The people in crowds gathered round the grated gates
of the Ducal Palace, which are shut._
_First Citizen_. I have gained the Gate, and can discern the Ten,
Robed in their gowns of state, ranged round the Doge.
_Second Cit_. I cannot reach thee with mine utmost effort.
How is it? let us hear at least, since sight
Is thus prohibited unto the people,
Except the occupiers of those bars.
_First Cit_. One has approached the Doge, and now they strip
The ducal bonnet from his head--and now
He raises his keen eyes to Heaven; I see
Them glitter, and his lips move--Hush! hush!--no, 10
'Twas but a murmur--Curse upon the distance!
His words are inarticulate, but the voice
Swells up like muttered thunder; would we could
But gather a sole sentence!
_Second Cit_. Hush! we perhaps may catch the sound.
_First Cit_. 'Tis vain.
I cannot hear him.--How his hoary hair
Streams on the wind like foam upon the wave!
Now--now--he kneels--and now they form a circle
Round him, and all is hidden--but I see
The lifted sword in air----Ah! hark! it falls! 20
[_The people murmur._
_Third Cit_. Then they have murdered him who would have freed us.
_Fourth Cit_. He was a kind man to the commons ever.
_Fifth Cit_. Wisely they did to keep their portals barred.
Would we had known the work they were preparing
Ere we were summoned here--we would have brought
Weapons, and forced them!
_Sixth Cit_. Are you sure he's dead?
_First Cit_. I saw the sword fall--Lo! what have we here?
_Enter on the Balcony of the Palace which fronts St. Mark's
Place a_ CHIEF OF THE TEN,[480] _with a bloody sword.
He waves it thrice before the People, and exclaims,_
"Justice hath dealt upon the mighty Traitor!"
[_The gates are opened; the populace rush in towards the
The foremost of them exclaims to those behind,_
"The gory head rolls down the Giants' Steps!"[fy][481]
[_The curtain falls_.[482]
FOOTNOTES:
[359] {331}[Marin Faliero was not in command of the land forces at the
siege of Zara in 1346. According to contemporary documents, he held a
naval command under Civran, who was in charge of the fleet. Byron was
misled by an error in Morelli's Italian version of the _Chronica
iadratina seu historia obsidionis Jaderæ_, p. xi. (See _Marino faliero
avanti il Dogado_, by Vittorio Lazzarino, published in _Nuovo Archivio
Veneto_, 1893, vol. v. pt. i. p. 132, note 4.)]
[360] [For the siege of Alesia (Alise in Côte d'Or), which resulted in
the defeat of the Gauls and the surrender of Vercingetorix, see _De
Bella Gallico_, vii. 68-90. Belgrade fell to Prince Eugene, August 18,
1717.]
[361] {332}[If this event ever took place, it must have been in 1346,
when the future Doge was between sixty and seventy years of age. The
story appears for the first time in the chronicle of Bartolomeo Zuccato,
notajo e cancelliere of the Comune di Treviso, which belongs to the
first half of the sixteenth century. The Venetian chroniclers who were
Faliero's contemporaries, and Anonimo Torriano, a Trevisan, who wrote
before Zuccato, are silent. See _Marino Faliero, La Congiura_, by
Vittorio Lazzarino.--_Nuovo Archivio Veneto_, 1897, vol. xiii. pt. i. p.
29.]
[362] ["Square talked in a very different strain.... In pronouncing
these [sentences from the _Tusculan Questions, etc_.] he was one day so
eager that he unfortunately bit his tongue ... this accident gave
Thwackum, who was present, and who held all such doctrines to be
heathenish and atheistical, an opportunity to clap a judgment on his
back."--_The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling_, Bk. V. chap. ii. 1768,
i. 234. See, too, Letter to Murray, November 23, 1822, _Letters_, 1901,
vi. 142; _Life_, p. 570.]
[363] [[_Principj di storia civile della Repubblica di Venezia_. Scritti
da Vettor Sandi, 1755, Part II. tom. i. pp. 127, 128.]
[364] [_Storia della Republica Veneziana_. Scritta da Andrea Navagiero,
_apud_ Muratori, _Italic. Rerum, Scriptores_, 1733, xxiii. p. 924,
_sq_.]
[365] [_Istoria dell' assedio e della Ricupera di Zara, Fatta da'
Veneziani nell' anno_ 1346. Scritta da auctore contemporaneo, pp.
i.-xxxviii.]
[366] {333}[Michele Steno was not, as Sanudo and others state, one of
the Capi of the Quarantia in 1355, but twenty years later, in 1375. When
Faliero was elected to the Dogeship, Steno was a youth of twenty, and a
man under thirty years of age was not eligible for the Quarantia.--_La
Congiura,_ etc., p. 64.]
[367] [History does not bear out the tradition of her youth. Aluica
Gradenigo was born in the first decade of the fourteenth century, and
became Dogaressa when she was more than forty-five years of age.--_La
Congiura,_ p. 69.]
[368] [See _A View of the Society and Manners in Italy,_ by John Moore,
M.D., 1781, i. 144-152. The "stale jest" is thus worded: "This lady
imagined she had been affronted by a young Venetian nobleman at a public
ball, and she complained bitterly ... to her husband. The old Doge, who
had all the desire imaginable to please his wife, determined, in this
matter, at least, to give her ample satisfaction."]
[369] {334}[For Frederick's verse, "Evitez de Bernis la stérile
abondance," see _La Bibliographie Universelle_, art. "Bernis"; and for
his jest, "Je ne la connais pas," see _History of Frederick the Great_,
by Thomas Carlyle, 1898, vi. 14.]
[370] [For the story of the abduction of Dervorgilla, wife of Tiernan
O'Ruarc, by Dermot Mac-Murchad, King of Leinster, in 1153, see Moore's
_History of Ireland_, 1837, ii. 200.]
[371] {335}[_Istoria della Repubblica di Venezia_, del Sig. Abate
Laugier, Tradotta del Francese. Venice, 1778, iv. 30.]
[372] {336}[The marble staircase on which Faliero took the ducal oath,
and on which he was afterwards beheaded, led into the courtyard of the
palace. It was erected by a decree of the Senate in 1340, and was pulled
down to make room for Rizzo's façade, which was erected in 1484. The
"Scala dei Giganti" (built by Antonio Rizzo, circ. 1483) does not occupy
the site of the older staircase.]
[373] [On the north side of the Campo, in front of the Church of Santi
Giovanni e Paolo (better known as San Zanipolo), stands the Scuola di
San Marco. Attached to the lower hall of the Scuola is the Chapel of
Santa Maria della Pace, in which the sarcophagus containing the bones of
Marino Faliero was discovered in 1815.]
[374] [In the Campo in front of the church is the equestrian statue of
Bartolomeo Colleoni, designed by Andrea Veroccio, and cast in 1496 by
Alessandro Leopardi.--_Handbook: Northern Italy_, p. 374.]
[375] {337}[See _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 317, note 1.]
[376] [See _Letters_, 1898, ii. 79, note 3.]
[ct] _It is like being at the whole process of a woman's toilet--it
disenchants._--[MS. M.]
[cu] _Any man of common independence._--[MS. M. erased.]
[377] {338}While I was in the sub-committee of Drury Lane Theatre, I can
vouch for my colleagues, and I hope for myself, that we did our best to
bring back the legitimate drama. I tried what I could to get _De
Montford_ revived, but in vain, and equally in vain in favour of
Sotheby's _Ivan_, which was thought an acting play; and I endeavoured
also to wake Mr. Coleridge to write us a tragedy[A]. Those who are not
in the secret will hardly believe that the _School for Scandal_ is the
play which has brought the _least money_, averaging the number of times
it has been acted since its production; so Manager Dibdin assured me. Of
what has occurred since Maturin's _Bertram_ I am not aware[B]; so that I
may be traducing, through ignorance, some excellent new writers; if so,
I beg their pardon. I have been absent from England nearly five years,
and, till last year, I never read an English newspaper since my
departure, and am now only aware of theatrical matters through the
medium of the _Parisian Gazette_ of Galignani, and only for the last
twelve months. Let me, then, deprecate all offence to tragic or comic
writers, to whom I wish well, and of whom I know nothing. The long
complaints of the actual state of the drama arise, however, from no
fault of the performers. I can conceive nothing better than Kemble,
Cooke, and Kean, in their very different manners, or than Elliston in
_Gentleman's_ comedy, and in some parts of tragedy. Miss O'Neill[C] I
never saw, having made and kept a determination to see nothing which
should divide or disturb my recollection of Siddons. Siddons and Kemble
were the _ideal_ of tragic action; I never saw anything at all
resembling them, even in _person_; for this reason, we shall never see
again Coriolanus or Macbeth. When Kean is blamed for want of dignity, we
should remember that it is a grace, not an art, and not to be attained
by study. In all, _not_ super-natural parts, he is perfect; even his
very defects belong, or seem to belong, to the parts themselves, and
appear truer to nature. But of Kemble we may say, with reference to his
acting, what the Cardinal de Retz said of the Marquis of Montrose, "that
he was the only man he ever saw who reminded him of the heroes of
Plutarch."[D]
[A] [See letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, March 31, 1815, _Letters_,
1899, iii. 190; letter to Moore, October 28, 1815, and note 1 (with
quotation from unpublished letter of Coleridge), and passages from
Byron's _Detached Thoughts_ (1821) ... _ibid_., pp. 230, 233-238.]
[B] [Maturin's _Bertram_ was played for the first time at Drury Lane,
May 9, 1816. (See _Detached Thoughts_ (1821), _Letters_, 1899, iii. 233,
and letter to Murray, October 12, 1817, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 171.)]
[C] [Elizabeth O'Neill (1791-1872), afterwards Lady Becher, made her
_début_ in 1814, and retired from the stage in 1819. Sarah Siddons
(1755-1831) made her final appearance on the stage June 9, 1818, and her
brother John Philip Kemble (1757-1823) appeared for the last time in
_Coriolanus_, June 23, 1817. Of the other actors mentioned in this note,
George Frederick Cooke (1756-1812) had long been dead; Edmund Kean
(1787-1833) had just returned from a successful tour in the United
States; and Robert William Elliston (1774-1831) (_vide ante_, p. 328)
had, not long before (1819), become lessee of Drury Lane Theatre.]
[D]["Le comte de Montross, Écossais et chef de la maison de Graham, le
seul homme du monde qui m'ait jamais rappelé l'idée de certains héros
que l'on ne voit plus que dans les vies de Plutarque, avail soutenu le
parti du roi d'Angleterre dans son pays, avec une grandeur d'àme qui
rien avait point de pareille en ce siècle."--_Mémoires du Cardinal de
Retz_, 1820, ii. 88.]
[378] {339}[This appreciation of the _Mysterious Mother_, which he seems
to have read in Lord Dover's preface to Walpole's Letters to Sir Horace
Mann, provoked Coleridge to an angry remonstrance. "I venture to remark,
first, that I do not believe that Lord Byron spoke sincerely; for I
suspect that he made a tacit exception of himself at least.... Thirdly,
that the _Mysterious Mother_ is the most disgusting, vile, detestable
composition that ever came from the hand of man. No one with a spark of
true manliness, of which Horace Walpole had none, could have written
it."--_Table Talk_, March 20, 1834. Croker took a very different view,
and maintained "that the good old English blank verse, the force of
character expressed in the wretched mother ... argue a strength of
conception, and vigour of expression capable of great things," etc. Over
and above the reasonable hope and expectation that this provocative
eulogy of Walpole's play would annoy the "Cockneys" and the "Lakers,"
Byron was no doubt influenced in its favour by the audacity of the plot,
which not only put _septentrional_ prejudices at defiance, but was an
instance in point that love ought not "to make a tragic subject unless
it is love furious, criminal, and hopeless" (Letter to Murray, January
4, 1821). He would, too, be deeply and genuinely moved by such verse as
this--
"Consult a holy man! inquire of him!
--Good father, wherefore? what should I inquire?
Must I be taught of him that guilt is woe?
That innocence alone is happiness--
That martyrdom itself shall leave the villain
The villain that it found him? Must I learn
That minutes stamped with crime are past recall?
That joys are momentary; and remorse
Eternal?...
Nor could one risen from the dead proclaim
This truth in deeper sounds to my conviction;
We want no preacher to distinguish vice
From virtue. At our birth the God revealed
All conscience needs to know. No codicil
To duty's rubric here and there was placed
In some Saint's casual custody."
Act i. sc. 3, _s.f._ _Works of the Earl of Orford_, 1798, i. 55.]
[379] {340}[Byron received a copy of Goethe's review of _Manfred_, which
appeared in _Kunst und Alterthum_ (ii. 2. 191) in May, 1820. In a letter
to Murray, dated October 17, 1820 (_Letters_, 1901, v. 100), he enclosed
a letter to Goethe, headed "For _Marino Faliero_. Dedication to Baron
Goethe, etc., etc., etc." It is possible that Murray did not take the
"Dedication" seriously, but regarded it as a _jeu d'esprit_, designed
for the amusement of himself and his "synod." At any rate, the
"Dedication" did not reach Goethe's hand till 1831, when it was
presented to him at Weimar by John Murray the Third. "It is written,"
says Moore, who printed a mutilated version in his _Letters and
Journals, etc._, 1830, ii. 356-358, "in the poet's most whimsical and
mocking mood; and the unmeasured severity poured out in it upon the two
favourite objects of his wrath and ridicule, compels me to deprive the
reader of its most amusing passages." The present text, which follows
the MS., is reprinted from _Letters_, 1901, v. 100-104--
"Dedication to Baron Goethe, etc., etc., etc.
"Sir--In the Appendix to an English work lately translated into
German and published at Leipsic, a judgment of yours upon English
poetry is quoted as follows: 'That in English poetry, great genius,
universal power, a feeling of profundity, with sufficient
tenderness and force, are to be found; but that _altogether these
do not constitute poets_,' etc., etc.
"I regret to see a great man falling into a great mistake. This
opinion of yours only proves that the '_Dictionary of Ten Thousand
living English Authors_'[A] has not been translated into German.
You will have read, in your friend Schlegel's version, the dialogue
in _Macbeth_--
"'There are _ten thousand!_
_Macbeth_. _Geese_, villain?
