The Works of Lord Byron Volume II Part 81

"This vocal performance sounds best at a great distance, and is then inexpressibly charming, as it only fulfills its design in the sentiment of remoteness. It is plaintive, but not dismal in its sound, and at times it is scarcely possible to refrain from tears. My companion, who otherwise was not a very delicately organised person, said quite unexpectedly: E singolare come quel canto intenerisce, e molto piu quando lo cantano meglio.

"I was told that the women of Libo, the long row of islands that divides the Adriatic from the Lagoons,[555] particularly the women of the extreme districts of Malamocca and Palestrina, sing in like manner the works of Ta.s.so to these and similar tunes.

"They have the custom, when their husbands are fishing out at sea, to sit along the sh.o.r.e in the evenings and vociferate these songs, and continue to do so with great violence, till each of them can distinguish the responses of her own husband at a distance."[556]

The love of music and of poetry distinguishes all cla.s.ses of Venetians, even amongst the tuneful sons of Italy. The city itself can occasionally furnish respectable audiences for two and even three opera-houses at a time; and there are few events in private life that do not call forth a printed and circulated sonnet. Does a physician or a lawyer take his degree, or a clergyman preach his maiden sermon, has a surgeon performed an operation, would a harlequin announce his departure or his benefit, are you to be congratulated on a marriage, or a birth, or a lawsuit, the Muses are invoked to furnish the same number of syllables, and the individual triumphs blaze abroad in virgin white or party-coloured placards on half the corners of the capital. The last curtsy of a favourite "prima donna" brings down a shower of these poetical tributes from those upper regions, from which, in our theatres, nothing but cupids and snowstorms are accustomed to descend. There is a poetry in the very life of a Venetian, which, in its common course, is varied with those surprises and changes so recommendable in fiction, but so different from the sober monotony of northern existence; amus.e.m.e.nts are raised into duties, duties are softened into amus.e.m.e.nts, and every object being considered as equally making a part of the business of life, is announced and performed with the same earnest indifference and gay a.s.siduity. The Venetian gazette constantly closes its columns with the following triple advertis.e.m.e.nt:--

_Charade._

Exposition of the most Holy Sacrament in the church of St.----

_Theatres_.

St. Moses, opera.

St. Benedict, a comedy of characters.

St. Luke, repose.

When it is recollected what the Catholics believe their consecrated wafer to be, we may perhaps think it worthy of a more respectable niche than between poetry and the playhouse.

3.

St. Mark yet sees his Lion where he stood Stand.

Stanza xi. line 5.

The Lion has lost nothing by his journey to the Invalides, but the gospel which supported the paw that is now on a level with the other foot. The horses also are returned [A.D. 1815] to the ill-chosen spot whence they set out, and are, as before, half hidden under the porch window of St. Mark's Church. Their history, after a desperate struggle, has been satisfactorily explored. The decisions and doubts of Erizzo and Zanetti, and lastly, of the Count Leopold Cicognara, would have given them a Roman extraction, and a pedigree not more ancient than the reign of Nero. But M. de Schlegel stepped in to teach the Venetians the value of their own treasures; and a Greek vindicated, at last and for ever, the pretension of his countrymen to this n.o.ble production[557]. M.

Mustoxidi has not been left without a reply; but, as yet, he has received no answer. It should seem that the horses are irrevocably Chian, and were transferred to Constantinople by Theodosius. Lapidary writing is a favourite play of the Italians, and has conferred reputation on more than one of their literary characters. One of the best specimens of Bodoni's typography is a respectable volume of inscriptions, all written by his friend Pacciaudi. Several were prepared for the recovered horses. It is to be hoped the best was not selected, when the following words were ranged in gold letters above the cathedral porch:--

QUATUOR. EQUORUM. SIGNA. A. VENETIS. BYZANTIO.

CAPTA. AD. TEMP. D. MAR. A. R. S. MCCIV. POSITA.

QUAE. HOSTILIS. CUPIDITAS. A. MDCCIIIC. ABSTULERAT.

