The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4

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[cd] {261} ----_of long-enduring ill._--[MS. erased.]

[ce]

----_the martyred country's gore_
_Will not in vain arise to whom belongs._--[MS. erased.]

[301] {262}Alexander of Parma, Spinola, Pescara, Eugene of Savoy,
Montecuccoli.

[Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma (1546-1592), recovered the Southern
Netherlands for Spain, 1578-79, made Henry IV. raise the siege of Paris,
1590, etc.

Ambrogio, Marchese di Spinola (1569-1630), a Maltese by birth, entered
the Spanish service 1602, took Ostend 1604, invested Bergen-op-Zoom,
etc.

Ferdinando Francesco dagli Avalos, Marquis of Pescara (1496-1525), took
Milan November 19, 1521, fought at Lodi, etc., was wounded at the battle
of Padua, February 24, 1525. He was the husband of Vittoria Colonna, and
when he was in captivity at Ravenna wrote some verses in her honour.

Francois Eugene (1663-1736), Prince of Savoy-Carignan, defeated the
French at Turin, 1706, and (with Marlborough) at Malplaquet, 1709; the
Turks at Peterwardein, 1716, etc.

Raimondo Montecuccoli, a Modenese (1608-1680), defeated the Turks at St.
Gothard in 1664, and in 1675-6 commanded on the Rhine, and
out-generalled Turenne and the Prince de Conde]

[302] Columbus, Americus Vespusius, Sebastian Cabot.

[Christopher Columbus (circ. 1430-1506), a Genoese, discovered mainland
of America, 1498; Amerigo Vespucci (1451-1512), a Florentine, explored
coasts of America, 1497-1504; Sebastian Cabot (1477-1557), son of
Giovanni Cabotto or Gavotto, a Venetian, discovered coasts of Labrador,
etc., June, 1497.]

[303] {263}[Compare--

"Ah! servile Italy, griefs hostelry!
A ship without a pilot in great tempest!"

_Purgatorio_, vi. 76, 77.]

[cf]

_Yet through this many-yeared eclipse of Woe_.
--[MS. Alternative reading.]
_Yet through this murky interreign of Woe_.--[MS. erased.]

[cg] _Which choirs the birds to song_---.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

[ch] _And Pearls flung down to regal Swine evince_.--[MS. Alternative
reading.]

[ci] _The whoredom of high Genius_----.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

[304] {264}[Alfieri, in his _Autobiography_ ... (1845, _Period III_.
chap. viii. p. 92) notes and deprecates the servile manner in which
Metastasio went on his knees before Maria Theresa in the Imperial
gardens of Schoenbrunnen.]

[cj] _And prides itself in prostituted duty_.--[MS. Alternative
reading.]

[305] A verse from the Greek tragedians, with which Pompey took leave of
Cornelia [daughter of Metellus Scipio, and widow of P. Crassus] on
entering the boat in which he was slain. [The verse, or verses, are said
to be by Sophocles, and are quoted by Plutarch, in his Life of Pompey,
c. 78, _Vitae_, 1814, vii. 159. They run thus--

[Greek: O(/stis ga\r o(s ty/rannon e)mporeu/etai,]
[Greek: Kei/nou e)sti\ dou~los, ka)\n e)leu/theros me|.]

("Seek'st thou a tyrant's door? then farewell, freedom!
Though _free_ as air before.")

_Vide Incert. Fab. Fragm_., No. 789, _Trag. Grec. Fragm_.,
A. Nauck, 1889, p. 316.]

[306] The verse and sentiment are taken from Homer.

[Greek: [E(/misy ga/r t' a)rete~s a)poai/nytai eu)ry/opa Zeu/s]
[Greek: 'Ane/ros, eu~(t' a(/n min kata\ dou/lion e~)mare(/le|sin.]

_Odyssey_, xvii. 322, 323.]

[307] {265}Petrarch. [Dante died September 14, 1321, when Petrarch, born
July 20, 1304, had entered his eighteenth year.]

