- Museum number
- 1868,0808.8572
- Title
- Object: A noble poet- scratching up his ideas.
- Description
-
Byron sits at a table writing on a sheet headed Il Liberale; he looks up for inspiration, scratching his head; this is also scratched by a web-winged, goat-legged Devil ('Old Scratch') who perches on the back of his chair, his left talons on the poet's shoulder. Byron, not caricatured, is directed to the left and wears a flowered dressing-gown with ungartered stockings. One of his many dogs (of spaniel type), its collar inscribed [By]ron., lies looking up at him, also scratching its head, one paw on a volume of Don Juan. The table is in a wide-open window, through which is seen a composite view of Venice (cf. BM Satires 14827), including a gondola, the Bridge of Sighs, and one side of the Piazza San Marco. On the sill is a flowering plant. On the floor (right) are a large book: Vision of Judg[ment], on which lie smaller ones, Liberal, and Heaven and Earth, with a scroll of MS. On the table are MS. and a Note Book. Above Byron's head is a picture of Cain killing Abel: End of Abel. A servant wearing an apron opens the door, speaking to a caller holding hat and cane. The latter asks: Pray, Jerome is his Lordship writing that note for me. [Answer] No Sir he is writing Poetry—[Qu.] How do you know that. [Ans.] Because he is scratching his head. 1 January 1823
Hand-coloured etching and aquatint
- Production date
- 1823
- Dimensions
-
Height: 219 millimetres
-
Width: 248 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M. Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', X, 1952)
Perhaps a plate from a book.
Byron's Vision of Judgment, attacking Southey's poem with the same title (also parodied by Hone, see No. 14226), Murray having refused it, appeared anonymously in the first number of The Liberal (15 Oct. 1822),¹ the quarterly of Byron and Leigh Hunt which expired after four numbers. Besides the criticism of George III, in contrast with Southey's panegyric, there was a general indictment of all illiberal government and especially of the Tory Ministry. The Liberal also contained three savage epigrams on Castlereagh's death, and was strongly attacked in the Ministerial Press. The expiring Constitutional Association, see No. 14221, in Dec. 1822 indicted John Hunt for the publication of The Vision. Cain was published in Dec. 1821; in both poems Byron's sympathies were with Lucifer. Byron was at Genoa, having left Venice in 1819. Leigh Hunt, Autobiography, 1903, ii. 125-7; Wickwar, Struggle for the Freedom of the Press, pp. 263-73; Fuess, Byron as a Satirist in Verse, 1912, pp. 188 ff. 'Liberal' was then a Spanish, Italian, or French term, connoting overt opposition to 'Legitimacy'. Cf. No. 13638.
¹ It had been read in proof at Holland House on 20 Dec. 1821, H. E. Fox, Journal, 1923, p. 93.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1989, April-Aug, Grasmere, Dove Cottage, Byron...
- Acquisition date
- 1868
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1868,0808.8572