FRANC. I. IMP. PACIS. ORBI. DATAE. TROPHAEUM. A.

MDCCCXV. VICTOR. REDUXIT.

Nothing shall be said of the Latin, but it may be permitted to observe, that the injustice of the Venetians in transporting the horses from Constantinople [A.D. 1204] was at least equal to that of the French in carrying them to Paris [A.D. 1797], and that it would have been more prudent to have avoided all allusions to either robbery. An apostolic prince should, perhaps, have objected to affixing over the princ.i.p.al entrance of a metropolitan church an inscription having a reference to any other triumphs than those of religion. Nothing less than the pacification of the world can excuse such a solecism.

4.

The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns-- An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt.

Stanza xii. lines 1 and 2.

After many vain efforts on the part of the Italians entirely to throw off the yoke of Frederic Barbarossa, and as fruitless attempts of the Emperor to make himself absolute master throughout the whole of his Cisalpine dominions, the b.l.o.o.d.y struggles of four-and-twenty years were happily brought to a close in the city of Venice. The articles of a treaty had been previously agreed upon between Pope Alexander III. and Barbarossa; and the former having received a safe-conduct, had already arrived at Venice from Ferrara, in company with the amba.s.sadors of the King of Sicily and the consuls of the Lombard League. There still remained, however, many points to adjust, and for several days the peace was believed to be impracticable. At this juncture, it was suddenly reported that the Emperor had arrived at Chioza, a town fifteen miles from the capital. The Venetians rose tumultuously, and insisted upon immediately conducting him to the city. The Lombards took the alarm, and departed towards Treviso. The Pope himself was apprehensive of some disaster if Frederic should suddenly advance upon him, but was rea.s.sured by the prudence and address of Sebastian Ziani, the Doge. Several emba.s.sies pa.s.sed between Chioza and the capital, until, at last, the Emperor, relaxing somewhat of his pretensions, "laid aside his leonine ferocity, and put on the mildness of the lamb."[558]

On Sat.u.r.day, the 23rd of July, in the year 1177, six Venetian galleys transferred Frederic, in great pomp, from Chioza to the island of Lido, a mile from Venice. Early the next morning, the Pope, accompanied by the Sicilian amba.s.sadors, and by the envoys of Lombardy, whom he had recalled from the main land, together with a great concourse of people, repaired from the patriarchal palace to St. Mark's Church, and solemnly absolved the Emperor and his partisans from the excommunication p.r.o.nounced against him. The Chancellor of the Empire, on the part of his master, renounced the anti-popes and their schismatic adherents.

Immediately the Doge, with a great suite both of the clergy and laity, got on board the galleys, and waiting on Frederic, rowed him in mighty state from the Lido to the capital. The Emperor descended from the galley at the quay of the Piazzetta. The Doge, the patriarch, his bishops and clergy, and the people of Venice with their crosses and their standards, marched in solemn procession before him to the church of St. Mark. Alexander was seated before the vestibule of the basilica, attended by his bishops and cardinals, by the patriarch of Aquileja, by the archbishops and bishops of Lombardy, all of them in state, and clothed in their church robes. Frederic approached--"moved by the Holy Spirit, venerating the Almighty in the person of Alexander, laying aside his imperial dignity, and throwing off his mantle, he prostrated himself at full length at the feet of the Pope. Alexander, with tears in his eyes, raised him benignantly from the ground, kissed him, blessed him; and immediately the Germans of the train sang with a loud voice, 'We praise thee, O Lord.' The Emperor then taking the Pope by the right hand, led him to the church, and having received his benediction, returned to the ducal palace."[559] The ceremony of humiliation was repeated the next day. The Pope himself, at the request of Frederic, said ma.s.s at St. Mark's. The Emperor again laid aside his imperial mantle, and taking a wand in his hand, officiated as _verger_, driving the laity from the choir, and preceding the pontiff to the altar.

