of that soul which burned and blasted and fed upon itself, in Harold, and Conrad, and Lara-and which comes again in this piece, more in sorrow than in anger-more proud, perhaps, and more awful than ever-but with the fiercer traits of its misanthropy subdued, as it were, and quenched in the gloom of a deeper despondency. Manfred does not, like Conrad and Lara, wreak the anguish of his burning heart in the dangers and daring of desperate and predatory war-nor seek to drown bitter thoughts in the tumult of perpetual contention; nor yet, like Harold, does he sweep over the peopled scenes of the earth with high disdain and aversion, and make his survey of the business, and pleasures, and studies of man an occasion for taunts and sarcasms, and the food of an unmeasurable spleen. He is fixed by the genius of the poet in the majestic solitudes of the central Alps-where, from his youth up, he has lived in proud but calm seclusion from the ways of men, conversing only with the magnificent forms and aspects of nature by which he is surrounded, and with the Spirits of the Elements, over whom he has acquired dominion by the secret and unhallowed studies of sorcery and magic. He is averse, indeed, from mankind, and scorns the low and frivolous nature to which he belongs; but he cherishes no animosity or hostility to that feeole race. Their concerns excite no interest-their pursuits no sympathy-their joys no envy. It is irksome and vexatious for him to be crossed by them in his melancholy musings,-but he treats them with gentleness and pity; and, except when stung to impatience by too importunate an intrusion, is kind and considerate to the comforts of all around him. This piece is properly entitled a dramatic poem-for it is merely poetical, and is not at all a drama or play in the modern acceptation of the tern. It has no action, no plot, and no characters; Manfred merely muses and suffers from the beginning to the end. His distresses are the same at the opening of the scene and at its closing, and the temper in which they are borne is the same. A hunter and a priest, and some domestics, are indeed introduced, but they have no connection with the passions or sufferings on which the interest depends; and Manfred is substantially alone throughout the whole piece. He holds no communion but with the memory of the Being he had loved; and the immortal Spirits whom he evokes to reproach with his misery, and their inability to relieve it. These unearthly beings approach nearer to the character of persons of the drama-but still they are but choral accompaniments to the performance; and Manfred is, in reality, the only actor and sufferer on the scene. To delineate his character indeed-to render conceivable his feelings-is plainly the whole scope and design of the poem; and the conception and execution are, in this respect, equally admirable. It is a grand and terrific vision of a being invested with superhuman attributes, in order that he may be capable of more than human sufferings, and be sustained under them by more than human force and pride. To object to the improbability of the fiction, is to mistake the end and aim of the author. Probabilities, we apprehend, did not enter at all into his considera The thought which is within me and around me, I do compel ye to my will:-Appear! [A star is seen at the darker end of the gallery: it is stationary; and a voice is heard singing. FIRST SPIRIT. Mortal! to thy bidding bow'd, With the azure and vermilion, Voice of the SECOND SPIRIT. On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds, tion; his object was, to produce effect-to exalt and dilate the character through whom he was to interest or appal us -and to raise our conception of it, by all the helps that could be derived from the majesty of nature, or the dread of superstition. It is enough, therefore, if the situation in which he has placed him is conceivable, and if the supposition of its reality enhances our emotions and kindles our imagination; for it is Manfred only that we are required to fear, to pity, or admire. If we can once conceive of him as a real existence, and enter into the depth and the height of his pride and his sorrows, we may deal as we please with the means that have been used to furnish us with this impression, or to enable us to attain to this conception. We may regard them but as types, or metaphors, or alle. gories; but HE is the thing to be expressed, and the feeling and the intellect of which all these are but shadows." -Jeffrey. "In this very extraordinary poem, Lord Byron has pursued the same course as in the third canto of Childe Harold, and put out his strength upon the same objects. The action is laid among the mountains of the Alps-the characters are all, more or less, formed and swayed by the operations of the magnificent scenery around them, and every page of the poem teems with imagery and passion, though, at the same time, the mind of the poet is often overborne, as it were, by the strength and novelty of its own conceptions; and thus the composition, as a whole, is liable to many and fatal objections. But there is a still more novel exhibition of Lord Byron's powers in this remarkable drama. He has here burst into the world of spirits; and, in the wild delight with which the elements of nature seem to have inspired him, he has endeavoured to embody and call up before him their ministering agents, and to employ these wild personifications, as he formerly employed the feelings and passions of man. We are not prepared to say, that, in this daring attempt, he has completely succeeded. We are inclined to think, that the plan he has conceived, and the principal character which he has wished to delineate, would require a fuller developement than is here given to them; and, accordingly, a sense of imperfection, incompleteness, and confusion accompanies the mind throughout the perusal of the poem, owing either to some failure on the part of the poet, or to the inherent mystery of the subject. But though, on that account, it is difficult to comprehend distinctly the drift of the composition, it unques tionably exhibits many noble delineations of mountain scenery, many impressive and terrible pictures of passion, and many wild and awful visions of imaginary horror." Wilson.