N

O one of the poets, who have has

He

many English lived in Italy, become as acclimated there as has Byron. This was due, I think, not so much to his long residence in that country, as to the fact that he was temperamentally meridional. Vehement, passionate, sentimental, and voluptuous, he was more nearly akin to the Mediterranean peoples than to his quasi-austere and well-nigh stolid countrymen. might well boast of being cosmopolitan, for his restless spirit was indeed without a country. He was ostracized from England, sought refuge in Italy, and found death in Greece. After his social exile from England, it was Italy that received him; and it was there that he did most of his best work. Enamored of the country, the people, their language and literature, he became quite domesticated. Writing to Moore from Ravenna in 1820, he says: ". . . I suspect I know a thing or two of Italy; -what do Englishmen know of Italians beyond their museums and saloons and some hack en passant? Now, I have lived in the heart of their houses, in parts of Italy least influenced by strangers, have seen and become (pars magna fui) a portion of their hopes, and fears, and passions, and am almost inoculated into a family. This is to see men and things as they are."

Byron seems to have had a good command of the Italian language, though he speaks of it somewhere, as being one easy to catch a smattering. of, but almost impossible for a foreigner to master. With the literature he was well acquainted. He knew the

works of Dante, Petrarch,* Boccaccio, Ariosto, Pulci, Tasso, Berni, Alfieri, Casti and doubtless of many others. He met Monti, Pindemonte and Silvio Pellico. It was through Pellico that he saw the satires of the Venetian poet Pietro Buratti, which were lent him in manuscript, they being too bold for publication. Another contemporary poet whose work Byron liked was Vitorelli, one of whose sonnets he translated.

A quotation from one of Ariosto's satires furnishes the motto for canto IV of "Childe Harold," while the "Corsair" has citations from Tasso and Dante. Stanzas 42 and 43 of the fourth canto of "Childe Harold" are a paraphrase of Filicaia's famous sonnet to Italy, and in "Don Juan," canto III, 108, the beautiful verses: "Soft hour! which wakes the wish and melts the heart

Of those who sail the seas, on the first day

Byron's acquaintance with Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ariosto, and Tasso, may be indicated by his allusions to them. In "Don Juan" III, 8, we have: "Think you if Laura had been Petrarch's wife, He would have written sonnets all his life?"

And in his letter to Murray (February 7, 1821) on Bowles' strictures of Pope, he seems to have considered Petrarch the greatest of Italian poets.

Again in "Don Juan" III, 105, he says of the pine forest of Ravenna:

"Evergreen forest which Boccaccio's lore, And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to me." In a letter to Murray (from Genoa October 25, 1822) he says in speaking of his "Don Juan": "It may be now and then voluptuous: Ariosto I can't help that. is worse."

In an earlier letter to Murray (Venice, July 1, 1917) in explaining these verses from "Childe Harold" IV, 3: "In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more, And silent rows the songless gondolier"

he says: "You know that formerly the gondoliers sung always, and Tasso's 'Gierusalemme' was their ballad.' †The sonnet beginning:

"Di due vaghe donzelle, oneste, accorte"
"Italia, Italia, o tu, cui, feo la sorte"

When they from their sweet friends are torn apart;

Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way

As the far bell of vesper makes him

start

Seeming to weep the dying day's decay;"

are a paraphrase of the opening verses. of canto VIII of the "Purgatorio"; "Era gia l'ora che volge il disio

Ai naviganti e intenerisce il core,

Lo di ch' han detto ai dolci amici addio,

E che lo nuovo peregrin d' amore Punge, se ode squilla di lontano

Che paia il giorno pianger che si more."

Besides Byron has several works on Italian subjects: "The Ode on Venice," "The Lament of Tasso," "The Prophecy of Dante," "Marino Faliero," "The Two Foscari," "Beppo," and translations of Dante's Francesca episode and of the first canto of Pulci's "Morgante Maggiore." None of these compositions have much interest for us here except "Beppo" and the translation from Pulci; but before noting their effect on Byron's later work, and more especially on "Don Juan," let us turn aside to analyze his style and to mark its development.

On examining his work we find his style to have two notable elements: the classical and the revolutionary. The classical element he inherits from the school of Pope, whom he greatly admired, and whom he defended most violently against the attack of Bowles; the revolutionary element is due to the nature of the man himself and of the times in which he lived. Both elements were in turn struggling for supremacy: now the one appeared, and now the other; gradually, the classical gave way to the revolutionary, and finally in Byron's supreme poem, "Don Juan,' the revolutionary triumphed completely. This was due to the Italian influence, which affected his style rath

er than his subject matter; for although several of his works have Italian subjects, still I have set them aside as unimportant from the point of view of the present thesis, since, after all, they are scarcely more, with the exception of the "Ode on Venice," than the voicings of the poet's own tempestuous being.

