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A double dungeon wall and wave
Have made and like a living grave.
Below the surface of the lake

The dark vault lies wherein we lay,
We heard it ripple night and day;

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,
I said his mighty heart declined,
He loathed and put away his food;

It was not that 't was coarse and rude,
For we were used to hunter's fare,
And for the like had little care :

The milk drawn from the mountain goat
Was changed for water from the moat,
Our bread was such as captive's tears
Have moisten'd many a thousand years,
Since man first pent his fellow men
Like brutes within an iron den;
But what were these to us or him?
These wasted not his heart or limb;
My brother's soul was of that mould
Which in a palace had grown cold,
Had his free breathing been denied
The range of the steep mountain's side;
But why delay the truth? he died.
I saw, and could not hold his head,
Nor reach his dying hand - nor dead,
Though hard I strove, but strove in vain,
To rend and gnash 2 my bonds in twain.
He died and they unlock'd his chain,,
And scoop'd for him a shallow grave
Even from the cold earth of our cave.
I begg'd them, as a boon, to lay
His corse in dust whereon the day
Might shine—it was a foolish thought,
But then within my brain it wrought,
That even in death his freeborn breast
In such a dungeon could not rest.

I might have spared my idle prayer
They coldly laugh'd — and laid him there :
The flat and turfless earth above

The being we so much did love;

His empty chain above it leant,
Such murder's fitting monument !

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,
The infant love of all his race,
His martyr'd father's dearest thought,
My latest care, for whom I sought
To hoard my life, that his might be
Less wretched now, and one day free;
He, too, who yet had held untired
A spirit natural or inspired
He, too, was struck, and day by day
Was wither'd on the stalk away.
Oh, God! it is a fearful thing
To see the human soul take wing
In any shape, in any mood: -
I've seen it rushing forth in blood,
I've seen it on the breaking ocean
Strive with a swoln convulsive motion,
I've seen the sick and ghastly bed
Of Sin delirious with its dread:
But these were horrors - this was woe
Unmix'd with such but sure and slow:
He faded, and so calm and meek,

So softly worn, so sweetly weak,

So tearless, yet so tender- kind,
And grieved for those he left behind;
With all the while a cheek whose bloom
Was as a mockery of the tomb,
Whose tints as gently sunk away
As a departing rainbow's ray-
An eye of most transparent light,
That almost made the dungeon bright,
And not a word of murmur-not
A groan o'er his untimely lot,
A little talk of better days,
A little hope my own to raise,
For I was sunk in silence - lost
In this last loss, of all the most;
And then the sighs he would suppress
Of fainting nature's feebleness,
More slowly drawn, grew less and less:
I listen'd, but I could not hear-

I call'd, for I was wild with fear;
I knew 't was hopeless, but my dread
Would not be thus admonished;

I call'd, and thought I heard a sound.

I burst my chain with one strong bound,
And rush'd to him: - I found him not,
I only stirr'd in this black spot,

I only lived I only drew
The accursed breath of dungeon-dew;
The last the sole the dearest link
Between me and the eternal brink,
Which bound me to my failing race,
Was broken in this fatal place. 3

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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.]

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--

A light broke in upon my brain, —
It was the carol of a bird;

It ceased, and then it came again,

The sweetest song ear ever heard,
And mine was thankful till my eyes
Ran over with the glad surprise,
And they that moment could not see
I was the mate of misery;

But then by dull degrees came back
My senses to their wonted track,
I saw the dungeon walls and floor
Close slowly round me as before,
I saw the glimmer of the sun
Creeping as it before had done,

But through the crevice where it came

That bird was perch'd, as fond and tame,
And tamer than upon the tree;

A lovely bird, with azure wings,
And song that said a thousand things,
And seem'd to say them all for me!

I never saw its like before,

I ne'er shall see its likeness more :

It seem'd like me to want a mate,
But was not half so desolate,
And it was come to love me when
None lived to love me so again,
And cheering from my dungeon's brink,
Had brought me back to feel and think.
I know not if it late were free,

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

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A kind of change came in my fate,
My keepers grew compassionate;

I know not what had made them so,
They were inured to sights of woe,
But so it was: - my broken chain
With links unfasten'd did remain,
And it was liberty to stride

Along my cell from side to side,

And up and down, and then athwart,
And tread it over every part;
And round the pillars one by one,
Returning where my walk begun,
Avoiding only, as I trod,

My brothers' graves without a sod;
For if I thought with heedless tread
My step profaned their lowly bed,
My breath came gaspingly and thick,
And my crush'd heart fell blind and sick.
XII.