[308] [Historical events may be thrown into the form of prophecy with
some security, but not so the critical opinions of the _soi-disani_
prophet. If Byron had lived half a century later, he might have placed
Ariosto and Tasso after and not before Petrarch.]

[ck]

_Was crimsoned with his veins who died to save,_
_Shall be his glorious argument,_----.--[MS, Alternative reading.]

[309] {266}[See the Introduction to the _Lament of Tasso_, _ante_, p.
139, and _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza xxxvi. line 2, _Poetical
Works_, 1899, ii. 355, note 1.]

[310] [Alfonso d'Este (II.), Duke of Ferrara, died 1597.]

[311] [Compare the opening lines of the _Orlando Furioso_--

"Le Donne, i Cavalier'! l'arme, gli amori,
Le Cortesie, l'audaci imprese io canto."

See _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanzas xl., xli.,
_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 359, 360, note 1.]

[312] [The sense is, "Ariosto may be matched with, perhaps excelled by,
Homer; but where is the Greek poet to set on the same pedestal with
Tasso?"]

[313] [Compare _Churchill's Grave_, lines 15-19--

"And is this all? I thought,--and do we rip
The veil of Immortality, and crave
I know not what of honour and of light
Through unborn ages, to endure this blight?
So soon, and so successless?"

_Vide ante_, p. 47.]

[cl] {267}

/ _winged_ \
_The_ < > _blood_----.--[MS. Alternative reading.]
\ _lightning_ /

[314] [Compare--

"For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise."

_Kubla Khan,_ lines 52, 53, _Poetical Works_. of
S. T. Coleridge, 1893, p. 94.]

[315] [Compare--

"By our own spirits are we deified:
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness."

_Resolution and Independence_, vii. lines 5-7,
Wordsworth's _Poetical Works_, 1889, p. 175.

Compare, too, Moore's fine apology for Byron's failure to submit to the
yoke of matrimony, "and to live happily ever afterwards"--

"But it is the cultivation and exercise of the imaginative faculty that,
more than anything, tend to wean the man of genius from actual life,
and, by substituting the sensibilities of the imagination for those of
the heart, to render, at last, the medium through which he feels no less
unreal than that through which he thinks. Those images of ideal good and
beauty that surround him in his musings soon accustom him to consider
all that is beneath this high standard unworthy of his care; till, at
length, the heart becoming chilled as the fancy warms, it too often
happens that, in proportion as he has refined and elevated his theory of
all the social affections, he has unfitted himself for the practice of
them."--_Life_, p. 268.]

[316] {269}[So too Wordsworth, in his Preface to the _Lyrical Ballads_
(1800); "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings."]

[317] [Compare--

"Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness ...
But baffled as thou wert from high ...
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals."

_Prometheus_, iii. lines 35, _seq_.; _vide ante_, p. 50.

Compare, too, the _Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte_, stanza xvi. _var_ ii.--

"He suffered for kind acts to men."

_Poetical Works_, 1900, iii. 312.]

[318] {270}["Transfigurate," whence "transfiguration," is derived from
the Latin _transfiguro,_ found in Suetonius and Quintilian. Byron may
have thought to anglicize the Italian _trasfigurarsi._]

[319] The Cupola of St. Peter's. [Michel Angelo, then in his
seventy-second year, received the appointment of architect of St.
Peter's from Pope Paul III. He began the dome on a different plan from
that of the first architect, Bramante, "declaring that he would raise
the Pantheon in the air." The drum of the dome was constructed in his
life-time, but for more than twenty-four years after his death (1563),
the cupola remained untouched, and it was not till 1590, in the
pontificate of Sixtus V., that the dome itself was completed. The ball
and cross were placed on the summit in November, 1593.--_Handbook of
Rome_, p. 239.

Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza cliii. line i, _Poetical
Works_, 1892, ii. 440, 441, note 2.]

