A double dungeon wall and wave The dark vault lies wherein we lay, Sounding o'er our heads it knock'd; And I have felt the winter's spray Wash through the bars when winds were high And wanton in the happy sky; And then the very rock hath rock'd, And I have felt it shake, unshock'd, Because I could have smiled to see The death that would have set me frce. VII. I said my nearer brother pined, It was not that 't was coarse and rude, The milk drawn from the mountain goat I might have spared my idle prayer The being we so much did love; His empty chain above it leant, VIII. But he, the favourite and the flower, Most cherish'd since his natal hour, this castle that Rousseau has fixed the catastrophe of his Héloïse, in the rescue of one of her children by Julie from the water; the shock of which, and the illness produced by the immersion, is the cause of her death. The château is large, and seen along the lake for a great distance. The walls are white.[" The early history of this castle," says Mr. Tennant, who went over it in 1821,"is, I believe, involved in doubt. By some historians it is said to be built in the year 1120, and according to others, in the year 1236; but by whom it was built seems not to be known. It is said, however, in history, that Charles the Fifth, Duke of Savoy, stormed and took it in 1536; that he there found great hidden treasures, and many wretched beings pining away their lives in these frightful dungeons, amongst whom was His mother's image in fair face, So softly worn, so sweetly weak, So tearless, yet so tender- kind, I call'd, for I was wild with fear; I call'd, and thought I heard a sound. I burst my chain with one strong bound, I only lived I only drew the good Bonnivard. On the pillar to which this unfortunate man is said to have been chained, I observed, cut out of the stone, the name of one whose beautiful poem has done much to heighten the interest of this dreary spot, and will, perhaps, do more towards rescuing from oblivion the names of Chillon' and Bonnivard,' than all the cruel sufferings which that injured man endured within its damp and gloomy walls."] 1["But why withhold the blow ?- he died."— MS.] -- A light broke in upon my brain, — It ceased, and then it came again, The sweetest song ear ever heard, But then by dull degrees came back But through the crevice where it came That bird was perch'd, as fond and tame, A lovely bird, with azure wings, I never saw its like before, I ne'er shall see its likeness more : It seem'd like me to want a mate, Or broke its cage to perch on mine, But knowing well captivity, Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine! Or if it were, in winged guise, A visitant from Paradise; "I saw them with their lake below, And their three thousand years of snow."-MS.] ↑ Between the entrances of the Rhone and Villeneuve, not far from Chillon, is a very small island; the only one I could A kind of change came in my fate, I know not what had made them so, Along my cell from side to side, And up and down, and then athwart, My brothers' graves without a sod; I made a footing in the wall, It was not therefrom to escape, For I had buried one and all, Who loved me in a human shape; And the whole earth would henceforth be A wider prison unto me: No child-no sire-no kin had I, No partner in my misery; I thought of this, and I was glad, For thought of them had made me mad; But I was curious to ascend A small green isle, it seem'd no more, Scarce broader than my dungeon floor, But in it there were three tall trees, And o'er it blew the mountain breeze, And by it there were waters flowing, And on it there were young flowers growing, The fish swam by the castle wall, And then new tears came in my eye, It was as is a new-dug grave, XIV. It might be months, or years, or days, I kept no count-I took no note, I had no hope my eyes to raise, And clear them of their dreary mote; At last men came to set me free, I ask'd not why, and reck'd not where, It was at length the same to me, Fetter'd or fetterless to be, I learn'd to love despair. And thus when they appear'd at last, Beppo: A VENETIAN STORY. Rosalind. Farewell, Monsieur Traveller: Look, you lisp, and wear strange suits: disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your Nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think that you have swam in a Gondola. As You Like It, Act IV. Sc. 1. Annotation of the Commentators. That is, been at Venice, which was much visited by the young English gentlemen of those times, and was then what Paris is now the seat of all dissoluteness. S. A. 3 [It has not been the purpose of Lord Byron to paint the peculiar character of Bonnivard. The object of the poem, like that of Sterne's celebrated sketch of the prisoner, is to consider captivity in the abstract, and to mark its effects in gradually chilling the mental powers as it benumbs and freezes the animal frame, until the unfortunate victim becomes, as it were, a part of his dungeon, and identified with his chains. This transmutation we believe to be founded on fact: at least, in the Low Countries, where solitude for life is