“Shout, drink, feast, and flatter! Oh! Erin, how low Wert thou sunk by misfortune and tyranny, till Thy welcome of tyrants had plunged thee below The depth of thy deep in a deeper gulf still.” The satire in this poem is as spontaneous and sincere as any Byron ever wrote; it is passionate, convincing, laden with noble scorn. The two methods of irony and invective are admirably mingled, without a trace of humor. We have already noticed some early poems in which Byron had evinced a liking for uncommon rhymes. In the humorous _Farewell to Malta_, written May 26, 1811, and printed in 1816, he employed octosyllabics, with such rhymes as: yawn sirs--dancers, fault’s in--waltzing, prate is--gratis. _The Devil’s Drive_, an irregular and amorphous fragment, broken off on December 9, 1813, also contains some extraordinary rhymes; but it deserves attention especially because it anticipates, to some extent, the thought and manner of _Don Juan_. It is styled a sequel to _The Devil’s Walk_, a fanciful ballad composed by Southey and Coleridge in 1799, but attributed by Byron to Porson, the great Cambridge scholar. Byron’s poem, a rambling and discursive satire, is crammed with allusions to current events, prophetic of the views which he was to advocate during the remainder of his career. It describes a night visit of the Devil to his favorites on earth, in the course of which he pauses to survey the battle-field of Leipzig, and then, passing on to England, investigates a Methodist chapel, the Houses of Parliament, a royal ball, and other supposed resorts of his disciples. Byron’s portrayal of the horrors of war is probably his first satiric expression of what was to become a frequent theme in his later work, and especially in _Don Juan_. As the Devil gazes down with glee at the bloody plain of Leipzig, the satirist remarks: “Not often on earth had he seen such a sight, Nor his work done half so well: For the field ran so red with the blood of the dead, That it blushed like the waves of Hell!”[160] The visit of the Devil to Parliament, with the poet’s comment on the spectacle there, is reminiscent of some sections of the _Rolliad_. The satire concludes with some caustic characterizations of Tory statesmen, some observations on the immorality of round dancing, and a picture of sixty scribbling reviewers, brewing damnation for authors.