[The seven Satires here grouped together represent work extending from Byron's twentieth to his thirty-sixth year, from the beginning, that is, to the end of his poetical career. Two distinct, and sometimes hostile, veins are to be noted in Byron's genius, -one romantic and lyrical, connecting him with the revolutionary poets of the day, the other satirical and neo-classic, deriving from the school of Queen Anne. In Childe Harold and the Tales the first vein is to be seen almost pure; in the Satires the second reigns practically unmixed; in Don Juan the two are inextricably blended, giving the real Byron, the full poet. - The history of the Satires is briefly as follows: As early as October, 1807, Byron had written a satirical poem which he called British Bards. This was printed in quarto sheets (but never published), one set of which is now in the British Museum. Lord Brougham's review of Hours of Idleness appeared in the Edinburgh Review of January, 1808. Spurred to revenge the scant courtesy shown him in that essay, Byron added to his satirical verses and published them anonymously as English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, in March, 1809. These began with the ninety-seventh line of the present poem. A second edition, to which he prefixed his name, followed in October of the same year, and a third and fourth were called for during his 'pilgrimage' in 1810 and 1811. On returning to England he revised the work for a fifth edition, which was actually printed when he suddenly resolved to suppress it. Several copies, however, escaped destruction, and from one of these the poem as it now appears in his Works derives. Byron often in later years regretted the indiscriminate sarcasm of this Satire, but the trick of flinging barbed arrows right and left he never forgot. Many of the judgments, though extravagant in expression as befits the Muse of Juvenal, are shrewdly penetrating. Hints from Horace was always a favorite of the author's, but is little read to-day. It was, however, for various reasons not published in the author's lifetime, and was first included among his Works in the Murray edition of 1831. - The Curse of Minerva is dated by Byron himself, Athens, March 17, 1811. It was to be published, as was also Hints from Horace, in the volume with the fifth edition of the Bards, and Moore states that The Curse of Minerva, and with it necessarily the other two poems, was suppressed out of deference to Lord Elgin. It was, curiously enough, first published in Philadelphia in 1815. — Byron wrote The Waltz in 1812 and published it anonymously in the spring of the following year. It exhibits at once the indignation felt by many English folk at the introduction of this form of round dancing' from Germany, and more particularly, that almost morbid sense of modesty which Byron, like many another man of rakish habits, so often manifested in words throughout his life. The Blues, a mere buffoonery,' as Byron calls it, was scribbled' at Ravenna, August 6, 1821, and is apparently a mere unprovoked effervescence of wit. It was published anonymously in Leigh Hunt's Liberal of April 26, 1823.—Into the long quarrel between Southey, the reformed radical and obliging poet-laureate, and Byron, leader of the 'Satanic school,' there is neither space nor occa sion here to enter. The result on Byron's side, notably the Dedication to Don Juan and The Vision of Judgment, was the writing of some of the most enjoyable satire ever penned. George III. died January 29, 1820; Southey's apotheosis of that monarch was published in April of the next year as A Vision of Judgment. The inexpressible flatness and absurdity of the hexameters which composed this poem cried out for ridicule, and Byron was ready. He sent the manuscript of his satire of the same name to Murray, October 4, 1821; Murray, however, cautiously refrained from printing, and the poem was first published in the Liberal of October 15, 1822. — The Age of Bronze was composed in December of 1822 and January of 1823, and three months later was published by John Hunt without the author's name. The poem contains a rapid survey of Napoleon's career, of the Congress of the Allied Powers at Verona, 1822, and the political difficulties of Great Britain of that year.] All my friends, learned and unlearned, have urged me not to publish this Satire with my name. If I were to be turned from the career of my humour by quibbles quick, and paper bullets of the brain, I should have complied. with their counsel. But I am not to be terrified by abuse, or bullied by reviewers, with or without arms. I can safely say that I have attacked none personally, who did not commence on the offensive. An author's works are public property he who purchases may judge, and publish his opinion if he pleases; and the authors I have endeavoured to commemorate may do by me as I have done by them. I dare say they will succeed better in condemning my scribblings, than in mending their own. But my object is not to prove that I can write well, but, if possible, to make others write better. As the poem has met with far more success than I expected, I have endeavoured in this edition to make some additions and alterations, to render it more worthy of public perusal. In the first edition of this satire, published anonymously, fourteen lines on the subject of Bowles's Pope were written by, and inserted at the request of, an ingenious friend of mine, who has now in the press a volume of poetry. In the present edition they are erased, and some of my own substituted in their stead, my only reason for this being that which I conceive would operate with any other person in the same manner, a determination not to publish with my name any production, which was not entirely and exclusively my own composition. With regard to the real talents of many of the poetical persons whose performances are mentioned or alluded to in the following pages, it is presumed by the author that there can be little difference of opinion in the public at large; though, like other sectaries, each has his separate tabernacle of proselytes, by whom his abilities are over-rated, his faults overlooked, and his metrical canons received without scruple and without consideration. But the unquestionable possession of considerable genius by several of the writers here censured renders their mental prostitution more to be regretted. Imbecility may be pitied, or, at worst, laughed at and forgotten; perverted powers demand the most decided reprehension. No one can wish more than the author that some known and able writer had undertaken their exposure; but Mr. Gifford has devoted himself to Massinger, and, in the absence of the regular physician, a country practitioner may, in cases of absolute necessity, be allowed to prescribe his nostrum to prevent the extension of so deplorable an epidemic, provided there be no quackery in his treatment of the malady. A caustic is here offered; as it is to be feared nothing short of actual cautery can recover the numerous patients afflicted with the present prevalent and distressing rabies for rhyming. As to the Edinburgh Reviewers, it would indeed require an Hercules to crush the Hydra; but if the author succeeds in merely bruising one of the heads of the serpent,' though his own hand should suffer in the encounter, he will be amply satisfied. Speed, Pegasus!-ye strains of great and small, Ode, epic, elegy, have at you all! I printed - older children do the same. 50 'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in 't. Not that a title's sounding charm can save Or scrawl or scribbler from an equal grave: This Lambe must own, since his patrician The work of each immortal bard appears The single wonder of a thousand years. Empires have moulder'd from the face of earth, Tongues have expired with those who gave them birth, Without the glory such a strain can give, First in the ranks see Joan of Arc advance, Though burnt by wicked Bedford for a witch, Behold her statue placed in glory's niche; Her fetters burst, and just released from prison, 210 A virgin phoenix from her ashes risen. threw More mad magicians than the world e'er knew. Immortal hero! all thy foes o'ercome, |