Between a prison and a palace, where
How few could feel for what he had to bear!
Vain his complaint,—my lord presents his bill,
His food and wine were doled out duly still:
Vain was his sickness, never was a clime
So free from homicide-to doubt's a crime!
And the stiff surgeon, who maintain'd his cause,
Hath lost his place, and gain'd the world's applause. (1)
But smile though all the pangs of brain and heart
Disdain, defy, the tardy aid of art;

Though, save the few fond friends and imaged face
Of that fair boy his sire shall ne'er embrace,
None stand by his low bed--though even the mind
Be wavering, which long awed and awes mankind:
Smile for the fetter'd eagle breaks his chain,
And higher worlds than this are his again.(2)
IV.

How, if that soaring spirit still retain
A conscious twilight of his blazing reign,
How must be smile, on looking down, to see
The little that he was and sought to be!
What though his name a wider empire found
Than his ambition, though with scarce a bound?
Though first in glory, deepest in reverse,
He tasted empire's blessings and its curse;
Though kings, rejoicing in their late escape
From chains, would gladly be their tyrant's ape;
How must he smile, and turn to yon lone grave,
The proudest sea-mark that o'ertops the wave!
What though his gaoler, duteous to the last,
Scarce deem'd the coffin's lead could keep him fast,
Refusing one poor line along the lid,

To date the birth and death of all it hid;
That name shall hallow the ignoble shore,
A talisman to all save him who bore:

The fleets that sweep before the eastern blast
Shall hear their sea-boys hail it from the mast;
When Victory's Gallic column shall but rise,
Like Pompey's pillar, in a desert's skies,
The rocky isle that holds or held his dust
Shall crown the Atlantic like the hero's bust,
And mighty nature o'er his obsequies
Do more than niggard envy still denies.

(1) The circumstances under which Mr. O'Meara's dis. missal from his Majesty's service took place will suffice to show how little "the stiff surgeon" merited the applause of Lord Byron. In a letter to the Admiralty Board by Mr, O'M., dated Oct. 28, 1818, there occurred the following paragraph" In the third interview which Sir Hudson Lowe had with Napoleon Bonaparte, in May, 1816, he proposed to the latter to send me away, and to replace me by Mr. Baxter, who had been several years surgeon in the Corsican Rangers. Failing in this attempt, he adopted the resolution of manifesting great confidence in me, by loading me with civilities, inviting me constantly to dine with him, conversing for hours together with me alone, both in his own house and grounds, and at Longwood, either in my own room, or under the trees and elsewhere. On some of these occasions he made to me observations upon the benefit which would result to Europe from the death of Napoleon Bonaparte; of which event he spoke in a manner which, considering his situation and mine, was peculiarly distressing to me." The Secretary to the Admiralty was instructed to answer in these terms: It is impossible to doubt the meaning which this passage was intended to convey; and my Lords can as little doubt that the insinuation is a calumnious falsehood: but if it were true, and if so horrible a suggestion were made to you, directly or indirectly, it was your bounden duty not to have lost a moment in communicating it to the Admiral on the spot, or to the Secretary of State, or to their Lord. ships. An overture so monstrous in itself, and so deeply involving, not merely the personal character of the go

But what are these to him? Can glory's lust
Touch the freed spirit or the fetter'd dust?
Small care hath he of what his tomb consists;
Nought if he sleeps-nor more if he exists:
Alike the better-seeing shade will smile
On the rude cavern of the rocky isle,

As if his ashes found their latest home

In Rome's Pantheon or Gaul's mimic dome.

He wants not this; but France shall feel the want
Of this last consolation, though so scant;
Her honour, fame, and faith demand his bones
To rear above a pyramid of thrones;
Or carried onward in the battle's van,

To form, like Guesclin's (3) dust, her talisman.
But be it as it is the time may come

His name shall beat the alarm, like Ziska's drum.(4)
V.