[320] {271}["Yet, however unequal I feel myself to that attempt, were I
now to begin the world again, I would tread in the steps of that great
master [Michel Angelo]. To kiss the hem of his garment, to catch the
slightest of his perfections, would be glory and distinction enough for
an ambitious man."--_Discourses_ of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1884, p. 289.]

[321] The statue of Moses on the monument of Julius II. [Michel Angelo's
Moses is near the end of the right aisle of the Church of S.
Pietro-in-Vincoli.]

"SONETTO

"_Di Giovanni Battista Zappi_.

"Chi e costui, che in si gran pietra scolto,
Siede gigante, e le piu illustri, e conte
Opre dell' arte avanza, e ha vive, e pronte
Le labbra si, che le parole ascolto?
Quest' e Mose; ben me 'l diceva il folto
Onor del mento, e 'l doppio raggio in fronte;
Quest' e Mose, quando scendea dal monte,
E gran parte del Nume avea nel volto.
Tal' era allor, che le sonanti, e vaste
Acque ei sospese, a se d' intorno; e tale
Quando il Mar chiuse, e ne fe tomba altrui.
E voi, sue turbe, un rio vitello alzaste?
Alzata aveste immago a questa eguale!
Ch' era men fallo i' adorar costui."

[_Scelta di Sonetti ... del Gobbi_, 1709, iii. 216.]

["And who is he that, shaped in sculptured stone
Sits giant-like? stern monument of art
Unparalleled, while language seems to start
From his prompt lips, and we his precepts own?
--'Tis Moses; by his beard's thick honours known,
And the twin beams that from his temples dart;
'Tis Moses; seated on the mount apart,
Whilst yet the Godhead o'er his features shone.
Such once he looked, when Ocean's sounding wave
Suspended hung, and such amidst the storm,
When o'er his foes the refluent waters roared.
An idol calf his followers did engrave:
But had they raised this awe-commanding form,
Then had they with less guilt their work adored."

Rogers.]

[cm] {272}

----_from whose word_
{_Israel took God, pronounce the law in stone._
{_Israel left Egypt, cleave the sea in stone_.--

[MS. Alternative readings.]

[322] The Last Judgment, in the Sistine Chapel.

["It is obvious, throughout his [Michel Angelo's] works, that the
poetical mind of the latter [Dante] influenced his feelings. The Demons
in the Last Judgment ... may find a prototype in _La Divina Comedia_.
The figures rising from the grave mark his study of _L'Inferno_, e _Il
Purgatorio_; and the subject of the Brazen Serpent, in the Sistine
Chapel, must remind every reader of Canto XXV. dell' _Inferno_."--_Life
of Michael Angelo_ by R. Duppa, 1856, p. 120.]

[323] I have read somewhere (if I do not err, for I cannot recollect
where,) that Dante was so great a favourite of Michael Angelo's, that he
had designed the whole of the Divina Commedia: but that the volume
containing these studies was lost by sea.

[Michel Angelo's copy of Dante, says Duppa (_ibid_., and note 1), "was a
large folio, with Landino's commentary; and upon the broad margin of the
leaves he designed with a pen and ink, all the interesting subjects.
This book was possessed by Antonio Montanti, a sculptor and architect in
Florence, who, being appointed architect to St. Peter's, removed to
Rome, and shipped his ... effects at Leghorn for Civita Vecchia, among
which was this edition of Dante. In the voyage the vessel foundered at
sea, and it was unfortunately lost in the wreck."]

[324] {273} See the treatment of Michel Angelo by Julius II., and his
neglect by Leo X. [Julius II. encouraged his attendance at the Vatican,
but one morning he was stopped by the chamberlain in waiting, who said,
"I have an order not to let you enter." Michel Angelo, indignant at the
insult, left Rome that very evening. Though Julius despatched five
couriers to bring him back, it was some months before he returned. Even
a letter (July 8, 1506), in which the Pope promised his "dearly beloved
Michel Angelo" that he should not be touched nor offended, but be
"reinstated in the apostolic grace," met with no response. It was this
quarrel with Julius II. which prevented the completion of the sepulchral
monument. The "Moses" and the figures supposed to represent the Active
and the Contemplative Life, and three Caryatides (since removed)
represent the whole of the original design, "a parallelogram surmounted
with forty statues, and covered with reliefs and other ornaments."--See
Duppa's _Life, etc_., 1856, pp. 33, 34, and _Handbook of Rome_, p. 133.]

