Will now descend the stairs by which I mounted
To sovereignty-the Giants' Stairs, on whose
Broad eminence I was invested duke.

My services have called me up those steps,

The malice of my foes will drive me down them.
There five and thirty years ago was I

Install'd, and traversed these same halls, from which
I never thought to be divorced except

A corse a corse, it might be, fighting for them

But not push'd hence by fellow-citizens.

But come; my son and I will go together

He to his grave, and I to pray for mine.

Chief of the Ten. What! thus in public?
Doge.

Elected, and so will I be deposed.

Marina! art thou willing?

Mar.

I was publicly

Here's my arm! [forth. Doge. And here my staff: thus propp'd will I go Chief of the Ten. It must not be the people will perceive it. [know it,

Doge. The people! There 's no people, you well Else you dare not deal thus by them or me. There is a populace, perhaps, whose looks

[you,

You talk wildly, and

Mar.
Had better now be seated, nor as yet

Depart. Ah! now you look as look'd my husband!
Bar. He sinks!-support him!— quick—a chair

A sovereign should die standing. My poor boy! Off with your arms!-- That bell!

Mar.

[The DOGE drops down and dies.1 My God! My God!

of age," says Lord Byron, "I was witness to a melancholy instance of the same effect of mixed passions upon a young person; who, however, did not die in consequence, at that time, but fell a victim, some years afterwards, to a seizure of the same kind, arising from causes intimately connected with agitation of mind." See post, Don Juan, c. iv. st. lix.]

All, except Lor., answer,

Yes.

Chief of the Ten. Heaven's peace be with him! Mar. Signors, your pardon: this is mockery. Juggle no more with that poor remnant, which, A moment since, while yet it had a soul,

(A soul by whom you have increased your empire, And made your power as proud as was his glory,) ! You banish'd from his palace, and tore down

From his high place, with such relentless coldness;
And now, when he can neither know these honours,
Nor would accept them if he could, you, signors,
Purpose with idle and superfluous pomp,
To make a pageant over what you trampled.
A princely funeral will be your reproach,
And not his honour.

Chief of the Ten.

Lady, we revoke not

1 [By a decree of the Council, the trappings of supreme power of which the Doge had divested himself while living, were stored to him when dead; and he was interred, with dical magnificence, in the church of the Minorites, the new Doge attending as a mourner.- See DARU.]

The Venetians appear to have had a particular turn for breaking the hearts of their Doges. The following is another tance of the kind in the Doge Marco Barbarigo: he was ceeded by his brother Agostino Barbarigo, whose chief merit is here mentioned. "Le doge, blessé de trouver constamment un contradicteur et un censeur si amer dans son fère, lui dit un jour en plein conseil: Messire Augustin, vous faites tout votre possible pour håter ma mort; vous vous flattez de me succéder; mais, si les autres vous connassent aussi-bien que je vous connais, ils n'auront garde de vous élire' Là-dessus il se leva, ému de colère, rentra Cans son appartement, et mourut quelques jours après. Ce frere, contre lequel il s'était emporté, fut précisément le saccesseur qu'on lui donna. C'était un mérite dont on aimait à tenir compte; surtout à un parent, de s'ètre mis en opposition avec le chef de la république.”—DARU, Hist. de Venise, vol. ii. p. 533.

3 L'ha pagata." An historical fact. See Hist. de Venise, par P. Daru, t. ii. p. 411.-[Here the original MS. ends. The two lines which follow were added by Mr. Gifford. In the margin of the MS. Lord Byron has written," If the last line should appear obscure to those who do not recollect the Custorical fact, mentioned in the first act, of Loredano's inscription in his book of Doge Foscari, debtor for the deaths of my father and uncle,' you may add the following lines to the conclusion of the last act :

Chief of the Ten. For what has he repaid thee?

Mar.
Though his possessions have been all consumed
In the state's service, I have still my dowry,
Which shall be consecrated to his rites,
And those of

[She stops with agitation.
Chief of the Ten. Best retain it for your children.
Mar. Ay, they are fatherless, I thank you.
Chief of the Ten.

We

Cannot comply with your request. His relics
Shall be exposed with wonted pomp, and follow'd
Unto their home by the new Doge, not clad

As Doge, but simply as a senator.

Mar. I have heard of murderers, who have interr'd Their victims; but ne'er heard, until this hour, Of so much splendour in hypocrisy O'er those they slew. I've heard of widows' tearsAlas! I have shed some always thanks to you! I've heard of heirs in sables-you have left none To the deceased, so you would act the part

Of such Well, sirs, your will be done! as one day, I trust, Heaven's will be done too!

Chief of the Ten.

Know you, lady,

To whom ye speak, and perils of such speech? Mar. I know the former better than yourselves; The latter- - like yourselves; and can face both. Wish you more funerals?

Bar.

Heed not her rash words; Her circumstances must excuse her bearing. Chief of the Ten. We will not note them down. Bar. (turning to Lor. who is writing upon his tablets). What art thou writing,

With such an earnest brow, upon thy tablets? Lor. (pointing to the Doge's body). That he has paid me! 3

Chief of the Ten.