O heaven! of which he was in power a feature;
O earth! of which he was a noble creature;
Thou isle! to be remember'd long and well,
That saw'st the unfledged eaglet chip his shell!
Ye Alps, which view'd him in his dawning flights
Hover, the victor of a hundred fights!
Thou Rome, who saw'st thy Caesar's deeds outdone!
Alas! why pass'd he too the Rubicon-
The Rubicon of man's awaken'd rights,
To herd with vulgar kings and parasites?
Egypt! from whose all dateless tombs arose
Forgotten Pharaohs from their long repose,
And shook within their pyramids to hear
A new Cambyses thundering in their ear;
While the dark shades of forty ages stood
Like startled giants by Nile's famous flood; (5)
Or from the pyramid's tall pinnacle
Beheld the desert peopled, as from hell,
With clashing hosts, who strew'd the barren sand
To re-manure the uncultivated land!
Spain! which, a moment mindless of the Cid,
Beheld his banner flouting thy Madrid!
Austria! which saw thy twice-ta'en capital
Twice spared, to be the traitress of his fall!
Ye race of Frederic!-Frederics but in name
And falsehood-heirs to all except his fame;

vernor, but the honour of the nation, and the important interest committed to his charge, should not have been re served in your own breast for two years, to be produced at last, not (as it would appear) from a sense of public duty, but in furtherance of your own personal hostility against the governor. Either the charge is in the last degree false sad calumnious, or you can have no possible excuse for having hitherto suppressed it. In either case, and without advert ing to the general tenour of your conduct, as stated in year letter, my Lords consider you to be an improper person 13 continue in his Majesty's service; and they have directed your name to be erased from the list of naval surgeons ad cordingly."-L. E.

(2) Bonaparte died the 5th of May, 1821.-L.E.

(3) Guesclin, constable of France, died in the midst of his triumphs, before Chateauneuf de Randon, in 1380. The English garrison, which had conditioned to surrender sta certain time, marched out the day after his death; and the commander respectfully laid the keys of the fortress on the bier, so that it might appear to have surrendered to his

ashes.

(4) John Ziska-a distinguished leader of the Hussites. It is recorded of him, that, in dying, he ordered his skin to be made the covering of a drum. The Bobemians hold his memory in superstitious veneration.-L. E.

(5) At the battle of the Pyramids, in July, 1798, Fons ¦ parte said, "Soldiers! from the summit of yonder pyramids forty ages behold you."-L. E.

The same high spirit which beat back the Moor
Through eight long ages of alternate gore
Revives-and where? in that avenging clime
Where Spain was once synonymous with crime,
Where Cortez' and Pizarro's banner flew,
The infant world redeems her name of "New."
'Tis the old aspiration breathed afresh,
To kindle souls within degraded flesh,
Such as repulsed the Persian from the shore

Where Greece was-No! she still is Greece once more.
One common cause makes myriads of one breast,
Slaves of the east, or helots of the west;
On Andes' and on Athos' peaks unfurl'd,
The self-same standard streams o'er either world;
The Athenian wears again Harmodius' sword; (1)
The Chili chief abjures his foreign lord;
The Spartan knows himself once more a Greek,
Young Freedom plumes the crest of each cacique;
Debating despots, hemm'd on either shore,
Shrink vainly from the roused Atlantic's roar;
Through Calpe's strait the rolling tides advance,
Sweep slightly by the half-tamed land of France,
Dash o'er the old Spaniard's cradle, and would fain
Unite Ausonia to the mighty main:

But driven from thence a while, yet not for aye,
Break o'er the Ægean, mindful of the day
Of Salamis ! (2)-there, there the waves arise,
Not to be lull'd by tyrant victories.
Lone, lost, abandon'd in their utmost need
By Christians, unto whom they gave their creed,
The desolated lands, the ravaged isle,
The foster'd feud encouraged to beguile,
The aid evaded, and the cold delay,
Prolong'd but in the hope to make a prey; (3)-
These, these shall tell the tale, and Greece can show
The false friend worse than the infuriate foe.
But this is well: Greeks only should free Greece,
Not the barbarian, with his mask of peace.
How should the autocrat of bondage be
The king of serfs, and set the nations free?
Better still serve the haughty Mussulman,
Than swell the Cossaque's prowling caravan;
Better still toil for masters, than await,
The slave of slaves, before a Russian gate,-
Number'd by hordes, a human capital,
A live estate, existing but for thrall,
Lotted by thousands, as a meet reward
For the first courtier in the Czar's regard;
While their immediate owner never tastes
His sleep, sans dreaming of Siberia's wastes:
Better succumb even to their own despair,
And drive the camel than purvey the bear.
VIL.

