The Works of Lord Byron Volume V Part 142

[315] ["In the amphitheatre ... crowds collected after the sittings of the Congress, to witness dramatic representations.... But for the costumes, a spectator might have imagined he was witnessing a resurrection of the ancient Romans."--_Congress, etc._, by M. de Chateaubriand, 1838, i. 76. This was on the 24th of November. Catalani sang. Rossini's cantata was performed with tremendous applause. On the next day the august visitors witnessed an illumination of the city.

"Leur attention s'est princ.i.p.alement arrete sur le superbe portail de l'eglise Sainte-Agnes, qui brillait de mille feux, au milieu desquels se lisait l'inscription suivante en lettres de grandeur colossale:

'_A Cesare Augusta Verona esultante_.'"

--_Le Moniteur_, December 14, 1822.]

[316] {563}[Alexander I. (Paulowitsch), 1777-1825, succeeded his father in 1801. He began his reign well. Taxation was diminished, judicial penalties were remitted, universities were founded and reorganized, personal servitude was abolished or restricted throughout the empire. At the height of his power and influence, when he was regarded as the Liberator of Europe, he granted a Const.i.tution to Poland, based on liberal if not democratic principles (June 21, 1815). But after a time he reverted to absolutism. Autocracy at home, a mystical and sentimental alliance with autocrats abroad, were incompatible with the indulgence of liberal proclivities. "After the Congresses of Aix-la-Chapelle and Troppau," writes M. Rambaud (_History of Russia_, 1888, ii. 384), "he was no longer the same man.... From that time he considered himself the dupe of his generous ideas ... at Carlsbad, at Laybach, and at Verona, Alexander was already the leader of the European reaction." But even to the last he believed that he could run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. "They may say of me," he exclaimed, "what they will; but I have lived and shall die republican" (ibid., p. 398).

Alexander was a man of ideas, a sentimentalist, and a _poseur_, but he had an eye to the main chance. Whatever cause or dynasty suffered, the Emperor Alexander was still triumphant. Byron's special grudge against him at this time was due to his vacillation with regard to the cause of Greek Independence. But he is too contemptuous. There were points in common between the "c.o.xcomb Czar" and his satirist; and it is far from certain that if the twain had changed places Byron might not have proved just "such an Alexander." In one respect their destiny was alike. The greatest sorrow of their lives was the death of a natural daughter.]

[317] [For Alexander's waltzing, see _Personal Reminiscences_, by Cornelia Knight and Thomas Raikes, 1875, p. 286. See, too, Moore's _Fables for the Holy Alliance_, Fable I., "A Dream."]

[em] _Now half inclining_----.--[MS.]

[318] {564} ["Pulk" is Polish for "regiment." The allusion must be to the military colonies planted by "the corporal of Gatchina," Araktcheef, in the governments of Novgorod, Kharkof, and elsewhere.]

[319] [Frederic Cesar La Harpe (1754-1838) was appointed by Catherine II. Governor to the Grand-Dukes Alexander and Constantine. It was from La Harpe's teaching that Alexander imbibed his liberal ideas. In 1816, when Byron pa.s.sed the summer in Switzerland, La Harpe was domiciled at Lausanne, and it is possible that a meeting took place.]

[320] [Alexander's platonic attachment to the Baronne de Krudener (Barbe Julie de Wietenhoff), beauty, novelist, _illuminee_, was the source of amus.e.m.e.nt rather than scandal. The Baronne, then in her fiftieth year, was the channel through which Franz Bader's theory or doctrine of the "Holy Alliance" was conveyed to the enthusiastic and receptive Czar. It was only a pa.s.sing whim. Alexander's mysticism was for ornament, not for use, and, before very long, Egeria and her Muscovite Numa parted company.]

[321] The dexterity of Catherine extricated Peter (called the Great by courtesy), when surrounded by the Mussulmans on the banks of the river Pruth. [Catherine, who had long been Peter's mistress, had at length been acknowledged as his wife. Her "dexterity" took the form of a bribe of money and jewels, conveyed to the Turkish grand-vizier Baltazhi-Mahomet, who was induced to accede to the Treaty of Pruth, July 20, 1711.]

[322] {565}

["Eight thousand men had to Asturias march'd Beneath Count Julian's banner.... To revenge His quarrel, twice that number left their bones, Slain in unnatural battle, on the field Of Xeres, where the sceptre from the Goths By righteous Heaven was reft."

Southey's _Roderick_, Canto XXV. lines 1, 2, 7-11.]

[323] [The Bashkirs are a Turco-Mongolian tribe inhabiting the slopes of the Ural Mountains. They supply a body of irregular cavalry to the Russian army.]

