XX. "She came, with mother and with sire- They bore me to the nearest hut- His rage, refining on my pain, Sent me forth to the wilderness, Bound, naked, bleeding, and alone, To pass the desert to a throne, What mortal his own doom may guess? (1) Charles, having perceived that the day was lost, and that his only chance of safety was to retire with the utmost precipitation, suffered himself to be mounted on horseback, and with the remains of his army fled to a place called Perewolochna, situated in the angle formed by the junction of the Vorskla and the Borysthenes. Here, accompanied by Mazeppa, and a few hundreds of his followers, Charles swam over the latter great river, and proceeding over a desolate country, in danger of perishing with hunger, at length reached the Bog, where he was kindly received by the Turkish pacha. The Russian envoy Let none despond, let none despair! May see our coursers graze at ease As I shall yield when safely there. (1) Comrades, good night!"-The Hetman threw His length beneath the oak-tree shade, With leafy couch already made, A bed nor comfortless nor new His eyes the hastening slumbers steep. The king had been an hour asleep.(2) at the Sublime Porte demanded that Mazeppa should be delivered up to Peter, but the old Hetman of the Cossacks escaped this fate by taking a disease which hastened his death." Barrow's Peter the Great, pp. 196-203.— L. E. (2) The copy of Mazeppa sent to this country by Lord Byron is in the handwriting of Theresa, Countess Guiccioli; and it is impossible not to suspect that the Poet had some circumstances of his own personal history in his mind, when he portrayed the fair Polish Theresa, her youthful lover, and the jealous rage of the old Count Palatine.— L. E. Morgante Maggiore. TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF PULCI. (1) ADVERTISEMENT. THE Morgante Maggiore, of the first canto of which this translation is offered, divides with the Orlando Innamorato the honour of having formed and suggested the style and story of Ariosto. The great defects of Boiardo were his treating too seriously the It was, (1) This translation was executed at Ravenna, in February, 1820, and first saw the light in the pages of the unfortu nate journal called The Liberal. The merit of it, as Lord Byron over and over states in his letters, consists in the wonderful verbum pro verbo closeness of the version. in fact, an exercise of skill in this art; and cannot be fairly estimated, without reference to the original Italian. Those who want full information, and clear philosophical views, as to the origin of the Romantic Poetry of the Italians, will do well to read at length an article on that subject, from the pen of the late Ugo Foscolo, in No. XLII. of the Quarterly Review. We extract from it the passage in which that learned writer applies himself more particularly to the Morgante of Pulci. After showing that all the poets of this class adopted, as the groundwork of their fictions, the old wild materials which had for ages formed the stock in trade of the professed story-tellers,-in those days a class of per sons holding the same place in Christendom, and more especially in italy, which their brothers still maintain all over the East,-Foscolo thus proceeds : "The customary forms of the narrative all find a place in romantic poetry such are,-the sententions reflections suggested by the matters which he has just related, or arising in anticipation of those which he is about to relate, and which the story-teller always opens when he resumes his recitations; his defence of his own merits against the attacks of rivals in trade; and his formal leave-taking when he parts from his audience, and invites them to meet him again on the morrow. This method of winding up each portion of the poem is a fa "The forms and materials of these popular stories were adopted by writers of a superior class, who considered the vulgar tales of their predecessors as blocks of marble finely tinted and variegated by the hand of nature, but which might afford a master-piece when tastefully worked and polished. The romantic poets treated the traditionary fictions just as Dante did the legends invented by the monks to i maintain their mastery over weak minds. He formed them into a pers which became the admiration of every age and nation: but Dante and Petrarca were poets who, though universally celebrated, were not universally understood. The learned found employment in writing com ments upon their poems; but the nation, without even excepting the higher ranks, knew them only by name. At the beginning of the fif teenth century, a few obscure authors began to write romances in prose and in rhyme, taking for their subject the wars of Charlemagne and Orlando, or sometimes the adventures of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. These works were so pleasing, that they were rapidly multiplied but the bards of romance cared little about style or versification.