The Works of Lord Byron Volume VI Part 1

The Works of Lord Byron.

Volume 6.

by Lord Byron.

PREFACE TO THE SIXTH VOLUME.

The text of this edition of _Don Juan_ has been collated with original MSS. in the possession of the Lady Dorchester and Mr. John Murray. The fragment of a Seventeenth Canto, consisting of fourteen stanzas, is now printed and published for the first time.

I have collated with the original authorities, and in many instances retranscribed, the numerous quotations from Sir G. Dalzell's _s.h.i.+pwrecks and Disasters at Sea_ (1812, 8vo) [Canto II. stanzas xxiv.-civ. pp.

87-112], and from a work ent.i.tled _Essai sur l'Histoire Ancienne et Moderne de la Nouvelle Russie_, par le Marquis Gabriel de Castelnau (1827, 8vo) [Canto VII. stanzas ix.--liii. pp. 304-320, and Canto VIII.

stanzas vi.--cxxvii. pp. 331-368], which were first included in the notes to the fifteenth and sixteenth volumes of the edition of 1833, and have been reprinted in subsequent issues of Lord Byron's _Poetical Works_.

A note (pp. 495-497) ill.u.s.trative of the famous description of Newstead Abbey (Canto XIII. stanzas lv.-lxxii.) contains particulars not hitherto published. My thanks and acknowledgments are due to Lady Chermside and Miss Ethel Webb, for the opportunity afforded me of visiting Newstead Abbey, and for invaluable a.s.sistance in the preparation of this and other notes.

The proof-sheets of this volume have been read by Mr. Frank E. Taylor. I am indebted to his care and knowledge for many important corrections and emendations.

I must once more record my grat.i.tude to Dr. Garnett, C.B., for the generous manner in which he has devoted time and attention to the solution of difficulties submitted to his consideration.

I am also indebted, for valuable information, to the Earl of Rosebery, K.G.; to Mr. J. Willis Clark, Registrar of the University of Cambridge; to Mr. W.P. Courtney; to my friend Mr. Thomas Hutchinson; to Miss Emily Jackson, of Hucknall Torkard; and to Mr. T.E. Page, of the Charterhouse.

On behalf of the publisher, I beg to acknowledge the kindness of the Lady Frances Trevanion, Sir J.G. Tollemache Sinclair, Bart., and Baron Dimsdale, in permitting the originals of portraits and drawings in their possession to be reproduced in this volume.

INTRODUCTION TO _DON JUAN_

Byron was a rapid as well as a voluminous writer. His _Tales_ were thrown off at lightning speed, and even his dramas were thought out and worked through with unhesitating energy and rapid achievement.

Nevertheless, the composition of his two great poems was all but coextensive with his poetical life. He began the first canto of _Childe Harold_ in the autumn of 1809, and he did not complete the fourth canto till the spring of 1818. He began the first canto of _Don Juan_ in the autumn of 1818, and he was still at work on a seventeenth canto in the spring of 1823. Both poems were issued in parts, and with long intervals of unequal duration between the parts; but the same result was brought about by different causes and produced a dissimilar effect. _Childe Harold_ consists of three distinct poems descriptive of three successive travels or journeys in foreign lands. The adventures of the hero are but the pretext for the s.h.i.+fting of the diorama; whereas in _Don Juan_ the story is continuous, and the scenery is exhibited as a background for the dramatic evolution of the personality of the hero. _Childe Harold_ came out at intervals, because there were periods when the author was stationary; but the interruptions in the composition and publication of _Don Juan_ were due to the disapproval and discouragement of friends, and the very natural hesitation and procrastination of the publisher.

Canto I. was written in September, 1818; Canto II. in December-January, 1818-1819. Both cantos were published on July 15, 1819. Cantos III., IV.

were written in the winter of 1819-1820; Canto V., after an interval of nine months, in October-November, 1820, but the publication of Cantos III., IV., V. was delayed till August 8, 1821. The next interval was longer still, but it was the last. In June, 1822, Byron began to work at a sixth, and by the end of March, 1823, he had completed a sixteenth canto. But the publication of these later cantos, which had been declined by Murray, and were finally entrusted to John Hunt, was spread over a period of several months. Cantos VI., VII., VIII., with a Preface, were published July 15; Cantos IX., X., XI, August 29; Cantos XII., XIII., XIV., December 17, 1823; and, finally, Cantos XV., XVI., March 26, 1824. The composition of _Don Juan_, considered as a whole, synchronized with the composition of all the dramas (except _Manfred_) and the following poems: _The Prophecy of Dante_, (the translation of) _The Morgante Maggiore, The Vision of Judgment, The Age of Bronze_, and _The Island_.