[324] [The Austrian and Russian armies stood between the Greeks and other peoples, and their independence, as Alexander the Great stood between Diogenes and the suns.h.i.+ne.]

[en]

_Still will I roll my tub at Sinope_ _Be slaves who may_----.--[MS.]

[325] [Lines 482, 483, are not in the MS.]

[326] {566} [Constant (Henri Benjamin de Rebecque, 1767-1830) was the "stormy petrel" of debate in the French Chamber. For instance, in a discussion on secret service money for the police (July 27, 1822), he exclaimed, "Vous les representez-vous payant d'une main le salaire du vol, et tenant peut-etre un crucifix de l'autre?" No wonder that there were "violens murmures, cris d'indignation a droite." The duel, however, did not arise out of a speech in the Chamber, but from a letter of June 5, 1822, in _La Quotidienne_, in which the Marquis de Forbin des Issarts replied to some letters of Constant, which had appeared in the _Courrier_ and _Const.i.tutionnel_. Constant was lame, and accordingly both combatants "out ete places a dix pet.i.ts pas sur des chaises." Both fired twice, but neither "was a penny the worse." (See _La Grande Encyclopedie_, art. "Constant;" and, for details, _La Quotidienne_, June 8, 1822. See, too, for "session de 1822," _Opinions el Discours_ de M.

Casimir Perrier, 1838, ii. 5-47.)]

[327] [Louis XVIII. (Louis Stanislas Xavier, 1755-1824) pa.s.sed several years of exile in England, at Goswell, Wanstead, and latterly at Hartwell, near Aylesbury, in Buckinghams.h.i.+re. When he entered Paris as king, in May, 1814, he was in his fifty-ninth year, inordinately bulky and unwieldy--a king _pour rire_. "C'est ce gros goutteux," explained an _ouvrier_ to a bystander, who had asked, "Which is the king?" Fifteen mutton cutlets, "sautees au jus," for breakfast; fifteen mutton cutlets served with a "sauce a la champagne," for dinner; to say nothing of strawberries, and sweet apple-puffs between meals, made digestion and locomotion difficult. It was no wonder that he was a martyr to the gout.

But he cared for nature and for books as well as for eating. His _Lettres d'Artwell_ (Paris, 1830), which profess to be selections from his correspondence with a friend, give a pleasant picture of the _roi en exil_. His wife, Louise de Savoie, died November, 1810, and in the following April he writes (_Lettres_, pp. 70, 71), "Mars a maintenu le bien d'un hiver fort doux; point encore de goutte; _a brebis tondue, Dieu measure le vent_. Helas! je l'eprouve bien qu'elle est tondue cette pauvre brebis!... je me promene dans le jardin, je vois mes rosiers qui poussent bien; a qui offrirai-je les roses?... Eh bien! je ne voudrais pas que cette goutte d'absinthe cessat, car pour cela il faudrait l'oublier. L'oublier! Ah Dieu! Je suis comme les enfans d'Israel qui disaient: _Super flumina Babylonis ... Sion._ Mais ajoutons tout de suite: _Si oblitus fuero hit, Jerusalem, oblivioni detur dextera mea_."

In another letter, June 8, 1811, he criticizes some translations of Horace, and laments that the good Pere Sanadon has confined himself to the _Opera Expurgata_. Not, he adds, that he would not have excluded one or two odes, "mais on a impitoyablement sabre des choses delicieuses"

(_Lettres_, p. 98).

To his wit, Chateaubriand testifies (_The Congress, etc._, 1838, i.

262). At the council, when affairs of state were being discussed, the king "would say in his clear shrill voice, 'I am going to make you laugh, M. de Chateaubriand.' The other ministers fumed with impatience, but Chateaubriand laughed, not as a courtier, but as a human being."]

[328] {567}[Louvel, who a.s.sa.s.sinated the Due de Berri, and who was executed June 7, 1820, was supposed to have been an agent of the _carbonari_. La Fayette, Constant, Lafitte, and others were also suspected of being connected with secret societies.--_The Court of the Tuileries, 1815-1848_, by Lady Jackson, 1883, ii. 19.]

[eo] {568}

_Immortal Wellington with beak so curled_.

_That foremost Corporal of all the World--_ _Immortal Wellington--and flags unfurled_.--[MS. erased.]

[329] "Naso suspendis adunco."--HORACE [_Sat._ i. 6, 5]. The Roman applies it to one who merely was imperious to his acquaintance.

