Chapter XIV: Conclusion

Mr. Augustine Birrell, in an illuminating essay on the writings of Pope, brings forward, with reference to satire, a standard of judgment which merits a wider application. “Dr. Johnson,” says Mr. Birrell, “is more to my mind as a sheer satirist than Pope, for in satire character tells more than in any other form of verse. We want a personality behind--a strong, gloomy, brooding personality; soured and savage if you will--nay, as sour and savage as you like, but spiteful never.” Without subscribing unreservedly to Mr. Birrell’s preference of Johnson over Pope, we may still point out that the most conspicuous feature of Byron’s satire, as, indeed, of most of his other poetry, is the underlying personality of the author, too powerful and aggressive to be obscured or hidden. There have been satirists who, in assuming to express public opinion, have succeeded in partly or entirely effacing themselves, and who have thus acted in the rôle of judicial censors, self-appointed to the task of voicing the sentiments of a party. In the poetry of the _Anti-Jacobin_, it is by no means easy to detect where the work of one Tory satirist leaves off and that of another begins. So in Dryden’s work we are seldom confronted directly by the emotions or partialities of the writer himself; _Absalom and Achitophel_ gives the impression of a cool impersonal commentary on certain episodes of history, prejudiced perhaps, but carried on with real or feigned calmness. Byron’s satire is of a different sort; we can read scarcely a page without recognizing the potency of the personality that produced it. Just as in _Childe Harold_ the hero usually represents Byron himself in some of the phases of his complex individuality; just as the Lara and the Corsair of his verse romances and the Cain and Manfred of his dramas are reflections of the misanthropical, theatrical and skeptical poet; so, in the satires, no matter what method he uses, it is always Byron who criticises and assails.

Most of the characteristics which make up this personality accountable for Byron’s satiric spirit have been brought out and discussed in previous chapters. The most important of all, probably, is the haste and impetuosity with which he was accustomed to act. In this respect he may be again contrasted with Dryden, who proceeded to satirize an enemy after due preparation, without apparent agitation or excitement, much as a surgeon performs a necessary operation. Even Pope, sensitive and irritable though he was, did not usually strike when his temper was beyond his control. Byron, on the other hand, was, in most cases, feverish and impulsive; what he thought to be provocation was followed at once by a blow. He did not adopt a position of unmoved superiority, but, both too proud and too impatient to delay, sought instinctively to settle a dispute on the spot. Except in some instances notable because of their rarity, Byron seems to have had no understanding of the method of toying with a prospective victim; he planned to close with his opponent, to meet him in a grapple, and to overwhelm him by sheer energy and intrepidity.

This want of restraint had, of course, some favorable results on his satire; the work was indisputably vigorous, effective because of the ungoverned passion which sustained it. At the same time this hasty action was detrimental to Byron’s art, and accounts, in part, for the frequent lack of subtlety in his satire. We may be roused temporarily by the fury of the lines; but when, in less enthusiastic moods, we examine the details, we miss the technique and the transforming craftsmanship of the supreme artist. Only in _The Vision of Judgment_ did he devote himself to devising means for gaining his end in the most dexterous fashion; and the consequence is that poem is the finest of his satires. In the earlier satires we have Byron, the man, talking out spontaneously, angrily, unguardedly, without second thought or reconsideration, like Churchill, a mighty wielder of the bludgeon but a poor master with the rapier.

Byron’s satiric spirit was always combative rather than argumentative or controversial. He preferred to assail men rather than principles. When he disliked an institution or a party, his invariable custom was to select some one as its representative and to proceed to call him to account. It is this desire to war with persons and not with theories that explains his attacks on Castlereagh, whom he never knew, but whom he singled out as the embodiment of England’s repressive policy. By nature Byron was much more ready to quarrel with the Foreign Minister as an individual than he was to discuss the prudence and expediency of that statesman’s measures.

The characteristics so far mentioned could belong only to a daring and fearless man. Byron never hesitated to avow his ideas, nor did he ever retract his invective except in cases in which he had been convinced that he was unjust. He published the _Lines to a Lady Weeping_ under his own name at a time when no one suspected his authorship. For years he satirized European sovereigns without showing the slightest sign of trepidation. He espoused unpopular causes, and often, of his own choice, ran close to danger, when mere silence would have assured him security.

But despite the fact that Byron’s hatreds were seldom disguised and that he was, on the whole, open and manly in his satire, there is another side to his nature which cannot be left unnoticed. He was, unfortunately, implicated in certain incidents which leave him under the suspicion of a kind of treachery towards his friends. His lampoon on Samuel Rogers, beginning,

“Nose and chin would shame a knocker;
Wrinkles that would puzzle Cocker;”

and ending,

“For his merits, would you know ’em?
Once he wrote a pretty Poem,”

unpublished during his lifetime, was nevertheless a malicious squib directed at a man who had been one of his closest companions. There can be no doubt, too, that Byron’s satiric ballad on Hobhouse, “My boy Hobbie, O,” sent secretly to England, was a true stab in the back, administered to the man who had been his loyal friend. Byron, moreover, was not always accurate in his charges. Like most satirists, he exaggerated to gain his point, and made claims which the evidence did not justify. Nor is it in his favor that he chose to attack his wife in public lampoons, and wrote scurrilous epigrams upon dead statesmen.

This lack of delicacy aside, however, it must be recognized that Byron’s satire was often exerted in condemning real evils, and that he performed a definite service to humanity. More than any other man of his time he insisted on liberty of speech and action in a period when reactionary politicians were in the ascendant. He combated the perennial forms of hypocrisy and cant which appear constantly in England. Neither Dryden nor Pope had been the consistent champion of great causes; but Byron so often employed his satire for beneficial purposes that, despite the vituperation with which it was greeted by conservatives, it became a powerful influence for good.

It may be said, in general, of the substance of Byron’s satires, that he devoted very little attention to the faults and foibles of mankind, taken as a whole. He was usually moved to satire by some contemporary person, event, or controversy, and his criticism was definite, levelled at some specific abuse or evil. In his youth he showed a disposition to take a lofty moral stand, and to preach against vice; but he was ill-suited to didacticism, and soon forsook it altogether. After 1812, his satire had a very intimate connection with the life around him in politics, society, and literature, and reflected the manners and moods of the age. It is to be noted, too, that Byron was, in theory at least, in opposition to the spirit of his time. His belief in liberal doctrines led him to resist much that seemed safe and solid to those in his own class of life. He was not, in his later days, in sympathy with the situation in Europe; and he died too soon to see his progressive ideas bear fruit in the revolutions of 1830 and the Reform Bill of 1832.

In literature Byron satirized, throughout his career, the representatives of the older romantic school: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey. He did this mainly on the ground that their principles of poetry were subversive of the rules handed down by his avowed masters, Pope and Gifford. In thus defending the name and doctrines of Pope, Byron was consistent during his literary lifetime, although he himself wandered from the path which he persistently asserted to be the only right one. In inveighing against Southey, he was, of course, animated largely by personal spite. For minor poetasters, scribblers who might have been made the puppets of a modern _Dunciad_, Byron had little but silent contempt. In literary satire, then, he presents the strange spectacle of a radical striving desperately to support a losing cause, and that cause a conservative one. Progressive in nearly every other respect, Byron persisted in opposing any attempt to deviate from the standard established by Pope.

Byron’s satire on society was partly the result of pique. He who had been for some time its idol, found himself expelled from English society, and, in retaliation, exposed its absurdities and follies. At the same time it is unquestionable that he furthered a reform in ridiculing the cant and sham of English high life. It was in his last saner days that he wrote the cantos of _Don Juan_ which treat of the all-pervasive hypocrisy of fashionable circles, and the satire, even to-day, rings true. It is noticeable that he seldom satirizes fads or fashions, and that he rarely, after 1812, attacks private immorality. His zeal is devoted to unveiling pretence, and to describing this outwardly brilliant gathering as it really is.

Since Byron was a radical and a rebel, his satire was devoted, so far as it concerned itself with political questions, to the glorification of liberty in all its forms, and to the vigorous denunciation of everybody and everything that tended to block or discourage progressive movements. In defence of freedom and in resistance to oppression, his satire found its fullest mission and its amplest justification. When continental Europe of the middle nineteenth century thought of Byron, it pictured him as a nobleman who had assailed tyrannical monarchy, who had aided Italy and Greece in their struggles for independence, and who had been willing to fight for the sake of the principles in which he believed. The words of Byron’s political creed have a noble ring: “The king-times are fast finishing. There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist; but the peoples will conquer in the end. I shall not live to see it, but I foresee it.”

The broader philosophical satire on humanity in which he was more and more inclined to indulge as he reached maturity is essentially shallow and cynical. As soon as Byron became indefinite, as soon as he undertook to preach, he grew unsatisfactory, for he had no lesson to teach beyond the pessimism of _Ecclesiastes_.

All these objects for satire afforded Byron an opportunity for expressing some much-needed criticism. The most unworthy sections of his satire are those devoted to mere revenge: the unchivalric lines on Lady Byron and Mrs. Clermont; the violent abuse of Southey and Jeffrey; and the treacherous thrusts at Rogers and Hobhouse. In these passages the satirist descends to the lower level of Churchill and Gifford.