[325] [Compare _Merchant of Venice_, act iv. sc. 1, lines 191, 192.]

[326] {274}[Compare--

"I fled, and cried out Death ...
I fled, but he pursued, (though more, it seems,
Inflamed with lust than rage), and swifter far,
Me overtook, his mother, all dismayed,
And in embraces forcible and foul,
Ingendering with me, of that rape begot
These yelling monsters, that with ceaseless cry
Surround me."

_Paradise Lost_, book ii. lines 787-796.]

[327] [In his _Convito_, Dante speaks of his banishment, and the poverty
and distress which attended it, in very affecting terms. "Ah! would it
had pleased the Dispenser of all things that this excuse had never been
needed; that neither others had done me wrong, nor myself undergone
penalty undeservedly,--the penalty, I say, of exile and of poverty. For
it pleased the citizens of the fairest and most renowned daughter of
Rome--Florence--to cast me out of her most sweet bosom, where I was born
and bred, and passed half of the life of man, and in which, with her
good leave, I still desire with all my heart to repose my weary spirit,
and finish the days allotted me; and so I have wandered in almost every
place to which our language extends, a stranger, almost a beggar,
exposing against my will the wounds given me by fortune, too often
unjustly imputed to the sufferer's fault. Truly I have been a vessel
without sail and without rudder, driven about upon different ports and
shores by the dry wind that springs out of dolorous poverty; and hence
have I appeared vile in the eyes of many, who, perhaps, by some better
report, had conceived of me a different impression, and in whose sight
not only has my person become thus debased, but an unworthy opinion
created of everything which I did, or which I had to do."--_Il Convito_,
book i. chap. iii., translated by Leigh Hunt, _Stories from the Italian
Poets_, 1846, i. 22, 23.]

[328] {275} What is Horizon's quantity? Hor[=i]zon, or Hor[)i]zon? adopt
accordingly.--[B.]

[cn]--_and the Horizon for bars_.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

[329] [Compare--

"Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar."

_Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza lvii.,
_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 371, note 1.

"Between the second and third chapels [in the nave of Santa Croce at
Florence] is the colossal monument to Dante, by Ricci ... raised by
subscription in 1829. The inscription, '_A majoribus ter frustra
decretum_,' refers to the successive efforts of the Florentines to
recover his remains, and raise a monument to their great
countryman."--_Handbook, Central Italy_, p. 32.]

[330] "E scrisse piu volte non solamente a' particolari Cittadini del
Reggimento, ma ancora al Popolo; e intra l' altre un' Epistola assai
lunga che incomincia: '_Popule mee_ (sic), _quid feci tibi?_"--_Le vite
di Dante, etc._, _scritte da Lionardo Aretino_, 1672, p. 47.

[331] {276}[About the year 1316 his friends obtained his restoration to
his country and his possessions, on condition that he should pay a
certain sum of money, and, entering a church, avow himself guilty, and
ask pardon of the republic.