[330] [Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, afterwards Marquis of Londonderry (1769-1822), who had been labouring under a "mental delirium" (Letter of Duke of Wellington, August 9, 1822), committed suicide by cutting his throat with a penknife (August 12, 1822). He was the uncompromising and successful opponent of popular causes in Ireland, Italy, and elsewhere, and, as such, Byron a.s.sailed him, alive and dead, with the bitterest invective. (See, for instance, the "Dedication" to _Don Juan_, stanzas xi.-xvi., sundry epigrams, and an "Epitaph.") In the Preface to Cantos VI., VII., VIII., of _Don Juan_, he justifies the inclusion of a stanza or two on Castlereagh, which had been written "before his decease," and, again, alludes to his suicide. (For an estimate of his career and character, see _Letters_, 1900, iv. 108, 109, note 1; and for a full report of the inquest, _The Annual Biography_, 1823, pp. 56-62.)]

[ep]

_Whose penknife saved some nations t'other day_.

_Who shaved his throat by chance the other day_.--[MS. erased.]

[331] ["The Pilot that weathered the Storm" was written by Canning, to be recited at a dinner given on Pitt's birthday, May 28, 1802.]

[eq] {569} _With reason--whate'er it may with rhyme_.--[MS. erased.]

[332] [George Canning (1770-1827) succeeded Lord Londonderry as Foreign Secretary, September 8, 1822. He was not a _persona grata_ to George IV., who had been offended by Canning's neutral att.i.tude, as a minister, on the question of the Queen's message (June 7, 1820), and by his avowal "of an unaltered regard and affection" for that "ill.u.s.trious personage"

herself. There was, too, the prospect of Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation. In 1821 he had spoken in favour of Plunket's bills, and, the next year (April 30, 1822), he had brought in a bill to remove the disabilities of Roman Catholic peers from sitting in the House of Lords. If Canning persisted in his advocacy of Catholic claims, the king's conscience might turn restive, and urge him to effectual resistance. Hence the warning in lines 563-567.]

[333] {570} [Demeter gave Triptolemus a chariot drawn by serpents, and bade him scatter wheat throughout the world. (See Ovid, _Met._, lib. v.

lines 642-661.)]

[er] _The mighty monosyllable high_ Rent!--[MS.]

[es] ----_upon the audit day_.--[MS. M.]

[334] ["Lord Londonderry proposed (April 29, 1822) that whenever wheat should be under 60 s.h.i.+llings a quarter, Government should be authorized to issue 1,000,000 in Exchequer bills to landed proprietors on the security of their crops; that importation of foreign corn should be permitted whenever the price of wheat should be at or above 70 s.h.i.+llings a quarter ... that a sliding-scale should be fixed, that for wheat being under 80s. a quarter at 12 s.h.i.+llings; above 80s. and below 85s., at 5 s.h.i.+llings; and above 85s., only one s.h.i.+lling."--Allison's _History of Europe_, 1815-1852, _and_ 1854, ii. 506. The first clause was thrown out, but the rest of the bill pa.s.sed May 13, 1822.]

[et] {571} _For fear that riches_----.--[MS. M.]

[eu] _Will sell the harvest at a market price_.--[MS. M.]

[ev] _Are gone--their fields untilled_.--[MS. M.]

[335] {572}[Peel's bill for the resumption of cash payments (Act 59 Geo.

III. cap. 49) was pa.s.sed June 14, 1819. The "landed interest" attributed the fall of prices and the consequent fall of rent to this measure, and hinted more or less plainly that the fund-holders should share the loss.

They had lent their money when the currency was inflated, and should not now be paid off in gold.

"But _you_," exclaims Cobbett [Letter to Mr. Western (_Weekly Register_, November 23, 1822)], "what can induce you to stickle for the Pitt system [i.e. paper-money]? I will tell you what it is: you loved the _high prices_, and the domination that they gave you.... Besides this, you think that the _boroughs can be preserved_ by a return to paper-money, and along with them the hare-and-pheasant law and justice. You loved the glorious times of paper-money, and you want them back again. You think that they could go on for ever.... The bill of 1819 was really a great relaxation of the Pitt system, and when you are crying out _spoliation_ and _confiscation_, when you are bawling out so l.u.s.tily about the robbery committed on you by the fund-holders and the placemen, and are praising the infernal Pitt system at the same time, ... you say they are receiving, the fund-vagabonds in particular, _more_ than they ought." It is evident that Byron's verse is a reverberation of Cobbett's prose.]

[336] [Pet.i.tions were presented by the inhabitants of St. Andrew, Holborn; St. Botolf, Bishopsgate; and St. Gregory by St. Paul, to the Court of Common Council, against a t.i.the-charge of 2s, 9d. in the pound on their annual rents.--_Morning Chronicle_, November 1, 1822.]

[337] Lines 614-657 are not in the MS.

[338] {573}[The Symplegades, or "justling rocks," Ovid's _instabiles Cyaneae_, were supposed to crush the s.h.i.+ps which sailed between them.]