The Mount Holly news. [volume] (Mount Holly, Burlington Co., N.J.) 1891-1942, 1897-03-23
LAMPOONING DAYS.
HAVE HAD THEIR RUN AND PASSED
OUT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.

OUT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
The Age of English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers When Byron Wrote His Bit
ter Satires-The Way They Manage such
Matters In France.
1t is said that ''Ianthe'' and ''The Maid
Of Athens" are the only two surviving
persons whom Byron had described or re-
ferred to in his poems. Whether this be &C
curately true or not, the generations against
which that brilliant literary Ishmael
waged such constant and such futile
war has almost entirely passed away, and
with it has passed the fashion of lampoon-
ing ones. rivals-and even of extolling
ones friends-in verse. Time was when a
spice of personality was an indispensable
attraction in a book meant to catch the
public ear, and if ayoung or inexperienced
author neglected this important point the
publisher would be sure to urge the neces-
slty OF catering for the general taste and
would perhaps himself suggest worthy
subject for an epigram. We are not refer
ring to the Curtis of a century and half
ago, but to the very honorable and gener-
GUS publishers with whom our GRANDPA
theirs had to do. The literary controversies
which were so rife in the age of English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers, but which
are nowadays comparatively rare, were
gloated over by an eager public, and it is
not to be wondered at if the publishers, who
had their fingers continuously upon their
customers pulse, preferred such books as
were calculated to stimulate the fever of
curiosity. These personal references were,
of course, very various in their character.
No lady could complain of being immor-
talized as Ianthe, but we can imagine that
considerable number of Byron's victims
would have given round sum to be ex-
cluded from his bitter satires. 1t must
have been a bad quarter of an hour for
the Scotch reviewers when they read the
retaliation which one of their company has
brought upon them, almost as uncomfort-
able as the five minutes in which the poor,
i'll treated governess read the description
of herself, commencing with the words.
Born in a garnet, in kitchen bred -
Few Of Byron's friends or acquaintance
escaped without single splutter from his
pen of gall, and some as is well known,
felt the injury very keenly But at the
same time he knew how to speak favorably
OOOh VI O4lS living anu bllG IL Is d
strange instance of the vast power welded
for good or evil by the maker of simple
verses that one lady is at the present mo
ment enjoying a comfortable annuity to
which she had no other claim whatever
than that of having been extolled by Byron
in few complimentary stanzas. To do
Byron justice, he rarely ''showed up his
contemporaries unless they had previously
turned their pens against him, whereas
there were poets in those times who hated
in verse for no better reason than that
their victims took different view of poll
tics from their own. Shelley's outburst
against Castlereagh, and many of Peter
Pindar's unmeasured diatribes, exceed in
their bitterness anything which we should
consider justifable today When we
say that the fashion of personal illusions
among poets has passed away, we do not
mean that the circumstance is unknown
in the present generation. The laureate's
escapade in Punch, in which he applied
the lash to the shoulders of a brother poet,
is not likely to be forgotten, and he has
taken several other occasions of belaboring
his critic, and the race of irresponsible
reviewers" in general. 1t is but short
time ago that two of our most popular
poets took up the cudgels to one another in
the public prints, and overloaded their
genius by mist of hard words and re-
examinations perhaps quite as virulent as
anything that Byron wrote of a rival
There can be no doubt that personal allu-
sions of the kind which we have instanced
are in every sense Objectionable, and that
the decay of the fashion is matter for
much congratulation. Two reasons in par