with fire,
and Dryden with majesty, that wandering and bastard muse. Byron gave
her wings to fly with, above the reach even of these. Others have
had as much of passion and as much of humor; Dryden had perhaps as
much of both combined. But here, and not elsewhere, a third quality
is apparent--the sense of a high and clear imagination.--Above all,
the balance of thought and passion is admirable; human indignation
and divine irony are alike understood and expressed; the pure and
fiery anger of men at the sight of wrong-doing, the tacit inscrutable
derision of heaven.” Nichol, in his life of Byron, says:--“Nowhere in
so much space, save in some of the prose of Swift, is there in English
so much scathing satire.”
Two figures in Byron’s poem have been made the basis of a shrewd
comparison by Henley. He says: “Byron and Wordsworth are like the
Lucifer and Michael of _The Vision of Judgment_. Byron’s was the
genius of revolt, as Wordsworth’s was the genius of dignified and
useful submission; Byron preached the doctrine of private revolution,
Wordsworth the dogma of private apotheosis--Byron was the passionate
and dauntless ‘soldier of a forlorn hope,’ Wordsworth a kind of
inspired clergyman.” Byron’s sympathies in the _Vision_, as in _Cain_,
were undoubtedly with Lucifer, the rebel and exile, and his poem will
live as a satiric declaration of the duty of active resistance to
despotism and oppression.
CHAPTER X
“THE AGE OF BRONZE” AND “THE BLUES”
Byron’s _Monody on the Death of Sheridan_, written at Diodati on
July 17, 1816, and recited in Drury Lane Theatre on September 7, was
followed by a period of several years in which he ceased to employ the
heroic couplet in poetry of any sort. The reasons for this temporary
abandonment of what had been, hitherto, a favorite measure, are not
altogether clear, although his action may be ascribed, in part, to his
renunciation of things English and to the influence upon him of his
study of the Italians. During his residence in Italy, Byron used many
metrical forms: the Spenserian stanza, ottava rima, terza rima, blank
verse, and other measures in some shorter lyrics and ephemeral verses.
Not until _The Age of Bronze_, which he began in December, 1822, did he
return to the heroic couplet of _English Bards_.
On January 10, 1823, Byron, then living in Genoa, wrote a letter to
Leigh Hunt, in which, among other things, he said: “I have sent to
Mrs. S[helley], for the benefit of being copied, a poem of about
seven hundred and fifty lines length--_The Age of Bronze_--or _Carmen
Seculare et Annus haud Mirabilis_, with this Epigraph--‘Impar
_Congressus_ Achilli’.” By way of description, he added: “It is
calculated for the reading part of the million, being all on politics,
etc., etc., etc., and a review of the day in general,--in my early
_English Bards_ style, but a little more stilted, and somewhat too full
of ‘epithets of war’ and classical and historical allusions.”[377]
The work as revised and completed contains 18 sections and 778 lines.
Originally destined for _The Liberal_, it was eventually published
anonymously by John Hunt, on April 1, 1823.
_The Age of Bronze_ is, then, entirely a political satire, intended
chiefly as a counterblast to the recent stringent regulations of the
reactionary Congress of Verona (1822). It comprises, however, other
material: an introductory passage on the great departed leaders, Pitt,
Fox, and Bonaparte; frequent digressions treating of the struggles
for constitutional government then taking place in Europe; and some
lines attacking the landed proprietors in England for their luke-warm
opposition to foreign war. It is, in nearly every sense, a timely poem,
although the note of “Vanitas Vanitatum” sounded in the early sections
gives the satire a universal application.
For a comprehension of Byron’s motives in writing _The Age of Bronze_,
it is necessary to understand something of the situation in Europe
at the time. Following the numerous insurrections of 1820–22 in
Spain, Portugal, Naples, Greece, and the South American States, the
European powers, guided by the three members of the Holy Alliance,
Russia, Prussia, and Austria, sent delegates to meet at Verona on
October 20, 1822, for a consideration of recent developments in
politics. The leading figure at the conference was Metternich, the
Austrian statesman, although Francis of Austria, Alexander of Russia,
and Frederick William of Prussia were among the monarchs present.
Montmorenci, representing an ultra-royalist ministry under Villiele,
was there to look after the interests of France; while England,
deprived at the last moment of Castlereagh’s services by his suicide,
sent Wellington. The gathering finally resolved itself into a conclave
for the purpose of discussing the right of France to interfere in
the affairs of Spain, by restoring Ferdinand VII, a member of the
House of Bourbon, to the throne of which he had been deprived by the
Constitutionalists. Wellington, after protesting against the agreement
reached by the other envoys to permit the interference of France,
left the Congress,[378] by Canning’s instructions, in December.