But not alone within the hoariest clime
Where Freedom dates her birth with that of Time,
And not alone where, plunged in night, a crowd
Of Incas darken to a dubious cloud,
The dawn revives: renown'd romantic Spain

(I) The famous hymn, ascribed to Callistratus :-
"Cover'd with myrtle-wreaths, I'll wear my sword
Like brave Harmodius, and his patriot friend
Aristogeiton, who the laws restored,

The tyrant slew, and bade oppression end," etc. etc.-L. E.

(2) See note, page 197.-P. E.

(3) For the first authentic account of the Russian in

Holds back the invader from her soil again.
Not now the Roman tribe nor Punic horde
Demand her fields as lists to prove the sword;
Not now the Vandal or the Visigoth
Pollute the plains, alike abborring both:
Nor old Pelayo on his mountain rears
The warlike fathers of a thousand years.
That seed is sown and reap'd, as oft the Moor
Sighs to remember on his dusky shore.
Long in the peasant's song or poet's page
Has dwelt the memory of Abencerrage;
The Zegri, and the captive victors, flung
Back to the barbarous realm from whence they sprung.
But these are gone-their faith, their swords, their
Yet left more anti-christian foes than they: [sway,
The bigot monarch and the butcher priest,
The Inquisition, with her burning feast,
The faith's red "auto," fed with human fuel,
While sate the catholic Moloch, calmly cruel,
Enjoying, with inexorable eye,

That fiery festival of agony!

The stern or feeble sovereign, one or both

By turns; the haughtiness whose pride was sloth:
The long degenerate noble; the debased
Hidalgo, and the peasant less disgraced,
But more degraded; the unpeopled realm;
The once proud navy which forgot the helm;
The once impervious phalanx disarray'd;
The idle forge that form'd Toledo's blade;
The foreign wealth that flow'd on every shore,
Save hers who earn'd it with the natives' gore;
The very language, which might vie with Rome's,
And once was known to nations like their homes,
Neglected or forgotten:-such was Spain;
But such she is not, nor shall be again.
These worst, these home invaders, felt and feel
The new Numantine soul of old Castile.
Up! up again! undaunted Tauridor!
The bull of Phalaris renews his roar;
Mount, chivalrous Hidalgo! not in vain
Revive the cry-"Iago! and close Spain!" (4)
Yes, close her with your armed bosoms round,
And form the barrier which Napoleon found,-
The exterminating war, the desert plain,
The streets without a tenant, save the slain;
The wild sierra, with its wilder troop
Of vulture-plumed guerrillas, on the stoop
For their incessant prey; the desperate wall
Of Saragossa, mightiest in her fall;
The man nerved to a spirit, and the maid
Waving her more than Amazonian blade; (5)
The knife of Arragon, (6) Toledo's steel;
The famous lance of chivalrous Castile;
The unerring rifle of the Catalan;
The Andalusian courser in the van;
The torch to make a Moscow of Madrid;
And in each heart the spirit of the Cid:--
Such have been, such shall be, such are. Advance
And win-not Spain, but thine own freedom, France!

trigues in Greece, in the years alluded to, see Gordon's History of the Greek Revolution (1832), vol. i.-L. E

(4) "Santiago y serra Espana!" the old Spanish war

cry.

(5) See ante, p. 78.-P. E.

(6) The Arragonians are peculiarly dexterous in the use of this weapon, and displayed it particularly in former French wars.

