I saw, and could not hold his head, But be, the favourite and the flower, And grieved for those he left behind; That almost made the dungeon bright, (4) In the MS. "To break or bite."-E. A little talk of better days, A little hope my own to raise, I call'd, and thought I heard a sound- The accursed breath of dungeon-dew; I could not die, I had no earthly hope-but faith, And that forbade a selfish death. IX. What next befell me then and there I know not well-I never knew- I had no thought, no feeling-none- So hateful to my heavy sight, But vacancy absorbing space, There were no stars-no earth-no time No check-no change-no good-no crimeBut silence, and a stirless breath Which neither was of life nor death; A sea of stagnant idleness, Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless! (2) "The gentle decay and gradual extinction of the youngest life is the most tender and beautiful passage in the poem." Jeffrey. X. A light broke in upon my brain,It was the carol of a bird; It ceased, and then it came again, The sweetest song ear ever heard; But then by dull degrees came back But through the crevice where it came I never saw its like before, I ne'er shall see its likeness more: Or broke its cage to perch on mine, Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine! A single cloud on a sunny day, A kind of change came in my fate, (1) In the MS. "I saw them with their lake below, And their three thousand years of snow."—E. I know not what had made them so, My brothers' graves without a sod; I made a footing in the wall,— For I had buried one and all Who loved me in a human shape; And the whole earth would henceforth be A wider prison unto me: No child-no sire-no kin had I, No partner in my misery; I thought of this, and I was glad, For thought of them had made me mad; To my barr'd windows, and to bend XIII. I saw them-and they were the same, A small green isle, it seem'd no more, (2) Between the entrances of the Rhone and Villeneuve, not far from Chillon, is a very small island; the only one I could perceive, in my voyage round and over the lake, within its cir The eagle rode the rising blast, It was as is a new-dug grave, Closing o'er one we sought to save,→ XIV. It might be months, or years, or days, And clear them of their dreary mote; I ask'd not why, and reck'd not where: cumference. It contains a few trees (I think not above three), and from its singleness and diminutive size has a peculiar effect upon the view. (1) Here follow in MS. "Nor slew I of my subjects onehath so little What sovereign yet so much hath } done?"—E. It was at length the same to me, I learn'd to love despair: ly possible to witness a sight more degrading to humanity than this exhibition :-with matted hair, wild looks, and haggard features, with eyes dazzled by the unwonted light of the sun, and ears deafened and astounded by the sudden exchange of the silence of a dungeon for the busy hum of men, the wretches sit more like rude images fashioned to a fantastic imitation of humanity, than like living and reflecting beings. In the course of time we are (2) It has not been the purpose of Lord Byron to paint the pe-assured they generally become either madmen or idiots, as mind or culiar character of Bonnivard. The object of the poem, like that of Sterne's celebrated sketch of the prisoner, is to consider captivity in the abstract, and to mark its effects in gradually chilling the mental powers as it benumbs and freezes the animal frame, until the unfortunate victim becomes, as it were, a part of his dungeon, and identified with his chains. This transmutation we believe to be founded on fact: at least, in the Low Countries, where solitude for life is substituted for capital punishments, something like it may be witnessed. On particular days in the course of the year, these victims of a jurisprudence which calls itself humane, are presented to the public eye, upon a stage erected in the open market-place, apparently to prevent their guilt and their punishment from being forgotten. It is scarce matter happens to predominate, when the mysterious balance between them is destroyed. It will readily be allowed that this singular poem is more powerful than pleasing. The dungeon of Bonnivard is, like that of the Ugolino, a subject too dismal for even the power of the painter or poet to counteract its horrors. It is the more disagreeable as affording human hope no anchor to res! upon, and describing the sufferer, though a man of talents and virtues, as altogether inert and powerless under his accumulated sufferings: yet, as a picture, however gloomy the colouring, it may rival any which Lord Byron has drawn; nor is it possible to read it without a sinking of the heart, corresponding with that which he describes the victim to have suffered." Sir Waller Scott. Manfred; A DRAMATIC POEM. (1) "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, But a continuance of enduring thought, Man. THE lamp must be replenish'd, but even Nor fluttering throb, that beats with hopes or wishes, then It will not burn so long as I must watch: (1) The following are extracts from Lord Byron's letters to Mr. Murray respecting the history of the composition of Manfred: "Venice, Feb. 18, 1817.-I forgot to mention to you, that a kind of Poem in dialogue (in blank verse) or Drama, from which 'the Incantation' is an extract, begun last summer in Switzerland, is finished: it is in three acts, but of a very wild, metaphysical, and inexplicable kind. Almost all the persons-but two or three -are Spirits of the earth and air, or the waters; the scene is in the Alps; the hero a kind of magician, who is tormented by a species of remorse, the cause of which is left half unexplained. He wanders about invoking these Spirits, which appear to him, and are of no use; he at last goes to the very abode of the Evil Principle, in proprid persond, to evocate a ghost, which anpears, and gives him an ambiguous and disagreeable answer; and, in the third act, he is found by his attendants dying in a tower where he had studied his art. You may perceive, by this outline, that I have no great opinion of this piece of fantasy; but I have at least rendered it quite impossible for the stage, for which my intercourse with Drury-Lane has given me the greatest contempt. I have not even copied it off, and feel too lazy at present to attempt the whole; but when I have, I will send it you, and you may either throw it into the fire or not." "March 3.—I sent you the other day, in two covers, the first act of Manfred, a drama as mad as Nat Lee's Bedlam tragedy, which was in twenty-five acts and some odd scenes: mine is but in three acts." Or lurking love of something on the earth.Now to my task.