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

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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,
Of gentle breath and hue.

The fish swam by the castle wall,
And they seem'd joyous each and all;
The cagle rode the rising blast,
Methought he never flew so fast
As then to me he seem'd to fly,

And then new tears came in my eye,
And I felt troubled--and would fain
I had not left my recent chain;
And when I did descend again,
The darkness of my dim abode
Fell on me as a heavy load;

It was as is a new-dug grave,
Closing o'er one we sought to save,-
And yet my glance, too much oppress'd,
Had almost need of such a rest.

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,
And all my bonds aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
A hermitage-and all my own!
And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home:
With spiders I had friendship made,
And watch'd them in their sullen trade,
Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
We were all inmates of one place,
And I, the monarch of each race,
Had power to kill-yet, strange to tell!
In quiet we had learn'd to dwell-
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are:-even I
Regain'd my freedom with a sigh. 2

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

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[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,
Such as all English people might peruse;

I never should regret the pains it took,
That's just the sort of fame that I should choose :
To sail about the world like Captain Cook,
I'd sling a cot up for my favourite Musc,
And we'd take verses out to Demarara,
To New South Wales, and up to Niagara.

"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
That Poets should be reckon'd meritorious:
And therefore I submissively propose
To erect one Board for Verse and one for Prose.

"Princes protecting Sciences and Art

I've often seen, in copper-plate and print;
I never saw them elsewhere, for my part,
And therefore I conclude there's nothing in 't:
But every body knows the Regent's heart;
I trust he won't reject a well-meant hint;
Each Board to have twelve members, with a seat
To bring them in per ann. five hundred neat: -
"From Princes I descend to the Nobility:

In former times all persons of high stations,
Lords, Baronets, and Persons of gentility,
Paid twenty guineas for the dedications:
This practice was attended with utility;

The patrons lived to future generations,
The poets lived by their industrious earning.—
So men alive and dead could live by Learning.

"Then, twenty guineas was a little fortune;

Now, we must starve unless the times should mend:
Our poets now-a-days are deem'd importune
If their addresses are diffusely penn'd;
Most fashionable authors make a short one
To their own wite, or child, or private friend,
To show their independence, I suppose;
And that may do for Gentlemen like those.
"Lastly, the common people I beseech —

Dear People! if you think my verses clever,
Preserve with care your noble parts of speech,
And take it as a maxim to endeavour
To talk as your good mothers used to teach,

And then these lines of mine may last for ever;
And don't confound the language of the nation
With long-tail'd words in osity and ation.

"I think that Poets (whether Whig or Tory)

(Whether they go to meeting or to church)
Should study to promote their country's glory
With patriotic, diligent research;
That children yet unborn may learn the story,

With grammars, dictionaries, canes, and birch:
It stands to reason - This was Homer's plan,
And we must do like him- the best we can.

"Madoc and Marmion, and many more,

Are out in print, and most of them have sold;
Perhaps together they may make a score;

Richard the First has had his story told-
But there were Lords and Princes long before,
That had behaved themselves like warriors bold:
Amongst the rest there was the great KING ARTHUR,
What hero's fame was ever carried farther?"

The following description of King Arthur's Christ-
mas at Carlisle is equally meritorious :-
"THE GREAT KING ARTHUR made a sumptuous Feast,
And held his Royal Christmas at Carlisle,
And thither came the Vassals, most and least,
From every corner of this British Isle;
And all were entertain'd, both man and beast,
According to their rank, in proper style;
The steeds were fed and litter'd in the stable,
The ladies and the knights sat down to table.
"The bill of fare (as you may well suppose)
Was suited to those plentiful old times,
Before our modern luxuries arose,

With truffles and ragouts, and various crimes;
And therefore, from the original in prose

I shall arrange the catalogue in rhymes:
They served up salmon, venison, and wild boars
By hundreds, and by dozens, and by scores.
"Hogsheads of honey, kilderkins of mustard,

Muttons and fatted beeves, and bacon swine;
Herons and bitterns, peacock, swan and bustard,
Teal, ma'lard, pigeons, widgeons, and in fine
Plum-puddings, pancakes, apple-pies and custard:
And therewithal they drank good Gascon wine,
With mead, and ale, and cyder, of our own;
For porter, punch, and negus were not known.
"The noise and uproar of the scullery tribe.