It remains to say a word of Byron’s methods, a word merely of recapitulation. Preferring directness always, he was inclined by nature to go straight to his goal, to speak his mind out without pausing to devise subtle or devious plans of attack. Except in his Italian satires his procedure was simple enough: he hurled epithets, made scandalous and scurrilous charges, and thought out offensive comments, writing usually in the first person and meeting his enemies face to face in the good old way of his eighteenth century predecessors. It is, perhaps, unsafe, with _Don Juan_ and _The Vision of Judgment_ before us, to assert that he was incapable of finesse and cunning; but, for the most part, even in these poems, he was more fond of abuse than he was of innuendo and crafty insinuation. His impetuosity and irrepressible impulsiveness, to which we have had occasion so often to refer, did not allow him to dwell scrupulously on artistic effects.

He had, however, two distinct satiric moods: the one, savage, stern, and merciless; the other, mocking, scornful, and humorous. The one resulted in invective, the other, in ridicule and burlesque. One came to him from Juvenal, Pope, and Gifford; the other he learned from Moore, Frere, and the Italians. Thanks to his versatility, he was successful in using both; but his real genius was shown more in the contemptuous mirth of _The Vision of Judgment_ than in the fury of _English Bards_.

Unlike Pope, Byron was no adept at framing pointed phrases. The beauty of Pope’s satire lies in the single lines, in the details and the finish of an epithet. Byron’s work, on the other hand, should be estimated with regard to the general effect. Few recall particular lines from the passage on Southey in _The Vision of Judgment_; yet every one remembers the complete caricature of the laureate. Pope manipulated a delicate and fine stencil; Byron painted on the canvas with broad sweeping strokes.

Byron was the last of the great English satirists in verse, and he has had no imitators who have been able to approach his unique style and manner. It is a curious fact that his influence after his death on nineteenth-century English satire has been almost negligible. The causes of this decline in satire since Byron’s day are not altogether easy to explain. Perhaps it may be accounted for as accompanying the general lack of interest in poetry of any sort so common to-day. Possibly it may be due to the stringency of the laws against libel, which has resulted in the situation described by Sir George Trevelyan in his _Ladies in Parliament_:

“But now the press has squeamish grown, and thinks invective rash:
And telling hits no longer lurk ’neath asterisk and dash;
And poets deal in epithets as soft as skeins of silk,
Nor dream of calling silly lords a curd of ass’s milk.”

In the twentieth century great political problems are usually fought out in the newspapers or in prose pamphlets; the editorials of our daily journals take the place of satires like _The Age of Bronze_. Doubtless, too, we have grown somewhat refined in our sensibilities and fastidious in our speech, so that we shrink from the cut-and-slash method in poetry. At any rate our English satire since 1830 has inclined toward raillery and humor, wholly unlike the ardent vindictiveness of the men under the Georges. The old régime died away with Byron; and in its stead we have had the polished cleverness of Praed, the gentle cynicism of Thackeray, the mild sentimentality of Looker and Dobson. Not until very recently have flashes of the invective spirit appeared in the work of William Watson and Rudyard Kipling. The great issues of the twentieth century have stimulated no powerful English satirist in verse.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The standard edition of Byron’s _Poetical Works_ is that by Ernest Hartley Coleridge in seven volumes (London, 1904), which contains an exhaustive bibliography of the successive editions and translations of different poems. The most complete collection of the _Letters and Journals_ is that by Rowland E. Prothero in six volumes (London, 1902). Any study of Byron must be largely based on these comprehensive and scholarly works. A fairly detailed list of critical articles on Byron was compiled by Roden Noel in his _Life of Lord Byron_; this, however, needs to be supplemented and revised in the light of recent investigation.

The following list includes only the more important sources of information for this treatise.

ACKERMANN, R. _Lord Byron_, Heidelberg, 1901.

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1890.

ARMSTRONG, J. L. _Life of Lord Byron_, London, 1858.

ARNOLD, MATTHEW. _Byron_ (In his _Essays in
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London, 1903).

AUSTIN, ALFRED. _A Vindication of Lord Byron_,
London, 1869.

_Byron and Wordsworth_ (In his
_Bridling of Pegasus_, London,
1910.)

BELL, JOHN. _Fugitive Poetry_, London, 1790. 18
vols. in 9.

BEYLE, HENRI. _Lord Byron en Italie_ (In his
_Racine_, Paris, 1854).

BLEIBTREU, K. _Byron der Uebermensch, Sein Leben
und sein Dichten_, Jena, 1897.

BLESSINGTON, LADY. _Conversations with Lord Byron_,
London, 1834.

BRANDES, G. _Main Currents in 19th Century
Literature_, London, 1905.

BRYDGES, SIR SAMUEL E. _Letters on the Character and
Poetical Genius of Lord Byron_,
London, 1824.

_An Impartial Portrait of Lord Byron,
as a Poet and a Man_, Paris, 1825.

BURATTI, P. _Poesie_, Venezia, 1864. 2 vols.

CASTELAR, E. _Life of Lord Byron, and Other
Sketches_, London, 1875.

CASTI, G. B. _Gli Animali Parlanti_, Londra, 1803.
2 Tome.

_Novelle_, Parigi, 1804. 3 volumi.

_Il Poema Tartaro_, Milano, 1871.

CHASLES, V. E. P. _Vie et influence de Byron sur son
époque_ (In his _Études sur
l’Angleterre au XIX siècle_,
1850.)

CHESTERTON, G. K. _The Optimism of Byron_ (In his
_Twelve Types_, London, 1903.)

CHURCHILL, C. _Poetical Works_, Boston, 1854. (Ed.
by Tooke.)

CLINTON, G. _Memoirs of the Life and Writings of
Lord Byron_, London, 1825.

COLLINS, J. C. _Studies in Poetry and Criticism_,
London, 1905.

COURTHOPE, W. J. _The Liberal Movement in English
Literature_, London, 1885.

_A History of English Poetry_,
London, 1895–1910. 6 vols.

DALLAS, R. C. _Recollections of the Life of Lord
Byron, 1808–1814_, London, 1824.

EDGCUMBE, R. _Byron, the Last Phase_, New York,
1909.

EICHLER, A. _John Hookham Frere; Sein Leben und
seine Werke; Sein Einfluss auf
Lord Byron_, Wien und Leipsig,
1905.

ELZE, KARL. _Lord Byron: A Biography_, London,
1872.

ESTEVE. _Byron et le Romantisme français_,
Paris, 1907.

FRERE, J. H. _Works_, London, 1872. 2 vols.

FUHRMAN. _Die Belesenheit des jungen Byron._

GALT, JOHN. _The Life of Lord Byron_, London,
1830.

GAMBA, P. _A Narrative of Lord Byron’s Last
Journey to Greece_, London, 1825.

GIFFORD, W. The _Baviad_ and the _Mæviad_,
London, 1797.

GILFILLAN, G. _A Second Gallery of Literary
Portraits_, London, 1850.

GUICCIOLI, COUNTESS. _Lord Byron jugé par les temoins de
sa vie_, Paris, 1868.

HANCOCK, A. E. _The French Revolution and the
English Poets_, New York, 1899.

HANNAY, J. _Satire and Satirists_, London, 1854.

HAZLITT, W. _The Spirit of the Age_, London, 1825.

HUNT, L. _Lord Byron, and Some of his
Contemporaries_, London, 1828. 2
vols.

JACK, A. A. _Poetry and Prose_, London, 1912.

JEAFFRESON, J. C. _The Real Lord Byron_, Leipsig, 1883.
3 vols.

KENNEDY, JAMES. _Conversations on Religion, with Lord
Byron and Others_, London, 1830.

KOEPPEL, E. _Lord Byron_, Berlin, 1903.

MEDWIN, T. _Journal of the Conversations of Lord
Byron_, London, 1824.

MOORE, THOMAS. _Letters and Journals of Lord Byron,
with Notices of his Life_,
London, 1830.

_Memoirs, Journal, and
Correspondence_, London, 1856. 8
vols.

MORE, P. E. _The Wholesome Revival of Byron._
(In the _Atlantic_. Vol. 82,
December, 1898.)

NICHOL, J. _Byron_, London, 1908. (Eng. Men of
Letters Series.)

PARRY, W. _The Last Days of Lord Byron_,
London, 1825.

POPE, A. _Poetical Works_, London, 1895. 10
vols.

PREVITE-ORTON, C. W. _Political Satire in English Poetry_,
Cambridge, 1910.

PULCI, L. _Morgante Maggiore_, Venezia, 1784.

PYRE, J. F. A. _Byron in our Day._ (In the
_Atlantic_, Vol. 99, April, 1907.)

ROEVER. _Lord Byrons Gedanken ueber Alexander
Pope’s Dichtkunst_, Hanover, 1886.

STEPHEN, L. _Byron_ (In _Dict. of Nat. Biog._,
Vol. viii., pp. 132–155).

SWINBURNE, A. C. _Essays and Studies_, London, 1875.

_Miscellanies_, London, 1886.

TRELAWNEY, E. J. _Recollections of the Last Days of
Shelley and Byron_, London, 1858.

_Records of Shelley, Byron, and the
Author_, London, 1878.

TRENT, W. P. _The Byron Revival._ (In the _Forum_,
Vol. 26, October, 1898.)

TUCKER, S. M. _Verse Satire in England before the
Renaissance_, New York, 1906.

WEDDIGEN, O. _Lord Byrons Einfluss auf die
europaischen Litteraturen der
Neuzeit_, Hannover, 1884.

FOOTNOTES

[1] That satire is primarily destructive criticism was asserted by Heinsius in a familiar passage quoted approvingly by Dryden in his _Essay on Satire_:--“Satire is a kind of poetry--in which human vices, ignorance, and errors, and all things besides, which are produced from them in every man, are severely reprehended.” The same theory is expressed by De Gubernatis in his _Storia della Satira_:--“La satira è, sovra ogni cosa, una negazione.”

