Mr. Augustine Birrell, in an illuminating essay on the writings of Pope, brings forward, with reference to satire, a standard of judgment which merits a wider application. “Dr. Johnson,” says Mr. Birrell, “is more to my mind as a sheer satirist than Pope, for in satire character tells more than in any other form of verse. We want a personality behind--a strong, gloomy, brooding personality; soured and savage if you will--nay, as sour and savage as you like, but spiteful never.” Without subscribing unreservedly to Mr. Birrell’s preference of Johnson over Pope, we may still point out that the most conspicuous feature of Byron’s satire, as, indeed, of most of his other poetry, is the underlying personality of the author, too powerful and aggressive to be obscured or hidden. There have been satirists who, in assuming to express public opinion, have succeeded in partly or entirely effacing themselves, and who have thus acted in the rôle of judicial censors, self-appointed to the task of voicing the sentiments of a party. In the poetry of the _Anti-Jacobin_, it is by no means easy to detect where the work of one Tory satirist leaves off and that of another begins. So in Dryden’s work we are seldom confronted directly by the emotions or partialities of the writer himself; _Absalom and Achitophel_ gives the impression of a cool impersonal commentary on certain episodes of history, prejudiced perhaps, but carried on with real or feigned calmness. Byron’s satire is of a different sort; we can read scarcely a page without recognizing the potency of the personality that produced it. Just as in _Childe Harold_ the hero usually represents Byron himself in some of the phases of his complex individuality; just as the Lara and the Corsair of his verse romances and the Cain and Manfred of his dramas are reflections of the misanthropical, theatrical and skeptical poet; so, in the satires, no matter what method he uses, it is always Byron who criticises and assails.