In form the satire is a closet drama in two acts, each containing approximately 160 lines. The characters represented are intended, in many instances, for living persons. Thus, in the first act, which takes place before the door of a lecture room, Inkel, who is apparently Byron, converses with Tracy, who may be Moore. Within, Scamp, probably Hazlitt, is delivering a discourse to a crew of “blues, dandies, dowagers, and second-hand scribes.” Among the subjects for discussion between the two men is Miss Lilac, a spinster, and heiress, and a Blue, who is doubtless a caricature of Miss Milbanke, the later Lady Byron. References to “Renegado’s Epic,” “Botherby’s plays,” and “the Old Girl’s Review” indicate that Byron has returned to some favorite subjects for his satire.
The second act is located at the home of Lady Bluebottle, who resembles closely Lady Holland, the well-known Whig hostess and one of Byron’s friends. Sir Richard Bluebottle, in a monologue, complains of the crowd of,
“Scribblers, wits, lecturers, white, black, and blue,”
who invade his house and who are provided for at his expense. In the scene which ensues, Inkel acts as a sort of interlocutor, with the others as a chorus. Wordsworth, the “poet of peddlers,” is satirized in the old fashion of English Bards as the writer who,
“Singing of peddlers and asses,
Has found out the way to dispense with Parnassus.”
Southey is referred to as “Mouthy.” Of the other figures, Lady Bluemont is, perhaps, Lady Beaumont, and Miss Diddle, Lydia White, “the fashionable blue-stocking.” When the party breaks up, Sir Richard is left exclaiming,
“I wish all these people were damned with my marriage.”
On May 6, 1823, Byron finished Canto XVI of Don Juan. The fourteen extant stanzas of Canto XVII are dated May 8th. Shortly after he made preparations for his expedition to Greece, and, on July 23, 1823, sailed in the Hercules, with Gamba and Trelawney, for Cephalonia. From this time on, his work in poetry practically ceased. He wrote Moore from Missolonghi, March 4, 1824: “I have not been quiet in an Ionian Island but much occupied with business.... Neither have I continued Don Juan, or any other poem.”[381] He devoted himself to drilling Greek troops, holding conferences with leaders, and corresponding with the patriot parties. A fever, brought on by over-exposure, attacked him on April 11th, on the 19th, he died. His remains were brought to England, and buried in the little church of Hucknall Torquard, only a few miles from Newstead Abbey.