His withdrawal, however, did not affect the ultimate decision of
the Congress to stamp out revolt whenever it assailed the precious
principle of Legitimacy. War between France and Spain broke out in
1823; Ferdinand VII was replaced upon his tottering throne; and the
despotic policy of Metternich triumphed, for a time, over democracy.
Canning’s only reply was to recognize the independence of the
rebellious colonies of Spain, and to assert the belligerency of the
Greeks, then fighting for their liberty against the Turks.
It is to the year which saw the work of the Congress of Verona that
Byron’s secondary title, _Annus haud Mirabilis_, obviously refers. In
a striking passage in the beginning of the poem, he pays a tribute
to the mighty dead, contrasting, by implication, the leaders of the
Congress with the departed heroes: Pitt and Fox, buried side by side in
Westminster Abbey; and Napoleon,
“Who born no king, made monarchs draw his car.”
The summary which Byron presents of Napoleon’s career is full of
admiration for the fallen emperor’s genius, and of resentment at the
indignities which, according to contemporary gossip, he had been
compelled to undergo on St. Helena. The man “whose game was empires and
whose stakes were thrones” was forced, says the poet, to become the
slave of “the paltry gaoler and the prying spy.” The passage is both an
appreciation and a judgment, wavering, as it does, between sympathy and
condemnation for the conqueror who burst the chains of Europe only to
renew,
“The very fetters which his arm broke through.”
The reference to these giants of the past leads Byron naturally to a
glorification of such liberators as Kosciusko, Washington, and Bolivar,
and to a joyful heralding of revolutions in Chili, Spain, and Greece:
“One common cause makes myriads of one breast,
Slaves of the east, or helots of the west;
On Andes’ and on Athos’ peaks unfurl’d,
The self-same standard streams o’er either world.”
Under the influence of this enthusiasm he prophecies a liberal outburst
which will end in the regeneration of Europe.
Contrasted with the optimism of this aspiring idealism is Byron’s gloom
over the deeds of the Congress of Verona. The measures advocated by
this gathering, as we have seen, were reactionary and autocratic; and
Byron’s description of it, tinged with liberal sentiment, is vigorously
satirical. In the conference headed by Metternich, “Power’s foremost
parasite,” he can see nothing but a body of tyrants,
“With ponderous malice swaying to and fro,
And crushing nations with a stupid blow.”
Many of the allusions in Byron’s sketches of the members recall the
language used by Moore in his _Fables for the Holy Alliance_. Moore’s
views of the situation in Europe agreed substantially with those of
Byron. Byron’s reference to the “coxcomb czar,”
“The autocrat of waltzes and of war,”
recalls Moore’s mention of that sovereign in _Fable I_:
“So, on he capered, fearless quite,
Thinking himself extremely clever,
And waltzed away with all his might,
As if the Frost would last forever.”
Byron accuses Louis XVIII, who was not present at the Congress, of
being a gourmand and a hedonist,
“A mild Epicurean, form’d at best
To be a kind host and as good a guest.”
The same idea is conveyed in Moore’s description of that king as,
“Sighing out a faint adieu
To truffles, salmis, toasted cheese.”
Especially painful to Byron was the report that Marie Louise
(1791–1849), Napoleon’s widow, who had been secretly married to her
chamberlain, Adam de Neipperg, had attended the Congress, and had
become reconciled to her first husband’s captors. One section of the
satire paints a picture of her leaning on the arm of the Duke of
Wellington, “yet red from Waterloo,” before her husband’s ashes have
had time to chill.
The most bitter, and, at the same time, the most just satire in the
poem is directed at the English landed gentry:
“The last to bid the cry of warfare cease,
The first to make a malady of peace.”
The rise in prices due to the long-continued war had fattened the
purses of the farmers and land-holders in England, and led them to wish
secretly for the continuance of the struggle. Byron attacks severely
their grudging assent to proposals of peace, and, in a succession
of rhymes on the word “rent,” points out the selfishness of their
position. The diatribe contains some of Byron’s most passionate lines:
“See these inglorious Cincinnati swarm,
Farmers of war, dictators of the farm;
_Their_ ploughshare was the sword in hireling hands,
_Their_ fields manured by gore of other lands;
Safe in their barns, these Sabine tillers sent
Their brethren out to battle--why? for rent!”