VIII.

But lo! a Congress! (1) What! that hallow'd name
Which freed the Atlantic? May we hope the same
For outworn Europe? With the sound arise
Like Samuel's shade to Saul's monarchic eyes,
The prophets of young Freedom, summon'd far
From climes of Washington and Bolivar;
Henry, the forest-born Demosthenes,

Whose thunder shook the Philip of the seas; (2)
And stoic Franklin's energetic shade,
Robed in the lightnings which his hand allay'd;
And Washington, the tyrant-tamer, wake,

Who renew

To bid us blush for these old chains, or break.
But who compose this senate of the few
That should redeem the many?
This consecrated name, till now assign'd
To councils held to benefit mankind?
Who now assemble at the holy call?

The blest Alliance, which says three are all!
An earthly trinity! which wears the shape
Of heaven's, as man is mimick'd by the ape.
A pious unity! in purpose one-
To melt three fools to a Napoleon.
Why, Egypt's gods were rational to these;
Their dogs and oxen knew their own degrees,
And, quiet in their kennel or their shed,
Cared little, so that they were duly fed;

Bat these, more hungry, must have something more,
The power to bark and bite, to toss and gore.
Ah! how much happier were good Æsop's frogs
Than we! for ours are animated logs,
With ponderous malice swaying to and fro,
And crushing nations with a stupid blow;
All dully anxious to leave little work
Ento the revolutionary stork.

IX.

Thrice-blest Verona! since the holy three
With their imperial presence shine on thee;
Honour'd by them, thy treacherous site forgets
The vaunted tomb of "all the Capulets;" (3)
Thy Scaligers-for what was "Dog the Great,"
Can Grande," (4) (which I venture to translate,)
To these sublimer pugs? Thy poet too,
Catullus, whose old laurels yield to new; (5)

The congress of the Sovereigns of Russia, Austria, Prussia, etc. etc. etc. which assembled at Verona, in the autumn of 1822.-L. E.

Patrick Henry, of Virginia, a leading member of the American Congress, died in June, 1797. Lord Byron alludes to his famous speech in 1765, in which, on saying, “Cæsar had his Brutus-Charles the First had his Cromwell-and George the Third--" Henry was interrupted with a shout of Treason! treason!"-but coolly finished the sentence with-George the Third may profit by their example." -L.E.

(3) I have been over Verona. The amphitheatre is wonderfal-beats even Greece. Of the truth of Juliet's story, they seem tenacious to a degree, insisting on the fact-giving a date (1303), and showing a tomb. It is a plain, open, and Partly-decayed sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden, once a cemetery, now rained to the very graves. The situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their love. I have brought away a few pieces of the granite, to give to my daughter and my nieces. The gothic monuments of the Scaliger princes pleased me, but a poor virtuoso am I.'" B. Letters, Nov 1816.-L. E.

(4) Cane 1. Della Scala, surnamed the Great, died in 1329; he was the protector of Dante, who celebrated him as "il Grau Lombardo."-L. E.

(5) Verona has been distinguished as the cradle of many illustrious men. There is one still living:

Thine amphitheatre, where Romans sate;
And Dante's exile shelter'd by thy gate;
Thy good old man, whose world was all within
Thy wall, nor knew the country held him in: (6)
Would that the royal guests it girds about
Were so far like, as never to get out!
Ay, shout! inscribe! rear monuments of shame,
To tell Oppression that the world is tame!
Crowd to the theatre with loyal rage,

The comedy is not upon the stage;
The show is rich in ribandry and stars,
Then gaze upon it through thy dungeon bars;
Clap thy permitted palms, kind Italy,
For thus much still thy fetter'd hands are free!

Resplendent sight!

X.

Behold the coxcomb Czar, (7)
The autocrat of waltzes and of war!
As eager for a plaudit as a realm,
And just as fit for flirting as the helm;
A Calmuck beauty with a Cossack wit,
And generous spirit, when 'tis not frost-bit;
Now half dissolving to a liberal thaw,

But harden'd back whene'er the morning's raw;
With no objection to true liberty,

Except that it would make the nations free.
How well the imperial dandy prates of peace!

