by Lord Byron
Or more conceited in his petty sphere:
But surely it was not worth while to fold
Such trash below your wing, Asmodeus dear:
We had the poor wretch safe (without being bored
With carriage) coming of his own accord.
LXXXIX.
“But since he’s here, let’s see what he has done.”
“Done!” cried Asmodeus, “he anticipates
The very business you are now upon,
And scribbles as if head clerk to the Fates.
Who knows to what his ribaldry may run,
When such an ass as this, like Balaam’s, prates?”
“Let’s hear,” quoth Michael, “what he has to say:
You know we’re bound to that in every way.”
XC.
Now the bard, glad to get an audience, which
By no means often was his case below,
Began to cough, and hawk, and hem, and pitch
His voice into that awful note of woe
To all unhappy hearers within reach
Of poets when the tide of rhyme’s in flow;
But stuck fast with his first hexameter,
Not one of all whose gouty feet would stir.
XCI.
But ere the spavined dactyls could be spurred
Into recitative, in great dismay
Both Cherubim and Seraphim were heard
To murmur loudly through their long array;
And Michael rose ere he could get a word
Of all his foundered verses under way,
And cried, “For God’s sake stop, my friend! ‘twere best —
‘Non Di, non homines’ — you know the rest.”
XCII.
A general bustle spread throughout the throng,
Which seemed to hold all verse in detestation;
The Angels had of course enough of song
When upon service; and the generation
Of ghosts had heard too much in life, not long
Before, to profit by a new occasion:
The Monarch, mute till then, exclaimed, “What! what!
Pye come again? No more — no more of that!”
XCIII.
The tumult grew; an universal cough
Convulsed the skies, as during a debate,
When Castlereagh has been up long enough
(Before he was first minister of state,
I mean — the slaves hear now); some cried “Off, off!”
As at a farce; till, grown quite desperate,
The Bard Saint Peter prayed to interpose
(Himself an author) only for his prose.
XCIV.
The varlet was not an ill-favoured knave;
A good deal like a vulture in the face,
With a hook nose and a hawk’s eye, which gave
A smart and sharper-looking sort of grace
To his whole aspect, which, though rather grave,
Was by no means so ugly as his case;
But that, indeed, was hopeless as can be,
Quite a poetic felony “de se.”
XCV.
Then Michael blew his trump, and stilled the noise
With one still greater, as is yet the mode
On earth besides; except some grumbling voice,
Which now and then will make a slight inroad
Upon decorous silence, few will twice
Lift up their lungs when fairly overcrowed;
And now the Bard could plead his own bad cause,
With all the attitudes of self-applause.
XCVI.
He said — (I only give the heads) — he said,
He meant no harm in scribbling; ‘twas his way
Upon all topics; ‘twas, besides, his bread,
Of which he buttered both sides; ‘twould delay
Too long the assembly (he was pleased to dread),
And take up rather more time than a day,
To name his works — he would but cite a few —
“Wat Tyler” — ”Rhymes on Blenheim” — ”Waterloo.”
XCVII.
He had written praises of a Regicide;
He had written praises of all kings whatever;
He had written for republics far and wide,
And then against them bitterer than ever;
For pantisocracy he once had cried
Aloud, a scheme less moral than ‘twas clever;
Then grew a hearty anti-jacobin —
Had turned his coat — and would have turned his skin.
XCVIII.
He had sung against all battles, and again
In their high praise and glory; he had called
Reviewing “the ungentle craft,” and then
Became as base a critic as e’er crawled —
Fed, paid, and pampered by the very men
By whom his muse and morals had been mauled:
He had written much blank verse, and blanker prose,
And more of both than any body knows.
XCIX.
He had written Wesley’s life: — here turning round
To Satan, “Sir, I’m ready to write yours,
In two octavo volumes, nicely bound,
With notes and preface, all that most allures
The pious purchaser; and there’s no ground
For fear, for I can choose my own reviewers:
So let me have the proper documents,
That I may add you to my other saints.”
C.
Satan bowed, and was silent. “Well, if you,
With amiable modesty, decline
My offer, what says Michael? There are few
Whose memoirs could be rendered more divine.
Mine is a pen of all work; not so new
As it was once, but I would make you shine
Like your own trumpet. By the way, my own
Has more of brass in it, and is as well blown.
CI.
“But talking about trumpets, here’s my ‘Vision!’
Now you shall judge, all people — yes — you shall
Judge with my judgment! and by my decision
Be guided who shall enter heaven or fall.
I settle all these things by intuition,
Times present, past, to come — Heaven — Hell — and all,
Like King Alfonso. When I thus see double,
I save the Deity some worlds of trouble.”
CII.
He ceased, and drew forth an MS.; and no
Persuasion on the part of Devils, Saints,
Or Angels, now could stop the torrent; so
He read the first three lines of the contents:
But at the fourth, the whole spiritual show
Had vanished, with variety of scents,
Ambrosial and sulphureous, as they sprang,
Like lightning, off from his “melodious twang.”