The following was his answer to a religious, who appears to have been
one of his kinsmen: "From your letter, which I received with due respect
and affection, I observe how much you have at heart my restoration to my
country. I am bound to you the more gratefully inasmuch as an exile
rarely finds a friend. But, after mature consideration, I must, by my
answer, disappoint the writers of some little minds ... Your nephew and
mine has written to me ... that ... I am allowed to return to Florence,
provided I pay a certain sum of money, and submit to the humiliation of
asking and receiving absolution.... Is such an invitation then to return
to his country glorious to d. all. after suffering in exile almost
fifteen years? Is it thus, then, they would recompense innocence which
all the world knows, and the labour and fatigue of unremitting study?
Far from the man who is familiar with philosophy, be the senseless
baseness of a heart of earth, that could imitate the infamy of some
others, by offering himself up as it were in chains. Far from the man
who cries aloud for justice, this compromise, by his money, with his
persecutors! No, my Father, this is not the way that shall lead me back
to my country. I will return with hasty steps, if you or any other can
open to me a way that shall not derogate from the fame and honour of d.;
but if by no such way Florence can be entered, then Florence I shall
never enter. What! shall I not every where enjoy the light of the sun
and the stars? and may I not seek and contemplate, in every corner of
the earth, under the canopy of heaven, consoling and delightful truth,
without first rendering myself inglorious, nay infamous, to the people
and republic of Florence? Bread, I hope, will not fail me."--_Epistola,
IX. Amico Florentino: Opere di Dante_, 1897, p. 413.]

THE MORGANTE MAGGIORE

OF PULCI.

INTRODUCTION TO THE _MORGANTE MAGGIORE_.

It is possible that Byron began his translation of the First Canto of
Pulci's _Morgante Maggiore_ (so called to distinguish the entire poem of
twenty-eight cantos from the lesser _Morgante_ [or, to coin a title,
"_Morganid_"] which was published separately) in the late autumn of
1819, before he had left Venice (see his letter to Bankes, February 19,
1820, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 403). It is certain that it was finished at
Ravenna during the first week of his "domestication" in the Palazzo
Guiccioli (Letters to Murray, February 7, February 21, 1820). He took a
deal of pains with his self-imposed task, "servilely translating stanza
from stanza, and line from line, two octaves every night;" and when the
first canto was finished he was naturally and reasonably proud of his
achievement. More than two years had elapsed since Frere's
_Whistlecraft_ had begotten _Beppo_, and in the interval he had written
four cantos of _Don Juan_, outstripping his "immediate model," and
equalling if not surpassing his model's parents and precursors, the
masters of "narrative romantic poetry among the Italians."

In attempting this translation--something, as he once said of his
Armenian studies, "craggy for his mind to break upon" (Letter to Moore,
December 5, 1816, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 10)--Byron believed that he was
working upon virgin soil. He had read, as he admits in his
"Advertisement," John Herman Merivale's poem, _Orlando in Roncesvalles_,
which is founded upon the _Morgante Maggiore_; but he does not seem to
have been aware that many years before (1806, 1807) the same writer (one
of the "associate bards") had published in the _Monthly Magazine_ (May,
July, 1806, etc., _vide ante_ Introduction to _Beppo_, p. 156) a series
of translations of selected passages of the poem. There is no
resemblance whatever between Byron's laboured and faithful rendering of
the text, and Merivale's far more readable paraphrase, and it is
evident that if these selections ever passed before his eyes, they had
left no impression on his memory. He was drawn to the task partly on
account of its difficulty, but chiefly because in Pulci he recognized a
kindred spirit who suggested and compelled a fresh and final dedication
of his genius to the humorous epopee. The translation was an act of
devotion, the offering of a disciple to a master.

"The apparent contradictions of the _Morgante Maggiore_ ... the brusque
transition from piety to ribaldry, from pathos to satire," the
paradoxical union of persiflage with gravity, a confession of faith
alternating with a profession of mockery and profanity, have puzzled and
confounded more than one student and interpreter. An intimate knowledge
of the history, the literature, the art, the manners and passions of the
times has enabled one of his latest critics and translators, John
Addington Symonds, to come as near as may be to explaining the
contradictions; but the essential quality of Pulci's humour eludes
analysis.