[2] See _Poetry_, VII, 1.

[3] In the Preface to _Absalom and Achitophel_, Dryden is inclined to take pride in his fairness:--“I have but laughed at some men’s follies, when I could have declaimed against their vices; and other men’s virtues I have commended, as freely as I have taxed their crimes.”

[4] _Epilogue to the Satires_, Dialogue II., 212–217.

[5] See Chesterton’s _Pope and the Art of Satire_.

[6] Both methods are illustrated in a line of the _Dunciad_:--

“My H--ley’s periods, or my Blackmore’s numbers.”

[7] In the Dramatis Personæ of _Absalom and Achitophel_ only two women appear, and they are spoken of in the poem in a complimentary way.

[8] Byron particularly emphasizes the correctness and moral tone of Pope: he is “the most perfect of our poets and the purest of our moralists” (_Letters_, v., 559); “his moral is as pure as his poetry is glorious” (_Letters_, v., 555); “he is the only poet that never shocks” (_Letters_, v., 560).

[9] Gay’s _Alexander Pope, his safe Return from Troy_ (1720) is interesting as being one of the rare examples of the use of the English octave stanza between _Lycidas_ and _Beppo_.

[10] _Letters_, v., 252.

[11] In speaking of the art of rhyming to Trelawney, Byron said:--“If you are curious in these matters, look in Swift. I will send you a volume; he beats us all hollow, his rhymes are wonderful.”

[12] Cf. Swift’s _The Puppet Show_ with Byron’s _Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog_.

[13] For a contemporary characterization of the unscrupulous satirists of the period see Cowper’s _Charity_, 501–532, in the passage beginning,

“Most satirists are indeed a public scourge.”

[14] Examples are _The Thimble_ (1743) by William Hawkins (1722–1801) and the _Scribleriad_ (1752) by Richard Owen Cambridge (1717–1802).

[15] _State Dunces_ (1733) and _The Gymnasiad_ (1738) by Paul Whitehead (1710–1744); _The Toast_ (1736) by William King (1685–1763); and a succession of anonymous poems, _The Battle of the Briefs_ (1752), _Patriotism_ (1765), _The Battle of the Wigs_ (1763), _The Triumph of Dulness_ (1781), _The Rape of the Faro-Bank_ (1797), and _The Battle of the Bards_ (1799).

[16] The most important is Churchill’s _Rosciad_ (1761), with the numerous replies which it elicited: the _Churchilliad_ (1761), the _Smithfield Rosciad_ (1761), the _Anti-Rosciad_ (1761), by Thomas Morell (1703–1784), and _The Rosciad of Covent Garden_ (1761) by H. J. Pye (1745–1813). Among other satires of the same class may be mentioned the _Smartiad_ (1752) by Dr. John Hill (1710–1775), with its answer, the severe and effective _Hilliad_ (1752) by Christopher Smart (1722–1771); the _Meretriciad_ (1764) by Arthur Murphy (1727–1806); the _Consuliad_ (1770), a fragment by Chatterton; the _Diaboliad_ (1777), with its sequel, the _Diabolady_ (1777) by William Combe (1741–1823); and finally the _Criticisms on the Rolliad_, Gifford’s _Baviad_ and _Mæviad_, the _Simpliciad_, and the _Alexandriad_ (1805).

[17] _The Scandalizade_ (1750); _The Pasquinade_ (1752) by William Kenrick (1725–1779); _The Quackade_ (1752); _The Booksellers_ (1766); _The Art of Rising in the Church_ (1763) by James Scott (1733–1814); _The Senators_ (1772); and _The Tribunal_ (1787).

[18] A few typical controversial satires of this decade are: _The Race_ (1762) by Cuthbert Shaw (1739–1771); _The Tower_ (1763); _The Demagogue_ (1764) by William Falconer (1732–1769); _The Scourge_ (1765); and _The Politician_ (1766) by E. B. Greene (1727–1788).

[19] Some characteristic examples are the _Epistle to Cornbury_ (1745) by Earl Nugent (1702–1788); the _Epistle to William Chambers_ (1773) and the _Epistle to Dr. Shebbeare_ (1777) by William Mason (1724–1797); and the _Epistle to Dr. Randolph_ (1796), as well as numerous other epistles, by T. J. Mathias.

[20] See Macaulay’s _Essay on Horace Walpole_, page 35.

[21] _An Essay on the Different Styles of Poetry_ (1713) by Thomas Parnell (1679–1718); _The Danger of Writing Verse_ (1741) by William Whitehead (1715–1785); _A Prospect of Poetry_ (1733); _The Perils of Poetry_ (1766); and _The Wreath of Fashion_ (1780) by Richard Tickell (1751–1793).

[22] The anonymous _Manners of the Age_ (1733); _Manners_ (1738) by Paul Whitehead; _The Man of Taste_ (1733) by James Bramston (1694–1744); the _Modern Fine Gentleman_ (1746) and the _Modern Fine Lady_ (1750) by Soame Jenyns (1703–1787); _Fashion_ (1748) by Joseph Warton (1722–1800); and _Newmarket_ (1751) by Thomas Warton (1728–1790).

[23] Examples are the _Essay on Reason_ (1733) by Walter Harte (1709–1774); the _Vanity of Human Enjoyments_ (1749) by James Cawthorn (1718–1761), the most slavish of all Pope’s imitators; _Honour_ (1737) by John Brown; _Advice_ and _Reproof_ (1747) by Smollett; _Of Retired and Active Life_ (1735) by William Helmoth (1710–1799); _Ridicule_ (1743) by William Whitehead; _Taste_ (1753) by John Armstrong (1709–1779); _An Essay on Conversation_ (1748) by Benjamin Stillingfleet (1702–1771).

[24] _Letters_, v., 162.

[25] _Letters_, iv., 485.

[26] See _An Apology_, 376–387.

[27] In his _Letters_, Byron refers once to Churchill’s _Times_ (_Letters_, ii., 148). His _Churchill’s Grave_ (1816), a parody of Wordsworth’s style, contains a reference to Churchill as “him who blazed the comet of a season.” Otherwise Churchill’s actual influence on Byron was not great.

[28] Byron praised Crabbe in _English Bards_ as “Nature’s sternest painter, but her best.” In a letter to Moore, February 2, 1818, he termed Crabbe and Rogers “the fathers of present Poesy,” and in his _Reply to Blackwood’s_ (1819) he said publicly: “We are all wrong except Crabbe, Rogers, and Campbell.” Crabbe, whom Horace Smith called “Pope in worsted stockings,” seemed, to Byron, to represent devotion to Pope.

[29] Byron said of Gifford in 1824: “I have always considered him as my literary father, and myself as his ‘prodigal son’” (_Letters_, vi., 329).

[30] The movement represented by this clique, _Gli Oziosi_, originated in Florence with a coterie of dilettanti, among whom were Robert Merry (1755–1799), Mrs. Piozzi (1741–1831), Bertie Greathead (1759–1826), and William Parsons (fl. 1785–1807). They published two small volumes, _The Arno Miscellany_ (1784) and _The Florence Miscellany_ (1785), both marred by affectation, obscurity, tawdry ornamentation, and frantic efforts at sublimity. The printing of Merry’s _Adieu and Recall to Love_ started a new series of sentimental verses, in the writing of which other scribblers took part: Hannah Cowley (1743–1809), Perdita Robinson (1752–1800), and Thomas Vaughan (fl. 1772–1820). Their combined contributions were gathered in Bell’s _British Album_ (1789).

[31] Merry had written a _Wreath of Liberty_ (1790) in praise of revolutionary principles.

[32] Scott said of Gifford: “He squashed at one blow a set of humbugs who might have humbugged the world long enough.” _New Morality_ has a reference to “the hand which brushed a swarm of fools away.” Byron inserted a similar passage in _English Bards_, 741–744.

[33] _Letters_, iv., 485.

[34] _English Bards_, 701.

[35] Moore speaks sarcastically of this custom in the Preface to _Corruption and Intolerance_ (1808): “The practice which has been lately introduced into literature, of writing very long notes upon very indifferent verses, appears to me a very happy invention, as it supplies us with a mode of turning dull poetry to account.”

[36] Byron said of the _Pursuits of Literature_: “It is notoriously, as far as the poetry goes, the worst written of its kind; the World has long been of but one opinion, viz., that it’s [sic] sole merit lies in the notes, which are indisputably excellent” (_Letters_, ii., 4).

[37] Examples are the _Fables of Æsop_ (1692) of Roger L’Estrange (1616–1704); _Æsop at Court, or Select Fables_ (1702) by Thomas Yalden (1671–1736); _Æsop’s Fables_ (1722) by Samuel Croxall (1680–1752); _Fables_ (1744) by Edward Moore (1711–1757); and collections by Nathaniel Cotton (1707–1788) and William Wilkie (1721–1772).

[38] See the _Spleen_ (1737) by Matthew Green (1696–1737); _Variety, a Tale for Married People_ (1732); and the poems of Isaac Hawkins Browne (1705–1760), James Bramston (1694–1744), George Colman, the elder (1732–1794), John Dalton (1709–1763), David Garrick (1717–1779). John Duncombe (1729–1763), and many other poetasters.

[39] _Probationary Odes_ also anticipate the more famous _Rejected Addresses_ (1812), and the _Poetic Mirror_ (1816) of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd.

[40] For less reserved praise of the _Rolliad_, see Trevelyan’s _Early History of Charles James Fox_, page 285.