CIII.
Those grand heroics acted as a spell;
The Angels stopped their ears and plied their pinions;
The Devils ran howling, deafened, down to Hell;
The ghosts fled, gibbering, for their own dominions —
(For ‘tis not yet decided where they dwell,
And I leave every man to his opinions);
Michael took refuge in his trump — but, lo!
His teeth were set on edge, he could not blow!
CIV.
Saint Peter, who has hitherto been known
For an impetuous saint, upraised his keys,
And at the fifth line knocked the poet down;
Who fell like Phaeton, but more at ease,
Into his lake, for there he did not drown;
A different web being by the Destinies
Woven for the Laureate’s final wreath, whene’er
Reform shall happen either here or there.
CV.
He first sank to the bottom — like his works,
But soon rose to the surface — like himself;
For all corrupted things are buoyed like corks,
By their own rottenness, light as an elf,
Or wisp that flits o’er a morass: he lurks,
It may be, still, like dull books on a shelf,
In his own den, to scrawl some “Life” or “Vision,”
As Welborn says — ”the Devil turned precisian.”
CVI.
As for the rest, to come to the conclusion
Of this true dream, the telescope is gone
Which kept my optics free from all delusion,
And showed me what I in my turn have shown;
All I saw farther, in the last confusion,
Was, that King George slipped into Heaven for one;
And when the tumult dwindled to a calm,
I left him practising the hundredth psalm.
Ra Oct. 4, 1821.
THE AGE OF BRONZE
OR,
CARMEN SECULARE ET ANNUS HAUD
MIRABILIS.
“Impar Congressus Achilli.”
INTRODUCTION
The Age of Bronze was begun in December, 1822, and finished on January 10, 1823. “I have sent,” he writes (letter to Leigh Hunt, Letters, 1901, vi. 160), “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.’ 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. If notes are necessary, they can be added.”
On March 5th he forwarded the “Proof in Slips” (“and certainly the Slips are the most conspicuous part of it”) to his new publisher, John Hunt; and, on April 1, 1823, The Age of Bronze was published, but not with the author’s name.
Ten years had gone by since he had published, only to disclaim, the latest of his boyish satires, The Waltz, and more than six years since he had written, “at the request of Douglas Kinnaird,” the stilted and laboured Monody on the Death of … Sheridan. In the interval (1816-1822) he had essayed any and every measure but the heroic, and, at length, as a tardy recognition of his allegiance to “the great moral poet of all times, of all climes, of all feelings, and of all stages of existence” (Observations upon “Observations,” Letters, 1901, v. 590), he reverts, as he believes, to his “early English Bards style,” the style of Pope.
The brazen age, the “Annus Haud Mirabilis,” which the satirist would hold up to scorn, was 1822, the year after Napoleon’s death, which witnessed a revolution in Spain, and the Congress of Allied Sovereigns at Verona. Earlier in the year, the publication of Las Cases’ Memorial de Ste Hélène, and of O’Meara’s Napoleon in Exile, or a Voice from St. Helena, had created a sensation on both sides of the Channel. Public opinion had differed as to the system on which Napoleon should be treated — and, since his death, there had been a conflict of evidence as to the manner in which he had been treated, at St. Helena. Tories believed that an almost excessive lenience and indulgence had been wasted on a graceless and thankless intriguer, while the “Opposition,” Liberals or Radicals, were moved to indignation at the hardships and restrictions which were ruthlessly and needlessly imposed on a fallen and powerless foe. It was, and is, a very pretty quarrel; and Byron, whose lifelong admiration for his “Héros de Roman” was tempered by reason, approached the Longwood controversy somewhat in the spirit of a partisan.
In The Age of Bronze (sects, iii.-v.) he touches on certain incidents of the “Last Phase” of Napoleon’s career, and proceeds to recapitulate, in a sort of Memoria Technica, the chief events of his history, from the dawn at Marengo to the sunset at “bloody and most bootless Waterloo,” and draws the unimpeachable moral that “Honesty is the best policy,” even when the “game is Empire” and “the stakes are thrones”!
From the rise and fall, the tyranny and captivity of Napoleon, he passes on to the Congress of Allied Powers, which met at Verona in November, 1822.
The “Congress” is the object of his satire. It had assembled with a parade of power and magnificence, and had dispersed with little or nothing accomplished. It was “impar Achilli” (vide ante, ), an empty menace, ill-matched with the revolutionary spirit, and in pitiful contrast to the Sic volo, sic jubeo of the dead Napoleon.