What debt did he owe you?

Nature's debt and [Curtain falls.

For my father's

And father's brother's death by his son's and own! Ask Gifford about this."-E.]

4 [Considered as poems, we confess that "Sardanapalus" and "The Two Foscari" appear to us to be rather heavy, verbose, and inelegant deficient in the passion and energy which belongs to Lord Byron's other writings-and still more in the richness of imagery, the originality of thought, and the sweetness of versification for which he used to be distinguished. They are for the most part solemn, prolix, and ostentatious-lengthened out by large preparations for catastrophes that never arrive, and tantalising us with slight specimens and glimpses of a higher interest scattered thinly up and down many weary pages of pompous declamation. Along with the concentrated pathos and homestruck sentiments of his former poetry, the noble author seems also we cannot imagine why to have discarded the spirited and melodious versification in which they were embodied, and to have formed to himself a measure equally remote from the spring and vigour of his former compositions, and from the softness and inflexibility of the ancient masters of the drama. There are some sweet lines, and many of great weight and energy; but the general march of the verse is cumbrous and unmusical. His lines do not vibrate like polished lances, at once strong and light, in the hands of his persons, but are wielded like clumsy batons in a bloodless affray. Instead of the graceful familiarity and idiomatical melodies of Shakspeare, it is apt, too, to fall into clumsy prose, in its approaches to the easy and colloquial style; and, in the loftier passages, is occasionally deformed by low and common images that harmonise but ill with the general solemnity of the diction.-JEFFREY.]

"On my calling on Lord Byron one morning, he produced the Deformed Transformed.' Handing it to Shelley, he said Shelley, I have been writing a Faustish kind of drama: tell me what you think of it.' After reading it attentively, Shelley returned it. 'Well,' said Lord B., how do you like it ?! Least,' replied he, of any thing I ever saw of yours. It is a bad imitation of Faust,' and besides, there are two entire lines of Southey's in it.' Lord Byron changed colour immediately, and asked hastily, what lines?' Shelley repeated,

And water shall see thee,

And fear thee, and flee thee.'

They are in the Curse of Kehama.' His Lordship instantly threw the poem into the fire. He seemed to feel no chagrin at seeing it consume-at least his countenance betrayed none, and his conversation became more gay and lively than usual. Whether it was hatred of Southey, or respect for Shelley's opinion, which made him commit the act that I considered a sort of suicide, was always doubtful to me. I was never more surprised than to see, two years afterwards, The Deformed Transformed' announced (supposing it to have perished at Pisa); but it seems that he must have had another copy of the manuscript, or that he had re-written it perhaps, without changing a word, except omitting the Kelama lines. His memory was remarkably retentive of his own writings. I be lieve he could have quoted almost every line he ever wrote." Mrs. Shelley, whose copy of "The Deformed Transformed" lies before us, has written as follows on the fly-leaf:

"This had long been a favourite subject with Lord Byron. I think that he mentioned it also in Switzerland. I copied ithe sending a portion of it at a time, as it was finished, to me. At this time he had a great horror of its being said that he plagiarised, or that he studied for ideas, and wrote with difficulty. Thus he gave Shelley Aikin's edition of the British Poets, that it might not be found in his house by some English lounger, and reported home: thus, too, he always dated when he began and when he ended a poem, to prove hereafter how quickly it was done. I do not think that he altered a line in this drama after he had once written it down. He composed and corrected in his mind. I do not know how he meant to finish it; but he said himself, that the whole conduct of the story was already conceived. It was at this time that a brutal paragraph alluding to his lameness appeared, which he re

No action of Lord Byron's life-scarce a line he has written — but was influenced by his personal defect."]

* [Published in 1803, the work of a Joshua Pickersgill, jun.] 3 [A clever anonymous critic thus sarcastically opens his notice of this poem:-"The reader has no doubt often heard of the Devil and Dr. Faustus: this is but a new birth of the same unrighteous couple, who are christened, however, by the noble hierophant who presides over the infernal ceremony, Julius Cæsar and Count Arnold. The drama opens with a scene between the latter, who is to all appear ance a well-disposed young man, of a very deformed person, and his mother: this good lady, with somewhat less maternal piety about her than adorns the mother-ape in the fable, turns her dutiful incubus of a son out of doors to gather wood. Arnold, upon this, proceeds incontinently to kill himself, by falling, after the manner of Brutus, on his wood-knife: he is, however, piously dissuaded from this guilty act, by whom does the reader think? A monk, perhaps, or a methodist preacher? no;- but by the Devil himself, in the shape of a tall black man, who rises. like an African water-god, out of a fountain. To this stranger, after the exchange of a few sinister compliments, Arnold, without more ado, sells his soul, for the privilege of wearing the beautiful form of Achilles. In the midst of all this absurdity, we still, however, recognise the master-mind of our great poet: his bold and beautiful spirit flashes at intervals through the surrounding horrors, into which he has chosen to plunge after Goethe, his magnus Apollo."]