-they sought for adventures, and enchantments, and miracles. We here obtain at least a partial explanation of the rapid decline of Italian poetry, and the amazing corruption of the Italian language, which took place immediately after the death of Petrarch, and which proceeded from bad to worse until the era of Lorenzo de Medici. "It was then that Pulci composed his Morgante for the amusement lately sprung up in England. I allude to that of the ingenious Whistlecraft. The serious poems on Roncesvalles in the same language, and more particularly the excellent one of Mr. Merivale, are to be traced to the same source. It has never yet been decided entirely whether Pulci's intention was or was not to deride the religion which is one of his favourite topics. It appears to me, that such an intention would have been no less hazardous to the poet than to the priest, particularly in that age and country; and the permission to publish the poem, and its reception among the classics of Italy, prove that it neither was nor is so of Madonna Lucrezia, the mother of Lorenzo; and he used to recite E del mio Carlo imperador m'increbbe: And whilst he quotes the great historian Leonardo Aretino with "Pulci's versification is remarkably fluent. Yet he is deficient in E' disse: lo vo', Marsilio, che tu muoja "Here we have an emperor superintending the execution of a Macon t'abbatta come traditore, O disleale e ingiusto imperadore! A Caradoro e stato scritto, O Carlo, O Carlo! O Carlo! (e crollava la testa) "O Charles,' he cried, Charles, Charles!'-and as he cried King Caradore has ascertain'd the thing, interpreted. That he intended to ridicule the monastic life, and suffered his imagination to play with the simple dulness of his converted giant, seems evident enough; but surely it were as unjust to accuse him of irreligion on this account, as to denounce FieldBarnabas, Thwackum, ing for his Parson Adams, Supple, and the Ordinary in Jonathan Wild,-or Scott, for the exquisite use of his Covenanters in the Tales of my Landlord. In the following translation I have used the liberty of the original with the proper names; as Pulci uses Gan, Ganellon, or Ganellone; Carlo, Carlomagno, or such buffoonery could not have been introduced into a composition This simple elucidation of the causes of the poetical character of the Morgante has been overlooked by the critics; and they have therefore disputed with great earnestness during the last two centuries, whether the Morgante is written in jest or earnest; and whether Pulci is not an atheist, who wrote in verse for the express purpose of scoffing at all religion. Mr. Merivale inclines, in his Orlando in Roncesvalles, to the opinion of M. Ginguené, that the Morgante is decidedly to be considered as a burlesque poem, and a satire against Yet Mr. Merivale himself acknowledges that the Christian religion it is wound up with a tragical effect, and dignified by religious sen- 326 Carlomano; Rondel, or Rondello, etc. as it suits his convenience; so has the translator. In other respects the version is faithful, to the best of the translator's ability, in combining his interpretation of the one language with the not very easy task of reducing it to the same versification in the other. The reader, on comparing it with the original, is requested to remember that the antiquated language of Pulci, however pure, is not easy to the generality of Italians themselves, from its great mixture of Tuscan proverbs; and he may therefore be more indulgent to the present attempt. How far the translator has succeeded, and whether or no he shall continue the work, are questions which the public will decide. He was induced whole extent, although, like the earth, it has the form of a globe. Mankind in those ages were much more ignorant than now. Hercules would blush at this day for having fixed his columns. Vessels will soon pass far beyond them. They may soon reach another hemisphere, because every thing tends to its centre; in like manner, as by a divine mystery, the earth is suspended in the midst of the stars; here below are cities and empires, which were ancient. The inhabitants of those regions were called Antipodes. They have plants and animals as well as you, and wage wars as well as you.'-Morgante, c. xxv. st. 229, etc. "The more we consider the traces of ancient science, which break in transient flashes through the darkness of the middle ages, and which gradually re-illuminated the horizon, the more shall we be disposed to adopt the hypothesis suggested by Bailly, and supported by him with seductive eloquence. He maintained that all the acquire ments of the Greeks and Romans had been transmitted to them as the wrecks and fragments of the knowledge once possessed by primæval nations, by empires of sages and philosophers, who were afterwards swept from the face of the globe by some overwhelming catastrophe. His theory may be considered as extravagant; but if the literary productions of the Romans were not yet extant, it would seem incredible that, after the lapse of a few centuries, the civilisation of the Augustan age could have been succeeded in Italy by such barbarity. The Italians were so ignorant, that they forgot their family names; and before the eleventh century individuals were known only by their Christian names. They had an indistinct idea, in the middle ages, of the existence of the antipodes; but it was a reminiscence of ancient knowledge. Dante has indicated the number and position of the stars composing the polar constellation of the Austral hemisphere. At the same time he tells us, that when Lucifer was hurled from the celestial regions, the arch-devil transfixed the globe; half his body remained on our side of the centre of the earth, and half on the other side. The shock given to the earth by his fall drove a great portion of the waters of the ocean to the southern he misphere, and only one high mountain remained uncovered, upon which Dante places his purgatory. As the fall of Lucifer happened before the creation of Adam, it is evident that Dante did not admit that the southern hemisphere had ever been inhabited; but, about thirty years afterwards, Petrarch, who was better versed in the an cient writers, ventured to hint that the sun