if it was but yesterday, and could point it out, spot by spot, torrent and all." And announcing the work to Moore (March 25, 1817), he says: "I wrote a sort of mad Drama, for the sake of introducing the Alpine scenery in description." This of course is an exaggerated statement of the case, for after all the poetic center of the poem is Manfred, not the Alps, and the poem is essentially psychological and lyrical rather than descriptive.

See the extracts from Byron's Journal and Letters given below in the notes to I, ii, and II, i and ii.

As to other sources, Goethe's 'Faust' obviously furnished certain suggestions. Writing to Rogers, April 4, 1817, Byron says: "I forgot to tell you that, last autumn, I furnished [Matthew Gregory, or 'Monk'] Lewis with 'bread and salt' for some days at Diodati, in reward for which (besides his conversation) he translated Goethe's 'Faust' to me by word of mouth." And later, June 7, 1820, in a letter to Murray: "[Goethe's] 'Faust' I never read, for I don't know German; but Matthew Monk Lewis, in 1816, at Coligny, translated most of it to me vivâ voce, and I was naturally much struck with it; but it was the Steinbach and the Jungfrau, and something else, much more than Faustus, that made me write 'Manfred."" The two poems are obviously not in competition. With several motives in common, the aims are different, and they belong in different classes.* With the spirit of Marlowe's 'Faustus' Manfred' also has something in common, and it is difficult to believe that Byron had never seen Marlowe's work, at least the portions contained in Lamb's 'Specimens of the English Dramatic Poets,' a book which he knew. Yet Byron assures us that such was the fact. "I never read and do not know that I ever saw the Faustus' of Marlowe," he writes to Murray. And later: "As to the Faustus' of Marlowe, I never read, never saw, nor heard of it—at least, thought of it, except that I think Mr. Gifford mentioned, in a note of his which you sent me, something about the catastrophe; but not as having anything to do with mine, which may or may resemble it, for anything I know." Jeffrey in his review of the poem remarks that "in the tone and pitch of the composition, as well as

*For suggestive comparisons of the two poems, see Castelar's 'Life of Byron' (Lond. 1875), pp. 169-175; Taine, Hist. Eng. Lit. Bk. IV, ch. ii, sect. iv.

in the character of the diction in the more solemn parts, 'Manfred' reminds us much more of the 'Prometheus' of Eschylus than of any more modern performance. The tremendous solitude of the principal person, the supernatural beings with whom alone he holds communion, the guilt, the firmness, the misery, are all points of resemblance to which the grandeur of the poetic imagery only gives a more striking effect." This flattering resemblance Byron was quite willing to admit. "Of the 'Prometheus' of Eschylus," he writes, "I was passionately fond as a boy (it was one of the Greek plays we read thrice a year at Harrow)... The Prometheus, if not exactly in my plan, has always been so much in my head that I can easily conceive its influence over all or anything that I have written." Perhaps also, as Goethe hinted, certain things in the story of Manfred and Astarte were suggested by the story of Pausanias and Cleonice, which Byron refers to in both text and notes of II, ii, 182 ff. Moreover, as Mr. Tozer suggests, but in a very general sense, sts. v-vii of the third book of 'Childe Harold' (written only a short time before Byron began Manfred ') contain the germ of the conception of 'Manfred.' They also suggest the real poetic impulse in the writing of this, as of most of his poetry. So Byron, in a letter to Murray at this period wrote: "Without exertion of some kind [as in composing 'Manfred '], I should have sunk under my imagination, and reality.'

And

Compare also 'Childe Harold,' Bk. IV, cxxiii-cxxvii. with the scenery and general atmosphere of 'Manfred,' compare Bk. III, lxii, lxxii-lxxv, xcii, xcvi-xcvii. In further illustration of Byron's state of mind at the time of the composition of ‘Manfred,' see the end of the extract from his Swiss Journal in the notes which follow on Act I, scene ii.

Of the general aim and character of the poem Byron wrote to Murray as follows: "I forgot to mention to you that a kind of Poem in dialogue (in blank verse) or Drama . . . 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 propriâ persona, to evocate a ghost, which appears 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" [so in the first version: see notes below to Act III, scene i]. The account is sufficiently deprecatory and unassuming; but all this is, of course, but the outer husk and argument; the real poetical motive is undescribed. The attempt was so daring and out of the common that at first Byron was doubtful of the worth and success of the poem. Afterwards he grew more confident, and, in July, 1817, wrote to Murray: "He is one of the best of my misbegotten, say what they will." He felt, however, that the style and conception were ultra-romantic and extreme, and, so, suggestive of the romantic verse-tales of his English period. "It is too much in 'my old style," he writes. "... I certainly am a devil of a mannerist, and must leave off." The mannerisms of 'Manfred' are perhaps of two sorts: (1) in the extravagance of Manfred's character and moods; (2) in the occasional half-archaisms and stagy turns of diction. Both, however, are introduced for a purpose, and are a part of the design as a whole.