There is little to be said with regard to the "Sources" of _Don Juan_.

Frere's _Whistlecraft_ had suggested _Beppo_, and, at the same time, had prompted and provoked a sympathetic study of Frere's Italian models, Berni and Pulci (see "Introduction to _Beppo_," _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 155-158; and "Introduction to _The Morgante Maggiore_" ibid., pp.

279-281); and, again, the success of _Beppo_, and, still more, a sense of inspiration and the conviction that he had found the path to excellence, suggested another essay of the _ottava rima_, a humorous poem "_a la Beppo_" on a larger and more important scale. If Byron possessed more than a superficial knowledge of the legendary "Don Juan,"

he was irresponsive and unimpressed. He speaks (letter to Murray, February 16, 1821) of "the Spanish tradition;" but there is nothing to show that he had read or heard of Tirso de Molina's (Gabriel Tellez) _El Burlador de Sevilla y Convidado de Piedra_ (_The Deceiver of Seville and the Stone Guest_), 1626, which dramatized the "ower true tale" of the actual Don Juan Tenorio; or that he was acquainted with any of the Italian (e.g. _Convitato di Pietra_, del Dottor Giacinto Andrea Cicognini, Fiorentino [see L. Allacci _Dramaturgia_, 1755, 4, p. 862]) or French adaptations of the legend (_e.g_. _Le Festin de Pierre, ou le fils criminel_, Tragi-comedie de De Villiers, 1659; and Moliere's _Dom Juan, ou Le Festin de Pierre_, 1665). He had seen (_vide post_, p. 11, note 2) Delpini's pantomime, which was based on Shadwell's _Libertine_, and he may have witnessed, at Milan or Venice, a performance of Mozart's _Don Giovanni_; but in taking Don Juan for his "hero," he took the name only, and disregarded the "terrible figure" "of the t.i.tan of embodied evil, the likeness of sin made flesh" (see _Selections from the Works of Lord Byron_, by A.C. Swinburne, 1885, p.

xxvi.), "as something to his purpose nothing"!

Why, then, did he choose the name, and what was the scheme or motif of his poem? Something is to be gathered from his own remarks and reflections; but it must be borne in mind that he is on the defensive, and that his half-humorous paradoxes were provoked by advice and opposition. Writing to Moore (September 19, 1818), he says, "I have finished the first canto ... of a poem in the style and manner of _Beppo_, encouraged by the good success of the same. It is ... meant to be a little quietly facetious upon every thing. But I doubt whether it is not--at least as far as it has gone--too free for these very modest days." The critics before and after publication thought that _Don Juan_ _was_ "too free," and, a month after the two first cantos had been issued, he writes to Murray (August 12, 1819), "You ask me for the plan of Donny Johnny; I _have_ no plan--I _had_ no plan; but I had or have materials.... You are too earnest and eager about a work never intended to be serious. Do you suppose that I could have any intention but to giggle and make giggle?--a playful satire, with as little poetry as could be helped, was what I meant." Again, after the completion but before the publication of Cantos III., IV., V., in a letter to Murray (February 16, 1821), he writes, "The Fifth is so far from being the last of _Don Juan_, that it is hardly the beginning. I meant to take him the tour of Europe, with a proper mixture of siege, battle, and adventure, and to make him finish as Anacharsis Cloots in the French Revolution....

I meant to have made him a _Cavalier Servente_ in Italy, and a cause for a divorce in England, and a Sentimental 'Werther-faced' man in Germany, so as to show the different ridicules of the society in each of these countries, and to have displayed him gradually _gate_ and _blase_, as he grew older, as is natural. But I had not quite fixed whether to make him end in h.e.l.l, or in an unhappy marriage, not knowing which would be the severest."

Byron meant what he said, but he kept back the larger truth. Great works, in which the poet speaks _ex animo_, and the man lays bare the very pulse of the machine, are not conceived or composed unconsciously and at haphazard. Byron did not "whistle" _Don Juan_ "for want of thought." He had found a thing to say, and he meant to make the world listen. He had read with angry disapproval, but he had read, Coleridge's _Critique on_ [Maturin's] _Bertram_ (_vide post_, p. 4, note 1), and, it may be, had caught an inspiration from one brilliant sentence which depicts the Don Juan of the legend somewhat after the likeness of Childe Harold, if not of Lord Byron: "Rank, fortune, wit, talent, acquired knowledge, and liberal accomplishments, with beauty of person, vigorous health, ... all these advantages, elevated by the habits and sympathies of n.o.ble birth and natural character, are ... combined in Don Juan, so as to give him the means of carrying into all its practical consequences the doctrine of a G.o.dless nature ... Obedience to nature is the only virtue." Again, "It is not the wickedness of Don Juan ... which const.i.tutes the character an abstraction, ... but the rapid succession of the correspondent acts and incidents, his intellectual superiority, and the splendid acc.u.mulation of his gifts and desirable qualities as coexistent with entire wickedness in one and the same person." Here was at once a suggestion and a challenge.

