The Works of Lord Byron Volume III Part 17

[47] [See Dryden's _Cymon and Iphigenia_, lines 84, 85.]

[48] [The sequel of a temporary liaison formed by Lord Byron during his career in London, occasioned this impromptu. On the cessation of the connection, the fair one [Lady C. Lamb: see _Letters_, 1898, ii. 451]

called one morning at her quondam lover's apartments. His Lordship was from home; but finding _Vathek_ on the table, the lady wrote in the first page of the volume the words, "Remember me!" Byron immediately wrote under the ominous warning these two stanzas.--_Conversations of Lord Byron_, by Thomas Medwin, 1824, pp. 329, 330.

In Medwin's work the euphemisms _false_ and _fiend_ are represented by asterisks.]

[49] {60} ["To Bd., Feb. 22, 1813.

"'Remember thee,' nay--doubt it not-- Thy Husband too may '_think_' of thee!

By neither canst thou be forgot, Thou false to him--thou fiend to me!

"'Remember thee'? Yes--yes--till Fate In Lethe quench the guilty dream.

Yet then--e'en then--Remorse and _Hate_ Shall vainly quaff the vanquished stream."

From a MS. (in the possession of Mr. Hallam Murray) not in Byron's handwriting.]

[bs] {61} ----_not confessed thy power_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[bt] ----_still forgets the hour_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[bu] {64} _Song_.--[_Childe Harold_, 1814.]

[50] ["I send you some lines which may as well be called 'A Song' as anything else, and will do for your new edition."--B.--(MS. M.)]

[bv] _But her who not_----.--[MS. M.]

[bw] {65} _To Ianthe_.--[MS. M. Compare "The Dedication" to _Childe Harold_.]

[51] {67} [It is possible that these lines, as well as the Sonnets "To Genevra," were addressed to Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster.--See _Letters,_ 1898, ii. 2, note 1; and _Letters,_ 1899, iii. 8, note 1.]

[bx] _To him who loves and her who loved_.--[MS. M.]

[by] _That trembling form_----.--[MS. M.]

[bz]

_Resigning thee, alas! I lost_ _Joys bought too dear, if bright with tears,_ _Yet ne'er regret the pangs it cost_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[ca] _And crush_----.--[MS. M.]

[cb] _And I been not unworthy thee_.--[MS. M.]

[cc] _Long may thy days_----.--[MS. M.]

[cd] _Might make my hope of guilty joy_.--[MS.]

[52] [Byron forwarded these lines to Moore in a postscript to a letter dated September 27, 1813. "Here's," he writes, "an impromptu for you by a 'person of quality,' written last week, on being reproached for low spirits."--_Letters_, 1898, ii. 268. They were written at Aston Hall, Rotherham, where he "stayed a week ... and behaved very well--though the lady of the house [Lady F. Wedderburn Webster] is young, and religious, and pretty, and the master is my particular friend."--_Letters_, 1898, ii. 267.]

[ce] {70} _And bleed_----.--[MS. M.]

[53] ["Redde some Italian, and wrote two Sonnets.... I never wrote but one sonnet before, and that was not in earnest, and many years ago, as an exercise--and I will never write another. They are the most puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic compositions."--_Diary_, December 18, 1813; _Letters_, 1898, ii. 379.]

[cf] {71} ----_Hope whispers not from woe_.--[MS. M.]

[54]

["In moments to delight devoted 'My Life!' is still the name you give, Dear words! on which my heart had doted Had Man an endless term to live.

But, ah! so swift the seasons roll That name must be repeated never, For 'Life' in future say, 'My Soul,'

Which like my love exists for ever."

Byron wrote these lines in 1815, in Lady Lansdowne's alb.u.m, at Bowood.--Note by Mr. Richard Edgecombe, _Notes and Queries_, Sixth Series, vii. 46.]

THE GIAOUR:

A FRAGMENT OF A TURKISH TALE.

"One fatal remembrance--one sorrow that throws Its bleak shade alike o'er our joys and our woes-- To which Life nothing darker nor brighter can bring, For which joy hath no balm--and affliction no sting."

MOORE.

["As a beam o'er the face," etc.--_Irish Melodies_.]

INTRODUCTION TO _THE GIAOUR_

In a letter to Murray, dated Pisa, December 12, 1821 (_Life_, p. 545), Byron avows that the "Giaour Story" had actually "some foundation on facts." Soon after the poem appeared (June 5, 1813), "a story was circulated by some gentlewomen ... a little too close to the text"

(Letters to Moore, September 1, 1813, _Letters_, 1898, ii. 258), and in order to put himself right with his friends or posterity, Byron wrote to his friend Lord Sligo, who in July, 1810, was anch.o.r.ed off Athens in "a twelve-gun brig, with a crew of fifty men" (see _Letters_, 1898, i. 289, note 1), requesting him to put on paper not so much the narrative of an actual event, but "what he had heard at Athens about the affair of that girl who was so near being put an end to while you were there."

