[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.”