Will now descend the stairs by which I mounted My services have called me up those steps, The malice of my foes will drive me down them. Install'd, and traversed these same halls, from which A corse-a corse, it might be, fighting for them But come; my son and I will go together He to his grave, and I to pray for mine. Chief of the Ten. What! thus in public? Elected, and so will I be deposed. I was publicly The sound! I heard it once, but once before, And that is five and thirty years ago! Even then I was not young. Bar. Doge. Sit down, my lord! "T is the knell of my poor boy! I pray you sit. [now. My heart aches bitterly. Bar. Doge. No; my seat here has been a throne till Marina! let us go. Doge. 'Tis said that our Venetian crystal has Such pure antipathy to poisons as To burst, if aught of venom touches it. You bore this goblet, and it is not broken. Doge. [you, Then it is false, or you are true. Mar. Doge. The people! There 's no people, you well Else Doge. You talk wildly, and You speak in passion, Depart. Ah! now you look as look'd my husband! You have reason. I have spoken much Of yours, although the law does not, nor will. Bar. [The death of the elder Foscari took place not at the palace, but in his own house; not immediately on his descent from the Giants' Stairs, but five days afterwards. "En entendant," says M. de Sismondi, “le son des cloches, qui sonnaient en actions de graces pour l'élection de son successeur, il mourut subitement d'une hémorrhagie causée par une veine qui s'éclata dans sa poitrine."-" Before I was sixteen years All, except Lor., answer, Yes. Chief of the Ten. Heaven's peace be with him! (A soul by whom you have increased your empire, A princely funeral will be your reproach, And not his honour. [By a decree of the Council, the trappings of supreme power of which the Doge had divested himself while living, were restored to him when dead; and he was interred, with dual magnificence, in the church of the Minorites, the new Doge attending as a mourner. See DARU.] The Venetians appear to have had a particular turn for breaking the hearts of their Doges. The following is another instance of the kind in the Doge Marco Barbarigo: he was ceeded by his brother Agostino Barbarigo, whose chief merit is here mentioned." Le doge, blessé de trouver constamment un contradicteur et un censeur si amer dans son frère, lui dit un jour en plein conseil: Messire Augustin, vous faites tout votre possible pour hâter ma mort; vous Vous flattez de me succéder; mais, si les autres vous connaissent aussi-bien que je vous connais, ils n'auront garde de vous élire Là-dessus il se leva, ému de colère, rentra dans son appartement, et mourut quelques jours après. frère, contre lequel il s'était emporté, fut précisément le saccesseur qu'on lui donna. C'était un mérite dont on aimait à tenir compte; surtout à un parent, de s'ètre mis en opposition avec le chef de la république."-DARU, Hist. de Venise, vol. ii. p. 533. Ce L'ha pagata." An historical fact. See Hist. de Venise, par P. Daru, t. ii. p. 411-[Here the original MS. ends. The two lines which follow were added by Mr. Gifford. In the margin of the MS. Lord Byron has written," If the last line should appear obscure to those who do not recollect the historical fact, mentioned in the first act, of Loredano's inscription in his book of Doge Foscari, debtor for the deaths of my father and uncle,' you may add the following lines to the conclusion of the last act : Chief of the Ten. For what has he repaid thee? To whom ye speak, and perils of such speech? Mar. I know the former better than yourselves; The latter-like yourselves; and can face both. Wish you more funerals? Bar. Heed not her rash words; Her circumstances must excuse her bearing. Chief of the Ten. We will not note them down. Bar. (turning to Lor. who is writing upon his tablets). What art thou writing, With such an earnest brow, upon thy tablets? Lor. (pointing to the Doge's body). That he has paid me ! 3 Chief of the Ten. What debt did he owe you? And father's brother's death-by his son's and own! Ask Gifford about this."-E.] 4 [Considered as poems, we confess that "Sardanapalus" and The Two Foscari" appear to us to be rather heavy, verbose, and inelegant-deficient in the passion and energy which belongs to Lord Byron's other writings-and still more in the richness of imagery, the originality of thought, and the sweetness of versification for which he used to be distinguished. They are for the most part solemn, prolix, and ostentatious-lengthened out by large preparations for catastrophes that never arrive, and tantalising us with slight specimens and glimpses of a higher interest scattered thinly up and down many weary pages of pompous declamation. Along with the concentrated pathos and homestruck sentiments of his former poetry, the noble author seems also we cannot imagine why to have discarded the spirited and melodious versification in which they were embodied, and to have formed to himself a measure equally remote from the spring and vigour of his former compositions, and from the softness and inflexibility of the ancient masters of the drama. There are some sweet lines, and many of great weight and energy; but the general march of the verse is cumbrous and unmusical. His lines do not vibrate like polished lances, at once strong and light, in the hands of his persons, but are wielded like clumsy batons in a bloodless affray. Instead of the graceful familiarity and idiomatical melodies of Shakspeare, it is apt, too, to fall into clumsy prose, in its approaches to the easy and colloquial style; and, in the loftier passages, is occasionally deformed by low and common images that harmonise but ill with the general solemnity of the diction.-JEFFREY.] [This drama was begun at Pisa in 1821, but was not published till January, 1824. Mr. Medwin says, "On my calling on Lord Byron one morning, he produced the Deformed Transformed.' Handing it to Shelley, he said Shelley, I have been writing a Faustish kind of drama tell me what you think of it. After reading it attentively, Shelley returned it. 