George Gordon Lord Byron (1788-1824)
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
(excerpt)
...
103 Time was, ere yet in these degenerate days
104Ignoble themes obtain'd mistaken praise,
105When sense and wit with poesy allied,
106No fabl'd graces, flourish'd side by side;
107From the same fount their inspiration drew,
108And, rear'd by taste, bloom'd fairer as they grew.
109Then, in this happy isle, a Pope's pure strain
110Sought the rapt soul to charm, nor sought in vain;
111A polish'd nation's praise aspir'd to claim,
112And rais'd the people's, as the poet's fame.
113Like him great Dryden pour'd the tide of song,
114In stream less smooth, indeed, yet doubly strong.
115Then Congreve's scenes could cheer, or Otway's melt--
116For nature then an English audience felt.
117But why these names, or greater still, retrace,
118When all to feebler bards resign their place?
119Yet to such times our lingering looks are cast,
120When taste and reason with those times are past.
121Now look around, and turn each trifling page,
122Survey the precious works that please the age;
123This truth at least let satire's self allow,
124No dearth of bards can be complain'd of now.
125The loaded press beneath her labour groans,
126And printers' devils shake their weary bones;
127While Southey's epics cram the creaking shelves,
128And Little's lyrics shine in hot-press'd twelves.
129Thus saith the Preacher: "Nought beneath the sun
130Is new"; yet still from change to change we run:
131What varied wonders tempt us as they pass!
132The cow-pox, tractors, galvanism and gas,
133In turns appear, to make the vulgar stare,
134Till the swoln bubble bursts--and all is air!
135Nor less new schools of Poetry arise,
136Where dull pretenders grapple for the prize:
137O'er taste awhile these pseudo-bards prevail;
138Each country book-club bows the knee to Baal,
139And, hurling lawful genius from the throne,
140Erects a shrine and idol of its own;
141Some leaden calf--but whom it matters not,
142From soaring Southey down to grovelling Stott.
143 Behold! in various throngs the scribbling crew,
144For notice eager, pass in long review:
145Each spurs his jaded Pegasus apace,
146And rhyme and blank maintain an equal race;
147Sonnets on sonnets crowd, and ode on ode;
148And tales of terror jostle on the road;
149Immeasurable measures move along;
150For simpering folly loves a varied song,
151To strange mysterious dulness still the friend,
152Admires the strain she cannot comprehend.
153Thus Lays of Minstrels--may they be the last!--
154On half-strung harps whine mournful to the blast.
155While mountain spirits prate to river sprites,
156That dames may listen to the sound at nights;
157And goblin brats, of Gilpin Horner's brood,
158Decoy young border-nobles through the wood,
159And skip at every step, Lord knows how high,
160And frighten foolish babes, the Lord knows why;
161While high-born ladies in their magic cell,
162Forbidding knights to read who cannot spell,
163Despatch a courier to a wizard's grave,
164And fight with honest men to shield a knave.
165 Next view in state, proud prancing on his roan,
166The golden-crested haughty Marmion,
167Now forging scrolls, now foremost in the fight,
168Not quite a felon, yet but half a knight,
169The gibbet or the field prepar'd to grace;
170A mighty mixture of the great and base.
171And think'st thou, Scott! by vain conceit perchance,
172On public taste to foist thy stale romance,
173Though Murray with his Miller may combine
174To yield thy muse just half-a-crown per line?
175No! when the sons of song descend to trade,
176Their bays are sear, their former laurels fade.
177Let such forego the poet's sacred name,
178Who rack their brains for lucre, not for fame:
179Still for stern Mammon may they toil in vain!
180And sadly gaze on gold they cannot gain!
181Such be their meed, such still the just reward
182Of prostituted muse and hireling bard!
183For this we spurn Apollo's venal son,
184And bid a long "good night to Marmion."
185 These are the themes that claim our plaudits now;
186These are the bards to whom the muse must bow;
187While Milton, Dryden, Pope, alike forgot,
188Resign their hallow'd bays to Walter Scott.
189 The time has been, when yet the muse was young,
190When Homer swept the lyre, and Maro sung,
191An epic scarce ten centuries could claim,
192While awe-struck nations hail'd the magic name;
193The work of each immortal bard appears
194The single wonder of a thousand years.
195Empires have moulder'd from the face of earth,
196Tongues have expir'd with those who gave them birth,
197Without the glory such a strain can give,
198As even in ruin bids the language live.
199Not so with us, though minor bards, content
200On one great work a life of labour spent:
201With eagle pinion soaring to the skies,
202Behold the ballad-monger Southey rise!
203To him let Camoëns, Milton, Tasso yield,
204Whose annual strains, like armies, take the field.
205First in the ranks see Joan of Arc advance,
206The scourge of England and the boast of France!
207Though burnt by wicked Bedford for a witch,
208Behold her statue plac'd in glory's niche;
209Her fetters burst, and just releas'd from prison,
210A virgin phoenix from her ashes risen.
211Next see tremendous Thalaba come on,
212Arabia's monstrous, wild and wondrous son:
213Domdaniel's dread destroyer, who o'erthrew
214More mad magicians than the world e'er knew.
215Immortal hero! all thy foes o'ercome,
216For ever reign--the rival of Tom Thumb!
217Since startled metre fled before thy face,
218Well wert thou doom'd the last of all thy race!
