Is yet within her breast, and may revive.
Count! count! I am your servant in all things,
And this is a new office:--'tis not oft 170
I am employed in such; but you perceive
How staunch a friend is what you call a fiend.
On earth you have often only fiends for friends;
Now _I_ desert not mine. Soft! bear her hence,
The beautiful half-clay, and nearly spirit!
I am almost enamoured of her, as
Of old the Angels of her earliest sex.[250]
_Arn._ Thou!
_Caes._ I! But fear not. I'll not be your rival.
_Arn._ Rival!
_Caes._ I could be one right formidable;
But since I slew the seven husbands of 180
Tobias' future bride (and after all
Was smoked out by some incense),[251] I have laid
Aside intrigue: 'tis rarely worth the trouble
Of gaining, or--what is more difficult--
Getting rid of your prize again; for there's
The rub! at least to mortals.
_Arn._ Prithee, peace!
Softly! methinks her lips move, her eyes open!
_Caes._ Like stars, no doubt; for that's a metaphor
For Lucifer and Venus.
_Arn._ To the palace
Colonna, as I told you!
_Caes._ Oh! I know 190
My way through Rome.
_Arn._ Now onward, onward! Gently!
[_Exeunt, bearing_ OLIMPIA. _The scene closes_.
PART III.
SCENE I.--_A Castle in the Apennines, surrounded by a wild
but smiling Country. Chorus of Peasants singing before the Gates_.
_Chorus_.
I.
The wars are over,
The spring is come;
The bride and her lover
Have sought their home:
They are happy, we rejoice;
Let their hearts have an echo in every voice!
II.
The spring is come; the violet's gone,
The first-born child of the early sun:[dt]
With us she is but a winter's flower,
The snow on the hills cannot blast her bower, 10
And she lifts up her dewy eye of blue
To the youngest sky of the self-same hue.
III.
And when the spring comes with her host
Of flowers, that flower beloved the most
Shrinks from the crowd that may confuse
Her heavenly odour and virgin hues.
IV.
Pluck the others, but still remember
Their herald out of dim December--
The morning star of all the flowers,
The pledge of daylight's lengthened hours; 20
Nor, midst the roses, e'er forget
The virgin--virgin Violet.
_Enter_ CAESAR.
_Caes._ (_singing_).
The wars are all over,
Our swords are all idle,
The steed bites the bridle,
The casque's on the wall.
There's rest for the rover;
But his armour is rusty,
And the veteran grows crusty,
As he yawns in the hall. 30
He drinks--but what's drinking?
A mere pause from thinking!
No bugle awakes him with life-and-death call.
_Chorus_.
But the hound bayeth loudly,
The boar's in the wood,
And the falcon longs proudly
To spring from her hood:
On the wrist of the noble
She sits like a crest,
And the air is in trouble 40
With birds from their nest.
_Caes._
Oh! shadow of Glory!
Dim image of War!
But the chase hath no story,
Her hero no star,
Since Nimrod, the founder
Of empire and chase,
Who made the woods wonder
And quake for their race.
When the lion was young, 50
In the pride of his might,
Then 'twas sport for the strong
To embrace him in fight;
To go forth, with a pine
For a spear, 'gainst the mammoth,
Or strike through the ravine[du]
At the foaming behemoth;
While man was in stature
As towers in our time,
The first born of Nature, 60
And, like her, sublime!
_Chorus_.
But the wars are over,
The spring is come;
The bride and her lover
Have sought their home:
They are happy, and we rejoice;
Let their hearts have an echo from every voice!
[_Exeunt the Peasantry, singing_.
FRAGMENT OF THE THIRD PART OF _THE DEFORMED TRANSFORMED_.
_Chorus_.
When the merry bells are ringing,
And the peasant girls are singing,
And the early flowers are flinging
Their odours in the air;
And the honey bee is clinging
To the buds; and birds are winging
Their way, pair by pair:
Then the earth looks free from trouble
With the brightness of a bubble:
Though I did not make it, 10
I could breathe on and break it;
But too much I scorn it,
Or else I would mourn it,
To see despots and slaves
Playing o'er their own graves.
_Enter_ COUNT ARNOLD.
{_Mem._ Jealous--Arnold of Caesar.
{Olympia at first not liking Caesar
{--then?--Arnold jealous of himself
{under his former figure, owing to
{the power of intellect, etc., etc., etc.
_Arnold_. You are merry, Sir--what? singing too?
_Caesar_. It is
The land of Song--and Canticles you know
Were once my avocation.
_Arn._ Nothing moves you;
You scoff even at your own calamity--
And such calamity! how wert thou fallen 20
Son of the Morning! and yet Lucifer
Can smile.
_Caes._ His shape can--would you have me weep,
In the fair form I wear, to please you?
_Arn._ Ah!
_Caes._ You are grave--what have you on your spirit!
_Arn._ Nothing.
_Caes._ How mortals lie by instinct! If you ask
A disappointed courtier--What's the matter?
"Nothing"--an outshone Beauty what has made
Her smooth brow crisp--"Oh, Nothing!"--a young heir
When his Sire has recovered from the Gout,
What ails him? "Nothing!" or a Monarch who 30
Has heard the truth, and looks imperial on it--
What clouds his royal aspect? "Nothing," "Nothing!"
Nothing--eternal nothing--of these nothings
All are a lie--for all to them are much!
And they themselves alone the real "Nothings."
Your present Nothing, too, is something to you--
What is it?
_Arn._ Know you not?
_Caes._ I only know
What I desire to know! and will not waste
Omniscience upon phantoms. Out with it!
If you seek aid from me--or else be silent. 40
And eat your thoughts--till they breed snakes within you.
_Arn._ Olimpia!
_Caes._ I thought as much--go on.
_Arn._ I thought she had loved me.
_Caes._ Blessings on your Creed!
What a good Christian you were found to be!
But what cold Sceptic hath appalled your faith
And transubstantiated to crumbs again
The _body_ of your Credence?
_Arn._ No one--but--
Each day--each hour--each minute shows me more
And more she loves me not--
_Caes._ Doth she rebel?
_Arn._ No, she is calm, and meek, and silent with me, 50
And coldly dutiful, and proudly patient--
Endures my Love--not meets it.
_Caes._ That seems strange.
You are beautiful and brave! the first is much
For passion--and the rest for Vanity.
_Arn._ I saved her life, too; and her Father's life,
And Father's house from ashes.
_Caes._ These are nothing.
You seek for Gratitude--the Philosopher's stone.
_Arn._ And find it not.
_Caes._ You cannot find what is not.
But _found_ would it content you? would you owe
To thankfulness what you desire from Passion? 60
No! No! you would be _loved_--what you call loved--
_Self-loved_--loved for _yourself_--for neither health,
Nor wealth, nor youth, nor power, nor rank, nor beauty--
For these you may be stript of--but _beloved_
As an abstraction--for--you know not what!
These are the wishes of a moderate lover--
And _so_ you love.
_Arn._ Ah! could I be beloved,
Would I ask wherefore?
_Caes._ Yes! and not believe
The answer--You are jealous.
_Arn._ And of whom?
_Caes._ It may be of yourself,[252] for Jealousy 70
Is as a shadow of the Sun. The Orb
Is mighty--as you mortals deem--and to
Your little Universe seems universal;
But, great as He appears, and is to you,
The smallest cloud--the slightest vapour of
Your humid earth enables you to look
Upon a Sky which you revile as dull;
Though your eyes dare not gaze on it when cloudless.
Nothing can blind a mortal like to light.
Now Love in you is as the Sun--a thing 80
Beyond you--and your Jealousy's of Earth--
A cloud of your own raising.
_Arn._ Not so always!
There is a cause at times.
_Caes._ Oh, yes! when atoms jostle,
The System is in peril. But I speak
Of things you know not. Well, to earth again!
This precious thing of dust--this bright Olimpia--
This marvellous Virgin, is a marble maid--
An Idol, but a cold one to your heat
Promethean, and unkindled by your torch.
_Arn._ Slave!
_Caes._ In the victor's Chariot, when Rome triumphed, 90
There was a Slave of yore to tell him truth!
You are a Conqueror--command your Slave.
_Arn._ Teach me the way to win the woman's love.
_Caes._ Leave her.
_Arn._ Where that the path--I'd not pursue it.
_Caes._ No doubt! for if you did, the remedy
Would be for a disease already cured.
_Arn._ All wretched as I am, I would not quit
My unrequited love, for all that's happy.
_Caes._ You have possessed the woman--still possess.
What need you more?
_Arn._ To be myself possessed-- 100
To be her heart as she is mine.
FOOTNOTES:
[201] {473}[_The Three Brothers_, by Joshua Pickersgill, junior, was
published in 1803. There is no copy of _The Three Brothers_ in the
British Museum. The following extracts are taken from a copy in the
Bodleian Library at Oxford (vol. 4, cap. xi. pp. 229-350):--
"Arnaud, the natural son of the Marquis de Souvricour, was a child
'extraordinary in Beauty and Intellect.' When travelling with his
parents to Languedoc, Arnaud being 8 years old, he was shot at by
banditti, and forsaken by his parents. The Captain of the band nursed
him. 'But those perfections to which Arnaud owed his existence, ceased
to adorn it. The ball had gored his shoulder, and the fall had
dislocated it; by the latter misadventure his spine likewise was so
fatally injured as to be irrecoverable to its pristine uprightness.
Injuries so compound confounded the Captain, who sorrowed to see a
creature so charming, at once deformed by a crooked back and an
excrescent shoulder.' Arnaud was found and taken back to his parents.
'The bitterest consciousness of his deformity was derived from their
indelicate, though, perhaps, insensible alteration of conduct.... Of his
person he continued to speak as of an abhorrent enemy.... "Were a
blessing submitted to my choice, I would say, [said Arnaud] be it my
immediate dissolution." "I think," said his mother, ... "that you could
wish better." "Yes," adjoined Arnaud, "for that wish should be that I
ever had remained unborn."' He polishes the broken blade of a sword, and
views himself therein; the sight so horrifies him that he determines to
throw himself over a precipice, but draws back at the last moment. He
goes to a cavern, and conjures up the prince of hell. "Arnaud knew
himself to be interrogated. What he required.... What was that answer
the effects explain.... There passed in liveliest portraiture the
various men distinguished for that beauty and grace which Arnaud so much
desired, that he was ambitious to purchase them with his soul. He felt
that it was his part to chuse whom he would resemble, yet he remained
unresolved, though the spectator of an hundred shades of renown, among
which glided by Alexander, Alcibiades, and Hephestion: at length
appeared the supernatural effigy of a man, whose perfections human
artist never could depict or insculp--Demetrius, the son of Antigonus.
Arnaud's heart heaved quick with preference, and strait he found within
his hand the resemblance of a poniard, its point inverted towards his
breast. A mere automaton in the hands of the Demon, he thrust the point
through his heart, and underwent a painless death. During his trance,
his spirit metempsychosed from the body of his detestation to that of
his admiration ... Arnaud awoke a Julian!'"]
[202] {474}[For a _resume_ of M. G. Lewis's _Wood Demon_ (afterwards
re-cast as _One O'clock; or, The Knight and the Wood-Demon_, 1811), see
"First Visit to the Theatre in London," _Poems_, by Hartley Coleridge,
1851, i., Appendix C, pp. cxcix.-cciii. The _Wood Demon_ in its original
form was never published.]
[203] [Mrs. Shelley inscribed the following note on the fly-leaf of her
copy of _The Deformed Transformed_:--
"This had long been a favourite subject with Lord Byron. I think that he
mentioned it also in Switzerland. I copied it--he sending a portion of
it at a time, as it was finished, to me. At this time he had a great
horror of its being said that he plagiarised, or that he studied for
ideas, and wrote with difficulty. Thus he gave Shelley Aikins' edition
of the British poets, that it might not be found in his house by some
English lounger, and reported home; thus, too, he always dated when he
began and when he ended a poem, to prove hereafter how quickly it was
done. I do not think that he altered a line in this drama after he had
once written it down. He composed and corrected in his mind. I do not
know how he meant to finish it; but he said himself that the whole
conduct of the story was already conceived. It was at this time that a
brutal paragraph[*] alluding to his lameness appeared, which he repeated
to me lest I should hear it from some one else. No action of Lord
Byron's life--scarce a line he has written--but was influenced by his
personal defect."
[*] It is possible that Mrs. Shelley alludes to a sentence in the
_Memoirs, etc., of Lord Byron_. (by Dr. John Watkin), 1822, p. 46: "A
malformation of one of his feet, and other indications of a rickety
constitution, served as a plea for suffering him to range the hills and
to wander about at his pleasure on the seashore, that his frame might be
invigorated by air and exercise."]
[cv] {477} _The Deformed--a drama.--B. Pisa, 1822_.
[204] [Moore (_Life_, p. 13) quotes these lines in connection with a
passage in Byron's "Memoranda," where, in speaking of his own
sensitiveness on the subject of his deformed foot, he described the
feeling of horror and humiliation that came over him, when his mother,
in one of her fits of passion, called him "_a lame brat!_"... "It may
be questioned," he adds, "whether that whole drama [_The Deformed
Transformed_] was not indebted for its origin to that single
recollection."
Byron's early letters (_e.g._ November 2, 11, 17, 1804, _Letters_, 1898,
i. 41, 45, 48) are full of complaints of his mother's "eccentric
behaviour," her "fits of phrenzy," her "caprices," "passions," and so
forth; and there is convincing proof--see _Life_, pp. 28, 306;
_Letters_, 1898, ii. 122 (incident at Bellingham's execution);
_Letters_, 1901, vi. 179 (_Le Diable Boiteux_)--that he regarded the
contraction of the muscles of his legs as a more or less repulsive
deformity. And yet, to quote one of a hundred testimonies,--"with regard
to Lord Byron's features, Mr. Mathews observed, that he was the only man
he ever contemplated, to whom he felt disposed to apply the word
_beautiful_" (_Memoirs of Charles Matthews_, 1838, ii. 380). The
looker-on or the consoler computes the magnitude and the liberality of
the compensation. The sufferer thinks only of his sufferings.]
[205] {478}[So, too, Prospero to Caliban, _Tempest_, act i. sc. 2, line
309, etc.]
[206] {479}[Compare--"Have not partook oppression." _Marino Faliero_,
act i. sc. 2, line 468, _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 362, note 1.]
[207] {480}[Compare the story of the philosopher Jamblichus and the
raising of Eros and Anteros from their "fountain-dwellings."--_Manfred_,
act ii. sc. 2, line 93, _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 105, note 2.]
[cw] {481} _Give me the strength of the buffalo's foot_ (_which marks
me_).--[MS.]
[cx] _The sailless dromedary_----.--[MS.]
[cy] {482} _Now I can gibe the mightiest_.--[MS.]
[208] {483}[So, too, in _The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus_ (Marlowe's
_Works_, 1858, p. 112), Faustus stabs his arm, "and with his proper
blood Assures his soul to be great Lucifer's."]
[cz]
_Walk lively and pliant_.
_You shall rise up as pliant_.--[MS, erased.]
[209] This is a well-known German superstition--a gigantic shadow
produced by reflection on the Brocken. [See Brewster's _Letters on
Natural Magic_, 1831, p. 128.]
[da] _And such my command_.--[MS.]
[210] {484}["Nigris vegetisque oculis."--Suetonius, _Vitae C. Julius
Caesar_, cap. xiv., _Opera Omnia_, 1826, i. 105.]
[211] [_Vide post_, p. 501, note 1.]
[212] ["Sed ante alias [Julius Caesar] dilexit M. Bruti matrem Serviliam
... dilexit et reginas ... sed maxime Cleopatram" (_ibid._, i. 113,
115). Cleopatra, born B.C. 69, was twenty-one years old when she met
Caesar, B.C. 48.]
