Where thousands equally were meant,”
was exactly contrary to Byron’s practice. He sought always to contend with persons, to decide questions, not by argument, but by a hand-to-hand grapple.
The peculiar features of English Bards are to be explained by the author’s character. He did not let his reason rule. From notes and letters we learn that he was often in doubt whether to praise or censure certain minor figures: it was on the spur of the moment that he changed “coxcomb Gell” to “classic Gell.” He was courageous and aggressive, but he was also unfair and illogical. There is little real humor in English Bards, so little that one is inclined to wonder where Jeaffreson discovered the “irresistibly comic verse” of which he speaks. When the satirist tries to be playful, the result is usually brutality. He has not yet acquired the conversational railling mood which he utilized so admirably in Beppo.
In spite of its crudities, its lack of restraint, and its manifest prejudices, English Bards shows many signs of power. In the light of the greater satire of Don Juan, it seems immature and inartistic, but it surpasses any work of a similar kind since the death of Pope. It is Byron’s masterpiece in classical satire. To excel it he had to turn for inspiration to another quarter, and to change both his method and his style.
CHAPTER V
“HINTS FROM HORACE” AND “THE CURSE OF MINERVA”
On July 2, 1809, Byron, accompanied by his friend, John Cam Hobhouse, sailed from Falmouth for Lisbon on a trip that was to take him to Spain, Malta, Greece, and Turkey. When he returned to England in July, 1811, after two years of travel and adventure, he brought with him “4000 lines of one kind or another,” including the first two cantos of Childe Harold and two satires, Hints from Horace and The Curse of Minerva. Hints from Horace, written in March, 1811, during the poet’s second visit to Athens, is dated March 14, 1811, on the last page of the most authentic manuscript. It was composed at the Capuchin Convent in Athens, where he had met accidentally with a copy of Horace’s epistle Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica, commonly known as the Ars Poetica.
The history of the fortunes of this work is perhaps worth relating. Byron, on his arrival, handed it over at once to Dallas, without giving him a hint of Childe Harold; indeed, only the latter’s obvious disappointment induced the poet to show him the Pilgrimage, which then seemed of little importance to its author. On September 4, 1811, Byron requested Dallas to aid him in correcting the proofs of Hints from Horace, and “in adapting the parallel passages of the imitation in such places to the original as may enable the reader not to lose sight of the allusion.”[125] There is, however, no reason for thinking that Dallas actually undertook the task, for on October 13th Byron complained to Hodgson that the labor of editing was still hanging fire, and begged the latter to assist him. Shortly after, owing partly to the adverse criticism of Dallas, and partly to Murray’s wish not to endanger the success of Childe Harold, the idea of immediate publication was put aside for some years. In 1820, Byron, then resident in Italy, was reminded of his unprinted satire, and wrote Murray to inform him that the manuscript had been left, among various papers, with Hobhouse’s father in England.[126] At intervals he expressed anxiety about the proofs, which Murray, exercising his discretion, delayed sending. From this revived project Byron was, for a time, dissuaded by the wise counsel of Hobhouse, who suggested that the poem would require much revision. Nevertheless on January 11, 1821, he informed Murray that he saw little to alter,[127] and accused him of having neglected to comply with his orders. A postscript to a letter of February 16, 1821, indicates that he was contemplating printing the Hints with its Latin original.[128] After March 4, 1822, there is no further allusion to the satire in his correspondence, and the question of printing it seems to have been forgotten. Although a few selections, amounting to 156 lines, were inserted in Dallas’s Recollections (1824), the poem did not appear complete until the Works were published by Murray in 1831.
Hints from Horace, through a curious perversity of judgment, was always a great favorite with Byron, and was estimated by him as one of his finest performances. His mature opinion of it and a possible cause for his preference are given in a letter to Murray, March 1, 1821: “Pray request Mr. Hobhouse to adjust the Latin to the English: the imitation is so close that I am unwilling to deprive it of its principal merit—its closeness. I look upon it and my Pulci as by far the best things of my doing.”[129] On September 23, 1820, when he had published portions of his masterpiece, Don Juan, he said, referring to the period of Hints from Horace: “I wrote better then than now.”[130] No intelligent reader will be likely to agree with Byron’s preposterous verdict on his own work, for Hints from Horace, although designed as a sequel to English Bards, is so much less vigorous and brilliant that it suffers decidedly by a comparison with the earlier satire. The poet, far from the scenes and associations where his rage had been aroused, has lost the angry inspiration which raised English Bards above mere ranting, and the white heat of his passion has cooled with the flight of time. The praise which Byron bestowed upon his poem is additional testimony to the often repeated assertion that authors are incompetent critics of their own productions.
Byron’s boastful claim for the accuracy of Hints from Horace as a version of the Ars Poetica may possibly lead to some misconceptions. Professor A. S. Cook, in his Art of Poetry, has pointed out some particular passages in which the English poet imitated his model, and has proved that he followed Horace, in places, with reasonable closeness. But Hints from Horace is far from being, like Byron’s version of the first canto of Pulci’s Morgante Maggiore, a mere translation. It must be remembered that Byron, in his secondary title, defined the Hints in three different ways in as many manuscripts, as “an Allusion,” as an “Imitation,” and as a “Partial Imitation.” The fact seems to be that the work conforms, in general, to the structure and argument of the Ars Poetica, in many cases translating literally the phrasing of the original, but altering and reorganizing the satire to fit current conditions.
The idea of thus preserving the continuity of Horace’s poem, while revising and readapting its text, was probably first conceived by Oldham in his English version of the Ars Poetica. In his preface Oldham stated his design as follows: “I resolved to alter the scene from Rome to London, and to make Use of English Names of Men, Places, and Customs, where the Parallel would decently permit, which I conceived would give a kind of New Air to the Poem, and render it more agreeable to the Relish of the Present Age.” Accordingly, while keeping roughly to the text of Horace, he introduced plentiful references to English poets. Byron also gives his satire a modern setting, but in so doing, takes more liberties than Oldham. He substitutes Milton for Homer as the classic example of the epic poet; he makes Shakspere instead of Æschylus the standard writer of drama. He inserts many passages, such as the remarks on the Italian Opera, on Methodism, and on the versification of Hudibras, which have no counterparts in the Ars Poetica. Oldham had refrained from satirising his contemporaries; Byron improves every opportunity for assailing his old antagonists. Allusions to “Granta” and her Gothic Halls, to “Cam’s stream,” to Grub-street, and to Parliament make Hints from Horace a thoroughly modern poem. We may apply to it Warburton’s comment on Pope’s Imitations: “Whoever expects a paraphrase of Horace, or a faithful copy of his genius, or manner of writing ... will be much disappointed.” Byron restates, without much alteration, the critical dicta which Horace had established as applicable to poetry in all times and countries; he takes the plan of the Ars Poetica as a rough guide for his English adaptation; but he introduces so many digressions and changes so many names that his satire is firmly stamped with his own individuality.