LECTURE VI. BYRON, MOORE, &c.-PRESENT ASPECT OF SATIRICAL LITERATURE. WHEN Lord Byron first began to write, the classical satirist of the day was William Gifford,1 our friend who did the butchering-business in the Anti-Jacobin. He had published, in 1794 and '95, the Baviad and Mæviad; and he was now extolled by the party who had taken him up, as the censor of the age. It is pleasant to know that the satirist has generally ranked in this country as an official of some dignity; though there is a constant tendency in officiality to degenerate into beadledom. One learns something of that age, and of the difference between our times and it, by observing the Giffordian phenomenon; by reflecting that Gifford was a great authority; was listened to when he mauled Shelley and Keats; and was deferred to respectfully by the author of Childe Harold and Don Juan. The Baviad and Mæviad succeeded to a degree, 1 Born 1757, died 1826. R which to me, when I look at them, appears extraordinary. They were levelled at the Della Cruscans; a clique of sentimentalists who twaddled in the rosepink style in those days, of whom Mrs. Piozzi was the most distinguished. "See," says Gifford, "Thrale's grey woman with a satchel roam, And bring in pomp laborious nothings home." In the Mæviad he attacks Boswell in this style : "And Boswell, aping with preposterous pride This, however, is only a moderate specimen. One Weston he calls: "Weston! who shrunk from truth's imperious light, Swells like a filthy toad with secret spite;" and once adds a note about some individual who actually appears to have liked Weston, and describes him as a 66 poor driveller, who is stupid enough to be Weston's admirer, and malignant enough to be his friend." Gifford was hearty in his abuse, as in his general energy, and flung his whole soul into Billingsgate with the same zeal which he had displayed when he studied algebra in the shoemaker's shop, working out "my problems with a blunted 1 But the point here is from the pungent Martial. |