In the fall of 1817 Byron brought out "Beppo," his first attempt in ottava rima. He acknowledges it to have been written in imitation of Whistlecraft;* but it far surpasses its model and gives us a foretaste of the Byron of "Don Juan." Three years later (February 21, 1820) he writes to Murray: "I have finished my translation of the first canto of the 'Morgante Maggiore' of Pulci, which I will transcribe and send. It is the parent not only of Whistlecraft, but of all jocose Italian poetry;" and in the fall of the same vear he sent him that matchless translation, telling him: "The Pulci I am proud of: it is superb; you have no such translation. It is the best thing I ever did in my life." For some reason or other Murray had not published it and a year later (September 12, 1821) Byron again says: "Why don't you publish my Pulci-the best thing I ever wrote. . . ?” Already he was enamored of the Italian's style; and whether conscious of it or not he had found in it a wonderful vehicle for his thought. The heroic couplet of Pope had offered him its advantages, but then too, it had found him with its limitations; the measure of Pulci offered him a broader field and less restraint, and in it he found ample elbow room for his wild and restless spirit. In his use of the couplet very few have equaled him; in his achievement with the octave stanza he stands alone.

*Whistlecraft: a poem in ottava rima, of the mockherioc type, by John Hookman Frere. It appeared in 1817, and purported to be the work of William and Robert Whistlecraft. It was entitled: "Prospectus and Specimen of an Intended National Work, intended to comprise the most interesting particulars relating to King Arthur and his Round Table."

Writing to Moore (October 1, 1821) Byron says: "I have written about 60 stanzas of a poem, in octave stanzas (in the Pulci style, which the fools in England think was invented by Whistlecraft-it is as old as the hills in Italy)." This was the beginning of "Don Juan" and between this time and March of 1824 were written the seventeen cantos of the poem as we now have them, making up one of the greatest, if not the very greatest satire ever written. It is mockheroic, and cannot, therefore, be compared with the austere and sublime "Paradise Lost"; but it nevertheless seems more truly epical, more nearly akin to the great epics of antiquity. The Iliad and Odyssey are the epics of the childhood of European civilization; "Don Juan" of its adolescence perhaps. They are poems representative of large periods of time, and are not provincial but universal or cosmopolitan. "Paradise Lost" on the other hand is local, marks but an hour or a day, so to speak, in the history of the world's development, and is but the voice of English Puritanism of the 17th century. Milton's poem is English, but Byron's is European. It is for this reason that "Don Juan" is more closely related to the Odyssey.

Now as to the influence of Pulci on "Don Juan." It is too obvious to escape the notice of even the casual reader. In speaking of the style of his poem (Canto VI, 6.) Byron says: "To the kind reader of our sober clime

This way of writing will appear exotic;"

and mindful of his master, he then goes on:

"Pulci was sire of the half-serious rhyme,

Who sang when chivalry was more Quixotic,

And revell'd in the fancies of the time,

True knights, chaste dames, huge giants, kings despotic."

In "Beppo," the "Vision of Judgment, and the translation from Pulci we had had intimations of "Don Juan"; and whatever hopes these had given rise to were all to be fulfilled. "Don Juan" reveals the poet in the fulness of his powers: mature, shriven of his early sentimentality, with a wider experience, always cynical and ironical, but sincere, and absolute master of his chosen meter.

As I have said before, the heroic couplet was too narrow for Byron's genius. It could fit Pope, but it cramped Byron. The latter needed more rein for his Pegasus, and he found it in the measure of Pulci. In "Don Juan," as nowhere else, he finds a sweep for his superb wit, his irony and cynicism, for such rhymes as "intellectual" and "hen peck'd you all," for deviation and asides, for such incomparable stanzas as those of the "Ave Maria," or that beginning:

"Between two worlds life hovers like a star" for burlesque and serious, tears and laughter, in short for all that has made "Don Juan" what it is his masterpiece. Nor does it seem to me that I am over-estimating the case, if I maintain that he owed the composition of it, at least in part, to Pulci; for I think it highly probable, that the thought of a great allcomprehensive satire was suggested to him by the reading of the "Morgante." Till he had read Pulci, breathed his atmosphere, and caught his manner he seems to have had no visions of "Don Juan"; but having once recognized the possibilities of the "ottava rima" he saw in it a tool with which he could fashion satire that would outdo even his former self. "Don Juan" seems exotic and foreign to our tongue, and were it

A virulent satire aimed at Southey, which appeared in 1821. It ridicules Southey's absurd poem of the same title-an apotheosis of George III who had recently died. Byron's satire is one of his ablest. 'Tis in ottava rima and of about a hundred stanzas. † Canto III, 102 and following.

Canto XV, 99.