Alexander, after reciting the gospel, preached to the people. The Emperor put himself close to the pulpit in the att.i.tude of listening; and the pontiff, touched by this mark of his attention (for he knew that Frederic did not understand a word he said), commanded the patriarch of Aquileja to translate the Latin discourse into the German tongue. The creed was then chanted. Frederic made his oblation, and kissed the Pope's feet, and, ma.s.s being over, led him by the hand to his white horse. He held the stirrup, and would have led the horse's rein to the water side, had not the Pope accepted of the inclination for the performance, and affectionately dismissed him with his benediction. Such is the substance of the account left by the archbishop of Salerno, who was present at the ceremony, and whose story is confirmed by every subsequent narration. It would be not worth so minute a record, were it not the triumph of liberty as well as of superst.i.tion. The states of Lombardy owed to it the confirmation of their privileges; and Alexander had reason to thank the Almighty, who had enabled an infirm, unarmed old man to subdue a terrible and potent sovereign.[560]

5.

Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo!

Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe.

Stanza xii. lines 8 and 9.

The reader will recollect the exclamation of the Highlander, "_Oh, for one hour of Dundee_!" Henry Dandolo, when elected Doge, in 1192, was eighty-five years of age. When he commanded the Venetians at the taking of Constantinople, he was consequently ninety-seven years old. At this age he annexed the fourth and a half of the whole empire of Romania,[561] for so the Roman empire was then called, to the t.i.tle and to the territories of the Venetian Doge. The three-eighths of this empire were preserved in the diplomas until the Dukedom of Giovanni Dolfino, who made use of the above designation in the year 1357.[562]

Dandolo led the attack on Constantinople in person. Two ships, the Paradise and the Pilgrim, were tied together, and a drawbridge or ladder let down from their higher yards to the walls. The Doge was one of the first to rush into the city. Then was completed, said the Venetians, the prophecy of the Erythraean sibyl:--"A gathering together of the powerful shall be made amidst the waves of the Adriatic, under a blind leader; they shall beset the goat--they shall profane Byzantium--they shall blacken her buildings--her spoils shall be dispersed; a new goat shall bleat until they have measured out and run over fifty-four feet nine inches and a half."[563] Dandolo died on the first day of June, 1205, having reigned thirteen years six months and five days, and was buried in the church of St. Sophia, at Constantinople. Strangely enough it must sound, that the name of the rebel apothecary who received the Doge's sword, and annihilated the ancient government, in 1796-7, was Dandolo.

6.

But is not Doria's menace come to pa.s.s?

Are they not _bridled?_ Stanza xiii. lines 3 and 4.

After the loss of the battle of Pola, and the taking of Chioza on the 16th of August, 1379, by the united armament of the Genoese and Francesco da Carrara, Signor of Padua, the Venetians were reduced to the utmost despair. An emba.s.sy was sent to the conquerors with a blank sheet of paper, praying them to prescribe what terms they pleased, and leave to Venice only her independence. The Prince of Padua was inclined to listen to these proposals; but the Genoese, who, after the victory at Pola, had shouted, "To Venice! to Venice! and long live St. George!"

determined to annihilate their rival; and Peter Doria, their commander-in-chief, returned this answer to the suppliants: "On G.o.d's faith, gentlemen of Venice, ye shall have no peace from the Signer of Padua, nor from our commune of Genoa, until we have first put a rein upon those unbridled horses of yours, that are upon the porch of your evangelist St. Mark. When we have bridled them we shall keep you quiet.

And this is the pleasure of us and of our commune. As for these, my brothers of Genoa, that you have brought with you to give up to us, I will not have them: take them back; for in a few days hence, I shall come and let them out of prison myself, both these and all the others"

