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Reactive Programming with RxJS Untangle Your
Asynchronous JavaScript Code 1st Edition Sergi Mansilla
Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Sergi Mansilla
ISBN(s): 9781680501292, 1680501291
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 3.65 MB
Year: 2015
Language: english
 Early praise for Reactive Programming with RxJS

Every significant shift in software development demands rethinking our approach-

es. Real-time and asynchronous web applications pose a huge challenge in web
development today. This book does an excellent job explaining how RxJS addresses
those challenges and teaches you how to rethink your world in terms of Observ-
ables.
➤ Zef Hemel
VP engineering, STX Next

This book is as hot as reactive programming itself! With great writing, clear expla-
nations, and practical examples, this is a fantastic resource for learning RxJS.
➤ Fred Daoud
Software-development contractor

Be proactive and learn reactive programming with this book before it’s too late.
Rx.Observable.fromBook(book).subscribe(function(value) {...do amazing stuff...});
➤ Javier Collado Cabeza
Senior software developer, NowSecure, Inc.

A very readable book with great content. This book is eminently useful and provides
a clear roadmap for learning reactive programming with RxJS with practical ex-
amples.
➤ Ramaninder Singh Jhajj
Software engineer, Area Services & Development, Know-Center, Austria
We've left this page blank to
make the page numbers the
same in the electronic and
paper books.

We tried just leaving it out,

but then people wrote us to
ask about the missing pages.

Anyway, Eddy the Gerbil

wanted to say “hello.”
Reactive Programming with RxJS
Untangle Your Asynchronous JavaScript Code

Sergi Mansilla

The Pragmatic Bookshelf

Dallas, Texas • Raleigh, North Carolina
Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products
are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and The Pragmatic
Programmers, LLC was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in
initial capital letters or in all capitals. The Pragmatic Starter Kit, The Pragmatic Programmer,
Pragmatic Programming, Pragmatic Bookshelf, PragProg and the linking g device are trade-
marks of The Pragmatic Programmers, LLC.
Every precaution was taken in the preparation of this book. However, the publisher assumes
no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages that may result from the use of
information (including program listings) contained herein.
Our Pragmatic courses, workshops, and other products can help you and your team create
better software and have more fun. For more information, as well as the latest Pragmatic
titles, please visit us at https://pragprog.com.

The team that produced this book includes:

Rebecca Gulick (editor)
Potomac Indexing, LLC (index)
Candace Cunningham (copyedit)
Dave Thomas (layout)
Janet Furlow (producer)
Ellie Callahan (support)

For international rights, please contact [email protected].

Copyright © 2015 The Pragmatic Programmers, LLC.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior consent of the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America.

ISBN-13: 978-1-68050-129-2
Encoded using the finest acid-free high-entropy binary digits.
Book version: P1.0—December 2015
Per a tu, Pipus
 Contents

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

1. The Reactive Way . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

What’s Reactive? 1
Of Observers and Iterators 6
The Rx Pattern and the Observable 9
Creating Observables 10
Wrapping Up 15

2. Deep in the Sequence . . . . . . . . . . 17

Visualizing Observables 17
Basic Sequence Operators 19
Canceling Sequences 24
Handling Errors 26
Making a Real-Time Earthquake Visualizer 29
Ideas for Improvements 36
Operator Rundown 36
Wrapping Up 38

3. Building Concurrent Programs . . . . . . . . 39

Purity and the Observable Pipeline 39
RxJS’s Subject Class 45
Spaceship Reactive! 50
Ideas for Improvements 68
Wrapping Up 68

4. Building a Complete Web Application . . . . . . 69

Building a Real-Time Earthquake Dashboard 69
Adding a List of Earthquakes 71
Getting Real-Time Updates from Twitter 82
 Contents • viii

Ideas for Improvements 88

Wrapping Up 88

5. Bending Time with Schedulers . . . . . . . . 89

Using Schedulers 89
Scheduling for Animations 95
Testing with Schedulers 97
Wrapping Up 101

6. Reactive Web Applications with Cycle.js . . . . . 103

Cycle.js 103
Installing Cycle.js 104
Our Project: Wikipedia Search 105
Model-View-Intent 112
Creating Reusable Widgets 115
Ideas for Improvements 118
Wrapping Up 118

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
 Acknowledgments
I have so many people to thank. There are those who have helped shape the
book and those who have helped shape me as a person. I couldn’t have done
this without any of them. I would particularly like to thank the following:

The exceptional people who came up with the Reactive Extensions library in
the first place, and the ones who expanded and evangelized it. This book
would obviously not exist without you: Erik Meijer, Matt Podwysocki, Bart
De Smet, Wes Dyer, Jafar Husain, André Staltz, and many more I am probably
forgetting.

The folks at The Pragmatic Bookshelf. It has been a pleasure to work with
you. Special thanks to Susannah Pfalzer, who has believed in the book since
it was nothing but an idea. I was also extremely lucky to get Rebecca Gulick
as my editor: You have been professional, patient, attentive to my questions,
and a joy to work with. I’ve been a fan of Pragmatic’s books for a long time,
and it has been a privilege to write a PragProg book myself. And, yes, both
publishers, Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt, do read and review every book!

The brilliant technical reviewers. David Bock, Javier Collado Cabeza, Fred
Daoud, Irakli Gozalishvili, Zef Hemel, Ramaninder Singh Jhajj, Aaron Kalair,
Daniel Lamb, Brian Schau, and Stephen Wolff, as well as Pragmatic publishers
Dave and Andy: This book is infinitely better thanks to all of you. You each
selflessly put time and energy into reviewing this book, detecting complicated
errors and saving me from more than one embarrassing mistake. Any errors
remaining in the book are my own fault.

To my friends. The ones who are always there, no matter the time and the
distance; you know who you are. Thanks for the laughs, the support, the
love.

My parents, Narcís Mansilla and Joana Molins. You are my guides and role
models. You never ceased to believe in me and always encouraged me to take
on bigger challenges. You bought me my first computer at a time when you
struggled to pay the bills. That started it all, and I owe you everything.

report erratum • discuss

 Acknowledgments •x

My son, Adrià. You were born while I was writing this book, and you have
changed the meaning of life for me. You’ve already taught me so much in
such little time, and I can’t wait to see what’s next.