_Answer_. _Authors_, sir.'[B]
Now, of these 'ten thousand authors,' there are actually nineteen
hundred and eighty-seven poets, all alive at this moment, whatever
their works may be, as their booksellers well know: and amongst
these there are several who possess a far greater reputation than
mine, though considerably less than yours. It is owing to this
neglect on the part of your German translators that you are not
aware of the works of William Wordsworth, who has a baronet in
London[C] who draws him frontispieces and leads him about to
dinners and to the play; and a Lord in the country,[D] who gave him
a place in the Excise--and a cover at his table. You do not know
perhaps that this Gentleman is the greatest of all poets
past--present and to come--besides which he has written an '_Opus
Magnum_' in prose--during the late election for Westmoreland.[E]
His principal publication is entitled '_Peter Bell_' which he had
withheld from the public for '_one and twenty years_'--to the
irreparable loss of all those who died in the interim, and will
have no opportunity of reading it before the resurrection. There is
also another named Southey, who is more than a poet, being actually
poet Laureate,--a post which corresponds with what we call in Italy
Poeta Cesareo, and which you call in German--I know not what; but
as you have a '_Caesar_'--probably you have a name for it. In
England there is no _Caesar_--only the Poet.
"I mention these poets by way of sample to enlighten you. They form
but two bricks of our Babel, (Windsor bricks, by the way) but may
serve for a specimen of the building.
"It is, moreover, asserted that 'the predominant character of the
whole body of the present English poetry is a _disgust_ and
_contempt_ for life.' But I rather suspect that by one single work
of _prose_, _you_ yourself have excited a greater contempt for life
than all the English volumes of poesy that ever were written.
Madame de Stäel says, that 'Werther has occasioned more suicides
than the most beautiful woman;' and I really believe that he has
put more individuals out of this world than Napoleon
himself,--except in the way of his profession. Perhaps, Illustrious
Sir, the acrimonious judgment passed by a celebrated northern
journal[F] upon you in particular, and the Germans in general, has
rather indisposed you towards English poetry as well as criticism.
But you must not regard our critics, who are at bottom good-natured
fellows, considering their two professions,--taking up the law in
court, and laying it down out of it. No one can more lament their
hasty and unfair judgment, in your particular, than I do; and I so
expressed myself to your friend Schlegel, in 1816, at Coppet.
"In behalf of my 'ten thousand' living brethren, and of myself, I
have thus far taken notice of an opinion expressed with regard to
'English poetry' in general, and which merited notice, because it
was yours.
"My principal object in addressing you was to testify my sincere
respect and admiration of a man, who, for half a century, has led
the literature of a great nation, and will go down to posterity as
the first literary Character of his Age.
"You have been fortunate, Sir, not only in the writings which have
illustrated your name, but in the name itself, as being
sufficiently musical for the articulation of posterity. In this you
have the advantage of some of your countrymen, whose names would
perhaps be immortal also--if anybody could pronounce them.
"It may, perhaps, be supposed, by this apparent tone of levity,
that I am wanting in intentional respect towards you; but this will
be a mistake: I am always flippant in prose. Considering you, as I
really and warmly do, in common with all your own, and with most
other nations, to be by far the first literary Character which has
existed in Europe since the death of Voltaire, I felt, and feel,
desirous to inscribe to you the following work,--_not_ as being
either a tragedy or a _poem_, (for I cannot pronounce upon its
pretensions to be either one or the other, or both, or neither,)
but as a mark of esteem and admiration from a foreigner to the man
who has been hailed in Germany 'the great Goethe.'
"I have the honour to be,
With the truest respect,
Your most obedient and
Very humble servant,
Byron,
"Ravenna, 8^bre^ 14º, 1820.
"P.S.--I perceive that in Germany, as well as in Italy, there is a
great struggle about what they call '_Classical_' and
'_Romantic_,'--terms which were not subjects of classification in
England, at least when I left it four or five years ago. Some of
the English Scribblers, it is true, abused Pope and Swift, but the
reason was that they themselves did not know how to write either
prose or verse; but nobody thought them worth making a sect of.
Perhaps there may be something of the kind sprung up lately, but I
have not heard much about it, and it would be such bad taste that I
shall be very sorry to believe it."
Another Dedication, to be prefixed to a Second Edition of the play was
found amongst Byron's papers. It remained in MS. till 1832, when it was
included in a prefatory note to _Marino Faliero, Works of Lord Byron_,
1832, xii. 50.
"Dedication of _Marino Faliero_.
"To the Honourable Douglas Kinnaird.
"My dear Douglas,--I dedicate to you the following tragedy, rather
on account of your good opinion of it, than from any notion of my
own that it may be worthy of your acceptance. But if its merits
were ten times greater than they possibly can be, this offering
would still be a very inadequate acknowledgment of the active and
steady friendship with which, for a series of years, you have
honoured your obliged and affectionate friend,
"BYRON.
"Ravenna, Sept. 1st, 1821."
[A][_A Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors of Great Britain and
Ireland, etc_., London, 1816, 8vo.]
[B] [_Macbeth_. Where got'st thou that goose look?
_Servant_. There is ten thousand--
_Macbeth_. Geese, villain?
_Servant_. Soldiers, sir."
_Macbeth_, act v. sc. 3, lines 12, 13.]
[C][Sir George Beaumont. See Professor W. Knight, _Life of Wordsworth_,
ii. (_Works_, vol. x.) 56.]
[D][Lord Lonsdale (_ibid_., p. 209).]
[E][_Two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmoreland_, 1818.]
[F][See an article on Goethe's _Aus Meinem Leben_, etc., in the
_Edinburgh Review_ for June, 1816, vol. xxvi. pp. 304-337.] ]
[cv] {345} _Are none yet of the Messengers returned_?--[MS. M.]
[380] [The _Consiglio Minore_, which originally consisted of the Doge
and his six councillors, was afterwards increased, by the addition of
the three _Capi_ of the _Quarantia Criminale_, and was known as the
_Serenissima Signoria_ (G. Cappelletti, _Storia della Repubblica di
Venezia_, 1850, i. 483). The Forty who were "debating on Steno's
accusation" could not be described as the "_Signory_."]
[cw] _With seeming patience_.--[MS. M.]
[cx] _He sits as deep_--[MS. M.]
[cy] {346}_Or aught that imitates_--.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[cz] _Young, gallant_--.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[381] [Bertuccio Faliero was a distant connection of the Doge, not his
nephew. Matters of business and family affairs seem to have brought them
together, and it is evident that they were on intimate terms.--_La
Congiura_, p. 84.]
[382] [The Avogadori, three in number, were the conductors of criminal
prosecutions on the part of the State; and no act of the councils was
valid, unless sanctioned by the presence of one of them; but they were
not, as Byron seems to imply, a court of first instance. The implied
reproach that they preferred to send the case to appeal because Steno
was a member of the "Quarantia," is based on an error of Sanudo's (_vide
ante_, p. 333).]
[da] {348} ----_Marin! Falieræ_ [sic].--[MS. M.]
[383] ["Marin Faliero, dalla bella moglie--altri la gode, ed egli la
mantien."--Marino Samuto, _Vitæ Ducum Venetorum, apud_ Muratori, _Rerum
Italicurum Scriptores_, 1733, xxii. 628-638]. Navagero, in his _Storia
della Repubblica Veneriana_, _ibid_., xxiii. 1040, gives a coarser
rendering of Steno's Lampoon.--"Becco Marino Fallier dalla belta
mogier;" and there are older versions agreeing in the main with that
Faliero's by Sanudo. It is, however, extremely doubtful whether Faliro's
conspiracy was, in any sense, the outcome of a personal insult. The
story of the Lampoon first appears in the Chronicle of Lorenzo de
Monaci, who wrote in the latter half of the fifteenth century. "Fama
fuit ... quia aliqui adolescentuli nobiles scripserunt in angulis
interioris palatii aliqua verba ignominiosa, et quod ipse (il Doge)
magis incanduit quoniam adolescentuli illi parva fuerant animadversione
puniti." In course of time the "noble youths" became a single noble
youth, whose name occurred in the annals, and the derivation or
evolution of the "verba ignominiosa," followed by a natural
process.--_La Congiura, Nuona Archivio Veneto_, 1897, tom. xiii. pt. ii.
p. 347.]
[384] {349}[Sanudo gives two versions of Steno's punishment: (1) that he
should be imprisoned for two months, and banished from Venice for a
year; (2) that he should be imprisoned for one month, flogged with a
fox's tail, and pay one hundred lire to the Republic.]
[385] {350}[_Vide ante_, p. 331.]
[386] {351}[Faliero's appeal to the "law" is a violation of "historical
accuracy." The penalty for an injury to the Doge was not fixed by law,
but was decided from time to time by the Judge, in accordance with
unwritten custom.--_La Congiura_, p. 60.]
[db] {352}_Who threw his sting into a poisonous rhyme_.--[Alternative
reading. MS. M.]
[387] [For the story of Cæsar, Pompeia, and Clodius, see Plutarch's
_Lives_, "Cæsar," Langhorne's translation, 1838, p. 498.]
[dc]----_Enrico_.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[388] [According to Sanudo (_Vitæ Ducum Venetorum, apud_ Muratori,
_Rerum Ital. Script_., 1733, xxii. 529), it was Ser Pantaleone Barbo who
intervened, when (A.D. 1204) the election to the Empire of
Constantinople lay between the Doge "Arrigo Dandolo" and "Conte
Baldovino di Fiandra."]
[dd] {354} ----_in olden days._--[MS. M.]
[389] {356}[According to the much earlier, and, presumably, more
historical narrative of Lorenzo de Monaci, Bertuccio Isarello was not
chief of the _Arsenalotti_, but simply the patron, that is the owner, of
a vessel (_paron di nave_), and consequently a person of importance
amongst sailors and naval artisans; and the noble who strikes the fatal
blow is not Barbaro, but a certain Giovanni Dandolo, who is known, at
that time, to have been "_sopracomito and consigliere del capitano da
mar_." If the Admiral of the Arsenal had been engaged in the conspiracy,
the fact could hardly have escaped the notice of contemporary
chroniclers. Signor Lazzarino suggests that the name Gisello, or
Girello, which has been substituted for that of Israel Bertuccio, is a
corruption of Isarello.--_La Congiura_, p. 74.]
[390] [The island of Sapienza lies about nine miles to the north-west of
Capo Gallo, in the Morea. The battle in which the Venetians under Nicolò
Pisani were defeated by the Genoese under Paganino Doria was fought
November 4, 1354. (See _Venice, an Historical Sketch_, by Horatio F.
Brown, 1893, p. 201.)]
[391] An historical fact. See Marin Sanuto's _Lives of the Doges_.
["Sanuto says that Heaven took away his senses for this buffet, and
induced him to conspire:--'Però fu permesso che il Faliero perdesse
l'intelletto.'"--_B. Letters_ (_Works, etc._, 1832, xii. 82. note 1).
[392] {358}["The number of their constant Workmen is 1200; and all these
Artificers have a Superior Officer called _Amiraglio_, who commands the
_Bucentaure_ on Ascension Day, when the Duke goes in state to marry the
sea. And here we cannot but notice, that by a ridiculous custom this
Admiral makes himself Responsible to the _Senat_ for the inconstancy of
the Sea, and engages his Life there shall be no Tempest that day. 'Tis
this Admiral who has the Guard of the Palais, St. Mark, with his
_Arsenalotti_, during the _interregnum_. He carries the Red Standard
before the Prince when he makes his Entry, by virtue of which office he
has his Cloak, and the two Basons (out of which the Duke throws the
money to the People) for his fee."--_The History of the Government of
Venice_, written in the year 1675, by the Sieur Amelott de la Houssaie,
London, 1677, p. 63.]
[393] [_Vide ante_, p. 356, note 1.]
[394] {360}[The famous measure known as the closing of the Great Council
was carried into force during the Dogeship (1289-1311) of Pietro
Gradenigo. On the last day of February, 1297, a law was proposed and
passed, "That the Council of Forty are to ballot, one by one, the names
of all those who during the last four years have had a seat in the Great
Council.... Three electors shall be chosen to submit names of fresh
candidates for the Great Council, on the ... approval of the Doge." But
strict as these provisions were, they did not suffice to restrict the
government to the aristocracy. It was soon decreed "that only those who
could prove that a paternal ancestor had sat on the Great Council, after
its creation in 1176, should now be eligible as members.... It is in
this provision that we find the essence of the _Serrata del Maggior
Consiglio_.... The work was not completed at one stroke.... In 1315 a
list of all those who were eligible ... was compiled. The scrutiny ...
was entrusted to the _Avogadori di Comun_, and became ... more and more
severe. To ensure the purity of blood, they opened a register of
marriages and births.... Thus the aristocracy proceeded to construct
itself more and more upon a purely oligarchical basis."--_Venice, an
Historical Sketch_, by Horatio F. Brown, 1893, pp. 162-164.]
[395] {362}[To "partake" this or that is an obsolete construction, but
rests on the authority of Dryden and other writers of the period.
Byron's "have partook" cannot come under the head of "good, sterling,
genuine English"! (See letter to Murray, October 8, 1820, _Letters_,
1901, v. 89.)]
[396] {363}[The bells of San Marco were never rung but by order of the
Doge. One of the pretexts for ringing this alarm was to have been an
announcement of the appearance of a Genoese fleet off the Lagune.
According to Sanudo, "on the appointed day they [the followers of the
sixteen leaders of the conspiracy] were to make affrays amongst
themselves, here and there, in order that the Duke might have a pretence
for tolling the bells of San Marco." (See, too, _Sketches from Venetian
History, 1831, i. 266, note._)]
[397] ["Le Conseil des Dix avail ses prisons speciales dites
_camerotti_; celles non officiellement appelées les _pozzi_ et les
_piombi_, les puits et les plombs, étaient de son redoubtable domaine.
Les _Camerotti di sotto_ (les puits) étaient obscurs mais non
accessibles à l'eau du canal, comme on l'a fait croire en des récits
dignes d'Anne Radcliffe; les _camerotti di soprà_ (les plombs) étaient
des cellules fortement doublées de bois mais non privées de
lumière."--_Les Archives de Venise_, par Armand Baschet, 1870, p. 535.
For the _pozzi_ and the "Bridge of Sighs" see note by Hobhouse,
_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 465; and compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV.
stanza i. line 1 (and _The Two Foscari_, act iv. sc. 1), _Poetical
Works_, 1899, ii. 327, note 2.]
