First Des. Crush the worm! Hence! Avaunt!-he's mine. Prince of the Powers invisible ! This man Is of no common order, as his port And presence here denote; his sufferings Our own; his knowledge and his powers and will, Which clogs the ethereal essence, have been such Of earth and heaven, from which no power, nor being, Nor breath from the worm upwards is exempt, And thine, it may be; be it so, or not, A soul like his- or power upon his soul. Let him answer that. Man. Ye know what I have known; and without Man. Hear me, hear me- I have so much endured- -so much endure- I know not what I ask, nor what I seek: And I would hear yet once before I perish And woke the mountain wolves, and made the caves [Over this fine drama, a moral feeling hangs like a sombrous thunder cloud. No other guilt but that so darkly shadowed out could have furnished so dreadful an illustration of the hideous aberrations of human nature, however noble and majestic, when left a prey to its desires, its passions, and its imagination. The beauty, at one time so innocently adored, is at last soiled, profaned, and violated. Affection, love, guilt, horror, remorse, and death, come in terrible succession, yet all darkly linked together. We think of Astarte as young, beautiful, innocent guilty-lost-murdered buried judged pardoned; but still, in her permitted visit to earth, speaking in a voice of sorrow, and with a countenance yet pale with mortal trouble. We had but a glimpse of her in her beauty and innocence; but, at last, she rises up before us in all the mortal silence of a ghost, with fixed, glazed, and passionless eyes, revealing death, judgment, and eternity. The moral breathes and burns in every word, in sadness, misery, insanity, desolation, and death. The work is "instinct with spirit," and in the agony and distraction, and all its dimly imagined causes, we behold, though broken up, confused, and shattered, the elements of a purer existence. - WILSON.] 2 [The third Act, as originally written, being shown to Mr. Gifford, he expressed his unfavourable opinion of it very distinctly and Mr. Murray transmitted this opinion to Lord Byron. The result is told in the following extracts from his letters: Inexplicable stillness! which till now To be of all our vanities the motliest, The merest word that ever fool'd the ear From out the schoolman's jargon, I should deem Re-enter HERMAN. Her. My lord, the abbot of St. Maurice craves To greet your presence. Enter the ABBOT OF ST. MAURICE. Abbot. Peace be with Count Manfred! Man. Thanks, holy father! welcome to these walls; Thy presence honours them, and blesseth those Who dwell within them. Abbot. Would it were so, Count! But I would fain confer with thee alone. guest? What would my reverend Abbot. Thus, without prelude:-Age and zeal, my office, And good intent, must plead my privilege; "Venice, April 14, 1817. The third Act is certainly d-d bad, and, like the Archbishop of Grenada's homily, (which savoured of the palsy,) has the dregs of my fever, during which it was written. It must on no account be published in its present state. I will try and reform it, or re-write it altogether; but the impulse is gone, and I have no chance of making any thing out of it. The speech of Manfred to the Sun is the only part of this Act I thought good myself; the rest is certainly as bad as bad can be, and I wonder what the devil possessed me. I am very glad indeed that you sent me Mr. Gifford's opinion without deduction. Do you suppose me such a booby as not, to be very much obliged to him? or that I was not, and am not, convinced and convicted in my conscience of this same overt act of nonsense? I shall try at it again; in the mean time, lay it upon the shelf- the whole Drama I mean.- Recollect not to publish, upon pain of 1 know not what, until I have tried again at the third act. I am not sure that I shall try, and still less that I shall succeed if I do." Rome, May 5. I have re-written the greater part, and returned what is not altered in the proof you sent me. The Abbot is become a good man, and the Spirits are brought in at the death. You will find, I think, some good poetry in this new Act, here and there; and if so, print it, without sending me farther proofs, under Mr. Gifford's correction, if he will have the goodness to overlook it."] 1 Which are forbidden to the search of man; That with the dwellers of the dark abodes, Which walk the valley of the shade of death, Thoc communest. I know that with mankind, Man. And what are they who do avouch these things? Abbot. My pious brethren-the scared peasantryEven thy own vassals-who do look on thee With most unquiet eyes. Thy life 's in peril. Man. Take it. The DEMON ASHTAROTH appears, singing as follows : — The raven sits On the raven-stone, And his black wing flits O'er the milk-white bone; To and fro, as the night-winds blow, The raven flaps his dusky wings. The fetters creak- and his ebon beak Croaks to the close of the hollow sound; And this is the tune, by the light of the moon, To which the witches dance their round Merrily, merrily, cheerily, cheerily, Merrily, speeds the ball: The dead in their shrouds, and the demons in clouds, Flock to the witches' carnival. "Raven-stone (Rabenstein), a translation of the German word for the gibbet, which in Germany and Switzerland is permanent, and made of stone." The choice of such remains-and for the last, Our institutions and our strong belief Have given me power to smooth the path from sin So saith the Lord, and with all humbleness His servant echoes back the awful word. Man. Old man! there is no power in holy men, Would make a hell of heaven-can exorcise Can deal that justice on the self-condemn'd All this is well; Abbot. For this will pass away, and be succeeded By an auspicious hope, which shall look up With calm assurance to that blessed place, Which all who seek may win, whatever be Their earthly errors, so they be atoned: And the commencement of atonement is The sense of its necessity. -Say onAnd all our church can teach thee shall be taught; And all we can absolve thee shall be pardon'd. Man. When Rome's sixth emperor 2 was near his last, The victim of a self-inflicted wound, To shun the torments of a public death 3 Abbot. I fear thee not- hence henceAvaunt thee, evil one! - help, ho! without there! Man. Convey this man to the Shreckhorn to its peak — To its extremest peak-watch with him there From now till sunrise; let him gaze, and know He ne'er again will be so near to heaven. But harm him not; and, when the morrow breaks, Set him down safe in his cell-away with him! Ash. Had I not better bring his brethren too, Convent and all, to bear him company? Man. No, this will serve for the present. Take him up. Ash. Come, friar! now an exorcism or two, And we shall fly the lighter. ASHTAROTH disappears with the ABBOT, singing as follows :— A prodigal son, and a maid undone, And a widow re-wedded within the year; MANFRED alone. Man. Why would this fool break in on me, and force 2 Otho, being defeated in a general engagement near Brixellum, stabbed himself. Plutarch says, that, though he lived full as badly as Nero, his last moments were those of a philosopher. He comforted his soldiers who lamented his fortune, and expressed his concern for their safety, when they solicited to pay him the last friendly offices. Martial says: "Sit Cato, dum vivit, sane vel Cæsare major, Dum moritur, numquid major Othone fuit?" public death. 