During the seven years between the completion of The Curse of Minerva and the publication of Beppo, Byron’s contributions to satire were, on the whole, sporadic, ephemeral, and unworthy of his genius. He composed in this period only one long formal satire, The Waltz, and that appeared anonymously, to be disowned by its author. The remaining satiric product may be divided into three groups: political epigrams and squibs, like Windsor Poetics, many of them printed in the newspapers, others sent in letters to friends; jocular and fragmentary jeux d’esprit, often, like The Devil’s Drive, semi-political; and ironical and invective verses dealing with his domestic troubles, illustrated by A Sketch. Nearly all are timely impromptus, to few of which he gave careful revision. The period is plainly transitional, for it marks the gradual change in Byron’s satiric method from the formal vituperation of English Bards to the colloquial raillery of Beppo. Little by little he forsakes the heroic couplet for other measures; more and more he diverges in practice from the principles of his masters, Pope and Gifford. As he grows more experienced and more mature, he tends to employ mockery as well as abuse, and in this development is to be seen an approach to the manner and spirit of Don Juan.

The causes for the comparative unproductivity in satire of this period in Byron’s life are by no means difficult to discover. The years which followed his return from abroad saw his dramatic entrance into London society, his association with leaders in politics and literature, his engagement to Miss Milbanke and eventual marriage to her on January 2, 1815, and his separation from her in 1816. Before 1812 he had been a somewhat isolated author; now he was a prominent and much discussed personage, busy with duties and engagements. It is true that even in the midst of these exciting days he did not cease writing; but his interest had been turned to the verse romance, popularized in England by Scott, and his literary work resulted in The Giaour and the narrative poems which followed it in rapid succession. Engaged in so many pleasurable pursuits, the poet had small inclination for sustained effort, and contented himself with pouring forth, with astonishing facility and fluency, these melodramatic Eastern tales. Possibly, too, his circumstances were so fortunate up to 1816 that he did not resort instinctively, as he did later, to satire as a means of voicing his dissatisfaction with men and things. It was not until he had been driven from his native land by the condemnation of his countrymen that his satiric spirit became again a dominant mood.

To comprehend the development of Byron’s political views, it is necessary to understand the conditions under which he formed them. After two previous attacks of insanity, George III became permanently demented in 1810, and the Regency Bill, making Prince George actual ruler of the nation, was passed on February 5, 1810. His well-known vicious propensities and illicit amours had made him unpopular, and when, on February 23, 1812, he first appeared in public as sovereign, he was coldly received. It had been generally supposed that with the power in his hands, he would reward the Whigs who had stood by him so faithfully through his many difficulties, but after vain efforts to organize a coalition ministry, he appointed Lord Liverpool as Prime Minister on June 9, 1812, and the Tories retained complete control over affairs of state. This action, equivalent to treachery, made the Regent a target for Whig abuse, and that party never ceased reviling the ruler who had been disloyal to their cause.

Byron at Cambridge had rather lukewarmly supported Whig doctrines, and when he took his seat in the House of Lords, he selected one of the neutral benches. Undoubtedly the attack upon him by the Whig Edinburgh Review inclined him to look askance on the party of which he was temperamentally a member; and it will be remembered that in English Bards he had assailed Lord Holland and other prominent Whigs. Once in London, however, he allied himself with the opposition, and soon became a regular visitor at Holland House. His three speeches in Parliament were in advocacy of liberal measures, the first, on February 27, 1812, being delivered in resistance to a bill instituting special penalties against the frame-breakers of Nottingham, and the second being a plea for Catholic emancipation. Scott’s suggestion that Byron’s liberalism was due “to the pleasure it afforded him as a vehicle of displaying his wit and satire against individuals in office” is not needed to explain the latter’s preference for Whig policies, for the poet would have joined himself inevitably to the more progressive and more radical party. Although his political beliefs at this time were somewhat vague and occasionally inconsistent, he was by nature an individualist and an opponent of conservatism. His espousal of liberal views may, however, have been assisted by his intimacy with Moore, Leigh Hunt, and other radical writers.

