He had, however, two distinct satiric moods: the one, savage, stern, and merciless; the other, mocking, scornful, and humorous. The one resulted in invective, the other, in ridicule and burlesque. One came to him from Juvenal, Pope, and Gifford; the other he learned from Moore, Frere, and the Italians. Thanks to his versatility, he was successful in using both; but his real genius was shown more in the contemptuous mirth of _The Vision of Judgment_ than in the fury of _English Bards_. Unlike Pope, Byron was no adept at framing pointed phrases. The beauty of Pope’s satire lies in the single lines, in the details and the finish of an epithet. Byron’s work, on the other hand, should be estimated with regard to the general effect. Few recall particular lines from the passage on Southey in _The Vision of Judgment_; yet every one remembers the complete caricature of the laureate. Pope manipulated a delicate and fine stencil; Byron painted on the canvas with broad sweeping strokes. Byron was the last of the great English satirists in verse, and he has had no imitators who have been able to approach his unique style and manner. It is a curious fact that his influence after his death on nineteenth-century English satire has been almost negligible. The causes of this decline in satire since Byron’s day are not altogether easy to explain. Perhaps it may be accounted for as accompanying the general lack of interest in poetry of any sort so common to-day. Possibly it may be due to the stringency of the laws against libel, which has resulted in the situation described by Sir George Trevelyan in his _Ladies in Parliament_: “But now the press has squeamish grown, and thinks invective rash: And telling hits no longer lurk ’neath asterisk and dash; And poets deal in epithets as soft as skeins of silk, Nor dream of calling silly lords a curd of ass’s milk.” In the twentieth century great political problems are usually fought out in the newspapers or in prose pamphlets; the editorials of our daily journals take the place of satires like _The Age of Bronze_. Doubtless, too, we have grown somewhat refined in our sensibilities and fastidious in our speech, so that we shrink from the cut-and-slash method in poetry. At any rate our English satire since 1830 has inclined toward raillery and humor, wholly unlike the ardent vindictiveness of the men under the Georges. The old régime died away with Byron; and in its stead we have had the polished cleverness of Praed, the gentle cynicism of Thackeray, the mild sentimentality of Looker and Dobson. Not until very recently have flashes of the invective spirit appeared in the work of William Watson and Rudyard Kipling. The great issues of the twentieth century have stimulated no powerful English satirist in verse. BIBLIOGRAPHY