Finally, Jen, the love of my life. You have had infinite patience and supported
me while I wrote a book in one of the busiest periods of our life so far. You
are an inspiration to me and you make me a better human being in every
way. You are my star.

Sergi Mansilla
Barcelona, December 2015

report erratum • discuss

 Preface
Reactive programming is taking the software world by storm. This book
combines the reactive programming philosophy with the possibilities of
JavaScript, and you’ll learn how to apply reactive techniques to your own
projects. We’ll focus on reactive programming to manage and combine streams
of events. In fact, we’ll cover how to make entire real-world, concurrent
applications just by declaring transformations on our program’s events.

Most software today deals with data that’s available only over time: websites
load remote resources and respond to complex user interactions, servers are
distributed across multiple physical locations, and people have mobile devices
that they expect to work at all times, whether on high-speed Wi-Fi or spotty
cellular networks. Any serious application involves many moving asynchronous
parts that need to be efficiently coordinated, and that’s very hard with today’s
programming techniques. On top of that, we have what’s always been there:
servers crashing, slow networks, and software bugs we have to deal with.

We can’t afford to keep programming applications the way we always have.

It worked for a while, but now it’s time for a new approach.

New World, Old Methods

In recent years JavaScript has become the most ubiquitous language in the
world and now powers the mission-critical infrastructure of businesses such
as Walmart and Netflix,1 mobile operating systems such as Firefox OS, and
complex popular applications such as Google Docs.

And yet we’re still using good ol‘ imperative-style programming to deal with
problems that are essentially asynchronous. This is very hard.

JavaScript developers see the language’s lack of threads as a feature, and we

usually write asynchronous code using callbacks, promises, and events. But

1. http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/24/why-walmart-is-using-node-js/, http://techblog.netflix.com/2014/06/scale-
and-performance-of-large.html

report erratum • discuss

 Preface • xii

as we keep adding more concurrency to our applications, the code to coordi-

nate asynchronous flows becomes unwieldy. Current mechanisms all have
serious shortcomings that hinder the developer’s productivity and make for
fragile applications.

Here’s a quick rundown of the current mechanisms for handling asynchronous

operations, along with their problems.

Callback Functions
A callback is a function (A) passed as a parameter to another function (B) that
performs an asynchronous operation. When (B) is done, it calls back (A) with
the results of the operation. Callbacks are used to manage asynchronous
flows such as network I/O, database access, or user input.
intro/callback_example.js
function B(callback) {
// Do operation that takes some time
callback('Done!');
}

function A(message) {
console.log(message);
}

// Execute `B` with `A` as a callback

B(A);

Callbacks are easy to grasp and have become the default way of handling
asynchronous data flows in JavaScript. But this simplicity comes at a price.
Callbacks have the following drawbacks:

• Callback hell. It’s easy to end up with lots of nested callbacks when han-
dling highly asynchronous code. When that happens, code stops being
linear and becomes hard to reason about. Whole applications end up
passed around in callbacks, and they become difficult to maintain and
debug.

• Callbacks can run more than once. There’s no guarantee the same callback
will be called only once. Multiple invocations can be hard to detect and
can result in errors and general mayhem in your application.

• Callbacks change error semantics. Callbacks break the traditional try/catch

mechanism and rely on the programmer to check for errors and pass
them around.

report erratum • discuss

 New World, Old Methods • xiii

• Concurrency gets increasingly complicated. Combining interdependent

results of multiple asynchronous operations becomes difficult. It requires
us to keep track of the state of each operation in temporal variables, and
then delegate them to the final combination operation in the proper order.

Promises
Promises came to save us from callbacks. A promise represents the result of
an asynchronous operation. In promise-based code, calling an asynchronous
function immediately returns a “promise” that will eventually be either resolved
with the result of the operation or rejected with an error. In the meantime,
the pending promise can be used as a placeholder for the final value.

Promises usually make programs more clear by being closer to synchronous

code, reducing the need for nesting blocks and keeping track of less state.

Unfortunately, promises are not a silver bullet. They’re an improvement over

callbacks, but they have a major shortcoming: they only ever yield a single
value. That makes them useless for handling recurrent events such as mouse
clicks or streams of data coming from the server, because we would have to
create a promise for each separate event instead of creating a promise that
handles the stream of events as it comes.

Event Emitters
When we emit an event, event listeners that are subscribed to it will fire.
Using events is a great way to decouple functionality, and in JavaScript, event
programming is common and generally a good practice.

But, you guessed it, event listeners come with their own set of problems, too:

• Events force side effects. Event listener functions always ignore their
return values, which forces the listener to have side effects if it wants to
have any impact in the world.

• Events are not first-class values. For example, a series of click events can’t
be passed as a parameter or manipulated as the sequence it actually is.
We’re limited to handling each event individually, and only after the event
happens.

• It is easy to miss events if we start listening too late. An infamous example

of that is the first version of the streams interface in Node.js, which would
often emit its data event before listeners had time to listen to it, losing it
forever.

report erratum • discuss

 Preface • xiv

Since these mechanisms are what we’ve always used to manage concurrency,
it might be hard to think of a better way. But in this book I’ll show you one:
reactive programming and RxJS try to solve all these problems with some
new concepts and mechanisms to make asynchronous programming a breeze
—and much more fun.

What Is Reactive Programming?

Reactive programming is a programming paradigm that encompasses many
concepts and techniques. In this book I’ll focus particularly on creating,
transforming, and reacting to streams of data. Mouse clicks, network requests,
arrays of strings—all these can be expressed as streams to which we can
“react” as they publish new values, using the same interfaces regardless of
their source.

Reactive programming focuses on propagating changes without our having

to explicitly specify how the propagation happens. This allows us to state
what our code should do, without having to code every step to do it. This
results in a more reliable and maintainable approach to building software.

What Is RxJS?
RxJS is a JavaScript implementation of the Reactive Extensions, or Rx.2 Rx
is a reactive programming model originally created at Microsoft that allows
developers to easily compose asynchronous streams of data. It provides a
common interface to combine and transform data from wildly different sources,
such as filesystem operations, user interaction, and social-network updates.

Rx started with an implementation for .NET, but today it has a well-maintained

open source implementation in every major language (and some minor ones).
It is becoming the standard to program reactive applications, and Rx’s main
data type, the Observable, is being proposed for inclusion in ECMAScript 7
as an integral part of JavaScript.