[db]
_And can_
_It be? the man who shook the earth is gone_.--[MS.]
[213] {485}["Upon the whole, it may be doubted whether there be a name
of Antiquity which comes down with such a general charm as that of
_Alcibiades_. _Why?_ I cannot answer: who can?"--_Detached Thoughts_
(1821), No. 108, _Letters_, 1901, v. 461. For Sir Walter Scott's note on
this passage, see _Letters_, 1900, iv. 77, 78, note 2.]
[214] [The outside of Socrates was that of a satyr and buffoon, but his
soul was all virtue, and from within him came such divine and pathetic
things, as pierced the heart, and drew tears from the hearers.--Plato,
_Symp_., p. 216, D.]
[215] {486}["Anthony had a noble dignity of countenance, a graceful
length of beard, a large forehead, an aquiline nose: and, upon the
whole, the same manly aspect that we see in the pictures and statues of
Hercules."--Plutarch's _Lives_, Langhorne's Translation, 1838, p. 634.]
[216] [As in the "Farnese" Hercules.]
[217] [The beauty and mien [of Demetrius Poliorcetes] were so inimitable
that no statuary or painter could hit off a likeness. His countenance
had a mixture of grace and dignity; and was at once amiable and awful;
and the unsubdued and eager air of youth was blended with the majesty of
the hero and the king.--Plutarch's _Lives_, Langhorne's Translation,
1838, p. 616.
Demetrius the Besieger rescued Greece from the sway of Ptolemy and
Cassander, B.C. 307. He passed the following winter at Athens, where
divine honours were paid to him under the title of "the Preserver"
([Greek: o(Sote/r]). He was "the shame of Greece in peace," by reason of
his profligacy--"the citadel was so polluted with his debaucheries, that
it appeared to be kept sacred in some degree when he indulged himself
only with such _Hetaerae_ as Chrysis, Lamia, Demo, and Anticyra." He was
the unspiritual ancestor of Charles the Second. Once when his father,
Antigonus, had been told that he was indisposed, "he went to see him;
and when he came to the door, he met one of his favourites going out. He
went in, however, and, sitting down by him, took hold of his hand. 'My
fever,' said Demetrius, 'has left me.' 'I knew it,' said Antigonus, 'for
I met it this moment at the door.'"--Plutarch's _Lives_, _ibid._, pp.
621-623.]
[218] {488}[Spercheus was a river-god, the husband of Polydora, the
daughter of Peleus. Peleus casts into the river the hair of his son
Achilles, in the pious hope that his son-in-law would accept the votive
offering, and grant the youth a safe return from the Trojan war. See
_Iliad_, xxiii. 140, _sqq._]
[219] {489}["Whosoever," says Bacon, "hath anything fixed in his person
that doth induce contempt, hath also a perpetual spur in himself to
rescue and deliver himself from scorn; therefore, all deformed persons
are extreme bold; first, as in their own defence, as being exposed to
scorn, but in process of time by a general habit; also it stirreth in
them industry, and especially of this kind, to watch and observe the
weakness of others, that they may have somewhat to repay." (Essay
xliv.). Byron's "chief incentive, when a boy, to distinction was that
mark of deformity on his person, by an acute sense of which he was first
stung into the ambition of being great."--_Life_, p. 306.]
[220] [Timur Bey, or Timur Lang, _i.e._ "the lame Timur" (A.D.
1336-1405), was the founder of the Mogul dynasty. He was the Tamerlane
of history and of legend. Byron had certainly read the selections from
Marlowe's _Tamburlaine the Great_, in Lamb's _Specimens of English
Dramatic Poets_.]
[221] {491}["I am black, but comely."--_Song of Solomon_ i. 5.]
[222] Adam means "_red earth_," from which the first man was formed.
[The word _ad[=a]m_ is said to be analogous to the Assyrian _admu_,
"child"--_i.e._ "one made" by God.--_Encycl. Bibl._, art. "Adam."]
[dc] {492} _This shape into Life_.--[_MS_.]
[223] {493}[The reference is to the _homunculi_ of the alchymists. See
Retzsch's illustrations to Goethe's _Faust_, 1834, plates 3, 4, 5.
Compare, too, _The Second Part of Faust_, act ii.--
"The glass rings low, the charming power that lives
Within it makes the music that it gives.
It dims! it brightens! it will shape itself.
And see! a graceful dazzling little elf.
He lives! he moves! spruce mannikin of fire,
What more can we? what more can earth desire?"
Anster's Translation, 1886, p. 91.]
[dd] _Your Interloper_----.--[MS.]
[224] {494}[Compare _Prisoner of Chillon_, stanza ii. line 35, _Poetical
Works_, 1091, iv. 15, note i. Compare, too, the dialogue between
Mephistopheles and the Will-o'-the Wisp, in the scene on the Hartz
Mountains, in _Faust_, Part I. (see Anster's Translation, 1886, p.
271).]
[225] {495}[The immediate reference is to the composite forces, German,
French, and Spanish, of the Imperial Army under the command of Charles
de Bourbon: but there is in lines 498-507 a manifest allusion to the
revolutionary movements in South America, Italy, and Spain, which were
at their height in 1822. (See the _Age of Bronze_, section vi. lines
260, _sq._, _post_, pp. 555-557.)]
[226] {496}[See Euripides, _Hippolytus_, line 733.]
[de] _Kochlani_----.--[MS.]
[227] [Kochlani horses were bred in a central province of Arabia.]
[228] [Byron's knowledge of Huon of Bordeaux was, most probably, derived
from Sotheby's _Oberon; or, Huon de Bourdeux: A Mask_, published in
1802. For _The Boke of Duke Huon of Burdeux_, done into English by Sir
John Bourchier, Lord Berners, see the reprint issued by the Early
English Text Society (E.S., No. xliii. 1884); and for _Analyse de Huon
de Bordeaux, etc._, see _Les Epopees Francaises_, by Leon Gautier, 1880,
ii. 719-773.]
[229] {497}[The so-called statue of Memnon, the beautiful son of
Tithonus and Eos (Dawn), is now known to be that of Amenhotep III., who
reigned in the eighteenth dynasty, about 1430 B.C. Strabo, ed. 1807. p.
1155, was the first to record the musical note which sounded from the
statue when it was touched by the rays of the rising sun. It used to be
argued (see Gifford's note to _Don Juan_, Canto XIII. stanza lxiv. line
3, ed. 1837, p. 731) that the sounds were produced by a trick, but of
late years it has been maintained that the Memnon's wail was due to
natural causes, the pressure of suddenly-warmed currents of air through
the pores and crevices of the stone. After the statue was restored, the
phenomenon ceased. (See _La statue vocale de Memnon_, par J. A. Letronne,
Paris, 1833, pp. 55, 56.)]
[df] _We'll add a "Count" to it_.--[MS.]
[dg] {498} ----_my eyes are full_.--[MS.]
[230] [Charles de Bourbon, Comte de Montpensier et de la Marche, Dauphin
d'Auvergne, was born February 17, 1490. He served in Italy with Bayard,
and helped to decide the victory of Agnadello (A.D. 1510). He was
appointed Constable of France by Francis I., January, 1515, and fought
at the battle of Marignano, September 13, 1515. Not long afterwards he
lost the king's favour, who was set against him by his mother, Louise de
Savoie; was recalled from his command in Italy, and superseded by Odet
de Foix, brother of the king's mistress. It was not, however, till he
became a widower (Susanne, Duchesse de Bourbon, died April 28, 1521)
that he finally broke with Francis and attached himself to the Emperor
Charles V. _Madame_, the king's mother, not only coveted the vast
estates of the house of Bourbon, but was enamoured of the Constable's
person, and, so to speak, gave him his choice between marriage and a
suit for his fiefs. Charles would have nothing to say to the lady's
proposals or to her son's entreaties, and seeing that rejection meant
ruin, he "entered into a correspondence with the Emperor and the King
[Henry VIII.] of England ... and, finding this discovered, went into the
Emperor's service."
After various and varying successes, both in the South of France and in
Lombardy, he found himself, in the spring of 1527, not so much the
commander-in-chief as the popular _capo_ of a mixed body of German,
Spanish, and Italian _condottieri_, unpaid and ill-disciplined, who had
mutinied more than once, who could only be kept together by the prospect
of unlimited booty, and a timely concession to their demands. "To Rome!
to Rome!" cried the hungry and tumultuous _landsknechts_, and on May 5,
1527, the "late Constable of France," at the head of an army of 30,000
troops, appeared before the walls of the sacred city. On the morning of
the 6th of May, he was killed by a shot from an arquebuse. His epitaph
recounts his honours: "Aucto Imperio, Gallo victo, Superata Italia,
Pontifice obsesso, Roma capta, Borbonius, Hic Jacet;" but in Paris they
painted the sill of his gate-way yellow, because he was a renegade and a
traitor. He could not have said, with the dying Bayard, "Ne me plaignez
pas-je meurs sans avoir servi contre _ma patrie, mon roy_, et mon
serment." (See _Modern Universal History_, 1760, xxiv. 150-152, Note C;
_Nouvelle Biographie Universelle_, art. "Bourbon.")]
[231] {499}[The contrast is between imperial Rome, the Lord of the
world, and papal Rome, "the great harlot which hath corrupted the earth
with her fornications" (_Rev._ ii. 19). Compare Part II. sc. iii. line
26, _vide post_, p. 521.]
[232] {500}[Compare _Manfred_, act iii. sc. 4, line 10; and _Childe
Harold_, Canto IV. stanza cxxviii. line 1; _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv.
131, 1899, ii. 423, note 2.]
[233] {501}["Calvitii vero deformitatem iniquissime ferret, saepe
obtrectatorum jocis obnoxiam expertus. Ideoque et deficientem capillum
revocare a vertice assuerat, et ex omnibus decretis sibi a Senatu
populoque honoribus non aliud aut recepit aut usurpavit libentius, quam
jus laureae coronae perpetuo gestandae."--Suetonius, _Opera Omnia_, 1826,
pp. 105, 106.]
[234] {503}[Francis the First was taken prisoner at the Battle of Pavia,
February 24, 1525.]
[dh] _With a soldier's firm foot_.--[MS.]
[235] [Compare _The Siege of Corinth_, line 752, _Poetical Works_, 1900,
iii. 483. There is a note of tragic irony in the soldiers' vain-glorious
prophecy.]
[di] _With the Bourbon will count o'er_.--[MS.]
[236] {504}[Brantome (_Memoires, etc._, 1722, i. 215) quotes a "chanson"
of "Les soldats Espagnols" as they marched Romewards. "Calla calla Julio
Cesar, Hannibal, y Scipion! Viva la fama de Bourbon."]
[dj] _The General with his men of confidence_.--[MS.]
[dk] {505} _And present phantom of that deathless world_.--[MS.]
[237] {506}[When the Uticans decided not to stand a siege, but to send
deputies to Caesar, Cato determined to put an end to his life rather than
fall into the hands of the conqueror. Accordingly, after he had retired
to rest he stabbed himself under the breast, and when the physician
sewed up the wound, he thrust him away, and plucked out his own
bowels.--Plutarch's _Lives_, Langhorne's Translation, 1838, P. 553.]
[dl] {507} _Of a mere starving_----.--[MS.]
[dm] ----_Work away with words_.--[MS.]
[dn] {508} _First City rests upon to-morrow's action_.--[MS.]
[238] {510}["Des l'aube du lundi 6 mai 1527, le connetable, a cheval, la
cuirasse couverte d'un manteau blanc, marcha vers le Borgo, dont les
murailles, a la hauteur de San-Spirito, etaient d'acces facile....
Bourbon mit pied a terre, et, prenant lui-meme une echelle l'appliqua
tout pres de la porte Torrione."--_De l'Italie_, par Emile Gebhart,
1876, p. 255. Caesar Grolierius (_Historia expugnatae ... Urbis_, 1637),
who claims to speak as an eye-witness (p. 2), describes "Borbonius" as
"insignemque veste et armis" (p. 62).]
[do] _'Tis the morning--Hark! Hark! Hark!_--[MS.]
[239] {512} Scipio, the second Africanus, is said to have repeated a
verse of Homer [_Iliad_, vi. 448], and wept over the burning of Carthage
[B.C. 146]. He had better have granted it a capitulation.
[dp] _Than such victors should pollute_.--[MS.]
[240] {514}[Byron retains or adopts the old-fashioned pronunciation of
the word "Rome" _metri gratia_. Compare _The Island_, Canto II. line
199.]
[241] ["Le bouillant Bourbon, a la tete des plus intrepides assaillans
tenoit, de la main gauche une echelle appuyee centre le mur, et de la
droite faisoit signe a ses soldats de monter pour suivre leurs
camarades; en ce moment il recut dans le flanc une balle d'arquebuse qui
le traversa de part en part; il tomba a terre, mortellement blesse. On
rapporte qu'avant d'expirer il prononca ces mots: 'Officiers et soldats,
cacher ma mort a l'ennemi et marchez toujours en avant; la victoire est
a vous, mon trepas ne peut vous la ravir.'"--_Sac de Rome en 1527_, par
Jacques Buonaparte, 1836, p. 201.]
[242] {515}["Quand il sentit le coup, se print a cryer: 'Jesus!' et puis il
dist 'Helas! mon Dieu, je suis mort!' Si prit son espee par la poignee
en signe de croix en disant tout hault, 'Miserere mei, Deus, secundum
magnam misericordiam tuam.'"--_Chronique de Bayart_, 1836, cap. lxiv.,
p. 119. For his rebuke of Charles de Bourbon, "Ne me plaignez pas,"
etc., _vide ante_, p. 499.]
[243] ["'M. de Bourbon,' dit un contemporain, 'termina de vie par mort,
mais avant fist le devoir de bon, Chrestien; car il se confessa et recut
son Createur."'--_De l'Italie_, par Emile Gebhart, 1876, p. 256.]
[244] {516}["While I was at work upon that diabolical task of mine,
there came, from time to time, to watch me, some of the Cardinals who
were invested in the castle; and most frequently the Cardinal of Ravenna
and the Cardinal de' Gaddi. I often told them not to show themselves,
since their nasty red caps gave a fair mark for the enemy."--_Life of
Benvenuto Cellini_, translated by J. A. Symonds, 1888, i. 112. See, too,
for the flight of the Cardinals, _Sac de Rome_, par Jacques Buonaparte,
Paris, 1836, p. 203.]
[dq] {517} _Covered with gore and glory--those good times_.--[MS.]
[245] ["Directing my arquebuse where I saw the thickest and most serried
troop of fighting men, I aimed exactly at one whom I remarked to be
higher than the rest; the fog prevented me from being certain whether he
was on horseback or on foot. Then I turned to Alessandro and Cecchino,
and bade them discharge their arquebuses, showing them how to avoid
being hit by the besiegers. When we had fired two rounds apiece, I crept
cautiously up to the walls, and observing a most extraordinary
confusion, I discovered afterwards that one of our shots had killed the
Constable of Bourbon; and from what I subsequently learned he was the
man whom I had first noticed above the heads of the rest." It is a fact
"that Bourbon was shot dead near the spot Cellini mentions. But the
honour of flying the arquebuse ... cannot be assigned to any one in
particular."--_Life of Benvenuto Cellini_, 1888, i. 114, and note.]
[246] {519}[Compare _Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte_, stanza vi. line 2,
_Poetical Works_, 1900, in. 307, note 3.]
[dr]
_'Tis the moment_
_When such I fain would show me_.--[MS.]