[398] {365}[For "Sapienza," _vide ante_, p. 356. According to the
genealogies, Marin Falier, by his first wife, had a daughter Lucia, who
was married to Franceschino Giustiniani; but there is no record of a
son. (See _La Congiura_, p. 21.)]
[399] {366}["The Doges were all _buried_ in _St. Mark's before_ Faliero:
it is singular that when his predecessor, _Andrea Dandolo_, died, the
Ten made a law that _all_ the _future Doges_ should be _buried with
their families in their own churches,--one would think by a kind of
presentiment_. So that all that is said of his _Ancestral Doges_, as
buried at St. John's and Paul's, is altered from the fact, _they being
in St. Mark's_. _Make a note_ of this, and put _Editor_ as the
subscription to it. As I make such pretensions to accuracy, I should not
like to be _twitted_ even with such trifles on that score. Of the play
they may say what they please, but not so of my costume and _dram.
pers_.--they having been real existences."--Letter to Murray, October
12, 1820, _Letters_, 1901, v. 95. Byron's injunction was not carried out
till 1832.]
[400] A gondola is not like a common boat, but is as easily rowed with
one oar as with two (though, of course, not so swiftly), and often is so
from motives of privacy; and, since the decay of Venice, of economy.
[401] {367}["What Gifford says (of the first act) is very consolatory.
'English, sterling _genuine English_,' is a desideratum amongst you, and
I am glad that I have got so much left; though Heaven knows how I retain
it: I _hear_ none but from my Valet, and his is _Nottinghamshire_; and I
_see_ none but in your new publications, and theirs is _no_ language at
all, but jargon.... Gifford says that it is 'good, sterling, genuine
English,' and Foscolo says that the characters are right
Venetian."--Letters to Murray, Sept. 11, Oct. 8, 1820, _Letters_, 1901,
v. 75-89.]
[402] [Byron admits (_vide ante_, p. 340) that the character of the
"Dogaressa" is more or less his own creation. It may be remarked that in
Casimir Delavigne's version of the story, the Duchess (Elena) cherishes
a secret and criminal attachment for Bertuccio Faliero, and that in Mr.
Swinburne's tragedy, while innocent in act, she is smitten with remorse
for a passion which overmasters her loyalty to her husband. Byron's
Angiolina is "faultily faultless, ... splendidly null."
In a letter to Murray, dated January 4, 1821 (_Letters_, 1901, v. 218),
he says, "As I think that _love_ is not the principal passion for
tragedy, you will not find me a popular writer. Unless it is Love,
_furious_, _criminal_, and _hapless_ [as in _The Mysterious Mother_, or
in Alfieri's _Mirra_, or Shelley's _Cenci_], it ought not to make a
tragic subject. When it is melting and maudlin, it _does_, but it ought
not to do; it is then for the gallery and second-price boxes." It is
probable that he owed these sentiments to the theory and practice of
Vittorio Alfieri. "It is extraordinary," writes M. de Fallette Barrol
(_Monthly Magazine_, April, 1805, reprinted in Preface to _Tragedie di
Alfieri_, A. Montucci, Edinburgh, 1805, i. xvi. _sq._), "that a man
whose soul possessed an uncommon share of ardour and sensibility, and
had experienced all the violence of the passions, should scarcely have
condescended to introduce love into his tragedies; or, when he does,
that he should only employ it with a kind of reserve and severity.... He
probably regarded it as a hackneyed agent; for in ... _Myrrha_ it
appears in such a strange character, that all the art of the writer is
not capable of divesting it of an air at once ludicrous and disgusting."
But apart from the example of Alfieri, there was another motive at
work--a determination to prove to the world that he was the master of
his own temperament, and that, if he chose, he could cast away frivolity
and cynicism, and clothe himself with austerity "as with a garment." He
had been taken to task for "treating well-nigh with equal derision the
most pure of virtues, and the most odious of vices" (_Blackwood's Edin.
Mag._, August, 1819), and here was an "answer to his accusers!"]
[403] {368}[The exact date of Marin Falier's birth is a matter of
conjecture, but there is reason to believe that he Was under
seventy-five years of age at the time of the conspiracy. The date
assigned is 1280-1285 A.D.]
[de] {369} ----_has he been doomed?_--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[404] {370}[According to Dio Cassius, the last words of Brutus were,
Ὦ τλῆμον ἀρετή, λόγος ἄρ᾽ ἦσθ᾽ [ἄλλως], ἐγὼ δὲ ὡς ἕργων ἥσκουν' σὺ δ᾽ ἀρ᾽
ἐδούλευες τύχῃ
--_Hist. Rom._, lib. xlvii. c. 49, ed. v., P. Boissevain, 1898, ii. 246.]
[df] {375}
_Doth Heaven forgive her own? is Satan saved?_
_But be it so?_--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[405] [There is no MS. authority for "From wrath eternal."]
[dg] _Oh do not speak thus rashly_.-[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[406] {377}
["Beg Heaven to cleanse the leprosy of lust."
_'Tis Pity she's a Whore_, by John Ford.
Lamb's _Dramatic Poets_, 1835, i. 265.]
[407] {378}[The Dogaressa Aluica was the daughter of Nicolò Gradenigo.
It was the Doge who inherited the "blood of Loredano" through his mother
Beriola.]
[408] {381}[The lines "and the hour hastens" to "whate'er may urge" are
not in the MS.]
[dh] {382}_Where Death sits throned_----.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[409] [Filippo Calendario, who is known to have been one of the
principal conspirators, was a master stone-cutter, who worked as a
sculptor, and ranked as such. The tradition, to which Byron does not
allude, that he was an architect, and designed the new palace begun in
1354, may probably be traced to a document of the fifteenth century, in
which Calendario is described as _commissario_, i.e. executor, of Piero
Basejo, who worked as a master stone-cutter for the Republic. The
_Maggior Consiglio_ was its own architect, and would not have empowered
a _tagliapietra_, however eminent, to act on his own
responsibility.--_La Congiura_, pp. 76, 77.]
[410] {383}[The _sbirri_ were constables, officers of the police
magistrates, the _signori di notte_. The Italians have a saying, _Dir le
sue ragioni agli sbirri_, that is, to argue with a policeman.]
[411] {384}["It was concerted that sixteen or seventeen leaders should
be stationed in various parts of the city, each being at the head of
forty men, armed and prepared; but the followers were not to know their
destination."--See translation of Sanudo's _Narrative_, _post_, p. 464.]
[412] [In the earlier chronicles Beltramo is named Vendrame. He was,
according to some authorities, _compare_ with Lioni, _i.e._ a co-sponsor
of the same godchild. Signor Lazzarino (_La Congiura_, p. 90 (2))
maintains that in all probability Beltramo betrayed his companions from
selfish motives, in order to save himself, and not from any
"compunctious visitings," or because he was "too full o' the milk of
human kindness." According to Sanudo (_vide post_, p. 465), "Beltramo
Bergamasco" was not one of the principal conspirators, but "had heard a
word or two of what was to take place." Ser Marco Soranzano (p. 466) was
one of the "Zonta" of twenty who were elected as assessors to the Ten,
to try the Doge of high treason against the Republic.]
[413] {386}[Compare--
"If we should fail,----We fail.
But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
And we'll not fail."
_Macbeth_, act i. sc. 7, lines 59-61.]
[di] _In a great cause the block may soak their gore_.--[Alternative
reading. MS. M.]
[dj] _If Brutus had not lived? He failed in giving_.--[MS. M.]
[414] [At the battle of Philippi, B.C. 42, Brutus lamented over the body
of Cassius, and called him the "last of the Romans."--Plutarch's
_Lives_, "Marcus Brutus," Langhorne's translation, 1838, p. 686.]
[415] [The citizens of Aquileia and Padua fled before the invasion of
Attila, and retired to the Isle of Gradus, and Rivus Altus, or Rialto.
Theodoric's minister, Cassiodorus, who describes the condition of the
fugitives some seventy years after they had settled on the "hundred
isles," compares them to "waterfowl who had fixed their nests on the
bosom of the waves." (See Gibbon's _Decline and Fall, etc._, 1825, ii.
375, note 6, and 376, notes 1, 2.)]
[416] [_Mal bigatto_, "vile silkworm," is a term of contempt and
reproach = "uomo de maligna intenzione," a knave.]
[417] {388}[Compare--
"I'll make assurance double sure,
And take a bond of fate."
_Macbeth_, act iv. sc. I, lines 83, 84.]
[418] {390}[For Byron's correction of this statement, _vide ante_, p.
366. The monument of the Doge Vitale Falier (d. 1096) "was at the right
side of the principal entrance into the Vestibule." According to G.
Meschinello (La Chiesa Ducale, 1753), Ordelafo Falier was buried in the
Atrio of St. Mark's. See, too, _Venetia città nobilissima ... descritta
da F. Sansovino_, 1663, pp. 96, 556.]
[dk] _We thought to make our peers and not our masters_.--[Alternative
reading. MS. M.]
[dl] ----_merit such requital_.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[419] {391}[Compare--
"I have set my life upon a cast,
And I will stand the hazard of the die."
_Richard III_., act v. sc. 4, lines 9, 10.]
[420] {392}["The equestrian statue of which I have made mention in the
third act as before the church, is not ... of a Faliero, but of some
other now obsolete warrior, although of a later date."--_Vide ante_,
Preface, p. 336. "In the Campo in front of the church [facing the Rio
dei Mendicanti] stands the equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, the
second equestrian statue raised in Italy after the revival of the
arts....The handsome marble pedestal is lofty, supported and flanked by
composite columns."--_Handbook: Northern Italy_, p. 374.]
[dm] {393}_Nor dwindle to a cut-throat without shuddering_.--[MS. M.
erased.]
[dn] _A scourged mechanic_----.--[MS. M.] _A roused mechanic_----.--[MS.
M. erased.]
[421] {394}An historical fact. [See Appendix A, p. 464.]
[do]
/ _in_ \
_So let them die_ < > _one_.--[MS. M.]
\ _as_ /
[dp] {397}_We are all lost in wonder_--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[dq] ----_of our splendid City_.--[MS. M. erased.]
[422] [Compare--
"Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles."
_Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza i. line 9, and _var_. i.]
[dr] {398}_But all the worst sins of the Spartan state_.--[Alternative
reading. MS. M.]
[ds] _The Lords of old Laconia_----.--[MS. M. erased.]
[423] {399}[Compare--
"A king of shreds and patches."
_Hamlet_, act iii. sc. 4, line 102.]
[424] ["The members of the Ten (_Il Cousiglio de' Dieci_) were elected
in the Great Council for one year only, and were not re-eligible for the
year after they had held office. Every month the Ten elected three of
their own number as chiefs, or _Capi_ of the Council.... The court
consisted, besides the Ten, of the Doge and his six councillors,
seventeen members in all, of whom twelve were necessary to make a
_quorum_. One of the _Avogadori di Comun_, or State advocates, was
always present, without the power to vote, but to act as clerk to the
court, informing it of the law, and correcting it where its procedure
seemed informal. Subsequently it became customary to add twenty members
to the Council, elected in the Maggior Consiglio, for each important
case as it arose."--_Venice, an Historical Sketch_, by Horatio F. Brown,
1893, pp. 177, 178. (See, too, _Les Archives de Venise_, par Armand
Baschet, 1870, p. 525.)]
[425] {400}[The chronicles are silent as to any embassy or commission
from the Republic to Rhodes or Cyprus in which Marin Falier held office
or took any part whatever. Cyprus did not pass into the hands of Venice
till 1489, and Rhodes was held by the Knights of St. John till 1522.]
[426] {401}[Compare--
"We have scotched the snake, not killed it."
Macbeth, act iii. sc. II, line 13.]
[dt] {402}_Fought by my side, and John Grimani shared._--[MS. M.
erased.]
[427] [Marc Cornaro did not "share" his Genoese, but his Hungarian
embassy.--_M. Faliero Avanti il Dogado: Archivio Veneto_, 1893, vol. v.
pt. i. p. 144.]
[du] {403}_My mission to the Pope; I saved the life._--[MS. M. erased.]
[dv]
_Bear witness with me! ye who hear and know,_
_And feel our mutual mass of many wrongs._--[MS. M. erased.]
[428] {404}[The Italian Oimé recalls the Latin _Hei mihi_ and the Greek
Οῖμοι [Greek: Oi~moi] ]
[429] [Compare--
"Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven,
Hope sapped, name blighted, Life's life lied away?"
_Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza cxxxv. lines 5, 6.
And--
"The beings which surrounded him were gone.
Or were at war with him."
_The Dream_, sect. viii. lines 3, 4, _vide ante_, p. 40]
[dw] _Sate grinning Mockery_----.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[dx] {405}_The feelings they abused_----.--[MS. M. erased.]
[dy] ----_and then perish_.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[dz] {406}
/ _carrion_ \
_Nor turn aside to strike at such a_ < >--[MS. M.]
\ _wretch_ /
[ea] {407}_You are a patriot, plebeian Gracchus_.--[Ed. 1832.] (MS., and
First Edition, 1821, insert "a.")
[430] [Compare "Why, Hal, 'tis my vocation, Hal; 'tis no sin for a man
to labour in his vocation."--I _Henry IV_., act i. sc. 2, lines 101,
102.]
[eb] {409}_To this now shackled_----.--[MS. M. erased.]
[431] {410}[Byron told Medwin that he wrote "Lioni's soliloquy one
moonlight night, after coming from the Benzoni's."--_Conversations_,
1824, p. 177.]
[ec] _High o'er the music_----.--[MS. M. erased.]
[432] {411}["At present, I am on the invalid regimen myself. The
Carnival--that is, the latter part of it, and sitting up late o' nights,
had knocked me up a little.... The mumming closed with a masked ball at
the Fenice, where I went, as also to most of the ridottos, etc., etc.;
and, though I did not dissipate much upon the whole, yet I find 'the
sword wearing out the scabbard,' though I have but just turned the
corner of twenty-nine.
"So we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
"For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And Love itself have rest.
"Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon."
Letter to Moore, February 28, 1817, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 59.]
[ed] {412}_Suggesting dreams or unseen Symmetry_.--[MS. M. erased.]
