THE CONSISTENCY IN BYRON’S SOCIAL
DOCTRINE*
IF WE were to apply Emerson’s maxim of thefoolish con-
sistency to the mind of Lord Byron, we should find that
it was neither small nor plagued with hobgoblins. His lord-
ship was nothing if not inconsistent. His career bears witness
to this fact, for his life was full of radical changes. His poetry,
too, is inconsistent. For example, he experimented with many
metrical forms, trying established measures of his own coun-
try (such as the heroic couplet of the school of Pope), as well
as measures formerly used almost exclusively by foreign
poets (such as the ottava rima of Pulci). In content, too, this
inconsistency is manifest. His habit of changing, within a
single paragraph or stanza, from a mood of high seriousness
to one of light banality cannot be overlooked by even the
most casual reader of his poetry. Yet, there was one point on
which he never varied in his thinking.
In a recent study of Byron, Professor Paul TruebIood ex-
plains that the poet’s medium was satire and that he began
his career with satirical verse, turned from it to sentiment in
Childe Harold and other poems, and finally returned to it
in Dan Juan, The Vision of Judgment, and works of the later
period. He also explains that Byron became increasingly
serious in political and social doctrines from December,
1820, when he broke off the composition of Don Juan after
completing tire fifth canto, to June, 1822, when he took up
the poem again. He says, too, that there is evidence in the
last eight cantos of Don Juan of revolutionary indoctrina-
tion, which was not apparent earlier.1
° A public lecture delivered at the Rice Institute on November
20, 1949.
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