274 Letters, vi., 50.

275 Letters, iv., 217.

276 “This poem [Don Juan] carries with it at once the stamp of originality and defiance of imitation.” (Shelley, Letter to Byron, Oct. 21, 1821).

277 Don Juan, II., 105; II., 166; V., 4; VI., 5–6.

278 Ibid., V., 33–39.

279 Don Juan, IX., 41.

280 Letters, iv., 342.

281 Don Juan, I., 200.

282 Don Juan, XII., 55.

283 Letters, iv., 260.

284 Letters, vi., 155.

285 Don Juan, XIV., 99.

286 It was begun at Venice, September 6, 1818, and the first two cantos were published anonymously, July 15, 1819, by Murray. Despite much hostile comment, and the reluctance and eventual refusal of Murray to print the work, Byron continued with his project, entrusting the publication of the poem, after Canto V., to John Hunt. Canto XVI. was completed May 6, 1823, and appeared with Canto XV. on March 26, 1824. Fourteen stanzas of an unfinished Canto XVII. were among his papers at the time of his death.

287 Beppo, 79.

288 Don Juan, VIII., 135.

289 Childe Harold, II., 74–76.

290 Ode to the French, 91–104.

291 Childe Harold, IV., 92.

292 Don Juan, IX., 24.

293 Don Juan, VIII., 50.

294 Many details of Byron’s satire may be traced to corresponding passages in the works of Moore, whose Fudge Family in Paris (1818) was familiar to him, and whose Fables for the Holy Alliance (1823), many of which were written while the two poets were together in Venice, was dedicated to Byron. Moore denounced Castlereagh as a despot, a bigot, and a time-server, ridiculing him especially for the absurdity of his speeches, which were notorious for their mixed metaphors and poorly chosen phrasing.

295 Shelley in many short squibs, and particularly in the Mask of Anarchy (1819), had assailed the ministry. He had compared Castlereagh and Sidmouth, the Home Secretary, to “two vultures, sick for battle” and “two vipers tangled into one” (Similes for Two Political Characters of 1819).

296 Young had condemned war in Satire VII., 55–68; Cowper had spoken against it in the Task, in the lines:—

Leigh Hunt and Shelley held exactly Byron’s opinions, and expressed them repeatedly.

297 It is possible that Byron, in his description of this assemblage, was influenced to some extent by T. L. Peacock, the friend of Shelley, who had published Headlong Hall (1816) and Nightmare Abbey (1818). In these books Peacock had created a sort of prose Comedy of Humors by forming groups of curious eccentrics, each one obsessed by a single passion or hobby, and by giving each figure a name suggestive of his peculiar folly.

298 Don Juan, XI., 86.

299 Letters, v., 542.

300 Don Juan, I., 205.

301 Don Juan, III., 78–87.

302 Don Juan, III., 5.

303 Ibid., III., 3.

304 Ibid., III., 25.

305 Ibid., VI., 6.

306 Ibid., II., 205.

307 Ibid., VI., 27.

308 Ibid., I., 178; XI., 36.

309 Ibid., VI., 14.

310 Ibid., VI., 2.

311 In Canto II., the entire shipwreck episode is a symposium of accounts of other wrecks taken from Dalzell’s Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea (1812), Remarkable Shipwrecks (1813), Bligh’s A Narrative of the Mutiny of the Bounty (1790), and The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron (1768), the last named work being the story of the adventures of Byron’s grandfather. His account of the siege and capture of Ismail in Cantos VII. and VIII. is based, even, in minute details, on Decastelnau’s Essai sur l’histoire ancienne et moderne de la Nouvelle Russie.

312 Don Juan, III., 101–109.

313 Ibid., II., 17–23.

314 Ibid., XI., 10.

315 Byron attributed the unpopularity of Don Juan with the ladies, and particularly with the Countess Guiccioli, to the fact that it is the “wish of all women to exalt the sentiment of the passions, and to keep up the illusion which is their empire” and that the poem “strips off this illusion, and laughs at that and most other things” (Letters, v., 321). It was the opposition of the Countess which induced him to promise to leave off the work at the fifth canto, a pledge which he fortunately disregarded after keeping it for several months.

316 Childe Harold, II., 7.

317 Don Juan, VI., 22. See also I., 215; III., 35.

318 Ibid., V., 21.

319 Ibid., XI., 82, 86.

320 Ibid., II., 34.

321 Don Juan, XII., 86.

322 Poetry, VI., 79.

323 Don Juan, IX., 73.

324 Ibid., XIII., 100.

325 Don Juan, III., 96.

326 See Ibid., I., 9; II., 8; III., 110; IV., 113; VI., 57, and numerous other instances.

327 Only in Canto II. does the story begin at once; every other canto has a preliminary disquisition. Canto IX., containing eighty-five stanzas, uses forty-one of them before the narrative begins, and of the entire number, forty-six are clearly made up of extraneous material. Of the ninety stanzas in Canto XI., over fifty are occupied with Byron’s satire on English society and contemporary events. Canto II. is, of course, filled largely with the shipwreck and the episode of Haidée; but in Canto III., over forty of the entire one hundred and eleven stanzas are discursive, and many others are partly so.

