On a Change of Masters at a Great Public School
On a Change of Masters at a Great Public School - fact Summary
From Harrow School
Byron satirically condemns a change of leadership at the school he attended, lamenting that a pompous, narrow-minded new master has replaced a worthy predecessor. Addressing the institution as "Ida," the poem likens the school’s decline to Rome’s fall under a barbarian ruler. It criticizes ostentation, pedantry, and arbitrary new rules that threaten the school’s intellectual reputation and leave only its name, not its learning, intact.
Read Complete AnalysesWHERE are those honours, Ida! once yow own, When Probus fill’d your magisterial throne? As ancient Rome, fast falling to disgrace, Hail’d a barbarian in her Cæsar’s place, So you, degenerate, share as hard a fate, And seat Pomposus where your Probus sate. Of narrow brain, yet of a narrower soul, Pomposus holds you in his harsh control; Pomposus, by no social virtue sway’d, With florid jargon, and with vain parade; With noisy nonsense, and new-fangled rules, Such as were ne’er before enforced in schools Mistaking pedantry for learning’s laws, He governs, sanction’d but by self applause; With him the same dire fate attending Rome, Ill-fated Ida! soon must stamp your doom; Like her o’erthrown, for ever lost to fame, No trace of science left you, but the name.
July 1805.
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