The Works of Lord Byron Volume VI Part 13

[18] ["In the eighth and concluding lecture of Mr. Hazlitt's canons of criticism, delivered at the Surrey Inst.i.tution (_The English Poets_, 1870, pp. 203, 204), I am accused of having 'lauded Buonaparte to the skies in the hour of his success, and then peevishly wreaking my disappointment on the G.o.d of my idolatry.' The first lines I ever wrote upon Buonaparte were the 'Ode to Napoleon,' after his abdication in 1814. All that I have ever written on that subject has been done since his decline;--I never 'met him in the hour of his success.' I have considered his character at different periods, in its strength and in its weakness: by his zealots I am accused of injustice--by his enemies as his warmest partisan, in many publications, both English and foreign.

"For the accuracy of my delineation I have high authority. A year and some months ago, I had the pleasure of seeing at Venice my friend the honourable Douglas Kinnaird. In his way through Germany, he told me that he had been honoured with a presentation to, and some interviews with, one of the nearest family connections of Napoleon (Eugene Beauharnais).

During one of these, he read and translated the lines alluding to Buonaparte, in the Third Canto of _Childe Harold_. He informed me, that he was authorized by the ill.u.s.trious personage--(still recognized as such by the Legitimacy in Europe)--to whom they were read, to say, _that 'the delineation was complete,'_ or words to this effect. It is no puerile vanity which induces me to publish this fact;--but Mr. Hazlitt accuses my inconsistency, and infers my inaccuracy. Perhaps he will admit that, with regard to the latter, one of the most intimate family connections of the Emperor may be equally capable of deciding on the subject. I tell Mr. Hazlitt that I never flattered Napoleon on the throne, nor maligned him since his fall. I wrote what I think are the incredible ant.i.theses of his character.

"Mr. Hazlitt accuses me further of delineating _myself_ in _Childe Harold_, etc., etc. I have denied this long ago--but, even were it true, Locke tells us, that all his knowledge of human understanding was derived from studying his own mind. From Mr. Hazlitt's opinion of my poetry I do not appeal; but I request that gentleman not to insult me by imputing the basest of crimes,--viz. 'praising publicly the same man whom I wished to depreciate in his adversity:'--the _first_ lines I ever wrote on Buonaparte were in his dispraise, in 1814,--the _last_, though not at all in his favour, were more impartial and discriminative, in 1818. Has he become more fortunate since 1814?" For Byron's various estimates of Napoleon's character and career, see _Childe Harold_, Canto III, stanza x.x.xvi. line 7, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 238, note 1.]

{13}[19] [Charles Francois Duperier Dumouriez (1739-1823) defeated the Austrians at Jemappes, November 6, 1792, etc. He published his _Memoires_ (Hamburg et Leipsic), 1794. For the spelling, see _Memoirs of General Dumourier_, written by himself, translated by John Fenwick.

London, 1794. See, too, _Lettre de Joseph Servan_, Ex-ministre de la Guerre, _Sur le memoire lu par M. Dumourier le 13 Juin a l'a.s.semblee Nationale; Bibiotheque Historique de la Revolution_, "Justifications,"

7, 8, 9.]

[20] [Antoine Pierre Joseph Barnave, born 1761, was appointed President of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly in 1790. He was guillotined November 30, 1793.

Jean Pierre Brissot de Warville, philosopher and politician, born January 14, 1754, was one of the princ.i.p.al instigators of the revolt of the Champ de Mars, July, 1789. He was guillotined October 31, 1793.

Marie Jean Antoine, Marquis de Condorcet, born September 17, 1743, was appointed President of the Legislative a.s.sembly in 1792. Proscribed by the Girondins, he poisoned himself to escape the guillotine, March 28, 1794.

Honore Gabriel Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau, born March 9, 1749, died April 2, 1791.

Jerome Petion de Villeneuve, born 1753, Mayor of Paris in 1791, took an active part in the imprisonment of the king. In 1793 he fell under Robespierre's displeasure, and to escape proscription took refuge in the department of Calvados. In 1794 his body was found in a field, half eaten by wolves.

Jean Baptiste, Baron de Clootz (better known as Anacharsis Clootz), was born in 1755. In 1790, at the bar of the National Convention, he described himself as the "Speaker of Mankind." Being suspected by Robespierre, he was condemned to death, March 24, 1794. On the scaffold he begged to be executed last, "in order to establish certain principles." (See Carlyle's _French Revolution_, 1839, iii. 315.)