[247] {520}[Among the Imperial troops which Charles de Bourbon led
against Rome were at least six thousand Landsknechts, ardent converts to
the Reformed religion, and eager to prove their zeal by the slaughter of
Catholics and the destruction of altars and crucifixes. Their leader,
George Frundsberg, had set out for Rome with the pious intention of
hanging the Pope (see _The Popes of Rome_, by Leopold Ranke, translated
by Sarah Austen, 1866, i. 72). Brantome (_Memoirs de Messire Pierre de
Bourdeille_.... Leyde, 1722, i. 230) gives a vivid picture of their
fanatical savagery: "Leur cruaute ne s'estendit pas seulement sur les
personnes, mais sur les marbres et les anciennes statues. Les
Lansquenets, qui nouvellement estoient imbus de la nouvelle Religion, et
les Espagnols encore aussi bien que les autres, s'habilloient en
Cardinaux et evesques en leur habits Pontificaux et se pourmenoient
ainsi parray la Ville."
In the Schmalkald articles, 1530, the pious belief that the Pope was
Antichrist became an article of the Lutheran creed. Compare the
following extracts, quoted by Hans Schultz in _Der Sacco di Roma_, 1894,
p. 63, from the _Historia von der Romischen Bischoff, etc._, 1527:
"Der Papst ist fuer den Verfasser der Antichrist, der durch Lug und Trug
seine Herrschaft in der Welt behauptet."
"Quant a l'armee imperiale, on n'en vit jamais de plus etonnante....
Allemands et Espagnols, lutheriens iconoclastes qui brulaient les
eglises, ou furieux mystiques qui brulaient Juils et Maures, barbares
plus raffines que _leur vieux ancetres les Visigoths, les Vandales et
les Huns_, ils frappaient l'Italie d'une terreur sans exemple."--_De
I'italie_, by E. Gebliart, chap. vii., "Le Sac de Rome en 1527," p.
245.]
[ds]
_Hush! don't let him hear you_
_Or he might take you off before your time_.--[MS.]
[248] {521}["We got with the greatest difficulty to the gate of the
castle.... I ascended to the keep, and, at the same instant, Pope
Clement came in through the corridors into the castle; he had refused to
leave the palace of St. Peter earlier, being unable to believe that his
enemies would effect their entrance into Rome."--_Life of Benvenuto
Cellini_, translated by J. A. Symonds, 1888, i. 114, 115.
So, too, Jacques Buonaparte (_Le Sac de Rome_, 1836, p. 202): "Le Pape
Clement, avoit entendu les cris des soldats; il se sauvoit
precipitamment par un long corridor pratique dans un mur double et se
laissoit emporter de son palais an chateau Saint-Ange."]
[249] {526}[Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons, was slain by Achilles,
who wept over her as she lay a-dying, bewailing her beauty and her
daring. For the picture, see Pausanias, _Descriptio Graeciae_, lib, v.
cap. 11, 2.]
[250] {527}[See _Gen_. vi. 2, the motto of _Heaven and Earth, ante_, p,
277.]
[251] ["It came to pass the same day, that in Echatane a city of Media,
Sara the daughter of Raguel was also reproached by her father's maids;
because that she had been married to seven husbands, whom Asmodeus the
evil spirit had killed before they had lain with her.... And as he went,
he remembered the words of Raphael, and took the ashes of the perfumes,
and put the heart and the liver of the fish thereupon, and made smoke
therewith. The which smell when the evil spirit had smelled, he fled
into the utmost parts of Egypt."--_Tobit_ iii. 7, 8; viii. 2, 3.]
[dt] {528} _The first born who burst the winter sun_.--[MS.]
[du] ----_through the brine_.--[MS.]
[252] {533}[Lucifer or Mephistopheles, renamed Caesar, wears the shape of
the Deformed Arnold. It may be that Byron intended to make Olimpia
bestow her affections, not on the glorious Achilles, but the witty and
interesting Hunchback.]
THE AGE OF BRONZE;
OR,
CARMEN SECULARE ET ANNUS HAUD MIRABILIS.[dv]
"Impar _Congressus_ Achilli."[253]
INTRODUCTION TO _THE AGE OF BRONZE_.
_The Age of Bronze_ was begun in December, 1822, and finished on January
10, 1823. "I have sent," he writes (letter to Leigh Hunt, _Letters_,
1901, vi. 160), "to Mrs. S[helley], for the benefit of being copied, a
poem of about seven hundred and fifty lines length--The Age of
Bronze,--or _Carmen Seculare et Annus haud Mirabilis_, with this
Epigraph--'Impar _Congressus_ Achilli.' It is calculated for the reading
part of the million, being all on politics, etc., etc., etc., and a
review of the day in general,--in my early _English Bards_ style, but a
little more stilted, and somewhat too full of 'epithets of war' and
classical and historical allusions. If notes are necessary, they can be
added."
On March 5th he forwarded the "Proof in Slips" ("and certainly the
_Slips_ are the most conspicuous part of it") to his new publisher, John
Hunt; and, on April 1, 1823, _The Age of Bronze_ was published, but not
with the author's name.
Ten years had gone by since he had published, only to disclaim, the
latest of his boyish satires, _The Waltz_, and more than six years since
he had written, "at the request of Douglas Kinnaird," the stilted and
laboured _Monody on the Death of ... Sheridan_. In the interval
(1816-1822) he had essayed any and every measure but the heroic, and, at
length, as a tardy recognition of his allegiance to "the great moral
poet of all times, of all climes, of all feelings, and of all stages of
existence" (_Observations upon "Observations,"_ _Letters_, 1901, v.
590), he reverts, as he believes, to his "early _English Bards_ style,"
the style of Pope.
The brazen age, the "Annus Haud Mirabilis," which the satirist would
hold up to scorn, was 1822, the year after Napoleon's death, which
witnessed a revolution in Spain, and the Congress of Allied Sovereigns
at Verona. Earlier in the year, the publication of Las Cases' _Memorial
de S^te^ Helene_, and of O'Meara's _Napoleon in Exile, or a Voice from
St. Helena_, had created a sensation on both sides of the Channel.
Public opinion had differed as to the system on which Napoleon should be
treated--and, since his death, there had been a conflict of evidence as
to the manner in which he had been treated, at St. Helena. Tories
believed that an almost excessive lenience and indulgence had been
wasted on a graceless and thankless intriguer, while the "Opposition,"
Liberals or Radicals, were moved to indignation at the hardships and
restrictions which were ruthlessly and needlessly imposed on a fallen
and powerless foe. It was, and is, a very pretty quarrel; and Byron,
whose lifelong admiration for his "Heros de Roman" was tempered by
reason, approached the Longwood controversy somewhat in the spirit of a
partisan.
In _The Age of Bronze_ (sects, iii.-v.) he touches on certain incidents
of the "Last Phase" of Napoleon's career, and proceeds to recapitulate,
in a sort of _Memoria Technica_, the chief events of his history, from
the dawn at Marengo to the sunset at "bloody and most bootless
Waterloo," and draws the unimpeachable moral that "Honesty is the best
policy," even when the "game is Empire" and "the stakes are thrones"!
From the rise and fall, the tyranny and captivity of Napoleon, he passes
on to the Congress of Allied Powers, which met at Verona in November,
1822.
The "Congress" is the object of his satire. It had assembled with a
parade of power and magnificence, and had dispersed with little or
nothing accomplished. It was "impar Achilli" (_vide ante_, p. 535,
note 1), an empty menace, ill-matched with the revolutionary spirit,
and in pitiful contrast to the _Sic volo, sic jubeo_ of the dead
Napoleon.
The immediate and efficient cause of the Congress of Verona was the
success of the revolution in Spain. The point at issue between Spanish
Liberals and Royalists, or _serviles_, was the adherence to, or the
evasion of, the democratic Constitution of 1812. At the moment the
Liberals were in the ascendant, and, as Chateaubriand puts it, had
driven King Ferdinand into captivity, at Urgel, in Catalonia, to the
tune of the Spanish Marseillaise, "_Tragala, Tragala_" "swallow it,
swallow it," that is, "accept the Constitution." On July 7, 1822, a
government was established under the name of the "Supreme Regency of
Spain during the Captivity of the King," and, hence, the consternation
of the partners of the Holy Alliance, especially France, who conceived,
or feigned to conceive, that revolution next door was a source of danger
to constitutional government at home. To meet the emergency, a Congress
was summoned in the first instance at Vienna, and afterwards at Verona.
Thither came the sovereigns of Europe, great and small, accompanied by
their chancellors and ministers. The Czar Alexander was attended by
Count Nesselrode and Count Pozzo di Borgo; the Emperor Francis of
Austria, by Metternich and Prince Esterhazy; the King of Prussia
(Frederic William III.), by Count Bernstorff and Baron Humboldt. George
IV. of Great Britain, and Louis XVIII. of France, being elderly and
gouty, sent as their plenipotentiaries the Duke of Wellington and the
Vicomte de Montmorenci, accompanied, and, finally, superseded by, the
French ambassador, M. de Chateaubriand. Thither, too, came the smaller
fry, Kings of the Two Sicilies and of Sardinia; and last, but not least,
Marie Louise of Austria, Archduchess of Parma, _ci-devant_ widow of
Napoleon, and wife _sub rosa_ of her one-eyed chamberlain, Count de
Neipperg. They met, they debated, they went to the theatre in state, and
finally decided to send monitory despatches to Spain, and to leave to
France a free hand to look after her own interests, and to go to war or
not, as she was pleased to determine. There was one dissentient, the
Duke of Wellington, who refused to sign the _proces verbaux_. His
Britannic Majesty had been advised to let the Spaniards alone, and not
to meddle with their internal affairs. The final outcome of the
Congress, the French invasion of Spain, could not be foreseen; and,
apparently, all that the Congress had accomplished was to refuse to
prohibit the exportation of negroes from Africa to America, and to
decline to receive the Greek deputies.
As the _Morning Chronicle_ (November 7, 1822) was pleased to put it,
"the Royal vultures have been deprived of their anticipated meal."
From the Holy Alliance and its antagonist, "the revolutionary stork,"
Byron turns to the landed and agricultural "interest" of Great Britain.
With the cessation of war and the resumption of cash payments in 1819,
prices had fallen some 50 per cent., and rents were beginning to fall.
Wheat, which in 1818 had fetched 80s. a quarter, in December, 1822, was
quoted at 39s. 11d.; consols were at 80. Poor rates had risen from
L2,000,000 in 1792 to L8,000,000 in 1822. How was the distress which
these changes involved to be met? By retrenchment and reform, by the
repeal of taxes, the reduction of salaries, by the landlords and
farmers, who had profited by war prices, submitting to the inevitable
reaction; or by sliding scales, by a return to an inflated currency,
perhaps by a repudiation of a portion of the funded debt?
The point of Byron's diatribe is that Squire Dives had enjoyed good
things during the war, and, now that the war was over, he had no
intention to let Lazarus have his turn; that, whoever suffered, it
should not be Dives; that patriotism had brought grist to his mill; and
that he proposed to suck no small advantage out of peace.
"Year after year they voted cent. per cent.,
Blood, sweat, and tear-wrung millions--why? for rent?
They roared, they dined, they drank, they swore they meant
To die for England--why then live?--for rent!"
It is easier to divine the "Sources" and the inspiration of _The Age of
Bronze_ than to place the reader _au courant_ with the literary and
political _causerie_ of the day. Byron wrote with O'Meara's book at his
elbow, and with batches of _Galignani's Messenger_, the _Morning
Chronicle_, and _Cobbett's Weekly Register_ within his reach. He was
under the impression that his lines would appear as an anonymous
contribution to _The Liberal_, and, in any case, he felt that he could
speak out, unchecked and uncriticized by friend or publisher. He was, so
to speak, unmuzzled.
With regard to the style and quality of his new satire, Byron was under
an amiable delusion. His couplets, he imagined, were in his "early
_English Bards_ style," but "more stilted." He did not realize that,
whatever the intervening years had taken away, they had "left behind"
experience and passion, and that he had learned to think and to feel.
The fault of the poem is that too much matter is packed into too small a
compass, and that, in parts, every line implies a minute acquaintance
with contemporary events, and requires an explanatory note. But, even
so, in _The Age of Bronze_ Byron has wedded "a striking passage of
history" to striking and imperishable verse.
_The Age of Bronze_ was reviewed in the _Scots Magazine_, April, 1823,
N.S., vol. xii. pp. 483-488; the _Monthly Review_, April, 1823, E.S.,
vol. 100, pp. 430-433; the _Monthly Magazine_, May, 1823, vol. 55, pp.
322-325; the _Examiner_, March 30, 1823; the _Literary Chronicle_, April
5, 1823; and the _Literary Gazette_, April 5, 1823.
THE AGE OF BRONZE.
I.
The "good old times"--all times when old are good--
Are gone; the present might be if they would;
Great things have been, and are, and greater still
Want little of mere mortals but their will:[dw]
A wider space, a greener field, is given
To those who play their "tricks before high heaven."[254]
I know not if the angels weep, but men
Have wept enough--for what?--to weep again!
II.
All is exploded--be it good or bad.
Reader! remember when thou wert a lad, 10
Then Pitt was all; or, if not all, so much,
His very rival almost deemed him such.[255]
We--we have seen the intellectual race
Of giants stand, like Titans, face to face--
Athos and Ida, with a dashing sea
Of eloquence between, which flowed all free,
As the deep billows of the AEgean roar
Betwixt the Hellenic and the Phrygian shore.
But where are they--the rivals! a few feet
Of sullen earth divide each winding sheet.[256] 20
How peaceful and how powerful is the grave,
Which hushes all! a calm, unstormy wave,
Which oversweeps the World. The theme is old
Of "Dust to Dust," but half its tale untold:
Time tempers not its terrors--still the worm
Winds its cold folds, the tomb preserves its form,
Varied above, but still alike below;
The urn may shine--the ashes will not glow--
Though Cleopatra's mummy cross the sea[257]
O'er which from empire she lured Anthony; 30
Though Alexander's urn[258] a show be grown
On shores he wept to conquer, though unknown--[259]
How vain, how worse than vain, at length appear
The madman's wish, the Macedonian's tear!
He wept for worlds to conquer--half the earth
Knows not his name, or but his death, and birth,
And desolation; while his native Greece
Hath all of desolation, save its peace.
He "wept for worlds to conquer!" he who ne'er
Conceived the Globe, he panted not to spare! 40
With even the busy Northern Isle unknown,
Which holds his urn--and never knew his throne.
III.
But where is he, the modern, mightier far,
Who, born no king, made monarchs draw his car;
The new Sesostris, whose unharnessed kings,[260]
Freed from the bit, believe themselves with wings,
And spurn the dust o'er which they crawled of late,
Chained to the chariot of the Chieftain's state?
Yes! where is he, "the champion and the child"[261]
Of all that's great or little--wise or wild; 50
Whose game was Empire, and whose stakes were thrones;
Whose table Earth--whose dice were human bones?
Behold the grand result in yon lone Isle,
And, as thy nature urges--weep or smile.
Sigh to behold the Eagle's lofty rage
Reduced to nibble at his narrow cage;
Smile to survey the queller of the nations
Now daily squabbling o'er disputed rations;[dx][262]
Weep to perceive him mourning, as he dines,
O'er curtailed dishes and o'er stinted wines; 60
O'er petty quarrels upon petty things.
Is this the Man who scourged or feasted kings?
Behold the scales in which his fortune hangs,
A surgeon's[263] statement, and an earl's[264] harangues!
A bust delayed,[265]--a book[266] refused, can shake
The sleep of Him who kept the world awake.
Is this indeed the tamer of the Great,[dy]
Now slave of all could tease or irritate--
The paltry gaoler[267] and the prying spy,
The staring stranger with his note-book nigh?[268] 70
Plunged in a dungeon, he had still been great;
How low, how little was this middle state,
Between a prison and a palace, where
How few could feel for what he had to bear!