Although an occasional touch of mockery reminds us of _Don Juan, The
Age of Bronze_, in method, shows a reversion to the invective manner of
_English Bards_. It can hardly be said, however, that this later satire
is any advance over the earlier poem. Its allusions are now unfamiliar
to the average reader, and the names once so pregnant with meaning have
faded into dim memories. Although _The Age of Bronze_ has sagacity and
practicality, it lacks unity and concentration. Without the vehement
sweep of _English Bards_, it is also too rhetorical and declamatory.
Most readers, despite the flash of spirit which now and then lights its
pages, have found the satire dull.
_The Blues_, so little deserving of attention in most respects, is
unique among Byron’s satires for two reasons: it is written in the form
of a play, and it employs the anapestic couplet metre, used by Anstey
and later by Moore. Byron’s first reference to it occurs in a letter
to Murray from Ravenna, August 7, 1821: “I send you a thing which I
scratched off lately, a mere buffoonery, to quiz _the Blues_, in two
literary eclogues. If published, it must be _anonymously_--don’t let
_my_ name out for the present, or I shall have all the old women in
London about my ears, since it sneers at the solace of their ancient
Spinsterstry.”[379] On September 20, 1821, he calls it a “mere
buffoonery, never meant for publication.”[380] Murray, following his
usual custom with literature which was likely to get him into trouble,
cautiously delayed publication, and the poem was turned over to John
Hunt and printed in _The Liberal_, No. III (pages 1–24), for April 26,
1823. It was not attributed to Byron by contemporary critics, most of
them giving Leigh Hunt credit for the authorship.
There is nothing in Byron’s letters to explain the immediate motive
which led the poet to scribble a work so unworthy of his genius. In
his journal kept during his society life in London there are several
references to the “blues,” and later he made some uncomplimentary
allusions to them in _Beppo_ and _Don Juan_. In a sense his efforts
to ridicule them seem to parallel the attacks of Gifford on a coterie
equally harmless and inoffensive.
In form the satire is a closet drama in two acts, each containing
approximately 160 lines. The characters represented are intended, in
many instances, for living persons. Thus, in the first act, which takes
place before the door of a lecture room, Inkel, who is apparently
Byron, converses with Tracy, who may be Moore. Within, Scamp, probably
Hazlitt, is delivering a discourse to a crew of “blues, dandies,
dowagers, and second-hand scribes.” Among the subjects for discussion
between the two men is Miss Lilac, a spinster, and heiress, and a
Blue, who is doubtless a caricature of Miss Milbanke, the later Lady
Byron. References to “Renegado’s Epic,” “Botherby’s plays,” and “the
_Old Girl’s Review_” indicate that Byron has returned to some favorite
subjects for his satire.
The second act is located at the home of Lady Bluebottle, who resembles
closely Lady Holland, the well-known Whig hostess and one of Byron’s
friends. Sir Richard Bluebottle, in a monologue, complains of the crowd
of,
“Scribblers, wits, lecturers, white, black, and blue,”
who invade his house and who are provided for at his expense. In the
scene which ensues, Inkel acts as a sort of interlocutor, with the
others as a chorus. Wordsworth, the “poet of peddlers,” is satirized in
the old fashion of _English Bards_ as the writer who,
“Singing of peddlers and asses,
Has found out the way to dispense with Parnassus.”
Southey is referred to as “Mouthy.” Of the other figures, Lady Bluemont
is, perhaps, Lady Beaumont, and Miss Diddle, Lydia White, “the
fashionable blue-stocking.” When the party breaks up, Sir Richard is
left exclaiming,
“I wish all these people were damned with my marriage.”
On May 6, 1823, Byron finished Canto XVI of _Don Juan_. The fourteen
extant stanzas of Canto XVII are dated May 8th. Shortly after he made
preparations for his expedition to Greece, and, on July 23, 1823,
sailed in the _Hercules_, with Gamba and Trelawney, for Cephalonia.
From this time on, his work in poetry practically ceased. He wrote
Moore from Missolonghi, March 4, 1824: “I have not been quiet in an
Ionian Island but much occupied with business.... Neither have I
continued _Don Juan_, or any other poem.”[381] He devoted himself
to drilling Greek troops, holding conferences with leaders, and
corresponding with the patriot parties. A fever, brought on by
over-exposure, attacked him on April 11th, on the 19th, he died. His
remains were brought to England, and buried in the little church of
Hucknall Torquard, only a few miles from Newstead Abbey.
