The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 4

by Baron George Gordon Byron Byron

When Don Juan appeared (July 15, 1819), the "Dedication" was not forthcoming, but of its existence and character Southey had been informed. "Have you heard," he asks (Letter to the Rev. H. Hill, Selections from the Letters, etc., 1856, iii. 142), "that Don Juan came over with a Dedication to me, in which Lord Castlereagh and I ... were coupled together for abuse as the 'two Roberts'? A fear of persecution (sic) from the one Robert is supposed to be the reason why it has been suppressed. Lord Byron might have done well to remember that the other can write dedications also; and make his own cause good, if it were needful, in prose or rhyme, against a villain, as well as against a slanderer."

When George III. died (January 29, 1820), it became the duty of the "laurel-honouring laureate" to write a funeral ode, and in composing a Preface, in vindication of the English hexameter, he took occasion "incidentally to repay some of his obligations to Lord Byron by a few comments on Don Juan" (Letter to the Rev. H. Hill, January 8, 1821, Selections, etc., iii. 225). He was, no doubt, impelled by other and higher motives to constitute himself a censor morum, and take up his parable against the spirit of the age as displayed and fostered in Don Juan (see a letter to Wynne, March 23, 1821, Selections, etc., iii. 238), but the suppressed "Dedication" and certain gibes, which had been suffered to appear, may be reckoned as the immediate causes of his anathema.

Southey's Vision of Judgement was published April 11, 1821—an undivine comedy, in which the apotheosis of George III., the beatification of the virtuous, and the bale and damnation of such egregious spirits as Robespierre, Wilkes, and Junius, are "thrown upon the screen" of the showman or lecturer. Southey said that the "Vision" ought to be read aloud, and, if the subject could be forgotten and ignored, the hexameters might not sound amiss, but the subject and its treatment are impossible and intolerable. The "Vision" would have "made sport" for Byron in any case, but, in the Preface, Southey went out of his way to attack and denounce the anonymous author of Don Juan.

"What, then," he asks (ed. 1838, x. 204), "should be said of those for whom the thoughtlessness and inebriety of wanton youth can no longer be pleaded, but who have written in sober manhood, and with deliberate purpose?... Men of diseased hearts and depraved imaginations, who, forming a system of opinions to suit their own unhappy course of conduct, have rebelled against the holiest ordinances of human society, and hating that revealed religion which, with all their efforts and bravadoes, they are unable entirely to disbelieve, labour to make others as miserable as themselves, by infecting them with a moral virus that eats into the soul! The school which they have set up may properly be called the Satanic school; for, though their productions breathe the spirit of Belial in their lascivious parts, and the spirit of Moloch in those loathsome images of atrocities and horrors which they delight to represent, they are more especially characterized by a Satanic pride and audacious impiety, which still betrays the wretched feeling of hopelessness wherewith it is allied."

Byron was not slow to take up the challenge. In the "Appendix" to the Two Foscari (first ed., pp. 325-329), which was written at Ravenna, June-July, but not published till December 11, 1821, he retaliates on "Mr. Southey and his 'pious preface'" in many words; but when it comes to the point, ignores the charge of having "published a lascivious book," and endeavours by counter-charges to divert the odium and to cover his adversary with shame and confusion. "Mr. S.," he says, "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.... I am not ignorant," he adds, "of Mr. Southey's calumnies on a different occasion, knowing them to be such, which he scattered abroad on his return from Switzerland against me and others.... What his 'death-bed' may be it is not my province to predicate; let him settle it with his Maker, as I must do with mine. There is something at once ludicrous and blasphemous in this arrogant scribbler of all works sitting down to deal damnation and destruction upon his fellow-creatures, with Wat Tyler, the Apotheosis of George the Third, and the Elegy on Martin the regicide, all shuffled together in his writing-desk."

Southey must have received his copy of the Two Foscari in the last week of December, 1821, and with the "Appendix" (to say nothing of the Third Canto of Don Juan) before him, he gave tongue, in the pages of the Courier, January 6, 1822. His task was an easy one. He was able to deny, in toto, the charge of uttering calumnies on his return from Switzerland, and he was pleased to word his denial in a very disagreeable way. He had come home with a stock of travellers' tales, but not one of them was about Lord Byron. He had "sought for no staler subject than St. Ursula." His charges of "impiety," "lewdness," "profanation," and "pollution," had not been answered, and were unanswerable; and as to his being a "scribbler of all work," there were exceptions—works which he had not scribbled, the nefanda which disfigured the writings of Lord Byron. "Satanic school" would stick.

So far, the battle went in Southey's favour. "The words of the men of Judah were fiercer than the words of the men of Israel," and Byron was reduced to silence. A challenge (sent through Kinnaird, but not delivered) was but a confession of impotence. There was, however, in Southey's letter to the Courier just one sentence too many. Before he concluded he had given "one word of advice to Lord Byron"—"When he attacks me again, let it be in rhyme. For one who has so little command of himself, it will be a great advantage that his temper should be obliged to keep tune."

Byron had anticipated this advice, and had already attacked the laureate in rhyme, scornfully and satirically, but with a gay and genial mockery which dispensed with "wormwood and verdigrease" or yet bitterer and more venomous ingredients.

There was a truth in Lamb's jest, that it was Southey's Vision of Judgement which was worthy of prosecution; that "Lord Byron's poem was of a most good-natured description—no malevolence" (Diary of H. C. Robinson, 1869, ii. 240). Good-natured or otherwise, it awoke inextinguishable laughter, and left Byron in possession of the field.

The Vision of Judgment, begun May 7 (but probably laid aside till September 11), was forwarded to Murray October 4, 1821. "By this post," he wrote to Moore, October 6, 1821 (Letters, 1901, v. 387), "I have sent my nightmare to balance the incubus of Southey's impudent anticipation of the Apotheosis of George the Third." A chance perusal of Southey's letter in the Courier (see Medwin's Conversations, 1824, p. 222, and letters to Douglas Kinnaird, February 6, 25, 1822) quickened his desire for publication; but in spite of many appeals and suggestions to Murray, who had sent Byron's "copy" to his printer, the decisive step of passing the proofs for press was never taken. At length Byron lost patience, and desired Murray to hand over "the corrected copy of the proof with the Preface" of the Vision of Judgment to John Hunt (see letters to Murray, July 3, 6, 1822, Letters, 1901, vi. 92, 93). Finally, a year after the MS. had been sent to England, the Vision of Judgment, by Quevedo Redivivus, appeared in the first number (pp. 1-39) of the Liberal, which was issued October 15, 1822. The Preface, to Byron's astonishment and annoyance, was not forthcoming (see letter to Murray, October 22, 1822, Letters, 1901, vi. 126, and Examiner, Sunday, November 3, 1822, p. 697), and is not prefixed to the first issue of the Vision of Judgment in the first number of the Liberal.