Would it not be possible to conceive and to depict an ideal character, gifted, gracious, and delightful, who should "carry into all its practical consequences" the doctrine of a mundane, if not G.o.dless doctrine, and, at the same time, retain the charities and virtues of uncelestial but not devilish manhood? In defiance of monition and in spite of resolution, the primrose path is trodden by all sorts and conditions of men, sinners no doubt, but not necessarily abstractions of sin, and to a.s.sert the contrary makes for cant and not for righteousness. The form and substance of the poem were due to the compulsion of Genius and the determination of Art, but the argument is a vindication of the natural man. It is Byron's "criticism of life." _Don Juan_ was _taboo_ from the first. The earlier issues of the first five cantos were doubly anonymous. Neither author nor publisher subscribed their names on the t.i.tle-page. The book was a monster, and, as its maker had foreseen, "all the world" shuddered. Immoral, in the sense that it advocates immoral tenets, or prefers evil to good, it is not, but it is unquestionably a dangerous book, which (to quote Kingsley's words used in another connection) "the young and innocent will do well to leave altogether unread." It is dangerous because it ignores resistance and presumes submission to pa.s.sion; it is dangerous because, as Byron admitted, it is "now and then voluptuous;" and it is dangerous, in a lesser degree, because, here and there, the purport of the quips and allusions is gross and offensive. No one can take up the book without being struck and arrested by these violations of modesty and decorum; but no one can master its contents and become possessed of it as a whole without perceiving that the mirror is held up to nature, that it reflects spots and blemishes which, on a survey of the vast and various...o...b.. dwindle into _natural_ and so comparative insignificance. Byron was under no delusion as to the grossness of _Don Juan_. His plea or pretence, that he was sheltered by the superior grossness of Ariosto and La Fontaine, of Prior and of Fielding, is _nihil ad rem_, if it is not insincere. When Murray (May 3, 1819) charges him with "approximations to indelicacy," he laughs himself away at the euphemism, but when Hobhouse and "the Zoili of Albemarle Street" talked to him "about morality," he flames out, "I maintain that it is the most moral of poems." He looked upon his great work as a whole, and he knew that the "_raison d'etre_ of his song" was not only to celebrate, but, by the white light of truth, to represent and exhibit the great things of the world--Love and War, and Death by sea and land, and Man, half-angel, half-demon--the comedy of his fortunes, and the tragedy of his pa.s.sions and his fate.

_Don Juan_ has won great praise from the great. Sir Walter Scott (_Edinburgh Weekly Journal_, May 19, 1824) maintained that its creator "has embraced every topic of human life, and sounded every string of the divine harp, from its slightest to its most powerful and heart-astounding tones." Goethe (_Kunst und Alterthum_, 1821 [ed.

Weimar, iii. 197, and _Sammtliche Werke_, xiii. 637]) described _Don Juan_ as "a work of boundless genius." Sh.e.l.ley (letter to Byron, October 21, 1821), on the receipt of Cantos III., IV., V., bore testimony to his "wonder and delight:" "This poem carries with it at once the stamp of originality and defiance of imitation. Nothing has ever been written like it in English, nor, if I may venture to prophesy, will there be, unless carrying upon it the mark of a secondary and borrowed light....

You are building up a drama," he adds, "such as England has not yet seen, and the task is sufficiently n.o.ble and worthy of you." Again, of the fifth canto he writes (Sh.e.l.ley's _Prose Works_, ed. H. Buxton Forman, iv. 219), "Every word has the stamp of immortality.... It fulfils, in a certain degree, what I have long preached of producing--something wholly new and relative to the age, and yet surpa.s.singly beautiful." Finally, a living poet, neither a disciple nor encomiast of Byron, pays eloquent tribute to the strength and splendour of _Don Juan_: "Across the stanzas ... we swim forward as over the 'broad backs of the sea;' they break and glitter, hiss and laugh, murmur and move like waves that sound or that subside. There is in them a delicious resistance, an elastic motion, which salt water has and fresh water has not. There is about them a wide wholesome air, full of vivid light and constant wind, which is only felt at sea. Life undulates and Death palpitates in the splendid verse.... This gift of life and variety is the supreme quality of Byron's chief poem" (_A Selection, etc._, by A.C. Swinburne, 1885, p. x.).