— Mysterious Agency! "March 6.-In remitting the third act of the sort of dramatic poem of which you will by this time have received the two first, I have little to observe, except that you must not publish it (if it ever is published) without giving me previous notice. I have really and truly no notion whether it is good or bad; and as this was not the case with the principal of my former publications, I am, therefore, inclined to rank it very humbly. You will submit it to Mr. Gifford, and to whomsoever you please besides. The thing, you will see at a glimpse, could never be attempted or thought of for the stage; I much doubt if for publication even. It is too much in my old style; but I composed it actually with a horror of the stage, and with a view to render the thought of it impracticable, knowing the zeal of my friends that I should try that for which I have an invincible repugnance, viz. a representation. I certainly am a devil of a mannerist, and must leave off; but what could I do? Without exertion of some kind, I should have sunk under my imagination and reality.” "March 25.-With regard to the 'Witch Drama,' I repeat, that I have not an idea if it is good or bad. If bad, it must, on no account, be risked in publication; if good, it is at your service. I value it at three hundred guineas, or less, if you like it. Perhaps, if published, the best way will be to add it to your winter volume, and not publish separately. The price will show you I don't pique myself upon it; so speak out. You may put it into the fire, if you like, and Gifford don't like.” "April 9-As for Manfred, the two first acts are the best, he third so so; but I was blown with the first and second beats. Ye spirits of the unbounded universe! In subtler essence-ye, to whom the tops And earth's and ocean's caves familiar things- Which gives me power upon you--Rise! appear! They come not yet. Now, by the voice of him [A pause. If it be so.-Spirits of earth and air, [A star is seen at the darker end of the gal- FIRST SPIRIT. Mortal! to thy bidding how'd, From my mansion in the cloud, You may call it 'a poem,' for it is no drama, and I do not choose to have it called by so d-d a name,-'a Poem in dialogue,' or —Pantomime, if you will, any thing but a green-room synonyme; and this is your motto < There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' Which the breath of twilight builds, Voice of the SECOND SPIRIT. On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds, Around his waist are forests braced, Or with its ice delay. I am the spirit of the place, Could make the mountain bow Where the wave hath no strife, the helps that could be derived from the majesty of nature, or the dread of superstition. It is enough, therefore, if the situation in which he has placed him is conceivable, and if the supposition of its reality enhances our emotions and kindles our imagination; for it is Manfred only that we are required to fear, to pity, or admire. If we can once conceive of him as a real exist sorrows, we may deal as we please with the means that have been used to furnish us with this impression, or to enable us to attain to this conception. We may regard them but as types, or metaphors, or allegories; but HE is the thing to be expressed, and the feeling and the intellect of which all these are but shadows." The annexed passages are extracted from the two ablest criti-ence, and enter into the depth and the height of his pride and his cisms that followed the publication of Manfred. “This celebrated piece is properly entitled a dramatic poem-for it is merely poetical, and is not at all a drama or play in the modern acceptation of the term. It has no action, no plot, and no characters; Hanfred merely muses and suffers from the beginning to the end. His distresses are the same at the opening of the scene and at its-Jeffrey. closing, and the temper in which they are borne is the same. A hunter and a priest, and some domestics, are indeed introduced, but they have no connection with the passions or sufferings on which the interest depends; and Manfred is substantially alone throughout the whole piece. He holds no communion but with the memory of the Being he had loved; and the immortal Spirits whom he evokes to reproach with his misery, and their inability to relieve it. These unearthly beings approach nearer to the character of persons of the drama-but still they are but choral accompaniments to the performance; and Manfred is, in reality, the only actor and sufferer on the scene. To delineate his character indeed-to render conceivable his feelings—is plainly the whole scope and design of the poem; and the conception and execution are, in this respect, equally admirable. It is a grand and terrific vision of a being invested with superhuman attributes, in order that he may be capable of more than human sufferings, and be sustained under them by more than human force and pride. To object to the improbability of the fiction, is to mistake the end and aim of the author. Probabilities, we apprehend, did not enter at all into his consideration; his object was, to produce effect-to exalt and dilate the character through whom he was to interest or appal us—and to raise our conception of it, by all "In this very extraordinary poem, Lord Byron has pursued the same course as in the third canto of Childe Harold, and put out his strength upon the same objects. The action is laid among the mountains of the Alps-the characters are all, more or less, formed and swayed by the operations of the magnificent scenery around them, and every page of the poem teems with imagery and passion, though, at the same time, the mind of the poet is often overborne, as it were, by the strength and novelty of its own conceptions; and thus the composition, as a whole, is liable to many and fatal objections. But there is a still more novel exhibition of Lord Byron's powers in this remarkable drama. He has here burst into the world of spirits; and, in the wild delight with which the elements of nature seem to have inspired him, he has endeavoured to embody and call up before him their ministering agents, and to employ these wild personifications, as he formerly employed the feelings and passions of man. We are not prepared to say, that, in this daring attempt, he has completely succeeded. We are inclined to think, that the plan he has conceived, and the principal character which he has wished to delineate, would require a fuller developement than is here given to them; and, accordingly, a sense of imperfection, incompleteness, and confusion, accompanies the mind |