[ee] _Which give their glitter lack, and the vast Æther_.--[MS. M.
erased.]
[ef] ----_seaborn palaces_.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[433] {413}[Compare "What, ma'amselle, don't you remember Ludovico, who
rowed the Cavaliero's gondola at the last regatta, and won the prize?
and who used to sing such sweet verses about Orlando's ... all under my
lattice ... on the moonlight nights at Venice?"--_Mysteries of Udolpho_,
by Anne Radcliffe, 1882, p. 195. Compare, too, _Beppo_, stanza xv. lines
1-6, _vide ante_, p. 164.]
[434] [Compare "The gondolas gliding down the canals are like coffins or
cradles ... At night the darkness reveals the tiny lanterns which guide
these boats, and they look like shadows passing by, lit by stars.
Everything in this region is mystery--government, custom,
love."--_Corinne or Italy_, by Madame de Staël, 1888, pp. 279, 280.
Compare, too--
"In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless Gondolier."
_Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza iii. lines 1, 2,
_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. note 3.]
[eg] ----_or towering spire_.--[MS. M.]
[eh] ----_at this moment_.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[ei] {414} ----_Has he no name?_--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[ej] _His voice and carriage_----.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[ek] {415}_If so withdraw and fly and tell me not_.--[Alternative
reading. MS. M.]
[el] {416}_Good I would now requite_----.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[em] _Remain at home_----.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[en] {417}_Why what hast thou to gainsay of the Senate?_--[Alternative
reading. MS. M.]
[eo] _On the accursed tyranny which taints._--[Alternative reading. MS.
M.]
[ep] {418}_I would not draw my breath_----.--[Alternative reading. MS.
M.]
[435] {419}[If Gifford had been at the pains to _read_ Byron's
manuscripts, or revise the proofs, he would surely have pointed out, if
he had not ventured to amend, his bad grammar.]
[436] {421}The Doge's family palace.
[eq] {422}_A Loredano_----.--[MS. erased.]
[437] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza xiv. line 3, _Poetical
Works_, 1898, ii. 339, note i.]
[438] {423}[Compare "Themistocles was sacrificing on the deck of the
admiral-galley."--_Plutarch's Lives_, Langhorne, 1838, p. 89.]
[439] [For Timoleon, who first saved, and afterwards slew his brother
Timophanes, for aiming at sovereignty, see _The Siege of Corinth_, line
59, note 1, _Poetical Works_, 1900, iii. 452.]
[er] {424}_The night is clearing from the sky_.--[MS. M. erased.]
[440] [For the use of "dapple" as an intransitive verb, compare
_Mazeppa_, xvi. line 646, _vide ante_, p. 227.]
[es] ----_Now--now to business_.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[et] {425}_The signal_----.--[MS. M. erased.]
_The storm-clock_----.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[441] ["'Tis done ... unerring beak" (six lines), not in MS.]
[442] [Byron had forgotten the dictum of the artist Reinagle, that
"eagles and all birds of prey attack with their talons and not with
their beaks" (see _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza xviii. line 6,
_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 226, note 1); or, possibly, had discovered
that eagles attack with their beaks as well as their talons.]
[443] [_Vide ante_, p. 368, note 1.]
[eu]
----_ten thousand caps were flung_
_Into the air and thrice ten_----.--[MS. M. erased.]
[444] {426}[Compare--
"Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo!"
_Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza xii. line 8,
_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 337.]
[ev]
/ _iron oracle_. \
_Where swings the sullen_ < >
\ _huge oracular bell_. /
[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[445] {427} "I Signori di Notte" held an important charge in the old
republic. [The surveillance of the "sestieri" was assigned to the
"Collegio dei Signori di notte al criminal." Six in all, they were at
once police magistrates and superintendents of police. (See Cappelletti,
_Storia, etc._, 1856, ii. 293.)]
[446] [The Doge overstates his authority. He could not preside without
his Council "in the _Maggior Consiglio_, or in the Senate, or in the
College; but four ducal councillors had the power to preside without the
Doge. The Doge might not open despatches except in the presence of his
Council, but his Council might open despatches in the absence of the
Doge."--_Venetian Studies_, by H. F. Brown, 1887, p. 189.]
[ew] {428}_That thus you dare assume a brigand's power._--[Alternative
reading. MS. M.]
[ex] ----_storm-clock._--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[447] [Byron may have had in his mind the "bell or clocke" (see _var._
ii.) in Southey's ballad of _The Inchcape Rock_.
"On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung,
And over the waves its warning rung."]
[ey] _Or met some unforeseen and fatal obstacle._--[Alternative reading.
MS. M.]
[448] {430}[A translation of _Beltramo Bergamasco_, i.e. a native of the
town and province of Bergamo, in the north of Italy. Compare "Comasco."
Harlequin ... was a Bergamasc, and the personification of the manners,
accent, and jargon of the inhabitants of the Val Brembana.--_Handbook:
Northern Italy_, p. 240.]
[ez] {431}_While Manlius, who hurled back the Gauls_----.--[Alternative
reading. MS. M.]
[fa] _The Grand Chancellor of the Ten_.--[MS. M. erased.]
[449] ["In the notes to _Marino Faliero_, it may be as well to say that
'_Benintende_' was not really of _the ten_, but merely _Grand
Chancellor_--a separate office, though an important one: it was an
arbitrary alteration of mine."--Letter to Murray, October 12, 1820.
Byron's correction was based on a chronicle cited by Sanudo, which is
responsible for the statement that Beneintendi de Ravignani presided as
Grand Chancellor at the Doge's trial, and took down his examination. As
a matter of fact, Beneintendi was at Milan, not at Venice, when the
trial took place. The "college" which conducted the examination of the
Doge consisted of Giovanni Mocenigo, Councillor; Giovanni Marcello,
Chief of the Ten; Luga da Lezze, "Inquisitore;" and Orio Pasqualigo,
"Avogadore."--_La Congiura_, p. 104(2).]
[450] "Giovedi grasso,"--"fat or greasy Thursday,"--which I cannot
literally translate in the text, was the day.
[451] {435}Historical fact. See Sanuto, Appendix, Note A [_vide post_,
p. 466].
[452] {436}["I know what Foscolo means about Calendaro's _spitting_ at
Bertram: _that's_ national--the _objection_, I mean. The Italians and
French, with those 'flags of Abomination,' their pocket handkerchiefs,
spit there, and here, and every where else--in your face almost, and
therefore _object_ to it on the Stage as _too familiar_. But we who
_spit_ nowhere--but in a man's face when we grow savage--are not likely
to feel this. Remember _Massinger_, and Kean's Sir Giles Overreach--
'Lord! _thus_ I _spit_ at thee and thy Counsel!'"
Letter to Murray, October 8, 1820, _Letters_, v. 1901, 89.
"Sir Giles Overreach" says to "Lord Lovel," in _A New Way to Pay Old
Debts_, act v. sc. 1, "Lord! thus I spit at thee, and at thy counsel."
Compare, too--
"You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine."
_Merchant of Venice_, act i. sc. 3, lines 106, 107.]
[fd] {437}_It is impending_----.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[453] {438}["Is [Solon] cum interrogaretur, cur nullum supplicium
constituisset in eum qui parentem necasset, respondit se id neminem
facturum putasse."--Cicero, _Pro Sext. Roscio Amerino_, cap, 25.]
[454] ["Signory" is used loosely to denote the State or Government of
Venice, not the "_collegio_" or "_Signoria Serenissima_."]
[455] [This statement is strictly historical. On the death of Andrea
Dandolo (September 7, 1334) the _Maggior Consiglio_ appointed a
commission of five "savi" to correct and modify the "promissione," or
ducal oath. The alterations which the commissioners suggested were
designed to prevent the Doge from acting on his own initiative in
matters of foreign policy.--_La Congiura_, pp. 30, 31.]
[456] {440}[Gelo is quoted as the type of a successful and beneficent
tyrant held in honour by all posterity; Thrasybulus as a consistent
advocate and successful champion of democracy.]
[457] [The lines from "I would have stood ... while living" are not in
the MS.]
[fe] _There were no other ways for truth to pierce them_.--[Alternative
reading. MS. M.]
[ff] {441}_The torture for the exposure of the truth_.--[Alternative
reading. MS. M.]
[fg]
/ _Doge Faliero's consort_. \
_Noble Venetians!_ < >--[MS. M. erased.]
\ _with respect the Duchess_. /
[458] The Venetian senate took the same title as the Roman, of
"conscript fathers." [It was not, however, the Senate, the _Pregadi_,
but the _Consiglio dei Dieci_, supplemented by the _Zonta_ of Twenty,
which tried and condemned the Doge.]
[fh] {443}_He hath already granted his own guilt_.--[Alternative
reading. MS. M.]
[fi] _He is a Sovereign and hath swayed the state_.--[Alternative
reading. MS. M.]
[459] {445}[The accepted spelling is "aerie." The word is said to be
derived from the Latin _atrium_. The form _eyry_, or _eyrie_, was
introduced by Spelman (_Gl_. 1664) to countenance an erroneous
derivation from the Saxon _eghe_, an egg. _N. Eng. Dict._, art.
"aerie."]
[fj] _Of his high aiery_----.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[460] [_Vide_ Suetonius, _De XII. Cæsaribus_, lib. iv. cap. 56, ed.
1691, p. 427. Angiolina might surely have omitted this particular
instance of the avenging vigilance of "Great Nemesis."]
[461] {446}[The story is told in Plutarch's _Alexander_, cap. 38.
Compare--
"And the king seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy;
Thais led the way,
To light him to his prey,
And like another Helen, fired another Troy."
Dryden's _Alexanders Feast_, vi. lines 25-28.]
[462] [Byron's imagination was prone to dwell on the "earthworm's slimy
brood." Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanzas v., vi. Dallas
(_Recollections of Lord Byron_, 1824, p. 124) once ventured to remind
his noble connection "that although our senses make us acquainted with
the chemical decomposition of our bodies," there were other and more
hopeful considerations to be entertained. But Byron was obdurate, "and
the worms crept in and the worms crept out" as unpleasantly as
heretofore.]
[fk] ----_you call your duty_.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[fl] {447} ----_never heard of_.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[fm] _For this almost_----.--[MS. M.]
[463] ["Hic est locus Marini Falethri, decapitati pro criminibus." Even
more impressive is the significant omission of the minutes of the trial
from the pages of the State Register. "The fourth volume of the _Misti
Consiglio X_. contains its decrees in the year 1355. On Friday, the 17th
April in that year, Marin Falier was beheaded. In the usual course, the
minutes of the trial should have been entered on the thirty-third page
of that volume; but in their stead we find a blank space, and the words
'[=N] S[=C]BATUR:' 'Be it not written.'"--_Calendar of State Papers_ ...
in Venice, Preface by Rawdon Brown, 1864, i. xvii.]
[464] [Lines 500-507 were forwarded in a letter to Murray, dated Marzo,
1821 (_Letters_, 1901, v. 261). According to Moore's footnote, "These
lines--perhaps from some difficulty in introducing them--were never
inserted in the Tragedy." It is true that in some copies of the first
edition of _Marino Faliero_ (1821, p. 151) these lines do not appear;
but in other copies of the first edition, in the second and other
editions, they occur in their place. It is strange that Moore, writing
in 1830, did not note the almost immediate insertion of these remarkable
lines.]
[465] {448}[The Council of Ten decided that the possessions of Faliero
should be confiscated; but the "Signoria," as an act of grace, and _ob
ducatûs reverentiam_, allowed him to dispose of 2000 "lire dei grossi"
of his own. The same day, April 17, the Doge dictated his will to the
notary Piero de Compostelli, leaving the 2000 lire to his wife
Aluica.--_La Congiura_, p. 105.]
[fn] {449}_Of the house of Rizzando Caminese_.--[MS. M.]
[fo] _Have I aught else to undergo ere Death?_--[Alternative reading.
MS. M.]
[466] {450}[The story as related by Sanudo is of doubtful authenticity,
_vide ante_, p. 332, note 1.]
[fp] {451}_Until he rolled beneath_----.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[fq] _A madness of the heart shall rise within_.--[Alternative reading.
MS. M.]
[467] [Compare--
"I pull in resolution."
_Macbeth_, act v. sc. 5, line 42.]
[468] {452}[See the translation of Sanudo's narrative in Appendix, p.
463.]
[fr]
----_whom I know_
_To be as worthless as the dust they trample_.--[MS. M. erased.]
[fs] {453}_With unimpaired but not outrageous grief_.--[Alternative
reading, MS. M.]
[469] {454}[An anachronism, _vide ante_, p. 336.]
[ft] _I am glad to be so_----.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
[470] This was the actual reply of Bailli, maire of Paris, to a
Frenchman who made him the same reproach on his way to execution, in the
earliest part of their revolution. I find in reading over (since the
completion of this tragedy), for the first time these six years, "Venice
Preserved," a similar reply on a different occasion by Renault, and
other coincidences arising from the subject. I need hardly remind the
gentlest reader, that such coincidences must be accidental, from the
very facility of their detection by reference to so popular a play on
the stage and in the closet as Otway's chef-d'oeuvre.
["Still crueller was the fate of poor Bailly [Jean Sylvani, born
September 17, 1736], First National President, First Mayor of Paris....
It is the 10th of November, 1793, a cold bitter drizzling rain, as poor
Bailly is led through the streets.... Silent, unpitied, sits the
innocent old man.... The Guillotine is taken down ... is carried to the
riverside; is there set up again, with slow numbness; pulse after pulse
still counting itself out in the old man's weary heart. For hours long;
amid curses and bitter frost-rain! 'Bailly, thou tremblest,' said one.
'_Mon ami_, it is for cold,' said Bailly, '_C'est de froid_.' Crueller
end had no mortal."--Carlyle's _French Revolution_, 1839, iii. 264.]
[fu] {455}_Who makest and destroyest suns!_--[MS. M. Vide letter of
February 2, 1821.]
[471] {456}[In his reply to the envoys of the Venetian Senate (April,
1797), Buonaparte threatened to "prove an Attila to Venice. If you
cannot," he added, "disarm your population, I will do it in your
stead--your government is antiquated--it must crumble to
pieces."--Scott's _Life of Napoleon Bonaparte_, 1828, p. 230. Compare,
too, _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza xc. lines 1, 2--
"The fool of false dominion--and a kind
Of bastard Cæsar," etc.]