We know that the poem itself, as Pio Rajna has shown, "the _rifacimento_
of two earlier popular poems," was written to amuse Lucrezia Tornabuoni,
the mother of Lorenzo de' Medici, and that it was recited, canto by
canto, in the presence of such guests as Poliziano, Ficino, and
Michelangelo Buonarotti; but how "it struck these contemporaries," and
whether a subtler instinct permitted them to untwist the strands and to
appraise the component parts at their precise ethical and spiritual
value, are questions for the exercise of the critical imagination. That
which attracted Byron to Pulci's writings was, no doubt, the co-presence
of faith, a certain _simplicity_ of faith, with an audacious and even
outrageous handling of the objects of faith, combined with a facile and
wanton alternation of romantic passion with a cynical mockery of
whatsoever things are sober and venerable. _Don Juan_ and the _Vision of
Judgment_ owe their existence to the _Morgante Maggiore_.

The MS. of the translation of Canto I. was despatched to England,
February 28, 1820. It is evident (see Letters, March 29, April 23, May
18, 1820, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 425, 1901, v. 17, 21) that Murray looked
coldly on Byron's "masterpiece" from the first. It was certain that any
new work by the author of _Don Juan_ would be subjected to the severest
and most hostile scrutiny, and it was doubtful if a translation of part
of an obscure and difficult poem, vaguely supposed to be coarse and
irreligious, would meet with even a tolerable measure of success. At any
rate, in spite of many inquiries and much vaunting of its excellence
(see Letters, June 29, September 12, 1821, _Letters_, 1901, v. 314,
362), the MS. remained for more than two years in Murray's hands, and it
was not until other arrangements came into force that the translation of
the First Canto of the _Morgante Maggiore_ appeared in the fourth and
last number of _The Liberal_, which was issued (by John Hunt) July 30,
1823.

For critical estimates of Luigi Pulci and the _Morgante Maggiore_, see
an article (_Quarterly Review_, April, 1819, vol. xxi. pp. 486-556), by
Ugo Foscolo, entitled "Narrative and Romantic Poems of the Italians;"
_Preface_ to the _Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo_, by A. Panizzi, 1830,
i. 190-302; _Poems Original and Translated_, by J. H. Merivale, 1838,
ii. 1-43; _Stories of the Italian Poets_, by J. H. Leigh Hunt, 1846, i.
283-314; _Renaissance in Italy_, by J. A. Symonds, 1881, iv. 431, 456,
and for translations of the _Morgante Maggiore_, _vide ibid_., Appendix
V. pp. 543-560; and _Italian Literature_, by R. Garnett, C.B., LL.D.,
1898, pp. 128-131.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The Morgante Maggiore, of the first canto of which this translation is
offered, divides with the Orlando Innamorato the honour of having formed
and suggested the style and story of Ariosto.[332] The great defects of
Boiardo were his treating too seriously the narratives of chivalry, and
his harsh style. Ariosto, in his continuation, by a judicious mixture of
the gaiety of Pulci, has avoided the one; and Berni, in his reformation
of Boiardo's poem, has corrected the other. Pulci may be considered as
the precursor and model of Berni altogether, as he has partly been to
Ariosto, however inferior to both his copyists. He is no less the
founder of a new style of poetry very lately sprung up in England. I
allude to that of the ingenious Whistlecraft. The serious poems on
Roncesvalles in the same language, and more particularly the excellent
one of Mr. Merivale, are to be traced to the same source.[333] It has
never yet been decided entirely whether Pulci's intention was or was not
to deride the religion which is one of his favourite topics. It appears
to me, that such an intention would have been no less hazardous to the
poet than to the priest, particularly in that age and country; and the
permission to publish the poem, and its reception among the classics of
Italy, prove that it neither was nor is so interpreted. That he
intended to ridicule the monastic life, and suffered his imagination to
play with the simple dulness of his converted giant, seems evident
enough; but surely it were as unjust to accuse him of irreligion on this
account, as to denounce Fielding for his Parson Adams, Barnabas,[334]
Thwackum, Supple, and the Ordinary in Jonathan Wild,--or Scott, for the
exquisite use of his Covenanters in the "Tales of my Landlord."