328 Beppo, 52.

329 For other rhymes of exceptional peculiarity, see Don Juan, I., 102; II., 206; II., 207; V., 5.

330 Ibid., I., 22.

331 Ibid., II., 1.

332 Don Juan, I., 6.

333 Ibid., III., 111.

334 Ibid., XIII., 94.

335 Ibid., I., 62.

336 Ibid., I., 11.

337 Ibid., VII., 15.

338 Ibid., VII., 3.

339 Ibid., XIII., 8.

340 Ibid., XV., 91.

341 Ibid., II., 207.

342 Ibid., V., 5.

343 Ibid., XIV., I. See also I., 25; I., 67; XVI., 4.

344 Ibid., I., 154; II., 13, 22, 38.

345 A characteristic example is Ibid., IX., 34.

346 Don Juan, I., 123–124; V., 8–9; V., 18–19; VIII., 109–110.

347 Ibid., I., 120.

348 Ibid., XV., 72.

349 Ibid., VI., 64; VII., 21; VIII., 30; XIII., 75; XIV., 29, 63; XVI., 60, 94, 98.

350 Ibid., I., 34; VI., 47; VIII., 32.

351 Ibid., IV., 42.

352 Ibid., VII., 27.

353 Don Juan, XI., 20.

354 Ibid., III., 6. See also I., 63, 65, 72; II., 172, 179; IX., 15, 59; XIII., 6, 19.

355 Many imitations and parodies of Don Juan were printed during Byron’s lifetime, and afterwards; among them were Canto XVII. of Don Juan, by One who desires to remain a very great Unknown (1832); Don Juan Junior, a Poem, by Byron’s Ghost (1839); A Sequel to Don Juan (1843); The Termination of the Sixteenth Canto of Lord Byron’s Don Juan (1864), by Harry W. Wetton.

356 Byron’s influence upon the literature of the nineteenth century may be studied in Otto Weddigen’s treatise Lord Byron’s Einfluss auf die Europaischen Litteraturen der Neuzeit and in Richard Ackermann’s Lord Byron (pp. 158–182). Collins numbers among his disciples in Germany, Wilhelm Mueller, Heine, Von Platen, Adalbert Chamisso, Karl Lebrecht, Immermann, and Christian Grabbe; among his French imitators, Lamartine, Hugo, de la Vigne, and de Musset; among his followers in Russia, Poushkin and Lermontoff. To these should be added Giovanni Berchet in Italy, and José de Espronceda in Spain. No other English poet, except Shakspere, has impressed his personality so strongly upon foreign countries.

357 Letters, vi., 377–399.

358 Thus in the Batrachomyomachia the elevated manner of epic poetry is used in depicting a warfare between frogs and mice; while in Voltaire’s La Pucelle, the French national heroine is made to behave like a daughter of the streets.

359 Some examples of the parody are The Splendid Shilling (1701) by John Philips (1676–1709); The Pipe of Tobacco (1734) by Isaac Hawkins Browne (1760); Probationary Odes; Rejected Addresses; and Swinburne’s Heptalogia.

360 The travesty flourished especially during the 17th century in the work of Paul Scarron (1610–1660) and his followers in France, and of Charles Cotton (1630–1687), John Philips (1631–1706), and Samuel Butler (1612–1680) in England. During this period Virgil and Ovid were popular subjects for travesty. Several travesties of Homer were published in England during the 18th century, one of which, by Bridges, was read by Byron (Letters, v., 166).

361 Charles Lamb said of it that it deserved prosecution far more than Byron’s Vision; and Nichol has styled it “the most quaintly preposterous panegyric ever penned.”

362 In his dedication Southey called George IV. “the royal and munificent patron of science, art, and literature,” and praised the monarch’s rule as Regent and King as an epoch remarkable for perfect integrity in the administration of public affairs and for attempts to “mitigate the evils incident to our state of society.”

363 Letters, v., 387.

364 Ibid., vi., 10.

365 Ibid., vi., 93.

366 Letters, vi., 129.

367 Ibid., vi., 159.

368 In the only public retort which Southey undertook, a Letter to the Courier, December 8, 1824, he could do little more than make charges of misrepresentation, and repeat his accusation that Byron was one “who played the monster in literature, and aimed his blows at women.” Southey unwittingly had engaged with too powerful an antagonist and only his want of a sense of humor kept him from appreciating the fact.

369 Letters, v., 385.

370 The recurrence in the Vision of many familiar devices of Don Juan reminds us that the Vision marks Byron’s resumption of the ottava rima, which he had left off on December 27, 1820, at the completion of Don Juan, Canto V., because of the request of the Countess Guiccioli that he discontinue the work. In the meantime he turned his attention to the drama, and Cain, The Two Foscari, and Sardanapalus were published in December, 1821. The Vision then was his only work in the octave stanza between December 27, 1820, and June, 1822, when he began Canto VI. of Don Juan.

371 Byron had finished his translation of the first canto of the Morgante in February, 1820.

372 The Vision of Judgment, 25.

373 Morgante Maggiore, XXVI., 91.

374 History of English Poetry, v., 250.

375 The Vision of Judgment, 92.

376 Letters, vi., 77.

377 Letters, vi., 160–161.

378 (this footnote was missing from the original book.)

379 Letters, v., 338.

380 Letters, v., 369.

381 Letters, vi., 336.