Who This Book Is For

This book is for developers with some experience with JavaScript. You should
be comfortable with closures and higher-order functions, and you should
understand the scope rules in JavaScript. That being said, I try to explain
the most complex language concepts we go through in this book.

2. https://rx.codeplex.com/

report erratum • discuss

 What’s in This Book • xv

What’s in This Book

This book is a practical introduction to reactive programming using RxJS.
The objective is to get you to think reactively by building small real-world
applications, so you can learn how to introduce reactive programming in your
day-to-day programming and make your programs more robust. This is not
a theoretical book about reactive programming, and it is not an exhaustive
reference book for the RxJS API. You can find these kinds of resources online.

We’ll be developing mostly for the browser, but we’ll see some examples in
Node.js, too. We’ll get deep into the subject early on, and we’ll build applica-
tions along the way to keep it real. Here are the chapters:

Unless you have used RxJS before, start with Chapter 1, The Reactive Way,
on page 1. In this chapter we introduce Observables, the main data type of
RxJS, which we’ll use extensively throughout the book.

With the basics of Observables established, we move on to Chapter 2, Deep

in the Sequence, on page 17. There you see that in reactive programming it’s
all about sequences of events. We visit some important sequence operators
and we build our first application, a real-time earthquake visualizer.

In Chapter 3, Building Concurrent Programs, on page 39, we look at how to

write concurrent code with minimal side effects. After covering the Observable
pipeline, we build a cool spaceship video game in about 200 lines of code and
with almost no global state.

In Chapter 4, Building a Complete Web Application, on page 69, we get deeper

into reactive app development and enhance the earthquake application we
made previously in Deep in the Sequence by making a server part in Node.js
that shows tweets related to earthquakes happening right now.

We get into some more advanced concepts of RxJS with Chapter 5, Bending
Time with Schedulers, on page 89, where we talk about the useful concept
RxJS provides to handle concurrency at a more fine-grained level: Schedulers.

With the knowledge of Schedulers under our hats, we explore how they help
us with testing. We’ll see how to simulate time in our tests to accurately test
asynchronous programs.

Finally, in Chapter 6, Reactive Web Applications with Cycle.js, on page 103,

we’ll use Cycle.js, a UI framework built on top of RxJS, to build a simple
application. Cycle.js draws concepts from modern frameworks such as React.js
to create a reactive framework that uses the advantages of Observables to
help us create fast user interfaces in a simple and reliable way.

report erratum • discuss

 Preface • xvi

Running the Code Examples

The code examples in this book are made for either the browser or Node.js.
The context of the code should clarify in what environment to run the code.

Running RxJS Code in the Browser

If the code is meant to run in the browser, we’ll use the file rx.all.js, which you
can find in the RxJS GitHub repository.3 rx.all.js includes all the operators in
RxJS, and it’s the easiest way to be sure all examples will work. Just load
the script in the <head> section of your HTML document:
<html>
<head>
<script src="rx.all.js"></script>
</head>
...
</html>

Keep in mind that it is a relatively big file and you may want to consider a
smaller file, such as rx.js or rx.lite.js, for your projects if you’re not using all the
functionality in RxJS.

Running RxJS Code in Node.js

Running code examples in Node.js is easy. Just make sure you install the
RxJS dependency in your project using npm:
$ npm install rx
[email protected] node_modules/rx

After that, you can import the RxJS library in your JavaScript files:
var Rx = require('rx');

Rx.Observable.just('Hello World!').subscribe(function(value) {
console.log(value);
});

And you can run it by simply invoking node and the name of the file:
$ node test.js
Hello World!

3. https://github.com/Reactive-Extensions/RxJS/tree/master/dist

report erratum • discuss

 Resources • xvii

RxJS Version
All the examples are made for RxJS 4.x. You can download the latest version
in the RxJS online repository.4

Resources
RxJS is gaining adoption very quickly, and there are more and more resources
about it every day. At times it might be hard to find resources about it online,
though. These are my favorite ones:

• RxJS official source code repository5

• ReactiveX, a collection of resources related to the Reactive Extensions6

• RxMarbles, an interactive tool to visualize Observables7

Download Sample Code

This book’s website has links to an interactive discussion forum as well as a
place to submit errata.8 You’ll also find the source code for all the projects
we build. Readers of the ebook can interact with the box above each code
snippet to view that snippet directly.

4. https://github.com/Reactive-Extensions/RxJS/releases/latest
5. https://github.com/Reactive-Extensions/RxJS
6. http://reactivex.io
7. http://rxmarbles.com/
8. http://pragprog.com/titles/smreactjs

report erratum • discuss

 CHAPTER 1

The Reactive Way

The real world is pretty messy: events happen in random order, applications
crash, and networks fail. Few applications are completely synchronous, and
writing asynchronous code is necessary to keep applications responsive. Most
of the time it’s downright painful, but it really doesn’t have to be.

Modern applications need super-fast responses and the ability to process

data from different sources at the same time without missing a beat. Current
techniques won’t get us there because they don’t scale—code becomes expo-
nentially more complex as we add concurrency and application state. They
get the job done only at the expense of a considerable mental load on the
developer, and that leads to bugs and complexity in our code.

This chapter introduces you to reactive programming, a natural, easier way

to think about asynchronous code. I’ll show you how streams of events—
which we call Observables—are a beautiful way to handle asynchronous code.
Then we’ll create an Observable and see how reactive thinking and RxJS
dramatically improve on existing techniques and make you a happier, more
productive programmer.

What’s Reactive?
Let’s start by looking at a little reactive RxJS program. This program needs
to retrieve data from different sources with the click of a button, and it has
the following requirements:

• It must unify data from two different locations that use different JSON
structures.

• The final result should not contain any duplicates.