shone upon mortals who were unknown to us: Nella stagion che il ciel rapido inchina "In the course of half a century after Petrarch, another step was His faithful steed, that long had served him well And, "O my much-loved steed, my generous friend, Of all thy toils, and thy brave spirit fled? O pardon me, if e'er I did offend With hasty wrong that mild and faithful head!" Just then, his eyes a momentary light Flash'd quick;-then closed again in endless night.” Bright with eternal youth and fadeless bloom, With her whom Sinai's holy hills adore, to make the experiment partly by his love for, and partial intercourse with, the Italian language, of which it is so easy to acquire a slight knowledge, and with which it is so nearly impossible for a foreigner to become accurately conversant. The Italian language is like a capricious beauty, who accords her smiles to all, her favours to few, and sometimes least to those also to present in an English dress a part at least of who have courted her longest. The translator wished a poem never yet rendered into a northern language; at the same time that it has been the original of some Alps, as well as of those recent experiments in poetry of the most celebrated productions on this side of the in England which have been already mentioned. (1) Crown'd with fresh flowers, whose colour and perfume "Whilst the soul of Orlando was soaring to heaven, a soft and plaintive strain was heard, and angelic voices joined in celestial harmony. They sang the psalm, When Israel went out of Egypt;" and the singers were known to be angels from the trembling of their wings. Poi si senti con un suon dolce e fioco 'In exitu Israel, cantar, de Ægypto, Sentito fu degli angeli solenne Che si conobbe al tremolar le penne.' "Dante has inserted passages from the Vulgate in his Divina Commedia; and Petrarch, the most religious of poets, quotes Scripture even when he is courting. Yet they were not accused of im piety. Neither did Pulci incur the danger of a posthumous excommunication until after the Reformation, when Pius V. (a Dominican, who was turned into a saint by a subsequent pope) promoted the welfare of holy mother church by burning a few wicked books, and hanging a few troublesome authors. The notion that Pulci was in the odour of heresy influenced the opinion of Milton, who only speaks of the Morgante as a sportful romance.' Milton was ansious to prove that Catholic writers had ridiculed popish divines, and that the Bible had been subjected to private judgment, notwithstanding the popes had prohibited the reading of it. His ardour did not allow him to stop and examine whether this prohibition might not be posterior to the death of Pulci. Milton had studied Pulei to advantage. The knowledge which he ascribes to his devils, their despairing repentance, the lofty sentiments which he bestows upon some of them, and, above all, the principle that, notwithstanding their crime and its punishment, they retain the grandeur and perfection of angelic nature, are all to be found in the Morgante as well as in Paradise Lost. Ariosto and Tasso have imitated other passages. When great poets borrow from their inferiors in genius, they turn their acquisitions to such advantage that it is difficult to detect their thefts, and still more difficult to blame them. "The poem is filled with kings, knights, giants, and devils. There are many battles and many duels. Wars rise out of wars, and empires are conquered in a day. Pulci treats us with plenty of magic aud enchantment. His love-adventures are not peculiarly interesting; and, with the exception of four or five leading personages, his characters are of no moment. The fable turns wholly upon the hatred which Ganellon, the felon knight of Maganza, bears towards Orlando and the rest of the Christian Paladins. Charlemagne is easily prac tised upon by Ganellon, his prime confidant and man of business, So he treats Orlando and his friends in the most scurvy manner imaginable, and sends them out to hard service in the wars against France. Ganellon is despatched to Spain to treat with King Marsilius, being also instructed to obtain the cession of a kingdom for Orlando; but he concerts a treacherous device with the Spaniards, and Orlando is killed at the battle of Roncesvalles. The intrigues of Ganellon, his spite, his patience, his obstinacy, his dissimulation, his affected humility, and his inexhaustible powers of intrigue, are admirably depicted and his character constitutes the chief and finest feature in the poem. Charlemagne is a worthy monarch, but easily gulled. Orlando is a real hero, chaste and disinterested, and who fights in good earnest for the propagation of the faith. He bap tizes the giant Morgante, who afterwards serves him like a faithful squire. There is another giant, whose name is Margutte. Morgante falis in with Margutte, and they become sworn brothers. Margutte is a very infidel giant, ready to confess his failings, and full of drollery. He sets all a-laughing, readers, giants, devils, and heroes; and he finishes his career by laughing till he bursts." The reader is referred to Moore's Life of Lord Byron, for his letters written when he was engaged on his version of the Morgante. Great part of them is occupied with anxious endeavours to ascertain whether usbergo means a helmet or a cuirass; a point on which the slightest knowledge of German would have been sufficient to make him easy. Usbergo is only another form of our own hauberk, and both are manifest corruptions of the German halsberg, i. e. covering of the neck.