[41] In _A Postscript_ he speaks of “the unmeaning and noisy lines of two things called _Baviad_ and _Mæviad_”; while in a note to _Out at Last, or the Fallen Minister_, he presents a sketch of Gifford’s life, accusing him of heinous crimes, and speaking of the “awkward and obscure inversions and verbose pomposity” of the _Baviad_. Gifford replied in the _Epistle to Peter Pindar_ (1800). Mathias and Canning invariably treated Pindar with contempt.

[42] _Vision of Judgment_, 92.

[43] See _A Dream_ (1786), a bitterly satirical address to George III, and the _Lines Written at Stirling_, attacking the Hanoverians.

[44] Byron knew the _New Bath Guide_ well, and admired it. In one of his youthful poems, an _Answer to Some Elegant Verses sent by a Friend to the Author_ he uses four lines of Anstey’s poem as a motto. He also quotes from it not infrequently in his letters.

[45] See _Letters from Simpson the Second to his Dear Brother in Wales_ (1788) and _Groans of the Talents_ (1807), both of which deliberately appropriate Anstey’s scheme. Both are anonymous.

[46] See the _Epistle to my Sisters_ (1734) by Thomas Lisle; _The ’Piscopade, a Panegyri-Satiri-Serio-Comical Poem_ (1748) by “Porcupinus Pelagius”; and Goldsmith’s three graceful satires, _Retaliation_ (1774), _The Haunch of Venison_ (1776), and the _Letter to Mrs. Bunbury_ (1777).

[47] The attitude of the _Anti-Jacobin_ was almost precisely that already adopted by Gifford and Mathias; that is, it represented extreme Tory feeling, and therefore was resolutely opposed to any movement in literature which seemed new or strange.

[48] The _Anti-Jacobin_ was deserted by its original editors, largely because it was becoming too dangerous a weapon for aspiring statesmen to handle. A new journal, under the same name, was less successful.

[49] It was the era described by Wordsworth in his sonnets _Written in London, 1802_, and _London, 1802_, the last beginning,

“Milton! thou should’st be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters! Altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men.”

[50] See the _Nation_, volume xciv., No. 2436, March 7, 1912.

[51] Examples are _Elijah’s Mantle_ (1807) by James Sayer (1748–1823), with its answer, the anonymous _Elijah’s Mantle Parodied_ (1807); the _Uti Possidetis and Status Quo_ (1807), _The Devil and the Patriot_ (1807), and Canning’s famous ballad _The Pilot that Weathered the Storm_.

[52] _Poetry_, i., 17.

[53] _Letters_, i., 209.

[54] It is probable that Byron’s verses are modelled somewhat on the _Epistle on His Schoolfellows at Eton_ (1766) by his relative and guardian, Lord Carlisle (1748–1825).

[55] _Letters_, i., 47.

[56] _Letters_, i., 183.

[57] _Letters_, i., 167.

[58] _Letters_, i., 211.

[59] _Letters_, i., 212.

[60] _Blackwood’s_, ix., 461.

[61] This practice was ridiculed by his enemy, Lady Montagu, in the lines:

“On the one side we see how Horace thought,
And on the other how he never wrote.”

[62] The opening couplet of _English Bards_ is a paraphrase of the first two lines of Juvenal, I. Other imitations occur in lines 87–88 (Juvenal, I., 17–18) and lines 93–94 (Juvenal, I., 19–21).

[63] _English Bards_, 47–48.

[64] _Satires_, iii., 15–18.

[65] _London_, 35–36.

[66] _Table Talk_, 571–572.

[67] _Baviad_, 215 ff.

[68] _All the Talents_, ii., 46–47.

[69] _English Bards_, 103–106.

[70] _Dunciad_, i., 28.

[71] _Satires_, i., 35–36.

[72] _English Bards_, 819–820.

[73] _English Bards_, 991–994.

[74] See _English Bards_, 144–145, 165–166, 202, 235, etc.

[75] Prologue to the second part of the _Conquest of Granada_, 1–2.

[76] _Essay on Criticism_, 610–630.

[77] _The Apology_ was written in response to a scathing article on the _Rosciad_, printed in the _Critical Review_ for March, 1761. This periodical, ultra-Tory in its principles, made a point of decrying, any work which was by a Whig author, or expressed any sympathy with liberal ideas. Though the editor, Tobias Smollett, was able to exculpate himself from the charge, Churchill deemed him accountable for the uncomplimentary review and, without naming him, described him in his satire as “alien from God, and foe to all mankind.”

[78] _The Apology_, 110–111.

[79] _English Bards_, 429.

[80] _The Apology_, 44.

[81] _English Bards_, 71.

[82] _Gentle Alterative._

[83] _Baviad_, 200–201.

[84] It is curious that Byron’s views on poetry were not very different from those held by Jeffrey. Both men believed in maintaining the common-sense traditions of the eighteenth century.

[85] “There can be no worse sign for the taste of the times than the depreciation of Pope” (_Letters_, v, 559).

[86] W. Tooke, in his edition of Churchill’s _Works_ (1804), expresses one phase of contemporary opinion in speaking of “the simplicity of a later school of poetry, the spawn of the lakes, consisting of a mawkish combination of the nonsense verse of the nursery with the rhodomontade of German Mysticism and Transcendentalism” (i., 189).

[87] _Epistles to Pope_, ii., 165.

[88] To this utterly unjust stricture Scott made a calm reply in his Preface to _Marmion_ (1830): “I never could conceive how an arrangement between an author and his publishers, if satisfactory to the persons concerned, could afford matter of censure to any third party.” Certainly Byron came to be a gross offender in this respect himself, and when, in 1819, he was haggling with Murray over the price of _Don Juan_, these boyish censures, if they met his eye, must have roused a smile.

[89] “The plot is absurd, and the antique costume of the language is disgusting, because it is unnatural” (_All the Talents_, page 68).

[90] _Pursuits of Literature_, iv., 397–398.

[91]

“Then still might Southey sing his crazy Joan,
To feign a Welshman o’er the Atlantic flown,
Or tell of Thalaba the wondrous matter,
Or with clown Wordsworth, chatter, chatter, chatter.”

(_Epics of the Ton_, 31–34.)

[92] After some praise of the three poets, the dedication of the _Simpliciad_ closes with the words: “I lament the degradation of your genius, and deprecate the propagation of your perverted taste.”

[93] Pope, in the _Dunciad_, had bantered Sir Richard Blackmore, author of epics, in the lines:--

“All hail him victor in both gifts of song,
Who sings so loudly, and who sings so long.”

(_Dunciad_, ii., 267–268.)

The possibility that Byron may have had this passage in mind is increased by his note to his lines in _English Bards_: “Must he [Southey] be content to rival Sir Richard Blackmore in the quantity as well as the quality of his verse?”

[94] _Simpliciad_, 212–213.

[95] It must be remembered, however, that practically every charge that Byron brings against the “Lakists” has a counterpart in Mant’s _Simpliciad_, printed only a year before Byron’s poem.

[96] _Baviad_, 248–261.

[97] _Letters_, v., 590.

[98] _Letters_, v., 539.

[99] _Letters_, i., 104.

[100] Mathias had asserted that Moore “had neither scrupled nor blushed to depict, and to publish to the world, the arts of systematic seduction, and to thrust upon the nation the most open and unqualified blasphemy against the very code and volume of our religion” (_Pursuits of Literature_, Preface to Dialogue IV.).

[101] Preface to _Mæviad_, page 59, Note.

[102] See the account of this period in Thorndike’s _Tragedy_, chapter x.

[103] Byron may have taken a suggestion from some lines of _Children of Apollo_:

“But in his diction Reynolds grossly errs;
For whether the love hero smiles or mourns,
’Tis oh! and ah! and oh! by turns.”

[104] _Satires_, iii., 197.

[105] _Dunciad_, iv., 45–70.

[106] _Rosciad_, 723–728.

[107] _The Man of Taste._

[108] One line of Byron’s attack,

“Himself a living libel on mankind,”

recalls Murphy’s address to Churchill,

“Thy look’s a libel on the human race.”

[109] In the _Scourge_, a new venture of Clarke’s begun in 1810, that editor published another scurrilous attack on Byron, involving also the poet’s mother. An action for libel which Byron intended to bring was for some reason abandoned, though not without some caustic words from him about “the cowardly calumniator of an absent man and a defenceless woman” (_Letters_, i., 324).

[110] _Letters_, i., 314. See also _Letters_, ii., 312; iii., 192.

[111] _Letters_, ii., 326.

[112] _Letters_, v., 539.

[113] _English Bards_, 209–210; 231–232; 239–240; 253–254; 909–910.

[114] _Ibid._, 415–417; 684–686.

[115] _Ibid._, 417, 1022.

[116] _Ibid._, 608–609; 624–625; 656–657.

[117] _Letters_, ii., 27.

[118] _Recollections of Lord Byron_, page 31.

[119] _Letters_, iv., 488.

[120] See _Pope and the Art of Satire_, by G. K. Chesterton.

[121] _Corruption_, 93–98.

[122] _English Bards_, 841–848.

[123] _Poetry_, i., 291.

[124] _Letters_, ii., 330.

[125] _Letters_, ii., 24.

[126] _Letters_, iv., 425.

[127] _Letters_, v., 221.

[128] _Letters_, v., 245.

[129] _Letters_, v., 255.

[130] _Letters_, v., 77.

