Byron’s Monody on the Death of Sheridan, written at Diodati on July 17, 1816, and recited in Drury Lane Theatre on September 7, was followed by a period of several years in which he ceased to employ the heroic couplet in poetry of any sort. The reasons for this temporary abandonment of what had been, hitherto, a favorite measure, are not altogether clear, although his action may be ascribed, in part, to his renunciation of things English and to the influence upon him of his study of the Italians. During his residence in Italy, Byron used many metrical forms: the Spenserian stanza, ottava rima, terza rima, blank verse, and other measures in some shorter lyrics and ephemeral verses. Not until The Age of Bronze, which he began in December, 1822, did he return to the heroic couplet of English Bards.

On January 10, 1823, Byron, then living in Genoa, wrote a letter to Leigh Hunt, in which, among other things, he said: “I have sent to Mrs. S[helley], for the benefit of being copied, a poem of about seven hundred and fifty lines length—The Age of Bronze—or Carmen Seculare et Annus haud Mirabilis, with this Epigraph—‘Impar Congressus Achilli’.” By way of description, he added: “It is calculated for the reading part of the million, being all on politics, etc., etc., etc., and a review of the day in general,—in my early English Bards style, but a little more stilted, and somewhat too full of ‘epithets of war’ and classical and historical allusions.”377 The work as revised and completed contains 18 sections and 778 lines. Originally destined for The Liberal, it was eventually published anonymously by John Hunt, on April 1, 1823.

The Age of Bronze is, then, entirely a political satire, intended chiefly as a counterblast to the recent stringent regulations of the reactionary Congress of Verona (1822). It comprises, however, other material: an introductory passage on the great departed leaders, Pitt, Fox, and Bonaparte; frequent digressions treating of the struggles for constitutional government then taking place in Europe; and some lines attacking the landed proprietors in England for their luke-warm opposition to foreign war. It is, in nearly every sense, a timely poem, although the note of “Vanitas Vanitatum” sounded in the early sections gives the satire a universal application.

For a comprehension of Byron’s motives in writing The Age of Bronze, it is necessary to understand something of the situation in Europe at the time. Following the numerous insurrections of 1820–22 in Spain, Portugal, Naples, Greece, and the South American States, the European powers, guided by the three members of the Holy Alliance, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, sent delegates to meet at Verona on October 20, 1822, for a consideration of recent developments in politics. The leading figure at the conference was Metternich, the Austrian statesman, although Francis of Austria, Alexander of Russia, and Frederick William of Prussia were among the monarchs present. Montmorenci, representing an ultra-royalist ministry under Villiele, was there to look after the interests of France; while England, deprived at the last moment of Castlereagh’s services by his suicide, sent Wellington. The gathering finally resolved itself into a conclave for the purpose of discussing the right of France to interfere in the affairs of Spain, by restoring Ferdinand VII, a member of the House of Bourbon, to the throne of which he had been deprived by the Constitutionalists. Wellington, after protesting against the agreement reached by the other envoys to permit the interference of France, left the Congress,378 by Canning’s instructions, in December. His withdrawal, however, did not affect the ultimate decision of the Congress to stamp out revolt whenever it assailed the precious principle of Legitimacy. War between France and Spain broke out in 1823; Ferdinand VII was replaced upon his tottering throne; and the despotic policy of Metternich triumphed, for a time, over democracy. Canning’s only reply was to recognize the independence of the rebellious colonies of Spain, and to assert the belligerency of the Greeks, then fighting for their liberty against the Turks.

It is to the year which saw the work of the Congress of Verona that Byron’s secondary title, Annus haud Mirabilis, obviously refers. In a striking passage in the beginning of the poem, he pays a tribute to the mighty dead, contrasting, by implication, the leaders of the Congress with the departed heroes: Pitt and Fox, buried side by side in Westminster Abbey; and Napoleon,

“Who born no king, made monarchs draw his car.”