Vain his complaint,--My Lord presents his bill,
His food and wine were doled out duly still;
Vain was his sickness, never was a clime
So free from homicide--to doubt's crime;
And the stiff surgeon,[269] who maintained his cause,
Hath lost his place, and gained the world's applause. 80
But smile--though all the pangs of brain and heart
Disdain, defy, the tardy aid of art;
Though, save the few fond friends and imaged face
Of that fair boy his Sire shall ne'er embrace,
None stand by his low bed--though even the mind
Be wavering, which long awed and awes mankind:
Smile--for the fettered Eagle breaks his chain,
And higher Worlds than this are his again.[270]
IV.
How, if that soaring Spirit still retain
A conscious twilight of his blazing reign, 90
How must he smile, on looking down, to see
The little that he was and sought to be!
What though his Name a wider empire found
Than his Ambition, though with scarce a bound;
Though first in glory, deepest in reverse,
He tasted Empire's blessings and its curse;
Though kings, rejoicing in their late escape
From chains, would gladly be _their_ Tyrant's ape;
How must he smile, and turn to yon lone grave,
The proudest Sea-mark that o'ertops the wave! 100
What though his gaoler, duteous to the last,
Scarce deemed the coffin's lead could keep him fast,
Refusing one poor line[271] along the lid,
To date the birth and death of all it hid;
That name shall hallow the ignoble shore,
A talisman to all save him who bore:
The fleets that sweep before the eastern blast
Shall hear their sea-boys[272] hail it from the mast;
When Victory's Gallic column[273] shall but rise,
Like Pompey's pillar[274], in a desert's skies, 110
The rocky Isle that holds or held his dust,
Shall crown the Atlantic like the Hero's bust,
And mighty Nature o'er his obsequies
Do more than niggard Envy still denies.
But what are these to him? Can Glory's lust
Touch the freed spirit or the fettered dust?
Small care hath he of what his tomb consists;
Nought if he sleeps--nor more if he exists:
Alike the better-seeing Shade will smile
On the rude cavern[275] of the rocky isle, 120
As if his ashes found their latest home
In Rome's Pantheon or Gaul's mimic dome[276].
He wants not this; but France shall feel the want
Of this last consolation, though so scant:
Her Honour--Fame--and Faith demand his bones,
To rear above a Pyramid of thrones;
Or carried onward in the battle's van,
To form, like Guesclin's dust, her Talisman[277].
But be it as it is--the time may come
His name shall beat the alarm, like Ziska's drum[278]. 130
V.
Oh Heaven! of which he was in power a feature;
Oh Earth! of which he was a noble creature;
Thou Isle! to be remembered long and well,
That saw'st the unfledged eaglet chip his shell!
Ye Alps which viewed him in his dawning flights
Hover, the Victor of a hundred fights!
Thou Rome, who saw'st thy Caesar's deeds outdone!
Alas! why passed he too the Rubicon--
The Rubicon of Man's awakened rights,
To herd with vulgar kings and parasites? 140
Egypt! from whose all dateless tombs arose
Forgotten Pharaohs from their long repose,
And shook within their pyramids to hear
A new Cambyses thundering in their ear;
While the dark shades of Forty Ages stood
Like startled giants by Nile's famous flood[279];
Or from the Pyramid's tall pinnacle
Beheld the desert peopled, as from hell,
With clashing hosts, who strewed the barren sand,
To re-manure the uncultivated land! 150
Spain! which, a moment mindless of the Cid,
Beheld his banner flouting thy Madrid[280]!
Austria! which saw thy twice-ta'en capital[281]
Twice spared to be the traitress of his fall!
Ye race of Frederic!--Frederics but in name
And falsehood--heirs to all except his fame:
Who, crushed at Jena, crouched at Berlin[282], fell
First, and but rose to follow! Ye who dwell
Where Kosciusko dwelt, remembering yet
The unpaid amount of Catherine's bloody debt[283]! 160
Poland! o'er which the avenging Angel past,
But left thee as he found thee,[284] still a waste,
Forgetting all thy still enduring claim,
Thy lotted people and extinguished name,
Thy sigh for freedom, thy long-flowing tear,
That sound that crashes in the tyrant's ear--
Kosciusko![285] On--on--on--the thirst of War
Gasps for the gore of serfs and of their Czar.
The half barbaric Moscow's minarets
Gleam in the sun, but 'tis a sun that sets! 170
Moscow! thou limit of his long career,
For which rude Charles had wept his frozen tear[286]
To see in vain--_he_ saw thee--how? with spire
And palace fuel to one common fire.
To this the soldier lent his kindling match,
To this the peasant gave his cottage thatch,
To this the merchant flung his hoarded store,
The prince his hall--and Moscow was no more!
Sublimest of volcanoes! Etna's flame
Pales before thine, and quenchless Hecla's tame; 180
Vesuvius shows his blaze,[287] an usual sight
For gaping tourists, from his hackneyed height:[dz]
Thou stand'st alone unrivalled, till the Fire
To come, in which all empires shall expire!
Thou other Element! as strong and stern,
To teach a lesson conquerors will not learn!--
Whose icy wing flapped o'er the faltering foe,
Till fell a hero with each flake of snow;
How did thy numbing beak and silent fang,
Pierce, till hosts perished with a single pang! 190
In vain shall Seine look up along his banks
For the gay thousands of his dashing ranks!
In vain shall France recall beneath her vines
Her Youth--their blood flows faster than her wines;
Or stagnant in their human ice remains
In frozen mummies on the Polar plains.
In vain will Italy's broad sun awaken
Her offspring chilled; its beams are now forsaken.
Of all the trophies gathered from the war,
What shall return? the Conqueror's broken car![288] 200
The Conqueror's yet unbroken heart! Again
The horn of Roland[289] sounds, and not in vain.
Lutzen, where fell the Swede of victory,[290]
Beholds him conquer, but, alas! not die:
Dresden[291] surveys three despots fly once more
Before their sovereign,--sovereign as before;[ea]
But there exhausted Fortune quits the field,
And Leipsic's[292] treason bids the unvanquished yield;
The Saxon jackal leaves the lion's side
To turn the bear's, and wolf's, and fox's guide; 210
And backward to the den of his despair
The forest monarch shrinks, but finds no lair!
Oh ye! and each, and all! Oh France! who found
Thy long fair fields ploughed up as hostile ground,
Disputed foot by foot, till Treason, still
His only victor, from Montmartre's hill[293]
Looked down o'er trampled Paris! and thou Isle,
Which seest Etruria from thy ramparts smile,
Thou momentary shelter of his pride,
Till wooed by danger, his yet weeping bride! 220
Oh, France! retaken by a single march,
Whose path was through one long triumphal arch!
Oh bloody and most bootless Waterloo!
Which proves how fools may have their fortune too,
Won half by blunder, half by treachery:
Oh dull Saint Helen! with thy gaoler nigh--
Hear! hear Prometheus[294] from his rock appeal
To Earth,--Air,--Ocean,--all that felt or feel
His power and glory, all who yet shall hear
A name eternal as the rolling year; 230
He teaches them the lesson taught so long,
So oft, so vainly--learn to do no wrong!
A single step into the right had made
This man the Washington of worlds betrayed:
A single step into the wrong has given
His name a doubt to all the winds of heaven;
The reed of Fortune, and of thrones the rod,
Of Fame the Moloch or the demigod;
His country's Caesar, Europe's Hannibal,
Without their decent dignity of fall. 240
Yet Vanity herself had better taught
A surer path even to the fame he sought,
By pointing out on History's fruitless page
Ten thousand conquerors for a single sage.
While Franklin's quiet memory climbs to Heaven,
Calming the lightning which he thence hath riven,
Or drawing from the no less kindled earth
Freedom and peace to that which boasts his birth;[295]
While Washington's a watchword, such as ne'er
Shall sink while there's an echo left to air:[296] 250
While even the Spaniard's thirst of gold and war
Forgets Pizarro to shout Bolivar![297]
Alas! why must the same Atlantic wave
Which wafted freedom gird a tyrant's grave--
The king of kings, and yet of slaves the slave,
Who burst the chains of millions to renew
The very fetters which his arm broke through,
And crushed the rights of Europe and his own,
To flit between a dungeon and a throne?
VI.
But 'twill not be--the spark's awakened--lo! 260
The swarthy Spaniard feels his former glow;
The same high spirit which beat back the Moor
Through eight long ages of alternate gore
Revives--and where? in that avenging clime
Where Spain was once synonymous with crime,
Where Cortes' and Pizarro's banner flew,
The infant world redeems her name of "_New_."
'Tis the _old_ aspiration breathed afresh,
To kindle souls within degraded flesh,
Such as repulsed the Persian from the shore 270
Where Greece _was_--No! she still is Greece once more.
One common cause makes myriads of one breast,
Slaves of the East, or helots of the West:
On Andes'[298] and on Athos' peaks unfurled,
The self-same standard streams o'er either world:
The Athenian[299] wears again Harmodius' sword;
The Chili chief[300] abjures his foreign lord;
The Spartan knows himself once more a Greek,[301]
Young Freedom plumes the crest of each cacique;
Debating despots, hemmed on either shore, 280
Shrink vainly from the roused Atlantic's roar;
Through Calpe's strait the rolling tides advance,
Sweep slightly by the half-tamed land of France,
Dash o'er the old Spaniard's cradle, and would fain
Unite Ausonia to the mighty main:
But driven from thence awhile, yet not for aye,
Break o'er th' AEgean, mindful of the day
Of Salamis!--there, there the waves arise,
Not to be lulled by tyrant victories.
Lone, lost, abandoned in their utmost need 290
By Christians, unto whom they gave their creed,
The desolated lands, the ravaged isle,
The fostered feud encouraged to beguile,
The aid evaded, and the cold delay,
Prolonged but in the hope to make a prey[302];--
These, these shall tell the tale, and Greece can show
The false friend worse than the infuriate foe.
But this is well: Greeks only should free Greece,
Not the barbarian, with his masque of peace.
How should the Autocrat of bondage be 300
The king of serfs, and set the nations free?
Better still serve the haughty Mussulman,
Than swell the Cossaque's prowling caravan;
Better still toil for masters, than await,
The slave of slaves, before a Russian gate,--
Numbered by hordes, a human capital,
A live estate, existing but for thrall,
Lotted by thousands, as a meet reward
For the first courtier in the Czar's regard;
While their immediate owner never tastes 310
His sleep, _sans_ dreaming of Siberia's wastes:
Better succumb even to their own despair,
And drive the Camel--than purvey the Bear.
VII.
But not alone within the hoariest clime
Where Freedom dates her birth with that of Time,
And not alone where, plunged in night, a crowd
Of Incas darken to a dubious cloud[eb],
The dawn revives: renowned, romantic Spain
Holds back the invader from her soil again.
Not now the Roman tribe nor Punic horde[ec] 320
Demands her fields as lists to prove the sword;
Not now the Vandal or the Visigoth
Pollute the plains, alike abhorring both[ed];
Nor old Pelayo[303] on his mountain rears
The warlike fathers of a thousand years.
That seed is sown and reaped, as oft the Moor
Sighs to remember on his dusky shore.
Long in the peasant's song or poet's page
Has dwelt the memory of Abencerrage;
The Zegri[304], and the captive victors, flung 330
Back to the barbarous realm from whence they sprung.
But these are gone--their faith, their swords, their sway,
Yet left more anti-christian foes than they[ee];
The bigot monarch, and the butcher priest[305],
The Inquisition, with her burning feast,
The Faith's red "Auto," fed with human fuel,
While sate the catholic Moloch, calmly cruel,
Enjoying, with inexorable eye,[ef]
That fiery festival of Agony!
The stern or feeble sovereign, one or both 340
By turns; the haughtiness whose pride was sloth;
The long degenerate noble; the debased
Hidalgo, and the peasant less disgraced,
But more degraded; the unpeopled realm;
The once proud navy which forgot the helm;
The once impervious phalanx disarrayed;
The idle forge that formed Toledo's blade;
The foreign wealth that flowed on every shore,
Save hers who earned it with the native's gore;
The very language which might vie with Rome's, 350
And once was known to nations like their homes,
Neglected or forgotten:--such _was_ Spain;
But such she is not, nor shall be again.
These worst, these _home_ invaders, felt and feel
The new Numantine soul of old Castile[eg],
Up! up again! undaunted Tauridor!
The bull of Phalaris renews his roar[eh];
Mount, chivalrous Hidalgo! not in vain
Revive the cry--"Iago! and close Spain!"[306]
Yes, close her with your armed bosoms round, 360
And form the barrier which Napoleon found,--
The exterminating war, the desert plain,
The streets without a tenant, save the slain;
The wild Sierra, with its wilder troop[ei]
Of vulture-plumed Guerrillas, on the stoop[ej]
For their incessant prey; the desperate wall
Of Saragossa, mightiest in her fall;
The Man nerved to a spirit, and the Maid
Waving her more than Amazonian blade[307];
The knife of Arragon, Toledo's steel; 370
The famous lance of chivalrous Castile[308];
The unerring rifle of the Catalan;
The Andalusian courser in the van;
The torch to make a Moscow of Madrid;
And in each heart the spirit of the Cid:--
Such have been, such shall be, such are. Advance,
And win--not Spain! but thine own freedom, France!
VIII.
But lo! a Congress[309]! What! that hallowed name
Which freed the Atlantic! May we hope the same
For outworn Europe? With the sound arise, 380
Like Samuel's shade to Saul's monarchic eyes,
The prophets of young Freedom, summoned far
From climes of Washington and Bolivar;
Henry, the forest-born Demosthenes,
Whose thunder shook the Philip of the seas[310];
And stoic Franklin's energetic shade,
Robed in the lightnings which his hand allayed;
And Washington, the tyrant-tamer, wake,
To bid us blush for these old chains, or break.
But _who_ compose this Senate of the few 390
That should redeem the many? _Who_ renew
This consecrated name, till now assigned
To councils held to benefit mankind?
Who now assemble at the holy call?
The blest Alliance, which says three are all!
An earthly Trinity! which wears the shape
Of Heaven's, as man is mimicked by the ape.
A pious Unity! in purpose one--
To melt three fools to a Napoleon[ek].
Why, Egypt's Gods were rational to these; 400
Their dogs and oxen knew their own degrees,
And, quiet in their kennel or their shed,
Cared little, so that they were duly fed;
But these, more hungry, must have something more--
The power to bark and bite, to toss and gore.
Ah, how much happier were good AEsop's frogs
Than we! for ours are animated logs,
With ponderous malice swaying to and fro,
And crushing nations with a stupid blow;
All dully anxious to leave little work 410
Unto the revolutionary stork.
IX.
Thrice blest Verona! since the holy three
With their imperial presence shine on thee!
Honoured by them, thy treacherous site forgets[el]
The vaunted tomb of "all the Capulets!"[311]
Thy Scaligers--for what was "Dog the Great,"
"Can Grande,"[312] (which I venture to translate,)
To these sublimer pugs? Thy poet too,
Catullus, whose old laurels yield to new;[313]
Thine amphitheatre, where Romans sate; 420
And Dante's exile sheltered by thy gate;
Thy good old man, whose world was all within
Thy wall, nor knew the country held him in;[314]
Would that the royal guests it girds about
Were so far like, as never to get out!
Aye, shout! inscribe![315] rear monuments of shame,
To tell Oppression that the world is tame!
Crowd to the theatre with loyal rage,
The comedy is not upon the stage;
The show is rich in ribandry and stars, 430
Then gaze upon it through thy dungeon bars;
Clap thy permitted palms, kind Italy,
For thus much still thy fettered hands are free!
X.
Resplendent sight! Behold the coxcomb Czar,[316]
The Autocrat of waltzes[317] and of war!
