1820-1821.
RAVENNA--DRAMAS--CAIN--VISION OF JUDGMENT.
Byrons's life at Ravenna was during the first months comparatively calm;
nevertheless, he mingled in society, took part in the Carnival, and was
received at the parties of the Legate. "I may stay," he writes in January,
1820, "a day--a week--a year--all my life." Meanwhile, he imported his
movables from Venice, hired a suite of rooms in the Guiccioli palace,
executed his marvellously close translation of Pulci's _Morgante
Maggiore_, wrote his version of the story of _Francesca of Rimini_, and
received visits from his old friend Bankes and from Sir Humphrey Davy. At
this time he was accustomed to ride about armed to the teeth, apprehending
a possible attack from assassins on the part of Count Guiccioli. In April
his letters refer to the insurrectionary movements then beginning against
the Holy Alliance. "We are on the verge of a row here. Last night they
have over-written all the city walls with 'Up with the Republic!' and
'Death to the Pope!' The police have been searching for the subscribers,
but have caught none as yet. The other day they confiscated the whole
translation of the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_, and have prosecuted
the translator." In July a Papal decree of separation between the Countess
and her husband was obtained, on condition of the latter paying from his
large income a pittance to the lady of 200 _l_. a year, and her
undertaking to live in her father's house--an engagement which was, first
in the spirit, and subsequently in the letter, violated. For a time,
however, she retired to a villa about fifteen miles from Ravenna, where
she was visited by Byron at comparatively rare intervals. By the end of
July he had finished _Marino Faliero_, and ere the close of the year the
fifth canto of _Don Juan_. in September he says to Murray, "I am in a
fierce humour, at not having Scott's _Monastery_. No more Keats,[1] I
entreat. There is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the manikin. I
don't feel inclined to care further about _Don Juan_. What do you think a
very pretty Italian lady said to me the other day, when I remarked that
'it would live longer than _Childe Harold_'? 'Ah! but I would rather have
the fame of _Childe Harold_ for three years than an immortality of _D.
J._'" This is to-day the common female judgment; it is known to have been
La Guiccioli's, as well as Mrs. Leigh's, and by their joint persuasion
Byron was for a season induced to lay aside "that horrid, wearisome Don."
About this time he wrote the memorable reply to the remarks on that poem
in _Blackwood's Magazine_', where he enters on a defence of his life,
attacks the Lakers, and champions Pope against the new school of poetry,
lamenting that his own practice did not square with his precept; and
adding, "We are all wrong, except Rogers, Crabbe, and Campbell."
[Footnote 1: In a note on a similar passage, bearing the date November
12, 1821, he, however, confesses:--"My indignation at Mr. Keats'
depreciation of Pope has hardly permitted me to do justice to his own
genius, which malgré all the fantastic fopperies of his style was
undoubtedly of great promise. His fragment of Hyperion seems actually
inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as AEschylus. He is a loss
to our literature."]
In November he refers to reports of his letters being opened by the
Austrian officials, and the unpleasant things the Huns, as he calls them,
are likely to find therein. Early in the next month he tells Moore that
the commandant of their troops, a brave officer, but obnoxious to the
people, had been found lying at his door, with five slugs in him, and,
bleeding inwardly, had died in the palace, where he had been brought to be
nursed.
This incident is versified in _Don Juan_, v. 33-39, with anatomical
minuteness of detail. After trying in vain to wrench an answer out of
death, the poet ends in his accustomed strain--
But it was all a mystery. Here we are,
And there we go:--but _where_? Five bits of lead--
Or three, or two, or one--send very far!
Assassination has sometimes been the prelude to revolution, but it may be
questioned if it has over promoted the cause of liberty. Most frequently
it has served as a pretext for reaction, or a red signal. In this
instance--as afterwards in 1848--overt acts of violence made the powers of
despotism more alert, and conduced with the half-hearted action of their
adversaries to the suppression of the rising of 1820-21. Byron's sympathy
with the movement seems to have been stimulated by his new associations.