• To avoid requesting data too many times, the user should not be able to
click the button more than once per second.

report erratum • discuss

Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
were under rapidly shifting conditions, it is uncritical to demand unity.
We might as well expect to find a model drama in a diary. The
important fact is that we have in these digressions a continuous
exposition of Byron’s satire during the most important years of his
life.
The peculiar features of the octave stanza, with its opportunity
for double and triple rhymes and the loose structure of its sestette,
made it more suited to Byron’s genius than the more compact and
less flexible heroic couplet. At the same time the concluding couplet
of the octave offered him a chance for brief and epigrammatic
expression. In general it may be said that no metrical form lends
itself more readily to the colloquial style which Byron preferred than
does the octave.
In utilizing this stanza, Byron, accepting the methods of Pulci
and Casti, allowed himself the utmost liberties in rhyming and verse-
structure. We have already seen that in several youthful poems, and,
indeed, in some later ephemeral verses, he had shown a fondness
for remarkable rhymes. By the date of Beppo he had broken away
entirely from the rigidity of the Popean theory of poetry, and had
confessed that he enjoyed a freer style of writing:

“I—take for rhyme, to hook my rambling verse on,

The first that Walker’s lexicon unravels,
And when I can’t find that, I put a worse on,
328
Not caring as I ought for critics’ cavils.”

In Don Juan this employment of uncommon rhymes had become a

genuine art. Byron once declared to Trelawney that Swift was the
greatest master of rhyming in English; but Byron is as superior to
Swift as the latter is to Barham and Browning in this respect. Indeed
Byron’s only rival is Butler, and there are many who would maintain,
on good grounds, that Byron as a master of rhyming is greater than
the author of Hudibras. When we consider the length of Don Juan,
the constant demand for double and triple rhymes, and the fact that
Byron seldom repeated himself, we cannot help marvelling at the
linguistic cleverness which enabled him to discover such unheard-of
combinations of syllables and words. Some of the most extraordinary
329
have become almost classic, e.g.:—

“But—Oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,

330
Inform us truly, have they not hen-pecked you all?”

“Since in a way that’s rather of the oddest, he

331
Became divested of his native modesty.”

Naturally in securing such a variety of rhymes he was forced to draw

from many sources. Foreign languages proved a rich field, and he
obtained from them some striking examples of words similar in
sound, sometimes rhyming them with words from the same
language, sometimes fitting them to English words and phrases.
Some typical specimens are worthy of quotation:
332
Latin—in medias res, please, ease.
333
Greek—critic is, poietikes.
334
French—seat, tête-à-tête, bete.
335
Italian—plenty, twenty, “mi vien in mente.”
336
Spanish—Lopé, copy.
337
Russian—Strokenoff, Chokenoff, poke enough.
Byron also resorts to the uses of proper names, borrowed from
many tongues:
338
Dante’s—Cervantes.
339
Hovel is—Mephistophelis.
 340
Tyrian—Presbyterian.
341
Avail us—Sardanapalus.
342
Pukes in—Euxine.
It may be added, too, that he was seldom over-accurate or
careful in making his rhymes exact. In one instance he rhymes
343
certainty—philosophy—progeny. Most stanzas have either double
or triple rhymes, but there are occasional stanzas in which all the
344
rhymes are single.
In Don Juan run-on lines are the rule rather than the exception.
Certain stanzas are really sentences in which the thought moves
straight on, disregarding entirely the ordinary restrictions of
345
versification. In more than one case the idea is even carried from
346
one stanza to another without a pause. In one extraordinary
instance a word is broken at the end of a line and finished at the
347
beginning of the next, following the example set by the Anti-
Jacobin in Rogero’s song in The Rovers. Like a public speaker,
Byron at times neglects coherence in order to keep the thread of his
discourse or to digress momentarily without losing grip on his
audience.
Much of the humor of Don Juan is due to the varied employment
of many forms of verbal wit: puns, plays upon words, and odd
repetitions and turns of expression. The puns are not always
commendable for their brilliance, though they serve often to
burlesque a serious subject. In at least one stanza Byron uses a
348
foreign language in punning. In general it is noticeable that puns
349
become more common in the later cantos of the poem. There are
also many curious turns of expression, comparable only to some of
350
the quips of Hood and Praed. Frequently, they are exceedingly
clever in the suddenness with which they shift the thought and give
the reader an unexpected surprise, e.g.:
 “Lambo presented, and one instant more
351
Had stopped this canto and Don Juan’s breath.”

Repetitions of words or sounds often convey the effect of a pun, e.g.:

“They either missed, or they were never missed,

352
And added greatly to the missing list.”

The witty line,

353
“But Tom’s no more—and so no more of Tom,”
is an excellent example of Byron’s verbal artistry.
It should be added here, also, that Byron displayed a singular
capacity for coining maxims and compressing much worldly wisdom
into a compact form. Some of his sayings have so far passed into
common speech that they are almost platitudes, e.g.:
354
“There is no sterner moralist than pleasure.”
As has been pointed out, this kind of sententious utterance in the
form of a proverb or an epigram was very common with the Italian
burlesque writers, especially with Pulci.
Something of the universality of Don Juan, of its appeal, not only
to particular countries and peoples, but also to the world at large,
355
may be indicated by the number of translations of it which exist. It
appeared in French in 1827, in Spanish in 1829, in Swedish in 1838,
in German in 1839, in Russian in 1846, in Roumanian in 1847, in
Italian in 1853, in Danish in 1854, in Polish in 1863, and in Servian in
1888. Since these first versions appeared, other and more
satisfactory ones have been published in most of the countries
named. It was chiefly through Don Juan that Byron became, what
Saintsbury calls him, “the sole master of young Russia, young Italy,
young Spain, in poetry.” In these days when Byron’s defence of the
rights of the people is less necessary, when his opposition to
despotism would find few tyrants to oppose, and when his
condemnation of war has developed into a widespread movement
for universal peace, the powerful impetus which his satire gave to
the progress of democracy is likely to be overlooked. His attitude of
defiance furnished an illustrious example to struggling nations, and
356
gave them hope of better things.
Within this limited space it has been possible to touch only upon
one or two phases of the many which this poem, perhaps the
greatest in English since Paradise Lost, presents to the reader.
Byron’s satire, in assuming a wider scope and a greater breadth of
view, in growing out of the insular into the cosmopolitan, has also
blended itself with romance and realism, with the lyric, the
descriptive, and the epic types of poetry until it has created a new
literary form and method suitable only to a great genius. His satiric
spirit, in assailing not only individuals, but also institutions, systems,
and theories of life, in concerning itself less with literary grudges and
personal quarrels than with momentous questions of society, in
progressing steadily from the specific to the universal, has
undergone a striking evolution. The tone of his satire has become
less formal and dignified, and more colloquial, while a more frequent
use of irony, burlesque, and verbal wit makes the poem easier and
more varied. Byron joins mockery with invective, raillery with
contempt, so that Don Juan, in retaining certain qualities of the old
Popean satire, seems to have tempered and qualified the acrimony
of English Bards. The inevitable result of this development was to
make Don Juan a reflection of Byron’s personality such as no other
of his works had been. Don Juan is Byron; and in this fact lies the
explanation of its strength and weakness.
 CHAPTER IX
“THE VISION OF JUDGMENT”