As eager for a plaudit as a realm,
And just as fit for flirting as the helm;
A Calmuck beauty with a Cossack wit,
And generous spirit, when 'tis not frost-bit;
Now half dissolving to a liberal thaw,[em] 440
But hardened back whene'er the morning's raw;
With no objection to true Liberty,
Except that it would make the nations free.
How well the imperial dandy prates of peace!
How fain, if Greeks would be his slaves, free Greece!
How nobly gave he back the Poles their Diet,
Then told pugnacious Poland to be quiet!
How kindly would he send the mild Ukraine,
With all her pleasant Pulks,[318] to lecture Spain!
How royally show off in proud Madrid 450
His goodly person, from the South long hid!
A blessing cheaply purchased, the world knows,
By having Muscovites for friends or foes.
Proceed, thou namesake of great Philip's son!
La Harpe, thine Aristotle, beckons on;[319]
And that which Scythia was to him of yore
Find with thy Scythians on Iberia's shore.
Yet think upon, thou somewhat aged youth,
Thy predecessor on the banks of Pruth;
Thou hast to aid thee, should his lot be thine, 460
Many an old woman,[320] but not Catherine.[321]
Spain, too, hath rocks, and rivers, and defiles--
The Bear may rush into the Lion's toils.
Fatal to Goths are Xeres' sunny fields;[322]
Think'st thou to thee Napoleon's victor yields?
Better reclaim thy deserts, turn thy swords
To ploughshares, shave and wash thy Bashkir[323] hordes,
Redeem thy realms from slavery and the knout,
Than follow headlong in the fatal route,
To infest the clime whose skies and laws are pure 470
With thy foul legions. Spain wants no manure:
Her soil is fertile, but she feeds no foe:
Her vultures, too, were gorged not long ago;
And wouldst thou furnish them with fresher prey?
Alas! thou wilt not conquer, but purvey.
I am Diogenes, though Russ and Hun[324]
Stand between mine and many a myriad's sun;
But were I not Diogenes, I'd wander
Rather a worm than _such_ an Alexander!
Be slaves who will, the cynic shall be free; 480
His tub hath tougher walls than Sinope:[en]
Still will he hold his lantern up to scan
The face of monarchs for an "honest man."[325]
XI.
And what doth Gaul, the all-prolific land
Of _ne plus ultra_ ultras and their band
Of mercenaries? and her noisy chambers
And tribune, which each orator first clambers
Before he finds a voice, and when 'tis found,
Hears "the lie" echo for his answer round?
Our British Commons sometimes deign to "hear!" 490
A Gallic senate hath more tongue than ear;
Even Constant,[326] their sole master of debate,
Must fight next day his speech to vindicate.
But this costs little to true Franks, who'd rather
Combat than listen, were it to their father.
What is the simple standing of a shot,
To listening long, and interrupting not?
Though this was not the method of old Rome,
When Tully fulmined o'er each vocal dome,
Demosthenes has sanctioned the transaction, 500
In saying eloquence meant "Action, action!"
XII.
But where's the monarch?[327] hath he dined? or yet
Groans beneath indigestion's heavy debt?
Have revolutionary pates risen,
And turned the royal entrails to a prison?
Have discontented movements stirred the troops?
Or have _no_ movements followed traitorous soups?
Have Carbonaro[328] cooks not carbonadoed
Each course enough? or doctors dire dissuaded
Repletion? Ah! in thy dejected looks 510
I read all France's treason in her cooks!
Good classic Louis! is it, canst thou say,
Desirable to be the "Desire?"
Why wouldst thou leave calm Hartwell's green abode,
Apician table, and Horatian ode,
To rule a people who will not be ruled,
And love much rather to be scourged than schooled?
Ah! thine was not the temper or the taste
For thrones; the table sees thee better placed:
A mild Epicurean, formed, at best, 520
To be a kind host and as good a guest,
To talk of Letters, and to know by heart
One _half_ the Poet's, _all_ the Gourmand's art;
A scholar always, now and then a wit,
And gentle when Digestion may permit;--
But not to govern lands enslaved or free;
The gout was martyrdom enough for thee.
XIII.
Shall noble Albion pass without a phrase
From a bold Briton in her wonted praise?
"Arts--arms--and George--and glory--and the Isles, 530
And happy Britain, wealth, and Freedom's smiles,
White cliffs, that held invasion far aloof,
Contented subjects, all alike tax-proof,
Proud Wellington, with eagle beak so curled,[eo]
That nose, the hook where he suspends the world![329]
And Waterloo, and trade, and----(hush! not yet
A syllable of imposts or of debt)----
And ne'er (enough) lamented Castlereagh,[330]
Whose penknife slit a goose-quill t'other day--[ep]
And, 'pilots who have weathered every storm'--[331] 540
(But, no, not even for rhyme's sake, name Reform)."
These are the themes thus sung so oft before,
Methinks we need not sing them any more;
Found in so many volumes far and near,
There's no occasion you should find them here.
Yet something may remain perchance to chime
With reason, and, what's stranger still, with rhyme.[eq]
Even this thy genius, Canning![332] may permit,
Who, bred a statesman, still wast born a wit,
And never, even in that dull House, couldst tame 550
To unleavened prose thine own poetic flame;
Our last, our best, our only orator,
Even I can praise thee--Tories do no more:
Nay, not so much;--they hate thee, man, because
Thy Spirit less upholds them than it awes.
The hounds will gather to their huntsman's hollo,
And where he leads the duteous pack will follow;
But not for love mistake their yelling cry;
Their yelp for game is not an eulogy;
Less faithful far than the four-footed pack, 560
A dubious scent would lure the bipeds back.
Thy saddle-girths are not yet quite secure,
Nor royal stallion's feet extremely sure;
The unwieldy old white horse is apt at last
To stumble, kick--and now and then stick fast
With his great Self and Rider in the mud;
But what of that? the animal shows blood.
XIV.
Alas, the Country! how shall tongue or pen
Bewail her now _un_country gentlemen?
The last to bid the cry of warfare cease, 570
The first to make a malady of peace.
For what were all these country patriots born?
To hunt--and vote--and raise the price of corn?
But corn, like every mortal thing, must fall,
Kings--Conquerors--and markets most of all.
And must ye fall with every ear of grain?
Why would you trouble Buonaparte's reign?
He was your great Triptolemus;[333] his vices
Destroyed but realms, and still maintained your prices;
He amplified to every lord's content 580
The grand agrarian alchymy, high _rent_.[er]
Why did the tyrant stumble on the Tartars,
And lower wheat to such desponding quarters?
Why did you chain him on yon Isle so lone?
The man was worth much more upon his throne.
True, blood and treasure boundlessly were spilt,
But what of that? the Gaul may bear the guilt;
But bread was high, the farmer paid his way,
And acres told upon the appointed day.[es]
But where is now the goodly audit ale? 590
The purse-proud tenant, never known to fail?
The farm which never yet was left on hand?
The marsh reclaimed to most improving land?
The impatient hope of the expiring lease?
The doubling rental? What an evil's peace!
In vain the prize excites the ploughman's skill,
In vain the Commons pass their patriot bill;[334]
The _Landed Interest_--(you may understand
The phrase much better leaving out the _land_)--
The land self-interest groans from shore to shore, 600
For fear that plenty should attain the poor.[et]
Up, up again, ye rents, exalt your notes,
Or else the Ministry will lose their votes,
And patriotism, so delicately nice,
Her loaves will lower to the market price;[eu]
For ah! "the loaves and fishes," once so high,
Are gone--their oven closed, their ocean dry,[ev]
And nought remains of all the millions spent,
Excepting to grow moderate and content.
They who are not so, _had_ their turn--and turn 610
About still flows from Fortune's equal urn;
Now let their virtue be its own reward,
And share the blessings which themselves prepared.
See these inglorious Cincinnati swarm,
Farmers of war, dictators of the farm;
_Their_ ploughshare was the sword in hireling hands,
_Their_ fields manured by gore of other lands;
Safe in their barns, these Sabine tillers sent
Their brethren out to battle--why? for rent!
Year after year they voted cent. per cent. 620
Blood, sweat, and tear-wrung millions--why?--for rent!
They roared, they dined, they drank, they swore they meant
To die for England--why then live?--for rent!
The peace has made one general malcontent
Of these high-market patriots; war was rent!
Their love of country, millions all mis-spent,
How reconcile? by reconciling rent!
And will they not repay the treasures lent?
No: down with everything, and up with rent!
Their good, ill, health, wealth, joy, or discontent, 630
Being, end, aim, religion--_rent_--_rent_--_rent_!
Thou sold'st thy birthright, Esau! for a mess;
Thou shouldst have gotten more, or eaten less;
Now thou hast swilled thy pottage, thy demands
Are idle; Israel says the bargain stands.
Such, landlords! was your appetite for war,
And gorged with blood, you grumble at a scar!
What! would they spread their earthquake even o'er cash?
And when land crumbles, bid firm paper crash?[335]
So rent may rise, bid Bank and Nation fall, 640
And found on 'Change a _Fundling_ Hospital?
Lo, Mother Church, while all religion writhes,
Like Niobe, weeps o'er her offspring--Tithes;[336]
The Prelates go to--where the Saints have gone,
And proud pluralities subside to one;
Church, state, and faction wrestle in the dark,
Tossed by the deluge in their common ark.
Shorn of her bishops, banks, and dividends,
Another Babel soars--but Britain ends.
And why? to pamper the self-seeking wants, 650
And prop the hill of these agrarian ants.
"Go to these ants, thou sluggard, and be wise;"
Admire their patience through each sacrifice,
Till taught to feel the lesson of their pride,
The price of taxes and of homicide;
Admire their justice, which would fain deny
The debt of nations:--pray _who made it high?_[337]
XV.
Or turn to sail between those shifting rocks,
The new Symplegades[338]--the crushing Stocks,
Where Midas might again his wish behold 660
In real paper or imagined gold.
That magic palace of Alcina[339] shows
More wealth than Britain ever had to lose,
Were all her atoms of unleavened ore,
And all her pebbles from Pactolus' shore.
There Fortune plays, while Rumour holds the stake
And the World trembles to bid brokers break.
How rich is Britain! not indeed in mines,
Or peace or plenty, corn or oil, or wines;
No land of Canaan, full of milk and honey, 670
Nor (save in paper shekels) ready money:
But let us not to own the truth refuse,
Was ever Christian land so rich in Jews?
Those parted with their teeth to good King John,
And now, ye kings, they kindly draw your own;
All states, all things, all sovereigns they control,
And waft a loan "from Indus to the pole."
The banker--broker--baron[340]--brethren, speed
To aid these bankrupt tyrants in their need.
Nor these alone; Columbia feels no less 680
Fresh speculations follow each success;
And philanthropic Israel deigns to drain
Her mild per-centage from exhausted Spain.
Not without Abraham's seed can Russia march;
Tis gold, not steel, that rears the conqueror's arch.
Two Jews, a chosen people, can command
In every realm their Scripture-promised land:--
Two Jews, keep down the Romans,[341] and uphold
The accursed Hun, more brutal than of old:
Two Jews,--but not Samaritans--direct 690
The world, with all the spirit of their sect.
What is the happiness of earth to them?
A congress forms their "New Jerusalem,"
Where baronies and orders both invite--
Oh, holy Abraham! dost thou see the sight?
Thy followers mingling with these royal swine,
Who spit not "on their Jewish gaberdine,"
But honour them as portion of the show--
(Where now, oh Pope! is thy forsaken toe?
Could it not favour Judah with some kicks? 700
Or has it ceased to "kick against the pricks?")
On Shylock's shore behold them stand afresh,
To cut from Nation's hearts their "pound of flesh."
XVI.
Strange sight this Congress! destined to unite
All that's incongruous, all that's opposite.
I speak not of the Sovereigns--they're alike,
A common coin as ever mint could strike;
But those who sway the puppets, pull the strings,
Have more of motley than their heavy kings.
Jews, authors, generals, charlatans, combine, 710
While Europe wonders at the vast design:
There Metternich, power's foremost parasite,
Cajoles; there Wellington forgets to fight;
There Chateaubriand[342] forms new books of martyrs;
And subtle Greeks[343] intrigue for stupid Tartars;
There Montmorenci, the sworn foe to charters,[344]
Turns a diplomatist of great eclat,
To furnish articles for the "Debats;"
Of war so certain--yet not quite so sure
As his dismissal in the "Moniteur." 720
Alas! how could his cabinet thus err!
Can Peace be worth an ultra-minister?
He falls indeed, perhaps to rise again,
"Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain.[345]"
XVII.
Enough of this--a sight more mournful woos
The averted eye of the reluctant Muse.
The Imperial daughter, the Imperial bride,[346]
The imperial Victim--sacrifice to pride;
The mother of the Hero's hope, the boy,
The young Astyanax of Modern Troy;[347] 730
The still pale shadow of the loftiest Queen
That Earth has yet to see, or e'er hath seen;
She flits amidst the phantoms of the hour,
The theme of pity, and the wreck of power.
Oh, cruel mockery! Could not Austria spare
A daughter? What did France's widow there?
Her fitter place was by St. Helen's wave,
Her only throne is in Napoleon's grave.
But, no,--she still must hold a petty reign,
Flanked by her formidable chamberlain; 740
The martial Argus, whose not hundred eyes[348]
Must watch her through these paltry pageantries.
What though she share no more, and shared in vain,
A sway surpassing that of Charlemagne,
Which swept from Moscow to the southern seas!
Yet still she rules the pastoral realm of cheese,
Where Parma views the traveller resort,
To note the trappings of her mimic court.
But she appears! Verona sees her shorn
Of all her beams--while nations gaze and mourn-- 750
Ere yet her husband's ashes have had time
To chill in their inhospitable clime;
(If e'er those awful ashes can grow cold;--
But no,--their embers soon will burst the mould;)
She comes!--the Andromache (but not Racine's,
Nor Homer's,)--Lo! on Pyrrhus' arm[349] she leans![ew]
Yes! the right arm, yet red from Waterloo,
Which cut her lord's half-shattered sceptre through,
Is offered and accepted? Could a slave
Do more? or less?--and _he_ in his new grave! 760
Her eye--her cheek--betray no inward strife,
And the _Ex_-Empress grows as _Ex_ a wife!
So much for human ties in royal breasts!
Why spare men's feelings, when their own are jests?
XVIII.
But, tired of foreign follies, I turn home,
And sketch the group--the picture's yet to come.
My Muse 'gan weep, but, ere a tear was spilt,
She caught Sir William Curtis in a kilt![350]
While thronged the chiefs of every Highland clan
To hail their brother, Vich Ian Alderman! 770
Guildhall grows Gael, and echoes with Erse roar,
While all the Common Council cry "Claymore!"[351]
To see proud Albyn's tartans as a belt
Gird the gross sirloin of a city Celt,
She burst into a laughter so extreme,
That I awoke--and lo! it was _no_ dream!
Here, reader, will we pause:--if there's no harm in
This first--you'll have, perhaps, a second "Carmen."
B. J^n 10^th^ 1823.
FOOTNOTES:
[dv] {535} _Annus Mirabilis_.--MS.
[253] [It has been suggested by Dr. Garnett (late keeper of the Printed
Books in the British Museum) that the motto to _The Age of Bronze_ may,
possibly, contain a reference to the statue of Achilles, "inscribed by
the women of England to Arthur, Duke of Wellington, and his brave
companions in arms," which was erected in Hyde Park, June 18, 1822.]
[dw] {541} _Want nothing of the little, but their_ will.--[MS.]
[254] [_Measure for Measure_, act ii. sc. 2, line 121.]
[255] [Fox used to say, "_I_ never want _a_ word, but Pitt never wants
_the_ word."]
[256] [The grave of Fox, in Westminster Abbey is within eighteen inches
of that of Pitt. Compare--
"Nor yet suppress the generous sigh.