Theresa's brother, Count Pietro, an enthusiastic young soldier, having
returned from Rome and Naples, surmounting a prejudice not wholly
unnatural, became attached to him, and they entered into a partnership in
behalf of what--adopting a phrase often flaunted in opposite camps--they
called constitutional principles. Finally the poet so committed himself to
the party of insurrection that, though his nationality secured him from
direct attack, his movements were necessarily affected by the fiasco. In
July the Gambas were banished from the Romagna, Pietro being actually
carried by force over the frontier; and, according to the articles of her
separation, the Countess had to follow them to Florence. Byron lingered
for some mouths, partly from a spirit of defiance, and partly from his
affection towards a place where he had enlisted the regards of numerous
beneficiaries. The Gambas were for some time bent on migrating to
Switzerland; but the poet, after first acquiescing, subsequently conceived
a violent repugnance to the idea, and early in August wrote to Shelley,
earnestly requesting his presence, aid, and counsel. Shelley at once
complied, and, entering into a correspondence with Madame Guiccioli,
succeeded in inducing her relatives to abandon their transmontane plans,
and agree to take up their headquarters at Pisa. This incident gave rise
to a series of interesting letters, in which the younger poet gives a
vivid and generous account of the surroundings and condition of his
friend. On the 2nd of August he writes from Ravenna:--"I arrived last
night at ten o'clock, and sat up talking with Lord B. till five this
morning. He was delighted to see me. He has, in fact, completely recovered
his health, and lives a life totally the reverse of that which he led at
Venice.... Poor fellow! he is now quite well, and immersed in politics and
literature. We talked a great deal of poetry and such matters last night,
and, as usual, differed, I think, more than ever. He affects to patronize
a system of criticism fit only for the production of mediocrity; and,
although all his finer poems and passages have been produced in defiance
of this system, yet I recognize the pernicious effects of it in the _Doge
of Venice_." Again, on the 15th: "Lord B. is greatly improved in every
respect--in genius, in temper, in moral views, in health, and happiness.
His connexion with La Guiccioli has been an inestimable benefit to him. He
lives in considerable splendour, but within his income, which is now about
4000_l_. a year, 1000_l_. of which he devotes to purposes of charity.
Switzerland is little fitted for him; the gossip and the cabals of those
Anglicised coteries would torment him, as they did before. Ravenna is a
miserable place. He would in every respect be better among the Tuscans. He
has read to me one of the unpublished cantos of _Don Juan_. It sets him
not only above, but far above, all the poets of the day. Every word has
the stamp of immortality.... I have spoken to him of Hunt, but not with a
direct view of demanding a contribution. I am sure, if I asked, it would
not be refused; yet there is something in me that makes it impossible.
Lord B. and I are excellent friends; and were I reduced to poverty, or
were I a writer who had no claim to a higher position than I possess, I
would freely ask him any favour. Such is not now the case." Later, after
stating that Byron had decided upon Tuscany, he says, in reference to La
Guiccioli, "At the conclusion of a letter, full of all the fine things she
says she has heard of me, is this request, which I transcribe:--'Signore,
la vostra bontà mi fa ardita di chiedervi un favore, me lo accordarete
voi? _Non partite da Ravenna senza milord_.' Of course, being now by all
the laws of knighthood captive to a lady's request, I shall only be at
liberty on my parole until Lord Byron is settled at Pisa."
Shelley took his leave, after a visit of ten days' duration, about the
17th or 18th of April. In a letter, dated August 26, he mentions having
secured for his lordship the Palazzo Lanfranchi, an old spacious building
on the Lung' Arno, once the family residence of the destroyers of Ugolino,
and still said to be haunted by their ghosts. Towards the close of
October, he says they have been expecting him any day those six weeks.