In reply to Byron’s attack on him in English Bards, Moore had sent the satirist a letter on January 1, 1810, preparatory to a challenge unless reparation were offered. Fortunately the note did not reach Byron until his landing in England, when the Irishman’s wrath had cooled and he himself was in a repentant mood. A short correspondence led to the meeting of the two, with Campbell and Rogers, at the house of the latter in November, 1811, where the difference was amicably adjusted. On December 11th Byron invited Moore to visit him at Newstead, and though Moore found it impossible to accept, the poets soon became good friends.152 It was not until the formation of this friendship that Byron began to take any active part in current politics; during the rest of his life, however, he was linked with Moore as a satirist on the Whig side and was, to a considerable extent, influenced by the latter’s work.153

As we have seen, Moore had failed in his attempts at formal satire; but in 1812, shortly after his acquaintance with Byron began, he commenced his persistent and stinging gibes at the Regent and his coterie. On February 13, 1812, the Prince sent his notorious letter to the Duke of York, asking for Whig support, and Moore’s admirable verse parody was soon in private circulation. This was one of the earliest, and certainly one of the most delightful, of the many brilliant satires with which Moore, for years, amused the town. In March, 1813, under the pen-name of “Thomas Brown, the Younger,” he published Intercepted Letters; or the Two-penny Postbag, in which he borrowed the structure of the anonymous Groans of the Talents by pretending to have discovered a number of letters from various celebrated personages. Moore’s letters, eight in all, are in rapid anapestic and octosyllabic metres, and are unusually bright and piquant, full of allusions to the scandalous gossip of court life. Although Moore continued his satires in numerous verses of a similar type, he never excelled this first success.

In March, 1812, Byron joined Moore in assailing the Regent. In the Whig Morning Chronicle for March 7th was printed a short epigram without a signature, called A Sympathetic Address to a Young Lady. The lines read as follows:—

The poem refers to an incident which had taken place at Carlton House a few days before, when the Princess Charlotte had burst into tears on learning that her royal father was intending to desert his Whig adherents. No one, apparently, suspected that Byron was the author; but in the second edition of the Corsair (February, 1814) the verses appeared as Lines to a Lady Weeping, publicly avowed by him. His acknowledgment brought upon him a storm of abuse from Tory papers—the Courier, the Morning Post, and the Sun—and a discussion ensued entirely out of proportion to the merit of the epigram which had excited it.154 “How odd,” wrote Byron to Murray, “that eight lines should have given birth, I really think, to eight thousand.”155 It is probable that no single production of Byron’s aroused more hostile comment at the time of its appearance.

Byron’s attitude towards the Regent at this period exposes him to a charge of double-dealing. In June, 1812, three months after the composition of the epigram, he met the Prince at a ball in an interview in which the two men conversed on Scott and his poetry. In relating the talk to Scott, Byron mentions that the Regent’s opinions were conveyed “with a tone and taste which gave me a very high idea of his abilities and accomplishments, which I had hitherto considered as confined to manners, certainly superior to those of any living gentleman.”156 It is probable that Byron was a little flattered by the Prince’s condescension; but his own tactlessness in acknowledging his epigram prevented any further intercourse, and he subsequently became the Regent’s open enemy.

Jeaffreson suggests that Byron’s avowal of the Lines to a Lady Weeping may have been hastened by his sympathy with Leigh Hunt,157 who, with his brother, John Hunt, had been tried for a libel on the Regent printed in their Examiner for March 12, 1812, and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and a fine of 500 pounds. Byron saw a kindred spirit in Hunt, and, after meeting him in prison in May, 1813, became his close friend. Hunt, on his part, stood by Byron in his Examiner at the time of the latter’s separation from his wife, and dedicated to him his Rimini (1816). Byron, after the unfortunate circumstances connected with The Liberal, modified his lofty opinion of Hunt; but in 1813 the latter was, to Moore and Byron, simply a martyr to liberal principles, a man who had been unjustly persecuted and condemned.158 There is, however, no evidence to justify Jeaffreson’s conclusion.

In his satire on “the first gentleman of Europe,” Byron was both less prolific and more savage than Moore. His satiric spirit, as usual, was stimulated by particular incidents which offered an opportunity for timely comment. It had been ascertained accidentally that Charles I had been buried in the vault with Henry VIII; and on April 1, 1813, the Regent was present at the opening of the coffins containing the ashes of the two sovereigns. This episode Byron made the theme of two short satires: Windsor Poetics, circulated in manuscript among his friends, but not printed until 1819; and the lines On a Royal Visit to the Vaults, published first in 1904. The point in both poems is the same—that George combines the vices of his two predecessors:

In mentioning Windsor Poetics, the better of the two poems, to Moore, Byron confessed, with some discernment: “It is too farouche; but, truth to say, my satires are not very playful.”159

The vindictive seriousness of Byron’s satire, as contrasted with Moore’s playfulness, is nowhere better shown than in the Condolatory Address to Sarah, Countess of Jersey, printed without his permission in the Champion, July 31, 1814, after it had been sent to the lady herself in a letter of May 29. Once a favorite of the Regent’s, Lady Jersey had incurred his dislike by her kindness to the deserted Princess of Wales, with the result that the Prince returned to Mrs. Mee, the painter, a miniature of the Countess, and announced his intention of ignoring her. Byron, who had been more than once the guest of Lady Jersey, saw a chance to strike a blow in her defense by assailing the Regent, and his lines on that ruler are scathing:

In satire of this sort there is nothing sportive or delicate; it is sheer invective of the kind which Byron had used on Clarke and was to employ against Castlereagh.

