Romanticism: An Anthology, ed. Duncan Wu, 4th edn.
(Chichester, West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, 2012)
Don Juan (first published 1819; edited from MS)1
Dedication (composed  July– September ; first published )
1
Bob Southey! You’re a poet – Poet Laureate,2
And representative of all the race;3
Although ’tis true you turned out a Tory at
Last, yours has lately been a common case;
And now, my epic renegade, what are ye at,
With all the Lakers4 in and out of place?
A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye
Like ‘four and twenty blackbirds in a pie,
5
2
Which pie5 being opened, they began to sing’
(This old song and new simile holds good),
‘A dainty dish to set before the King’
Or Regent,6 who admires such kind of food.
And Coleridge7 too has lately taken wing,
But like a hawk encumbered with his hood,
Explaining metaphysics to the nation;8
I wish he would explain his explanation.
10
15
3
You, Bob, are rather insolent, you know,
At being disappointed in your wish
To supersede all warblers here below,
And be the only blackbird in the dish;
20
Notes
Don Juan
1
Don Juan is probably Byron’s finest achievement in verse. It
was the epic poem he was born to write. Cantos I and II
appeared first, without the Dedication, in 1819; they are published here in their entirety. See headnote, pp. 869–70.
2
Southey was Poet Laureate 1813–43, a post that entailed the
composition of occasional poems in honour of the King. For
Byron and Shelley, this was conclusive proof, were any needed,
that Southey had abandoned his early radicalism. In an unpublished Preface to Don Juan, Byron wrote that the Dedication
‘may be further supposed to be produced by someone who
may have a cause of aversion from the said Southey – for some
personal reason – perhaps a gross calumny invented or circulated by this Pantisocratic apostle of apostasy, who is sometimes as unguarded in his assertions as atrocious in his
conjectures, and feeds the cravings of his wretched vanity – disappointed in its nobler hopes, and reduced to prey upon such
snatches of fame as his contributions to the Quarterly Review’.
Byron’s animus towards him was indeed personal: as he told
Hobhouse on 11 November 1818, ‘The son of a bitch on his
return from Switzerland two years ago, said that Shelley and I
“had formed a league of incest and practised our precepts with
etc.” He lied like a rascal, for they were not sisters – one being
Godwin’s daughter by Mary Wollstonecraft, and the other the
daughter of the present Mrs Godwin by a former husband. The
attack contains no allusion to the cause, but some good verses,
and all political and poetical. He lied in another sense, for there
was no promiscuous intercourse, my commerce being limited
to the carnal knowledge of the Miss Clairmont’ (Marchand vi
76). Having heard Byron read the Dedication, Shelley said of
Southey that ‘The poor wretch will writhe under the lash’
(Jones ii 42).
3
all the race i.e. of poets.
4
Lakers i.e. Southey, Wordsworth and Coleridge, who were
first lumped together as the ‘Lake School’ by Jeffrey (see p.
734). By this time Coleridge was resident in London rather
than Cumbria.
5
pie There may be a pun on the name of Henry James Pye
(1745–1813), arch poetaster and Laureate prior to Southey.
6
Regent George, Prince of Wales, governed as Prince Regent
1811–20, during his father’s insanity.
7
As recently as 1816, Byron had given Coleridge £100 to help
him through a bad patch; enmity developed because, as Byron
told Murray, ‘Coleridge went about repeating Southey’s lie
with pleasure’ (Marchand v 83). The lie is, of course, the
rumour about the league of incest (see note 2 above).
8
Explaining metaphysics to the nation Byron is thinking of
Coleridge’s recent prose discourses, The Statesman’s Manual
(1816), Biographia Literaria and Lay Sermon (1817) and The
Friend (1818).
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And then you overstrain yourself, or so,
And tumble downward like the flying fish
Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob,
And fall for lack of moisture, quite a dry-bob!9
4
And Wordsworth, in a rather long Excursion
(I think the quarto holds five hundred pages),10
Has given a sample from the vasty11 version
Of his new system to perplex the sages;
’Tis poetry (at least by his assertion),
And may appear so when the dog-star rages;12
And he who understands it would be able
To add a story13 to the Tower of Babel.14
25
30
5
You gentlemen, by dint of long seclusion
From better company, have kept your own
At Keswick,15 and, through still-continued fusion
Of one another’s minds, at last have grown
To deem as a most logical conclusion
That poesy has wreaths for you alone;
There is a narrowness in such a notion
Which makes me wish you’d change your lakes for ocean.
35
40
6
I would not imitate the petty thought,
Nor coin16 my self-love to so base a vice,
For all the glory your conversion17 brought,
Since gold alone should not have been its price.