Georges Jacques Danton, born October 28, 1759, helped to establish the Revolutionary Tribunal, March 10, and the Committee of Public Safety, April 6, 1793; agreed to proscription of the Girondists, June, 1793; was executed with Camille Desmoulins and others, April 5, 1794.

Jean Paul Marat, born May 24, 1744, physician and man of science, proposed and carried out the wholesale ma.s.sacre of September 2-5, 1792; was denounced to, but acquitted by, the Revolutionary Tribunal, May, 1793; a.s.sa.s.sinated by Charlotte Corday, July 13, 1793.

Marie Jean Paul, Marquis de La Fayette, born September 6, 1757, died May 19, 1834.

With the exception of La Fayette, who outlived Byron by ten years, and Lord St. Vincent, all "the famous persons" mentioned in stanzas ii.-iv.

had pa.s.sed away long before the First Canto of _Don Juan_ was written.]

{14}[21] [Barthelemi Catherine Joubert, born April 14, 1769, distinguished himself at the engagements of Cava, Montebello, Rivoli, and in the Tyrol. He was afterwards sent to oppose Suvoroff, and was killed at Novi, August 15, 1799.

For Hoche and Marceau, _vide ante, Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 296.

Jean Lannes, Duke of Montebello, born April 11, 1769, distinguished himself at Lodi, Aboukir, Acre, Austerlitz, Jena and, lastly, at Essling, where he was mortally wounded. He died May 31, 1809.

Louis Charles Antoine Desaix de Voygoux, born August 27, 1768, won the victory at the Pyramids, July 21, 1798. He was mortally wounded at Marengo, June 14, 1800.

Jean Victor Moreau, born August 11, 1763, was victorious at Engen, May 3, and at Hohenlinden, December 3, 1800. He was struck by a cannon-ball at the battle of Dresden, August 27, and died September 2, 1813.]

{15}[22] [Hor., _Od._, iv. c. ix. 1. 25-- "Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona," etc.]

[23] [Hor., _Epist. Ad Pisones_, lines 148, 149-- "Semper ad eventum festinat, et in medias res, Non secus ac notas, auditorem rapit--"]

[24] ["Quien no ha visto Sevilla, no ha visto maravilla."]

{16}[25] [In his reply to _Blackwood_ (No. xxix. August, 1819), Byron somewhat disingenuously rebuts the charge that _Don Juan_ contained "an elaborate satire on the character and manners of his wife." "If," he writes, "in a poem by no means ascertained to be my production there appears a disagreeable, casuistical, and by no means respectable female pedant, it is set down for my wife. Is there any resemblance? If there be, it is in those who make it--I can see none."--Letters, 1900, iv.

477. The allusions in stanzas xii.-xiv., and, again, in stanzas xxvii.-xxix., are, and must have been meant to be, unmistakable.]

[26] [Gregor von Feinagle, born? 1765, was the inventor of a system of mnemonics, "founded on the topical memory of the ancients," as described by Cicero and Quinctilian. He lectured, in 1811, at the Royal Inst.i.tution and elsewhere. When Rogers was asked if he attended the lectures, he replied, "No; I wished to learn the Art of Forgetting"

(_Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers_, 1856, p. 42).]

{17}[a]

_Little she spoke--but what she spoke was Attic all_, _With words and deeds in perfect unanimity._--[MS.]

[27] [Sir Samuel Romilly, born 1757, lost his wife on the 29th of October, and committed suicide on the 2nd of November, 1818.--"But there will come a day of reckoning, even if I should not live to see it. I have at least seen Romilly shivered, who was one of the a.s.sa.s.sins. When that felon or lunatic ... was doing his worst to uproot my whole family, tree, branch, and blossoms--when, after taking my retainer, he went over to them [see _Letters_, 1899, iii. 324]--when he was bringing desolation ... on my household G.o.ds--did he think that, in less than three years, a natural event--a severe, domestic, but an unexpected and common calamity--would lay his carcase in a cross-road, or stamp his name in a verdict of Lunacy! Did he (who in his drivelling s.e.xagenary dotage had not the courage to survive his Nurse--for what else was a wife to him at his time of life?)--reflect or consider what _my_ feelings must have been, when wife, and child, and sister, and name, and fame, and country, were to be my sacrifice on his legal altar,--and this at a moment when my health was declining, my fortune embarra.s.sed, and my mind had been shaken by many kinds of disappointment--while I was yet young, and might have reformed what might be wrong in my conduct, and retrieved what was perplexing in my affairs! But the wretch is in his grave," etc.-Letter to Murray, June 7, 1819, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 316.]