Byron never became reconciled to the Regent, not even when, as George IV, the latter ascended the throne. Indeed what is probably the poet’s most bitter estimate of his sovereign was sent in a letter to Moore on September 17, 1821—the lines now entitled The Irish Avatar. Queen Caroline had died on August 7, 1821, shortly after the failure of her husband to secure a divorce, and not over a week later, the king was feasted with regal pomp at Dublin by the servile Irish office-holders. The combination of circumstances was fit material for satire, and Byron spoke out in stanzas that ring with rage and contempt:—

The satire in this poem is as spontaneous and sincere as any Byron ever wrote; it is passionate, convincing, laden with noble scorn. The two methods of irony and invective are admirably mingled, without a trace of humor.

We have already noticed some early poems in which Byron had evinced a liking for uncommon rhymes. In the humorous Farewell to Malta, written May 26, 1811, and printed in 1816, he employed octosyllabics, with such rhymes as: yawn sirs—dancers, fault’s in—waltzing, prate is—gratis. The Devil’s Drive, an irregular and amorphous fragment, broken off on December 9, 1813, also contains some extraordinary rhymes; but it deserves attention especially because it anticipates, to some extent, the thought and manner of Don Juan. It is styled a sequel to The Devil’s Walk, a fanciful ballad composed by Southey and Coleridge in 1799, but attributed by Byron to Porson, the great Cambridge scholar. Byron’s poem, a rambling and discursive satire, is crammed with allusions to current events, prophetic of the views which he was to advocate during the remainder of his career. It describes a night visit of the Devil to his favorites on earth, in the course of which he pauses to survey the battle-field of Leipzig, and then, passing on to England, investigates a Methodist chapel, the Houses of Parliament, a royal ball, and other supposed resorts of his disciples. Byron’s portrayal of the horrors of war is probably his first satiric expression of what was to become a frequent theme in his later work, and especially in Don Juan. As the Devil gazes down with glee at the bloody plain of Leipzig, the satirist remarks:

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:

and with a prefatory letter from “Horace Hornem, Esq.,” the professed author. This imaginary personage is a country gentleman of a Midland county, who has married a middle-aged Maid of Honor. During a winter in town with his wife’s relative, the Countess of Waltzaway, Hornem sees his spouse at a ball, waltzing with an hussar, and, after several vain attempts to master the new dance himself, composes the satire in its honor, “with the aid of William Fitzgerald, Esq.—and a few hints from Dr. Busby.” In the poem, however, Byron apparently makes no effort to fit the language or style to this fictitious figure.

Although the waltz, brought originally from Germany, was, in 1812, steadily winning its way to acceptance by the more fashionable element of society, its introduction was still meeting with opposition from many quarters. Byron, as censor of the Italian Opera and of Little’s Poems, was certainly not inconsistent in disapproving of the foreign dance on the ground of its immodesty. Doubtless, too, his own lameness, which prevented him from participating in the amusement, had some influence on his attitude. He had denounced the dance in English Bards in the line,

“Now in loose waltz the thin-clad daughters leap,”

and in Section 25 of The Devil’s Drive, he had made the Devil’s fairest disciples waltzers, and had quoted Satan’s words:

Byron’s declaration that The Waltz is in the style of English Bards is not altogether exact, for though the metre of the two satires is the same and the same machinery of prose notes is used in both poems, the first-named work has a kind of jocularity which distinguishes it from the more severe earlier production. The Waltz, moreover, has some features of the mock-heroic, although the conventional structure of that genre is not made conspicuous. Thus it begins with an apostrophe to “Terpsichore, Muse of the many-twinkling feet,” and later, in true heroic manner, the author exclaims,

The personification of “Waltz,” carried out for a time in such phrases as “Nimble Nymph,” “Imperial Waltz,” “Endearing Waltz,” and “Voluptuous Waltz,” is, however, often disregarded or forgotten. She is described as a lovely stranger, “borne on the breath of Hyperborean gales,” from Hamburg to England, and welcomed there by the “daughters of the land.” At this point the mock-heroic element ceases to be noticeable, and the rest of the poem is devoted to an exposure of the iniquity which the new dance had brought into English high society.

