I sunk before my vain despair, and knelt Fifth Spirit. Man. Bid him bow down to that which is above The Spirits. Crush the worm! Tear him in pieces! First Des. Hence! Avaunt!-he's mine. And presence here denote; his sufferings Our own; his knowledge and his powers and will, This is not all the passions, attributes Of earth and heaven, from which no power, nor being, Nor breath from the worm upwards is exempt, A soul like his or power upon his soul. power I could not be amongst ye: but there are The heart and the form, And the aspect thou worest Redeem from the worm. Appear!- Appear!— Appear! Who sent thee there requires thee here! [The Phantom of ASTARTE rises und stands in the midst. Man. Can this be death? there's bloom upon her cheek; But now I see it is no living hue But a strange hectic-like the unnatural red NEMESIS. By the power which hath broken I know not what I ask, She is not of our order, but belongs And we are baffled also. Man. I have so much endured-so much endure- nor what I seek: and what I am; And I would hear yet once before I perish And woke the mountain wolves, and made the caves (Scene closes.) [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 settered, 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: Her. All, my lord, are ready: Here is the key and casket. Man. It is well: Thou may'st retire. To be of all our vanities the motliest, But it is well to have known it, though but once: "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 I 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."] May also be my herald. Rumours strange, Man. Proceed, I listen. Abbot. 'Tis said thou holdest converse with the things Man. I hear thee. This is my reply: whate'er Abbot. My son! I did not speak of punishment, [Thus far the text stands as originally penned: we subjoin the sequel of the scene as given in the first MS.: "Abbot. Then, hear and tremble! For the headstrong Who in the mail of innate hardihood [wretch Would shield himself, and battle for his sins, Which are forbidden to the search of man ; Man. And what are they who do avouch these Abbot. My pious brethren-the scared peasantry- Man. Take it. Abbot. Man. When Rome's sixth emperor 2 was near his [MANFRED opens the casket, strikes a light, and Ho! Ashtaroth! The DEMON ASHTAROTH appears, singing as follows: On the raven-stone, And his black wing flits O'er the milk.white bone; To and fro, as the night-winds blow, Croaks to the close of the hollow sound; And this is the tune, by the light of the moon, Merrily, speeds the ball: The dead in their shrouds, and the demons in clouds, "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, Have given me power to smooth the path from sin 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 last, The victim of a self-inflicted wound, " hence Abbot. I fear thee not-hence But harm him not; and, when the morrow breaks, Man. No, this will serve for the present. 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 It was not of my seeking. My heart sickens, "Sit Cato, dum vivit, sane vel Cæsare major, Dum moritur, numquíd major Othone fuit ?" not loss of life, bu: ? the torments of a Choose between them."— - MS.] 3 [“To shun { public death. 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: Abbot. I knew not whither-it might be to fall; Abbot. And wherefore so? Man. I could not tame my nature down; for he Must serve who fain would sway-and soothe—and sue And watch all time-and pry into all place- Abbot. And why not live and act with other men? Man. Because my nature was averse from life; And yet not cruel; for I would not make, But find a desolation: - like the wind, The red-hot breath of the most lone simoom, Which dwells but in the desert, and sweeps o'er The barren sands which bear no shrubs to blast, And revels o'er their wild and arid waves, [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. I am, 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.] ["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, Alas! I 'gin to fear that thou art past all aid More than are number'd in the lists of Fate, [Exit MANFRED. Abb. This should have been a noble creature 3: he Hath all the energy which would have made A goodly frame of glorious elements, Had they been wisely mingled; as it is, It is an awful chaos-light and darkness- 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 hosom 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.] SCENE II. Another Chamber. MANFRED and HERMAN. Her. My lord, you bade me wait on you at sunset: He sinks behind the mountain. Man. Doth he so ? I will look on him. [MANFRED advances to the Window of the Hall, Glorious Orb! the idol Of early nature, and the vigorous race And hearts of all who walk within thy rays! [Exit MANFRED. Or its contents, it were impossible To draw conclusions absolute, of aught His studies tend to. To be sure, there is How many years is't? Manuel. Ere Count Manfred's birth, I served his father, whom he nought resembles. Her. There be more sons in like predicament. But wherein do they differ? Manuel. I speak not Of features or of form, but mind and habits; Count Sigismund was proud, but gay and free,A warrior and a reveller; he dwelt not With books and solitude, nor made the night A gloomy vigil, but a festal time, Merrier than day; he did not walk the rocks And forests like a wolf, nor turn aside From men and their delights. Her. Beshrew the hour, But those were jocund times! I would that such Would visit the old walls again; they look As if they had forgotten them. These walls Manuel. Manuel. That was a night indeed! I do remember 'T was twilight, as it may be now, and such Another evening; -yon red cloud, which rests On Eigher's pinnacle, so rested then,— So like that it might be the same; the wind Was faint and gusty, and the mountain snows Began to glitter with the climbing moon; Count Manfred was, as now, within his tower, How occupied, we knew not, but with him The sole companion his wanderings And watchings-her, whom of all earthly things Hush! who comes here? And love of human kind, and will to aid [HERMAN goes in. Vassal. Peasant. Faith, not I,Not that, if one, or two, or more, will join, I then will stay behind; but, for my part, I do not see precisely to what end. l'assal. Cease your vain prating-come. Manuel (speaking within). He's dead. 'T is all in vain Her. (within). Not so-even now methought he moved; But it is dark-so bear him gently out Softly how cold he is! take care of his temples In winding down the staircase. |