[p. 727, E. _vide infra_]. In fact, the Genoese did advance as far as Malamocco, within five miles of the capital; but their own danger, and the pride of their enemies, gave courage to the Venetians, who made prodigious efforts, and many individual sacrifices, all of them carefully recorded by their historians. Vettor Pisani was put at the head of thirty-four galleys. The Genoese broke up from Malamocco, and retired to Chioza in October; but they again threatened Venice, which was reduced to extremities. At this time, the 1st of January, 1380, arrived Carlo Zeno, who had been cruising on the Genoese coast with fourteen galleys. The Venetians were now strong enough to besiege the Genoese. Doria was killed on the 22nd of January, by a stone bullet, one hundred and ninety-five pounds' weight, discharged from a bombard called the Trevisan. Chioza was then closely invested; five thousand auxiliaries, among whom were some English condottieri, commanded by one Captain Ceccho, joined the Venetians. The Genoese, in their turn, prayed for conditions, but none were granted, until, at last, they surrendered at discretion; and, on the 24th of June, 1380, the Doge Contarini made his triumphal entry into Chioza. Four thousand prisoners, nineteen galleys, many smaller vessels and barks, with all the ammunition and arms, and outfit of the expedition, fell into the hands of the conquerors, who, had it not been for the inexorable answer of Doria, would have gladly reduced their dominion to the city of Venice. An account of these transactions is found in a work called _The War of Chioza_,[564] written by Daniel Chinazzo, who was in Venice at the time.

7.

Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must Too oft remind her who and what enthrals.

Stanza xv. lines 7 and 8.

The population of Venice, at the end of the seventeenth century, amounted to nearly two hundred thousand souls. At the last census, taken two years ago [1816], it was no more than about one hundred and three thousand; and it diminishes daily. The commerce and the official employments, which were to be the unexhausted source of Venetian grandeur, have both expired.[565] Most of the patrician mansions are deserted, and would gradually disappear, had not the Government, alarmed by the demolition of seventy-two during the last two years, expressly forbidden this sad resource of poverty. Many remnants of the Venetian n.o.bility are now scattered, and confounded with the wealthier Jews upon the banks of the Brenta, whose Palladian palaces have sunk, or are sinking, in the general decay. Of the "gentiluomo Veneto," the name is still known, and that is all. He is but the shadow of his former self, but he is polite and kind. It surely may be pardoned to him if he is querulous. Whatever may have been the vices of the republic, and although the natural term of its existence may be thought by foreigners to have arrived in the due course of mortality, only one sentiment can be expected from the Venetians themselves. At no time were the subjects of the republic so unanimous in their resolution to rally round the standard of St. Mark, as when it was for the last time unfurled; and the cowardice and the treachery of the few patricians who recommended the fatal neutrality, were confined to the persons of the traitors themselves. The present race cannot be thought to regret the loss of their aristocratical forms, and too despotic government; they think only on their vanished independence. They pine away at the remembrance, and on this subject suspend for a moment their gay good humour. Venice may be said, in the words of the Scripture, "to die daily;" and so general and so apparent is the decline, as to become painful to a stranger, not reconciled to the sight of a whole nation expiring, as it were, before his eyes. So artificial a creation, having lost that principle which called it into life and supported its existence, must fall to pieces at once, and sink more rapidly than it rose. The abhorrence of slavery, which drove the Venetians to the sea, has, since their disaster, forced them to the land, where they may be at least overlooked amongst the crowd of dependents, and not present the humiliating spectacle of a whole nation loaded with recent chains. Their liveliness, their affability, and that happy indifference which const.i.tution alone can give (for philosophy aspires to it in vain), have not sunk under circ.u.mstances; but many peculiarities of costume and manner have by degrees been lost; and the n.o.bles, with a pride common to all Italians who have been masters, have not been persuaded to parade their insignificance. That splendour which was a proof and a portion of their power, they would not degrade into the trappings of their subjection.

They retired from the s.p.a.ce which they had occupied in the eyes of their fellow citizens; their continuance in which would have been a symptom of acquiescence, and an insult to those who suffered by the common misfortune. Those who remained in the degraded capital, might be said rather to haunt the scenes of their departed power, than to live in them. The reflection, "who and what enthrals," will hardly bear a comment from one who is, nationally, the friend and the ally of the conqueror. It may, however, be allowed to say thus much, that to those who wish to recover their independence, any masters must be an object of detestation; and it may be safely foretold that this unprofitable aversion will not have been corrected before Venice shall have sunk into the slime of her choked ca.n.a.ls.