Because his rival slumbers nigh;
Nor be thy _requiescat_ dumb,
Lest it be said o'er Fox's tomb.
Where,--taming thought to human pride!--
The mighty chiefs sleep side by side.
Drop upon Fox's grave the tear,
'Twill trickle to his rival's bier," etc.
_Marmion_, by Sir Walter Scott, Introduction to
Canto I. lines 125-128, 184-188.
Compare, too, Macaulay on Warren Hastings: "In that temple of silence
and reconciliation, where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried,
in the Great Abbey ... the dust of the illustrious accused should have
mingled with the dust of the illustrious accusers. This was not to
be."--_Critical and Historical Essays_, 1843, iii. 465.]
[257] {542}[The Cleopatra whose mummy is preserved in the British Museum
was a member of the Theban Archon family. Her date was _circ._ A.D.
100.]
[258] [According to Strabo (_Rerum Geog._, xvii. ed. 1807, ii. 1127),
Ptolemaeus Soter brought Alexander's body back from Babylon, and buried
it in Alexandria, in the spot afterwards known as the _Soma_. There it
lay, in Strabo's time, not in its original body-mask of golden
chase-work, which Ptolemaeus Cocces had stolen, but in a casket of
glass. Great men "turned to pilgrims" to visit Alexander's grave.
Augustus crowned the still life-like body with a golden laurel-wreath,
and scattered flowers over the tomb: Caligula stole the breastplate, and
wore it during his pantomimic triumphs; Septimius Severus buried in the
sarcophagus the writings of the priests, and a clue to the
hieroglyphics. Finally, the sarcophagus and its sacred remains
disappear, and Alexander himself passes into the land of fable and
romance. In 1801 a sarcophagus came into the possession of the English
Army, and was presented by George III. to the British Museum.
Hieroglyphics were as yet undeciphered, and, in 1805, the traveller
Edward Daniel Clarke published a quarto monograph (_The Tomb of
Alexander, etc._), in which he proves, to his own satisfaction, that
"this surprising sarcophagus in one entire block of green Egyptian
_breccia_," had once contained the ashes of Alexander the Great. Byron
knew Clarke, and, no doubt, respected his authority (see letter December
15, 1813, _Letters_, 1898, ii. 308); and, hence, the description of
"Alexander's urn" as "a show." The sarcophagus which has, since 1844,
been assigned to its rightful occupant, Nectanebus II. (Nekht-neb-f), is
a conspicuous object in the Egyptian Gallery of the British Museum. It
is a curious coincidence that in the Ethiopic version of the
Pseudo-Callisthenes, Alexander is said to have been the son of
Nectanebus II., who threw a spell over Olympias, the wife of Philip of
Macedon, and won her love by the exercise of nefarious magic. (See the
_Life and Exploits of Alexander the Great_, by E. A. Wallis Budge,
Litt.D., F.S.A., Keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the
British Museum, 1896, i, ix.)]
[259] {543}[Arrian (_Alexand. Anabasis_, vii. i, 4, ed. 1849, p. 165)
says that Alexander would never have rested content with what he had
acquired; "that if he had annexed Europe to Asia, and the British Isles
to Europe, he would have sought out some no-man's-land to conquer." So
insatiable was his ambition, that when the courtly philosopher
Anaxarchus explained to him the theory of the plurality of worlds he
bemoaned himself because as yet he was not master of one. "_Heu me_,
inquit, _miserum, quod ne uno quidem adhuc potitus sum_."--Valerius
Maximus, _De Dictis, etc._, lib. viii. cap. xiv. ex. 2. See, too,
_Juvenal_, x. 168, 169. Burton (_Anatomy of Melancholy_, 1893, i. 64)
denies that this was spoken like a prince, but, as wise Seneca censures
him [on another occasion, however], 'twas _vox iniquissima et
stultissima_, "'twas spoken like a bedlam fool."]
[260] [Compare _Werner_, act iii. sc. I, lines 288, 289, "When he
[Sesostris] went into the temple or the city, his custom was to cause
the horses to be unharnessed out of his chariot, and to yoke four kings
and four princes to the chariot-pole."--Diodori Siculi _Bibl. Hist_.,
lib. i. p. 37, C, ed. 1604, p. 53.]
[261] {544}[In a speech delivered in the House of Commons, February 17,
1800, "On the continuance of the War with France," Pitt described
Napoleon as the "child and champion of Jacobinism." Coleridge, who was
reporting for the _Morning Post_, took down Pitt's words as "nursling
and champion" (unpublished MS. note-book)--a finer and more original
phrase, but substituted "child" for "nursling" in his "copy." (See
_Letters of S. T. Coleridge_, 1895, i. 327, note i.) The phrase was
much in vogue, _e.g._ "All that survives of Jacobinism in Europe looks
up to him as its 'child and champion.'"-_Quarterly Review_, xvi. 48.]
[dx] Lines 55-58 not in MS.
[262] [O'Meara, under the dates August 19, September 5, September 7, 13,
etc. (see _Napoleon in Exile_, 1888, i. 95, 96, 114, 121, etc.), reports
complaints on the part of Napoleon with regard to the reduction of
expenses suggested or enforced by Sir Hudson Lowe, and gives specimens
of the nature and detail of these reductions. For a refutation of
O'Meara's facts and figures (as given in _Napoleon in Exile_, 1822, ii.
Appendix V.), see the _History of the Captivity of Napoleon_, by William
Forsyth, Q.C., 1853, iii. 121, _sq_.; see, too, _Sir Hudson Lowe and
Napoleon_, by R. C. Seaton, 1898. It is a fact that Sir Hudson Lowe, on
his own responsibility, increased the allowance for the household
expenses of Napoleon and his staff from L8000 to L12,000 a year, and it
is also perfectly true that opportunities for complaint were welcomed by
the ex-Emperor and his mimic court. It was _la politique de Longwood_ to
make the worst of everything, on the off-chance that England would get
to hear, and that Radical indignation and Radical sympathy would gild,
perhaps unbar, the eagle's cage. It is true, too, that a large sum of
money was spent on behalf of a prisoner of war whom the stalwarts of the
Tory party would have executed in cold blood. But it is also true that
Napoleon had no need to manufacture complaints, that he was exposed to
unnecessary discomforts, that useless and irritating precautions were
taken to prevent his escape, that the bottles of champagne and madeira,
the fowls and the bundles of wood were counted with an irritating
preciseness, inconsistent with the general scale of expenditure, which
saved a little waste, and covered both principals and agents with
ridicule. It is said that O'Meara, in his published volumes, manipulated
his evidence, and that his own letters give him the lie; but there is a
mass of correspondence, published and unpublished, between him and Sir
Thomas Reade, Sir Hudson Lowe, and Major Gorrequer (see Addit. MSS.
Brit. Mus. 20,145), which remains as it was written, and which testifies
to facts which might have been and were not refuted on the spot and at
the moment. With regard to "disputed rations," the Governor should have
been armed with a crushing answer to any and every complaint. As it was,
he was able to show that champagne was allowed to "Napoleon Buonaparte,"
and that he did not exceed his allowance.]
[263] {545}[In his correspondence with Lord Bathurst, Sir Hudson Lowe
more than once quotes "statements" made by Dr. O'Meara (_vide post_, p.
546). But the surgeon may be William Warden (1777-1849), whose _Letters
written on board His Majesty's Ship the Northumberland, and at St,
Helena_, were published in 1816.]
[264] [Henry, Earl of Bathurst (1762-1834), Secretary for War and the
Colonies, replied to Lord Holland's motion "for papers connected with
the personal treatment of Napoleon Buonaparte at St. Helena," March 18,
1817. _Parl. Deb._, vol. 35, pp. 1137-1166.]
[265] [A bust of Napoleon's son, the Duke of Reichstadt, had been
forwarded to St. Helena. O'Meara (_Napoleon in Exile, etc._, 1822, i. p.
100) says "that it had been in the island fourteen days, during several
of which it was at Plantation House," before it was transferred to
Longwood. Forsyth (_History of Napoleon in Captivity_, 1853, ii. 146)
denies this statement. It was, no doubt, detained on board ship for
inspection, but not at Plantation House.]
[266] [The book in question was _The Substance of some Letters written
by an Englishman in Paris_, 1816 (by J. C. Hobhouse). It was inscribed
"To the Emperor Napoleon." Lowe's excuse was that Hobhouse had submitted
the work to his inspection, and suggested that if the Governor did not
think fit to give it to Napoleon, he might place it in his own library.
(See _Napoleon in Exile_, 1822, i. 85-87; and Forsyth, 1853, i. 193.)]
[dy] _Weep to survey the Tamer of the Great_.--[MS.]
[267] [Lieutenant-General Sir Hudson Lowe, K.C.B. (1769-1844), was the
son of an army surgeon, John Hudson Lowe. His mother was Irish. He was
appointed Governor of St. Helena, August 23, 1815, and landed in the
island April 14, 1816. Byron met him at Lord Holland's, before he sailed
for St. Helena, and was not impressed by his remarks on Napoleon and
Waterloo (_Letters_, 1901, v. 429). He was well-intentioned, honourable,
and, in essentials, humane, but he was arrogant and tactless. The
following sentence, from a letter written by Lowe to O'Meara, October 3,
1816 (Forsyth, i. 318, 319), is characteristic: "With respect to the
instructions I have received, and my manner of making them known, never
having regarded General Bonaparte's opinions in any point whatever as to
_matter_ or _manner_, as an oracle or criterion by which to regulate my
own judgment, I am not disposed to think the less favourably of the
instructions, or my mode of executing them." It must, however, be borne
in mind that this was written some time after Lowe's fifth and last
interview with his captive (Aug. 18, 1816); that Napoleon had abused him
to his face and behind his back, and was not above resorting to paltry
subterfuges in order to defy and exasperate his "paltry gaoler."]
[268] {546}[There is reason to think that "the staring stranger" was the
traveller Captain Basil Hall (1788-1844), who called upon Byron at
Venice (see _Letters_, 1900, iv. 252), but did not see him. His account
of his interview with Napoleon is attached to his narrative of a _Voyage
to Java_, 1840. It is not included in the earlier editions of Hall's
_Voyage to the Corea and the Loochoo Islands_, but is quoted by Scott,
in his _Life of Napoleon_, 1827.]
[269] [Barry Edward O'Meara (1786-1836) began life as assistant-surgeon
to the 62nd Regiment, then stationed in Sicily and Calabria. In 1815 he
was surgeon on board the _Bellerophon_, under Captain F. L. Maitland.
Napoleon took a fancy to him because he could speak Italian, and, as his
own surgeon Mengeaud would not follow him into exile, requested that
O'Meara might accompany him, in the _Northumberland_, to St. Helena. His
position was an ambiguous one. He was to act as Napoleon's medical and,
_quoad hoc_, confidential attendant, but he was not to be subservient to
him or dependent on him. At St. Helena Lowe expected him to be something
between an intermediary and a spy, and, for a time, O'Meara discharged
both functions to the Governor's satisfaction (statements by Dr. O'Meara
are quoted by Lowe in his letter to Lord Bathurst [_Life of Napoleon,
etc._, by Sir W. Scott, 1828, p. 763]). As time went on, the surgeon
yielded to the glamour of Napoleon's influence, and more and more
disliked and resented the necessity of communicating private
conversations to Lowe. He "withheld his confidence," with the result
that the Governor became suspicious, and treated O'Meara with
reprobation and contempt. At length, on July 18, 1818, on a renewed
accusation of "irregularities," Lord Bathurst dismissed him from his
post, and ordered him to quit St. Helena. He returned to England, and,
October 28, 1818, addressed a letter (see Forsyth's _Napoleon, etc._,
iii. 432, 433) to J. W. Croker, the Secretary to the Admiralty, in which
he argued against the justice of his dismissal. One sentence which
asserted that Lowe had dwelt upon the "benefit which would result to
Europe from the death of Napoleon," was seized upon by Croker as
calumnious, and in answer to his remonstrance, O'Meara's name was struck
off the list of naval surgeons. He published, in 1819, a work entitled
_Exposition of some of the Transactions that have taken place at St.
Helena since the appointment of Sir Hudson Lowe as Governor_, which was
afterwards expanded into _Napoleon in Exile, or a Voice from St. Helena_
(2 vols., 1822). The latter work made a great sensation, and passed
through five editions. It was republished in 1888. O'Meara was able, and
generously disposed, but he was not "stiff" (_vide infra_, 489). "He
was," says Lord Rosebery (_Napoleon, The Last Phase_, 1900, p. 31), "the
confidential servant of Napoleon: unknown to Napoleon, he was the
confidential agent of Lowe; and behind both their backs he was the
confidential informant of the British Government.... Testimony from such
a source is ... tainted." Neither men nor angels will disentangle the
wheat from the tares.]
[270] {547}[Buonaparte died the 5th of May, 1821.]
[271] [At the end of vol. ii. of O'Meara's _Voice, etc._ (ed. 5), there
is a statement, signed by Count Montholon, to the effect that he wished
the following inscription to be placed on Napoleon's coffin--
"Napoleon.
Ne a Ajaccio le 15 Aout, 1769,
Mort a Ste. Helene le 5 Mai, 1821;"
but that the Governor said, "that his instructions would not allow him
to sanction any other name being placed on the coffin than that of
'General Bonaparte.'" Lowe would have sanctioned "Napoleon Bonaparte,"
but, on his own admission, _did_ refuse the inscription of the one word
"Napoleon."--Forsyth, iii. 295, 296, note 3.]
[272] {548}[Hall, in his interview with Napoleon at St. Helena,
_Narrative of a Voyage to Java_, 1840, p. 77, testifies that, weeks
before the vessel anchored at St. Helena, August 11, 1817, "the
probability of seeing him [Napoleon] had engrossed the thoughts of every
one on board.... Even those of our number who, from their situation,
could have no chance of seeing him, caught the fever of the moment, and
the most cold and indifferent person on board was roused on the occasion
into unexpected excitement."]
[273] [The Colonne Vendome, erected to commemorate the Battle of
Austerlitz, was inaugurated in 1810.]
[274] [Pompey's, i.e. Diocletian's Pillar stands on a mound near the
Arabian cemetery, about three quarters of a mile from Alexandria,
between the city and Lake Mareotis.]
[275] [Napoleon was buried, May 9, 1821, in a garden in the middle of a
deep ravine, under the shade of two willow trees.]
[276] [Byron took for granted that Napoleon's remains would one day rest
under the dome of the Pantheon, where Mirabeau is buried, and where
cenotaphs have been erected to Voltaire and Rousseau. As it is (since
December 15, 1840) he sleeps under the Dome des Invalides. Above the
entrance are these words, which are taken from his will: "Je desire que
mes cendres reposent sur les bords de la Seine, au milieu de ce peuple
Francais que j'ai tant aime."]
[277] {549} Guesclin died during the siege of a city; it surrendered,
and the keys were brought and laid upon his bier, so that the place
might appear rendered to his ashes. [Bertrand du Guesclin, born 1320,
first distinguished himself in the service of King John II. of France,
in defending Rennes against Henry Duke of Lancaster, 1356-57. He was
made Constable of France in 1370, and died before the walls of
Chateauneuf-de-Randon (Lozere). July 13, 1380. He was buried by the
order of Charles V. in Saint-Denis, hard by the tomb which the king had
built for himself. In _La Vie vaillant Bertran du Guesclin_ [_Chronique,
etc._ (par E. Charriere), 1839, tom. ii. p. 321, lines 22716, _sq._],
the English do not place the keys of the castle on Du Guesclin's bier,
but present them to him as he lies tossing on his death-bed ("a son lit
agite"). So, too, _Histoire de Messire Bertrand du Guesclin_, par Claude
Menard, 1618, 540: "Et Engloiz se accorderent a ce faire. Lors issirent
dudit Chastel, et vindrent a Bertran, et lui presenterent les clefs. Et
ne demora gueres, qu'il getta le souppir de la mort."]