[131] There have been many actual translations of the _Ars Poetica_ into English. T. Drant published, in 1567, the first complete version. Queen Elizabeth left a fragmentary version of 194 lines in her _Englishings_ (1598). Ben Jonson’s excellent _Horace, of the Art of Poetry_ was printed after his death. Of other translations, from that of Roscommon (1680) in blank verse, to that of Howes (1809) in heroic couplets, it is unnecessary to speak, except to say that they mount into the hundreds. In such works as _The Art of Preaching_ by Christopher Pitt (1699–1748) and _The Art of Politicks_ (1731) by James Bramston (1694–1744) the title and method of Horace had been transferred to other fields. _Harlequin-Horace; or the Art of Modern Poetry_ by James Miller (1706–1744) is an ironical parody of the _Ars Poetica_.

[132] See his treatise, _Ueber das Verhaltnis von Byrons Hints from Horace zu Horaz und Pope_.

[133] See his article in _Anglia_, ii., 256.

[134] _Ars Poetica_, 269–270.

[135] _Essay on Criticism_, 124–125.

[136] _Hints from Horace_, 423–424.

[137] _Hints from Horace_, 399–412.

[138] _Letters_, ii., 150.

[139] _Charity_, 420–500.

[140] _Poetry_, i., 396.

[141] _Pursuits of Literature_, page 93.

[142] _Poetry_, i., 444.

[143] _Letters_, iii., 271.

[144] _Childe Harold_, II., 10–15.

[145] _Life of Byron_, ii., 145.

[146] _Don Juan_, x., 17.

[147] Churchill’s poem ends with a prophecy from the Goddess of Famine just as Byron’s ends with Minerva’s curse.

[148]

“Blest paper-credit! last and best supply!
That lends Corruption lighter wings to fly!”

(_Epistle to Lord Bathurst, On the Use of Riches_, 40–41.)

[149] _Childe Harold_, II., 12.

[150] _The Parthenon_, stanza 3.

[151] _The Curse of Minerva_, 95–116.

[152] Byron expressed his esteem for his new friend in his Journal, December 10, 1813:--“I have just had the kindest letter from Moore. I _do_ think that man is the best-hearted, the only _hearted_ being I ever encountered; and then, his talents are equal to his feelings” (_Letters_, ii., 371).

[153] See Byron’s impromptu lines to Moore in a letter of May 19, 1812, in which he says, speaking of a projected visit to Hunt in prison:--

“Pray Phœbus at length our political malice
May not get us lodgings within the same palace.”

(_Letters_, ii., 204–209.)

[154] See _Letters_, ii., 463–492 (Appendix vii.).

[155] _Letters_, iii., 61.

[156] _Letters_, ii., 134.

[157] _The Real Lord Byron_, ii., 51.

[158] On December 2, 1813, Byron wrote Hunt:--“I have a thorough esteem for that independence of spirit which you have maintained with sterling talent, and at the expense of some suffering” (_Letters_, ii., 296).

[159] _Letters_, iii., 58.

[160] Byron’s attitude towards war recalls the sardonic passage on the same subject in _Gulliver’s Travels_, Part IV.

[161] _Letters_, iii., 64.

[162] _Letters_, iii., 66.

[163] _Letters_, ii., 324.

[164] _Childe Harold_, III., 36–52.

[165] _Letters_, ii., 176.

[166] _Letters_, ii., 202.

[167] Byron himself was asked to compete, but resolved not to risk his reputation in such a contest. Although 112 poems were submitted, all were adjudged unsatisfactory, and Byron was eventually requested by Lord Holland to save the situation. His verses were recited on October 10, 1812, but met with small commendation.

[168] This little volume, published in 1812, after having been refused by Murray and others, proved an overwhelming success. Byron was delighted with _Cui Bono?_ a clever imitation of the gloomy and mournful portions of _Childe Harold_, in the same stanzaic form. Among the other writers parodied were Wordsworth, Crabbe, Moore, Coleridge, and Lewis. Byron said:--“I think the _Rejected Addresses_ by far the best thing of the kind since the _Rolliad_” (_Letters_, ii., 177).

[169] Byron himself said of this period:--“I felt that, if what was whispered and murmured was true, I was unfit for England; if false, England was unfit for me” (_Reply to Blackwood’s_, _Letters_, iv., 479).

[170] _Letters_, iii., 272.

[171] _Letters_, iii., 278.

[172] _Childe Harold_, I., 26.

[173] _Childe Harold_, I., 69–70.

[174] _Childe Harold_, I., 9.

[175] _Letters_, i., 308.

[176] _Letters_, ii., 5.

[177] See _Letters_, ii., 413 (Appendix i.).

[178] _Letters_, ii., 379; ii, 403.

[179] See Fuhrman’s _Die Belesenheit des jungen Byron_, Berlin, 1903.

[180] _Letters_, iii., 19.

[181] _Letters_, v., 70.

[182] _Life of Byron_, iv., 237.

[183] Frere was well known in 1817 as a prominent London wit. His career as a diplomat, which apparently promised him high preferment, had been cut short by some unlucky transactions leading to his being held partly responsible for the failure of the Peninsular campaign, and he had been recalled in 1809 from his position as envoy to Ferdinand VII. of Spain. The incident drew upon him Byron’s lines on “blundering Frere” in some expunged stanzas of _Childe Harold_, I. Piqued by the action of the government and constitutionally inclined to inactivity, Frere had since led an indolent and self-indulgent existence as scholar and clubman.

[184] Dr. Eichler finds that Frere drew something from Aristophanes and Cervantes, but more from Pulci, Berni, and Casti. For Frere’s indebtedness to the Italians, see Eichler’s _Frere_, 115.

[185] _Letters_, iv., 172.

[186] _Letters_, iv., 176.

[187] While it is undisputed that the ottava rima is a native Italian stanza, its origin has never been satisfactorily determined. That it was a common measure before the time of Boccaccio is easily demonstrable; but it is equally probable that he, in his _Teseide_, was the earliest writer to employ it consciously for literary purposes. With him it assumed the form which it was to preserve for centuries: eight endecasyllabic lines, rhyming abababcc. In Pulci’s _Morgante Maggiore_ it became freer and less dignified, without losing any of its essential characteristics. Pulci made ottava rima the standard measure for the Italian romantic epic and burlesque, and it was used by men differing so greatly in nature and motive as Boiardo, Berni, Tasso, Marino, Tassoni, Forteguerri, and Casti. To the Italian language, rich in double and triple rhymes, it is especially well suited; and its elasticity is proved by its effective employment in both the lofty epic of Tasso and the vulgar verse of Casti.

In English the borrowed ottava rima has had strange vicissitudes. Transferred to our literature, along with other Italian metrical forms, by Wyatt and Surrey, it was managed by them crudely, but still with some success. At least nineteen short poems by Wyatt are in this stanza. A typical illustration of its state at this period may be examined in Surrey’s _To His Mistresse_. In Elizabethan days the octave had a sporadic popularity. Although Spenser made choice of his own invented stanza for his _Faerie Queen_, he tried ottava rima in _Virgil’s Gnat_. Daniel in _The Civille Warres_ and Drayton in _The Barrons’ Warres_ associated it with tedium and dulness. It was, of course, natural that Fairfax, in his fine version of Tasso, should adopt the stanza of his original; and Harington translated Ariosto in the same measure, giving it, probably for the first time in English, a little of the burlesque tone which was typical of the Italians. Milton, in the epilogue to _Lycidas_, used the octave with reserved stateliness; while Gay, in _Mr. Pope’s Welcome from Greece_, made it a vehicle for quiet merriment.

During the eighteenth century the predominance of the heroic couplet hindered the spread of exotic verse forms--and the octave was still exotic. In 1812, William Tennant (1786–1846), an obscure Scotch schoolmaster, revived it in his burlesque epic, _Anster Fair_, modifying the structure by changing the last line to an alexandrine. Then came Merivale, Byron, Rose, Procter, and Keats, who settled the measure as a standard form in modern English literature.

[188] For a detailed comparison of the versification of _Beppo_ with that of _The Monks, and the Giants_, see Eichler’s _Frere_, 170–184.

[189] _The Monks, and the Giants_, Introduction, 1.

[190] _The Monks, and the Giants_ I., 9.

[191] Dr. Eichler has neglected to notice the important fact that at the time of the composition of _Beppo_, Byron could have been familiar with only the first two cantos of _The Monks, and the Giants_. A brief comparison of dates will establish this point. Cantos I. and II. of Frere’s poem were published in 1817; _Beppo_, written in the autumn of 1817 (_Letters_, iv., 172), was sent to Murray on January 19, 1818 (_Letters_, iv., 193), and given out for sale on February 28 of the same year. Not until later in 1818 were the last two cantos of Frere’s work printed, and the full edition of four cantos came out some months later. On July 17, 1818, Byron wrote Murray, “I shall be glad of Whistlecraft,” referring doubtless to the newly issued complete edition of _The Monks, and the Giants_.

[192] Only 36 of the 99 stanzas in _Beppo_ are devoted entirely to the plot. The greater portion of the poem is occupied with digressions upon many subjects, containing some personal satire, some comment on political and literary topics, and much discursive chat upon social life and morals. The plot serves only as a frame for the satire.

[193] See _Memoir of Frere_, i., 166.

[194] _Letters_, iv., 193.

[195] _The Monks, and the Giants_, III., 59.

[196] Eichler’s _Frere_, 184.

[197] In his _Studies in Poetry and Criticism_ (London, 1905), Churton Collins pointed out Byron’s indebtedness to Casti, but mentioned only Casti’s _Novelle_. See Collins’s volume, pp. 96–98.

[198] Eichler’s _Frere_, 163.

[199] _Letters_, iv., 217.