Byron’s Vision of Judgment, printed in the first number of The

Liberal, October 15, 1820, was the climax of his long quarrel with
Southey, the complicated details of which have been related at
357
length by Mr. Prothero in his edition of the Letters and Journals.
Byron’s hostility to Southey was due apparently to several causes,
some personal, some political, and some literary. He believed that
Southey had spread malicious reports about the alleged immorality
of his life in Switzerland with Jane Clermont, Mary Godwin, and
Shelley; he considered the laureate to be an apostate from liberalism
and a truckler to aristocracy; and he had no patience with his views
on poetry and his lack of respect for Pope. The two men were, in
fact, fundamentally incompatible in temperament and opinions,
Southey being firmly convinced that Byron was a dissipated and
dangerous debauchee, while Byron thought Southey a dull, servile,
and somewhat hypocritical scribbler.
Since The Vision of Judgment was Byron’s only attempt at
genuine travesty, it may be well to differentiate between the travesty
and other kindred forms of satire, all of which are commonly grouped
under the generic heading, burlesque. Broadly speaking, a
burlesque is any literary production in which there is an absurd
incongruity in the adjustment of style to subject matter or subject
matter to style, humor being excited by a continual contrast between
what is high and what is low, what is exalted and what is
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commonplace. The peculiar effect of burlesque is ordinarily
dependent upon its comparison with some form of literature of a
more serious nature. Of the subdivisions of burlesque, the parody
aims particularly at the humorous imitation of the style and manner
of another work, the original characters and incidents being
displaced by incidents of a more trifling sort. The parody has been a
popular variety of satire, and examples of it may be discovered in the
359
productions of any sophisticated or critical age. The travesty, in
the narrow sense of the term, is a humorous imitation of another
work, the subject matter remaining substantially the same, being
made ridiculous, however, by a grotesque treatment and a less
imaginative style. A serious theme is thus deliberately degraded and
debased. The commonest subjects of travesty have been derived, as
one might expect, from mythology or from the great epic poems. Its
popularity, except in certain limited periods, has never equalled that
360
of the parody.
Considered simply as a travesty, Byron’s Vision is remarkable in
two respects: first, in that it burlesques a contemporary poem, while
most other travesties ridicule works of antiquity, or at least of
established repute; second, in that it has an intrinsic merit of its own
far surpassing that of the poem which suggested it. Thus the general
dictum that a travesty is valuable chiefly through the contrast which it
presents to some nobler masterpiece is contradicted by Byron’s
satire, which is in itself an artistic triumph.
Southey’s Vision of Judgment, of which Byron’s Vision is a
travesty, was written in the author’s function as poet-laureate shortly
after the death of George III. on January 29, 1820. Certainly in many
361
ways it lent itself readily to burlesque. It was composed in the
unrhymed dactyllic hexameter, a measure in which Southey was
even less successful than Harvey and Sidney had been. It was full of
adulation of a king, who, however much he may have been
distinguished for domestic virtues, was surely, in his public activities,
no suitable subject for encomium. It was dedicated, moreover, to
George IV. in language which seems to us to-day the grossest
362
flattery. The poem itself, divided into twelve sections, deals with
the appearance of the old King at the gate of heaven, his judgment
and beatification by the angels, and his meeting with the shades of
illustrious dead—English worthies, mighty figures of the Georgian
age, and members of his own family.
 Many special features of Southey’s poem were disagreeable to
Byron. It was a vindication and a eulogy of the existing system of
government in England, George III, whom Byron despised, being
described as an ideal sovereign. Southey had made a contemptuous
reference to what he was pleased to call the watchwords of Faction,
“Freedom, Invaded Rights, Corruption, and War, and Oppression,” a
summary which must have been distasteful to a man who had been
raising his voice in resistance to political tyranny. Southey had also
carefully omitted Dryden and Pope from the list of great writers
whom George III met in heaven. On the whole Southey’s poem was
pervaded by a tone of arrogance and self-satisfaction which was
exceedingly offensive to Byron.
Byron had begun his travesty on May 7, 1821, and had sent it to
363
Murray from Ravenna on October 4th. Unconscious of the fact
that this satire was in Murray’s hands, Southey meanwhile had
published his Letter to the Courier, January 5, 1822, vindictively
personal, and containing one unlucky paragraph: “One word of
advice to Lord Byron before I conclude. When he attacks me again,
let it be in rhyme. For one who has so little command of himself, it
will be a great advantage that his temper should be obliged to keep
tune.” When this Letter came to Byron’s notice, his anger boiled
over; he sent Southey a challenge, which through the discretion of
364
Kinnaird, was never delivered ; and he decided immediately to
publish his Vision, which he had almost determined to suppress.
Murray, however, delayed the proof, and on July 3, 1822, Byron,
irritated by this tardiness and enthusiastic over his newly planned
365
periodical, The Liberal, sent a letter by John Hunt, the proprietor
of the magazine, requesting Murray to turn the satire over to Hunt. In
the first number of The Liberal, then, the Vision was given the most
conspicuous position, printed, however, without the preface, which
Murray, either ignorantly or unfairly, had withheld from Hunt. A
vigorous letter from Byron recovered the preface, which was inserted
366
in a second edition of the periodical. The consequences of
publication somewhat justified Murray’s apprehensions. John Hunt
was prosecuted by the Constitutional Association, and on July 19,
1824, only three days after Byron’s body had been buried in the
church of Hucknall Torkard, was convicted, fined one hundred
pounds, and compelled to enter into securities for five years. In
fairness to Byron, it must be added that he had offered to come to
England in order to stand trial in Hunt’s stead, and had desisted only
367
when he found that such procedure would not be allowed.
In his Vision, Byron had at least four objects for his satire. He
wished to ridicule Southey’s poem by burlesquing many of its absurd
elements; he aimed to proceed more directly against Southey by
exposing the weak points in his character and career; he desired to
present a true picture of George III, in contrast to Southey’s idealized
portrait; and he intended to make a general indictment of all illiberal
government and particularly of the policy then being pursued by the
English Tory party. He seized instinctively upon the weaknesses of
the panegyric, and while preserving the general plan and retaining
many of the characters, freely mocked at its cant and smug conceit.
Through a style purposely grotesque and colloquial, he turned
Southey’s pompous rhetoric into absurdity; by touches of realism
and caricature he made the solemn angels and demons laughable;
while, occasionally rising to a loftier tone suggestive of the spirit of
Don Juan, he reasserted his love of liberty and hatred of despotism.
In executing his project, Byron deliberately neglected a large part
of Southey’s Vision and confined himself almost exclusively to the
scene at the trial of the King. He began actually with the situation
represented in Section IV of Southey’s poem, omitting all the
preliminary matter, and ended with Southey’s Section V, avoiding
entirely the meeting of George with the English worthies. So far as
subject matter is concerned, Byron travestied only two of the twelve
divisions of the earlier work. He concentrated his attention on the
judgment of the King, and then deserted formal travesty in order to
introduce his attack on Southey.
It was part of Byron’s scheme that angels and demons, serious
characters in Southey’s poem, should be made the objects of mirth.
By a dexterous application of realism, he changed the New
Jerusalem of Southey into a very earthly place, where angels now
and then sing out of tune and hoarse, and where six angels and
twelve saints act as a business-like Board of Clerks. These creatures
of the spiritual realm are very substantial beings, not at all immune
from mortal infirmities and passions. Saint Peter is a dull somnolent
personage who grumbles over the leniency of heaven’s Master
towards earth’s kings, and sweats through his apostolic skin at the
appalling sight of Lucifer and demons pursuing the body of George
to the very doors of heaven. Satan salutes Michael,