CONCLUSION
Mr. Augustine Birrell, in an illuminating essay on the writings of
Pope, brings forward, with reference to satire, a standard of judgment
which merits a wider application. “Dr. Johnson,” says Mr. Birrell, “is
more to my mind as a sheer satirist than Pope, for in satire character
tells more than in any other form of verse. We want a personality
behind--a strong, gloomy, brooding personality; soured and savage if
you will--nay, as sour and savage as you like, but spiteful never.”
Without subscribing unreservedly to Mr. Birrell’s preference of Johnson
over Pope, we may still point out that the most conspicuous feature
of Byron’s satire, as, indeed, of most of his other poetry, is the
underlying personality of the author, too powerful and aggressive to
be obscured or hidden. There have been satirists who, in assuming to
express public opinion, have succeeded in partly or entirely effacing
themselves, and who have thus acted in the rôle of judicial censors,
self-appointed to the task of voicing the sentiments of a party. In the
poetry of the _Anti-Jacobin_, it is by no means easy to detect where
the work of one Tory satirist leaves off and that of another begins.
So in Dryden’s work we are seldom confronted directly by the emotions
or partialities of the writer himself; _Absalom and Achitophel_ gives
the impression of a cool impersonal commentary on certain episodes
of history, prejudiced perhaps, but carried on with real or feigned
calmness. Byron’s satire is of a different sort; we can read scarcely a
page without recognizing the potency of the personality that produced
it. Just as in _Childe Harold_ the hero usually represents Byron
himself in some of the phases of his complex individuality; just as the
Lara and the Corsair of his verse romances and the Cain and Manfred
of his dramas are reflections of the misanthropical, theatrical and
skeptical poet; so, in the satires, no matter what method he uses, it
is always Byron who criticises and assails.
Most of the characteristics which make up this personality accountable
for Byron’s satiric spirit have been brought out and discussed in
previous chapters. The most important of all, probably, is the haste
and impetuosity with which he was accustomed to act. In this respect
he may be again contrasted with Dryden, who proceeded to satirize an
enemy after due preparation, without apparent agitation or excitement,
much as a surgeon performs a necessary operation. Even Pope, sensitive
and irritable though he was, did not usually strike when his temper
was beyond his control. Byron, on the other hand, was, in most cases,
feverish and impulsive; what he thought to be provocation was followed
at once by a blow. He did not adopt a position of unmoved superiority,
but, both too proud and too impatient to delay, sought instinctively to
settle a dispute on the spot. Except in some instances notable because
of their rarity, Byron seems to have had no understanding of the
method of toying with a prospective victim; he planned to close with
his opponent, to meet him in a grapple, and to overwhelm him by sheer
energy and intrepidity.
This want of restraint had, of course, some favorable results on his
satire; the work was indisputably vigorous, effective because of the
ungoverned passion which sustained it. At the same time this hasty
action was detrimental to Byron’s art, and accounts, in part, for the
frequent lack of subtlety in his satire. We may be roused temporarily
by the fury of the lines; but when, in less enthusiastic moods, we
examine the details, we miss the technique and the transforming
craftsmanship of the supreme artist. Only in _The Vision of Judgment_
did he devote himself to devising means for gaining his end in the most
dexterous fashion; and the consequence is that poem is the finest of
his satires. In the earlier satires we have Byron, the man, talking
out spontaneously, angrily, unguardedly, without second thought or
reconsideration, like Churchill, a mighty wielder of the bludgeon but a
poor master with the rapier.
Byron’s satiric spirit was always combative rather than argumentative
or controversial. He preferred to assail men rather than principles.
When he disliked an institution or a party, his invariable custom was
to select some one as its representative and to proceed to call him to
account. It is this desire to war with persons and not with theories
that explains his attacks on Castlereagh, whom he never knew, but whom
he singled out as the embodiment of England’s repressive policy. By
nature Byron was much more ready to quarrel with the Foreign Minister
as an individual than he was to discuss the prudence and expediency of
that statesman’s measures.
The characteristics so far mentioned could belong only to a daring and
fearless man. Byron never hesitated to avow his ideas, nor did he ever
retract his invective except in cases in which he had been convinced
that he was unjust. He published the _Lines to a Lady Weeping_ under
his own name at a time when no one suspected his authorship. For years
he satirized European sovereigns without showing the slightest sign
of trepidation. He espoused unpopular causes, and often, of his own
choice, ran close to danger, when mere silence would have assured him
security.