[200] Born in 1721 in Italy, Casti had been a precocious student at the seminary of Montefiascone, where he became Professor of Literature at the age of sixteen. In 1764 he moved, with the musician, Guarducci, to Florence, where he was created Poeta di Corte by the Grand Duke Leopold. Here he came to the attention of Joseph II., who invited him to Vienna and bestowed upon him several posts of honor. A lucky friendship with Count Kaunitz enabled him to visit most of the capitals of Europe in company with that Prime Minister’s son, and he gained in this way an inside knowledge of court life in several countries. In 1778 he took up his residence in St. Petersburg, where Catharine II. received him cordially. Later he returned to Vienna and was crowned Court Poet by the Emperor Leopold. The attraction of the French Revolution drew him to Paris in 1796, where he lived until his death, February 16, 1804.

[201] _Quarterly Review_, April, 1819.

[202] Churton Collins, however, makes the statement that “_Don Juan_ is full of reminiscences of the _Novelle_,” and points out definite parallelisms between Novella IV., _La Diavolessa_, and the plot of _Don Juan_. He adds: “To Casti, then, undoubtedly belongs the honour of having suggested and furnished Byron with a model for _Don Juan_.” (_Studies in Poetry and Criticism_, pp. 97–98.) It seems probable, however, that Byron took even more from _Il Poema Tartaro_ than he did from the _Novelle_. Casti’s _Gli Animali Parlanti_ and _Il Poema Tartaro_ are not mentioned in Collins’s study.

[203] To this work Byron refers in a letter to Murray, March 25, 1818: “Rose’s _Animali_ I never saw till a few days ago,--they are excellent.” (_Letters_, iv., 217.)

[204] _Gli Animali Parlanti_, VII., 6 ff.

[205] _Ibid._, III., 37.

[206] _Ibid._, III., 32.

[207] _Ibid._, XX., 69.

[208] _Ibid._, XIV., 47; XVII., 36, 56.

[209] _Gli Animali Parlanti_, I., 52.

[210] _Don Juan_, X., 25.

[211] _Gli Animali Parlanti_, XVIII., 33.

[212] _Don Juan_, VII., 68.

[213] _Gli Animali Parlanti_, IV., 13.

[214] _Don Juan_, XIV., 13. See also _Gli Animali Parlanti_, X., 1; XVIII., 32, and _Don Juan_, VII., 26, 41; VIII., 124.

[215] _Gli Animali Parlanti_, IV., 73.

[216] _Don Juan_, XV., 19. See also _Gli Animali Parlanti_, III., 95; VII., 38; _Don Juan_, VI., 8; VIII., 89; _The Vision of Judgment_, 34.

[217] _Gli Animali Parlanti_, IV., 107.

[218] _Don Juan_, I., 231. See also _Gli Animali Parlanti_, XX., 126, and _Don Juan_, IV., 117; V., 159; VI., 120; VII., 35; IX., 85; XV., 98.

[219] In _Childe Harold_ the digression had been used, not for satire, but for personal reminiscences, eulogy, and philosophical meditation; see Canto I., 91–92, with its tribute to Wingfield, and Canto I., 93, with its promise of another canto to come.

[220] _Il Poema Tartaro_, II., 8.

[221] _Don Juan_, IX., 62.

[222] _Il Poema Tartaro_, IV., 76.

[223] _Don Juan_, IX., 81. See also _Don Juan_, IX., 80.

[224] _Il Poema Tartaro_, I., 5.

[225] See _Il Poema Tartaro_, IV., 54–55, and _Don Juan_, IX., 82.

[226] See _Il Poema Tartaro_, V., 32 ff., and _Don Juan_, X., 39.

[227] See _Il Poema Tartaro_, VIII., 85, and _Don Juan_, VII., 14–15.

[228] See _Il Poema Tartaro_, III., 81, and _Don Juan_, III., 20; X., 69.

[229] _Il Poema Tartaro_, VI., 98.

[230] _Don Juan_, VII., 18.

[231] _Il Poema Tartaro_, VIII., 12.

[232] _Ibid._, III., 68.

[233] _Ibid._, IV., 69.

[234] _Il Poema Tartaro_, VI., 47.

[235] _Ibid._, XII., 79.

[236] _Letters_, iv., 217.

[237] _Letters_, iv., 407.

[238] In structure, the _Morgante Maggiore_, is made up of the _rifacimenti_ of two earlier works: one, the _Orlando_, rather commonplace and monotonous in tone, was the basis of the first twenty-three cantos; the other, _La Spagna_, in prose, loftier and more stately, gave a foundation for the last five cantos.

[239] _Don Juan_, IV., 6.

[240] It is probable that Byron had read Merivale’s poem, _Orlando in Roncesvalles_ (1814), for in the advertisement to his translation of Pulci he refers to “the serious poems on Roncesvalles in the same language [English]--and particularly the excellent one of Mr. Merivale.” Merivale’s work, based though it is upon the _Morgante_, is without humor, and could have given Byron nothing of the spirit of Pulci.

[241] _Letters_, iv., 402.

[242] _Letters_, iv., 407.

[243] Cantos III. and IV. of _Don Juan_ were written in the winter of 1819–1820, while Byron was at work on his translation of the _Morgante_; hence it is certain that the influence of Pulci may be looked for at least as early as Canto III. It is probable, moreover, that Byron became acquainted with Pulci’s work before, or soon after, the beginning of _Don Juan_ in September, 1818.

[244] _Don Juan_, X., 87.

[245] _Don Juan_, VII., 55.

[246] _Morgante Maggiore_, XIV., 7.

[247] _Ibid._, III., 51.

[248] _Ibid._, XI., 21.

[249] _Don Juan_, II., 92.

[250] _Morgante Maggiore_, XVIII., 117.

[251] _Ibid._, XVIII., 144.

[252] _Don Juan_, XII., 50.

[253] _Morgante Maggiore_, XXIV., 83.

[254] _Don Juan_, XII., 88.

[255] _Morgante Maggiore_, XXVIII., 138–9.

[256] _Don Juan_, XV., 19.

[257] _Ibid._, V., 159.

[258] Other examples occur in the _Morgante Maggiore_, I., 4; II., 1; XIV., 1; XVI., 1; XXI., 1; XXIV., 1; XXVIII., 1.

[259] _Don Juan_, X., 4.

[260] _Morgante Maggiore_, I., 8.

[261] _Morgante Maggiore_, XXV., 283.

[262] _Ibid._, XXVIII., 35.

[263] _Don Juan_, XV., 20.

[264] It is significant that Byron was able to make his translation of the first canto of the _Morgante_ so faithful to the original. On September 28, 1820, he wrote Murray:--“The Pulci I am proud of; it is superb; you have no such translation. It is the best thing I ever did in my life” (_Letters_, i., 83). It is obvious that there were features in Pulci’s style which appealed to Byron.

[265] Berni was a priest, who became, with Molza, La Casa, Firenzuola, and Bini, a member of the famous Accademia della Vignajuoli in Rome, in which circle he was accustomed to recite his humorous poetry. He died under suspicious circumstances, perhaps poisoned by one of the Medicean princesses. He was the bitter enemy of Pietro Aretino, the most scurrilous satirist of the age.

[266] See, _Don Juan_, XII., 1–22, with its discussion of avarice.

[267] See, for example, the _Innamorato_, II., 70:

“Ma s’io dicesse ogni cosa al presente
Da dire un’ altra volta non aria;
Pero tornate, e s’attenti starete,
Sempre piu belle cose sentirete.”

[268] _Don Juan_, VII., 85.

[269] Many characteristics of the _Innamorato_, however, are like those of the work of Pulci and Casti. There are the same equivocal allusions and obscenities, the same pervasive skepticism and pessimism, and the same colloquial style that are to be met with in the _Morgante_ and the _Novelle_. Berni was perhaps greater as a craftsman and artist, but otherwise had the virtues and the faults of the other burlesque poets.

[270] _Letters_, iii., 444–445.

[271] Buratti’s career is treated at length in Vittorio Malamani’s monograph, _Il Principe dei satirici Veneziani_ (1887). An edition of his poetry, in two volumes, was printed in 1864.

[272] Buratti’s after-life brought him once into relation with Byron. On the birth of a son to Hoppner, the British Consul at Venice, Byron presented the father with a short madrigal:--

“His father’s sense, his mother’s grace,
In him, I hope, will always fit so;
With--still to keep him in good case--
The health and appetite of Rizzo.”

The Count Rizzo Pattarol, named in the last line, had the verses translated into several languages, in the Italian version changing the word “appetite” to “buonomore.” This piece of vanity so excited the mirth of Buratti that he commemorated the affair in an epigram. Byron, however, seems to have paid no attention to the incident.

[273] There is less of the mock-heroic in _Don Juan_ than is ordinarily supposed. It has little in common with the classical Mock-Epic, represented in English by the _Dunciad_, the _Scribleriad_, and the _Dispensary_, poems which use the epic machinery of gods and goddesses, ridiculing the manner of the Greek and Roman epics through the method of parody. _Don Juan_, on the other hand, is unrelated to the work of either Homer or Virgil. Nor does it burlesque the Italian epics: its characters, modern and unconventional as they are, are not, even in a humorous sense, heroic, and the matter dealt with is borrowed from none of the Italian romances. The fact that exalted emotions are made absurd, or that fine feelings are jeered at does not warrant us in classing _Don Juan_ with the mock-heroic poems. Indeed, the mere absence of the typical addresses to the Muse--they occur only twice in _Don Juan_ (II., 7; III., 1)--indicates that Byron did not imitate the epic form.