According to the letter which Moore published (_Life_, p. 178), and which is reprinted in the present issue (_Letters_, 1898, ii. 257), Byron interposed on behalf of a girl, who "in compliance with the strict letter of the Mohammedan law," had been sewn in a sack and was about to be thrown into the sea. "I was told," adds Lord Sligo, "that you then conveyed her in safety to the convent, and despatched her off at night to Thebes." The letter, which Byron characterizes as "curious," is by no means conclusive, and to judge from the designedly mysterious references in the Journal, dated November 16 and December 5, and in the second postscript to a letter to Professor Clarke, dated December 15, 1813 (_Letters_, 1898, ii. 321, 361, 311), "the circ.u.mstances which were the groundwork" are not before us. "An event," says John Wright (ed. 1832, ix. 145), "in which Lord Byron was personally concerned, undoubtedly supplied the groundwork of this tale; but for the story so circ.u.mstantially set forth (see Medwin's _Conversations_, 1824, pp. 121, 124) of his having been the lover of this female slave, there is no foundation. The girl whose life the poet saved at Athens was not, we are a.s.sured by Sir John Hobhouse (_Westminster Review_, January, 1825, iii.

27), an object of his Lordship's attachment, but of that of his Turkish servant." Nevertheless, whatever Byron may have told Hobhouse (who had returned to England), and he distinctly says (_Letters_, 1898, ii. 393) that he did not tell him everything, he avowed to Clarke that he had been led "to the water's edge," and confided to his diary that to "describe the _feelings_ of _that_ situation was impossible--it is _icy_ even to recollect them."

For the allusive and fragmentary style of the _Giaour_, _The Voyage of Columbus_, which Rogers published in 1812, is in part responsible. "It is sudden in its transitions," wrote the author, in the Preface to the first edition, "... leaving much to be imagined by the reader." The story or a part of it is told by a fellow-seaman of Columbus, who had turned "eremite" in his old age, and though the narrative itself is in heroic verse, the prologue and epilogue, as they may be termed, are in "the romance or ballad-measure of the Spanish." The resemblance between the two poems is certainly more than accidental. On the other hand, a vivid and impa.s.sioned description of Oriental scenery and customs was, as Gifford observed, new and original, and though, by his own admission, Byron was indebted to _Vathek_ (or rather S. Henley's notes to _Vathek_) and to D'Herbelot's _Bibliotheque Orientale_ for allusions and details, the "atmosphere" could only have been reproduced by the creative fancy of an observant and enthusiastic traveller who had lived under Eastern skies, and had come within ken of Eastern life and sentiment.

In spite, however, of his love for the subject-matter of his poem, and the facility, surprising even to himself, with which he spun his rhymes, Byron could not persuade himself that a succession of fragments would sort themselves and grow into a complete and connected whole. If his thrice-repeated depreciation of the _Giaour_ is not entirely genuine, it is plain that he mis...o...b..ed himself. Writing to Murray (August 26, 1813) he says, "I have, but with some difficulty, _not_ added any more to this snake of a poem, which has been lengthening its rattles every month;" to Moore (September 1), "The _Giaour_ I have added to a good deal, but still in foolish fragments;" and, again, to Moore (September 8), "By the coach I send you a copy of that awful pamphlet the _Giaour_."

But while the author doubted and apologized, or deprecated "his love's excess In words of wrong and bitterness," the public read, and edition followed edition with bewildering speed.

The _Giaour_ was reviewed by George Agar Ellis in the _Quarterly_ (No.

x.x.xi., January, 1813 [published February 11, 1813]) and in the _Edinburgh Review_ by Jeffrey (No. 54, January, 1813 [published February 24, 1813]).

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON _THE GIAOUR_

The bibliography of the _Giaour_ is beset with difficulties, and it is doubtful if more than approximate accuracy can be secured. The composition of the entire poem in its present shape was accomplished within six months, May-November, 1813, but during that period it was expanded by successive accretions from a first draft of 407 lines (extant in MS.) to a seventh edition of 1334 lines. A proof is extant of an edition of 28 pages containing 460 lines, itself an enlargement on the MS.; but whether (as a note in the handwriting of the late Mr.

Murray affirms) this was or was not published is uncertain. A portion of a second proof of 38 pages has been preserved, but of the publication of the poem in this state there is no record. On June 5 a first edition of 41 pages, containing 685 lines, was issued, and of this numerous copies are extant. At the end of June, or the beginning of July, 1813, a second edition, ent.i.tled, a "New Edition with some Additions," appeared. This consisted of 47 pages, and numbered 816 lines. Among the accretions is to be found the famous pa.s.sage beginning, "He that hath bent him o'er the dead." Two MS. copies of this _pannus vere purpureus_ are in Mr.