The Works of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 9

[47] ["This is true _keeping_--an Eastern picture perfect in its foreground, and distance, and sky, and no part of which is so dwelt upon or laboured as to obscure the princ.i.p.al figure."--Sir Walter Scott, _Quarterly Review_, No. x.x.xi. "Byron's Dream" is the subject of a well-known picture by Sir Charles Eastlake.]

[48] {38}[Compare--

"Then Cythna turned to me and from her eyes Which swam with unshed tears," etc.

Sh.e.l.ly's _Revolt of Islam_ ("Laon and Cythna"), Canto XII. stanza xxii. lines 2, 3, _Poetical Works_, 1829, p. 48.]

[49] [An old servant of the Chaworth family, Mary Marsden, told Was.h.i.+ngton Irving (_Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey_, 1835, p. 204) that Byron used to call Mary Chaworth "his bright morning star of Annesley."

Compare the well-known lines--

"She was a form of Life and Light, That, seen, became a part of sight; And rose, where'er I turned mine eye, The Morning-star of Memory!"

_The Giaour_, lines 1127-1130, _Poetical Works_, 1900, iii. 136, 137.]

[50] ["This touching picture agrees closely, in many of its circ.u.mstances, with Lord Byron's own prose account of the wedding in his Memoranda; in which he describes himself as waking, on the morning of his marriage, with the most melancholy reflections, on seeing his wedding-suit spread out before him. In the same mood, he wandered about the grounds alone, till he was summoned for the ceremony, and joined, for the first time on that day, his bride and her family. He knelt down--he repeated the words after the clergyman; but a mist was before his eyes--his thoughts were elsewhere: and he was but awakened by the congratulations of the bystanders to find that he was--married."--_Life_, p. 272.

Medwin, too, makes Byron say (_Conversations, etc._, 1824, p. 46) that he "trembled like a leaf, made the wrong responses, and after the ceremony called her (the bride) Miss Milbanke." All that can be said of Moore's recollection of the "memoranda," or Medwin's repet.i.tion of so-called conversations (reprinted almost _verbatim_ in _Life, Writings, Opinions, etc._, 1825, ii. 227, _seq._, as "Recollections of the Lately Destroyed Ma.n.u.script," etc.), is that they tend to show that Byron meant _The Dream_ to be taken literally as a record of actual events. He would not have forgotten by July, 1816, circ.u.mstances of great import which had taken place in December, 1815: and he's either lying of malice prepense or telling "an ower true tale."]

[j] {40}

----_the glance_ _Of melancholy is a fearful gift;_ _For it becomes the telescope of truth,_ _And shows us all things naked as they are_.--[MS.]

[51] [Compare--

"Who loves, raves--'tis youth's frenzy--but the cure Is bitterer still, as charm by charm unwinds Which robed our idols, and we see too sure Nor Worth nor Beauty dwells from out the mind's Ideal shape of such."

_Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza cxxiii. lines 1-5, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 420.]

[52] Mithridates of Pontus. [Mithridates, King of Pontus (B.C. 120-63), surnamed Eupator, succeeded to the throne when he was only eleven years of age. He is said to have safeguarded himself against the designs of his enemies by drugging himself with antidotes against poison, and so effectively that, when he was an old man, he could not poison himself, even when he was minded to do so--"ut ne volens quidem senex veneno mori potuerit."--Justinus, _Hist._, lib. x.x.xvii. cap. ii.

According to Medwin (_Conversations_, p. 148), Byron made use of the same ill.u.s.tration in speaking of Polidori's death (April, 1821), which was probably occasioned by "poison administered to himself" (see _Letters_, 1899, iii. 285).]

[53] {41}[Compare--

"Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends."

_Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza xiii. line 1.

"...and to me High mountains are a feeling."

_Ibid._, stanza lxxii. lines 2,3, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 223, 261.]

[54] [Compare--

"Ye Spirits of the unbounded Universe!"

_Manfred_, act i. sc. 1, line 29, _vide post_, p. 86.]

[55] [Compare _Manfred_, act ii. sc. 2, lines 79-91; and _ibid._, act iii. sc. 1, lines 34-39; and sc. 4, lines 112-117, _vide post_, pp. 105, 121, 135.]

[k] {42}In the original MS. _A Dream_.

[56] [Sir Walter Scott (_Quarterly Review_, October, 1816, vol. xvi. p.

204) did not take kindly to _Darkness_. He regarded the "framing of such phantasms" as "a dangerous employment for the exalted and teeming imagination of such a poet as Lord Byron. The waste of boundless s.p.a.ce into which they lead the poet, the neglect of precision which such themes may render habitual, make them in respect to poetry what mysticism is to religion." Poetry of this kind, which recalled "the wild, unbridled, and fiery imagination of Coleridge," was a novel and untoward experiment on the part of an author whose "peculiar art" it was "to show the reader where his purpose tends." The resemblance to Coleridge is general rather than particular. It is improbable that Scott had ever read _Limbo_ (first published in _Sibylline Leaves_, 1817), an attempt to depict the "mere horror of blank nought-at-all;" but it is possible that he had in his mind the following lines (384-390) from _Religious Musings_, in which "the final destruction is impersonated"

(see Coleridge's note) in the "red-eyed Fiend:"--

"For who of woman born may paint the hour, When seized in his mid course, the Sun shall wane, Making the noon ghastly! Who of woman born May image in the workings of his thought, How the black-visaged, red-eyed Fiend outstretched Beneath the unsteady feet of Nature groans In feverous slumbers?"