219Well might triumphant genii bear thee hence,
220Illustrious conqueror of common sense!
221Now, last and greatest, Madoc spreads his sails,
222Cacique in Mexico, and prince in Wales;
223Tells us strange tales, as other travellers do,
224More old than Mandeville's, and not so true.
225Oh Southey! Southey! cease thy varied song!
226A bard may chant too often and too long:
227As thou art strong in verse, in mercy, spare!
228A fourth, alas! were more than we could bear.
229But if, in spite of all the world can say,
230Thou still wilt verseward plod thy weary way;
231If still in Berkley ballads most uncivil,
232Thou wilt devote old women to the devil,
233The babe unborn thy dread intent may rue:
234"God help thee," Southey, and thy readers too.
235 Next comes the dull disciple of thy school,
236That mild apostate from poetic rule,
237The simple Wordsworth, framer of a lay
238As soft as evening in his favourite May,
239Who warns his friend "to shake off toil and trouble,
240And quit his books, for fear of growing double";
241Who, both by precept and example, shows
242That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose;
243Convincing all, by demonstration plain,
244Poetic souls delight in prose insane;
245And Christmas stories tortur'd into rhyme
246Contain the essence of the true sublime.
247Thus, when he tells the tale of Betty Foy,
248The idiot mother of "an idiot boy";
249A moon-struck, silly lad, who lost his way,
250And, like his bard, confounded night with day;
251So close on each pathetic part he dwells,
252And each adventure so sublimely tells,
253That all who view the "idiot in his glory"
254Conceive the bard the hero of the story.
255 Shall gentle Coleridge pass unnotic'd here,
256To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear?
257Though themes of innocence amuse him best,
258Yet still obscurity's a welcome guest.
259If Inspiration should her aid refuse
260To him who takes a pixy for a muse,
261Yet none in lofty numbers can surpass
262The bard who soars to elegize an ass.
263So well the subject suits his noble mind,
264He brays the laureat of the long-ear'd kind.
Notes
103] First published in March 1809, this poem of over a thousand lines is partly a response to the unfavourable review of Byron's Hours of Idleness in the Edinburgh Review of January 1808. The first edition began with this line.
115] Otway: tragic dramatist of the Restoration.
128] Little's lyrics. Thomas Moore published his early poems under the pseudonym "Thomas Little."
Hot-pressed twelves. After printing, sheets were pressed between cold or hot rollers. Twelves are duodecimo volumes, each sheet being folded to make twelve leaves.
129] See Ecclesiastes I: 9.
132] Cow-pox: vaccination against small pox, first tried by Edward Jenner in 1796, who set up the National Vaccine Establishment in 1808.
Tractors: according to E. H. Coleridge, metal rods advertised to cure "Red Noses, Gouty Toes, Windy Bowels, Broken Legs, Hump Backs" by an American quack early in the century.
Galvanism: the medical use of electricity.
Gas: laughing gas (nitrous oxide), a stimulant first used by Dr. Beddoes in the late eighteenth century.
142] Stott: "Stott, better known in the Morning Post by the name of Hafiz. This person is at present the most profound explorer of the bathos" (Byron's note).
148] Tales of terror. A book of this name, written by "Monk" Lewis, with the assistance of Scott and others, was published in 1801.
157] Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel (pub. 1805) grew out of the suggestion that he write a ballad on the border legend of Gilpin Horner.
173] Murray and Miller were publishers with whom Constable, Byron's publisher, had arranged to share the copyright of Marmion.
184] "Good night to Marmion:" "the pathetic and also prophetic exclamation of Henry Blount, Esquire, on the death of honest Marmion" (Byron's note).
190] Maro: Virgil.
203] Camoëns: Portuguese epic poet, author of the Lusiad (pub. 1572).
Tasso: Italian epic poet, author of Gerusalemme Liberata (pub. 1580).
205-22] Southey's Joan of Arc was first published in 1796, Thalaba in 1801, and Madoc in 1805.
213] Domdaniel: "a seminary for evil magicians, under the roots of the sea" (Southey).
216] Tom Thumb: the hero of Fielding's farce, The Tragedy of Tragedies, or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great.
217] Here and in line 225, Byron refers to Southey's irregular, unrhymed verse-forms.
222] Cacique: West Indian Prince. #Mexico ... Wales. The first part of Madoc takes place in Wales, the second in Mexico.
224] Mandeville's. The very popular fourteenth-century travel book Mandeville's Travels pretended to be an authentic account of exotic marvels.
231-32] "See The Old Woman of Berkeley, a ballad by Mr. Southey, wherein an aged gentlewoman is carried away by Beelzebub on a 'high trotting horse'." (Byron's note).
239-40] See Wordsworth, The Tables Turned, 1-4.
260-64] Refers to Coleridge's early poems Song of the Pixies and Effusion To a Young Ass (in which he calls the ass "brother").
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: George Gordon, lord Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers; a satire (London: J. Cawthorn, March 1809). B-10 4322 Fisher Rare Book Library (Toronto). Byron, Works. 17 vols. London: John Murray, 1832-33. PR 4351 M6 1832 ROBA
First publication date:
1809
RPO poem editor: M. T. Wilson
RP edition: 3RP 2.480.
Recent editing: 2:2002/3/27
Form: couplets
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