[278] [John of Trocnow, surnamed Zi[)z]ka, or the "One-eyed," was born
circ. 1360, and died while he was besieging a town on the Moravian
border, October 11, 1424. He was the hero of the Hussite or Taborite
crusade (1419-1422), the _malleus Catholicorum_. The story is that on
his death-bed he was asked where he wished to be buried, and replied,
"that it mattered not, that his flesh might be thrown to the vulture and
eagles; but his skin was to be carefully preserved and made into a drum,
to be carried in the front of the battle, that the very sound might
disperse their enemies." Voltaire, in his _Essai sur Les M[oe]urs et
L'Esprit des Nations_ (cap. lxxiii. s.f. _[OE]uvres Completes, etc._,
1836, iii. 256), mentions the legend as a fact, "Il ordonna qu' apres sa
mort on fit un tambour de sa peau." Compare _Werner_, act i. sc. I,
lines 693, 694.]
[279] {550}["Au moment de la bataille Napoleon avait dit a ses troupes,
en leur montrant les Pyramides: 'Soldats, quarante siecles vous
regardent.'"--_Campagnes d'Egypte et de Syrie_, 1798-9, par le General
Bertrand, 1847, i. 160.]
[280] [Madrid was taken by the French, first in March, 1808, and again
December 2, 1808.]
[281] [Vienna was taken by the French under Murat, November 14, 1805,
evacuated January 12, 1806, captured by Napoleon, May, 1809, and
restored at the conclusion of peace, October 14, 1809. Her treachery
consisted in her hospitality to the sovereigns at the Congress of
Vienna, November, 1814, and her share in the Treaty of Vienna, March 25,
1815, which ratified the Treaties of Chaumont, March 1, and of Paris,
April 11, 1814.]
[282] [At Jena Napoleon defeated Prince Hohenlohe, and at Auerstadt
General Davoust defeated the King of Prussia, October 14, 1806. Napoleon
then advanced to Berlin, October 27, from which he issued his famous
decree against British commerce, November 20, 1806.]
[283] [The partition of Poland. "Henry [of Prussia] arrived at St.
Petersburg, December 9, 1770; and it seems now to be certain that the
first open proposal of a dismemberment of Poland arose in his
conversations with the Empress.... Catherine said to the Prince, 'I will
frighten Turkey and flatter England. It is your business to gain
Austria, that she may lull France to sleep;' and she became at length so
eager, that ... she dipt her finger into ink, and drew with it the lines
of partition on a map of Poland which lay before them."--_Edinburgh
Review_, November, 1822 (art. x. on _Histoire des Trois Demembremens de
la Pologne_, par M. Ferrand, 1820, etc., vol. 37, pp. 479, 480.)]
[284] {551} [Napoleon promised much, but did little for the Poles. "In
speaking of the business of Poland he ... said it was a whim (_c'etait
un caprice_)."--_Narrative of an Embassy to Warsaw_, by M. Dufour de
Pradt, 1816, p. 51. "The Polish question," says Lord Wolseley (_Decline
and Fall of Napoleon_, 1893, p. 19), "thrust itself most inconveniently
before him. In early life all his sympathies ... were with the Poles,
and he had regarded the partition of their country as a crime.... As a
very young man liberty was his only religion; but he had now learned to
hate and to fear that term.... He had no desire ... to be the Don
Quixote of Poland by reconstituting it as a kingdom. To fight Russia by
the re-establishment of Polish independence was not, therefore, to be
thought of."]
[285] [The final partition of Poland took place after the Battle of
Maciejowice, October 12, 1794, when "Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko
fell." Tyrants, _e.g._ Napoleon in 1806, and Alexander in 1814 and again
in 1815, approached Kosciusko with respect, and loaded him with flattery
and promises, and then "passed by on the other side."]
[286] [The reference is to Charles's chagrin when the Grand Vizier
allowed the Russians to retire in safety from the banks of the Pruth,
and assented to the Treaty of Jassy, July 21, 1711. Charles, "impatient
for the fight, and to behold the enemy in his power," had ridden above
fifty leagues from Bender to Jassy, swam the Pruth at the risk of his
life, and found that the Czar had marched off in triumph. He contrived
to rip up the Vizier's robe with his spur, "remonta a cheval, et
retourna a Bender le desespoir dans le c[oe]ur" (_Histoire de Charles
XII._, Livre v. _s.f._).]
[287] {552}["Naples, October 29, 1822. Le Vesuve continue a lancer des
pierres et des cendres."--From _Le Moniteur Universel_, November 21,
1822.]
[dz] _For staring tourists_----.--[MS.]
[288] [The material for this description of Napoleon on his return from
Moscow is drawn from De Pradt's _Narrative of an Embassy to Warsaw and
Wilna_, published in 1816, pp. 133-141. "I hurried out, and arrived at
the Hotel d'Angleterre.... [Warsaw, December 10, 1812]. I saw a small
carriage body placed on a sledge made of four pieces of fir: it had
stood some crashes, and was much damaged.... The ministers joined me in
addressing to him ... wishes for the preservation of his health and the
prosperity of his journey. He replied, 'I never was better; if I carried
the devil with me, I should be all the better for that (_Quand j'aurai
le diable je ne m'en porterai que mieux_).' These were his last words.
He then mounted the humble sledge, which bore Caesar and his fortune, and
disappeared." The passage is quoted in the _Quarterly Review_, October,
1815, vol. xiv. pp. 64-68.]
[289] {553}
["Soldats Francais! Serrez vos rangs!
Intendez Roland qui vous crie!
Armez vous contre vos tyrans!
Brisez les fers de la patrie."
"L'Ombre de Roland," _Morning Chronicle_, October 10, 1822.]
[290] [Gustavus Adolphus fell at the great battle of Lutzen, in
November, 1632. Napoleon defeated the allied Russian and Prussian armies
at Lutzen, May 2, 1813.]
[291] [On June 26, 1813, Napoleon re-entered Dresden, and on the 27th
repulsed the allied sovereigns, the Emperors of Russia and Prussia, with
tremendous loss. Thousands of prisoners and a great quantity of cannon
were taken.]
[ea]
_Dresden beholds three nations fly once more_
_Before the lash they oft had felt before_.--[MS. erased.]
[292] [At the battle of Leipzig, October 18, 1813, on the appearance of
Bernadotte, the Saxon soldiers under Regnier deserted and went over to
the Allies. Napoleon, whose army was already weakened, lost 30,000 men
at Leipzig.]
[293] [Joseph Buonaparte, who had been stationed on the heights of
Montmartre, March 30, 1814, to witness if not direct the defence of
Paris against the Allies under Bluecher, authorized Marmont to
capitulate. His action was, unjustly, regarded as a betrayal of his
brother's capital.]
[294] {554} I refer the reader to the first address of Prometheus in
AEschylus, when he is left alone by his attendants, and before the
arrival of the chorus of Sea-nymphs.--_Prometheus Vinctus_, line 88,
_sq._
[295] [Franklin published his _Opinions and Conjectures concerning the
Properties and Effects of the Electrical Matter and the Means of
preserving Buildings, Ships, etc., from Lightning_, in 1751, and in
June, 1752, "the immortal kite was flown." It was in 1781, when he was
minister plenipotentiary at the Court of France, that the Latin
hexameter, "Eripuit c[oe]lo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis," first applied
to him by Turgot, was affixed to his portrait by Fragonard. The line,
said to be an adaptation of a line in the _Astronomicon_ of Manilius
(lib. i. 104), descriptive of the Reason, "Eripuitque Jovi fulmen
viresque tonandi," was turned into French by Nogaret, d'Alembert, and
other wits and scholars. It appears on the reverse of a medal by F.
Dupre, dated 1786. (See _Works_ of Benjamin Franklin, edited by Jared
Sparks, 1840, viii. 537-539; _Life and Times, etc._, by James Parton,
1864, i. 285-291.)]
[296] {555}["To be the first man--_not_ the Dictator, not the Sylla, but
the Washington, or the Aristides, the leader in talent and truth--is
next to the Divinity."--Journal, November 24, 1813, _Letters_, 1898, ii.
340.]
[297] [Simon Bolivar (_El Libertador_), 1783-1830, was at the height of
his power and fame at the beginning of 1823. In 1821 he had united New
Grenada to Venezuela under the name of the Republic of Columbia, and on
the 1st of September he made a solemn entry into Lima. He was greeted
with acclaim, but in accepting the honours which his fellow-citizens
showered upon him, he warned them against the dangers of tyranny.
"Beware," he said, "of a Napoleon or an Iturbide." Byron, at one time,
had a mind to settle in "Bolivar's country" (letter to Ellice, June 12,
1821, _Letters_, 1901, vi. 89); and he christened his yacht _The
Bolivar_.]
[298] [A proclamation of Bolivar's, dated June 8, 1822, runs thus:
"Columbians, now all your delightful country is free.... From the banks
of the Orinoco to the Andes of Peru, the ... army marching in triumph
has covered with its protecting arms the entire extent of
Columbia."--"Jamaica Papers," _Morning Chronicle_, September 28, 1822.]
[299] {556}[The capitulation of Athens was signed June 21, 1822. "Three
days after the Greeks had sworn to observe the capitulation, they
commenced murdering their helpless prisoners.... The streets of Athens
were stained with the blood of four hundred men, women, and
children."--_History of Greece_, by George Finlay, 1877, vi. 283. The
sword was hid in the myrtle bough. Hence the allusion. (Compare _Childe
Harold_, Canto III. stanza xx. line 9, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 228,
and 291, note 2.)]
[300] [The independence of Chili dated from April 5, 1818, when General
Jose de San Martin routed the Spanish army on the plains of Maypo. On
the 28th of July, 1821, the Independence of Peru was proclaimed. General
San Martin assumed the title of Protector, and, August 3, 4, 1821,
issued proclamations, in which he announced the independence of Peru,
and bade the Spaniards tremble if they "abused his indulgence."
_Extracts from a Journal written on the Coast of Chili, etc._, by
Captain Basil Hall, 1824, i. 266-272.]
[301] [On the 8th of August, 1822, Niketas and Hypsilantes defeated the
Turks under Dramali, near Lerna. The Moreotes attributed their good
fortune to the generalship of Kolokotrones, a Messenian. Compare with
the whole of section vi. the following quotations from an article on the
"Numbers of the Greeks," which appeared in the _Morning Chronicle_,
September 13, 1822--
"'Trust not for freedom to the Franks,
They have a king who buys and sells;
In native swords and native ranks
The only hope of courage dwells.'
Byron.
"As Russia has now removed her warlike projects, and the Greeks are
engaged single-handed with the whole force of the Ottoman Empire,
etc.... Byron's Grecian bard can no longer exclaim--
'My country! on thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now--
The heroic bosom beats no more.'
"Greece is no longer a 'nation's sepulchre,' the foul abode of slaves,
but the living theatre of the patriot's toils and the hero's
achievements. Her banners once more float on the mountains, and the
battles she has already won show that in every glen and valley, as well
as on
'Suli's rock and Parga's shore
Exists the remnant of a line
Such as the Doric mothers bore.'"]
[302] {557}[An account of these Russian intrigues in Greece is contained
in Thomas Gordon's _History of the Greek Revolution_, 1832, i. 194-204.]
[eb] {558} _Of Incas known but as a cloud_.--[MS. erased.]
[ec] _Not now the Roman or the Punic horde_.--[MS.]
[ed] ----_abhorrent of them both_.--[MS.]
[303] [Pelayo, said to be the son of Favila, Duke of Cantabria, was
elected king by the Christians of the Asturias in 718, and defeated the
Arab generals Suleyman and Manurza. He died A.D. 737.]
[304] [For the "fabulous sketches" of the Zegri and Abencerrages, rival
Moorish tribes, whose quarrels, at the close of the fifteenth century,
deluged Granada with blood, see the _Civil Wars of Granada_, a prose
fiction, interspersed with ballads, by Gines Perez de Hita, published in
1595. An opera, _Les Abencerages_, by Cherubini, was performed in Paris
in 1813. Chateaubriand's _Les Aventures du dernier Abencerrage_ was not
published till 1826.]
[ee] _And yet have left worse enemies than they_.--[MS. erased.]
[305] [Ferdinand VII. returned to Madrid in March, 1814. "No sooner was
he established on his throne ... than he set himself to restore the old
absolutism with its worst abuses. The nobles recovered their privileges
... the Inquisition resumed its activity; and the Jesuits returned to
Spain.... A _camarilla_ of worthless courtiers and priests conducted the
government, and urged the king to fresh acts of revolutionary violence.
For six years Spain groaned under a royalist 'reign of
terror.'"--_Encycl. Brit._, art. "Spain," vol. 22, p. 345.]
[ef] _As rose on his remorseless ear the cry_.--[MS. erased.]
[eg] {559} _The re-awakened virtue_----.--[MS. erased.]
[eh] ----_is on the shore_.--[MS. erased.]
[306] "'St. Jago and close Spain!' the old Spanish war-cry." ["Santiago
y serra Espana."]
[ei] _The wild Guerilla on Morena_----.--[MS. erased]
[ej] _Of eagle-eyed_----.--[MS. erased.]
[307] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto I. stanzas liv.-lvi., _Poetical
Works_, i. 57, 58, 91, 92 (note II). The "man" was Tio Jorge (Jorge
Ibort), _vide ibid._, p. 94.]
[308] {560} The Arragonians are peculiarly dexterous in the use of this
weapon, and displayed it particularly in former French wars.
[309] [_Vide ante_, the Introduction to the _Age of Bronze_, pp,
537-540.]
[310] [Patrick Henry, born May 29, 1736, died June 6, 1799, was one of
the leading spirits of the American Revolution. His father, John Henry,
a Scotchman, a cousin of the historian, William Robertson, had acquired
a small property in Virginia. Patrick was not exactly "forest born,"
but, as a child, loved to play truant "in the forest with his gun or
over his angle-rod." He first came into notice as an orator in the
"Parson's Cause," a suit brought by a minister of the Established Church
to recover his salary, which had been fixed at 16,000 lbs. of tobacco.
In his speech he is said to have struck the key-note of the Revolution
by arguing that "a king, by disallowing acts of a salutary nature, from
being the father of his people, degenerates into a tyrant, and forfeits
all right to his subjects' obedience." His famous speech against the
"Stamps Act" was delivered in the House of Burgesses of Virginia, May
29, 1765. One passage, with which, no doubt, Byron was familiar, has
passed into history. "Caesar had his Brutus--Charles the First had his
Cromwell--and George the Third--" Henry was interrupted with a shout of
"Treason! treason!!" but finished the sentence with, and "George the
Third _may profit by their example_. If _this_ be treason, make the most
of it."
Henry was delegate to the first Continental Congress, five times
Governor of Virginia, and was appointed U.S. Senator in 1794.
His contemporaries said that he was "the greatest orator that ever
lived." He seems to have exercised a kind of magical influence over his
hearers, which they could not explain, which charmed and overwhelmed
them, and "has left behind a tradition of bewitching persuasiveness and
almost prophetic sublimity."--See _Life of Patrick Henry_, by William
Wirt, 1845, _passim._]
[ek] {561} ----_to one Napoleon_.--[MS. erased.]
[el] ----_thy poor old wall forgets_.--[MS. erased.]
[311] ["I have been over Verona. The amphitheatre is wonderful--beats
even Greece. Of the truth of Juliet's story they seem tenacious to a
degree, insisting on the fact, giving a date (1303), and showing a tomb.