The immediate and efficient cause of the Congress of Verona was the success of the revolution in Spain. The point at issue between Spanish Liberals and Royalists, or serviles, was the adherence to, or the evasion of, the democratic Constitution of 1812. At the moment the Liberals were in the ascendant, and, as Chateaubriand puts it, had driven King Ferdinand into captivity, at Urgel, in Catalonia, to the tune of the Spanish Marseillaise, “Tragala, Tragala” “swallow it, swallow it,” that is, “accept the Constitution.” On July 7, 1822, a government was established under the name of the “Supreme Regency of Spain during the Captivity of the King,” and, hence, the consternation of the partners of the Holy Alliance, especially France, who conceived, or feigned to conceive, that revolution next door was a source of danger to constitutional government at home. To meet the emergency, a Congress was summoned in the first instance at Vienna, and afterwards at Verona. Thither came the sovereigns of Europe, great and small, accompanied by their chancellors and ministers. The Czar Alexander was attended by Count Nesselrode and Count Pozzo di Borgo; the Emperor Francis of Austria, by Metternich and Prince Esterhazy; the King of Prussia (Frederic William III.), by Count Bernstorff and Baron Humboldt. George IV. of Great Britain, and Louis XVIII. of France, being elderly and gouty, sent as their plenipotentiaries the Duke of Wellington and the Vicomte de Montmorenci, accompanied, and, finally, superseded by, the French ambassador, M. de Chateaubriand. Thither, too, came the smaller fry, Kings of the Two Sicilies and of Sardinia; and last, but not least, Marie Louise of Austria, Archduchess of Parma, ci-devant widow of Napoleon, and wife sub rosâ of her one-eyed chamberlain, Count de Neipperg. They met, they debated, they went to the theatre in state, and finally decided to send monitory despatches to Spain, and to leave to France a free hand to look after her own interests, and to go to war or not, as she was pleased to determine. There was one dissentient, the Duke of Wellington, who refused to sign the procès verbaux. His Britannic Majesty had been advised to let the Spaniards alone, and not to meddle with their internal affairs. The final outcome of the Congress, the French invasion of Spain, could not be foreseen; and, apparently, all that the Congress had accomplished was to refuse to prohibit the exportation of negroes from Africa to America, and to decline to receive the Greek deputies.
As the Morning Chronicle (November 7, 1822) was pleased to put it, “the Royal vultures have been deprived of their anticipated meal.”
From the Holy Alliance and its antagonist, “the revolutionary stork,” Byron turns to the landed and agricultural “interest” of Great Britain. With the cessation of war and the resumption of cash payments in 1819, prices had fallen some 50 per cent., and rents were beginning to fall. Wheat, which in 1818 had fetched 80s. a quarter, in December, 1822, was quoted at 39s. 11d.; consols were at 80. Poor rates had risen from £2,000,000 in 1792 to £8,000,000 in 1822. How was the distress which these changes involved to be met? By retrenchment and reform, by the repeal of taxes, the reduction of salaries, by the landlords and farmers, who had profited by war prices, submitting to the inevitable reaction; or by sliding scales, by a return to an inflated currency, perhaps by a repudiation of a portion of the funded debt?
The point of Byron’s diatribe is that Squire Dives had enjoyed good things during the war, and, now that the war was over, he had no intention to let Lazarus have his turn; that, whoever suffered, it should not be Dives; that patriotism
had brought grist to his mill; and that he proposed to suck no small advantage out of peace.
“Year after year they voted cent. per cent.,
Blood, sweat, and tear-wrung millions — why? for rent?
They roared, they dined, they drank, they swore they meant
To die for England — why then live? — for rent!”
It is easier to divine the “Sources” and the inspiration of The Age of Bronze than to place the reader au courant with the literary and political causerie of the day. Byron wrote with O’Meara’s book at his elbow, and with batches of Galignani’s Messenger, the Morning Chronicle, and Cobbett’s Weekly Register within his reach. He was under the impression that his lines would appear as an anonymous contribution to The Liberal, and, in any case, he felt that he could speak out, unchecked and uncriticized by friend or publisher. He was, so to speak, unmuzzled.
With regard to the style and quality of his new satire, Byron was under an amiable delusion. His couplets, he imagined, were in his “early English Bards style,” but “more stilted.” He did not realize that, whatever the intervening years had taken away, they had “left behind” experience and passion, and that he had learned to think and to feel. The fault of the poem is that too much matter is packed into too small a compass, and that, in parts, every line implies a minute acquaintance with contemporary events, and requires an explanatory note. But, even so, in The Age of Bronze Byron has wedded “a striking passage of history” to striking and imperishable verse.
The Age of Bronze was reviewed in the Scots Magazine, April, 1823, N.S., vol. xii. pp. 483-488; the Monthly Review, April, 1823, E.S., vol. 100, pp. 430-433; the Monthly Magazine, May, 1823, vol. 55, pp. 322-325; the Examiner, March 30, 1823; the Literary Chronicle, April 5, 1823; and the Literary Gazette, April 5, 1823.
THE AGE OF BRONZE.
I.
The “good old times” — all times when old are good —
Are gone; the present might be if they would;
Great things have been, and are, and greater still
Want little of mere mortals but their will:
A wider space, a greener field, is given
To those who play their “tricks before high heaven.”
I know not if the angels weep, but men
Have wept enough — for what? — to weep again!
II.
All is exploded — be it good or bad.
Reader! remember when thou wert a lad, 10
Then Pitt was all; or, if not all, so much,