"Ravenna, June 7. 1820.
"Enclosed is something which will interest you, to wit, the opinion
of _the_ greatest man of Germany--perhaps of Europe--upon one of
the great men of your advertisements, (all 'famous hands,' as Jacob
Tonson used to say of his ragamuffins,)--in short, a critique of
_Goethe's_ upon _Manfred_. There is the original, an English
translation, and an Italian one; keep them all in your
archives,--for the opinions of such a man as Goethe, whether
favourable or not, are always interesting--and this is more so, as
favourable. His _Faust_ I never read, for I don't know German; but
Matthew Monk Lewis, in 1816, at Coligny, translated most of it to
me _vivâ voce_, and I was naturally much struck with it; but it was
the _Steinbach_ and the _Jungfrau_, and something else, much more
than Faustus, that made me write Manfred. The first scene, however,
and that of Faustus are very similar. Acknowledge this letter.
"Yours ever.
"P.S. I have received _Ivanhoe_;--_good_. Pray send me some
tooth-powder and tincture of myrrh, by _Waite_, &c. Ricciardetto
should have been _translated literally, or not at all_. As to
puffing _Whistlecraft_, it _won't_ do. I'll tell you why some day
or other. Cornwall's a poet, but spoilt by the detestable schools
of the day. Mrs. Hemans is a poet also, but too stiltified and
apostrophic,--and quite wrong. Men died calmly before the Christian
era, and since, without Christianity: witness the Romans, and,
lately, Thistlewood, Sandt, and Lovel--_men who ought to have been
weighed down with their crimes, even had they believed_. A deathbed
is a matter of nerves and constitution, and not of religion.
Voltaire was frightened, Frederick of Prussia not: Christians the
same, according to their strength rather than their creed. What
does H * * H * * mean by his stanza? which is octave got drunk or
gone mad. He ought to have his ears boxed with Thor's hammer for
rhyming so fantastically."
* * * * *
The following is the article from Goethe's "Kunst und Alterthum,"
enclosed in this letter. The grave confidence with which the venerable
critic traces the fancies of his brother poet to real persons and
events, making no difficulty even of a double murder at Florence to
furnish grounds for his theory, affords an amusing instance of the
disposition so prevalent throughout Europe, to picture Byron as a man of
marvels and mysteries, as well in his life as his poetry. To these
exaggerated, or wholly false notions of him, the numerous fictions
palmed upon the world of his romantic tours and wonderful adventures in
places he never saw, and with persons that never existed[75], have, no
doubt, considerably contributed; and the consequence is, so utterly out
of truth and nature are the representations of his life and character
long current upon the Continent, that it may be questioned whether the
real "flesh and blood" hero of these pages,--the social,
practical-minded, and, with all his faults and eccentricities, _English_
Lord Byron,--may not, to the over-exalted imaginations of most of his
foreign admirers, appear but an ordinary, unromantic, and prosaic
personage.
[Footnote 75: Of this kind are the accounts, filled with all sorts of
circumstantial wonders, of his residence in the island of Mytilene;--his
voyages to Sicily,--to Ithaca, with the Countess Guiccioli, &c. &c. But
the most absurd, perhaps, of all these fabrications, are the stories
told by Pouqueville, of the poet's religious conferences in the cell of
Father Paul, at Athens; and the still more unconscionable fiction in
which Rizo has indulged, in giving the details of a pretended theatrical
scene, got up (according to this poetical historian) between Lord Byron
and the Archbishop of Arta, at the tomb of Botzaris, in Missolonghi.]
* * * * *
"GOETHE ON MANFRED.
[1820.]
"Byron's tragedy, Manfred, was to me a wonderful phenomenon, and one
that closely touched me. This singular intellectual poet has taken my
Faustus to himself, and extracted from it the strongest nourishment for
his hypochondriac humour. He has made use of the impelling principles in
his own way, for his own purposes, so that no one of them remains the
same; and it is particularly on this account that I cannot enough admire
his genius. The whole is in this way so completely formed anew, that it
would be an interesting task for the critic to point out not only the
alterations he has made, but their degree of resemblance with, or
dissimilarity to, the original: in the course of which I cannot deny
that the gloomy heat of an unbounded and exuberant despair becomes at
last oppressive to us. Yet is the dissatisfaction we feel always
connected with esteem and admiration.
"We find thus in this tragedy the quintessence of the most astonishing
talent born to be its own tormentor. The character of Lord Byron's life
and poetry hardly permits a just and equitable appreciation. He has
often enough confessed what it is that torments him. He has repeatedly
pourtrayed it; and scarcely any one feels compassion for this
intolerable suffering, over which he is ever laboriously ruminating.
There are, properly speaking, two females whose phantoms for ever haunt
him, and which, in this piece also, perform principal parts--one under
the name of Astarte, the other without form or actual presence, and
merely a voice. Of the horrid occurrence which took place with the
former, the following is related:--When a bold and enterprising young
man, he won the affections of a Florentine lady. Her husband discovered
the amour, and murdered his wife; but the murderer was the same night
found dead in the street, and there was no one on whom any suspicion
could be attached. Lord Byron removed from Florence, and these spirits
haunted him all his life after.
"This romantic incident is rendered highly probable by innumerable
allusions to it in his poems. As, for instance, when turning his sad
contemplations inwards, he applies to himself the fatal history of the
king of Sparta. It is as follows:--Pausanias, a Lacedemonian general,
acquires glory by the important victory at Platæa, but afterwards
forfeits the confidence of his countrymen through his arrogance,
obstinacy, and secret intrigues with the enemies of his country. This
man draws upon himself the heavy guilt of innocent blood, which attends
him to his end; for, while commanding the fleet of the allied Greeks, in
the Black Sea, he is inflamed with a violent passion for a Byzantine
maiden. After long resistance, he at length obtains her from her
parents, and she is to be delivered up to him at night. She modestly
desires the servant to put out the lamp, and, while groping her way in
the dark, she overturns it. Pausanias is awakened from his
sleep--apprehensive of an attack from murderers, he seizes his sword,
and destroys his mistress. The horrid sight never leaves him. Her shade
pursues him unceasingly, and he implores for aid in vain from the gods
and the exorcising priests.
"That poet must have a lacerated heart who selects such a scene from
antiquity, appropriates it to himself, and burdens his tragic image with
it. The following soliloquy, which is overladen with gloom and a
weariness of life, is, by this remark, rendered intelligible. We
recommend it as an exercise to all friends of declamation. Hamlet's
soliloquy appears improved upon here."[76]
[Footnote 76: The critic here subjoins the soliloquy from Manfred,
beginning "We are the fools of time and terror," in which the allusion
to Pausanias occurs.]
* * * * *