Byron, Marino Faliero and Sardanapalus [etc.]

Byron, Marino Faliero (1821) and Sardanapalus, et al. (1821); review by Reginald Heber, Quarterly Review, XXVII (July 1822), 476-524. [Issue appeared October 1822.] Heber (1783–1826), a churchman, talks more about “we Christians” than most of the Quarterly’s older reviewers deigned to do, but he again takes human beings rather than dogmas as the standards against which to measure virtue and vice (pp. 477-478). Fortunately he directs his attention chiefly to literary matters, and here he shows both erudition and common sense. The Quarterly obviously avoided reviewing Byron’s best late works, like Beppo and Don Juan, partly because the journal would have had to praise the quality of satire directed against its own principles.