It is a plain, open, and partly decayed sarcophagus, with withered
leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden, once a cemetery,
now ruined to the very graves. The situation struck me as very
appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their love.... The Gothic
monuments of the Scaliger princes pleased me, but 'a poor virtuoso am
I.'"--Letter to Moore, November 7, 1816, _Letters_, 1899, iii. 386, 387.
The tombs of the Scaligers are close to the Church of Santa Maria
l'Antica. Juliet's tomb, "of red Verona marble," is in the garden of the
_Orfanotrofio_, between the Via Cappucini and the Adige. It is not "that
ancient vault where all the kindred of the Capulets lie," which has long
since been destroyed. Since 1814 Verona had been under Austria's sway,
and had "treacherously" forgotten her republican traditions.]
[312] {562}[Francesco Can Grande della Scala died in 1329. It was under
his roof that Dante learned
"... how salt his food who fares
Upon another's bread--how steep his path
Who treadeth up and down another's stairs."
For anecdotes of Can Grande, see _Commedia, etc._, by E. H. Plumptre,
D.D., 1886, I. cxx., cxxi.; and compare _Dante at Verona_, by D. G.
Rossetti, _Works_, 1886, i. 1-17.]
[313] [Ippolito Pindemonte, the modern Tibullus (1753-1828). (See
_Letters_, 1900, iv. 127, note 4.)]
[314] [Claudian's famous old man of Verona, "_qui suburbium numquam
egressus est_."
"Indocilis rerum, vicinae nescius urbis,
Adspectu fruitur liberiore poli."
C. Claudiani _Opera_, lii., _Epigrammata_, ii. lines 9, 10 (ed. 1821,
iii. 427).]
[315] ["In the amphitheatre ... crowds collected after the sittings of
the Congress, to witness dramatic representations.... But for the
costumes, a spectator might have imagined he was witnessing a
resurrection of the ancient Romans."--_Congress, etc._, by M. de
Chateaubriand, 1838, i. 76. This was on the 24th of November. Catalani
sang. Rossini's cantata was performed with tremendous applause. On the
next day the august visitors witnessed an illumination of the city.
"Leur attention s'est principalement arrete sur le superbe portail de
l'eglise Sainte-Agnes, qui brillait de mille feux, au milieu desquels se
lisait l'inscription suivante en lettres de grandeur colossale:
'_A Cesare Augusta Verona esultante_.'"
--_Le Moniteur_, December 14, 1822.]
[316] {563}[Alexander I. (Paulowitsch), 1777-1825, succeeded his father
in 1801. He began his reign well. Taxation was diminished, judicial
penalties were remitted, universities were founded and reorganized,
personal servitude was abolished or restricted throughout the empire. At
the height of his power and influence, when he was regarded as the
Liberator of Europe, he granted a Constitution to Poland, based on
liberal if not democratic principles (June 21, 1815). But after a time
he reverted to absolutism. Autocracy at home, a mystical and sentimental
alliance with autocrats abroad, were incompatible with the indulgence of
liberal proclivities. "After the Congresses of Aix-la-Chapelle and
Troppau," writes M. Rambaud (_History of Russia_, 1888, ii. 384), "he
was no longer the same man.... From that time he considered himself the
dupe of his generous ideas ... at Carlsbad, at Laybach, and at Verona,
Alexander was already the leader of the European reaction." But even to
the last he believed that he could run with the hare and hunt with the
hounds. "They may say of me," he exclaimed, "what they will; but I have
lived and shall die republican" (ibid., p. 398).
Alexander was a man of ideas, a sentimentalist, and a _poseur_, but he
had an eye to the main chance. Whatever cause or dynasty suffered, the
Emperor Alexander was still triumphant. Byron's special grudge against
him at this time was due to his vacillation with regard to the cause of
Greek Independence. But he is too contemptuous. There were points in
common between the "Coxcomb Czar" and his satirist; and it is far from
certain that if the twain had changed places Byron might not have proved
just "such an Alexander." In one respect their destiny was alike. The
greatest sorrow of their lives was the death of a natural daughter.]
[317] [For Alexander's waltzing, see _Personal Reminiscences_, by
Cornelia Knight and Thomas Raikes, 1875, p. 286. See, too, Moore's
_Fables for the Holy Alliance_, Fable I., "A Dream."]
[em] _Now half inclining_----.--[MS.]
[318] {564} ["Pulk" is Polish for "regiment." The allusion must be to
the military colonies planted by "the corporal of Gatchina," Araktcheef,
in the governments of Novgorod, Kharkof, and elsewhere.]
[319] [Frederic Cesar La Harpe (1754-1838) was appointed by Catherine
II. Governor to the Grand-Dukes Alexander and Constantine. It was from
La Harpe's teaching that Alexander imbibed his liberal ideas. In 1816,
when Byron passed the summer in Switzerland, La Harpe was domiciled at
Lausanne, and it is possible that a meeting took place.]
[320] [Alexander's platonic attachment to the Baronne de Kruedener (Barbe
Julie de Wietenhoff), beauty, novelist, _illuminee_, was the source of
amusement rather than scandal. The Baronne, then in her fiftieth year,
was the channel through which Franz Bader's theory or doctrine of the
"Holy Alliance" was conveyed to the enthusiastic and receptive Czar. It
was only a passing whim. Alexander's mysticism was for ornament, not for
use, and, before very long, Egeria and her Muscovite Numa parted
company.]
[321] The dexterity of Catherine extricated Peter (called the Great by
courtesy), when surrounded by the Mussulmans on the banks of the river
Pruth. [Catherine, who had long been Peter's mistress, had at length
been acknowledged as his wife. Her "dexterity" took the form of a bribe
of money and jewels, conveyed to the Turkish grand-vizier
Baltazhi-Mahomet, who was induced to accede to the Treaty of Pruth, July
20, 1711.]
[322] {565}
["Eight thousand men had to Asturias march'd
Beneath Count Julian's banner.... To revenge
His quarrel, twice that number left their bones,
Slain in unnatural battle, on the field
Of Xeres, where the sceptre from the Goths
By righteous Heaven was reft."
Southey's _Roderick_, Canto XXV. lines 1, 2, 7-11.]
[323] [The Bashkirs are a Turco-Mongolian tribe inhabiting the slopes of
the Ural Mountains. They supply a body of irregular cavalry to the
Russian army.]
[324] [The Austrian and Russian armies stood between the Greeks and
other peoples, and their independence, as Alexander the Great stood
between Diogenes and the sunshine.]
[en]
_Still will I roll my tub at Sinope_
_Be slaves who may_----.--[MS.]
[325] [Lines 482, 483, are not in the MS.]
[326] {566} [Constant (Henri Benjamin de Rebecque, 1767-1830) was the
"stormy petrel" of debate in the French Chamber. For instance, in a
discussion on secret service money for the police (July 27, 1822), he
exclaimed, "Vous les representez-vous payant d'une main le salaire du
vol, et tenant peut-etre un crucifix de l'autre?" No wonder that there
were "violens murmures, cris d'indignation a droite." The duel, however,
did not arise out of a speech in the Chamber, but from a letter of June
5, 1822, in _La Quotidienne_, in which the Marquis de Forbin des Issarts
replied to some letters of Constant, which had appeared in the
_Courrier_ and _Constitutionnel_. Constant was lame, and accordingly
both combatants "out ete places a dix petits pas sur des chaises." Both
fired twice, but neither "was a penny the worse." (See _La Grande
Encyclopedie_, art. "Constant;" and, for details, _La Quotidienne_, June
8, 1822. See, too, for "session de 1822," _Opinions el Discours_ de M.
Casimir Perrier, 1838, ii. 5-47.)]
[327] [Louis XVIII. (Louis Stanislas Xavier, 1755-1824) passed several
years of exile in England, at Goswell, Wanstead, and latterly at
Hartwell, near Aylesbury, in Buckinghamshire. When he entered Paris as
king, in May, 1814, he was in his fifty-ninth year, inordinately bulky
and unwieldy--a king _pour rire_. "C'est ce gros goutteux," explained an
_ouvrier_ to a bystander, who had asked, "Which is the king?" Fifteen
mutton cutlets, "sautees au jus," for breakfast; fifteen mutton cutlets
served with a "sauce a la champagne," for dinner; to say nothing of
strawberries, and sweet apple-puffs between meals, made digestion and
locomotion difficult. It was no wonder that he was a martyr to the gout.
But he cared for nature and for books as well as for eating. His
_Lettres d'Artwell_ (Paris, 1830), which profess to be selections from
his correspondence with a friend, give a pleasant picture of the _roi en
exil_. His wife, Louise de Savoie, died November, 1810, and in the
following April he writes (_Lettres_, pp. 70, 71), "Mars a maintenu le
bien d'un hiver fort doux; point encore de goutte; _a brebis tondue,
Dieu measure le vent_. Helas! je l'eprouve bien qu'elle est tondue cette
pauvre brebis!... je me promene dans le jardin, je vois mes rosiers qui
poussent bien; a qui offrirai-je les roses?... Eh bien! je ne voudrais
pas que cette goutte d'absinthe cessat, car pour cela il faudrait
l'oublier. L'oublier! Ah Dieu! Je suis comme les enfans d'Israel qui
disaient: _Super flumina Babylonis ... Sion._ Mais ajoutons tout de
suite: _Si oblitus fuero hit, Jerusalem, oblivioni detur dextera mea_."
In another letter, June 8, 1811, he criticizes some translations of
Horace, and laments that the good Pere Sanadon has confined himself to
the _Opera Expurgata_. Not, he adds, that he would not have excluded one
or two odes, "mais on a impitoyablement sabre des choses delicieuses"
(_Lettres_, p. 98).
To his wit, Chateaubriand testifies (_The Congress, etc._, 1838, i.
262). At the council, when affairs of state were being discussed, the
king "would say in his clear shrill voice, 'I am going to make you
laugh, M. de Chateaubriand.' The other ministers fumed with impatience,
but Chateaubriand laughed, not as a courtier, but as a human being."]
[328] {567}[Louvel, who assassinated the Due de Berri, and who was
executed June 7, 1820, was supposed to have been an agent of the
_carbonari_. La Fayette, Constant, Lafitte, and others were also
suspected of being connected with secret societies.--_The Court of the
Tuileries, 1815-1848_, by Lady Jackson, 1883, ii. 19.]
[eo] {568}
_Immortal Wellington with beak so curled_.
_That foremost Corporal of all the World--_
_Immortal Wellington--and flags unfurled_.--[MS. erased.]
[329] "Naso suspendis adunco."--HORACE [_Sat._ i. 6, 5]. The Roman
applies it to one who merely was imperious to his acquaintance.
[330] [Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, afterwards Marquis of
Londonderry (1769-1822), who had been labouring under a "mental
delirium" (Letter of Duke of Wellington, August 9, 1822), committed
suicide by cutting his throat with a penknife (August 12, 1822). He was
the uncompromising and successful opponent of popular causes in Ireland,
Italy, and elsewhere, and, as such, Byron assailed him, alive and dead,
with the bitterest invective. (See, for instance, the "Dedication" to
_Don Juan_, stanzas xi.-xvi., sundry epigrams, and an "Epitaph.") In the
Preface to Cantos VI., VII., VIII., of _Don Juan_, he justifies the
inclusion of a stanza or two on Castlereagh, which had been written
"before his decease," and, again, alludes to his suicide. (For an
estimate of his career and character, see _Letters_, 1900, iv. 108, 109,
note 1; and for a full report of the inquest, _The Annual Biography_,
1823, pp. 56-62.)]
[ep]
_Whose penknife saved some nations t'other day_.
_Who shaved his throat by chance the other day_.--[MS. erased.]
[331] ["The Pilot that weathered the Storm" was written by Canning, to
be recited at a dinner given on Pitt's birthday, May 28, 1802.]
[eq] {569} _With reason--whate'er it may with rhyme_.--[MS. erased.]
[332] [George Canning (1770-1827) succeeded Lord Londonderry as Foreign
Secretary, September 8, 1822. He was not a _persona grata_ to George
IV., who had been offended by Canning's neutral attitude, as a minister,
on the question of the Queen's message (June 7, 1820), and by his avowal
"of an unaltered regard and affection" for that "illustrious personage"
herself. There was, too, the prospect of Catholic Emancipation. In 1821
he had spoken in favour of Plunket's bills, and, the next year (April
30, 1822), he had brought in a bill to remove the disabilities of Roman
Catholic peers from sitting in the House of Lords. If Canning persisted
in his advocacy of Catholic claims, the king's conscience might turn
restive, and urge him to effectual resistance. Hence the warning in
lines 563-567.]
[333] {570} [Demeter gave Triptolemus a chariot drawn by serpents, and
bade him scatter wheat throughout the world. (See Ovid, _Met._, lib. v.
lines 642-661.)]
[er] _The mighty monosyllable high_ Rent!--[MS.]
[es] ----_upon the audit day_.--[MS. M.]
[334] ["Lord Londonderry proposed (April 29, 1822) that whenever wheat
should be under 60 shillings a quarter, Government should be authorized
to issue L1,000,000 in Exchequer bills to landed proprietors on the
security of their crops; that importation of foreign corn should be
permitted whenever the price of wheat should be at or above 70 shillings
a quarter ... that a sliding-scale should be fixed, that for wheat being
under 80s. a quarter at 12 shillings; above 80s. and below 85s., at 5
shillings; and above 85s., only one shilling."--Allison's _History of
Europe_, 1815-1852, _and_ 1854, ii. 506. The first clause was thrown
out, but the rest of the bill passed May 13, 1822.]
[et] {571} _For fear that riches_----.--[MS. M.]
[eu] _Will sell the harvest at a market price_.--[MS. M.]
[ev] _Are gone--their fields untilled_.--[MS. M.]
[335] {572}[Peel's bill for the resumption of cash payments (Act 59 Geo.
III. cap. 49) was passed June 14, 1819. The "landed interest" attributed
the fall of prices and the consequent fall of rent to this measure, and
hinted more or less plainly that the fund-holders should share the loss.
They had lent their money when the currency was inflated, and should not
now be paid off in gold.
"But _you_," exclaims Cobbett [Letter to Mr. Western (_Weekly Register_,
November 23, 1822)], "what can induce you to stickle for the Pitt system
[i.e. paper-money]? I will tell you what it is: you loved the _high
prices_, and the domination that they gave you.... Besides this, you
think that the _boroughs can be preserved_ by a return to paper-money,
and along with them the hare-and-pheasant law and justice. You loved the
glorious times of paper-money, and you want them back again. You think
that they could go on for ever.... The bill of 1819 was really a great
relaxation of the Pitt system, and when you are crying out _spoliation_
and _confiscation_, when you are bawling out so lustily about the robbery
committed on you by the fund-holders and the placemen, and are praising
the infernal Pitt system at the same time, ... you say they are
receiving, the fund-vagabonds in particular, _more_ than they ought." It
is evident that Byron's verse is a reverberation of Cobbett's prose.]
[336] [Petitions were presented by the inhabitants of St. Andrew,
Holborn; St. Botolf, Bishopsgate; and St. Gregory by St. Paul, to the
Court of Common Council, against a tithe-charge of 2s, 9d. in the pound
on their annual rents.--_Morning Chronicle_, November 1, 1822.]
[337] Lines 614-657 are not in the MS.
[338] {573}[The Symplegades, or "justling rocks," Ovid's _instabiles
Cyaneae_, were supposed to crush the ships which sailed between them.]
[339] [Alcina, the personification of carnal pleasure in the _Orlando
Furioso_, is the counterpart of Homer's _Circe_. "She enjoyed her lovers
for a time, and then changed them into trees, stones, fountains, or
beasts, as her fancy dictated." (See Ariosto, _Orlando Furioso_, vi. 35,
_seq_.)]