[472] Should the dramatic picture seem harsh, let the reader look to the
historical of the period prophesied, or rather of the few years
preceding that period. Voltaire calculated their "nostre bene merite
Meretrici" at 12,000 of regulars, without including volunteers and local
militia, on what authority I know not; but it is, perhaps, the only part
of the population not decreased. Venice once contained two hundred
thousand inhabitants: there are now about ninety thousand; and THESE!!
few individuals can conceive, and none could describe, the actual state
into which the more than infernal tyranny of Austria has plunged this
unhappy city. From the present decay and degeneracy of Venice under the
Barbarians, there are some honourable individual exceptions. There is
Pasqualigo, the last, and, alas! _posthumous_ son of the marriage of the
Doges with the Adriatic, who fought his frigate with far greater
gallantry than any of his French coadjutors in the memorable action off
Lissa. I came home in the squadron with the prizes in 1811, and
recollect to have heard Sir William Hoste, and the other officers
engaged in that glorious conflict, speak in the highest terms of
Pasqualigo's behaviour. There is the Abbate Morelli. There is Alvise
Querini, who, after a long and honourable diplomatic career, finds some
consolation for the wrongs of his country, in the pursuits of literature
with his nephew, Vittor Benzon, the son of the celebrated beauty, the
heroine of "La Biondina in Gondoleta." There are the patrician poet
Morosini, and the poet Lamberti, the author of the "Biondina," etc., and
many other estimable productions; and, not least in an Englishman's
estimation, Madame Michelli, the translator of Shakspeare. There are the
young Dandolo and the improvvisatore Carrer, and Giuseppe Albrizzi, the
accomplished son of an accomplished mother. There is Aglietti, and were
there nothing else, there is the immortality of Canova. Cicognara,
Mustoxithi, Bucati, etc., etc., I do not reckon, because the one is a
Greek, and the others were born at least a hundred miles off, which,
throughout Italy, constitutes, if not a _foreigner_, at least a
_stranger_ (_forestiére_).
[This note is not in the MS. The first eight lines were included among
the notes, and the remainder formed part of the Appendix in all editions
1821-1831.
Nicolò Pasqualigo (1770-1821) received the command of a ship in the
Austrian Navy in 1800, and in 1805 was appointed Director of the Arsenal
of Venice. He took part in both the Lissa expeditions, and was made
prisoner after a prolonged resistance, March 13, 1811. (See _Personaggi
illustri delta Veneta patrizia gente_, by E. A. Cicogna, 1822, p. 33.
See, too, for Lissa, _Poetical Works_, 1900, iii. 25, note 3.)
The Abate Jacopo Morelli (1745-1819), known as _Principe dei
Bibliotecarj_, became custodian of the Marciana Library in 1778, and
devoted the whole of his long and laborious life to the service of
literature. (For a list of his works, etc., see Tipaldo's _Biografia,
etc._, 1835, ii. 481. See, too, _Elogio di Jacopo Morelli_, by A.
Zendrini, Milano, 1822.)
Alvisi Querini, brother to Marina Querini Benzon, published in 1759 a
poem entitled _L'Ammiraglio dell' Indie_. He wrote under a pseudonym,
Ormildo Emeressio.
Vittore Benzon (d. 1822), whose mother, Marina, was celebrated by Anton
Maria Lamberti (1757-1832) as _La biondina in gondoleta (Poesie_, 1817,
i. 20), was the author of _Nella_, a love-poem, abounding in political
allusions. (See Tipaldo, v. 122, and _Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi, I Suoi
amici_, by V. Malamani, 1882, pp. 119, 136.)
II Conte Domenico Morosini (see _Letters_, Venezia, 1829) was the author
of two tragedies, _Medea in Corinto_ and _Giulio Sabino_, published in
1806.
Giustina Renier Michiel (1755-1832) was niece to the last Doge, Lodovico
Manin. Her _salon_ was the centre of a brilliant circle of friends,
including such names as Pindemonte, Foscolo, and Cesarotti. Her
translation of _Othello_, _Macbeth_, and _Coriolanus_ formed part of the
_Opere Drammatiche di Shakspeare_, published in Venice in 1797. Her
work, _Origine delle Feste Veneziane_, was published at Milan in 1829.
(See _G. R. Michiel, Archivio Veneto_, tom. xxxviii. 1889.)
Luigi Carrer (1801-1856) began life as a lawyer, but afterwards devoted
himself to poetry and literature. He was secretary of the Venetian
Institute in 1842, and, later, Director of the Carrer Museum. (See Gio.
Crespan, _Della vita e delle lettere di Luigi Carrer_, 1869.)
For Giuseppino Albrizzi (1800-1860), and for Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi,
Countess Albrizzi (? 1761-1836), see _Letters_, 1900, iv. 14, note 1;
and for Francesco Aglietti (1757-1836), Leopoldo Cicognara (1767-1835),
and Andreas Moustoxudes (1787-1860), see _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii.
324, note 1.
The "younger Dandolo" may be Conte Girolamo Antonio Dandolo, author of
_Sui Quattro Cavalli, etc._, published in 1817, and of _La Caduta della
Repubblica di Venezia_, 1855. By "Bucati" may possibly be meant the
satirist Pietro Buratti (1772-1832). (See _Poesie Veneziane_, by R.
Barbiera, 1886, p. 209.)]
[fv] {457}
/ _lazars_ \
_Beggars for nobles_, < _lepers_ > _for a people_!--[MS. M.]
\ _wretches_ /
[473] The chief palaces on the Brenta now belong to the Jews; who in the
earlier times of the republic were only allowed to inhabit Mestri, and
not to enter the city of Venice. The whole commerce is in the hands of
the Jews and Greeks, and the Huns form the garrison.
[474] {458}[Napoleon was crowned King of Italy, May 3, 1805. Venice was
ceded by Austria, December 26, 1805, and shortly after, Eugène
Beauharnais was appointed Viceroy of Italy, with the title of Prince of
Venice. It is certain that the "Vice-gerent" stands for Beauharnais, but
it is less evident why Byron, doubtless quoting from _Hamlet_, calls
Napoleon the "Vice of Kings." Did he mean a "player-king," one who not
being a king acted the part, as the "vice" in the old moralities; or did
he misunderstand Shakespeare, and seek to depreciate Beauharnais as the
Viceroy of a Viceroy, that is Joseph Bonaparte?]
[fw] _Vice without luxury_----.--[Alternative reading, MS. M.]
[475] [Compare--
"When Vice walks forth with her unsoftened terrors."
_Ode on Venice_, line 34, _vide ante_, p. 194.]
[476] See Appendix, Note C.
[477] {459}If the Doge's prophecy seem remarkable, look to the
following, made by Alamanni two hundred and seventy years ago;--"There
is one very singular prophecy concerning Venice: 'If thou dost not
change,' it says to that proud republic, 'thy liberty, which is already
on the wing, will not reckon a century more than the thousandth year.'
If we carry back the epocha of Venetian freedom to the establishment of
the government under which the republic flourished, we shall find that
the date of the election of the first Doge is 697: and if we add one
century to a thousand, that is, eleven hundred years, we shall find the
sense of the prediction to be literally this: 'Thy liberty will not last
till 1797.' Recollect that Venice ceased to be free in the year 1796,
the fifth year of the French republic; and you will perceive that there
never was prediction more pointed, or more exactly followed by the
event. You will, therefore, note as very remarkable the three lines of
Alamanni addressed to Venice; which, however, no one has pointed out:--
"'Se non cangi pensier, l'un secol solo
Non conterà sopra 'l millesimo anno
Tua libertà, che va fuggendo a volo.'
_Sat_., xii. ed. 1531, p. 413.
Many prophecies have passed for such, and many men have been called
prophets for much less."--P. L. Ginguené, _Hist. Lit. d'Italie_, ix. 144
[Paris Edition, 1819].
[478] Of the first fifty Doges, _five_ abdicated--_five_ were banished
with their eyes put out--_five_ were massacred--and _nine_ deposed; so
that _nineteen_ out of fifty lost the throne by violence, besides two
who fell in battle: this occurred long previous to the reign of Marino
Faliero. One of his more immediate predecessors, Andrea Dandolo, died of
vexation. Marino Faliero himself perished as related. Amongst his
successors, _Foscari_, after seeing his son repeatedly tortured and
banished, was deposed, and died of breaking a blood-vessel, on hearing
the bell of Saint Mark's toll for the election of his successor.
Morosini was impeached for the loss of Candia; but this was previous to
his dukedom, during which he conquered the Morea, and was styled the
Peloponnesian. Faliero might truly say,--
"Thou den of drunkards with the blood of princes!"
[fx] _Thou brothel of the waters! thou sea Sodom!_--[Alternative
reading. MS. M.]
[479] [See letters to Webster, September 8, 1818, and to Hoppner,
December 31, 1819, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 255, 393.]
[480] {461} "Un Capo de' Dieci" are the words of Sanuto's Chronicle.
[fy]
_The gory head is rolling down the steps!_
_The head is rolling dawn the gory steps!_--
[Alternative readings. MS. M.]
[481] [A picture in oils of the execution of Marino Faliero, by
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), which was exhibited in
the Salon in 1827, is now in the Wallace Collection (_Provisional
Catalogue_, 1900, p. 28).]
[482] [End of the Historical Tragedy of Marino Faliero, or the Doge of
Venice.
Begun April 4th, 1820.
Completed July 16th, 1820.
Finished copying in August 16th, 17th, 1820.
The which copying takes ten times the toil of composing, considering the
weather--_thermometer 90 in the shade_--and my domestic duties.
The motto is--
"Dux inquietæ turbidus Adriræ."
Horace.]
APPENDIX.
NOTE A.
I am obliged for the following excellent translation of the old
Chronicle to Mr. F. Cohen,[483] to whom the reader will find himself
indebted for a version that I could not myself--though after many years'
intercourse with Italian--have given by any means so purely and so
faithfully.
Story of Marino Faliero, Doge XLIV. mcccliv.[483a]
On the eleventh day of September, in the year of our Lord, 1354, Marino
Faliero was elected and chosen to be the Duke of the Commonwealth of
Venice. He was Count of Valdemarino, in the Marches of Treviso, and a
Knight, and a wealthy man to boot. As soon as the election was
completed, it was resolved in the Great Council, that a deputation of
twelve should be despatched to Marino Faliero the Duke, who was then on
his way from Rome; for when he was chosen, he was ambassador at the
court of the Holy Father, at Rome,--the Holy Father himself held his
court at Avignon. When Messer Marino Faliero the Duke was about to land
in this city, on the 5th day of October, 1354, a thick haze came on and
darkened the air: and he was enforced to land on the place of Saint
Mark, between the two columns, on the spot where evil doers are put to
death; and all thought that this was the worst of tokens.--Nor must I
forget to write that which I have read in a chronicle.--When Messer
Marino Faliero was Podesta and Captain of Treviso, the Bishop delayed
coming in with the holy sacrament, on a day when a procession was to
take place. Now, the said Marino Faliero was so very proud and wrathful,
that he buffeted the Bishop, and almost struck him to the ground: and,
therefore, Heaven allowed Marino Faliero to go out of his right senses,
in order that he might bring himself to an evil death.
When this Duke had held the dukedom during nine months and six days, he,
being wicked and ambitious, sought to make himself Lord of Venice, in
the manner which I have read in an ancient chronicle. When the Thursday
arrived upon which they were wont to hunt the bull, the bull hunt took
place as usual; and, according to the usage of those times, after the
bull hunt had ended, they all proceeded unto the palace of the Duke, and
assembled together in one of his halls; and they disported themselves
with the women. And until the first bell tolled they danced, and then a
banquet was served up. My Lord the Duke paid the expenses thereof,
provided he had a Duchess, and after the banquet they all returned to
their homes.
Now to this feast there came a certain Ser Michele Steno, a gentleman of
poor estate and very young, but crafty and daring, and who loved one of
the damsels of the Duchess. Ser Michele stood amongst the women upon the
solajo; and he behaved indiscreetly, so that my Lord the Duke ordered
that he should be kicked off the solajo [i.e. platform]; and the
esquires of the Duke flung him down from the solajo accordingly. Ser
Michele thought that such an affront was beyond all bearing; and when
the feast was over, and all other persons had left the palace, he,
continuing heated with anger, went to the hall of audience, and wrote
certain unseemly words relating to the Duke and the Duchess upon the
chair in which the Duke was used to sit; for in those days the Duke did
not cover his chair with cloth of sendal, but he sat in a chair of wood.
Ser Michele wrote thereon--"_Marin Falier, the husband of the fair wife;
others kiss her, but he keeps her._"[484] In the morning the words were
seen, and the matter was considered to be very scandalous; and the
Senate commanded the Avogadori of the Commonwealth to proceed therein
with the greatest diligence. A largess of great amount was immediately
proffered by the Avogadori, in order to discover who had written these
words. And at length it was known that Michele Steno had written them.
It was resolved in the Council of Forty that he should be arrested; and
he then confessed that in the fit of vexation and spite, occasioned by
his being thrust off the solajo in the presence of his mistress, he had
written the words. Therefore the Council debated thereon. And the
Council took his youth into consideration, and that he was a lover; and
therefore they adjudged that he should be kept in close confinement
during two months, and that afterwards he should be banished from Venice
and the state during one year. In consequence of this merciful sentence
the Duke became exceedingly wroth, it appearing to him, that the Council
had not acted in such a manner as was required by the respect due to his
ducal dignity; and he said that they ought to have condemned Ser Michele
to be hanged by the neck, or at least to be banished for life.
Now it was fated that my Lord Duke Marino was to have his head cut off.