substituted for capital punishments, something like it may be witnessed. On particular days in the course of the year, these victims of a jurisprudence which calls itself humane, are presented to the public eye, upon a stage erected in the open market-place, apparently to prevent their guilt and their punishment from being forgotten. It is scarcely possible to witness a sight more degrading to humanity than this exhibition with matted hair, wild looks, and haggard features, with eyes dazzled by the unwonted light of the sun, and ears opened a new vein, in which his genius was destined to work out some of its brightest triumphs. "I have written," he says to Mr. Murray, "a poem humourous, in or after the excellent manner of Mr. Whistlecraft, and founded on a Venetian anecdote which deafened and astounded by the sudden exchange of the silence of a dungeon for the busy hum of men, the wretches sit more like rude images fashioned to a fantastic imitation of humanity, than like living and reflecting beings. In the course of time we are assured they generally become either madmen or idiots, as mind or matter happens to predominate, when the mysterious balance between them is destroyed. It will readily be allowed that this singular poem is more powerful than pleasing. The dungeon of Bonnivard is, like that of Ugolino, a subject too dismal for even the power of the painter or poet to counteract its horrors. It is the more disagreeable as affording human hope no anchor to rest upon, and describing the sufferer, though a man of talents and virtues, as altogether inert and powerless under his accumulated sufferings; yet, as a picture, however gloomy the colouring, it may rival any which Lord Byron has drawn; nor is it possible to read it without a sinking of the heart, corresponding with that which he describes the victim to have suffered. - SIR WALTER SCOTT.] 3 [ Although I was only nine days at Venice, I saw, in that little time, more liberty to sin, than ever I heard tell of in the city of London in nine years.". Roger Ascham.] amused me. It is called Beppo-the short name for Giuseppo, - - that is, the Joe of the Italian Joseph. It has politics and ferocity." Again-" Whistlecraft is my immediate model, but Berni is the father of that kind of writing; which, I think, suits our language, too, very well. We shall see by this experiment. It will, at any rate, show that I can write cheerfully, and repel the charge of monotony and mannerism." He wished Mr. Murray to accept of Beppo as a free gift, or, as he chose to express it, "as part of the contract for Canto Fourth of Childe Harold; " adding, however,-" if it pleases, you shall have more in the same mood; for I know the Italian way of life, and, as for the verse and the passions, I have them still in tolerable vigour." The Right Honourable John Hookham Frere has, then, by Lord Byron's confession, the merit of having first introduced the Bernesque style into our language; but his performance, entitled "Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Stowmarket, in Suffolk, Harness and Collar Makers, intended to comprise the most interesting Particulars relating to King Arthur and his Round Table," though it delighted all elegant and learned readers, obtained at the time little notice from the public at large, and is already almost forgotten. For the causes of this failure, about which Mr. Rose and others have written at some length, it appears needless to look further than the last sentence we have been quoting from the letters of the author of the more successful Beppo. Whistlecraft had the verse: it had also the humour, the wit, and even the poetry of the Italian model; but it wanted the life of actual manners, and the strength of stirring passions. Mr. Frere had forgot, or was, with all his genius, unfit to profit by remembering, that the poets, whose style he was adopting, always made their style appear a secondary matter. They never failed to embroider their merriment on the texture of a really interesting story. Lord Byron perceived this; and avoiding his immediate master's one fatal error, and at least equalling him in the excellencies which he did display, engaged at once the sympathy of readers of every class, and became substantially the founder of a new species of English poetry. In justice to Mr. Frere, however, whose "Specimen" has long been out of print, we must take this opportunity of showing how completely, as to style and versification, he had anticipated Beppo and Don Juan. In the introductions to his cantos, and in various detached passages of mere description, he had produced precisely the sort of effect at which Lord Byron aimed in what we may call the secondary, or merely ornamental, parts of his Comic Epic. For example, this is the beginning of Whistlecraft's first canto: "I've often wish'd that I could write a book, I never should regret the pains it took, "Poets consume exciseable commodities, They raise the nation's spirit when victorious, They drive an export trade in whims and oddities, Making our commerce and revenue glorious; As an industrious and