“Not often on earth had he seen such a sight,
Nor his work done half so well:
For the field ran so red with the blood of the dead,
That it blushed like the waves of Hell!”[160]
The visit of the Devil to Parliament, with the poet’s comment on the spectacle there, is reminiscent of some sections of the Rolliad. The satire concludes with some caustic characterizations of Tory statesmen, some observations on the immorality of round dancing, and a picture of sixty scribbling reviewers, brewing damnation for authors.
The significant feature of The Devil’s Drive is the mocking spirit which animates the poem. Although the humor is sometimes clumsy and cheap, and the style formless and crude, the underlying tone is no longer ferocious, and the satire is no longer mere invective. The work is practically the only satire of Byron’s before Beppo in which are mingled the cool scorn, the bizarre wit, and the grotesque realism which were to be blended in Don Juan. The poem, too, is proof that by 1814, at least, Byron was firmly fixed in most of his political opinions. He had shown his dislike for Castlereagh and the Regent; he had expressed himself as opposed to all war and bloodshed, except in a righteous cause; and he had become an advanced liberal thinker, ready to oppose all unprogressive measures.
After the publication of the Corsair in January, 1814, Byron announced his intention of quitting poetry.[161] His resolution, however, was short-lived, for on April 10th he wrote Murray that he had just finished an “ode on the fall of Napoleon.”[162] Byron had, from the first, been interested in the career of Napoleon, with whom he felt, apparently, an instinctive sympathy. The poet’s expressed judgments of the Emperor seem, however, to indicate several changes in sentiment. In Childe Harold he had called him “Gaul’s Vulture,” and had spoken of “one bloated chief’s unwholesome reign”; in his Journal for November 17, 1813, he said: “He (Napoleon) has been a Héros de Roman of mine—on the Continent—I don’t want him here.”[163] The Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, composed in a single day after the news of the abdication of Fontainebleau, is a severe attack on the fallen Emperor, in which Byron, reproaching him for not having committed suicide, terms him “ill-minded man,” “Dark Spirit,” and “throneless homicide,” ending with an uncomplimentary contrast between him and Washington. Nevertheless, when the report of Waterloo reached him, Byron cried: “I am damned sorry for it.” In three poems written shortly after—Napoleon’s Farewell, Lines from the French, and An Ode from the French—he shows a kind of admiration for the Corsican. Finally came the splendid stanzas on Napoleon in Childe Harold, III,[164] ending with the personal reference, implying that Byron’s own faults and virtues were those of the French emperor and exile.
The one long classical satire during this period is The Waltz, which has to do primarily with society. On October 18, 1812, Byron wrote Murray: “I have a poem on Waltzing for you, of which I make you a present; but it must be anonymous. It is in the old style of English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers.”[165] The satire was printed in the spring of 1813, but was so coldly received that Byron, on April 21, 1813, begged Murray to deny the report that he was the author of “a certain malicious publication on Waltzing.”[166] The whole affair leaves Byron under the suspicion of duplicity.
The poem was published with a motto from the Aeneid:
“Qualis in Eurotæ ripis, aut per juga Cynthi,