'Well,' said Lord B., how do you like it?' Least,' replied he, of any thing I ever saw of yours. It is a bad imitation of Faust,' and besides, there are two entire lines of Southey's in it.' Lord Byron changed colour immediately, and asked hastily,' what lines?' Shelley repeated, They are in the And water shall see thee, And fear thee, and flee thee." Curse of Kehama. His Lordship instantly threw the poem into the fire. He seemed to feel no chagrin at seeing it consume—at least his countenance betrayed none, and his conversation became more gay and lively than usual. Whether it was hatred of Southey, or respect for Shelley's opinion, which made him commit the act that I considered a sort of suicide, was always doubtful to me. I was never more surprised than to see, two years afterwards, The Deformed Transformed' announced (supposing it to have perished at Pisa); but it seems that he must have had another copy of the manuscript, or that he had re-written it perhaps, without changing a word, except omitting the Keliama lines. His memory was remarkably retentive of his own writings. I believe he could have quoted almost every line he ever wrote." Mrs. Shelley, whose copy of " The Deformed Transformed" lies before us, has written as follows on the fly-leaf: — "This had long been a favourite subject with Lord Byron. I think that he mentioned it also in Switzerland. I copied ithe 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 Aikin's 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 re PART I. SCENE I. A Forest. Enter ARNOLD and his mother BERTHA. Bert. OUT, hunchback! Arn. Bert. Thou incubus ! I was born so, mother!4 Out, Thou nightmare! Of seven sons, The sole abortion ! Arn. Would that I had been so, And never seen the light! Bert. I would so too! But as thou hast - hence, hence- and do thy best! Arn. It bears its burthen; but, my heart! Will it Sustain that which you lay upon it, mother? I love, or, at the least, I loved you: nothing peated to me; lest I should hear it first from some one else. No action of Lord Byron's life- scarce a line he has written - but was influenced by his personal defect."] * [Published in 1803, the work of a Joshua Pickersgill, jun.] 3 [A clever anonymous critic thus sarcastically opens his notice of this poem:-"The reader has no doubt often heard of the Devil and Dr. Faustus: this is but a new birth of the same unrighteous couple, who are christened, however, by the noble hierophant who presides over the infernal ceremony, Julius Caesar and Count Arnold. The drama opens with a scene between the latter, who is to all appear ance a well-disposed young man, of a very deformed person, and his mother: this good lady, with somewhat less maternal piety about her than adorns the mother-ape in the fable, turns her dutiful incubus of a son out of doors to gather wood. Arnold, upon this, proceeds incontinently to kill himself, by falling, after the manner of Brutus, on his wood-knife: he is, however, piously dissuaded from this guilty act, by whom does the reader think? A monk, perhaps, or a methodist preacher? no; - but by the Devil himself, in the shape of a tall black man, who rises, like an African water-god, out of a fountain. To this stranger, after the exchange of a few sinister compliments, Arnold, without more ado, sells his soul, for the privilege of wearing the beautiful form of Achilles. In the midst of all this absurdity, we still, however, recognise the master-mind of our great poet : his bold and beautiful spirit flashes at intervals through the surrounding horrors, into which he has chosen to plunge after Goethe, his magnus Apollo."] 4 ["One of the few pages of Lord Byron's Memoranda,' which related to his early days, was 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, whether this drama was not indebted for its origin to this single recollec tion." Moore. "Lord Byron's own mother, when in ill humour with him, used to make the deformity in his foot the subject of taunts and reproaches. She would (we quote from a letter written by one of her relations in Scotland) pass from passionate caresses to the repulsion of actual disgust; then devour him with kisses again, and swear his eyes were as beautiful as his father's." Quar. Rev.] Save you, in nature, can love aught like me. Vile form-from the creation, as it hath The green bough from the forest. Yes I nursed thee, Because thou wert my first-born, and I knew not If there would be another unlike thee, That monstrous sport of nature. And gather wood! But get hence, I will but when I bring it, Speak to me kindly. Though my brothers are So beautiful and lusty, and as free As the free chase they follow, do not spurn me; Our milk has been the same. Arn. (solus). Oh mother! Her bidding; -wearily but willingly I would fulfil it, could I only hope A kind word in return. What shall I do? [ARNOLD begins to cut wood: in doing this he wounds one of his hands. My labour for the day is over now. Accursed be this blood that flows so fast; At home-What home? I have no home, no kin, To share their sports or pleasures. Must I bleed too Or that the devil, to whom they liken me, [ARNOLD goes to a spring, and stoops to wash They are right; and Nature's mirror shows me My horrid shadow-like a demon placed [He pauses. [This is now generally believed to be a vulgar error; the smallness of the animal's mouth rendering it incapable of the [ARNOLD places the knife in the ground, with And I can fall upon it. Yet one glance The fountain moves without a wind: but shall Arn. (holding out his wounded arm). Take it all. Stran. Not now. A few drops will suffice for this. [The Stranger takes some of ARNOLD's blood in his hand, and casts it into the fountain. Shadows of beauty! Shadows of power! Rise to your duty This is the hour! Walk lovely and pliant From the depth of this fountain, Bestrides the Hartz Mountain, I That our eyes may behold The model in air Of the form I will mould, Bright as the Iris When ether is spann'd; Such his desire is, [Pointing to ARNOLD. Demons who wore Or sophist of yore Or the shape of each victor, To each high Roman's picture Who breathed to destroy Shadows of beauty! Shadows of power! Up to your duty This is the hour! [hairs. Stran. His brow was girt with laurels more than I can but promise you his form his fame Stran. Then you are far more difficult to please [The Stranger approaches the fountain, and Be, that the man who shook the earth is gone, A little of your blood. This is a well-known German superstition — a gigantic shadow produced by reflection on the Brocken. [The Brocken is the name of the loftiest of the Hartz mountains, a picturesque range which lies in the kingdom of Hanover. From Stran. the earliest periods of authentic history, the Brocken has been the seat of the marvellous. For a description of the pheno menon alluded to by Lord Byron, see Sir David Brewster's "Natural Magic," p. 128.] |