How fain, if Greeks would be his slaves, free Greece!
How nobly gave he back the Poles their Diet,
Then told pugnacious Poland to be quiet!
How kindly would he send the mild Ukraine,
With all her pleasant pulks, to lecture Spain!
How royally show off in proud Madrid
His goodly person, from the South long hid!
A blessing cheaply purchased, the world knows,
By having Muscovites for friends or foes.
Proceed, thou namesake of great Philip's son!
La Harpe, thine Aristotle, beckons on;
And that which Scythia was to him of yore
Find with thy Scythians on Iberia's shore.
Yet think upon, thou somewhat aged youth,
Thy predecessor on the banks of Pruth;
Thou hast to aid thee, should his lot be thine,
Many an old woman, but no Catherine. (8)

Per cui la fama in te chiara risuona
Egregia, eccelsa, alma Verona,'—

I mean Ippolito Pindemonte, a poet who has caught a portion of that sun whose setting beams yet gild the horizon of Italy. His rural pieces, for their chaste style of colouring, their repose, and their keeping, may be said to be, in poetry, what the landscapes of Claude Lorraine are in picture." Rose.-L. E.

(6) Claudian's famous old man of Verona, "qui subur bium nunquam egressus est."-The Latin verses are beautifully imitated by Cowley:

"Happy the man who his whole life doth bound
Within the enclosure of his little ground:
Happy the man whom the same humble place
(The hereditary cottage of his race)
From his first rising infancy has known,
And, by degrees, sees gently bending down,
With natural propension, to that earth
Which both preserved his life and gave him birth.
Him no false distant lights, by Fortune set,
Could ever into foolish wanderings get;

No change of consuls marks to him the year:
The change of seasons is his calendar," etc. etc.-L.

(7) The Emperor Alexander, who died in 1825.-L. E. (8) The dexterity of Catherine extricated Peter (called the Great by courtesy), when surrounded by the Mussulmans on the banks of the river Pruth. [For particulars of this transaction, see Barrow's Peter the Great, p. 220.-L. E.]

Spain, too, hath rocks, and rivers, and defiles-
The bear may rush into the lion's toils.
Fatal to Goths are Xeres' sunny fields; (1)
Think'st thou to thee Napoleon's victor yields?
Better reclaim thy deserts, turn thy swords

To ploughshares, shave and wash thy Bashkir hordes,
Redeem thy realms from slavery and the knout,
Than follow headlong in the fatal route,

To infest the clime whose skies and laws are pure
With thy foul legions. Spain wants no manure:
Her soil is fertile, but she feeds no foe;
Her vultures, too, were gorged not long ago;
And wouldst thou furnish them with fresher prey?
Alas! thou wilt not conquer, but purvey.
I am Diogenes, though Russ and Hun
Stand between mine and many a myriad's sun;
But were I not Diogenes, I'd wander
Rather a worm than such an Alexander!
Be slaves who will, the cynic shall be free;
His tub hath tougher walls than Sinopè:
Still will he hold his lantern up to scan
The face of monarchs for an "honest man."

XI.

And what doth Gaul, the all-prolific land
Of ne plus ultra ultras and their band
Of mercenaries? and her noisy chambers
And tribune, which each orator first clambers
Before he finds a voice, and when 't is found,
Hears "the lie" echo for his answer round?
Our British Commons sometimes deign to "hear!"
A Gallic senate hath more tongue than ear;
Even Constant, their sole master of debate,
Must fight next day his speech to vindicate.
But this costs little to true Franks, who had rather
Combat than listen, were it to their father.
What is the simple standing of a shot,
To listening long, and interrupting not?
Though this was not the method of old Rome,
When Tully fulmined o'er each vocal dome;
Demosthenes has sanction'd the transaction,
In saying eloquence meant "Action, action!"

XII.