4 ["One of the few pages of Lord Byron's Memoranda,' which related to his early days, was where, in speaking of his own sensitiveness on the subject of his deformed foot, he described the feeling of horror and humiliation that came over him, when his mother, in one of her fits of passion, called him a lame brat!' It may be questioned, whether this drama was not indebted for its origin to this single recollec tion."- MoORE.

"Lord Byron's own mother, when in ill humour with him, used to make the deformity in his foot the subject of taunts and reproaches. She would (we quote from a letter written by one of her relations in Scotland) pass from passionate caresses to the repulsion of actual disgust; then devour him with kisses again, and swear his eyes were as beautiful as his father's." Quar. Rev.]

A kind word in return. What shall I do? [ARNOLD begins to cut wood: in doing this he

wounds one of his hands.

My labour for the day is over now.

Accursed be this blood that flows so fast;
For double curses will be my meed now

At home-What home? I have no home, no kin,
No kind-not made like other creatures, or
To share their sports or pleasures. Must I bleed too
Like them? Oh that each drop which falls to earth
Would rise a snake to sting them, as they have stung
me!

Or that the devil, to whom they liken me,
Would aid his likeness! If I must partake
His form, why not his power? Is it because
I have not his will too? For one kind word
From her who bore me would still reconcile me
Even to this hateful aspect. Let me wash
The wound.

[ARNOLD goes to a spring, and stoops to wash
his hand: he starts back.

They are right; and Nature's mirror shows me
What she hath made me. I will not look on it
Again, and scarce dare think on't. Hideous wretch
That I am! The very waters mock me with
My horrid shadow-like a demon placed
Deep in the fountain to scare back the cattle
From drinking therein.

[He pauses.
And shall I live on,
A burden to the earth, myself, and shame
Unto what brought me into life! Thou blood,
Which flowest so freely from a scratch, let me
Try if thou wilt not in a fuller stream
Pour forth my woes for ever with thyself
On earth, to which I will restore at once
This hateful compound of her atoms, and
Resolve back to her elements, and take
The shape of any reptile save myself,

And make a world for myriads of new worms!
This knife! now let me prove if it will sever
This wither'd slip of nature's nightshade — my

[This is now generally believed to be a vulgar error; the maliness of the animal's mouth rendering it incapable of the

Vile form-from the creation, as it hath
The green bough from the forest.

[ARNOLD places the knife in the ground, with
the point upwards.

Now 'tis set,

And I can fall upon it. Yet one glance
On the fair day, which sees no foul thing like
Myself, and the sweet sun which warm'd me, but
In vain. The birds-how joyously they sing!
So let them, for I would not be lamented:
But let their merriest notes be Arnold's knell;
The fallen leaves my monument; the murmur
Of the near fountain my sole elegy.
Now, knife, stand firmly, as I fain would fall!
[As he rushes to throw himself upon the knife, his
eye is suddenly caught by the fountain, which
seems in motion.

The fountain moves without a wind: but shall
The ripple of a spring change my resolve?
No. Yet it moves again! The waters stir,
Not as with air, but by some subterrane
And rocking power of the internal world.
What's here ? A mist! No more? -
[A cloud comes from the fountain.
gazing upon it; it is dispelled, and a tall
black man comes towards him.

Arn. Spirit or man?

Stran.

Say both in one?

Arn.

He stands

What would you? Speak!

As man is both, why not

Your form is man's, and yet

You may be devil.
Stran.
So many men are that
Which is so call'd or thought, that you may add me
To which you please, without much wrong to either.
But come you wish to kill yourself; — pursue
Your purpose.

Arn.

You have interrupted me.

Arn. (holding out his wounded arm). Take it all. Stran. Not now. A few drops will suffice for this. [The Stranger takes some of ARNOLD'S blood in his hand, and casts it into the fountain. Shadows of beauty!

Shadows of power! Rise to your duty

This is the hour!

Walk lovely and pliant

From the depth of this fountain, As the cloud-shapen giant

Bestrides the Hartz Mountain. I Come as ye were,

That our eyes may behold

The model in air

Of the form I will mould, Bright as the Iris

When ether is spann'd;

Such his desire is, [Pointing to ARNOLD.
Such my command !
Demons heroic-

Demons who wore
The form of the stoic

Or sophist of yore

Or the shape of each victor,
From Macedon's boy

To each high Roman's picture
Who breathed to destroy
Shadows of beauty!

Shadows of power!

Up to your duty

This is the hour!

Stran. His brow was girt with laurels more than You see his aspect-choose it, or reject.

I can but promise you his form: his fame
Must be long sought and fought for.
Arn.
I will fight too,
But not as a mock Cæsar. Let him pass;
His aspect may be fair, but suits me not.

Stran. Then you are far more difficult to please
Than Cato's sister, or than Brutus's mother,
Or Cleopatra at sixteen-an age

When love is not less in the eye than heart.
But be it so! Shadow, pass on!

[The phantom of Julius Cæsar disappears.
Arn.
And can it
Be, that the man who shook the earth is gone,
And left no footstep?

Stran. There you err. His substance Left graves enough, and woes enough, and fame More than enough to track his memory; But for his shadow, 'tis no more than yours,