is probably given her to suggest the present association and to add another element of mystery to her nature.

For further references to this mysterious portion of the story, cf. I, i. 24, 87-91; II, i, 21–30, 84-87; II, ii, 59, 104–121, 192– 197; II, iv, 83, 97–155; III, iii, 41–47.

196: 98. The Phantom of Astarte. For the possible symbolism underlying this apparition, cf. 'Childe Harold' IV, cxxiv, 3-4: "Though to the last, in verge of our decay,

Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first."

196: 100. Cf. Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind' (1819):

"thou breath of Autumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven. . . . .

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red."

Phan. Manfred! With this

197: 154. Say, thou lovest me. enigmatical answer Astarte vanishes. With what tones are we to imagine that she pronounces the name Manfred? Is it a cry of love and atonement? Is the germ here of the conclusion of the

second part of Goethe's 'Faust,'

"Das Ewig-Weibliche

Zieht uns hinan,"

and as Margaret's love for Faust reaches beyond the grave, so here does Astarte's for Manfred?

198: 160. he mastereth himself, and makes His torture tributary to his will. In these words is summed up the secret of Byron's nature, his chief differentia. His will would not be broken. Not strength of will and self-mastery, but indomitable persistency of will, was his, confronting all Will from without with Titanic resistance; all tortures of the spirit, to the death that ended all, being made tributary to his will. Nothing of the spirit of reconciling submission, Dante's

"La sua volontade e nostra pace,"

or Cardinal Newman's

"I loved to choose and see my path, but now,

Lead Thou me on,"

but the inflexible assertion of the individual might and spiritual independence of the human soul.

ACT III, SCENE I

The third act as originally written was bad and a failure, as Byron admitted after reflection and when he had been informed of Gifford's private censure passed upon it. Byron composed rapidly, and laborious correction and polish were things that he brought himself to with difficulty. All the more remarkable, therefore, is this the revised version, which he produced within a month after the abandonment of the first version. In the first version (printed in its entirety in Moore's 'Life of Byron,' following the letter to Murray of May 5, 1817) there are only two scenes. As far as line 56 the two versions are identical; while the whole of the present scene ii, including Manfred's impassioned invocation to the sun, formed the conclusion of the original scene i. In between, however, in place of the present text, wherein the Abbot labors in vain to convert Manfred from the error of his thoughts, but finally departs in peace, stood a passage of some sixty lines in which the Abbot is represented as threatening Manfred with dire punishments unless he reconciles himself at once to the Church; hereupon Manfred, somewhat after the manner of Faustus in Marlowe's drama, plays "pranks fantastical" with the Abbot, summoning the Demon Ashtaroth, who appears singing a grotesque and uncanny demon-chant of a raven, a gibbet, and the witches' carnival (a lyric which the poet Thomas Lovell Beddoes perhaps has imitated in Wolfram's Song in 'Death's Jest-Book,' act v, sc. iv), and who at Manfred's bidding conveys the Abbot through the air to the peak of the Schreckhorn, there to do penance till sunrise. For the serious purposes of the drama this is, as Byron soon saw, out of keeping and mere "nonsense." How much more dignified and adequate is the present version! The second scene of the discarded version coincided with the present third scene as får as line 47. But at this point, instead of the entrance of the Abbot, Herman and Manuel suddenly break off (the mystery of Astarte remains unrevealed in both versions) on discovering that Manfred's tower is on fire. Manfred, mortally injured, is rescued from the ruins and expires,

"With strange accompaniments and fearful signs,"

uttering, addressed to Manuel, the dying words here addressed to the Abbot:

"6 'Old man! 'tis not so difficult to die."

The drama closes with three lines given to Herman and. Manuel :

"Her. His eyes are fixed and lifeless.-He is gone.

Manuel. Close them.-My old hand quivers.-He departs-
Whither? I dread to think-but he is gone!"

In the re-written act the poet has given us a poetical instead of a melodramatic ending, including the famous passage on the Coliseum, and a fitting farewell to all that is mortal of Manfred.

1985. The reference to the key and casket seems to have been retained from the original version by inadvertence. Here they are not again referred to; there they were used by Manfred in calling up the Demon Ashtaroth.

199 13. The golden secret, the sought "Kalon." τὸ καλόν, beauty, moral beauty; or more commonly in the compounded form κaλoκaya@by, the beautiful and good, in the Academic philosophy, the ideal of man.