“as might an old Castilian

Poor noble meet a mushroom rich civilian,”

and the archangel, in turn, greets the fallen Lucifer superciliously as

“my good old friend.” It is probable that in this practice of treating
with ridicule those beings who are commonly spoken of with
reverence, Byron is imitating Pulci, whose angels and devils are
also, in their attributes, more human than divine.
Byron’s trial scene, in which Lucifer and Michael dispute for the
possession of George III, is an admirable travesty of Southey’s
representation of the same episode. The glorified monarch of
Southey’s Vision meets in Byron’s satire with scant courtesy from
Lucifer, who acts as attorney for the prosecution. Lucifer admits the
king’s “tame virtues” and grants that he was a “tool from first to last”;
but he charges him with having “ever warr’d with Freedom and the
free,” with having stained his career with “national and individual
woes,” with having resisted Catholic emancipation, and with having
lost a continent to his country. Wilkes and Junius, the two
shamefaced accusers of Southey’s Vision, now act in a different
manner. Wilkes scornfully extends his forgiveness to the king, and
Junius, while reiterating the truth of his original accusations, refuses
to be enlisted as an incriminating witness. This section of the satire
is splendidly managed. The whole assault on the king tends to show
him as more misguided than criminal. The lines,
 “A better farmer ne’er brush’d dew from lawn,
A worse king never left a realm undone!”

create a kind of sympathy for George in that they portray him as a

man placed in a position for which he was manifestly unfitted.
Southey’s name is mentioned only once before the 35th stanza
of Byron’s poem, but from that point until the conclusion the work
deals entirely with him. These stanzas constitute what is probably
Byron’s happiest effort at personal satire. For once he did not act in
haste, but carefully matured his project, studied its execution, and
permitted his first impulsive anger to moderate into scorn. With due
attention to craftsmanship, he surveyed and annihilated his enemy,
laughing at him contemptuously and making every stroke tell. It
should be observed too that he chose a method largely indirect and
dramatic. He did not, as in English Bards, merely apply offensive
epithets; rather he placed Southey in a ridiculous situation and made
him the sport of other characters. The satire, is, therefore,
exceedingly effective since it allows the victim no chance for a
368
reply. By turning the laugh on Southey, Byron closed the
controversy by attaining what is probably the most desirable result of
purely personal satire—the making an opponent seem not hateful
but absurd.
Byron’s poem, however, was something more than a chapter in
the satisfaction of a private quarrel. It is also a liberal polemic,
assailing not only the whole system of constituted authority in
England, but also tyranny and repression wherever they operate.
The indictment of George III, which at times approaches sublimity, is
in reality directed against the entire reactionary policy of
contemporary European statesmen and rulers. The doctrines of the
revolutionary Byron, already familiar to us in Don Juan, are to be
found in the ironic stanzas upon the sumptuous funeral of the king, a
passage admired by Goethe; respect for monarchy itself had died
out in a nobleman who could say of George’s entombment:
 “It seemed the mockery of hell to fold
The rottenness of eighty years in gold.”

With all its broad humor, the satire is aflame with indignation. In this
respect the poem performed an important public service. In place of
stupid content with things as they were, it offered critical comment on
existing conditions, comment somewhat biassed, it is true, but
nevertheless in refreshing contrast to the conventional submission of
the great majority of the British public.
Much of what has already been pointed out with regard to the
sources and inspiration of Don Juan may be applied without
alteration to The Vision of Judgment, which is, as Byron told Moore,
written “in the Pulci style, which the fools in England think was
369
invented by Whistlecraft—it is as old as the hills in Italy.” The
Vision, being shorter and more unified, contains few digressions
which do not bear directly upon the plot; but it has the same
colloquial and conversational style, the same occasional rise into
true imaginative poetry with the inevitable following drop into the
commonplace, the same fondness for realism, and the same broad
370
burlesque. Hampered as it is by the necessity of keeping the
story well-knit, Byron’s personality has ample opportunity for
expression.
It is probable that Byron’s description of Saint Peter and the
371
angels owes much to his reading of Pulci. In at least one instance
there is a palpable imitation. Saint Peter in the Vision, who was so
terrified by the approach of Lucifer that,

“He patter’d with his keys at a great rate,

372
And sweated through his apostolic skin,”

suffered as did the same saint in the Morgante Maggiore who was
weary with the duty of opening the celestial gate for slaughtered
Christians:
 “Credo che molto quel giorno s’affana:
E converrà ch’egli abbi buono orecchio,
Tanto gridavan quello anime Osanna
Ch’eran portate dagli angeli in cielo;
373
Sicchè la barba gli sudava e ’l pelo.”

