The Works of Lord Byron Volume III Part 85

[413] {507} [The revise of _Parisina_ is endorsed in Murray's handwriting, "Given to me by Lord Byron at his house, Sat.u.r.day, January 13, 1816."]

[414] The lines contained in this section were printed as set to music some time since, but belonged to the poem where they now appear; the greater part of which was composed prior to _Lara_, and other compositions since published. [Note to _Siege, etc._, First Edition, 1816.]

[qy]

_Francisca walks in the shadow of night_, _But it is not to gaze on the heavenly light_-- _But if she sits in her garden bower_, _'Tis not for the sake of its blowing flower_.-- [_Nathan_, 1815, 1829.]

[qz] {508} _There winds a step_----.--[_Nathan_, 1815, 1829.]

[415] {509} [Leigh Hunt, in his _Autobiography_ (1860, p. 252), says, "I had the pleasure of supplying my friendly critic, Lord Byron, with a point for his _Parisina_ (the incident of the heroine talking in her sleep)."

Putting Lady Macbeth out of the question, the situation may be traced to a pa.s.sage in Henry Mackenzie's _Julia de Roubigne_ (1777, ii. 101: "Montauban to Segarva," Letter x.x.xv.):--

"I was last night abroad at supper; Julia was a-bed before my return. I found her lute lying on the table, and a music-book open by it. I could perceive the marks of tears shed on the paper, and the air was such as might encourage their falling. Sleep, however, had overcome her sadness, and she did not awake when I opened the curtain to look on her. When I had stood some moments, I heard her sigh strongly through her sleep, and presently she muttered some words, I know not of what import. I had sometimes heard her do so before, without regarding it much; but there was something that roused my attention now. I listened; she sighed again, and again spoke a few broken words. At last I heard her plainly p.r.o.nounce the name Savillon two or three times, and each time it was accompanied with sighs so deep that her heart seemed bursting as it heaved then."]

[ra] {511} ----_Medora's_----.--[Copy erased.]

[416] [Compare _Christabel_, Part II. lines 408, 409--

"Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth."]

[417] {513} [Compare the famous eulogy of Marie Antoinette, in Burke's _Reflections on the Revolution in France, in a Letter intended to have been sent to a Gentleman in Paris_, London, 1790, pp. 112, 113--

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles.... Little did I dream ... that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult."]

[rb] {514} _As tear by tear rose gathering still_.--[Revise.]

[418] [Lines 175-182, which are in Byron's handwriting, were added to the Copy.]

[419] {516} [The meaning is plain, but the construction is involved. The contrast is between the blood of foes, which Hugo has shed for Azo, and Hugo's own blood, which Azo is about to shed on the scaffold. But this is one of Byron's incurious infelicities.]

[420] {517} Haught--haughty. "Away, _haught_ man, thou art insulting me."--Shakespeare [_Richard II._, act iv. sc. i, line 254--"No lord of thine, thou haught insulting man."]

[421] {518} [Lines 304, 305, and lines 310-317 are not in the Copy. They were inserted by Byron in the Revise.]

[422] [A writer in the _Critical Review_ (February, 1816, vol. iii. p.

151) holds this couplet up to derision. "Too" is a weak ending, and, orally at least, ambiguous.]

[423] ["I sent for _Marmion_, ... because it occurred to me there might be a resemblance between part of _Parisina_ and a similar scene in Canto 2d. of _Marmion_. I fear there is, though I never thought of it before, and could hardly wish to imitate that which is inimitable.... I had completed the story on the pa.s.sage from Gibbon, which, in fact, leads to a like scene naturally, without a thought of the kind; but it comes upon me not very comfortably."--Letter to Murray, February 3, 1816 (_Letters_, 1899, iii. 260). The scene in _Marmion_ is the one where Constance de Beverley appears before the conclave--

"Her look composed, and steady eye, Bespoke a matchless constancy; And there she stood so calm and pale, That, but her breathing did not fail, And motion slight of eye and head, And of her bosom, warranted That neither sense nor pulse she lacks, You must have thought a form of wax, Wrought to the very life, was there-- So still she was, so pale, so fair."

Canto II. stanza xxi. lines 5-14.]

[424] {519} ["I admire the fabrication of the 'big Tear,' which is very fine--much larger, by the way, than Shakespeare's."--Letter of John Murray to Lord Byron (_Memoir of John Murray_, 1891, i. 354).]

[425] [Compare _Christabel_, Part I. line 253--"A sight to dream of, not to tell!"]

[rc] {521} _For a departing beings soul_.--[Copy.]

[426] [For the peculiar use of "knoll" as a verb, compare _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza xcvi. line 5; and _Werner_, act iii. sc. 3.]

[427] {522} [Lines 401-404, which are in Byron's handwriting, were added to the Copy.]

[rd] {523} _His latest beads and sins are counted_.--[Copy.]

[428] {524} [For the use of "electric" as a metaphor, compare Coleridge's _Songs of the Pixies_, v. lines 59, 60--

"The electric flash, that from the melting eye Darts the fond question and the soft reply."]

[re] _But no more thrilling voice rose there_.--[Copy.]

[429] {526} [Here, again, Byron is _super grammaticam_. The comparison is between Hugo and "goodly sons," not between Hugo and "bride" in the preceding line.]

[430] [Lines 539-544 are not in the Copy, but were inserted in the Revise.]

[431] {527} [Lines 551-556 are not in the Copy, but were inserted in the Revise.]

[rf] _Ah, still unwelcomely was haunted_.--[Copy.]

[rg] _Had only sealed a just decree_.--[Copy.]

POEMS OF THE SEPARATION.