3 ["To shun {not loss of life, but the torments of a Choose between them."- MS.] And thy own soul with heaven. Hast thou no hope? "Tis strange-even those who do despair above, Yet shape themselves some fantasy on earth, To which frail twig they cling, like drowning men. To make my own the mind of other men, And watch all time-and pry into all place-- Abbot. And why not live and act with other men ? [This speech has been quoted in more than one of the sketches of the Poet's own life. Much earlier, when only twenty-three years of age, he had thus prophesied :-" It seems as if I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of old age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered. Other men can always take refuge in their families I have no resource but my own reflections, and they present no prospect, here or hereafter, except the selfish satisfaction of surviving my betters. indeed, very wretched. My days are listless, and my nights restless. I have very seldom any society; and when I have, I run out of it. I don't know that I sha'n't end with insanity."Byron Letters, 1811.] I am, 2 [" Of the immortality of the soul, it appears to me that there can be little doubt if we attend for a moment to the action of mind. It is in perpetual activity. I used to doubt it -but reflection has taught me better. How far our future state will be individual; or, rather, how far it will at all resemble our present existence, is another question; but that the mind is eternal seems as probable as that the body is not so."- Byron Diary, 1821. "I have no wish to reject Christianity without investigation, on the contrary, I am very desirous of believing; for I have no happiness in my present unsettled notions on religion."- Byron Conversations with Kennedy, 1823.] 3 [There are three only, even among the great poets of modern times, who have chosen to depict, in their full shape and vigour, those agonies to which great and meditative And seeketh not, so that it is not sought, I 'gin to fear that thou art past all aid Man. Look on me! there is an order Of mortals on the earth, who do become Or having been, that I am still on earth. [Exit MANFRED. And mind and dust-and passions and pure thoughts, intellects are, in the present progress of human history, exposed by the eternal recurrence of a deep and discontented scepticism. But there is only one who has dared to represent himself as the victim of those nameless and undefinable sufferings. Goethe chose for his doubts and his darkness the terrible disguise of the mysterious Faustus. Schiller, with still greater boldness, planted the same anguish in the restless, haughty, and heroic bosom of Wallenstein. But Byron has sought no external symbol in which to embody the inquietudes of his soul. He takes the world, and all that it inherit, for his arena and his spectators; and he displays himself before their gaze, wrestling unceasingly and ineffectually with the demon that torments him. At times, there is something mournful and depressing in his scepticism; but oftener it is of a high and solemn character, approaching to the very verge of a confiding faith. Whatever the poet may believe, we, his readers, always feel ourselves too much ennobled and elevated, even by his melancholy, not to be confirmed in our own belief by the very doubts so majestically conceived and uttered. His scepticism, if it ever approaches to a creed, carries with it its refutation in its grandeur. There is neither philosophy nor religion in • those bitter and savage taunts which have been cruelly thrown out, from many quarters, against those moods of mind which are involuntary, and will not pass away; the shadows and spectres which still haunt his imagination may once have disturbed our own; -through his gloom there are frequent flashes of illumination: -and the sublime sadness which to him is breathed from the mysteries of mortal existence, is always joined with a longing after immortality, and expressed in language that is itself divine. - WILSON.] MANFRED advances to the Window of the Hall. Of early nature, and the vigorous race Of the embrace of angels, with a sex More beautiful than they, which did draw down The erring spirits who can ne'er return. Most glorious orb! that wert a worship, ere Which gladden'd, on their mountain tops, the hearts Thou chief star! Centre of many stars! which mak'st our earth And hearts of all who walk within thy rays! Even as our outward aspects;-thou dost rise, SCENE III. [Exit MANFRED. The Mountains-The Castle of Manfred at some distance-A Terrace before a Tower. - Time, Twilight. HERMAN, MANUEL, and other Dependants of MANFRED. Her. 'Tis strange enough; night after night, for years, He hath pursued long vigils in this tower, And it came to pass, that the Sons of God saw the Caughters of men, that they were fair," &c." There were ants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the Sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they are children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown."- Genesis, ch. vi. verses 2 and 4. 2 Pray, was Manfred's speech to the Sun still retained in Act third I hope so: it was one of the best in the thing, and better than the Coliseum."- Byron Letters, 1817.] ["Some strange things in these few years." - MS.] [The remainder of the third Act, in its original shape, ran thus:Her. Look-look-the tower The tower's on fire. Oh, heavens and earth! what sound, What dreadful sound is that? [A crash like thunder. Manuel. Help, help, there!-to the rescue of the Count,The Count's in danger,-what ho! there! approach! [The Servants, Vassals, and Peasantry approach, stupified with terror. If there be any of you who have heart These walls Oh! I have seen Come, be friendly; Must change their chieftain first. |