Byron, however, did not leave till the morning of the 29th. On his road,
there occurred at Imola the accidental meeting with Lord Clare. Clare--who
on this occasion merely crossed his friend's path on his way to Rome--at a
later date came on purpose from Geneva before returning to England to
visit the poet, who, then at Leghorn, recorded in a letter to Moore his
sense of this proof of old affection undecayed. At Bologna--his next
stage--he met Rogers by appointment, and the latter has preserved his
memory of the event in well-known lines. Together they revisited Florence
and its galleries, where they were distracted by the crowds of
sight-seeing visitors. Byron must have reached Pisa not later than the 2nd
of November (1821), for his first letter from there bears the date of the
3rd.
The later months of the poet's life at Ravenna were marked by intense
literary activity. Over a great part of the year was spread the
controversy with Bowles about Pope, i.e. between the extremes of Art
against Nature, and Nature against Art. It was a controversy for the most
part free from personal animus, and on Byron's part the genuine expression
of a reaction against a reaction. To this year belong the greater number
of the poet's Historical Dramas. What was said of these, at the time by
Jeffrey, Heber, and others, was said with justice; it is seldom that the
criticism of our day finds so little to reverse in that of sixty years
ago.
The author, having shown himself capable of being pathetic, sarcastic,
sentimental, comical, and sublime, we would be tempted to think that he
had written these plays to show, what no one before suspected, that he
could also be dull, were it not for his own exorbitant estimation of them.
Lord Byron had few of the powers of a great dramatist; he had little
architectural imagination, or capacity to conceive and build up a whole.
His works are mainly masses of fine, splendid, or humorous writing, heaped
together; the parts are seldom forged into one, or connected by any
indissoluble link. His so-called Dramas are only poems divided into
chapters. Further, he had little of what Mr. Ruskin calls penetrative
imagination. So it has been plausibly said that he made his men after his
own image, his women after his own heart. The former are, indeed, rather
types of what he wished to be than what he was. They are better, and
worse, than himself. They have stronger wills, more definite purposes, but
less genial and less versatile natures. But it remains true, that when he
tried to represent a character totally different from himself, the result
is either unreal or uninteresting. _Marino Faliero_, begun April, finished
July, 1820, and prefixed by a humorous dedication to Goethe--which was,
however, suppressed--was brought on the stage of Drury Lane Theatre early
in 1821, badly mangled, appointed, and acted--and damned.
Byron seems to have been sincere in saying he did not intend any of his
plays to be represented. We are more inclined to accuse him of
self-deception when he asserts that he did not mean them to be popular;
but he took sure means to prevent them from being so. _Marino Faliero_, in
particular, was pronounced by Dr. John Watkins--old Grobius himself--"to
be the dullest of dull plays;" and even the warmest admirers of the poet
had to confess that the style was cumbrous. The story may be true, but it
is none the less unnatural. The characters are comparatively commonplace,
the women especially being mere shadows; the motion is slow; and the
inevitable passages of fine writing are, as the extolled soliloquy of
Lioni, rather rhetorical than imaginative. The speeches of the Doge are
solemn, but prolix, if not ostentatious, and--perhaps the vital
defect--his cause fails to enlist our sympathies. Artistically, this play
was Byron's most elaborate attempt to revive the unities and other
restrictions of the severe style, which, when he wrote, had been
"vanquished in literature." "I am persuaded," he writes in the preface,
"that a great tragedy is not to be produced by following the old
dramatists, who are full of faults, but by producing regular dramas like
the Greeks." He forgets that the statement in the mouth of a Greek
dramatist that his play was not intended for the stage, would have been a
confession of failure; and that Aristotle had admitted that even the Deity
could not make the Past present. The ethical motives of Faliero are,
first, the cry for vengeance--the feeling of affronted or unsatiated
pride,--that runs through so much of the author's writing, and second, the
enthusiasm for public ends, which was beginning to possess him. The
following lines have been pointed out as embodying some of Byron's spirit
of protest against the more selfish "greasy domesticity" of the Georgian
era:--
I. BER. Such ties are not
For those who are called to the high destinies
Which purify corrupted commonwealths:
We must forget all feelings save the one,
We must resign all passions save our purpose,
We must behold no object save our country,
And only look on death as beautiful
So that the sacrifice ascend to heaven,
And draw down freedom on her evermore.