Structurally and regarded as narrative (dramatic it was never intended to be), 'Manfred' misses being a great poem. In its essence, and aside from the external form and machinery, it is a great lyrical poem:* but lyrical in Byron's manner; not in the coined and minted perfection of the parts, but in the overmastering mood, the impress of a perfectly incomparable and unparalleled genius (in the strict sense of these words), the passionate sweep, and the dynamic harmony, felt in the whole. It is the great English poem expressive of modern Welt-Schmerz, the woes of the Time-Spirit, the throes of Romanticism in life and in literature. The misanthropy, the scepticism, and the pessimism of the age herein, as sentiments, receive full and fierce expression. It has grave defects of style in its parts, but in its central poetic purpose it is a magnificent success. Manfred is the central con

* Its main lyrical motives have been treated by Tschaikowsky, the great Russian composer, in a "Symphony, after Byron's 'Manfred,' in four tableaux," somewhat sensationally, but with great lyrical power,

ception-Manfred as the type and representative of one part of the spirit of Byron's age. Jeffrey, the earliest of the critics of 'Manfred,' was quite right when he said that "it is Manfred only that we are required to fear, to pity, to admire. If we can once conceive of him as a real existence and enter into the depth and the height of his pride and his 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." Jeffrey, too, is right in his interpretation of the author's design (and Byron approved of Jeffrey's criticism): "If we were to consider it as a proper drama, or even as a finished poem, we should be obliged to add that it is far too indistinct and unsatisfactory. But this we take to be according to the design and conception of the author. He contemplated but a dim and magnificent sketch of a subject which did not admit of more accurate drawing or more brilliant colouring. Its obscurity is a part of its grandeur; and the darkness that rests upon it, and the smoky distance in which it is lost, are all devices to increase its majesty, to stimulate our curiosity, and to impress us with deeper

Manfred is not Byron, except in the sense that Hamlet is Shakspere. There is much of Byron's mind in Manfred; more of that subtle and indefinable quality, his genius; very little indeed of the outward things of Byron's life.

In addition to Eschylus' Prometheus,' to Marlowe's 'Faustus,' ard to Goethe's 'Faust,' Shelley's 'Prometheus Unbound' may be studied to advantage in connection with 'Manfred.'* It is likely also that Byron had Milton's Satan in mind while composing this drama.

What are the qualities of Byron's blank verse in 'Manfred '? Does the verse generally lack continuity of thought and of rhythmical flow? Where are the prevailing pauses ? What substitutions and inversions are most frequently used? Does it lack in resonance and richness of tone-color? Is it better in dialogue or in

* O. Lohmann (in an article on 'Manfred' in 'Anglia,' V, 291) suggests for further comparison, as a type of revolt, Molière's 'Don Juan.'

soliloquies and descriptive passages? Is the poet more successful in rhymed passages? Where is rhyme used? Has Byron's verse the merit of being a transparent instrument, so that the poetic idea and emotion are transmitted without intercepting the attention in the process?

What stylistic devices are prominent in this poem? Is metaphor or is simile more frequent? Do the tropes used rather present pictures or express energy and passion? What devices of repetition are used and what is the effect? (See, e.g., I, ii, 1-3; II, iv, 136, 143–149.) Is the poet's use of personification vivid and effective? Byron's use of poetical epithet (qualifying adjectives) throughout Manfred' should be studied, noting the peculiar effect and appropriateness of each epithet in its place. See, e.g., "the answer'd owls"; "cloud-cleaving minister"; "serpent smile"; "shut soul"; "clankless chain"; "liberal air"; 66 tering herd"; toppling crags"; "salt-surf weeds of bitterness"; "difficult air" (of mountains); "crackling skies"; "hush'd boughs"; "snow-shining mountains"; "angry clouds." But does Byron habitually make much use of adjectives? If not, what is it that chiefly gives his style its poetical quality?

66

saun

168: The Motto, from 'Hamlet' I, v, put in connection with Byron's "dramatic poem," apparently is intended to suggest (but merely to suggest) several ideas: (1) the justification of the use of the supernatural in 'Manfred;' (2) that the poem is philosophical, with a difference, or at least that it is symbolic; (3) and so a poetic-dramatic vindication of Byron's peculiar personal philosophy, rather than that of any accepted creeds (or Horatio's); and (4) that the hero's state of soul is perhaps fundamentally that of Hamlet; whereupon we are at liberty to recall by way of explanation other key-notes in Hamlet' which are echoed in Manfred,' as, for example:

and,

"But I have that within which passeth show."

"How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!"

and,

"To be, or not to be: that is the question."

But note the essential difference (doubtless both temperamental