Byron had certainly read the selections from
Marlowe's _Tamburlaine the Great_, in Lamb's _Specimens of English
Dramatic Poets_.
Marlowe's _Tamburlaine the Great_, in Lamb's _Specimens of English
Dramatic Poets_.
Byron
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" (?
? ? ? ? ? [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? 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_.
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" (?
? ? ? ? ? [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? 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_.
