The Works of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 76

"My princ.i.p.al object in addressing you was to testify my sincere respect and admiration of a man, who, for half a century, has led the literature of a great nation, and will go down to posterity as the first literary Character of his Age.

"You have been fortunate, Sir, not only in the writings which have ill.u.s.trated your name, but in the name itself, as being sufficiently musical for the articulation of posterity. In this you have the advantage of some of your countrymen, whose names would perhaps be immortal also--if anybody could p.r.o.nounce them.

"It may, perhaps, be supposed, by this apparent tone of levity, that I am wanting in intentional respect towards you; but this will be a mistake: I am always flippant in prose. Considering you, as I really and warmly do, in common with all your own, and with most other nations, to be by far the first literary Character which has existed in Europe since the death of Voltaire, I felt, and feel, desirous to inscribe to you the following work,--_not_ as being either a tragedy or a _poem_, (for I cannot p.r.o.nounce upon its pretensions to be either one or the other, or both, or neither,) but as a mark of esteem and admiration from a foreigner to the man who has been hailed in Germany 'the great Goethe.'

"I have the honour to be,

With the truest respect,

Your most obedient and

Very humble servant,

Byron,

"Ravenna, 8^bre^ 14, 1820.

"P.S.--I perceive that in Germany, as well as in Italy, there is a great struggle about what they call '_Cla.s.sical_' and '_Romantic_,'--terms which were not subjects of cla.s.sification in England, at least when I left it four or five years ago. Some of the English Scribblers, it is true, abused Pope and Swift, but the reason was that they themselves did not know how to write either prose or verse; but n.o.body thought them worth making a sect of.

Perhaps there may be something of the kind sprung up lately, but I have not heard much about it, and it would be such bad taste that I shall be very sorry to believe it."

Another Dedication, to be prefixed to a Second Edition of the play was found amongst Byron's papers. It remained in MS. till 1832, when it was included in a prefatory note to _Marino Faliero, Works of Lord Byron_, 1832, xii. 50.

"Dedication of _Marino Faliero_.

"To the Honourable Douglas Kinnaird.

"My dear Douglas,--I dedicate to you the following tragedy, rather on account of your good opinion of it, than from any notion of my own that it may be worthy of your acceptance. But if its merits were ten times greater than they possibly can be, this offering would still be a very inadequate acknowledgment of the active and steady friendship with which, for a series of years, you have honoured your obliged and affectionate friend,

"BYRON.

"Ravenna, Sept. 1st, 1821."

[A][_A Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors of Great Britain and Ireland, etc_., London, 1816, 8vo.]

[B] [_Macbeth_. Where got'st thou that goose look?

_Servant_. There is ten thousand-- _Macbeth_. Geese, villain?

_Servant_. Soldiers, sir."

_Macbeth_, act v. sc. 3, lines 12, 13.]

[C][Sir George Beaumont. See Professor W. Knight, _Life of Wordsworth_, ii. (_Works_, vol. x.) 56.]

[D][Lord Lonsdale (_ibid_., p. 209).]

[E][_Two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmoreland_, 1818.]

[F][See an article on Goethe's _Aus Meinem Leben_, etc., in the _Edinburgh Review_ for June, 1816, vol. xxvi. pp. 304-337.] ]

[cv] {345} _Are none yet of the Messengers returned_?--[MS. M.]

[380] [The _Consiglio Minore_, which originally consisted of the Doge and his six councillors, was afterwards increased, by the addition of the three _Capi_ of the _Quarantia Criminale_, and was known as the _Serenissima Signoria_ (G. Cappelletti, _Storia della Repubblica di Venezia_, 1850, i. 483). The Forty who were "debating on Steno's accusation" could not be described as the "_Signory_."]

[cw] _With seeming patience_.--[MS. M.]

[cx] _He sits as deep_--[MS. M.]

[cy] {346}_Or aught that imitates_--.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]

[cz] _Young, gallant_--.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]

[381] [Bertuccio Faliero was a distant connection of the Doge, not his nephew. Matters of business and family affairs seem to have brought them together, and it is evident that they were on intimate terms.--_La Congiura_, p. 84.]

[382] [The Avogadori, three in number, were the conductors of criminal prosecutions on the part of the State; and no act of the councils was valid, unless sanctioned by the presence of one of them; but they were not, as Byron seems to imply, a court of first instance. The implied reproach that they preferred to send the case to appeal because Steno was a member of the "Quarantia," is based on an error of Sanudo's (_vide ante_, p. 333).]

[da] {348} ----_Marin! Falierae_ [sic].--[MS. M.]

[383] ["Marin Faliero, dalla bella moglie--altri la G.o.de, ed egli la mantien."--Marino Samuto, _Vitae Duc.u.m Venetorum, apud_ Muratori, _Rerum Italicurum Scriptores_, 1733, xxii. 628-638]. Navagero, in his _Storia della Repubblica Veneriana_, _ibid_., xxiii. 1040, gives a coa.r.s.er rendering of Steno's Lampoon.--"Becco Marino Fallier dalla belta mogier;" and there are older versions agreeing in the main with that Faliero's by Sanudo. It is, however, extremely doubtful whether Faliro's conspiracy was, in any sense, the outcome of a personal insult. The story of the Lampoon first appears in the Chronicle of Lorenzo de Monaci, who wrote in the latter half of the fifteenth century. "Fama fuit ... quia aliqui adolescentuli n.o.biles scripserunt in angulis interioris palatii aliqua verba ignominiosa, et quod ipse (il Doge) magis incanduit quoniam adolescentuli illi parva fuerant animadversione puniti." In course of time the "n.o.ble youths" became a single n.o.ble youth, whose name occurred in the annals, and the derivation or evolution of the "verba ignominiosa," followed by a natural process.--_La Congiura, Nuona Archivio Veneto_, 1897, tom. xiii. pt. ii.

p. 347.]