INTRODUCTION TO _POEMS OF THE SEPARATION._

The two poems, _Fare Thee Well_ (March 17) and _A Sketch_ (March 29, 1816), which have hitherto been ent.i.tled _Domestic Pieces_, or _Poems on His Own Circ.u.mstances_, I have ventured to rename _Poems of the Separation_. Of secondary importance as poems or works of art, they stand out by themselves as marking and helping to make the critical epoch in the life and reputation of the poet. It is to be observed that there was an interval of twelve days between the date of _Fare Thee Well_ and _A Sketch_; that the composition of the latter belongs to a later episode in the separation drama; and that for some reasons connected with the proceedings between the parties, a pathetic if not uncritical resignation had given place to the extremity of exasperation--to hatred and fury and revenge. It follows that either poem, in respect of composition and of publication, must be judged on its own merits. Contemporary critics, while they were all but unanimous in holding up _A Sketch_ to unqualified reprobation, were divided with regard to the good taste and good faith of _Fare Thee Well_. Moore intimates that at first, and, indeed, for some years after the separation, he was strongly inclined to condemn the _Fare Thee Well_ as a histrionic performance--"a showy effusion of sentiment;" but that on reading the account of all the circ.u.mstances in Byron's _Memoranda_, he was impressed by the reality of the "swell of tender recollections, under the influence of which, as he sat one night musing in his study, these stanzas were produced--the tears, as he said, falling fast over the paper as he wrote them" (_Life_, p. 302).

With whatever purpose, or under whatever emotion the lines were written, Byron did not keep them to himself. They were shown to Murray, and copies were sent to "the initiated." "I have just received," writes Murray, "the enclosed letter from Mrs. Maria Graham [1785-1842, _nee_ Dundas, auth.o.r.ess and traveller, afterwards Lady Callcott], to whom I had sent the verses. It will show you that you are thought of in the remotest corners, and furnishes me with an excuse for repeating that I shall not forget you. G.o.d bless your Lordship. Fare _Thee_ Well" [MSS.

M.].

But it does not appear that they were printed in their final shape (the proof of a first draft, consisting of thirteen stanzas, is dated March 18, 1816) till the second copy of verses were set up in type with a view to private distribution (see _Letters_, 1899, iii. 279). Even then there was no thought of publication on the part of Byron or of Murray, and, as a matter of fact, though _Fare Thee Well_ was included in the "Poems" of 1816, it was not till both poems had appeared in over twenty pirated editions that _A Sketch_ was allowed to appear in vol. iii. of the Collected Works of 1819. Unquestionably Byron intended that the "initiated," whether foes or sympathizers, should know that he had not taken his dismissal in silence; but it is far from certain that he connived at the appearance of either copy of verses in the public press.

It is impossible to acquit him of the charge of appealing to a limited circle of specially chosen witnesses and advocates in a matter which lay between himself and his wife, but the aggravated offence of rushing into print may well be attributed to "the injudicious zeal of a friend," or the "malice prepense" of an enemy. If he had hoped that the verses would slip into a newspaper, as it were, _malgre lui_, he would surely have taken care that the seed fell on good ground under the favouring influence of Perry of the _Morning Chronicle_, or Leigh Hunt of the _Examiner_. As it turned out, the first paper which possessed or ventured to publish a copy of the "domestic pieces" was the _Champion_, a Tory paper, then under the editorship of John Scott (1783-1821), a man of talent and of probity, but, as Mr. Lang puts it (_Life and Letters_ of John Gibson Lockhart, 1897, i. 256), "Scotch, and a professed moralist." The date of publication was Sunday, April 14, and it is to be noted that the _Ode from the French_ ("We do not curse thee, Waterloo") had been published in the _Morning Chronicle_ on March 15, and that on the preceding Sunday, April 7, the brilliant but unpatriotic apostrophe to the _Star of the Legion of Honour_ had appeared in the _Examiner_. "We notice it [this strain of his Lordship's harp]," writes the editor, "because we think it would not be doing justice to the merits of such political tenets, if they were not coupled with their corresponding practice in regard to moral and domestic obligations.

There is generally a due proportion kept in 'the music of men's lives.'

... Of many of the _facts_ of this distressing case we are not ignorant; but G.o.d knows they are not for a newspaper. Fortunately they fall within very general knowledge, in London at least; if they had not they would never have found their way to us. But there is a respect due to certain wrongs and sufferings that would be outraged by uncovering them." It was all very mysterious, very terrible; but what wonder that the laureate of the ex-emperor, the contemner of the Bourbons, the paeanist of the "star of the brave," "the rainbow of the free," should make good his political heresy by personal depravity--by unmanly vice, unmanly whining, unmanly vituperation?

Wordsworth, to whom Scott forwarded the _Champion_ of April 14, "outdid"

the journalist in virtuous fury: "Let me say only one word of Lord B.

The man is insane. The verses on his private affairs excite in me less indignation than pity. The latter copy is the Billingsgate of Bedlam.

... You yourself seem to labour under some delusion as to the merits of Lord B.'s poetry, and treat the wretched verses, the _Fare Well_, with far too much respect. They are disgusting in sentiment, and in execution contemptible. 'Though my many faults deface me,' etc. Can worse doggerel than such a stanza be written? One verse is commendable: 'All my madness none can know.'" The criticism, as criticism, confutes itself, and is worth quoting solely because it displays the feeling of a sane and honourable man towards a member of the "opposition," who had tripped and fallen, and now lay within reach of his lash (see _Life of William Wordsworth_, 1889, ii. 267, etc.).

It was not only, as Macaulay put it, that Byron was "singled out as an expiatory sacrifice" by the British public in a periodical fit of morality, but, as the extent and the limitations of the attack reveal, occasion was taken by political adversaries to inflict punishment for an outrage on popular sentiment.