_Poetical Works_, 1893, p. 60.

Another and a less easily detected source of inspiration has been traced (see an article on Campbell's _Last Man_, in the _London Magazine and Review_, 1825, New Series, i. 588, seq.) to a forgotten but once popular novel ent.i.tled _The Last Man, or Omegarus and Syderia, a Romance in Futurity_ (two vols. 1806). Kolbing (_Prisoner of Chillon_, etc., pp.

136-140) adduces numerous quotations in support of this contention. The following may serve as samples: "As soon as the earth had lost with the moon her guardian star, her decay became more rapid.... Some, in their madness, destroyed the instruments of husbandry, others in deep despair summoned death to their relief. Men began to look on each other with eyes of enmity" (i. 105). "The sun exhibited signs of decay, its surface turned pale, and its beams were frigid. The northern nations dreaded peris.h.i.+ng by intense cold ... and fled to the torrid zone to court the sun's beneficial rays" (i. 120). "The reign of Time was over, ages of Eternity were going to begin; but at the same moment h.e.l.l shrieked with rage, and the sun and stars were extinguished. The gloomy night of chaos enveloped the world, plaintive sounds issued from mountains, rocks, and caverns,--Nature wept, and a doleful voice was heard exclaiming in the air, 'The human race is no more!'"(ii. 197).

It is difficult to believe that Byron had not read, and more or less consciously turned to account, the imagery of this novel; but it is needless to add that any charge of plagiarism falls to the ground.

Thanks to a sensitive and appreciative ear and a retentive memory, Byron's verse is interfused with manifold strains, but, so far as _Darkness_ is concerned, his debt to Coleridge or the author of _Omegarus and Syderia_ is neither more nor less legitimate than the debt to Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Joel, which a writer in the _Imperial Magazine_ (1828, x. 699), with solemn upbraidings, lays to his charge.

The duty of acknowledging such debts is, indeed, "a duty of imperfect obligation." The well-known lines in Tennyson's _Locksley Hall_--

"Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue!"

is surely an echo of an earlier prophecy from the pen of the author of _Omegarus and Syderia_: "In the center the heavens were seen darkened by legions of armed vessels, making war on each other!... The soldiers fell in frightful numbers.... Their blood stained the soft verdure of the trees, and their scattered bleeding limbs covered the fields and the roofs of the labourers' cottages" (i. 68). But such "conveyings" are honourable to the purloiner. See, too, the story of the battle between the Vulture-cavalry and the Sky-gnats, in Lucian's _Verae Historiae_, i.

16.]

[57] {44}

["If thou speak'st false, Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive, Till famine cling thee."

_Macbeth_, act V. sc. 5, lines 38-40.

Fruit is said to be "clung" when the skin shrivels, and a corpse when the face becomes wasted and gaunt.]

[58] {45}[So, too, Vathek and Nouronihar, in the Hall of Eblis, waited "in direful suspense the moment which should render them to each other ... objects of terror."--_Vathek_, by W. Beckford, 1887, p. 185.]

[59] [Charles Churchill was born in February, 1731, and died at Boulogne, November 4, 1764. The body was brought to Dover and buried in the churchyard attached to the demolished church of St. Martin-le-Grand ("a small deserted cemetery in an obscure lane behind [i.e. above] the market"). See note by Charles De la Pryme, _Notes and Queries_, 1854, Series I. vol. x. p. 378. There is a tablet to his memory on the south wall of St. Mary's Church, and the present headstone in the graveyard (it was a "plain headstone" in 1816) bears the following inscription:--

"1764.

Here lie the remains of the celebrated C. Churchill.

'Life to the last enjoy'd, here Churchill lies.'"

Churchill had been one of Byron's earlier models, and the following lines from _The Candidate_, which suggested the epitaph (lines 145-154), were, doubtless, familiar to him:--

"Let one poor sprig of Bay around my head Bloom whilst I live, and point me out when dead; Let it (may Heav'n indulgent grant that prayer) Be planted on my grave, nor wither there; And when, on travel bound, some rhyming guest Roams through the churchyard, whilst his dinner's drest, Let it hold up this comment to his eyes; Life to the last enjoy'd, _here_ Churchill lies; Whilst (O, what joy that pleasing flatt'ry gives) Reading my Works he cries--_here_ Churchill lives."

Byron spent Sunday, April 25, 1816, at Dover. He was to sail that night for Ostend, and, to while away the time, "turned to Pilgrim" and thought out, perhaps began to write, the lines which were finished three months later at the Campagne Diodati.

"The Grave of Churchill," writes Scott (_Quarterly Review_, October, 1816), "might have called from Lord Byron a deeper commemoration; for, though they generally differed in character and genius, there was a resemblance between their history and character.... both these poets held themselves above the opinion of the world, and both were followed by the fame and popularity which they seemed to despise. The writings of both exhibit an inborn, though sometimes ill-regulated, generosity of mind, and a spirit of proud independence, frequently pushed to extremes.

Both carried their hatred of hypocrisy beyond the verge of prudence, and indulged their vein of satire to the borders of licentiousness."

Save for the affectation of a style which did not belong to him, and which in his heart he despised, Byron's commemoration of Churchill does not lack depth or seriousness. It was the parallel between their lives and temperaments which awoke reflection and sympathy, and prompted this "natural homily." Perhaps, too, the shadow of impending exile had suggested to his imagination that further parallel which Scott deprecated, and deprecated in vain, "death in the flower of his age, and in a foreign land."]