[384] {349}[Sanudo gives two versions of Steno's punishment: (1) that he should be imprisoned for two months, and banished from Venice for a year; (2) that he should be imprisoned for one month, flogged with a fox's tail, and pay one hundred lire to the Republic.]

[385] {350}[_Vide ante_, p. 331.]

[386] {351}[Faliero's appeal to the "law" is a violation of "historical accuracy." The penalty for an injury to the Doge was not fixed by law, but was decided from time to time by the Judge, in accordance with unwritten custom.--_La Congiura_, p. 60.]

[db] {352}_Who threw his sting into a poisonous rhyme_.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]

[387] [For the story of Caesar, Pompeia, and Clodius, see Plutarch's _Lives_, "Caesar," Langhorne's translation, 1838, p. 498.]

[dc]----_Enrico_.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]

[388] [According to Sanudo (_Vitae Duc.u.m Venetorum, apud_ Muratori, _Rerum Ital. Script_., 1733, xxii. 529), it was Ser Pantaleone Barbo who intervened, when (A.D. 1204) the election to the Empire of Constantinople lay between the Doge "Arrigo Dandolo" and "Conte Baldovino di Fiandra."]

[dd] {354} ----_in olden days._--[MS. M.]

[389] {356}[According to the much earlier, and, presumably, more historical narrative of Lorenzo de Monaci, Bertuccio Isarello was not chief of the _a.r.s.enalotti_, but simply the patron, that is the owner, of a vessel (_paron di nave_), and consequently a person of importance amongst sailors and naval artisans; and the n.o.ble who strikes the fatal blow is not Barbaro, but a certain Giovanni Dandolo, who is known, at that time, to have been "_sopracomito and consigliere del capitano da mar_." If the Admiral of the a.r.s.enal had been engaged in the conspiracy, the fact could hardly have escaped the notice of contemporary chroniclers. Signor Lazzarino suggests that the name Gisello, or Girello, which has been subst.i.tuted for that of Israel Bertuccio, is a corruption of Isarello.--_La Congiura_, p. 74.]

[390] [The island of Sapienza lies about nine miles to the north-west of Capo Gallo, in the Morea. The battle in which the Venetians under Nicol Pisani were defeated by the Genoese under Paganino Doria was fought November 4, 1354. (See _Venice, an Historical Sketch_, by Horatio F.

Brown, 1893, p. 201.)]

[391] An historical fact. See Marin Sanuto's _Lives of the Doges_.

["Sanuto says that Heaven took away his senses for this buffet, and induced him to conspire:--'Per fu permesso che il Faliero perdesse l'intelletto.'"--_B. Letters_ (_Works, etc._, 1832, xii. 82. note 1).

[392] {358}["The number of their constant Workmen is 1200; and all these Artificers have a Superior Officer called _Amiraglio_, who commands the _Bucentaure_ on Ascension Day, when the Duke goes in state to marry the sea. And here we cannot but notice, that by a ridiculous custom this Admiral makes himself Responsible to the _Senat_ for the inconstancy of the Sea, and engages his Life there shall be no Tempest that day. 'Tis this Admiral who has the Guard of the Palais, St. Mark, with his _a.r.s.enalotti_, during the _interregnum_. He carries the Red Standard before the Prince when he makes his Entry, by virtue of which office he has his Cloak, and the two Basons (out of which the Duke throws the money to the People) for his fee."--_The History of the Government of Venice_, written in the year 1675, by the Sieur Amelott de la Houssaie, London, 1677, p. 63.]

[393] [_Vide ante_, p. 356, note 1.]

[394] {360}[The famous measure known as the closing of the Great Council was carried into force during the Dogeship (1289-1311) of Pietro Gradenigo. On the last day of February, 1297, a law was proposed and pa.s.sed, "That the Council of Forty are to ballot, one by one, the names of all those who during the last four years have had a seat in the Great Council.... Three electors shall be chosen to submit names of fresh candidates for the Great Council, on the ... approval of the Doge." But strict as these provisions were, they did not suffice to restrict the government to the aristocracy. It was soon decreed "that only those who could prove that a paternal ancestor had sat on the Great Council, after its creation in 1176, should now be eligible as members.... It is in this provision that we find the essence of the _Serrata del Maggior Consiglio_.... The work was not completed at one stroke.... In 1315 a list of all those who were eligible ... was compiled. The scrutiny ...

was entrusted to the _Avogadori di Comun_, and became ... more and more severe. To ensure the purity of blood, they opened a register of marriages and births.... Thus the aristocracy proceeded to construct itself more and more upon a purely oligarchical basis."--_Venice, an Historical Sketch_, by Horatio F. Brown, 1893, pp. 162-164.]

[395] {362}[To "partake" this or that is an obsolete construction, but rests on the authority of Dryden and other writers of the period.