It is in The Waltz that Byron for the first time manifests the ability to deal with political questions in a lighter vein, in a manner something like that of Moore. He alludes, for instance, to the Regent’s well-known preference for ladies of a mature age:

This topic Moore touched upon frequently, particularly in Intercepted Letters, II, from Major M’Mahon, the Regent’s parasite and pander, and in The Fudge Family in Paris, Letter X, in which Biddy Fudge says,

“The Regent loves none but old women you know.”

A note to line 162 of The Waltz has a joking reference to the Regent’s whiskers, an adornment which had excited Moore’s merriment, especially in his “rejected drama,” The Book, appended to Letter VII of Intercepted Letters. The fact that the dance is an importation from Germany allows Byron to sum up ironically what England owes to that country:

“A dozen dukes, some kings, a Queen—and Waltz.”

The body of the satire is occupied with a description of the dance itself, given in lines which are too often more prurient and suggestive than the waltz could possibly have been. Byron is here surely not at his best, and his coarseness is not extenuated by his alleged moral purpose. Weiser’s judgment that The Waltz is the ripest of Byron’s youthful poems will, to most critics, seem unwarranted. There is barely a line of the satire which is either witty or epigrammatic; the style is low and the language is cheap in tone; the versification is lifeless and dull. The one thing for which it is to be noted is the spirit of mockery sometimes displayed, and the tendency to jest rather than to inveigh.

The competition for a suitable dedicatory address for the reopening of Drury Lane Theatre in 1812,167 memorable as the occasion for the skilful parodies contained in the Rejected Addresses168 of James and Horace Smith, led Byron also to compose a rather extraordinary satire. The genuine address of Dr. Busby (1755–1838) had been rejected, along with those of the other competitors; but on October 14th, two or three evenings after the formal opening of the theatre, Busby’s son endeavored to recite his father’s poem from one of the boxes, and nearly started a riot. Byron thereupon wrote a Parenthetical Address, by Dr. Plagiary, which was printed in the Morning Chronicle for October 23, 1812. This satire, which Byron called “a parody of a peculiar kind,” is noteworthy only in that it selects lines and phrases from Busby’s address, and connecting them by satiric comments, manages to make the original seem ridiculous.

The story of Byron’s love affairs between 1812 and 1817 has been so often related that any presentation of the details here is unnecessary, especially since in only one case did his amours lead him to satire. According to Medwin, Lady Caroline Lamb, the fickle and incorrigible lady who so violently sought Byron for a lover, called one day at the poet’s apartments, and finding him away, wrote in a volume of Vathek the words “Remember me.” When Byron discovered the warning, he added to it two stanzas of burning invective, concluding,

Several theories have been advanced to explain the causes and results of Byron’s unfortunate marriage, but the main facts seem to be simple enough. In 1813 he proposed to Miss Milbanke, a cousin of Lady Caroline Lamb’s by marriage, and was refused. The intimacy of the two continued, however, and a second offer, made in 1814, was accepted. The wedding, which took place on January 2, 1815, was accompanied by some inauspicious omens, but the honeymoon, spent at Halnaby, was apparently happy. Byron’s financial circumstances were straitened, and, on his return to London, he was pursued by creditors. He himself was irritable, unsuited for a quiet domestic life, and Lady Byron was probably over-puritanical. At any rate, whoever may have been the more at fault, his wife, soon after the opening of 1816, left him, took steps to have his mental condition examined, and later demanded a separation. In this crisis of his life, public opinion sided with Lady Byron, and the poet became a social outcast.169 The deed of separation was signed on April 22, 1816, and on the 25th of the same month, Byron left England forever.

During the arrangements for the separation Byron showed no resentment towards his wife. Indeed he wrote Moore on March 8, 1816:—“I do not believe—that there ever was a better, or even a brighter, a kinder, or a more amiable and agreeable being than Lady Byron.”170 His wrath fell heavily, however, on Mrs. Clermont, Lady Byron’s old governess, who had come to stay with her mistress when the trouble began. On her Byron laid the responsibility for the events which followed. He thought her a spy on his actions, accused her of having broken open his desk in order to read his private papers, and considered her an impudent meddler. As he signed the deed of separation, he muttered, “This is Mrs. Clermont’s work.” His full rage against her burst out in A Sketch, finished March 29, 1816, and published, through some one’s indiscretion, in the Tory Champion for April 14th. Fifty copies of this satire were printed for private circulation, with Byron’s poem Fare Thee Well, addressed to his wife. The appearance of these verses in the newspapers started a violent controversy in the daily press, carried out on party lines.