But despite the fact that Byron’s hatreds were seldom disguised and
that he was, on the whole, open and manly in his satire, there is
another side to his nature which cannot be left unnoticed. He was,
unfortunately, implicated in certain incidents which leave him under
the suspicion of a kind of treachery towards his friends. His lampoon
on Samuel Rogers, beginning,
“Nose and chin would shame a knocker;
Wrinkles that would puzzle Cocker;”
and ending,
“For his merits, would you know ’em?
Once he wrote a pretty Poem,”
unpublished during his lifetime, was nevertheless a malicious squib
directed at a man who had been one of his closest companions. There
can be no doubt, too, that Byron’s satiric ballad on Hobhouse, “My boy
Hobbie, O,” sent secretly to England, was a true stab in the back,
administered to the man who had been his loyal friend. Byron, moreover,
was not always accurate in his charges. Like most satirists, he
exaggerated to gain his point, and made claims which the evidence did
not justify. Nor is it in his favor that he chose to attack his wife in
public lampoons, and wrote scurrilous epigrams upon dead statesmen.
This lack of delicacy aside, however, it must be recognized that
Byron’s satire was often exerted in condemning real evils, and that
he performed a definite service to humanity. More than any other man
of his time he insisted on liberty of speech and action in a period
when reactionary politicians were in the ascendant. He combated the
perennial forms of hypocrisy and cant which appear constantly in
England. Neither Dryden nor Pope had been the consistent champion of
great causes; but Byron so often employed his satire for beneficial
purposes that, despite the vituperation with which it was greeted by
conservatives, it became a powerful influence for good.
It may be said, in general, of the substance of Byron’s satires, that
he devoted very little attention to the faults and foibles of mankind,
taken as a whole. He was usually moved to satire by some contemporary
person, event, or controversy, and his criticism was definite, levelled
at some specific abuse or evil. In his youth he showed a disposition
to take a lofty moral stand, and to preach against vice; but he was
ill-suited to didacticism, and soon forsook it altogether. After 1812,
his satire had a very intimate connection with the life around him
in politics, society, and literature, and reflected the manners and
moods of the age. It is to be noted, too, that Byron was, in theory at
least, in opposition to the spirit of his time. His belief in liberal
doctrines led him to resist much that seemed safe and solid to those in
his own class of life. He was not, in his later days, in sympathy with
the situation in Europe; and he died too soon to see his progressive
ideas bear fruit in the revolutions of 1830 and the Reform Bill of 1832.
In literature Byron satirized, throughout his career, the
representatives of the older romantic school: Wordsworth, Coleridge,
and Southey. He did this mainly on the ground that their principles of
poetry were subversive of the rules handed down by his avowed masters,
Pope and Gifford. In thus defending the name and doctrines of Pope,
Byron was consistent during his literary lifetime, although he himself
wandered from the path which he persistently asserted to be the only
right one. In inveighing against Southey, he was, of course, animated
largely by personal spite. For minor poetasters, scribblers who might
have been made the puppets of a modern _Dunciad_, Byron had little but
silent contempt. In literary satire, then, he presents the strange
spectacle of a radical striving desperately to support a losing cause,
and that cause a conservative one. Progressive in nearly every other
respect, Byron persisted in opposing any attempt to deviate from the
standard established by Pope.
Byron’s satire on society was partly the result of pique. He who
had been for some time its idol, found himself expelled from English
society, and, in retaliation, exposed its absurdities and follies.
At the same time it is unquestionable that he furthered a reform in
ridiculing the cant and sham of English high life. It was in his last
saner days that he wrote the cantos of _Don Juan_ which treat of the
all-pervasive hypocrisy of fashionable circles, and the satire, even
to-day, rings true. It is noticeable that he seldom satirizes fads or
fashions, and that he rarely, after 1812, attacks private immorality.
His zeal is devoted to unveiling pretence, and to describing this
outwardly brilliant gathering as it really is.