8.

Watering the tree which bears his Lady's name With his melodious tears, he gave himself to Fame.

Stanza x.x.x. lines 8 and 9.

Thanks to the critical ac.u.men of a Scotchman, we now know as little of Laura as ever.[566] The discoveries of the Abbe de Sade, his triumphs, his sneers, can no longer instruct or amuse. We must not, however, think that these memoirs[567] are as much a romance as Belisarius or the Incas, although we are told so by Dr. Beattie, a great name, but a little authority.[568] His "labour" has not been in vain, notwithstanding his "love" has, like most other pa.s.sions, made him ridiculous.[569] The hypothesis which overpowered the struggling Italians, and carried along less interested critics in its current, is run out. We have another proof that we can never be sure that the paradox, the most singular, and therefore having the most agreeable and authentic air, will not give place to the re-established ancient prejudice.

It seems, then, first, that Laura was born, lived, died, and was buried, not in Avignon, but in the country. The fountains of the Sorga, the thickets of Cabrieres, may resume their pretensions, and the exploded _de la Bastie_ again be heard with complacency. The hypothesis of the Abbe had no stronger props than the parchment sonnet and medal found on the skeleton of the wife of Hugo de Sade, and the ma.n.u.script note to the _Virgil_ of Petrarch, now in the Ambrosian library. If these proofs were both incontestable, the poetry was written, the medal composed, cast, and deposited within the s.p.a.ce of twelve hours: and these deliberate duties were performed round the carca.s.s of one who died of the plague, and was hurried to the grave on the day of her death. These doc.u.ments, therefore, are too decisive: they prove not the fact, but the forgery.

Either the sonnet or the Virgilian note must be a falsification. The Abbe cites both as incontestably true; the consequent deduction is inevitable--they are both evidently false.[570]

Secondly, Laura was never married, and was a haughty virgin rather than that _tender and prudent_ wife who honoured Avignon, by making that town the theatre of an honest French pa.s.sion, and played off for one and twenty years her _little machinery_ of alternate favours and refusals[571] upon the first poet of the age. It was, indeed, rather too unfair that a female should be made responsible for eleven children upon the faith of a misinterpreted abbreviation, and the decision of a librarian.[572] It is, however, satisfactory to think that the love of Petrarch was not platonic. The happiness which he prayed to possess but once and for a moment was surely not of the mind,[573] and something so very real as a marriage project, with one who has been idly called a shadowy nymph, may be, perhaps, detected in at least six places of his own sonnets. The love of Petrarch was neither platonic nor poetical; and if in one pa.s.sage of his works he calls it "amore veementeissimo ma unico ed onesto," he confesses, in a letter to a friend, that it was guilty and perverse, that it absorbed him quite, and mastered his heart.

In this case, however, he was perhaps alarmed for the culpability of his wishes; for the Abbe de Sade himself, who certainly would not have been scrupulously delicate if he could have proved his descent from Petrarch as well as Laura, is forced into a stout defence of his virtuous grandmother. As far as relates to the poet, we have no security for the innocence, except perhaps in the constancy of his pursuit. He a.s.sures us in his epistle to posterity, that, when arrived at his fortieth year, he not only had in horror, but had lost all recollection and image of any "irregularity." But the birth of his natural daughter cannot be a.s.signed earlier than his thirty-ninth year; and either the memory or the morality of the poet must have failed him, when he forgot or was guilty of this _slip_.[574] The weakest argument for the purity of this love has been drawn from the permanence of its effects, which survived the object of his pa.s.sion. The reflection of M. de la Bastie, that virtue alone is capable of making impressions which death cannot efface, is one of those which everybody applauds, and everybody finds not to be true, the moment he examines his own breast or the records of human feeling.[575] Such apophthegms can do nothing for Petrarch or for the cause of morality, except with the very weak and the very young. He that has made even a little progress beyond ignorance and pupilage cannot be edified with anything but truth. What is called vindicating the honour of an individual or a nation, is the most futile, tedious, and uninstructive of all writing; although it will always meet with more applause than that sober criticism, which is attributed to the malicious desire of reducing a great man to the common standard of humanity. It is, after all, not unlikely that our historian was right in retaining his favourite hypothetic salvo, which secures the author, although it scarcely saves the honour of the still unknown mistress of Petrarch.[576]

9.