-L. E. Around his waist are forests braced, The avalanche in his hand; But ere it fall, that thundering ball Must pause for my command. The glacier's cold and restless mass Moves onward day by day; But I am he who bids it pass, Or with its ice delay. (1) I am the spirit of the place, Could make the mountain bow And quiver to his cavern'd baseAnd what with me wouldst thou? Voice of the THIRD SPIRIT. In the blue depth of the waters, Where the wave hath no strife, Where the wind is a stranger, And the sea-snake hath life, Where the mermaid is decking Her green hair with shells; Like the storm on the surface Came the sound of thy spells; O'er my calm hall of coral The deep echo roll'd To the Spirit of Ocean FOURTH SPIRIT. Where the slumbering earthquake Rise boilingly higher; Strike deep in the earth, I have quitted my birth-place I am the rider of the wind, Is yet with lightning warm; To speed to thee, o'er shore and sea I swept upon the blast: The fleet I met sail'd well, and yet "Twill sink ere night be past. SIXTH SPIRIT. My dwelling is the shadow of the night, Why doth thy magic torture me with light? SEVENTH SPIRIT. The star which rules thy destiny (1) In the MS. "Or makes its ice delay."-L. E. Hath made you mine. Slaves, scoff not at my will! The lightning of my being, is as bright, And shall not yield to yours, though coop'd in clay! Spirit. We answer as we answer'd; our reply Is even in thine own words. Man. Why say ye so? Spirit. If, as thou say'st, thine essence be as ours, We have replied in telling thee, the thing Mortals call death hath nought to do with us. Man. I then have call'd ye from your realms in vain; Ye cannot, or ye will not, aid me. Your voices, sweet and melancholy sounds, Spirit. We have no forms, beyond the elements Man. I have no choice; there is no form on earth Hideous or beautiful to me. Let him, Who is most powerful of ye, take such aspect As unto him may seem most fitting-Come! Seventh Spirit. (Appearing in the shape of a beautiful female figure.) Behold! Man. Oh God! if it be thus, and thou I yet might be most happy. I will clasp thee, A Voice is heard in the Incantation which follows. (1) And the glow-worm in the grass, And the wisp on the morass; (2) With a power and with a sign. Though thy slumber may be deep, Yet thy spirit shall not sleep; There are shades which will not vanish, There are thoughts thou canst not banish; By a power to thee unknown, Thou canst never be alone; Thou art wrapt as with a shroud, Thou art gather'd in a cloud; Though thou seest me not pass by, And a magic voice and verse Hath baptized thee with a curse; (1) These verses were writen in Switzerland, in 1816, and transmitted to England for publication, with the third canto of Childe Harold. "As they were written," says Mr. Moore, "immediately after the last fruitless attempt at reconciliation, it is needless to say who was in the poet's thoughts while he penned some of the opening stanzas."--L. E. (2) "And the wisp on the morass "-Hearing, in Febru ary, 1818, of a menaced version of Manfred by some Italian, Lord Byron wrote to his friend Mr. Hoppner-" If you have any means of communicating with the man, would you permit me to convey to him the offer of any price he may obtain, or think to obtain, for his project, provided he will And a spirit of the air From thy false tears I did distil I found the strongest was thine own. By thy cold breast and serpent smile, Which pass'd for human thine own heart; By thy delight in others' pain, And on thy head I pour the vial Which doth devote thee to this trial; Shall be in thy destiny; Though thy death shall still seem near To thy wish, but as a fear; Lo! the spell now works around thee, And the clankless chain hath bound thee; O'er thy heart and brain together Hath the word been pass'd-Now wither! SCENE II. The Mountain of the Jungfrau.-Time, Morning.— Man. The spirits I have raised abandon me- I lean no more on super-human aid, It hath no power upon the past, and for The future, till the past be gulf'd in darkness, It is not of my search.--My mother Earth! And thou fresh-breaking Day, and you, ye Mountains, throw his translation into the fire, and promise not to undertake any other of that, or any other of my things? I will send him his money immediately, on this condition." A negotiation was accordingly set on foot, and the translator, on receiving two hundred francs, delivered up his manuscript, and engaged never to translate any other of the poet's works. Of his qualifications for the task some notion may be formed from the fact, that he had turned the word "wisp," in this line, into "a bundle of straw."-L. E. (3) In the MS. "I do adjure thee to this spell."