Mad, Bad, etc


'Some kinder casuists are pleased to say,
In nameless print- that I have no devotion;
But set those persons down with me to pray,
And you shall see who has the properest notion
Of getting into heaven the shortest way;
My altars are the mountains and the ocean,
Earth, air, stars,- all that springs from the great Whole,
Who hath produced, and will receive the soul.'

Phew! For no particular reason I've just finished reading the first four Cantos of Byron's Don Juan. It's a long time since I studied him at school, and I hadn't realised how highly Byron ranked predecessors such as Dryden and Pope. This makes me wonder if his reputation as the 'arch-Romantic' isn't over-stated. In a way his style is more eighteenth than nineteenth century - more like Mozart than Beethoven. He certainly shares Mozart's lightness of touch, and his earthy humour. As he said himself: "As to 'Don Juan', confess that it is the sublime of that sort of writing; it may be bawdy, but is it not good English? It may be profligate, but is it not life, is it not the thing? Could any man have written it who has not lived in the world? and tooled in a post-chaise? in a hackney coach? in a Gondola? against a wall? in a court carriage? in a vis a vis? on a table? and under it?"