But where's the monarch? hath he dined? or yet
Groans beneath indigestion's heavy debt?
Have revolutionary patés risen,
And turn'd the royal entrails to a prison?
Have discontented movements stirr'd the troops?
Or have no movements follow'd traitorous soups?
Have Carbonaro (2) cooks not carbonadoed
Each course enough? or doctors dire dissuaded

(1)" Eight thousand men had to Asturias march'd
Beneath Count Julian's banner; the remains
Of that brave army which in Africa
So well against the Mussulman made head,
Till sense of injuries insupportable,
And raging thirst of vengeance, overthrew
Their leader's noble spirit. 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.-L. E.

(2) According to Botta, the Neapolitan republicans who, during the reign of King Joachim, fled to the recesses of the Abruzzi, and there formed a secret confederacy, were the first that assumed the designation, since familiar all over Italy, of "Carbonari" (colliers).-L. E.

Repletion? Ah! in thy dejected looks
I read all France's treason in her cooks!
Good classic Louis! is it, canst thou say,
Desirable to be the "Désiré?"

Why wouldst thou leave calm Hartwell's green abode,(3)
Apician table, and Horatian ode,

To rule a people who will not be ruled,
And love much rather to be scourged than school'd?
Ah! thine was not the temper or the taste
For thrones; the table sees thee better placed:
A mild Epicurean, form'd, at best,
To be a kind host and as good a guest,
To talk of letters, and to know by heart
One half the poet's, all the gourmand's art;
A scholar always, now and then a wit,
And gentle when digestion may permit;-
But not to govern lands enslaved or free;
The gout was martyrdom enough for thee.

XIIL.

Shall noble Albion pass without a phrase
From a bold Briton in her wonted praise ? [isles - |
“ Arts-arms-and George-and glory-and the
And happy Britain-wealth-and Freedom's smiles -
White cliffs, that held invasion far aloof-
Contented subjects, all alike tax-proof-
Proud Wellington, with eagle beak so curl'd,
That nose, the hook where he suspends the world! (4)
And Waterloo-and trade-and- -(hush! not yet
A syllable of imposts or of debt)-
And ne'er (enough) lamented Castlereagh,
Whose penknife slit a goose-quill t'other day-
And pilots who have weather'd every storm'-
(But, no, not even for rhyme's sake, name Refor
These are the themes thus sung so oft before,
Methinks we need not sing them any more;
Found in so many volumes far and near,
There's no occasion you should find them here.
Yet something may remain perchance to chime
With reason, and, what's stranger still, with rhyme.
Even this thy genius, Canning! may permit,
Who, bred a statesman, still wast born a wit,
And never, even in that dull House, couldst tame
To unleaven'd prose thine own poetic flame;
Our last, our best, our only orator, (6)
Even I can praise thee-Tories do no more:
Nay, not so much;-they hate thee, man! because
Thy spirit less upholds them than it awes.
The hounds will gather to their huntsman's hollo,
And where he leads the duteous pack will follow;
But not for love mistake their yelling cry;
Their yelp for game is not a eulogy;

(3) Hartwell, in Buckinghamshire - the residence of Louis XVIII. during the latter years of the Emigration.-L. E. (4) "Naso suspendit adunco.”—Horace. The Roman applies it to one who merely was imperi to his acquaintance.

(5) "The Pilot that weather'd the storm" is the burthe of a song, in honour of Pitt, by Canning.-L. E.

(6) "I have never heard any one who fulfilled my idah of an orator. Grattan would have been near it, but for harlequin delivery. Pitt I never heard-Fox but once; a then he struck me as a debater, which to me seems as differ ent from an orator as an improvvisatore or a versifier fro a poet. Grey is great, but it is not oratory. Cannin sometimes very like one. Whitbread was the Demosthenes of bad taste and vulgar vehemence, but strong, and Ear sh Holland is impressive from sense and sincerity. Burdetti sweet and silvery as Belial himself, and, I think, the greatest favourite in Pandemonium." B. Diary, 1821.-L.E.