[274] _Letters_, vi., 50.

[275] _Letters_, iv., 217.

[276] “This poem [_Don Juan_] carries with it at once the stamp of originality and defiance of imitation.” (Shelley, Letter to Byron, Oct. 21, 1821).

[277] _Don Juan_, II., 105; II., 166; V., 4; VI., 5–6.

[278] Ibid., V., 33–39.

[279] _Don Juan_, IX., 41.

[280] _Letters_, iv., 342.

[281] _Don Juan_, I., 200.

[282] _Don Juan_, XII., 55.

[283] _Letters_, iv., 260.

[284] _Letters_, vi., 155.

[285] _Don Juan_, XIV., 99.

[286] It was begun at Venice, September 6, 1818, and the first two cantos were published anonymously, July 15, 1819, by Murray. Despite much hostile comment, and the reluctance and eventual refusal of Murray to print the work, Byron continued with his project, entrusting the publication of the poem, after Canto V., to John Hunt. Canto XVI. was completed May 6, 1823, and appeared with Canto XV. on March 26, 1824. Fourteen stanzas of an unfinished Canto XVII. were among his papers at the time of his death.

[287] _Beppo_, 79.

[288] _Don Juan_, VIII., 135.

[289] _Childe Harold_, II., 74–76.

[290] _Ode to the French_, 91–104.

[291] _Childe Harold_, IV., 92.

[292] _Don Juan_, IX., 24.

[293] _Don Juan_, VIII., 50.

[294] Many details of Byron’s satire may be traced to corresponding passages in the works of Moore, whose _Fudge Family in Paris_ (1818) was familiar to him, and whose _Fables for the Holy Alliance_ (1823), many of which were written while the two poets were together in Venice, was dedicated to Byron. Moore denounced Castlereagh as a despot, a bigot, and a time-server, ridiculing him especially for the absurdity of his speeches, which were notorious for their mixed metaphors and poorly chosen phrasing.

[295] Shelley in many short squibs, and particularly in the _Mask of Anarchy_ (1819), had assailed the ministry. He had compared Castlereagh and Sidmouth, the Home Secretary, to “two vultures, sick for battle” and “two vipers tangled into one” (_Similes for Two Political Characters of 1819_).

[296] Young had condemned war in _Satire VII._, 55–68; Cowper had spoken against it in the _Task_, in the lines:--

“War is a game which, were their subjects wise,
Kings would not play at.”

Leigh Hunt and Shelley held exactly Byron’s opinions, and expressed them repeatedly.

[297] It is possible that Byron, in his description of this assemblage, was influenced to some extent by T. L. Peacock, the friend of Shelley, who had published _Headlong Hall_ (1816) and _Nightmare Abbey_ (1818). In these books Peacock had created a sort of prose Comedy of Humors by forming groups of curious eccentrics, each one obsessed by a single passion or hobby, and by giving each figure a name suggestive of his peculiar folly.

[298] _Don Juan_, XI., 86.

[299] _Letters_, v., 542.

[300] _Don Juan_, I., 205.

[301] _Don Juan_, III., 78–87.

[302] _Don Juan_, III., 5.

[303] _Ibid._, III., 3.

[304] _Ibid._, III., 25.

[305] _Ibid._, VI., 6.

[306] _Ibid._, II., 205.

[307] _Ibid._, VI., 27.

[308] _Ibid._, I., 178; XI., 36.

[309] _Ibid._, VI., 14.

[310] _Ibid._, VI., 2.

[311] In Canto II., the entire shipwreck episode is a symposium of accounts of other wrecks taken from Dalzell’s _Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea_ (1812), _Remarkable Shipwrecks_ (1813), Bligh’s _A Narrative of the Mutiny of the Bounty_ (1790), and _The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron_ (1768), the last named work being the story of the adventures of Byron’s grandfather. His account of the siege and capture of Ismail in Cantos VII. and VIII. is based, even, in minute details, on Decastelnau’s _Essai sur l’histoire ancienne et moderne de la Nouvelle Russie_.

[312] _Don Juan_, III., 101–109.

[313] _Ibid._, II., 17–23.

[314] _Ibid._, XI., 10.

[315] Byron attributed the unpopularity of _Don Juan_ with the ladies, and particularly with the Countess Guiccioli, to the fact that it is the “wish of all women to exalt the _sentiment_ of the passions, and to keep up the illusion which is their empire” and that the poem “strips off this illusion, and laughs at that and most other things” (_Letters_, v., 321). It was the opposition of the Countess which induced him to promise to leave off the work at the fifth canto, a pledge which he fortunately disregarded after keeping it for several months.

[316] _Childe Harold_, II., 7.

[317] _Don Juan_, VI., 22. See also I., 215; III., 35.

[318] _Ibid._, V., 21.

[319] _Ibid._, XI., 82, 86.

[320] _Ibid._, II., 34.

[321] _Don Juan_, XII., 86.

[322] _Poetry_, VI., 79.

[323] _Don Juan_, IX., 73.

[324] _Ibid._, XIII., 100.

[325] _Don Juan_, III., 96.

[326] See _Ibid._, I., 9; II., 8; III., 110; IV., 113; VI., 57, and numerous other instances.

[327] Only in Canto II. does the story begin at once; every other canto has a preliminary disquisition. Canto IX., containing eighty-five stanzas, uses forty-one of them before the narrative begins, and of the entire number, forty-six are clearly made up of extraneous material. Of the ninety stanzas in Canto XI., over fifty are occupied with Byron’s satire on English society and contemporary events. Canto II. is, of course, filled largely with the shipwreck and the episode of Haidée; but in Canto III., over forty of the entire one hundred and eleven stanzas are discursive, and many others are partly so.

[328] _Beppo_, 52.

[329] For other rhymes of exceptional peculiarity, see _Don Juan_, I., 102; II., 206; II., 207; V., 5.

[330] _Ibid._, I., 22.

[331] _Ibid._, II., 1.

[332] _Don Juan_, I., 6.

[333] _Ibid._, III., 111.

[334] _Ibid._, XIII., 94.

[335] _Ibid._, I., 62.

[336] _Ibid._, I., 11.

[337] _Ibid._, VII., 15.

[338] _Ibid._, VII., 3.

[339] _Ibid._, XIII., 8.

[340] _Ibid._, XV., 91.

[341] _Ibid._, II., 207.

[342] _Ibid._, V., 5.

[343] _Ibid._, XIV., I. See also I., 25; I., 67; XVI., 4.

[344] _Ibid._, I., 154; II., 13, 22, 38.

[345] A characteristic example is _Ibid._, IX., 34.

[346] _Don Juan_, I., 123–124; V., 8–9; V., 18–19; VIII., 109–110.

[347] _Ibid._, I., 120.

[348] _Ibid._, XV., 72.

[349] _Ibid._, VI., 64; VII., 21; VIII., 30; XIII., 75; XIV., 29, 63; XVI., 60, 94, 98.

[350] _Ibid._, I., 34; VI., 47; VIII., 32.

[351] _Ibid._, IV., 42.

[352] _Ibid._, VII., 27.

[353] _Don Juan_, XI., 20.

[354] _Ibid._, III., 6. See also I., 63, 65, 72; II., 172, 179; IX., 15, 59; XIII., 6, 19.

[355] Many imitations and parodies of _Don Juan_ were printed during Byron’s lifetime, and afterwards; among them were Canto XVII. of _Don Juan_, by One who desires to remain a very great Unknown (1832); _Don Juan Junior_, a Poem, by Byron’s Ghost (1839); _A Sequel to Don Juan_ (1843); _The Termination of the Sixteenth Canto of Lord Byron’s Don Juan_ (1864), by Harry W. Wetton.

[356] Byron’s influence upon the literature of the nineteenth century may be studied in Otto Weddigen’s treatise _Lord Byron’s Einfluss auf die Europaischen Litteraturen der Neuzeit_ and in Richard Ackermann’s _Lord Byron_ (pp. 158–182). Collins numbers among his disciples in Germany, Wilhelm Mueller, Heine, Von Platen, Adalbert Chamisso, Karl Lebrecht, Immermann, and Christian Grabbe; among his French imitators, Lamartine, Hugo, de la Vigne, and de Musset; among his followers in Russia, Poushkin and Lermontoff. To these should be added Giovanni Berchet in Italy, and José de Espronceda in Spain. No other English poet, except Shakspere, has impressed his personality so strongly upon foreign countries.

[357] _Letters_, vi., 377–399.

[358] Thus in the _Batrachomyomachia_ the elevated manner of epic poetry is used in depicting a warfare between frogs and mice; while in Voltaire’s _La Pucelle_, the French national heroine is made to behave like a daughter of the streets.

[359] Some examples of the parody are _The Splendid Shilling_ (1701) by John Philips (1676–1709); _The Pipe of Tobacco_ (1734) by Isaac Hawkins Browne (1760); _Probationary Odes_; _Rejected Addresses_; and Swinburne’s _Heptalogia_.

[360] The travesty flourished especially during the 17th century in the work of Paul Scarron (1610–1660) and his followers in France, and of Charles Cotton (1630–1687), John Philips (1631–1706), and Samuel Butler (1612–1680) in England. During this period Virgil and Ovid were popular subjects for travesty. Several travesties of Homer were published in England during the 18th century, one of which, by Bridges, was read by Byron (_Letters_, v., 166).

[361] Charles Lamb said of it that it deserved prosecution far more than Byron’s _Vision_; and Nichol has styled it “the most quaintly preposterous panegyric ever penned.”