In employing the realistic method in depicting the angels, Byron

seems to have caught something of Pulci’s grotesque spirit.
One line of the Vision,
“When this old, blind, mad, helpless, weak, poor worm,”
seems to imitate the opening of Shelley’s powerful Sonnet; England
in 1819, already quoted,
“An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king.”
Professor Courthope has suggested that Byron’s Don Juan owes
374
something to the work of Peter Pindar. The evidence for the
relationship seems, however, to be very scanty. Wolcot never
employed the octave stanza, nor, indeed, did he ever show
evidences of true poetic power. The two men were, of course, alike
in that they were both liberals, both avowedly enemies of George III,
and both outspoken in their dislikes. But Byron seldom except in
parts of the Vision used the method of broad caricature so
characteristic of Pindar. In the Vision, too, occurs the only obvious
reference on Byron’s part to Pindar’s satire. He describes the effect
of Southey’s dactyls on George III, in the lines:

“The monarch, mute till then, exclaim’d, ‘What! What!

375
Pye come again? No more—No more of that.’”

The couplet recalls Pindar’s delightful imitations of that king’s

eccentric habit of repeating words and phrases. However, Byron’s
style in both Don Juan and the Vision is drawn more from Italian than
from English models.
The Vision of Judgment is, if we exclude Don Juan as being
more than satire, the greatest verse-satire that Byron ever wrote. It is
only natural then to compare the poem with other English satires
which have high rank in our literature. A practically unanimous
critical decision has established Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel
as occupying the foremost position in English satire before the time
of Byron. Unquestionably this work of Dryden’s is admirable; it is
witty, pointed, and direct, embellished with masterly character
sketches and almost faultless in style. It does, however, suffer
somewhat from a lack of unity, due primarily to the fact that the
narrative element in the poem is subordinate to the description.
Byron’s Vision, on the other hand, has a single plot, which is
carefully carried out to a climax and a conclusion. Action joins with
invective and description in forming the satire. Thus the two poems,
approximately the same length if we consider only Part I of Absalom
and Achitophel, give a decidedly different impression. Dryden’s satire
seems a panorama of figures, while Byron’s has the coherence and
clash of a drama.
Absalom and Achitophel is witty but seldom humorous; while
Byron joins caricature and burlesque to wit. The best lines in
Dryden’s poem, such as:

“Beggar’d by fools, whom still he found too late;

He had his jest, and they had his estate,”

excite admiration for the author’s cleverness, but rarely arouse a

smile; the Vision, the contrary, is full of buffoonery. Dryden’s sense of
the dignity of the satirist’s office did not permit him to lower his style,
and he never became familiar with his readers; the very essence of
Byron’s satire is its colloquial character.
Dryden kept his personality always in the background, while the
egotistical Byron could not refrain from letting his individuality lend
fire and passion to whatever he wrote. Thus the Vision, despite the
fact that it is the most cool of Byron’s satires, cannot be called calm
and restrained. Self-control, the will to subdue and govern his
impulses and prejudices, was beyond his reach. Fortunately in the
Vision he did take time to exercise craftsmanship, but he never
attained the polished artistry and firm reserve of his predecessor.
Certainly in urbanity, in dignity, and in justice Dryden is the superior,
just as he is undoubtedly less imaginative, less varied, and less
spirited than Byron.
The two satires are, then, radically different in their methods.
One is a masterpiece of the Latin classical satire in English, formal
and regular, and using the standard English couplet; the other is our
finest example of the Italian style in satire—the mocking, grotesque,
colloquial, and humorous manner of Pulci and Casti. Both are
effective; but one is inclined to surmise that the purple patches in
Absalom and Achitophel will outlast the more perfect whole of The
Vision of Judgment.
The probable results of the publication of a work of such a
sensational character had been foreseen by both Murray and
Longman. When the first number of The Liberal appeared containing
not only The Vision of Judgment but also three epigrams of Byron’s
on the death of Castlereagh, it was received by a torrent of hostile
criticism from the Tory press. The Literary Gazette for October 19,
1822, called Byron’s work “heartless and beastly ribaldry,” and added
on November 2, that Byron had contributed to the Liberal “impiety,
vulgarity, inhumanity, and heartlessness.” The Courier for October 26
termed him “an unsexed Circe, who gems the poisoned cup he
offers us.” On the Whig side, in contrast, Hunt’s Examiner for
September 29 spoke of it as “a Satire upon the Laureate, which
contains also a true and fearless character of a grossly adulated
monarch.”
Byron himself described it to Murray as “one of my best
376
things.” Later critical opinion has also tended to rank it very high.
Goethe called the verses on George III “the sublime of hatred.”
Swinburne, himself a revolutionist but no partisan of Byron’s,
exhausts superlatives in commenting on it: “This poem—stands
alone, not in Byron’s work only, but in the work of the world. Satire in
earlier times had changed her rags for robes; Juvenal had clothed
with fire, and Dryden with majesty, that wandering and bastard
muse. Byron gave her wings to fly with, above the reach even of
these. Others have had as much of passion and as much of humor;
Dryden had perhaps as much of both combined. But here, and not
elsewhere, a third quality is apparent—the sense of a high and clear
imagination.—Above all, the balance of thought and passion is
admirable; human indignation and divine irony are alike understood
and expressed; the pure and fiery anger of men at the sight of
wrong-doing, the tacit inscrutable derision of heaven.” Nichol, in his
life of Byron, says:—“Nowhere in so much space, save in some of
the prose of Swift, is there in English so much scathing satire.”
Two figures in Byron’s poem have been made the basis of a
shrewd comparison by Henley. He says: “Byron and Wordsworth are
like the Lucifer and Michael of The Vision of Judgment. Byron’s was
the genius of revolt, as Wordsworth’s was the genius of dignified and
useful submission; Byron preached the doctrine of private revolution,
Wordsworth the dogma of private apotheosis—Byron was the
passionate and dauntless ‘soldier of a forlorn hope,’ Wordsworth a
kind of inspired clergyman.” Byron’s sympathies in the Vision, as in
Cain, were undoubtedly with Lucifer, the rebel and exile, and his
poem will live as a satiric declaration of the duty of active resistance
to despotism and oppression.
 CHAPTER X
“THE AGE OF BRONZE” AND “THE BLUES”