-L. E. That openest over all, and unto all Art a delight-thou shinest not on my heart. And my brain reels-and yet my foot is firm: If it be life to wear within myself My own soul's sepulchre, for I have ceased Ay, Thou winged and cloud-cleaving minister, [An eagle passes. Whose happy flight is highest into heaven, But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we, To sink or soar, with our mix'd essence make A conflict of its elements, and breathe The breath of degradation and of pride, And men are what they name not to themselves, [The shepherd's pipe in the distance is heard. (1) The germs of this, and of several other passages in Manfred, may be found in the Journal of his Swiss tour, which Lord Byron transmitted to his sister: e. g. "Sept. 19. Arrived at a lake in the very bosom of the mountains; left our quadrupeds, and ascended further; came to some snow in patches, upon which my forehead's perspiration fell like rain, making the same dents as in a sieve; the chill of the wind and the snow turned me giddy, but I scrambled on and upwards. Hobhouse went to the highest pinnacle. The whole of the mountains superb. A shepherd on a steep and very high cliff, playing upon his pipe; very different from Arcadia. The music of the cows' bells (for their wealth, like the patriarchs', is cattle) in the pastures, which reach to a height far above any mountains in Britain, and the shepherds shouting to us from crag to crag, and playing on their reeds where the steeps appeared almost inaccessible, with the surrounding scenery, realized all that I have ever heard or imagined of a pastoral existence-much more so than Greece or Asia Minor; for there we are a little too much of the sabre and musket order, and if there is a crook in one hand, you are sure to see a gun in the other: but this was pure and unmixed-solitary, savage, and patriarenal. As we went, they played the Ranz des Vaches' and other airs, by way of farewell. I have lately repeopled my mind with nature."-L. E. (2) See the opening lines to the Prisoner of Chillon, antè, p. 278. Speaking of Marie Antoinette, "I was struck," says Madame Campan, "with the astonishing change mis The viewless spirit of a lovely sound, Enter, from below, a CHAMOIS HUNTER. This way the chamois leap'd: her nimble feet Man. (not perceiving the other.) To be thus- Having been otherwise! Now furrow'd o'er C. Hun. The mists begin to rise from up the valley; Man. The mists boil up around the glaciers; clouds Rise curling fast beneath me, white and sulphury, Like foam from the roused ocean of deep hell, (5) Whose every wave breaks on a living shore, Heap'd with the damn'd like pebbles-I am giddy. (6) C. Hun. I must approach him cautiously; if near, A sudden step will startle him, and he Seems tottering already. fortune had wrought upon her features: her whole head of hair had turned almost white, during her transit from Varennes to Paris." The same thing occurred to the unfortunate Queen Mary. "With calm but undaunted fortitude," says her historian, "she laid her neck upon the block; and while one executioner held her hands, the other, at the second stroke, cut off her head, which, falling out of its attire, discovered her hair, already grown quite grey with cares and sorrows." The hair of Mary's grandson, Charles I., turned quite grey, in like manner, during his stay at Carisbrooke.-L. E. (3) "Passed whole woods of withered pines, all withered, -trunks stripped and barkless, branches lifeless; done by a single winter: their appearance reminded me of me and my family." Swiss Journal.-L. E. (4) "Ascended the Wengen mountain; left the horses, took off my coat, and went to the summit. On one side, our view comprised the Jungfrau, with all her glaciers; then the Dent d'Argent, shining like truth; then the Little Giant, and the Great Giant; and last, not least, the Wetterhorn. The height of the Jungfrau is thirteen thousand feet above the sea, and eleven thousand above the valley. Heard the avalanches falling every five minutes nearly." Swiss Journal. -L. E. Man. My bones kad then been quiet in their depth; Ye were not meant for me- -Earth! take these atoms! [AS MANFRED is in act to spring from the cliff, the CHAMOIS HUNTER seizes and retains him with a sudden grasp. C. Hun. Hold, madman!-though aweary of thy life, Man. I am most sick at heart-nay, grasp me not- C. Hun. I'll answer that anon.-Away with me- [As they descend the rocks with difficulty, the scene ACT II. A Cottage amongst the Bernese Alps. May call thee lord? I only know their portals; C. Hun. Well, sir, pardon me the question, Man. Away, away! there's blood upon the brim! Man. I say 'tis blood-my blood! the pure warm Which ran in the veins of my fathers, and in ours C. Hun. Man of strange words, and some half- Which makes thee people vacancy, whate'er Man. Patience, and patience! Hence!—that word was made For brutes of burthen, not for birds of prey; C. Hun. Thanks to heaven! Man. Think'st thou existence doth depend on time? C. Hun. No, no-yet pause-thou must not yet Innumerable atoms; and one desert, Thy mind and body are alike unfit To trust each other, for some hours at least; When thou art better, I will be thy guide- Man. It imports not: I do know My route full well, and need no further guidance. One of the many chiefs, whose castled crags hell during a spring-tide-it was white and sulphury, and immeasurably deep in appearance. The side we ascended was not of so precipitous a nature; but on arriving at the summit we looked down upon the other side upon a boiling Barren and cold, on which the wild waves break, C. Hun. Alas! he's mad-but yet I must not Man. I would I were-for then the things I see C. Hun. sea of cloud, dashing against the crags on which we stood these crags on one side quite perpendicular. In passing the masses of snow, I made a snowball and pelted Hobhouse with it." Swiss Journal.-L. E. |