CAL. But if we fail--?
I. BER. They never fail who die
In a great cause: the block may soak their gore;
Their heads may sodden in the sun; their limbs
Be strung to city gates and castle walls,
But still their spirit walks abroad.
--a passage which, after his wont, he spoils by platitudes about the
precisian Brutus, who certainly did not give Rome liberty.
Byron's other Venetian Drama, the _Two Foscari_, composed at Ravenna,
between the 11th of June and the 10th of July, 1821, and published in the
following December, is another record of the same failure and the same
mortification, due to the same causes. In this play, as Jeffrey points
out, the preservation of the unities had a still more disastrous effect.
The author's determination to avoid rant did not hinder his frequently
adopting an inflated style; while professing to follow the ancient rules,
he forgets the warning of Horace so far as to permit the groans of the
tortured Foscari to be heard on the stage. The declamations of Marina
produce no effect on the action, and the vindictiveness of Loridano,
though effectively pointed in the closing words, "He has paid me," is not
rendered interesting, either by a well established injury, or by any trace
of Iago's subtle genius.
In the same volume appeared _Sardanapalus_, written in the previous May,
and dedicated to Goethe. In this play, which marks the author's last
reversion to the East, we are more arrested by the majesty of the theme--
Thirteen hundred years
Of empire ending like a shepherd's tale,
by the grandeur of some of the passages, and by the development of the
chief character, made more vivid by its being distinctly autobiographical.
Sardanapalus himself is Harold, raised "high on a throne," and rousing
himself at the close from a life of effeminate lethargy. Myrrha has been
often identified with La Guiccioli, and the hero's relation to his Queen
Zarina compared with that of the poet to his wife; but in his portrait of
the former the author's defective capacity to represent national character
is manifest: Myrrha is only another Gulnare, Medora, or Zuleika. In the
domestic play of _Werner_--completed at Pisa in January, 1822, and
published in November, there is no merit either of plan or execution; for
the plot is taken, with little change, from "The German's Tale," written
by Harriet Lee, and the treatment is throughout prosaic. Byron was never a
master of blank verse; but _Werner_, his solo success on the modern
British stage, is written in a style fairly parodied by Campbell, when he
cut part of the author's preface into lines, and pronounced them as good
as any in the play.
The _Deformed Transformed_, another adaptation, suggested by a forgotten
novel called _The Three Brothers_, with reminiscences of _Faust_, and
possibly of Scott's _Black Dwarf_, was begun at Pisa in 1821, but not
published till January, 1824. This fragment owes its interest to the
bitter infusion of personal feeling in the first scene, and its occasional
charm to the march of some of the lines, especially those describing the
Bourbon's advance on Rome; but the effect of the magical element is killed
by previous parallels, while the story is chaotic and absurd. The
_Deformed Transformed_ bears somewhat the same relation to _Manfred as
Heaven and Earth_--an occasionally graphic dream of the world before the
Deluge, written October, 1821, and issued about the same time as Moore's
_Loves of the Angels_, on a similar theme--does to _Cain_. The last named,
begun in July, and finished at Ravenna in September, is the author's
highest contribution to the metaphysical poetry of the century. In _Cain_
Byron grapples with the perplexities of a belief which he never either
accepted or rejected, and with the yet deeper problems of life and death,
of good and ill. In dealing with these his position is not that of one
justifying the ways of God to man--though he somewhat disingenuously
appeals to Milton in his defence--nor that of the definite antagonism of
_Queen Mab_. The distinction in this respect between Byron and Shelley
cannot be over-emphasized. The latter had a firm faith other than that
commonly called Christian. The former was, in the proper sense of the
word, a sceptic, beset with doubts, and seeking for a solution which he
never found, shifting in his expression of them with every change of a
fickle and inconsistent temperament. The atmosphere of _Cain_ is almost
wholly negative; for under the guise of a drama, which is mainly a
dialogue between two halves of his mind, the author appears to sweep aside
with something approaching to disdain the answers of a blindly accepted
tradition, or of a superficial optimism, e.g.--
CAIN. Then my father's God did well
When he prohibited the fatal tree.