A Sketch, containing 104 lines in heroic couplets, is a coarse and scurrilous attack on Mrs. Clermont, beginning with a short account of her life,

and closing with a terrible imprecation,

Perhaps no more savage satire was ever levelled at a woman; it is even more venomous than Pope’s assault on Lady Montagu in what Mr. Birrell calls “the most brutal lines ever written by man of woman.” Murray wrote Byron, after showing the satire to Rogers, Canning, and Frere:—“They have all seen and admired the lines; they agree that you have produced nothing better; that satire is your forte; and so in each class as you choose to adopt it.”171 These men, however, were active supporters of Byron, and their praise seems extravagant. Whatever his provocation may have been—and it was probably great—Byron did not enhance his fame by this barbarous tirade.

In the very midst of his anger the poet pauses in the poem to pay his wife a tribute and to assert his love for her; but not long after he turned to assail Lady Byron herself. Indeed he is said to have attached an epigram to the deed of separation,

In September, 1816, when he was in Switzerland, he wrote the Lines on Hearing that Lady Byron Was Ill, in which he fairly gloats over her in her sickness. No one can mistake the meaning of the line,

“I have had many foes, but none like thee,”

or of the charge,

These stanzas, however, were not printed until 1832. In the meantime Byron had continued the attack on his wife in Childe Harold, III, 117, and IV, 130–138, in Don Juan, and in an occasional short epigram sent to friends in England. There can be no doubt that as the years went by and his attempts at reconciliation were thwarted, he grew thoroughly embittered against her.

Byron’s habits of thought were so frequently satirical that it was natural for him to introduce satire even into poems which were obviously of a different character. In his preface to Childe Harold he announced his intention of following Beattie in giving full rein to his inclination, and being “either droll or pathetic, descriptive or sentimental, tender or satirical” as the mood came to him. In that poem the moralizing and didactic elements often closely approach satire, and there are some passages of genuine invective, a few of which have already been indicated.

In the first canto a visit to Cintra leads Byron into an indictment of the Convention of Cintra (1808), signed by Kellerman and Wellesley, by the terms of which the French troops in Portugal were permitted to evacuate with artillery, cavalry, and equipment. This agreement was regarded by the home officials as equivalent to treason, and the men responsible were subjected to some rigorous criticism. Byron took the popular side of the question in saying,

This patriotic mood seems, however, to have been a passing one. In after years he was not inclined to take the part of his country. Of a different sort are the stanzas on a London Sunday173 which, in Moore’s opinion, disfigure the poem. Canto I has also some satiric animadversions upon women, notably the lines,

In the final version of the first two cantos some stanzas of a satiric tone were omitted, among them lines on Frere, Carr, and Wellesley in Canto I, and passages on Elgin, Hope, Gell, and the “gentle Dilettanti” in Canto II.

A few ephemeral verses of this period still remain unnoticed: an occasional epistle in rhyme to Moore or Murray; four brief squibs on Lord Thurlow’s poetry; and several unimportant epigrams on trivial subjects. No one of them is significant as literature, and they may well be passed by without comment.

In a last glance at Byron’s satiric production from 1811 to 1818 we perceive that, with the single exception of Hints from Horace, an avowed imitation, his work was directed towards definite ends. He was little given to vague denunciation; on the contrary, in touch as he was with current events and a keen observer of what was going on around him, he aimed, in his satire, at specific evils and follies. It is interesting, too, that most of his work after his return from abroad was journalistic and transitory, hastily conceived and carelessly composed. At the same time there are signs of a change in spirit. Though he still continues to burst out into invective on provocation, he is beginning to recognize the value of humor and mockery. More and more he is employing new metrical forms, and neglecting the heroic couplet for freer and more varied measures.

When Byron left England in 1816, he had been taught much by experience and had acquired some maturity of judgment. To some extent, though not entirely, he had outgrown the affectation and morbid pessimism of his boyhood. In a stern school he had learned many lessons, and, as a result, his satire from the time of his voluntary exile until his death displays a different spirit. When at last he discovered an artistic form and style in which to embody it, it showed a decided gain in merit and originality over English Bards, which, in 1817, was still the best satire he had written.