The Works of Lord Byron Volume III Part 28

[es] {141} _I have no heart to love him now_ _And 'tis but to declare my end_.--[ms]

[et]

_But now Remembrance murmurs o'er_ _Of all our early youth had been_-- _In pain, I now had turned aside_ _To bless his memory ere I died_, _But Heaven would mark the vain essay_, _If Guilt should for the guiltless fray_-- _I do not ask him not to blame_-- _Too gentle he to wound my name_-- _I do not ask him not to mourn_, _For such request might sound like scorn_-- _And what like Friends.h.i.+p's manly tear_ _So well can grace a brother's bier?_ _But bear this ring he gave of old_, _And tell him--what thou didst behold_-- _The withered frame--the ruined mind_, _The wreck that Pa.s.sion leaves behind_-- _The shrivelled and discoloured leaf_ _Seared by the Autumn blast of Grief_.--[MS., First Copy.]

[eu] {142} _Nay--kneel not, father, rise--despair_.--[MS.]

[122] {143} "Symar," a shroud. [Cymar, or simar, is a long loose robe worn by women. It is, perhaps, the same word as the Spanish _camarra_ (Arabic _camarra_), a sheep-skin cloak. It is equivalent to "shroud"

only in the primary sense of a "covering."]

[ev] _Which now I view with trembling spark_.--[MS.]

[ew] {144} _Then lay me with the nameless dead_.--[MS.]

[123] The circ.u.mstance to which the above story relates was not very uncommon in Turkey. A few years ago the wife of Muchtar Pacha complained to his father of his son's supposed infidelity; he asked with whom, and she had the barbarity to give in a list of the twelve handsomest women in Yanina. They were seized, fastened up in sacks, and drowned in the lake the same night! One of the guards who was present informed me that not one of the victims uttered a cry, or showed a symptom of terror at so sudden a "wrench from all we know, from all we love." The fate of Phrosine, the fairest of this sacrifice, is the subject of many a Romaic and Arnaout ditty. The story in the text is one told of a young Venetian many years ago, and now nearly forgotten. I heard it by accident recited by one of the coffee-house story-tellers who abound in the Levant, and sing or recite their narratives. The additions and interpolations by the translator will be easily distinguished from the rest, by the want of Eastern imagery; and I regret that my memory has retained so few fragments of the original. For the contents of some of the notes I am indebted partly to D'Herbelot, and partly to that most Eastern, and, as Mr. Weber justly ent.i.tles it, "sublime tale," the "Caliph Vathek." I do not know from what source the author of that singular volume may have drawn his materials; some of his incidents are to be found in the _Bibliotheque Orientale_; but for correctness of costume, beauty of description, and power of imagination, it far surpa.s.ses all European imitations, and bears such marks of originality that those who have visited the East will find some difficulty in believing it to be more than a translation. As an Eastern tale, even Ra.s.selas must bow before it; his "Happy Valley" will not bear a comparison with the "Hall of Eblis." [See _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza xxii. line 6, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 37, note 1.

"Mansour Effendi tells the story (_vide supra_, line 6) thus: Frosini was niece of the Archbishop of Joannina. Mouctar Pasha ordered her to come to his harem, and her father advised her to go; she did so.

Mouctar, among other presents, gave her a ring of great value, which she wished to sell, and gave it for that purpose to a merchant, who offered it to the wife of Mouctar. That lady recognized the jewel as her own, and, discovering the intrigue, complained to Ali Pasha, who, the next night, seized her himself in his own house, and ordered her to be drowned. Mansour Effendi says he had the story from the brother and son of Frosini. This son was a child of six years old, and was in bed in his mother's chamber when Ali came to carry away his mother to death. He had a confused recollection of the horrid scene."--_Travels in Albania,_ 1858, i. Ill, note 6.

The concluding note, like the poem, was built up sentence by sentence.

Lines 1-12, "forgotten," are in the MS. Line 12, "I heard," to line 17, "original," were added in the Second Edition. The next sentence, "For the contents" to "Vathek," was inserted in the Third; and the concluding paragraph, "I do not know" to the end, in the Fourth Editions.]

[ex] {146} _Nor whether most he mourned none knew_.

_For her he loved--or him he slew_.--[MS.]

THE BRIDE OF ABYDOS.

A TURKISH TALE.

"Had we never loved sae kindly, Had we never loved sae blindly, Never met--or never parted, We had ne'er been broken-hearted."--

Burns [_Farewell to Nancy_].

INTRODUCTION TO THE _THE BRIDE OF ABYDOS_.

Many poets--Wordsworth, for instance--have been conscious in their old age that an interest attaches to the circ.u.mstances of the composition of their poems, and have furnished their friends and admirers with explanatory notes. Byron recorded the _motif_ and occasion of the _Bride of Abydos_ while the poem was still in the press. It was written, he says, to divert his mind, "to wring his thoughts from reality to imagination--from selfish regrets to vivid recollections" (_Diary_, December 5, 1813, _Letters_, ii. 361), "to distract his dreams from ..."

(_Diary_, November 16) "for the sake of _employment_" (Letter to Moore, November 30, 1813). He had been staying during part of October and November at Aston Hall, Rotherham, with his friend James Wedderburn Webster, and had fallen in love with his friend's wife, Lady Frances.

