“An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king.”
Professor Courthope has suggested that Byron’s Don Juan owes something to the work of Peter Pindar.[374] The evidence for the relationship seems, however, to be very scanty. Wolcot never employed the octave stanza, nor, indeed, did he ever show evidences of true poetic power. The two men were, of course, alike in that they were both liberals, both avowedly enemies of George III, and both outspoken in their dislikes. But Byron seldom except in parts of the Vision used the method of broad caricature so characteristic of Pindar. In the Vision, too, occurs the only obvious reference on Byron’s part to Pindar’s satire. He describes the effect of Southey’s dactyls on George III, in the lines:
“The monarch, mute till then, exclaim’d, ‘What! What!
Pye come again? No more—No more of that.’”[375]
The couplet recalls Pindar’s delightful imitations of that king’s eccentric habit of repeating words and phrases. However, Byron’s style in both Don Juan and the Vision is drawn more from Italian than from English models.
The Vision of Judgment is, if we exclude Don Juan as being more than satire, the greatest verse-satire that Byron ever wrote. It is only natural then to compare the poem with other English satires which have high rank in our literature. A practically unanimous critical decision has established Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel as occupying the foremost position in English satire before the time of Byron. Unquestionably this work of Dryden’s is admirable; it is witty, pointed, and direct, embellished with masterly character sketches and almost faultless in style. It does, however, suffer somewhat from a lack of unity, due primarily to the fact that the narrative element in the poem is subordinate to the description. Byron’s Vision, on the other hand, has a single plot, which is carefully carried out to a climax and a conclusion. Action joins with invective and description in forming the satire. Thus the two poems, approximately the same length if we consider only Part I of Absalom and Achitophel, give a decidedly different impression. Dryden’s satire seems a panorama of figures, while Byron’s has the coherence and clash of a drama.
Absalom and Achitophel is witty but seldom humorous; while Byron joins caricature and burlesque to wit. The best lines in Dryden’s poem, such as:
“Beggar’d by fools, whom still he found too late;
He had his jest, and they had his estate,”
excite admiration for the author’s cleverness, but rarely arouse a smile; the Vision, the contrary, is full of buffoonery. Dryden’s sense of the dignity of the satirist’s office did not permit him to lower his style, and he never became familiar with his readers; the very essence of Byron’s satire is its colloquial character.