And as it is necessary when any effect is to be brought about, that the
cause of such effect must happen, it therefore came to pass, that on the
very day after sentence had been pronounced on Ser Michele Steno, being
the first day of Lent, a gentleman of the house of Barbara, a choleric
gentleman, went to the arsenal, and required certain things of the
masters of the galleys. This he did in the presence of the Admiral of
the arsenal, and he, bearing the request, answered, No, it cannot be
done. High words arose between the gentleman and the Admiral, and the
gentleman struck him with his fist just above the eye; and as he
happened to have a ring on his finger, the ring cut the Admiral and drew
blood. The Admiral, all bruised and bloody, ran straight to the Duke to
complain, and with the intent of praying him to inflict some heavy
punishment upon the gentleman of Cà Barbaro.--"What wouldst thou have me
do for thee?" answered the Duke: "think upon the shameful gibe which
hath been written concerning me; and think on the manner in which they
have punished that ribald Michele Steno, who wrote it; and see how the
Council of Forty respect our person."--Upon this the Admiral answered,
"My Lord Duke, if you would wish to make yourself a prince, and to cut
all those cuckoldy gentlemen to pieces, I have the heart, if you do but
help me, to make you prince of all this state; and then you may punish
them all." Hearing this, the Duke said, "How can such a matter be
brought about?"--and so they discoursed thereon.
The Duke called for his nephew, Ser Bertuccio Faliero, who lived with
him in the palace, and they communed about this plot. And without
leaving the place, they sent for Philip Calendaro, a seaman of great
repute, and for Bertuccio Israello, who was exceedingly wily and
cunning. Then taking counsel among themselves, they agreed to call in
some others; and so, for several nights successively, they met with the
Duke at home in his palace. And the following men were called in singly;
to wit:--Niccolo Fagiuolo, Giovanni da Corfu, Stefano Fagiono, Niccolo
dalle Bende, Niccolo Biondo, and Stefano Trivisano.--It was concerted
that sixteen or seventeen leaders should be stationed in various parts
of the city, each being at the head of forty men, armed and prepared;
but the followers were not to know their destination. On the appointed
day they were to make affrays amongst themselves here and there, in
order that the Duke might have a pretence for tolling the bells of San
Marco; these bells are never rung but by the order of the Duke. And at
the sound of the bells, these sixteen or seventeen, with their
followers, were to come to San Marco, through the streets which open
upon the Piazza. And when the noble and leading citizens should come
into the Piazza, to know the cause of the riot, then the conspirators
were to cut them in pieces; and this work being finished, my Lord Marino
Faliero the Duke was to be proclaimed the Lord of Venice. Things having
been thus settled, they agreed to fulfil their intent on Wednesday, the
15th day of April, in the year 1355. So covertly did they plot, that no
one ever dreamt of their machinations.
But the Lord, who hath always helped this most glorious city, and who,
loving its righteousness and holiness, hath never forsaken it, inspired
one Beltramo Bergamasco to be the cause of bringing the plot to light,
in the following manner. This Beltramo, who belonged to Ser Niccolo
Lioni of Santo Stefano, had heard a word or two of what was to take
place; and so, in the above-mentioned month of April, he went to the
house of the aforesaid Ser Niccolo Lioni, and told him all the
particulars of the plot. Ser Niccolo, when he heard all these things,
was struck dead, as it were, with affright. He heard all the
particulars; and Beltramo prayed him to keep it all secret; and if he
told Ser Niccolo, it was in order that Ser Niccolo might stop at home on
the 15th of April, and thus save his life. Beltramo was going, but Ser
Niccolo ordered his servants to lay hands upon him, and lock him up. Ser
Niccolo then went to the house of Messer Giovanni Gradenigo Nasoni, who
afterwards became Duke, and who also lived at Santo Stefano, and told
him all. The matter seemed to him to be of the very greatest importance,
as indeed it was; and they two went to the house of Ser Marco Cornaro,
who lived at San Felice; and, having spoken with him, they all three
then determined to go back to the house of Ser Niccolo Lioni, to examine
the said Beltramo; and having questioned him, and heard all that he had
to say, they left him in confinement. And then they all three went into
the sacristy of San Salvatore, and sent their men to summon the
Councillors, the Avogadori, the Capi de' Dieci, and those of the Great
Council.
When all were assembled, the whole story was told to them. They were
struck dead, as it were, with affright. They determined to send for
Beltramo. He was brought in before them. They examined him, and
ascertained that the matter was true; and, although they were
exceedingly troubled, yet they determined upon their measures. And they
sent for the Capi de' Quarante, the Signori di Notte, the Capi de'
Sestieri, and the Cinque della Pace; and they were ordered to associate
to their men other good men and true, who were to proceed to the houses
of the ringleaders of the conspiracy, and secure them. And they secured
the foreman of the arsenal, in order that the conspirators might not do
mischief. Towards nightfall they assembled in the palace. When they were
assembled in the palace, they caused the gates of the quadrangle of the
palace to be shut. And they sent to the keeper of the Bell-tower, and
forbade the tolling of the bells. All this was carried into effect. The
before-mentioned conspirators were secured, and they were brought to the
palace; and, as the Council of Ten saw that the Duke was in the plot,
they resolved that twenty of the leading men of the state should be
associated to them, for the purpose of consultation and deliberation,
but that they should not be allowed to ballot.
The counsellors were the following:--Ser Giovanni Mocenigo, of the
Sestiero of San Marco; Ser Almoro Veniero da Santa Marina, of the
Sestiero of Castello; Ser Tomaso Viadro, of the Sestiero of Canaregio;
Ser Giovanni Sanudo, of the Sestiero of Santa Croce; Ser Pietro
Trivisano, of the Sestiero of San Paolo; Ser Pantalione Barbo il Grando,
of the Sestiero of Ossoduro. The Avogadori of the Commonwealth were
Zufredo Morosini, and Ser Orio Pasqualigo; and these did not ballot.
Those of the Council of Ten were Ser Giovanni Marcello, Ser Tomaso
Sanudo, and Ser Micheletto Dolfino, the heads of the aforesaid Council
of Ten. Ser Luca da Legge, and Ser Pietro da Mosto, inquisitors of the
aforesaid Council. And Ser Marco Polani, Ser Marino Veniero, Ser Lando
Lombardo, and Ser Nicoletto Trivisano, of Sant' Angelo.
Late in the night, just before the dawning, they chose a junta of
twenty noblemen of Venice from amongst the wisest, and the worthiest,
and the oldest. They were to give counsel, but not to ballot. And they
would not admit any one of Cà Faliero. And Niccolo Faliero, and another
Niccolo Faliero, of San Tomaso, were expelled from the Council, because
they belonged to the family of the Doge. And this resolution of creating
the junta of twenty was much praised throughout the state. The following
were the members of the junta of twenty:--Ser Marco Giustiniani,
Procuratore, Ser Andrea Erizzo, Procuratore, Ser Lionardo Giustiniani,
Procuratore, Ser Andrea Contarini, Ser Simone Dandolo, Ser Niccolo
Volpe, Ser Giovanni Loredano, Ser Marco Diedo, Ser Giovanni Gradenigo,
Ser Andrea Cornaro Cavaliere, Ser Marco Soranzo, Ser Rinieri du Mosto,
Ser Gazano Marcello, Ser Marino Morosini, Ser Stefano Belegno, Ser
Niccolo Lioni, Ser Filippo Orio, Ser Marco Trivisano, Ser Jacopo
Bragadino, Ser Giovanni Foscarini.
These twenty were accordingly called in to the Council of Ten; and they
sent for my Lord Marino Faliero, the Duke: and my Lord Marino was then
consorting in the palace with people of great estate, gentlemen, and
other good men, none of whom knew yet how the fact stood.
At the same time Bertuccio Israello, who, as one of the ringleaders, was
to head the conspirators in Santa Croce, was arrested and bound, and
brought before the Council. Zanello del Brin, Nicoletto di Rosa,
Nicoletto Alberto, and the Guardiaga, were also taken, together with
several seamen, and people of various ranks. These were examined, and
the truth of the plot was ascertained.
On the 16th of April judgment was given in the Council of Ten, that
Filippo Calendaro and Bertuccio Israello should be hanged upon the red
pillars of the balcony of the palace, from which the Duke is wont to
look at the bull hunt: and they were hanged with gags in their mouths.
The next day the following were condemned:--Niccolo Zuccuolo, Nicoletto
Blondo, Nicoletto Doro, Marco Giuda, Jacomello Dagolino, Nicoletto
Fidele, the son of Filippo Calendaro, Marco Torello, called Israello,
Stefano Trivisano, the money-changer of Santa Margherita, and Antonio
dalle Bende. These were all taken at Chiozza, for they were endeavouring
to escape. Afterwards, by virtue of the sentence which was passed upon
them in the Council of Ten, they were hanged on successive days; some
singly and some in couples, upon the columns of the palace, beginning
from the red columns, and so going onwards towards the canal. And other
prisoners were discharged, because, although they had been involved in
the conspiracy, yet they had not assisted in it; for they were given to
understand by some of the heads of the plot, that they were to come
armed and prepared for the service of the state, and in order to secure
certain criminals; and they knew nothing else. Nicoletto Alberto, the
Guardiaga, and Bartolommeo Ciricolo and his son, and several others, who
were not guilty, were discharged.
On Friday, the 16th day of April, judgment was also given in the
aforesaid Council of Ten, that my Lord Marino Faliero, the Duke, should
have his head cut off; and that the execution should be done on the
landing-place of the stone staircase, where the Dukes take their oath
when they first enter the palace. On the following day, the 17th of
April, the doors of the palace being shut, the Duke had his head cut
off, about the hour of noon. And the cap of estate was taken from the
Duke's head before he came down stairs. When the execution was over, it
is said that one of the Council of Ten went to the columns of the palace
over against the place of St. Mark, and that he showed the bloody sword
unto the people, crying out with a loud voice--"The terrible doom hath
fallen upon the traitor!"--and the doors were opened, and the people all
rushed in, to see the corpse of the Duke, who had been beheaded.
It must be known that Ser Giovanni Sanudo, the councillor, was not
present when the aforesaid sentence was pronounced; because he was
unwell and remained at home. So that only fourteen balloted; that is to
say, five councillors, and nine of the Council of Ten. And it was
adjudged, that all the lands and chattels of the Duke, as well as of the
other traitors, should be forfeited to the state. And as a grace to the
Duke, it was resolved in the Council of Ten, that he should be allowed
to dispose of two thousand ducats out of his own property. And it was
resolved, that all the councillors and all the Avogadori of the
Commonwealth, those of the Council of Ten, and the members of the junta,
who had assisted in passing sentence on the Duke and the other traitors,
should have the privilege of carrying arms both by day and by night in
Venice, and from Grado to Cavazere. And they were also to be allowed two
footmen carrying arms, the aforesaid footmen living and boarding with
them in their own houses. And he who did not keep two footmen might
transfer the privilege to his sons or his brothers; but only to two.
Permission of carrying arms was also granted to the four Notaries of the
Chancery, that is to say, of the Supreme Court, who took the
depositions; and they were, Amedio, Nicoletto di Lorino, Steffanello,
and Pietro de Compostelli, the secretaries of the Signori di Notte.
After the traitors had been hanged, and the Duke had had his head cut
off, the state remained in great tranquillity and peace. And, as I have
read in a Chronicle, the corpse of the Duke was removed in a barge, with
eight torches, to his tomb in the church of San Giovanni e Paolo, where
it was buried. The tomb is now in that aisle in the middle of the little
church of Santa Maria della Pace which was built by Bishop Gabriel of
Bergamo. It is a coffin of stone, with these words engraven thereon:
"_Heic jacet Dominus Marinus Faletro Dux._"--And they did not paint his
portrait in the hall of the Great Council:--but in the place where it
ought to have been, you see these words:--"_Hic est locus Marini
Faletro, decapitati pro criminibus._"--And it is thought that his house
was granted to the church of Sant' Apostolo; it was that great one near
the bridge. Yet this could not be the case, or else the family bought it
back from the church; for it still belongs to Cà Faliero. I must not
refrain from noting, that some wished to write the following words in
the place where his portrait ought to have been, as
aforesaid:--"_Marinus Faletro Dux, temeritas me cepit. Pænas lui,
decapitatus pro criminibus._"--Others, also, indited a couplet, worthy
of being inscribed upon his tomb.
"_Dux Venetum jacet heic, patriam qui prodere tentans,_
_Sceptra, decus, censum perdidit, atque caput._"
NOTE B.
Petrarch on the Conspiracy of Marino Faliero.[485]
"Al giovane doge Andrea Dandolo succedette un vecchio, il quale tardi si
pose al timone della repubblica, ma sempre prima di quel, che facea d'
uopo a lui ed alia patria: egli è Marino Faliero, personaggio a me noto
per antica dimestichezza. Falsa era l' opinione intorno a lui, giacchè
egli si mostrò fornito più di coraggio, che di senno. Non pago della
prima dignità, entrò con sinistro piede nel pubblico Palazzo:
imperciocchè questo doge dei Veneti, magistrato sacro in tutti i secoli,
che dagli antichi fu sempre venerato qual nume in quella città, l'
altr'jeri fu decollato nel vestibolo dell' istesso Palazzo. Discorrerei
fin dal principio le cause di un tale evento, se cosi vario, ed ambiguo
non ne fosse il grido: nessuno però lo scusa, tutti affermano, che egli
abbia voluto cangiar qualche cosa nell' ordine della repubblica a lui
tramandato dai maggiori. Che desiderava egli di più? Io son d' avviso,
che egli abbia ottenuto ciò, che non si concedette a nessun altro:
mentre adempiva gli uffici di legato presso il Pontefice, e sulle rive
del Rodano trattava la pace, che io prima di lui avevo indarno tentato
di conchiudere, gli fu conferito l' onore del ducato, che nè chiedeva,
nè s' aspettava. Tornato in patria, pensò a quello, cui nessuno non pose
mente giammai, e soffrì quello, che a niuno accadde mai di soffrire:
giacchè in quel luogo celeberrimo, e chiarissimo, e bellissimo infra
tutti quelli, che io vidi, ove i suoi antenati avevano ricevuti
grandissimi onori in mezzo alle pompe trionfali, ivi egli fu trascinato
in modo servile, e spogliato delle insegne ducali, perdette la testa, e
macchiò col proprio sangue le soglie del tempio, l' atrio del Palazzo, e
le scale marmoree endute spesse volte illustri o dalle solenni
festività, o dalle ostili spoglie. Ho notato il luogo, ora noto il
tempo: è l' anno del Natale di Cristo, 1355, fu il giorno diciotto
aprile si alto è il grido sparso, che se alcuno esaminerà la disciplina,
e le costumanze di quella città, e quanto mutamento di cose venga
minacciato dalla morte di un solo uomo (quantunque molti altri, come
narrano, essendo complici, o subirono l' istesso supplicio, o lo
aspettano) si accorgerà, che nulla di più grande avvenne ai nostri tempi
nella Italia. Tu forse qui attendi il mio giudizio: assolvo il popolo,
se credere si dee alia fama, benchè abbia potuto e castigate più
mitemente, e con maggior dolcezza vendicare il suo dolore: ma non cosi
facilmente, si modera un' ira giusta insieme, e grande in un numeroso
popolo principalmente, nel quale il precipitoso, ed instabile volgo
aguzza gli stimoli dell' iracondia con rapidi, e sconsigliati clamori.