-L. E. (1) "About the Morgante Maggiore, I won't have a line MORGANTE MAGGIORE. CANTO I. I. In the beginning was the word next God; Of thinking, and without him nought could be: Shall help my famous, worthy, old song through. II. And thou, O Virgin! daughter, mother, bride, Of the same Lord, who gave to you each key Of heaven, and hell, and every thing beside, The day thy Gabriel said "All hail!" to thee, Since to thy servants pity's ne'er denied, With flowing rhymes, a pleasant style and free, Be to my verses then benignly kind, And to the end illuminate my mind. III. "Twas in the season when sad Philomel Weeps with her sister, who remembers and Deplores the ancient woes which both befell, And makes the nymphs enamour'd, to the hand Of Phaeton, by Phoebus loved so well, His car (but temper'd by his sire's command) Was given, and on the horizon's verge just now Appear'd, so that Tithonus scratch'd his brow: IV. When I prepared my bark first to obey, As it should still obey, the helm, my mind, And carry prose or rhyme, and this my lay Of Charles the Emperor, whom you will find By several pens already praised; but they Who to diffuse his glory were inclined, For all that I can see in prose or verse, Have understood Charles badly, and wrote worse. V. Leonardo Aretino said already, That if, like Pepin, Charles had had a writer Of genius quick, and diligently steady, No hero would in history look brighter; He in the cabinet being always ready, And in the field a most victorious fighter, Who for the church and Christian faith had wrought, Certes, far more than yet is said or thought. VI. You still may see at Saint Liberatore The abbey, no great way from Manopell, omitted. It may circulate or it may not, but all the criticism on earth sha'nt touch a line, unless it be because it is badly translated. Now you say, and I say, and others say, that the translation is a good one, and so it shall go to press as it is. Pulci must answer for his own irreligion: 1 answer for the translation only." Lord B. to Mr. Murray, Ravenna, 1820. "The Morgante is the best translation that ever was or will be made."-Lord B. to Mr. Moore. Pisa, 1822. "The self-will of Lord Byron was in no point more conspicuous than in the determination with which he thus persisted in giving the preference to one or two works of his own which, in the eyes of all other persons, were most decided failures. Of this class was the translation from Pulci so frequently mentioned by him, which appeared afterwards in The Liberal, and which, though thus rescued from the fate of remaining unpublished, must for ever, I fear, submit to the doom of being unread." Moore.-P. E. XII. "A thousand times I've been about to say, Orlando too presumptuously goes on; Here are we, counts, kings, dukes, to own thy sway, But he has too much credit near the throne, XIII. "And even at Aspramont thou didst begin To let him know he was a gallant knight, And by the fount did much the day to win; But I know who that day had won the fight If it had not for good Gherardo been: The victory was Almonte's else; his sight He kept upon the standard, and the laurels In fact and fairness are his earning, Charles. XIV. "If thou remember'st being in Gascony, When there advanced the nations out of Spain, Had not his valour driven them back again. ""Tis fit thy grandeur should dispense relief, So that each here may have his proper part, For the whole court is more or less in grief: Perhaps thou deem'st this lad a Mars in heart?" Orlando one day heard this speech in brief, As by himself it chanced he sate apart: And with the sword he would have murder'd Gan, And thus at length they separated were. Wanted but little to have slain him there; Then forth alone from Paris went the chief, And burst and madden'd with disdain and grief. XVII. From Ermellina, consort of the Dane, He took Cortana, and then took Rondell, And on towards Brara prick'd him o'er the plain; And when she saw him coming, Aldabelle Stretch'd forth her arms to clasp her lord again: Orlando, in whose brain all was not well, As "Welcome, my Orlando, home," she said, Raised up his sword to smite her on the head. XVIII. Like him a fury counsels; his revenge On Gan in that rash act he seem'd to take, XIX. Then full of wrath departed from the place, The traitor Gan remember'd by the way; An abbey which in a lone desert lay, The abbot was call'd Clermont, and by blood XXI. The monks could pass the convent gate no more, Nor leave their cells for water or for wood; Orlando knock'd, but none would ope, before Unto the prior it at length seem'd good; Enter'd, he said that he was taught to adore Him who was born of Mary's holiest blood, And was baptized a Christian; and then show'd How to the abbey he had found his road. XXII. Said the abbot, "You are welcome; what is mine And that you may not, cavalier, conceive To be rusticity, you shall receive "When hither to inhabit first we came These mountains, albeit that they are obscure, As you perceive, yet without fear or blame They seem'd to promise an asylum sure: From savage brutes alone, too fierce to tame, "T was fit our quiet dwelling to secure; But now, if here we'd stay, we needs must guard Against domestic beasts with watch and ward. XXIV. "These make us stand, in fact, upon the watch; "Our ancient fathers living the desert in, For just and holy works were duly fed; Think not they lived on locusts sole, 'tis certain That manna was rain'd down from heaven instead; But here 'tis fit we keep on the alert in [bread, Our bounds, or taste the stones shower'd down for From off yon mountain daily raining faster, And flung by Passamont and Alabaster. |