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.