[28] [Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) published _Castle Rackrent_, etc., etc., etc., in 1800. "In 1813," says Byron, "I recollect to have met them [the Edgeworths] in the fashionable world of London.... She was a nice little una.s.suming 'Jeannie Deans-looking body,' as we Scotch say; and if not handsome, certainly not ill-looking" (_Diary_, January 19, 1821, _Letters_, 1901, v. 177-179).]

[29] [Sarah Trimmer (1741-1810) published, in 1782, _Easy Introduction to the Study of Nature_; _History of the Robins_ (dedicated to the Princess Sophia) in 1786, etc.]

[30] [Hannah More (1745-1833) published _Coelebs in Search of a Wife_ in 1809.]

[31] [Pope, _Rape of the Lock_, Canto II, line 17.]

{19}[32] [John Harrison (1693-1776), known as "Longitude" Harrison, was the inventor of watch compensation. He received, in slowly and reluctantly paid instalments, a sum of 20,000 from the Government, for producing a chronometer which should determine the longitude within half a degree. A watch which contained his latest improvements was worn by Captain Cook during his three years' circ.u.mnavigation of the globe.]

[33] "Description des _vertus incomparables_ de l'Huile de Maca.s.sar."

See the Advertis.e.m.e.nt. [_An Historical, Philosophical and Practical Essay on the Human Hair_, was published by Alexander Rowland, jun., in 1816. It was inscribed, "To her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte of Wales and Cobourg."]

[b] _Where all was innocence and quiet bliss_.--[MS.]

[c] _And so she seemed, in all outside formalities_.--[MS.]

[34] ["'Zounds, an I were now by this rascal, I could brain him with his lady's fan."--I _Henry IV._, act ii, sc 3, lines 19, 20.]

{21}[d] _Wishing each other d.a.m.ned, divorced, or dead_.--[MS.]

[35] [According to Medwin (_Conversations_, 1824, p. 55), Byron "was surprised one day by a Doctor and a Lawyer almost forcing themselves at the same time into my room. I did not know," he adds, "till afterwards the real object of their visit. I thought their questions singular, frivolous, and somewhat importunate, if not impertinent: but what should I have thought, if I had known that they were sent to provide proofs of my insanity?" Lady Byron, in her _Remarks on Mr. Moore's Life, etc_.

(_Life_, pp. 661-663), says that Dr. Baillie (_vide post_, p. 412, note 2), whom she consulted with regard to her husband's supposed insanity, "not having had access to Lord Byron, could not p.r.o.nounce a positive opinion on this point." It appears, however, that another doctor, a Mr.

Le Mann (see _Letters_, 1899, iii. 293, note 1, 295, 299, etc.), visited Byron professionally, and reported on his condition to Lady Byron.

Hence, perhaps, the mention of "druggists."]

{22}[36] ["I deem it _my duty to G.o.d_ to act as I am acting."--Letter of Lady Byron to Mrs. Leigh, February 14, 1816, _Letters_, 1899, iii. 311.]

[37] ["This is so very pointed."--[?Hobhouse.] "If people make application, it is their own fault."--[B.].--[_Revise._]

[38] ["There is some doubt about this."--[H.] "What has the 'doubt' to do with the poem? it is, at least, poetically true. Why apply everything to that absurd woman? I have no reference to living characters."--[B.].--[_Revise._] Medwin (_Conversations_, 1824, p. 54) attributes the "breaking open my writing-desk" to Mrs. Charlment (i.e.

Mrs. Clermont) the original of "A Sketch," _Poetical Works_, 1900, iii.

540-544. It is evident from Byron's reply to Hobhouse's remonstrance that Medwin did not invent this incident, but that some one, perhaps Fletcher's wife, had told him that his papers had been overhauled.]

{23}[e] _First their friends tried at reconciliation_.--[MS.]

[f] _The lawyers recommended a divorce_.--[MS.]

{24}[g]

/ besides was _He had been ill brought up, <> bilious_.

besides being /