They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died.

Stanza x.x.xi. line 1.

Petrarch retired to Arqua immediately on his return from the unsuccessful attempt to visit Urban V. at Rome, in the year 1370, and with the exception of his celebrated visit to Venice in company with Francesco Novello da Carrara, he appears to have pa.s.sed the four last years of his life between that charming solitude and Padua. For four months previous to his death he was in a state of continual languor, and in the morning of July the 19th, in the year 1374, was found dead in his library chair with his head resting upon a book. The chair is still shown amongst the precious relics of Arqua, which, from the uninterrupted veneration that has been attached to everything relative to this great man from the moment of his death to the present hour, have, it may be hoped, a better chance of authenticity than the Shaksperian memorials of Stratford-upon-Avon.

Arqua (for the last syllable is accented in p.r.o.nunciation, although the a.n.a.logy of the English language has been observed in the verse) is twelve miles from Padua, and about three miles on the right of the high road to Rovigo, in the bosom of the Euganean hills. After a walk of twenty minutes across a flat well-wooded meadow, you come to a little blue lake, clear but fathomless, and to the foot of a succession of acclivities and hills, clothed with vineyards and orchards, rich with fir and pomegranate trees, and every sunny fruit shrub. From the banks of the lake the road winds into the hills, and the church of Arqua is soon seen between a cleft where two ridges slope towards each other, and nearly enclose the village. The houses are scattered at intervals on the steep sides of these summits; and that of the poet is on the edge of a little knoll overlooking two descents, and commanding a view, not only of the glowing gardens in the dales immediately beneath, but of the wide plains, above whose low woods of mulberry and willow, thickened into a dark ma.s.s by festoons of vines, tall, single cypresses, and the spires of towns, are seen in the distance, which stretches to the mouths of the Po and the sh.o.r.es of the Adriatic. The climate of these volcanic hills is warmer, and the vintage begins a week sooner than in the plains of Padua. Petrarch is laid, for he cannot be said to be buried, in a sarcophagus of red marble, raised on four pilasters on an elevated base, and preserved from an a.s.sociation with meaner tombs. It stands conspicuously alone, but will be soon overshadowed by four lately planted laurels. Petrarch's Fountain, for here everything is Petrarch's, springs and expands itself beneath an artificial arch, a little below the church, and abounds plentifully, in the driest season, with that soft water which was the ancient wealth of the Euganean hills. It would be more attractive, were it not, in some seasons, beset with hornets and wasps. No other coincidence could a.s.similate the tombs of Petrarch and Archilochus. The revolutions of centuries have spared these sequestered valleys, and the only violence which has been offered to the ashes of Petrarch was prompted, not by hate, but veneration. An attempt was made to rob the sarcophagus of its treasure, and one of the arms was stolen by a Florentine through a rent which is still visible. The injury is not forgotten, but has served to identify the poet with the country where he was born, but where he would not live. A peasant boy of Arqua being asked who Petrarch was, replied, "that the people of the parsonage knew all about him, but that he only knew that he was a Florentine."

Mr. Forsyth[577] was not quite correct in saying that Petrarch never returned to Tuscany after he had once quitted it when a boy. It appears he did pa.s.s through Florence on his way from Parma to Rome, and on his return in the year 1350, and remained there long enough to form some acquaintance with its most distinguished inhabitants. A Florentine gentleman, ashamed of the aversion of the poet for his native country, was eager to point out this trivial error in our accomplished traveller, whom he knew and respected for an extraordinary capacity, extensive erudition, and refined taste, joined to that engaging simplicity of manners which has been so frequently recognised as the surest, though it is certainly not an indispensable, trait of superior genius.