Compatisco, e nell' istesso tempo mi adiro con quell' infelice uomo, il
quale adorno di un' insolito onore, non so, che cosa si volesse negli
estremi anni della sua vita: la calamità di lui diviene sempre più
grave, perchè dalla sentenza contra di esso promulgata apparirà, che
egli fu non solo misero, ma insano, e demente, e che con vane arti si
usurpò per tanti anni una falsa fama di sapienza. Ammonisco i dogi, i
quali gli succederanno, che questo e un' esempio posto innanzi ai loro
occhi, quale specchio, nel quale veggano d' essere non signori, ma duci,
anzi nemmeno duci, ma onorati servi della Repubblica. Tu sta sano; e
giacchè fluttuano le pubbliche cose, sforziamoci di governar
modestissimamente i privati nostri affari."--_Viaggi di Francesco
Petrarca_, descritti dal Professore Ambrogio Levati, Milano, 1820, iv.
323-325.
The above Italian translation from the Latin epistles of Petrarch
proves--1stly, That Marino Faliero was a personal friend of Petrarch's;
"antica dimestichezza," old intimacy, is the phrase of the poet. 2dly,
That Petrarch thought that he had more courage than conduct, "più di
_coraggio_ che di senno." 3dly, That there was some jealousy on the part
of Petrarch; for he says that Marino Faliero was treating of the peace
which he himself had "vainly attempted to conclude." 4thly, That the
honour of the Dukedom was conferred upon him, which he neither sought
nor expected, "che nè chiedeva, nè aspettava," and which had never been
granted to any other in like circumstances, "ciò che non si concedette a
nessun altro," a proof of the high esteem in which he must have been
held. 5thly, That he had a reputation for _wisdom_, _only_ forfeited by
the last enterprise of his life, "si usurpò per tanti anni una falsa
fama di sapienza."--"He had usurped for so many years a false fame of
wisdom," rather a difficult task, I should think. People are generally
found out before eighty years of age, at least in a republic.--From
these, and the other historical notes which I have collected, it may be
inferred, that Marino Faliero possessed many of the qualities, but not
the success of a hero; and that his passions were too violent. The
paltry and ignorant account of Dr. Moore falls to the ground. Petrarch
says, "that there had been no greater event in his times" (_our times_
literally), "nostri tempi," in Italy. He also differs from the historian
in saying that Faliero was "on the banks of the _Rhone_," instead of at
Rome, when elected; the other accounts say, that the deputation of the
Venetian senate met him at Ravenna. How this may have been, it is not
for me to decide, and is of no great importance. Had the man succeeded,
he would have changed the face of Venice, and perhaps of Italy. As it
is, what _are_ they both?
NOTE C.
Venetian Society and Manners.
"Vice without splendour, sin without relief
Even from the gloss of love to smooth it o'er;
But in its stead, coarse lusts of habitude," etc.
"To these attacks so frequently pointed by the government against the
clergy,--to the continual struggles between the different constituted
bodies,--to these enterprises carried on by the mass of the nobles
against the depositaries of power,--to all those projects of innovation,
which always ended by a stroke of state policy; we must add a cause not
less fitted to spread contempt for ancient doctrines; _this was the
excess of corruption_.
"That freedom of manners, which had been long boasted of as the
principal charm of Venetian society, had degenerated into scandalous
licentiousness: the tie of marriage was less sacred in that Catholic
country, than among those nations where the laws and religion admit of
its being dissolved. Because they could not break the contract, they
feigned that it had not existed; and the ground of nullity, immodestly
alleged by the married pair, was admitted with equal facility by priests
and magistrates, alike corrupt. These divorces, veiled under another
name, became so frequent, that the most important act of civil society
was discovered to be amenable to a tribunal of exceptions; and to
restrain the open scandal of such proceedings became the office of the
police. In 1782 the Council of Ten decreed, that every woman who should
sue for a dissolution of her marriage should be compelled to await the
decision of the judges in some convent, to be named by the court.[486]
Soon afterwards the same council summoned all causes of that nature
before itself.[487] This infringement on ecclesiastical jurisdiction
having occasioned some remonstrance from Rome, the council retained only
the right of rejecting the petition of the married persons, and
consented to refer such causes to the holy office as it should not
previously have rejected.[488]
"There was a moment in which, doubtless, the destruction of private
fortunes, the ruin of youth, the domestic discord occasioned by these
abuses, determined the government to depart from its established maxims
concerning the freedom of manners allowed the subject. All the
courtesans were banished from Venice; but their absence was not enough
to reclaim and bring back good morals to a whole people brought up in
the most scandalous licentiousness. Depravity reached the very bosoms of
private families, and even into the cloister; and they found themselves
obliged to recall, and even to indemnify,[489] women who sometimes
gained possession of important secrets, and who might be usefully
employed in the ruin of men whose fortunes might have rendered them
dangerous. Since that time licentiousness has gone on increasing; and we
have seen mothers, not only selling the innocence of their daughters,
but selling it by a contract, authenticated by the signature of a public
officer, and the performance of which was secured by the protection of
the laws.[490]
"The parlours of the convents of noble ladies, and the houses of the
courtesans, though the police carefully kept up a number of spies about
them, were the only assemblies for society in Venice; and in these two
places, so different from each other, there was equal freedom. Music,
collations, gallantry, were not more forbidden in the parlours than at
the casinos. There were a number of casinos for the purpose of public
assemblies, where gaming was the principal pursuit of the company. It
was a strange sight to see persons of either sex masked, or grave in
their magisterial robes, round a table, invoking chance, and giving way
at one instant to the agonies of despair, at the next to the illusions
of hope, and that without uttering a single word.
"The rich had private casinos, but they lived _incognito_ in them; and
the wives whom they abandoned found compensation in the liberty they
enjoyed. The corruption of morals had deprived them of their empire. We
have just reviewed the whole history of Venice, and we have not once
seen them exercise the slightest influence."--Daru, _Hist. de la Répub.
de Vénise_, Paris, 1821, v. 328-332.
* * * * *
The author of "Sketches Descriptive of Italy," (1820), etc., one of the
hundred tours lately published, is extremely anxious to disclaim a
possible plagiarism from _Childe Harold_ and _Beppo_. See p. 159, vol.
iv. He adds that still less could this presumed coincidence arise from
"my conversation," as he had "_repeatedly declined an introduction to me
while in Italy_."
Who this person may be I know not;[491] but he must have been deceived
by all or any of those who "repeatedly offered to introduce" him, as I
invariably refused to receive any English with whom I was not previously
acquainted, even when they had letters from England. If the whole
assertion is not an invention, I request this person not to sit down
with the notion that he could have been introduced, since there has been
nothing I have so carefully avoided as any kind of intercourse with his
countrymen,--excepting the very few who were for a considerable time
resident in Venice, or had been of my previous acquaintance. Whoever
made him any such offer was possessed of impudence equal to that of
making such an assertion without having had it. The fact is, that I hold
in utter abhorrence any contact with the travelling English, as my
friend the Consul General Hoppner and the Countess Benzoni (in whose
house the Conversazione mostly frequented by them is held), could amply
testify, were it worth while. I was persecuted by these tourists even to
my riding ground at Lido, and reduced to the most disagreeable circuits
to avoid them. At Madame Benzoni's I repeatedly refused to be introduced
to them;--of a thousand such presentations pressed upon me, I accepted
two, and both were to Irish women.
* * * * *
I should hardly have descended to speak of such trifles publicly, if the
impudence of this "sketcher" had not forced me to a refutation of a
disingenuous and gratuitously impertinent assertion; so meant to be, for
what could it import to the reader to be told that the author "had
repeatedly declined an introduction," even if it had been true, which,
for the reasons I have above given, is scarcely possible. Except Lords
Lansdowne, Jersey, and Lauderdale, Messrs. Scott, Hammond, Sir Humphry
Davy, the late M. Lewis, W. Bankes, Mr. Hoppner, Thomas Moore, Lord
Kinnaird, his brother, Mr. Joy, and Mr. Hobhouse, I do not recollect to
have exchanged a word with another Englishman since I left their
Country; and almost all these I had known before. The others,--and God
knows there were some hundreds, who bored me with letters or visits, I
refused to have any communication with, and shall be proud and happy
when that wish becomes mutual.
FOOTNOTES:
[483] {462}Mr. Francis Cohen, afterwards Sir Francis Palgrave
(1788-1861), the author of the _Rise and Progress of the English
Constitution, History of the Anglo-Saxons_, etc., etc.
[483a][In the earlier editions (1821-1825) Francis Cohen's translation
(Appendix II.) is preceded by an Italian version (Appendix I.), taken
directly from Muratori's edition of Marin Sanudo's _Vite dei Dogi_
(_Rerum Italicarum Scriptores_, 1733, xii. 628-635). The two versions
are by no means identical. Cohen's "translation" is, presumably an
accurate rendering of Sanudo's text, and must have been made either from
the original MS. or from a transcript sent from Italy to England.
Muratori's Italian is a _rifacimento_ of the original, which has been
altered and condensed with a view to convenience or literary effect.
Proper names of persons and places are changed, Sanudo's Venetian
dialect gives place to Muratori's Italian, and notes which Sanudo added
in the way of illustration and explanation are incorporated in the text.
In the _Life of Marino Faliero_, pp. 199, 200 of the original text are
omitted, and a passage from an old chronicle, which Sanudo gives as a
note, is made to appear part of the original narrative. (See Preface to
_Le Vite dei Dogi di Marin Sanudo_, by G. Monticolo, 1900; _Marino
Faliero, La Congiura_, by V. Lazzarino; _Nuovo Archivio Veneto_, 1897,
vol. xiii. pt. i. p. 15, note 1.)]
[484] {463}["_Marin Faliero dalla bella moglie: altri la gode, ed egli
la mantien._" According to Andrea Navagero (_It. Rer. Script._, xxiii.
1038), the writing on the chair ran thus: "_Becco Marino Falier dalla
bella mogier_" (_vide ante_, p. 349). Palgrave has bowdlerized Steno's
lampoon.]
[485] {468}["Had a copy taken of an extract from Petrarch's Letters,
with reference to the conspiracy of the Doge Marino Faliero, containing
the poet's opinion of the matter."--_Diary_, February 11, 1821,
_Letters_, 1901, v. 201.]
[486] {470}Correspondence of M. Schlick, French chargé d'affaires.
Despatch of 24th August, 1782.
[487] _Ibid_. Despatch, 31st August.
[488] _Ibid_. Despatch of 3d September, 1785.
[489] The decree for their recall designates them as _nostre benemerite
meretrici_: a fund and some houses, called _Case rampane_, were assigned
to them; hence the opprobrious appellation of _Carampane_. [The writer
of the Preface to _Leggi e memorie Venete sulla Prostituzione_, which
was issued from Lord Orford's private press in 1870, maintains that the
designation is mythical. "Tale asserzione che non ha verum fondamento,
salvo che nella imaginazione di chi primo la scrisse lo storico francese
Daru non si fece scrupolo di ripetuta ciecamente. Fu altresi ripetuta da
Lord Byron e da altri," etc. The volume, a sumptuous folio, prints a
series of rescripts promulgated by the Venetian government against
_meretrici_ and other disagreeable persons.]
[490] Meyer, Description of Venice, vol. ii.; and M. de Archenholtz,
Picture of Italy, vol. i. sect. 2, pp. 65, 66. [_Voyage en Italie_, par
F. J. L. Meyer, An X. cap. iii.]
[491] {471}[In a letter to Murray, September 11, 1820 (_Letters_, 1901,
v. 75, 84), Byron writes, "Last post I sent you a note fierce as Faliero
himself, in answer to a trashy tourist, who pretends that he could have
been introduced to me;" but at the end of the month, September 29, 1820,
he withdraws his animadversions: "I open my letter to say, that on
reading more of the 4 volumes on Italy [_Sketches descriptive of Italy
in the Years_ 1816, 1817, etc., by Miss Jane Waldie] ... I perceive
(_horresco referens_) that it is written by a WOMAN!!! In that case you
must suppress my note and answer.... I can only say that I am sorry that
a Lady should say anything of the kind. What I would have said to one of
the other sex you know already." Nevertheless, the note was appended to
the first edition, which appeared April 21, 1821.]
THE VISION OF JUDGMENT.
BY
QUEVEDO REDIVIVUS.
SUGGESTED BY THE COMPOSITION SO ENTITLED BY THE AUTHOR
OF "WAT TYLER."
"A Daniel come to judgment! yea, a Daniel!
I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word."
[_Merchant of Venice_, act iv. sc. 1, lines 218, 336.]
INTRODUCTION TO _THE VISION OF JUDGMENT_.
Byron's _Vision of Judgment_ is a parody of Southey's _Vision of
Judgement_.
The acts or fyttes of the quarrel between Byron and Southey occur in the
following order. In the summer of 1817 Southey, accompanied by his
friends, Humphrey Senhouse and the artist Edward Nash, passed some weeks
(July) in Switzerland. They visited Chamouni, and at Montanvert, in the
travellers' album, they found, in Shelley's handwriting, a Greek
hexameter verse, in which he affirmed that he was an "atheist," together
with an indignant comment ("fool!" also in Greek) superadded in an
unknown hand (see _Life of Shelley_, by E. Dowden, 1886, ii. 30, note).