All pilfering and scrambling in their calling,
Was past all powers of language to describe
The din of nianful oaths and female squalling:
The sturdy porter, huddling up his bribe,
And then at random breaking heads and bawling,

Feeling their granite ears severely wounded,

Outcries, and cries of order, and contusions,
Made a confusion beyond all confusions;

"Beggars and vagabonds, blind, lame, and sturdy,
Minstrels and singers with their various airs,
The pipe, the tabor, and the hurdy-gurdy,
Jugglers and mountebanks with apes and bears,
Continued from the first day to the third day,

An uproar like ten thousand Smithfield fars;
There were wild beasts and foreign birds and creatures,
And Jews and Foreigners with foreign features.

"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
Of minstrels, menials, courtezans, and boors,
(Although appropriate to their meaner station)
Would certainly revolt a taste like yours;

Therefore I shall omit the calculation

Of all the curses, oaths, and ents, and stabs,
Occasion'd by their dice, and drink, and drabs.

"We must take care in our poetic cruise,

And never hold a single tack too long;
Therefore my versatile, ingenious Muse,
Takes leave of this illiterate, low-bred throng,
Intending to present superior views,

Which to genteeler company belong,
And show the higher orders of society
Behaving with politeness and propriety.

“And certainly they say, for fine behaving

King Arthur's Court has never had its match;
True point of honour, without pride or braving,
Strict etiquette for ever on the watch:
Their manners were refined and perfect-saving
Some modern graces, which they could not catch,
As spitting through the teeth, and driving stages,
Accomplishments reserved for distant ages.

"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,
Showed them prepared, on proper provocation,

To give the lie, puil noses, stab, and kick ;
And for that very reason, it is said,
They were so very courteous and well-bred.

"The ladies look'd of an heroic race

At first a general likeness struck your eye,
Tall figures, open features, oval face,
Large eyes, with ample eyebrows arch'd and high;
Their manners had an odd, peculiar grace,
Neither repulsive, affable, nor shy,

Majestical, reserved, and somewhat sullen;
Their dresses partly silk and partly woollen."

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,
But not in castles or in courts alone;

She breathed a wish, throughout those sacred cells,
For bells of larger size, and louder tone;

Giants abominate the sound of bells,

And soon the fierce antipathy was shown,
The tinkling and the jingling, and the clangor,
Roused their irrational, gigantic anger.

"Unhappy mortals! ever blind to fate!

Unhappy Monks! you see no danger nigh;
Exulting in their sound, and size, and weight,
From morn till noon the merry peal you ply:
The belfry rocks, your bosoms are elate,

Your spirits with the ropes and pulleys fly;
Tired, but transported, panting, pulling, hauling,
Ramping and stamping, overjoy'd and bawling."
"Meanwhile the solemn mountains that surrounded
The silent valley where the convent lay,
With tintinnabular uproar were astounded,
When the first peal burst forth at break of day:

They scarce knew what to think, or what to say:
And (though large mountains commonly conceal
Their sentiments, dissembling what they feel,

"Yet) Cader-Gibbrish from his cloudy throne
To huge Loblommon gave an intimation
Of this strange rumour, with an awful tone,
Thund'ring his deep surprise and indignation;
The lesser hills, in language of their own,
Discuss'd the topic by reverberation;
Discoursing with their echoes all day long.
Their only conversation was, ' ding-dong.'"

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
For saying handsome things, and being civil,
Wheeling about as he was pull'd and shoved.'

"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 memory seized and bore away;
And ever when the ladies chose to ask,
Sir Tristram was prepared to sing and play,
Not like a minstrel, earnest at his task,
But with a sportive, careless, easy style,
As if he seem'd to mock himself the while.

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
All countries of the Catholic persuasion,
Some weeks before Shrove Tuesday comes about,
The people take their fill of recreation,

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