Byron’s Monody on the Death of Sheridan, written at Diodati on

July 17, 1816, and recited in Drury Lane Theatre on September 7,
was followed by a period of several years in which he ceased to
employ the heroic couplet in poetry of any sort. The reasons for this
temporary abandonment of what had been, hitherto, a favorite
measure, are not altogether clear, although his action may be
ascribed, in part, to his renunciation of things English and to the
influence upon him of his study of the Italians. During his residence
in Italy, Byron used many metrical forms: the Spenserian stanza,
ottava rima, terza rima, blank verse, and other measures in some
shorter lyrics and ephemeral verses. Not until The Age of Bronze,
which he began in December, 1822, did he return to the heroic
couplet of English Bards.
On January 10, 1823, Byron, then living in Genoa, wrote a letter
to Leigh Hunt, in which, among other things, he said: “I have sent to
Mrs. S[helley], for the benefit of being copied, a poem of about seven
hundred and fifty lines length—The Age of Bronze—or Carmen
Seculare et Annus haud Mirabilis, with this Epigraph—‘Impar
Congressus Achilli’.” By way of description, he added: “It is
calculated for the reading part of the million, being all on politics,
etc., etc., etc., and a review of the day in general,—in my early
English Bards style, but a little more stilted, and somewhat too full of
377
‘epithets of war’ and classical and historical allusions.” The work
as revised and completed contains 18 sections and 778 lines.
Originally destined for The Liberal, it was eventually published
anonymously by John Hunt, on April 1, 1823.
 The Age of Bronze is, then, entirely a political satire, intended
chiefly as a counterblast to the recent stringent regulations of the
reactionary Congress of Verona (1822). It comprises, however, other
material: an introductory passage on the great departed leaders, Pitt,
Fox, and Bonaparte; frequent digressions treating of the struggles for
constitutional government then taking place in Europe; and some
lines attacking the landed proprietors in England for their luke-warm
opposition to foreign war. It is, in nearly every sense, a timely poem,
although the note of “Vanitas Vanitatum” sounded in the early
sections gives the satire a universal application.
For a comprehension of Byron’s motives in writing The Age of
Bronze, it is necessary to understand something of the situation in
Europe at the time. Following the numerous insurrections of 1820–
22 in Spain, Portugal, Naples, Greece, and the South American
States, the European powers, guided by the three members of the
Holy Alliance, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, sent delegates to meet
at Verona on October 20, 1822, for a consideration of recent
developments in politics. The leading figure at the conference was
Metternich, the Austrian statesman, although Francis of Austria,
Alexander of Russia, and Frederick William of Prussia were among
the monarchs present. Montmorenci, representing an ultra-royalist
ministry under Villiele, was there to look after the interests of France;
while England, deprived at the last moment of Castlereagh’s
services by his suicide, sent Wellington. The gathering finally
resolved itself into a conclave for the purpose of discussing the right
of France to interfere in the affairs of Spain, by restoring Ferdinand
VII, a member of the House of Bourbon, to the throne of which he
had been deprived by the Constitutionalists. Wellington, after
protesting against the agreement reached by the other envoys to
378
permit the interference of France, left the Congress, by Canning’s
instructions, in December. His withdrawal, however, did not affect the
ultimate decision of the Congress to stamp out revolt whenever it
assailed the precious principle of Legitimacy. War between France
and Spain broke out in 1823; Ferdinand VII was replaced upon his
tottering throne; and the despotic policy of Metternich triumphed, for
a time, over democracy. Canning’s only reply was to recognize the
independence of the rebellious colonies of Spain, and to assert the
belligerency of the Greeks, then fighting for their liberty against the
Turks.
It is to the year which saw the work of the Congress of Verona
that Byron’s secondary title, Annus haud Mirabilis, obviously refers.
In a striking passage in the beginning of the poem, he pays a tribute
to the mighty dead, contrasting, by implication, the leaders of the
Congress with the departed heroes: Pitt and Fox, buried side by side
in Westminster Abbey; and Napoleon,
“Who born no king, made monarchs draw his car.”
The summary which Byron presents of Napoleon’s career is full of
admiration for the fallen emperor’s genius, and of resentment at the
indignities which, according to contemporary gossip, he had been
compelled to undergo on St. Helena. The man “whose game was
empires and whose stakes were thrones” was forced, says the poet,
to become the slave of “the paltry gaoler and the prying spy.” The
passage is both an appreciation and a judgment, wavering, as it
does, between sympathy and condemnation for the conqueror who
burst the chains of Europe only to renew,
“The very fetters which his arm broke through.”
The reference to these giants of the past leads Byron naturally to a
glorification of such liberators as Kosciusko, Washington, and
Bolivar, and to a joyful heralding of revolutions in Chili, Spain, and
Greece:

“One common cause makes myriads of one breast,

Slaves of the east, or helots of the west;
On Andes’ and on Athos’ peaks unfurl’d,
The self-same standard streams o’er either world.”

Under the influence of this enthusiasm he prophecies a liberal

outburst which will end in the regeneration of Europe.
 Contrasted with the optimism of this aspiring idealism is Byron’s
gloom over the deeds of the Congress of Verona. The measures
advocated by this gathering, as we have seen, were reactionary and
autocratic; and Byron’s description of it, tinged with liberal sentiment,
is vigorously satirical. In the conference headed by Metternich,
“Power’s foremost parasite,” he can see nothing but a body of
tyrants,

“With ponderous malice swaying to and fro,

And crushing nations with a stupid blow.”

Many of the allusions in Byron’s sketches of the members recall the

language used by Moore in his Fables for the Holy Alliance. Moore’s
views of the situation in Europe agreed substantially with those of
Byron. Byron’s reference to the “coxcomb czar,”
“The autocrat of waltzes and of war,”
recalls Moore’s mention of that sovereign in Fable I:

“So, on he capered, fearless quite,

Thinking himself extremely clever,
And waltzed away with all his might,
As if the Frost would last forever.”

Byron accuses Louis XVIII, who was not present at the

Congress, of being a gourmand and a hedonist,

“A mild Epicurean, form’d at best

To be a kind host and as good a guest.”

The same idea is conveyed in Moore’s description of that king as,

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