LUCIFER. But had done better in not planting it.
Again, a kid, after suffering agonies from the sting of a reptile, is
restored by antidotes--
Behold, my son! said Adam, how from evil
Springs good!
LUCIFER. What didst thou answer?
CAIN. Nothing; for
He is my father; but I thought, that 'twere
A better portion for the animal
Never to have been stung at all.
This rebellious nature naturally yields to the arguments of Lucifer, a
spirit in which much of the grandeur of Milton's Satan is added to the
subtlety of Mephistopheles. In the first scene Cain is introduced,
rebelling against toils imposed on him by an offence committed before he
was born,--"I sought not to be born"--the answer, that toil is a good,
being precluded by its authoritative representation as a punishment; in
which mood he is confirmed by the entrance and reasonings of the Tempter,
who identifies the Deity with Seva the Destroyer, hints at the dreadful
visitation of the yet untasted death; when Adah, entering, takes him at
first for an angel, and then recognizes him as a fiend. Her invocation to
Eve, and comparison of the "heedless, harmless, wantonness of bliss" in
Eden, to the later lot of those girt about with demons from whose
fascination they cannot fly, is one of the most striking in the drama; as
is the line put into the mouth of the poet's most beautiful female
character, to show that God cannot be alone,--
What else can joy be, but diffusing joy?
Her subsequent contrast of Lucifer with the other angels is more after the
style of Shelley than anything else in Byron--
As the silent sunny moon,
All light, they look upon us. But thou seemst
Like an ethereal night, where long white clouds
Streak the deep purple, and unnumber'd stars
Spangle the wonderful mysterious vault
With things that look as if they would be suns--
So beautiful, unnumber'd and endearing;
Not dazzling, and yet drawing us to them,
They fill my eyes with tears, and so dost thou.
The flight with Lucifer, in the second act, in the abyss of space and
through the Hades of "uncreated night," with the vision of long-wrecked
worlds, and the interminable gloomy realms
Of swimming shadows and enormous shapes,
--suggested, as the author tells us, by the reading of Cuvier--leaves us
with impressions of grandeur and desolation which no other passages of
English poetry can convey. Lord Byron has elsewhere exhibited more
versatility of fancy and richness of illustration, but nowhere else has he
so nearly "struck the stars." From constellation to constellation the pair
speed on, cleaving the blue with mighty wings, but finding in all a blank,
like that in Richter's wonderful dream. The result on the mind of Cain is
summed in the lines on the fatal tree,--
It was a lying tree--for we _know_ nothing;
At least, it _promised knowledge_ at the price
Of death--but _knowledge_ still; but, what _knows_ man?
A more modern poet answers, after beating at the same iron gates, "Behold,
we know not anything." The most beautiful remaining passage is Cain's
reply to the question--what is more beautiful to him than all that he has
seen in the "unimaginable ether"?--
My sister Adah.--All the stars of heaven,
The deep blue noon of night, lit by an orb
Which looks a spirit, or a spirit's world--
The hues of twilight--the sun's gorgeous coming--
His setting indescribable, which fills
My eyes with pleasant tears as I behold
Him sink, and feel my heart flow softly with him
Along that western paradise of clouds
The forest shade--the green bough--the bird's voice--
The vesper bird's, which seems to sing of love,
And mingles with the song of cherubim,
As the day closes over Eden's walls:--
All these are nothing, to my eyes and heart,
Like Adah's face.
Lucifer's speech, at the close of the act is perhaps too Miltonic to be
absolutely original. Returning to earth, we have a pastoral, of which Sir
Egerton Brydges justly and sufficiently remarks, "The censorious may say
what they will, but there are speeches in the mouth of Cain and Adah,
especially regarding their child, which nothing in English poetry but the
'wood-notes wild' of Shakespeare, ever equalled." Her cry, as Cain seems
to threaten the infant, followed by the picture of his bloom and joy, is a
touch of perfect pathos. Then comes the interview with the pious Abel, who
is amazed at the lurid light in the eyes of his brother, with the spheres
"singing in thunder round" him--the two sacrifices, the murder, the shriek
of Zillah--
Father! Eve!