[362] In his dedication Southey called George IV. “the royal and munificent patron of science, art, and literature,” and praised the monarch’s rule as Regent and King as an epoch remarkable for perfect integrity in the administration of public affairs and for attempts to “mitigate the evils incident to our state of society.”

[363] _Letters_, v., 387.

[364] _Ibid._, vi., 10.

[365] _Ibid._, vi., 93.

[366] _Letters_, vi., 129.

[367] _Ibid._, vi., 159.

[368] In the only public retort which Southey undertook, a _Letter to the Courier_, December 8, 1824, he could do little more than make charges of misrepresentation, and repeat his accusation that Byron was one “who played the monster in literature, and aimed his blows at women.” Southey unwittingly had engaged with too powerful an antagonist and only his want of a sense of humor kept him from appreciating the fact.

[369] _Letters_, v., 385.

[370] The recurrence in the _Vision_ of many familiar devices of _Don Juan_ reminds us that the _Vision_ marks Byron’s resumption of the ottava rima, which he had left off on December 27, 1820, at the completion of _Don Juan_, Canto V., because of the request of the Countess Guiccioli that he discontinue the work. In the meantime he turned his attention to the drama, and _Cain_, _The Two Foscari_, and _Sardanapalus_ were published in December, 1821. The _Vision_ then was his only work in the octave stanza between December 27, 1820, and June, 1822, when he began Canto VI. of _Don Juan_.

[371] Byron had finished his translation of the first canto of the _Morgante_ in February, 1820.

[372] _The Vision of Judgment_, 25.

[373] _Morgante Maggiore_, XXVI., 91.

[374] _History of English Poetry_, v., 250.

[375] _The Vision of Judgment_, 92.

[376] _Letters_, vi., 77.

[377] _Letters_, vi., 160–161.

[378] (this footnote was missing from the original book.)

[379] _Letters_, v., 338.

[380] _Letters_, v., 369.

[381] _Letters_, vi., 336.

INDEX

Ackermann, Richard, 186 (note)

_Age of Bronze, The_, 4, 6, 8, 53, 202–207.

Anstey, Christopher, 30, 32, 40.

_Anti-Jacobin_, 30–33, 37, 59, 61, 64, 85

Barrett, E. S., 36, 40

Becher, Rev. J. T., 39, 45, 48

_Beppo_, 6, 7, 8, 93, 113–127, 129–131, 144, 145, 161, 163, 182

Berni, Francesco, 8, 118 (note), 121 (note), 127, 144, 155–157, 161

Birrell, Augustine, Mr., 103, 209

_Blackwood’s Magazine_, 51

Blessington, Countess of, 115, 164.

_Blues, The_, 207–209

Bowles, Rev. Samuel, 62–63

Brougham, Lord, 48, 167

Burns, Robert, 29

Butler, Samuel, 11, 16, 122, 182

Butler, Dr., 40–41

Buratti, 157–159

Byron, Lady, 107–110, 175–176

Byron, Lord: place among English satirists, 7;
divisions of his satire, 8–9;
early satiric verse, 39–47;
position in 1798;
travels in Spain and Greece, 77;
life in London, 94;
his political beliefs, 95, 143, 168–172, 204;
life in Italy, 115–116;
death and burial, 208;
influence, 185, 186 (note)

Canning, George, 31, 32, 34, 35, 40, 203, 204

Carlisle, Lord, 43 (note), 66–67

Casti, Giambattista, 8, 117, 118–119, 127–144, 161, 162, 181

Castlereagh, Lord, 102, 170–171

Chesterton, G. K., 14

_Childe Harold_, 6, 7, 77, 78, 110–111, 122, 136 (note)

Churchill, Charles, 3, 21–22, 25;
_Apology Addressed to the Critical Reviewers_, 56–58;
_Prophecy of Famine_, 66, 88–89

Clarke, Hewson, 67

Clermont, Mrs., 108–109, 215

Cleveland, John, 11, 88

Coleridge, S. T., 60–62, 63, 84, 173

Collins, J. C., 127 (note), 129 (note)

_Corsair, The_, 97

Courthope, W. J., 6, 29

Cowper, 22, 66

Crabbe, 22–23

_Critical Review_, 56–57

_Curse of Minerva, The_, 7, 77, 86–92

Dallas, R. C., 49, 68, 77, 78

_Devil’s Drive, The_, 93, 101–102

_Don Juan_, 6, 8, 93, 114, 116, 127, 128, 133–144, 147–154, 158,
159, 161, 162, 163–187, 198, 208, 216

Dryden, 3, 7, 11–13, 14, 15, 17, 37, 52;
comparison of _Absalom and Achitophel_ and _The Vision of
Judgment_, 198–199; 210, 211, 212

_Edinburgh Review_, 48–58

_English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers_, 7–8, 33, 36, 37, 38, 47,
48–76, 79, 92, 95, 112, 162, 167, 169, 174, 187, 201, 215

Forteguerri, 160

Frere, J. H., 31, 118 (note);
_The Monks, and the Giants_, 117–127;
_Fugitive Pieces_, 39, 41, 42

George III, 34, 94, 190, 191, 192, 193, 195, 196, 200

George IV, 94, 96–98, 100, 105, 171

_Giaour, The_, 7, 94

Gifford, 8, 10, 23–25, 29, 31, 40, 42, 47, 50, 53, 54, 65;
comparison of Gifford and Byron, 71–73; 74, 85, 93, 113, 170, 213

Goethe, 195

Goldsmith, 20, 30 (note)

Guiccioli, Countess, 116, 174, 177 (note)

Hamilton, Lady Anne, 35–36, 40;
_Epics of the Ton_, 59–60, 61, 64

Henley, W. E., 200

_Hints from Horace_, 8, 77–85, 92

Hobhouse, J. C., 77, 78, 179, 216

Hodgson, F., 57, 59, 73, 78

Holland, Lord, 58, 68, 106 (note)

Hunt, Leigh, 68, 69, 95, 98, 115, 146, 202

Ireland, W. H., 36

Jeaffreson, 75, 98

Jeffrey, 45, 50, 55, 56, 84, 216

Johnson, Samuel, 21

Juvenal, 21, 51

Lamb, Lady Caroline, 107

Lewis, M. G., 63, 64

_Liberal, The_, 98, 148, 188, 191, 199, 201, 206

_Lines to a Lady Weeping_, 97, 98

Mant, Richard, 36–37, 40;
his _Simpliciad_, 59, 60, 61, 62

Mathias, T. J., 19 (note), 25–26, 29, 33, 37, 40;
his _Pursuits of Literature_, 26 (note); 118

Moore, Thomas, 1, 30, 32, 36, 38;
attacked in _English Bards_, 63–64; 74;
his quarrel and reconciliation with Byron, 95–97; 98, 99, 105, 111

Murray, John, 78, 97, 102, 109, 111, 115, 118, 147, 154 (note), 164,
165, 166 (note), 175, 179, 191, 200

Ottava rima, 9, 114, 120–121 (note);
Byron’s management of, 122, 161, 181, 202

Parody, 5, 32, 189 and note

Peacock, T. L., 172 (note)

Pigot, Elizabeth, 44, 48

Pope, 5, 7, 10;
work as a satirist, 13–16; 18, 22, 33, 36, 37, 40, 41, 53, 54, 55,
59, 62, 63;
comparison of Byron and Pope, 69–72; 74;
_Essay on Criticism_, 81–82;
_Epistle to Lord Bathurst_, 89; 93, 113, 173, 191, 214

Pulci, Luigi, 8, 117, 120, 144;
life, and influence on Byron, 145–155; 156, 161, 196–197, 199

_Rejected Addresses_, 28 (note), 106–107 and note

_Rolliad_, 27–28, 32, 40

Satire, 2–5

Scott, Walter, Sir, 5, 59–60 and note, 98

Shelley, 38, 171 (note), 178, 188

_Sketch, A_, 93, 108–109

Southey, 60–62, 84, 173;
Byron’s quarrel with him, 188, ff.;
his _Vision of Judgment_, 190–191

Swift, 16–17, 27, 122, 182

Swinburne, 200

Travesty, 5, 189 and note

Trelawney, 17 (note), 115, 182

_Vision of Judgment, The_, 7, 8, 114, 116, 162, 188–201

_Waltz, The_, 6, 7, 8, 65, 93, 103–106

_Windsor Poetics_, 93, 99

Wordsworth, 34, 36, 60–62, 71, 84, 174, 208

Young, 16, 20, 28

VITA

CLAUDE MOORE FUESS, the author of this dissertation, was born at Waterville, New York, January 12, 1885, and prepared for college at the Waterville High School, graduating in 1901. He took the full course of four years at Amherst College, graduating with the degree of B. A. in 1905. During 1905–1907, he was in residence at Columbia University, where he took courses in English and Comparative Literature under Professors G. R. Carpenter, W. A. Neilson, W. P. Trent, J. B. Fletcher, J. E. Spingarn, Brander Matthews, J. W. Cunliffe, G. P. Krapp, and W. W. Lawrence. He received the degree of M. A. from Columbia in 1906, and in 1906–7 was University Fellow in English and Editor of the _English Graduate Record_. In 1907–8, he was Head of the Department of English in George School, George School, Pa., and from 1908–10 was Instructor in English at Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., studying abroad at Oxford during the summer of 1910. After a third year of residence at Columbia in 1910–11, he returned to Phillips Academy, where he is at present Instructor in English.

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Footnotes, originally at the bottoms of the pages that referenced them, have been collected, sequentially renumbered, and placed just before the Index.

Footnote 378 (referenced on page 204) was missing from the original book.