From a brief note to his sister, dated November 5, we learn that he was in a sc.r.a.pe, but in "no immediate peril," and from the lines, "Remember him, whom Pa.s.sion's power" (_vide ante_, p. 67), we may infer that he had sought safety in flight. The _Bride of Abydos_, or _Zuleika_, as it was first ent.i.tled, was written early in November, "in four nights"

(_Diary_, November 16), or in a week (Letter to Gifford, November 12)--the reckoning goes for little--as a counter-irritant to the pain and distress of _amour interrompu_.

The confession or apology is eminently characteristic. Whilst the _Giaour_ was still in process of evolution, still "lengthening its rattles," another Turkish poem is offered to the public, and the natural explanation, that the author is in vein, and can score another trick, is felt to be inadequate and dishonouring--"To withdraw _myself_ from _myself_," he confides to his _Diary_(November 27), "has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive for scribbling at all."

It is more than probable that in his twenty-sixth year Byron had not attained to perfect self-knowledge, but there is no reason to question his sincerity. That Byron loved to surround himself with mystery, and to dissociate himself from "the general," is true enough; but it does not follow that at all times and under all circ.u.mstances he was insincere.

"Once a _poseur_ always a _poseur_" is a rough-and-ready formula not invariably applicable even to a poet.

But the _Bride of Abydos_ was a tonic as well as a styptic. Like the _Giaour_, it embodied a personal experience, and recalled "a country replete with the _darkest_ and _brightest_, but always the most _lively_ colours of my memory" (_Diary_, December 5, 1813).

In a letter to Galt (December 11, 1813, Letters, 1898, ii. 304, reprinted from _Life of Byron_, pp. 181, 182) Byron maintains that the first part of the _Bride_ was drawn from "observations" of his own, "from existence." He had, it would appear, intended to make the story turn on the guilty love of a brother for a sister, a tragic incident of life in a Harem, which had come under his notice during his travels in the East, but "on second thoughts" had reflected that he lived "two centuries at least too late for the subject," and that not even the authority of the "finest works of the Greeks," or of Schiller (in the _Bride of Messina_), or of Alfieri (in _Mirra_), "in modern times,"

would sanction the intrusion of the ?s?t?? [miseton] into English literature. The early drafts and variants of the MS. do not afford any evidence of this alteration of the plot which, as Byron thought, was detrimental to the poem as a work of art, but the undoubted fact that the _Bride of Abydos_, as well as the _Giaour_, embody recollections of actual scenes and incidents which had burnt themselves into the memory of an eye-witness, accounts not only for the fervent heat at which these Turkish tales were written, but for the extraordinary glamour which they threw over contemporary readers, to whom the local colouring was new and attractive, and who were not out of conceit with "good Monsieur Melancholy."

Byron was less dissatisfied with his second Turkish tale than he had been with the _Giaour_. He apologizes for the rapidity with which it had been composed--_stans pede in uno_--but he announced to Murray (November 20) that "he was doing his best to beat the _Giaour_," and (November 29) he appraises the _Bride_ as "my first entire composition of any length."

Moreover, he records (November 15), with evident gratification, the approval of his friend Hodgson, "a very sincere and by no means (at times) a flattering critic of mine," and modestly accepts the praise of such masters of letters as "Mr. Canning," Hookham Frere, Heber, Lord Holland, and of the traveller Edward Daniel Clarke.

The _Bride of Abydos_ was advertised in the _Morning Chronicle,_ among "Books published this day," on November 29, 1813. It was reviewed by George Agar Ellis in the _Quarterly Review_ of January, 1814 (vol. x. p.

331), and, together with the _Corsair_, by Jeffrey in the _Edinburgh Review_ of April, 1814 (vol. xxiii. p. 198).

NOTE TO THE MSS. OF _THE BRIDE OF ABYDOS_.

The MSS. of the _Bride of Abydos_ are contained in a bound volume, and in two packets of loose sheets, numbering thirty-two in all, of which eighteen represent additions, etc., to the First Canto; and fourteen additions, etc., to the Second Canto.

The bound volume consists of a rough copy and a fair copy of the first draft of the _Bride_; the fair copy beginning with the sixth stanza of Canto I.

The "additions" in the bound volume consist of--

1. Stanza xxviii. of Canto II.--here called "Conclusion" (fifty-eight lines). And note on "Sir Orford's Letters."

2. Eight lines beginning, "Eve saw it placed," at the end of stanza xxviii.

3. An emendation of six lines to stanza v. of Canto II., with reference to the comboloio, the Turkish rosary.

4. Forty additional lines to stanza xx. of Canto II., beginning, "For thee in those bright isles," and being the first draft of the addition as printed in the Revises of November 13, etc.

5. Stanza xxvii. of Canto II., twenty-eight lines.

6. Ten additional lines to stanza xxvii., "Ah! happy!"--"depart."

7. Affixed to the rough Copy in stanza xxviii., fifty-eight lines, here called "Continuation." This is the rough Copy of No. 1.

The eighteen loose sheets of additions to Canto I. consist of--

1. The Dedication.

2. Two revisions of "Know ye the land."

3. Seven sheets, Canto I. stanzas i.-v., being the commencement of the Fair Copy in the bound volume.

4. Two sheets of the additional twelve lines to Canto I. stanza vi., "Who hath not proved,"--"Soul."