pains-taking body 't is "Princes protecting Sciences and Art I've often seen, in copper-plate and print; In former times all persons of high stations, The patrons lived to future generations, "Then, twenty guineas was a little fortune; Now, we must starve unless the times should mend: Dear People! if you think my verses clever, And then these lines of mine may last for ever; "I think that Poets (whether Whig or Tory) (Whether they go to meeting or to church) With grammars, dictionaries, canes, and birch: "Madoc and Marmion, and many more, Are out in print, and most of them have sold; Richard the First has had his story told- The following description of King Arthur's Christ- With truffles and ragouts, and various crimes; I shall arrange the catalogue in rhymes: Muttons and fatted beeves, and bacon swine; All pilfering and scrambling in their calling, Feeling their granite ears severely wounded, Outcries, and cries of order, and contusions, "Beggars and vagabonds, blind, lame, and sturdy, An uproar like ten thousand Smithfield fars; "All sorts of people there were seen together, All sorts of characters, all sorts of dresses; The fool with fox's tail and peacock's feather, Pilgrims, and penitents, and grave burgesses; The country people with their coats of leather, Vintners and victuallers with cans and messes; Grooms, archers, varlets, falconers and yeomen, Damsels and waiting-maids, and waiting-women. "But the profane, indelicate amours, The vulgar, unenlighten'd conversation Therefore I shall omit the calculation Of all the curses, oaths, and ents, and stabs, "We must take care in our poetic cruise, And never hold a single tack too long; Which to genteeler company belong, “And certainly they say, for fine behaving King Arthur's Court has never had its match; "They look'd a manly, generous generation; Beards, shoulders, eyebrows.broad, and square, and thick, Their accents firm and loud in conversation, Their eyes and gestures eager, sharp, and quick, To give the lie, puil noses, stab, and kick ; "The ladies look'd of an heroic race At first a general likeness struck your eye, Majestical, reserved, and somewhat sullen; The little snatches of critical quizzing introduced in Whistlecraft are perfect in their way. Take, for example, this good-humoured parody on one of the most magnificent passages in Wordsworth: "In castles and in courts Ambition dwells, She breathed a wish, throughout those sacred cells, Giants abominate the sound of bells, And soon the fierce antipathy was shown, "Unhappy mortals! ever blind to fate! Unhappy Monks! you see no danger nigh; Your spirits with the ropes and pulleys fly; They scarce knew what to think, or what to say: "Yet) Cader-Gibbrish from his cloudy throne Mr. Rose has a very elegant essay on Whistlecraf in his "Thoughts and Recollections by One of th last Century," which thus concludes: I "Beppo, which had a story, and which pointed but one way, inet with signal and universal success; while The Monks and the Giants' have been little appreciated, by the majority of readers. Yet those who will only laugh upon a suflicient warrant, may, on analysing this bravura-poem, find legitimate matter for their mirth. The want of meaning certainly cannot be objected to it, with reason; for it contains a deep substratum of sense, and does not exhibit a character which has not, or might not, have its parallel in nature. remember at the time this poem was published, (which was, when the French monarchy seemed endangered by the vacillating conduct of Louis XVIII., who, under the guidance of successive ministers, was trimming between the loyalists and the liberals, apparently thinking that civility and conciliation was a remedy for all evils,) a friend dared me to prove my assertion; and, by way of a text, referred me to the character of the crippled abbot, under whose direction, The convent was all going to the devil, While he, poor creature, thought himself beloved "The obvious application of this was made by me to Louis XVIII; and if it was not the intention of the author to designate him in particular, the applicability of the passage to the then state of France, and her ruler, shows, at least, the intrinsic truth of the description. Take, in the same way, | the character of Sir Tristrani, and we shall find its elements, if not in one, in different living persons. 'Songs, music, languages, and many a lay Asturian, or Armoric, Irish, Basque, His ready wit, and rambling education, With the congenial influence of his stars, Had taught him all the arts of conversation, All games of skill, and stratagems of wars; His birth, it seems, by Merlin's calculation, Was under Venus, Mercury, and Mars: His mind with all their attributes was mix'd, And, like those planets, wand'ring and untix'd. "Who can read this description, without recognising in it the portraits (flattering portraits, perhaps) of two military characters well known in society?' The reader will find a copious criticism on Whistlecraft, from the pen of Ugo Foscolo, in the Quarterly Review, vol. xxi.] Beppo. I. "T is known, at least it should be, that throughout |