Southey copied this entry into his note-book, and "spoke of the
circumstance on his return" (circ. August 12, 1817). In the course of
the next year some one told Byron that a rumour had reached England that
he and Shelley "had formed a league of incest with two sisters," and
that Southey and Coleridge were the authors of the scandal. There is
nothing to show through what channel the report of the rumour reached
Byron's ears, but it may be inferred that it was in his mind (see Letter
to Murray, November 24, 1818, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 272) when he assailed
Southey in the "Dedication" ("in good, simple, savage verse") to the
First Canto of _Don Juan_, which was begun September 6, 1818. Shelley,
who was already embittered against Southey (see the account of a dinner
at Godwin's, November 6, 1817, _Diary of H. C. Robinson_, 1869, ii. 67),
heard Byron read this "Dedication," and, in a letter to Peacock (October
8, 1818), describes it as being "more like a mixture of wormwood and
verdigrease than satire."
When _Don Juan_ appeared (July 15, 1819), the "Dedication" was not
forthcoming, but of its existence and character Southey had been
informed. "Have you heard," he asks (Letter to the Rev. H. Hill,
_Selections from the Letters, etc._, 1856, iii. 142), "that _Don Juan_
came over with a Dedication to me, in which Lord Castlereagh and I ...
were coupled together for abuse as the 'two Roberts'? A fear of
persecution (_sic_) from the _one_ Robert is supposed to be the reason
why it has been suppressed. Lord Byron might have done well to remember
that the other can write dedications also; and make his own cause good,
if it were needful, in prose or rhyme, against a villain, as well as
against a slanderer."
When George III. died (January 29, 1820), it became the duty of the
"laurel-honouring laureate" to write a funeral ode, and in composing a
Preface, in vindication of the English hexameter, he took occasion
"incidentally to repay some of his obligations to Lord Byron by a few
comments on _Don Juan_" (Letter to the Rev. H. Hill, January 8, 1821,
_Selections, etc._, iii. 225). He was, no doubt, impelled by other and
higher motives to constitute himself a _censor morum_, and take up his
parable against the spirit of the age as displayed and fostered in _Don
Juan_ (see a letter to Wynne, March 23, 1821, _Selections, etc._, iii.
238), but the suppressed "Dedication" and certain gibes, which had been
suffered to appear, may be reckoned as the immediate causes of his
anathema.
Southey's _Vision of Judgement_ was published April 11, 1821--an
undivine comedy, in which the apotheosis of George III., the
beatification of the virtuous, and the bale and damnation of such
egregious spirits as Robespierre, Wilkes, and Junius, are "thrown upon
the screen" of the showman or lecturer. Southey said that the "Vision"
ought to be read aloud, and, if the subject could be forgotten and
ignored, the hexameters might not sound amiss, but the subject and its
treatment are impossible and intolerable. The "Vision" would have "made
sport" for Byron in any case, but, in the Preface, Southey went out of
his way to attack and denounce the anonymous author of _Don Juan_.
"What, then," he asks (ed. 1838, x. 204), "should be said of those for
whom the thoughtlessness and inebriety of wanton youth can no longer be
pleaded, but who have written in sober manhood, and with deliberate
purpose?... Men of diseased hearts and depraved imaginations, who,
forming a system of opinions to suit their own unhappy course of
conduct, have rebelled against the holiest ordinances of human society,
and hating that revealed religion which, with all their efforts and
bravadoes, they are unable entirely to disbelieve, labour to make others
as miserable as themselves, by infecting them with a moral virus that
eats into the soul! The school which they have set up may properly be
called the Satanic school; for, though their productions breathe the
spirit of Belial in their lascivious parts, and the spirit of Moloch in
those loathsome images of atrocities and horrors which they delight to
represent, they are more especially characterized by a Satanic pride and
audacious impiety, which still betrays the wretched feeling of
hopelessness wherewith it is allied."
Byron was not slow to take up the challenge. In the "Appendix" to the
_Two Foscari_ (first ed., pp. 325-329), which was written at Ravenna,
June-July, but not published till December 11, 1821, he retaliates on
"Mr. Southey and his 'pious preface'" in many words; but when it comes
to the point, ignores the charge of having "published a lascivious
book," and endeavours by counter-charges to divert the odium and to
cover his adversary with shame and confusion. "Mr. S.," he says, "with a
cowardly ferocity, exults over the anticipated 'death-bed repentance' of
the objects of his dislike; and indulges himself in a pleasant 'Vision
of Judgment,' in prose as well as verse, full of impious impudence.... I
am not ignorant," he adds, "of Mr. Southey's calumnies on a different
occasion, knowing them to be such, which he scattered abroad on his
return from Switzerland against me and others.... What _his_ 'death-bed'
may be it is not my province to predicate; let him settle it with his
Maker, as I must do with mine. There is something at once ludicrous and
blasphemous in this arrogant scribbler of all works sitting down to deal
damnation and destruction upon his fellow-creatures, with Wat Tyler, the
Apotheosis of George the Third, and the Elegy on Martin the regicide,
all shuffled together in his writing-desk."
Southey must have received his copy of the _Two Foscari_ in the last
week of December, 1821, and with the "Appendix" (to say nothing of the
Third Canto of _Don Juan_) before him, he gave tongue, in the pages of
the _Courier_, January 6, 1822. His task was an easy one. He was able to
deny, _in toto_, the charge of uttering calumnies on his return from
Switzerland, and he was pleased to word his denial in a very
disagreeable way. He had come home with a stock of travellers' tales,
but not one of them was about Lord Byron. He had "sought for no staler
subject than St. Ursula." His charges of "impiety," "lewdness,"
"profanation," and "pollution," had not been answered, and were
unanswerable; and as to his being a "scribbler of all work," there were
exceptions--works which he had _not_ scribbled, the _nefanda_ which
disfigured the writings of Lord Byron. "Satanic school" would stick.
So far, the battle went in Southey's favour. "The words of the men of
Judah were fiercer than the words of the men of Israel," and Byron was
reduced to silence. A challenge (sent through Kinnaird, but not
delivered) was but a confession of impotence. There was, however, in
Southey's letter to the _Courier_ just one sentence too many. Before he
concluded he had given "one word of advice to Lord Byron"--"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_."
Byron had anticipated this advice, and had already attacked the laureate
in rhyme, scornfully and satirically, but with a gay and genial mockery
which dispensed with "wormwood and verdigrease" or yet bitterer and more
venomous ingredients.
There was a truth in Lamb's jest, that it was Southey's _Vision of
Judgement_ which was worthy of prosecution; that "Lord Byron's poem was
of a most good-natured description--no malevolence" (_Diary of H. C.
Robinson_, 1869, ii. 240). Good-natured or otherwise, it awoke
inextinguishable laughter, and left Byron in possession of the field.
The _Vision of Judgment_, begun May 7 (but probably laid aside till
September 11), was forwarded to Murray October 4, 1821. "By this post,"
he wrote to Moore, October 6, 1821 (_Letters_, 1901, v. 387), "I have
sent my nightmare to balance the incubus of Southey's impudent
anticipation of the Apotheosis of George the Third." A chance perusal of
Southey's letter in the _Courier_ (see Medwin's _Conversations_, 1824,
p. 222, and letters to Douglas Kinnaird, February 6, 25, 1822) quickened
his desire for publication; but in spite of many appeals and suggestions
to Murray, who had sent Byron's "copy" to his printer, the decisive step
of passing the proofs for press was never taken. At length Byron lost
patience, and desired Murray to hand over "the corrected copy of the
proof with the Preface" of the _Vision of Judgment_ to John Hunt (see
letters to Murray, July 3, 6, 1822, _Letters_, 1901, vi. 92, 93).
Finally, a year after the MS. had been sent to England, the _Vision of
Judgment_, by Quevedo Redivivus, appeared in the first number (pp. 1-39)
of the _Liberal_, which was issued October 15, 1822. The Preface, to
Byron's astonishment and annoyance, was not forthcoming (see letter to
Murray, October 22, 1822, _Letters_, 1901, vi. 126, and _Examiner_,
Sunday, November 3, 1822, p. 697), and is not prefixed to the first
issue of the _Vision of Judgment_ in the first number of the _Liberal_.
The _Liberal_ was severely handled by the press (see, for example, the
_Literary Gazette_ for October 19, 26, November 2, 1822; see, too, an
anonymous pamphlet entitled _A Critique on the "Liberal"_ (London,
1822, 8vo, 16 pages), which devotes ten pages to an attack on the
_Vision of Judgment_). The daily press was even more violent. The
_Courier_ for October 26 begins thus: "This _scoundrel-like_ publication
has at length made its appearance."
There was even a threat of prosecution. Byron offered to employ counsel
for Hunt, to come over to England to stand his trial in his stead, and
blamed Murray for not having handed over the corrected proof, in which
some of the more offensive passages had been omitted or mitigated (see
letter to Murray, December 25, 1822, and letter to John Hunt, January 8,
1823, _Letters,_ 1901, vi. 155, 159). It is to be noted that in the list
of _Errata_ affixed to the table of Contents at the end of the first
volume of the _Liberal,_ the words, a "weaker king ne'er," are
substituted for "a worse king never" (stanza viii. line 6), and "an
unhandsome woman" for "a bad, ugly woman" (stanza xii. line 8). It would
seem that these emendations, which do not appear in the MS., were
slipped into the _Errata_ as precautions, not as after-thoughts.
Nevertheless, it was held that a publication "calumniating the late
king, and wounding the feelings of his present Majesty," was a danger to
the public peace, and on January 15, 1824, the case of the King _v._
John Hunt was tried in the Court of King's Bench. The jury brought in a
verdict of "Guilty," but judgment was deferred, and it was not till July
19, 1824, three days after the author of the _Vision of Judgment_ had
been laid to rest at Hucknall Torkard, that the publisher was sentenced
to pay to the king a fine of one hundred pounds, and to enter into
securities, for five years, for a larger amount.
For the complete text of section iii. of Southey's Preface, Byron's
"Appendix" to the _Two Foscari_, etc., see _Essays Moral and Political_,
by Robert Southey, 1832, ii. 183, 205. See, too, for "Quarrel between
Byron and Southey," Appendix I. of vol. vi. of _Letters of Lord Byron,_
1901.
* * * * *
NOTE.
The following excerpt from H. C. Robinson's _Diary_ is printed from the
original MS., with the kind permission of the trustees of Dr. Williams'
Theological Library (see "Diary," 1869, ii. 437):--
"[Weimar], August 15, [1829].
"W[ordsworth] will not put the nose of B[yron] out with Frau von
Goethe, but he will be appreciated by her. I am afraid of the
experiment with the great poet himself....
" ... I alone to the poet....
"I read to him the _Vision of Judgment_. He enjoyed it like a
child; but his criticisms went little beyond the exclamatory 'Toll!
Ganz grob! himmlisch! unübertrefflich!' etc., etc.
"In general, the more strongly peppered passages pleased him the
best. Stanza 9 he praised for the clear distinct painting; 10 he
repeated with emphasis,--the last two lines conscious that his own
age was eighty; 13, 14, and 15 are favourites with me. G. concurred
in the suggested praise. The stanza 24 he declared to be sublime.
The characteristic speeches of Wilkes and Junius he thought most
admirable.
"Byron 'hat selbst viel übertroffen;' and the introduction of
Southey made him laugh heartily.
"August 16.
"Lord B. he declared to be inimitable. Ariosto was not so _keck_ as
Lord B. in the _Vision of Judgment_."
PREFACE
It hath been wisely said, that "One fool makes many;" and it hath been
poetically observed--
"[That] fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
[POPE'S _Essay on Criticism_, line 625.]
If Mr. Southey had not rushed in where he had no business, and where he
never was before, and never will be again, the following poem would not
have been written. It is not impossible that it may be as good as his
own, seeing that it cannot, by any species of stupidity, natural or
acquired, be _worse._ The gross flattery, the dull impudence, the
renegade intolerance, and impious cant, of the poem by the author of
"Wat Tyler," are something so stupendous as to form the sublime of
himself--containing the quintessence of his own attributes.
So much for his poem--a word on his preface. In this preface it has
pleased the magnanimous Laureate to draw the picture of a supposed
"Satanic School," the which he doth recommend to the notice of the
legislature; thereby adding to his other laurels the ambition of those
of an informer. If there exists anywhere, except in his imagination,
such a School, is he not sufficiently armed against it by his own
intense vanity? The truth is that there are certain writers whom Mr. S.
imagines, like Scrub, to have "talked of _him_; for they laughed
consumedly."[492]
I think I know enough of most of the writers to whom he is supposed to
allude, to assert, that they, in their individual capacities, have done
more good, in the charities of life, to their fellow-creatures, in any
one year, than Mr. Southey has done harm to himself by his absurdities
in his whole life; and this is saying a great deal. But I have a few
questions to ask.
1stly, Is Mr. Southey the author of _Wat Tyler_?
2ndly, Was he not refused a remedy at law by the highest judge of his
beloved England, because it was a blasphemous and seditious
publication?[493]
3rdly, Was he not entitled by William Smith, in full parliament, "a
rancorous renegado?"[494]
4thly, Is he not poet laureate, with his own lines on Martin the
regicide staring him in the face?[495]
And, 5thly, Putting the four preceding items together, with what
conscience dare _he_ call the attention of the laws to the publications
of others, be they what they may?
I say nothing of the cowardice of such a proceeding; its meanness speaks
for itself; but I wish to touch upon the _motive_, which is neither more
nor less than that Mr. S. has been laughed at a little in some recent
publications, as he was of yore in the _Anti-jacobin_, by his present
patrons. Hence all this "skimble scamble stuff" about "Satanic," and so
forth. However, it is worthy of him--"_qualis ab incepto_."
If there is anything obnoxious to the political opinions of a portion of
the public in the following poem, they may thank Mr. Southey. He might
have written hexameters, as he has written everything else, for aught
that the writer cared--had they been upon another subject. But to
attempt to canonise a monarch, who, whatever were his household virtues,
was neither a successful nor a patriot king,--inasmuch as several years
of his reign passed in war with America and Ireland, to say nothing of
the aggression upon France--like all other exaggeration, necessarily
begets opposition. In whatever manner he may be spoken of in this new
_Vision_, his _public_ career will not be more favourably transmitted by
history. Of his private virtues (although a little expensive to the
nation) there can be no doubt.
With regard to the supernatural personages treated of, I can only say
that I know as much about them, and (as an honest man) have a better
right to talk of them than Robert Southey. I have also treated them more
tolerantly. The way in which that poor insane creature, the Laureate,
deals about his judgments in the next world, is like his own judgment in
this. If it was not completely ludicrous, it would be something worse. I
don't think that there is much more to say at present.