Since Byron was a radical and a rebel, his satire was devoted, so far
as it concerned itself with political questions, to the glorification
of liberty in all its forms, and to the vigorous denunciation of
everybody and everything that tended to block or discourage progressive
movements. In defence of freedom and in resistance to oppression, his
satire found its fullest mission and its amplest justification. When
continental Europe of the middle nineteenth century thought of Byron,
it pictured him as a nobleman who had assailed tyrannical monarchy, who
had aided Italy and Greece in their struggles for independence, and who
had been willing to fight for the sake of the principles in which he
believed. The words of Byron’s political creed have a noble ring: “The
king-times are fast finishing. There will be blood shed like water, and
tears like mist; but the peoples will conquer in the end. I shall not
live to see it, but I foresee it.”
The broader philosophical satire on humanity in which he was more
and more inclined to indulge as he reached maturity is essentially
shallow and cynical. As soon as Byron became indefinite, as soon as he
undertook to preach, he grew unsatisfactory, for he had no lesson to
teach beyond the pessimism of _Ecclesiastes_.
All these objects for satire afforded Byron an opportunity for
expressing some much-needed criticism. The most unworthy sections of
his satire are those devoted to mere revenge: the unchivalric lines on
Lady Byron and Mrs. Clermont; the violent abuse of Southey and Jeffrey;
and the treacherous thrusts at Rogers and Hobhouse. In these passages
the satirist descends to the lower level of Churchill and Gifford.
It remains to say a word of Byron’s methods, a word merely of
recapitulation. Preferring directness always, he was inclined by nature
to go straight to his goal, to speak his mind out without pausing to
devise subtle or devious plans of attack. Except in his Italian satires
his procedure was simple enough: he hurled epithets, made scandalous
and scurrilous charges, and thought out offensive comments, writing
usually in the first person and meeting his enemies face to face in the
good old way of his eighteenth century predecessors. It is, perhaps,
unsafe, with _Don Juan_ and _The Vision of Judgment_ before us, to
assert that he was incapable of finesse and cunning; but, for the most
part, even in these poems, he was more fond of abuse than he was of
innuendo and crafty insinuation. His impetuosity and irrepressible
impulsiveness, to which we have had occasion so often to refer, did not
allow him to dwell scrupulously on artistic effects.
He had, however, two distinct satiric moods: the one, savage, stern,
and merciless; the other, mocking, scornful, and humorous. The one
resulted in invective, the other, in ridicule and burlesque. One came
to him from Juvenal, Pope, and Gifford; the other he learned from
Moore, Frere, and the Italians. Thanks to his versatility, he was
successful in using both; but his real genius was shown more in the
contemptuous mirth of _The Vision of Judgment_ than in the fury of
_English Bards_.
Unlike Pope, Byron was no adept at framing pointed phrases. The
beauty of Pope’s satire lies in the single lines, in the details and
the finish of an epithet. Byron’s work, on the other hand, should be
estimated with regard to the general effect. Few recall particular
lines from the passage on Southey in _The Vision of Judgment_; yet
every one remembers the complete caricature of the laureate. Pope
manipulated a delicate and fine stencil; Byron painted on the canvas
with broad sweeping strokes.
Byron was the last of the great English satirists in verse, and he
has had no imitators who have been able to approach his unique style
and manner. It is a curious fact that his influence after his death
on nineteenth-century English satire has been almost negligible. The
causes of this decline in satire since Byron’s day are not altogether
easy to explain. Perhaps it may be accounted for as accompanying the
general lack of interest in poetry of any sort so common to-day.
Possibly it may be due to the stringency of the laws against libel,
which has resulted in the situation described by Sir George Trevelyan
in his _Ladies in Parliament_:
“But now the press has squeamish grown, and thinks invective rash:
And telling hits no longer lurk ’neath asterisk and dash;
And poets deal in epithets as soft as skeins of silk,
Nor dream of calling silly lords a curd of ass’s milk.”
In the twentieth century great political problems are usually fought
out in the newspapers or in prose pamphlets; the editorials of our
daily journals take the place of satires like _The Age of Bronze_.
Doubtless, too, we have grown somewhat refined in our sensibilities
and fastidious in our speech, so that we shrink from the cut-and-slash
method in poetry. At any rate our English satire since 1830 has
inclined toward raillery and humor, wholly unlike the ardent
vindictiveness of the men under the Georges. The old régime died away
with Byron; and in its stead we have had the polished cleverness of
Praed, the gentle cynicism of Thackeray, the mild sentimentality
of Looker and Dobson. Not until very recently have flashes of the
invective spirit appeared in the work of William Watson and Rudyard
Kipling. The great issues of the twentieth century have stimulated no
powerful English satirist in verse.
BIBLIOGRAPHY