Cantos I., II. of _Don Juan_ were reviewed in _Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_, August, 1819, vol. v. pp. 512-518; Cantos III., IV., V., August, 1821, vol. x. pp. 107-115; and Cantos VI., VII., VIII., July, 1823, vol. xiv. pp. 88-92: in the _British Critic_, Cantos I., II. were reviewed August, 1819, vol. xii. pp. 195-205; and Cantos III., IV., V., September, 1821, vol. xvi. pp. 251-256: in the _British Review_, Cantos I., II. were reviewed August, 1819, vol. xiv. pp. 266-268; and Cantos III., IV., V., December, 1821, vol. xviii. pp. 245-265: in the _Examiner_, Cantos I., II. were reviewed October 31, 1819; Cantos III., IV., V., August 26, 1821; and Cantos XV., XVI., March 14 and 21, 1824: in the _Literary Gazette_, Cantos I., II. were reviewed July 17 and 24, 1819; Cantos III., IV., V., August 11 and 18, 1821; Cantos VI., VII., VIII., July 19, 1823; Cantos IX., X., XL, September 6, 1823; Cantos XII., XIII., XIV., December 6, 1823; and Cantos XV., XVI., April 3, 1824: in the _Monthly Review_., Cantos I., II. were reviewed July, 1819, Enlarged Series, vol. 89, p. 309; Cantos III., IV., V., August, 1821, vol. 95, p. 418; Cantos VI., VII., VIII., July, 1823, vol. 101, p. 316; Cantos IX., X., XI., October, 1823, vol. 102, p. 217; Cantos XII., XIII., XIV., vol. 103, p. 212; and Cantos XV., XVI., April, 1824, vol.

103, p. 434: in the _New Monthly Magazine_, Cantos I., II. were reviewed August, 1819, vol. xii. p. 75. See, too, an article on the "Morality of _Don Juan_," _Dublin University Magazine_, May, 1875, vol. lx.x.xv. pp.

630-637.

Neither the _Quarterly_ nor the _Edinburgh Review_ devoted separate articles to _Don Juan_; but Heber, in the _Quarterly Review_ (Lord Byron's _Dramas_), July, 1822, vol. xxvii. p. 477, and Jeffrey, in the _Edinburgh Review_ (Lord Byron's _Tragedies_), February, 1822, vol. 36, pp. 446-450, took occasion to pa.s.s judgment on the poem and its author.

For the history of the legend, see _History of Spanish Literature_, by George Ticknor, 1888, vol. ii. pp. 380, 381; and _Das Kloster_, von J.

Scheible, 1846, vol. iii. pp. 663-765. See, too, _Notes sur le Don Juanisme_, par Henri de Bruchard, _Mercure de France_, Avril, 1898, vol.

xxvi. pp. 58-73; and _Don Juan_, par Gustave Kahn, _Revue Encyclopedique_, 1898, tom. viii. pp. 326-329.

DON JUAN.

FRAGMENT ON THE BACK OF THE MS. OF CANTO I.

I WOULD to Heaven that I were so much clay, As I am blood, bone, marrow, pa.s.sion, feeling-- Because at least the past were pa.s.sed away, And for the future--(but I write this reeling, Having got drunk exceedingly to-day, So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling) I say--the future is a serious matter-- And so--for G.o.d's sake--hock and soda-water!

DEDICATION.[1]

I.

BOB SOUTHEY! You're a poet--Poet-laureate, And representative of all the race; Although 't is true that you turned out a Tory at Last,--yours has lately been a common case; And now, my Epic Renegade! what are ye at?

With all the Lakers, in and out of place?

A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye Like "four and twenty Blackbirds in a pye;

II.

"Which pye being opened they began to sing,"

(This old song and new simile holds good), "A dainty dish to set before the King,"

Or Regent, who admires such kind of food;-- And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing, But like a hawk enc.u.mbered with his hood,-- Explaining Metaphysics to the nation-- I wish he would explain his Explanation.[2]

III.

You, Bob! are rather insolent, you know, At being disappointed in your wish To supersede all warblers here below, And be the only Blackbird in the dish; And then you overstrain yourself, or so, And tumble downward like the flying fish Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob, And fall, for lack of moisture, quite a-dry, Bob![3]

IV.