Adah! Come hither! Death is in the world;
Cain's rallying from stupor--
I am awake at last--a dreary dream
Had madden'd me,--but he shall never wake:
the curse of Eve; and the close--[Greek: meizon ae kata dakrua]
CAIN. Leave me.
ADAH. Why all have left thee.
CAIN. And wherefore lingerest thou? Dost thou not fear?
ADAH. I fear
Nothing, except to leave thee.
* * * * *
CAIN. Eastward from Eden will we take our way.
ADAH. Leave! thou shalt be my guide; and may our God
Be thine! Now let us carry forth our children.
CAIN. And _he_ who lieth there was childless. I
Have dried the fountain of a gentle race.
O Abel!
ADAH. Peace be with him.
CAIN. But with _me_!
_Cain_, between which and the _Cenci_ lies the award of the greatest
single performance in dramatic shape of our century, raised a storm. It
was published, with _Sardanapalus_ and _The Two Foscari_ in December,
1821, and the critics soon gave evidence of the truth of Elze's remark--
"In England freedom of action is cramped by the want of freedom of
thought. The converse is the case with us Germans; freedom of thought is
restricted by the want of freedom in action. To us this scepticism
presents nothing in the least fearful." But with us it appeared as if a
literary Guy Fawkes had been detected in the act of blowing up half the
cathedrals and all the chapels of the country. The rage of insular
orthodoxy was in proportion to its impotence. Every scribbler with a
cassock denounced the book and its author, though few attempted to answer
him. The hubbub was such that Byron wrote to Murray, authorizing him to
disclaim all responsibility, and offering to refund the payment he had
received. "Say that both you and Mr. Gilford remonstrated. I will come to
England to stand trial. 'Me, me, adsum qui feci,'"--and much to the same
effect. The book was pirated; and on the publisher's application to have
an injunction, Lord Eldon refused to grant it. The majority of the minor
reviewers became hysterical, and Dr. Watkins, amid much almost
inarticulate raving, said that Sir Walter Scott, who had gratefully
accepted the dedication, would go down to posterity with the brand of
_Cain_ upon his brow. Several even of the higher critics took fright.
Jeffrey, while protesting his appreciation of the literary merits of the
work, lamented its tendency to unsettle faith. Mr. Campbell talked of its
"frightful audacity." Bishop Heber wrote at great length to prove that its
spirit was more dangerous than that of _Paradise Lost_--and succeeded. The
_Quarterly_ began to cool towards the author. Moore wrote to him, that
Cain was "wonderful, terrible, never to be forgotten," but "dreaded and
deprecated" the influence of Shelley. Byron showed the letter to Shelley,
who wrote to a common friend to assure Mr. Moore that he had not the
smallest influence over his lordship in matters of religion, and only
wished he had, as he would "employ it to eradicate from his great mind the
delusions of Christianity, which seem perpetually to recur, and to lie in
ambush for the hours of sickness and distress." Shelley elsewhere writes:
"What think you of Lord B.'s last volume? In my opinion it contains finer
poetry than has appeared in England since _Paradise Lost_. Cain is
apocalyptic; it is a revelation not before communicated to man." In the
same strain, Scott says of the author of the "grand and tremendous drama:"
"He has certainly matched Milton on his own ground." The worst effect of
those attacks appears in the shifts to which Byron resorted to explain
himself,--to be imputed, however, not to cowardice, but to his wavering
habit of mind. Great writers in our country have frequently stirred
difficult questions in religion and life, and then seemed to be half
scared, like Rouget de Lisle, by the reverberation of their own voices.
Shelley almost alone was always ready to declare, "I meant what I said,
and stand to it."