You have your salary – was’t for that you wrought?18
And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise.19
You’re shabby fellows, true – but poets still,
And duly seated on the immortal hill.20
45
Notes
9
a dry-bob! sex without ejaculation.
five hundred pages Jeffrey criticized The Excursion (1814) for
its length; see p. 736 above.
11
vasty vast, enormous.
12
when the dog-star rages The star Sirius, in the constellation
of the Greater Dog, the brightest of the fixed stars, has been
alleged to have all kinds of bad effects when its influence
rises with the sun; the joke here is that it will distort everyone’s judgement so much as to make The Excursion appear to
be poetry. Cf. Pope, Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot 3–4: ‘The dog-star
rages! Nay ’tis past a doubt, / All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is
let out.’
13
story floor, level.
14
the Tower of Babel the cause of God’s decision to confound
the language of men; Genesis 11:1–9.
15
At Keswick Only Southey lived at Keswick (as Byron well
knew); Coleridge lived in London, and Wordsworth in
Grasmere.
10
16
coin ‘fashion’, effectively, ‘convert’. The implication is that
Southey’s vanity has led him to relinquish his ideals for the
pittance he is paid as Laureate.
17
conversion a pun, meaning: (i) conversion of vanity to the
gold Southey is paid as Laureate, and (ii) conversion from
radical to Tory.
18
wrought i.e. composed poetry.
19
An unpublished note appears in the proofs: ‘Wordsworth’s
place may be in the Customs; it is, I think, in that of the
Excise – besides another at Lord Lonsdale’s table, where this
poetical charlatan and political parasite picks up the crumbs
with a hardened alacrity, the converted Jacobin having long
subsided into the clownish sycophant of the worst prejudices
of aristocracy.’ William Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale, was
Wordsworth’s patron; he procured Wordsworth’s job as
Distributor of Stamps and was the dedicatee of The Excursion.
20
the immortal hill Parnassus, a mountain of Phocis (northwest of Athens), sacred to the muses.
7
21
Your bays may hide the baldness of your brows,
Perhaps some virtuous blushes (let them go);
To you I envy neither fruit nor boughs,
And for the fame you would engross22 below
The field is universal, and allows
Scope to all such as feel the inherent glow –
Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore and Crabbe23 will try
’Gainst you the question with posterity.
50
55
8
For me who, wandering with pedestrian24 muses,
Contend not with you on the winged steed,
I wish your fate may yield ye, when she chooses,
The fame you envy25 and the skill you need;26
And recollect a poet nothing loses
In giving to his brethren their full meed
Of merit, and complaint of present days
Is not the certain path to future praise.27
60
9
He that reserves his laurels for posterity
(Who does not often claim the bright reversion?)28
Has generally no great crop29 to spare it, he
Being only injured by his own assertion;
And although here and there some glorious rarity
Arise like Titan from the sea’s immersion,30
The major part of such appellants31 go
To God knows where – for no one else can know.
65
70
10
If, fallen in evil days on evil tongues,32
Milton appealed to the avenger, Time;
If Time, the avenger, execrates his wrongs,
And makes the word ‘Miltonic’ mean ‘sublime’,
He deigned not to belie his soul in songs,
75
Notes
21
bays The leaves of the bay-tree or bay-laurel were, in classical times, the symbol of poetic excellence.
22
engross monopolize. Byron was quite famous himself.
23
Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore and Crabbe Walter Scott, Samuel
Rogers, Thomas Campbell, Thomas Moore and George Crabbe
were well-known and respected poets in their day. Byron
saw them as working, broadly speaking, within the neoclassical
tradition stemming from Pope; as such, they were vastly preferable to the Lakers; for more on this see pp. 863–4 above.
24
pedestrian by implication, less metaphysical and more
down to earth.
25
The fame you envy In the Proem to Carmen Nuptiale (1816),
Southey had written: ‘There was a time when all my youthful
thought / Was of the muse; and of the poet’s fame’ (ll. 1–2).
26
need i.e. lack.
And recollect…praise In the Proem to Carmen Nuptiale
(1816), Southey wrote that Fancy had told him to walk ‘Far
from the vain, the vicious, and the proud’ (l.27). Byron seems
to have taken this as a reference to himself.
28
the bright reversion the right of succession (i.e. to posthumous fame).
29
no great crop i.e. of praise for other poets.
30
Arise like Titan from the sea’s immersion Byron has in mind
Helios, son of Hyperion, god of the sun.
31
appellants challengers, i.e. those who reserve their laurels
for posterity.
32
Paradise Lost vii 25–6.
27
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Nor turn his very talent to a crime;
He did not loathe the sire to laud the son,33
But closed the tyrant-hater he begun.34
80
11
Think’st thou, could he, the blind old man,35 arise
Like Samuel from the grave,36 to freeze once more
The blood of monarchs with his prophecies,
Or be alive again, again all hoar
With time and trials, and those helpless eyes
And heartless daughters,37 worn and pale and poor –
Would he adore a sultan? – he obey
The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh?38
85
12
Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant!
Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin’s39 gore,
And thus for wider carnage taught to pant,
Transferred to gorge upon a sister-shore;
The vulgarest tool that tyranny could want,
With just enough of talent, and no more,
To lengthen fetters by another fixed,
And offer poison long already mixed.
90
95
13
An orator of such set trash of phrase40
Ineffably, legitimately vile,
That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise,
Nor foes (all nations) condescend to smile;
Not even a sprightly blunder’s spark can blaze
From that Ixion grindstone’s41 ceaseless toil,
That turns and turns, to give the world a notion
Of endless torments and perpetual motion.
100
14
A bungler even in its disgusting trade,
And botching, patching, leaving still behind
Something of which its masters are afraid,
105
Notes
33
He did not loathe…son Charles I and II. Byron’s point is
that Southey (a former republican) hated George III (in
his radical youth) but praised his son (the Prince Regent);
by contrast, Milton remained a republican throughout
his life.
34
But closed the tyrant-hater he begun As far as Byron was concerned, both George III and the Prince Regent were tyrants.
At that time, the monarch (an inherited post) had enormous
political power.
35
the blind old man Milton.
36
Like Samuel from the grave Samuel was raised from the
grave by the Witch of Endor; 1 Samuel 28:13–14.
37
heartless daughters said to have robbed Milton of his
books.
38
Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (1769–1822), Foreign
Secretary 1812–22. As Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of
Ireland (1797–1801), he had been responsible for imprisoning
the leaders of the United Irish rebellion.
39
Erin’s Ireland’s.
40
such set trash of phrase Castlereagh was renowned as an
incompetent speaker.
41
Ixion grindstone’s Ixion, King of Thessaly, was banished
from heaven and sentenced to be tied to a burning and spinning wheel in Hades.
States to be curbed42 and thoughts to be confined,
Conspiracy or congress43 to be made,
Cobbling at manacles for all mankind –
A tinkering slavemaker who mends old chains,
With God and man’s abhorrence for its gains.
110
15
If we may judge of matter by the mind,
Emasculated to the marrow, It
Hath but two objects: how to serve and bind,
Deeming the chain it wears even men may fit;
Eutropius44 of its many masters – blind
To worth as freedom, wisdom as to wit –
Fearless, because no feeling dwells in ice,
Its very courage stagnates to a vice.
115
120
16
Where shall I turn me not to view its bonds
(For I will never feel them)? Italy,
Thy late-reviving Roman soul desponds
Beneath the lie this state-thing45 breathed o’er thee;
Thy clanking chain and Erin’s yet green wounds
Have voices, tongues to cry aloud for me.
Europe has slaves, allies, kings, armies still –
And Southey lives to sing them very ill.46
125
17
Meantime, Sir Laureate,47 I proceed to dedicate,
In honest, simple verse, this song to you,
And if in flattering strains I do not predicate,48
’Tis that I still retain my ‘buff and blue’49
(My politics, as yet, are all to educate);
Apostasy’s so fashionable too,
To keep one creed’s a task grown quite herculean –
Is it not so, my Tory ultra-Julian?50
130
135
Notes
42
States to be curbed i.e. France under Napoleon; Castlereagh
helped negotiate the alliance with Russia, Austria and
Prussia that led to Napoleon’s defeat.
43
congress As Foreign Secretary, Castlereagh was instrumental in the Treaty of Paris (May 1814), which restored the
Bourbon monarchy after Napoleon’s abdication, and the
Congress of Vienna (1814–15), which reorganized Europe
after the Napoleonic Wars.
44
Eutropius Roman eunuch raised to high office; see Gibbon,
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 32.
45
this state-thing The Congress of Vienna (‘this state-thing’)
restored papal power.
46
This stanza provides an overview of Castlereagh’s misdeeds. In 1798 he had helped to defeat the Irish insurrection
and establish the Union of 1801; as a chief negotiator of the
Treaty of Vienna, 1814–15, he had been responsible for
suppressing the revival of free Italian cities, instead placing
Italy under Austrian rule. Southey celebrated his deeds in
Carmen Triumphale (1814) and The Poet’s Pilgrimage to
Waterloo (1816).
47
Sir Laureate Southey.
48
predicate extol, commend (i.e. Southey and his poetry).
49
buff and blue colours of the Whig Club. The comparison is
with Southey, who has relinquished all his liberal credentials.
50
‘I allude not to our friend Landor’s hero, the traitor Count
Julian, but to Gibbon’s hero, vulgarly yclept “The Apostate” ’
(Byron’s note). Julian was brought up as a Christian, but
secretly worshipped Roman gods before he became Emperor
in 361 ce. During his brief reign he attempted to restore
pagan worship (he died 363).
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