CANTO THE THIRD. "Afin que cette application vous forçât de penser à autre chose; il n'y a en vérité de remède que celui-là et le temps." Lettre du Roi de Prusse à D'Alembert, Sept. 7, 1776. INTRODUCTION TO CANTO III. In a month from the appearance of "The Siege of Corinth,” and “Parasina,” Lord Byron wrote to Moore (March 8, 1816) that his poetical feelings began and ended with eastern countries, and that having exhausted the subject, he could make nothing of any other. When a restless spirit, satiated with the monotony of a stationary life, and, above all, anguish at the marriage of his early love, Miss Chaworth, sent him to rove in 1809, the effect was to inspire the two first Cantos of Childe Harold-the earliest poem worthy of his present name. Another domestic catastrophe-the refusal of his wife in Jan. 1816, to live with him any longer-and the consequent clamour which was raised against him, drove him, at the end of April, into a second and final exile. The poetical result was the same as before. The soil which, on the eve of starting, he declared to be exhausted, immediately threw out the richest vintage it had hitherto produced. He travelled through Flanders and the Rhine country to Switzerland, and there completed, before the end of June, the third Canto of Childe Harold. "It is," he says, a "fine indistinct piece of poetical desolation, and my favourite. I was half mad during the time of its composition, between metaphysics, mountains, lakes, love inextinguishable, thoughts unutterable, and the nightmare of my own delinqu ncies." All these subjects are depicted in his stanzas, which may be considered the poetical autobiography of perhaps the most melancholy period of his not less melancholy than glorious life. The notes of woe were extorted by his domestic misery; the metaphysics, which imparted an occasional mysticism to his strains, he owed to Shelley, whom he met at Geneva; and the admiration of this companion for Wordsworth was also the cause why Lord Byron wrote of the lakes and mountains in a spirit akin to that of the Rydal bard, though expressed in nobler and more animating terms. The third canto was bought by Mr. Murray for 1500 guineas, and published in August 1816. Since the appearance of its precursors, the mind of Lord Byron had gained in depth and energy. The descriptions of nature are grander, the reflections profounder and more impassioned, the words more burning and concise. The stanzas upon Waterloo, those on the thunderstorm in the mountains, and the characters of Rousseau, Voltaire, and Gibbon, are among the very finest passages in English verse. Yet so difficult is it to rekindle by a continuation the original enthusiasm, that many gave the palm to the previous cantos, and even Jeffrey did no more than express his confidence, that it would not be thought inferior and might probably be preferred. But a generous article by Sir Walter Scott, in the Quarterly Review, did justice both to the poem and its author- turned back the tide of obloquy which had set in against Lord Byron, and convinced the world that his genius was still on the ascendant Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child! But with a hope. Awaking with a start, The waters heave around me; and on high The winds lift up their voices: I depart, Whither I know not; but the hour's gone by When Albion's lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye. |