Byron having, with or without design, arraigned some of the Thirty-Nine
Articles of his countrymen, proceeded in the following month (October
1821) to commit an outrage, yet more keenly resented, on the memory of
their sainted king, the pattern of private virtue and public vice, George
III. The perpetration of this occurred in the course of the last of his
numerous literary duels, of which it was the close. That Mr. Southey was a
well-meaning and independent man of letters, there can be no doubt. It
does not require the conclusive testimony of the esteem of Savage Landor
to compel our respect for the author of the _Life of Nelson_, and the
open-handed friend of Coleridge; nor is it any disparagement that, with
the last-named and with Wordsworth, he in middle life changed his
political and other opinions. But in his dealings with Lord Byron, Southey
had "eaten of the insane root." He attacked a man of incomparably superior
powers, for whom his utter want of humour--save in its comparatively
childish forms--made him a ludicrously unequal match, and paid the penalty
in being gibbeted in satires that will endure with the language. The
strife, which seems to have begun on Byron's leaving England, rose to its
height when his lordship, in the humorous observations and serious defence
of his character against "the Remarks" in Blackwood, 1819 (August),
accused the Laureate of apostasy, treason, and slander.
In 1821, when the latter published his _Vision of Judgment_--the most
quaintly preposterous panegyric ever penned--he prefixed to it a long
explanatory note, in the course of which he characterizes _Don Juan_ as a
"monstrous combination of horror and mockery, lewdness and impiety,"
regrets that it has not been brought under the lash of the law, salutes
the writer as chief of the Satanic school, inspired by the spirits of
Moloch and Belial, and refers to the remorse that will overtake him on his
death-bed. To which Byron, _inter alia_: "Mr. Southey, with a cowardly
ferocity, exults over the anticipated death-bed repentance of the objects
of his dislike, and indulges himself in a pleasant 'Vision of Judgment,'
in prose, as well as verse, full of impious impudence. What Mr. Southey's
sensations or ours may be in the awful moment of leaving this state of
existence, neither he nor we can pretend to decide. In common, I presume,
with most men of any reflection, _I_ have not waited for a death-bed to
repent of many of my actions, notwithstanding the 'diabolical pride' which
this pitiful renegade in his rancour would impute to those who scorn him."
This dignified, though trenchant, rejoinder would have been unanswerable;
but the writer goes on to charge the Laureate with spreading calumnies. To
this charge Southey, in January, 1822, replies with "a direct and positive
denial," and then proceeds to talk at large of the "whip and branding
iron," "slaves of sensuality," "stones from slings," "Goliahs," "public
panders," and what not, in the manner of the brave days of old.
In February Byron, having seen this assault in the _Courier_, writes off
in needless heat, "I have got Southey's pretended reply; what remains to
be done is to call him out,"--and despatches a cartel of mortal defiance.
Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, through whom this was sent, judiciously suppressed
it, and the author's thirst for literary blood was destined to remain
unquenched. Meanwhile he had written his own _Vision of Judgment_. This
extraordinary work, having been refused by both Murray and Longman,
appeared in 1822 in the pages of the _Liberal_. It passed the bounds of
British endurance; and the publisher, Mr. John Hunt, was prosecuted and
fined for the publication.
Readers of our day will generally admit that the "gouty hexameters" of the
original poem, which celebrates the apotheosis of King George in heaven,
are much more blasphemous than the _ottava rima_ of the travesty, which
professes to narrate the difficulties of his getting there. Byron's
_Vision of Judgment_ is as unmistakably the first of parodies as the
_Iliad_ is the first of epics, or the _Pilgrim's Progress_ the first of
allegories. In execution it is almost perfect. _Don Juan_ is in scope and
magnitude a far wider work; but no considerable series of stanzas in _Don
Juan_ are so free from serious artistic flaw. From first to last, every
epithet hits the white; every line that does not convulse with laughter
stings or lashes. It rises to greatness by the fact that, underneath all
its lambent buffoonery, it is aflame with righteous wrath. Nowhere in such
space, save in some of the prose of Swift, is there in English so much
scathing satire.