The summary which Byron presents of Napoleon’s career is full of admiration for the fallen emperor’s genius, and of resentment at the indignities which, according to contemporary gossip, he had been compelled to undergo on St. Helena. The man “whose game was empires and whose stakes were thrones” was forced, says the poet, to become the slave of “the paltry gaoler and the prying spy.” The passage is both an appreciation and a judgment, wavering, as it does, between sympathy and condemnation for the conqueror who burst the chains of Europe only to renew,

“The very fetters which his arm broke through.”

The reference to these giants of the past leads Byron naturally to a glorification of such liberators as Kosciusko, Washington, and Bolivar, and to a joyful heralding of revolutions in Chili, Spain, and Greece:

Under the influence of this enthusiasm he prophecies a liberal outburst which will end in the regeneration of Europe.

Contrasted with the optimism of this aspiring idealism is Byron’s gloom over the deeds of the Congress of Verona. The measures advocated by this gathering, as we have seen, were reactionary and autocratic; and Byron’s description of it, tinged with liberal sentiment, is vigorously satirical. In the conference headed by Metternich, “Power’s foremost parasite,” he can see nothing but a body of tyrants,

Many of the allusions in Byron’s sketches of the members recall the language used by Moore in his Fables for the Holy Alliance. Moore’s views of the situation in Europe agreed substantially with those of Byron. Byron’s reference to the “coxcomb czar,”

“The autocrat of waltzes and of war,”

recalls Moore’s mention of that sovereign in Fable I:

Byron accuses Louis XVIII, who was not present at the Congress, of being a gourmand and a hedonist,

The same idea is conveyed in Moore’s description of that king as,

Especially painful to Byron was the report that Marie Louise (1791–1849), Napoleon’s widow, who had been secretly married to her chamberlain, Adam de Neipperg, had attended the Congress, and had become reconciled to her first husband’s captors. One section of the satire paints a picture of her leaning on the arm of the Duke of Wellington, “yet red from Waterloo,” before her husband’s ashes have had time to chill.

The most bitter, and, at the same time, the most just satire in the poem is directed at the English landed gentry:

The rise in prices due to the long-continued war had fattened the purses of the farmers and land-holders in England, and led them to wish secretly for the continuance of the struggle. Byron attacks severely their grudging assent to proposals of peace, and, in a succession of rhymes on the word “rent,” points out the selfishness of their position. The diatribe contains some of Byron’s most passionate lines:

Although an occasional touch of mockery reminds us of Don Juan, The Age of Bronze, in method, shows a reversion to the invective manner of English Bards. It can hardly be said, however, that this later satire is any advance over the earlier poem. Its allusions are now unfamiliar to the average reader, and the names once so pregnant with meaning have faded into dim memories. Although The Age of Bronze has sagacity and practicality, it lacks unity and concentration. Without the vehement sweep of English Bards, it is also too rhetorical and declamatory. Most readers, despite the flash of spirit which now and then lights its pages, have found the satire dull.

The Blues, so little deserving of attention in most respects, is unique among Byron’s satires for two reasons: it is written in the form of a play, and it employs the anapestic couplet metre, used by Anstey and later by Moore. Byron’s first reference to it occurs in a letter to Murray from Ravenna, August 7, 1821: “I send you a thing which I scratched off lately, a mere buffoonery, to quiz the Blues, in two literary eclogues. If published, it must be anonymously—don’t let my name out for the present, or I shall have all the old women in London about my ears, since it sneers at the solace of their ancient Spinsterstry.”379 On September 20, 1821, he calls it a “mere buffoonery, never meant for publication.”380 Murray, following his usual custom with literature which was likely to get him into trouble, cautiously delayed publication, and the poem was turned over to John Hunt and printed in The Liberal, No. III (pages 1–24), for April 26, 1823. It was not attributed to Byron by contemporary critics, most of them giving Leigh Hunt credit for the authorship.

There is nothing in Byron’s letters to explain the immediate motive which led the poet to scribble a work so unworthy of his genius. In his journal kept during his society life in London there are several references to the “blues,” and later he made some uncomplimentary allusions to them in Beppo and Don Juan. In a sense his efforts to ridicule them seem to parallel the attacks of Gifford on a coterie equally harmless and inoffensive.

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,

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.