The name is absent

Byron’s Social Doctrine         27

or state for which to fight, Charles IV and Ferdinand VII
having abdicated in favoχ∙ of Napoleon.

He also laments for Greece when he compares her present
state with her past glory. He regrets that Greece is a “sad
relic of departed worth.” He laments the fact that the people
are slaves from birth to death, and that every “carle can lord
it o’er the land.” He dreams that the hour is near which shall
give Greece back the heritage that is hers—her lost liberty.
“What spirit,” he asks, “shall call thee from the tomb?” The
Greeks themselves cry for foreign arms and aid. But he calls
indignantly to these hereditary bondsmen: Do they not know
that they who would be free must strike the blow themselves?
Help from outside may “lay their despoilers low,” but that
will not win freedom’s flame. He ends this plea by calling
on Greece to change her lords; her “glorious day is o’er, but
not [her] years of shame.”

We are not surprised by tire first significant fact exhibited
in this passage. Byron shows here a deep love for hberty.
He had shown that in the first canto and in some early poems
and letters as well. We note, however, that in calling upon
the hereditary bondsmen of Greece to rid themselves of their
present lords, and in admonishing them that they alone can
achieve the freedom they deserve, he is anticipating revolu-
tionary indoctrination, which, as Mr. Trueblood points out,
is part of the essence of the latter cantos of Don Juan. Byron
was indoctrinated with revolutionary fervor a good while be-
fore the appearance of the great satires of the later period, or,
for that matter, before the appearance of Childe Harold,
Canto IV, in 1818. Had he found a more suitable means of
expression in his earlier career, he would have raised a
stronger voice on behalf of these principles.

Revolution, Byron would say, is the means by which a

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