“There is no sterner moralist than pleasure.”[354]
As has been pointed out, this kind of sententious utterance in the form of a proverb or an epigram was very common with the Italian burlesque writers, especially with Pulci.
Something of the universality of Don Juan, of its appeal, not only to particular countries and peoples, but also to the world at large, may be indicated by the number of translations of it which exist.[355] It appeared in French in 1827, in Spanish in 1829, in Swedish in 1838, in German in 1839, in Russian in 1846, in Roumanian in 1847, in Italian in 1853, in Danish in 1854, in Polish in 1863, and in Servian in 1888. Since these first versions appeared, other and more satisfactory ones have been published in most of the countries named. It was chiefly through Don Juan that Byron became, what Saintsbury calls him, “the sole master of young Russia, young Italy, young Spain, in poetry.” In these days when Byron’s defence of the rights of the people is less necessary, when his opposition to despotism would find few tyrants to oppose, and when his condemnation of war has developed into a widespread movement for universal peace, the powerful impetus which his satire gave to the progress of democracy is likely to be overlooked. His attitude of defiance furnished an illustrious example to struggling nations, and gave them hope of better things.[356]
Within this limited space it has been possible to touch only upon one or two phases of the many which this poem, perhaps the greatest in English since Paradise Lost, presents to the reader. Byron’s satire, in assuming a wider scope and a greater breadth of view, in growing out of the insular into the cosmopolitan, has also blended itself with romance and realism, with the lyric, the descriptive, and the epic types of poetry until it has created a new literary form and method suitable only to a great genius. His satiric spirit, in assailing not only individuals, but also institutions, systems, and theories of life, in concerning itself less with literary grudges and personal quarrels than with momentous questions of society, in progressing steadily from the specific to the universal, has undergone a striking evolution. The tone of his satire has become less formal and dignified, and more colloquial, while a more frequent use of irony, burlesque, and verbal wit makes the poem easier and more varied. Byron joins mockery with invective, raillery with contempt, so that Don Juan, in retaining certain qualities of the old Popean satire, seems to have tempered and qualified the acrimony of English Bards. The inevitable result of this development was to make Don Juan a reflection of Byron’s personality such as no other of his works had been. Don Juan is Byron; and in this fact lies the explanation of its strength and weakness.
CHAPTER IX
“THE VISION OF JUDGMENT”
Byron’s Vision of Judgment, printed in the first number of The Liberal, October 15, 1820, was the climax of his long quarrel with Southey, the complicated details of which have been related at length by Mr. Prothero in his edition of the Letters and Journals.[357] Byron’s hostility to Southey was due apparently to several causes, some personal, some political, and some literary. He believed that Southey had spread malicious reports about the alleged immorality of his life in Switzerland with Jane Clermont, Mary Godwin, and Shelley; he considered the laureate to be an apostate from liberalism and a truckler to aristocracy; and he had no patience with his views on poetry and his lack of respect for Pope. The two men were, in fact, fundamentally incompatible in temperament and opinions, Southey being firmly convinced that Byron was a dissipated and dangerous debauchee, while Byron thought Southey a dull, servile, and somewhat hypocritical scribbler.
Since The Vision of Judgment was Byron’s only attempt at genuine travesty, it may be well to differentiate between the travesty and other kindred forms of satire, all of which are commonly grouped under the generic heading, burlesque. Broadly speaking, a burlesque is any literary production in which there is an absurd incongruity in the adjustment of style to subject matter or subject matter to style, humor being excited by a continual contrast between what is high and what is low, what is exalted and what is commonplace.[358] The peculiar effect of burlesque is ordinarily dependent upon its comparison with some form of literature of a more serious nature. Of the subdivisions of burlesque, the parody aims particularly at the humorous imitation of the style and manner of another work, the original characters and incidents being displaced by incidents of a more trifling sort. The parody has been a popular variety of satire, and examples of it may be discovered in the productions of any sophisticated or critical age.[359] The travesty, in the narrow sense of the term, is a humorous imitation of another work, the subject matter remaining substantially the same, being made ridiculous, however, by a grotesque treatment and a less imaginative style. A serious theme is thus deliberately degraded and debased. The commonest subjects of travesty have been derived, as one might expect, from mythology or from the great epic poems. Its popularity, except in certain limited periods, has never equalled that of the parody.[360]
Considered simply as a travesty, Byron’s Vision is remarkable in two respects: first, in that it burlesques a contemporary poem, while most other travesties ridicule works of antiquity, or at least of established repute; second, in that it has an intrinsic merit of its own far surpassing that of the poem which suggested it. Thus the general dictum that a travesty is valuable chiefly through the contrast which it presents to some nobler masterpiece is contradicted by Byron’s satire, which is in itself an artistic triumph.
Southey’s Vision of Judgment, of which Byron’s Vision is a travesty, was written in the author’s function as poet-laureate shortly after the death of George III. on January 29, 1820. Certainly in many ways it lent itself readily to burlesque.[361] It was composed in the unrhymed dactyllic hexameter, a measure in which Southey was even less successful than Harvey and Sidney had been. It was full of adulation of a king, who, however much he may have been distinguished for domestic virtues, was surely, in his public activities, no suitable subject for encomium. It was dedicated, moreover, to George IV. in language which seems to us to-day the grossest flattery.[362] The poem itself, divided into twelve sections, deals with the appearance of the old King at the gate of heaven, his judgment and beatification by the angels, and his meeting with the shades of illustrious dead—English worthies, mighty figures of the Georgian age, and members of his own family.
Many special features of Southey’s poem were disagreeable to Byron. It was a vindication and a eulogy of the existing system of government in England, George III, whom Byron despised, being described as an ideal sovereign. Southey had made a contemptuous reference to what he was pleased to call the watchwords of Faction, “Freedom, Invaded Rights, Corruption, and War, and Oppression,” a summary which must have been distasteful to a man who had been raising his voice in resistance to political tyranny. Southey had also carefully omitted Dryden and Pope from the list of great writers whom George III met in heaven. On the whole Southey’s poem was pervaded by a tone of arrogance and self-satisfaction which was exceedingly offensive to Byron.