199: 17-18. A reminiscence of Hamlet, who, after the scholar's habit, and with similar inconsequentiality, calls for

"My tables,-meet it is I set it down,

That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”

199: 19. The abbot of St. Maurice. At St. Maurice, in the Rhone valley, some few miles above the point where the river empties into Lake Leman and some fifty miles from the region where most of the action of this drama is imagined to take place, there is a very ancient and at one time important abbey, now inhabited by Augustinian monks.

200 63. Cf. 'Romans' xii, 19: "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."

200 70-71. The sense is, "Remorse, not founded on the fear of hell, in itself produces deep despair," etc. Cf. Sackville's 'Induction to the Mirror for Magistrates,' st. 32:

"And first, within the porch and jaws of Hell

Sat deep Remorse of Conscience."

Compare and contrast the treatment of the theme of despair in Marlowe's Faustus,' especially scenes xiv and xvi.

201 88-96. The story of the death of Nero, sixth emperor, A.D. 54-68, is told in Suetonius, 'Life of Nero' xlix.

201: 101. despair above, i.e., despair of being pardoned above, in Heaven.

ACT III, SCENE II

This passage formed the conclusion of the original first scene. Of it Byron said: "The speech of Manfred to the Sun is the only part of this act [in its first form] I thought good myself." Cf. the equally magnificent Hymn to the Sun in Tennyson's 'Akbar's Dream.' Cf. also Ossian's Address to the Sun (at end of Carthon ').

204 4-8. The fate of these "giant sons and "erring spirits forms the subject of Byron's dramatic poem 'Heaven and Earth,' 1821. Cf. 'Genesis' vi, 2, 4. Cf. also, Moore's poem The Loves of the Angels,' 1823.

6

:

204 13. the Chaldean shepherds. The Chaldeans were fireworshippers.

ACT III, SCENE III

What is the poetic intention of this scene and its function in the structure of the drama? Why the references to the mysterious chamber, the vigils in the tower, Manfred's father and the good old times, his wanderings, and the fatal night where Manfred and the still-undescribed Astarte were alone together in the tower? In what way does this scene serve as preparation for and contrast/ to the final scene that follows?

206 37. The (Grosse) Eiger stands a few miles north from the Jungfrau in the region of the Bernese Oberland. Manfred's castle is thus imagined in this region in sight of the Eiger,—but not necessarily to the east of it, as the sunset rays frequently color the clouds in the east as well as the west.

206: 46-47. For the missing word are we to supply sister? And is the love described that of brother and sister? Does that agree with previous references to Astarte? Or is the word perhaps cousin? The poet obviously intended the mystery to pique our curiosity, but still to remain unsolved.

ACT III, SCENE IV

The structure of this scene deserves study. The calm and solemn opening with its reminiscences of earthly beauty and glory in Manfred's soliloquy, then the intervention of the Abbot, the representative of conventional opinion and the conventional power of good, as opposed to the conventional and limited powers of evil who next appear,-all by subtle gradations prepare our mood for the climax of Manfred's fate that follows, and all serve to set in bold relief the dominant figure of the hero.

Byron's once notorious and agitating "scepticism" is to be traced in the implications of this scene more than elsewhere in the poem. It properly gives the "moral" of the piece. Manfred is not converted and saved at the last moment by the power of the Church, nor is he carried off despairing by the powers of evil, as is the hero in Marlowe's 'Faustus' and in the popular versions of the Faust legend generally. Moreover Goethe's optimistic resolution of the situation in the ending of the second part of 'Faust' was not then in existence to afford the hint of still a third outcome to Byron. And so, with the stern naturalism which was the result of the absolute integrity and intellectual sincerity of Byron's poetic genius when confronted with the fundamental and eternal problems of life, Manfred is neither saved by the Church, nor damned by the Devil, nor rapt up to Heaven by the intercession of the atoning power of the Ever-Feminine, but simply dies, an immortal soul, destined to the immortality of its own heaven or hell,-of its own heaven and hell.

"The mind which is immortal makes itself

Requital for its good or evil thoughts-
Is its own origin of ill and end--

And its own place and time."

This is Byron's doctrine-his poetic doctrine-of future punishment and future life. A complete statement in four lines of the relativity of all existence except that of the individual soul! As for this life and the ending of it,—

"Old man ! 'tis not so difficult to die."