In many respects Byron had more in common with Gifford than with Pope. It is Gifford to whom, in English Bards, he refers so often as a master; it is he whom he mentions in 1811 as his “Magnus Apollo”[117]; and it was of the Baviad and the Mæviad that he was thinking when he conceived his plan of hunting down the “clamorous brood of Folly.”
Pope, preserving in his satire a calm deliberation which enabled him both to conceal and to concentrate his inward wrath, was capable, even when most in a rage, of a sustained analysis of those whom he hated, and seldom let his temper sweep him off his feet. Gifford and Byron prefer a more slashing and a less reserved method. Dallas once said of Byron: “His feelings rather than his judgment guided his pen.”[118] The same idea was also expressed by the poet himself:—“Almost all I have written has been mere passion.”[119] These two statements, confirming each other, explain the lack of poise and the want of a sense of proportion which are apparent in English Bards, as they were apparent in the Baviad. Unlike Dryden, neither Gifford nor Pope allows his victims any merit; each paints entirely in sombre colors, without ever perfecting a finished sketch or alleviating the black picture with the admission of a single virtue. Their conclusions, naturally, are unpleasantly dogmatic, founded as they are on prejudice and seldom subjected to reason. Most satire is, of course, biassed and unjust, but the careful craftsman takes good care that his charges shall have a semblance of plausibility and shall not defeat their purpose by arousing in reaction a sympathy for the defendant.[120] Satire written in a rage is likely to be mere invective, and invective, even when embodied in artistic form, is usually less effective than deliberate irony. Byron in his later satire learned better than to portray an enemy as all fool or all knave.
Gifford was, as he sedulously protested, fighting for a principle, aiming at the extermination of certain forms of affectation and false taste in poetry. There is no ground for suspecting his sincerity, any more than there is for questioning Byron’s motive in his effort to defend the classical standards against the encroachments of romanticism. It so happened that Gifford was performing a genuine service to letters, while Byron engaged himself in a struggle at once unnecessary and hopeless. In their zeal and enthusiasm, however, both satirists lost a feeling for values. Gifford delivered sledge-hammer blows at butterflies; Byron classed together, without discernment, the work of mediocrity and genius, and heaped abuse indiscriminately upon poetaster and poet.
Gifford’s method, like Byron’s, was descriptive and direct, and his satires have little action. The Baviad, with its dialogue framework, is not unlike some of Pope’s Epistles, while the Mæviad is more akin to English Bards. Byron, following Mathias and Gifford, employed prose notes to reinforce his verse, but he never, like Gifford, padded them with quotations from the men whom he was attacking. In both the Mæviad and English Bards names are printed in full. Gifford used no type names, nor did he succeed in creating a type. In style and diction Byron is Gifford’s superior. The latter was often vulgar and inelegant, and his ear for rhythm and melody was poor. Byron’s instinctive good taste kept him from blotting his pages with the language of the streets. His study of Pope, moreover, had enabled him to acquire something of the smoothness as well as of the vigor of that master.
It may be said in general of English Bards that it owes most in versification to Pope, and most in manner and structure to Gifford. There are, however, other satirists to whom Byron may have been slightly indebted. At the time when he was preparing British Bards, Francis Hodgson (1781–1852), his close friend, irritated by some severe criticism in the Edinburgh Review on his translation of Juvenal (1807), was planning his Gentle Alterative prepared for the Reviewers, which appeared in Lady Jane Grey; and other Poems (1809). The fact that the provocation was the same as for English Bards and that the two authors were acquaintances offers a curious case of parallelism in literature. It is certain, however, that Byron’s satire, which is much longer than the Gentle Alterative, is indebted to it only in minor respects, if at all. Both satires mention the ludicrous mistake of an Edinburgh Review article in attributing to Payne Knight some Greek passages really quoted from Pindar; but this error had been discussed in a long note to All the Talents, and was a favorite literary joke of the period. Both poets, too, call upon the master, Gifford, to do his part in castigating the age. Beyond these superficial similarities, it may safely be asserted that Byron borrowed nothing from Hodgson.
It is curious that the striking simile of the eagle shot by an arrow winged with a feather from his own plume used by Moore in Corruption[121] should have been employed by Byron[122] in speaking of the tragic death of Henry Kirke White (1785–1805), the religious poet and protégé of Southey. The simile, which has been traced to Fragment 123 of Æschylus, occurs also in Waller’s To a Lady Singing a Song of His Own Composing. It is somewhat remarkable that two poets in two successive years should have happened upon the same figure, each working it out so elaborately. Aside from this one parallelism, Moore’s early satires, almost entirely political, would seem to have had no definite influence upon English Bards.
It has been shown, then, that Byron’s ideas in his satire were not always entirely his own, and that he reflected, in many cases, the views and sometimes the phraseology of other satirists, notably Pope, Churchill, and Gifford. English Bards belongs to the school of English classical satire, and, as such, has the peculiarities and the established features common to the different types of that genre. In the preface to the second edition of his poem, Byron said: “I can safely say that I have attacked none personally, who did not commence on the offensive.”[123] To accept this literally would be to misinterpret Byron’s whole theory of satire. Whether he admitted it or not he was a great personal satirist—in English Bards, primarily a personal satirist. Looking back at the time when his wrath was fiercest, he said: “Like Ishmael, my hand was against all men, and all men’s against me.”[124] Even when satirising a principle or a movement, he was invariably led to attack the individuals who represented it. Swift’s satiric code:
“Malice never was his aim;
He lash’d the vice, but spar’d the name;
No individual could resent,