from Ravenna, March 20, 1820. It was first published in 1830, in the Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, ii. 309-311.

Dante, in his Inferno (Canto V. lines 97–142) places Francesca and her lover Paolo among the Justful in the second circle of Hell. Francesca daughter of Guido Vecchio da Polenta, Lord of Ravenna, married (circ. 1275) Gianciotto, second son of Malatesta da Verrucchio, Lord of Rimini According to Boccaccio, Gianciotto was "hide ously deformed in countenance and figure," and determined to woo and marry Francesca br proxy. He accordingly sent, as his repre sentative, his younger brother Paolo, the hand somest and most accomplished man in all Italy. Francesca saw Paolo arrive, and imagined she beheld her future husband. That mistake was, the commencement of her passion." A day came when the lovers were surprised together, and Gianciotto slew both his brother and his wife.]

[Caïna is the first belt of Cocytus, that is, circle ix. of the Inferno, in which fratricides and betrayers of their kindred are immersed up to the neck.]

* [Virgil.]

[The sentiment is derived from Boethius. The earlier commentators assume that the "teacher" (line 27) is the author of the sentence, but later authorities point out that "mio dottore" can only apply to Virgil (v. 70), who, then and there, in the world of shades was suffering the bitter experience of having "known better days." Compare

"A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things."

Tennyson's Locksley Hall.] ["A Gallehault was the book and he who wrote it" (A. J. Butler). The book which the lovers were reading is entitled L'Illustre et Famosa Historia di Lancilotto del Lago. The one point" (1. 36) of the original runs thus: Et la reina .. lo piglia per il mento, et lo bacia davanti a Gallehault, assai lungamente. ["And the Queen took him by the chin, and before the eves of Gallehault kissed him over and over again."]-Lib. Prim. cap. lxvi. The Gallehault of the Lancilotto, the shameless purveyor," must not be confounded with the , stainless Galahad of the Morte d'Arthur.]

THE Conspiracy of the Doge Marino Faliero is one of the most remarkable events in the annals of the most singular government, city, and people of modern history. It occurred in the year 1355. Everything about Venice is, or was, extraordinary her aspect is like a dream, and her history is like a romance. The story of this Doge is to be found in all her Chronicles, and particularly detailed in the "Lives of the Doges," by Marin Sanuto, which is given in the Appendix. It is simply and clearly related, and is perhaps more dramatic in itself than any scenes which can be founded upon the subject.

Marino Faliero appears to have been a man of talents and of courage. I find him commander-in-chief of the land forces at the siege of Zara, where he

[Marino Faliero was written at Ravenna, April-July, 1820. It was published with The Prophecy of Dante, April 21, 1821.]

Ac

[Marin Faliero was not in command of the land forces at the siege of Zara in 1346. cording to contemporary documents, he held a naval command under Civran, who was in charge of the fleet.]

beat the King of Hungary and his army of eighty thousand men, killing eight thousand men, and keeping the besieged at the same time in check; an exploit to which I know none similar in history, except that of Cæsar at Alesia, and of Prince Eugene at Belgrade. He was afterwards commander of the fleet in the same war. He took Capo d'Istria. He was ambassador at Genoa and Rome, at which last he received the news of his election to the dukedom; his absence being a proof that he sought it by no intrigue, since he was apprised of his predecessor's death and his own succession at the same moment. But he appears to have been of an ungovernable temper. A story is told by Sanuto, of his having, many years before, when podesta and captain at Treviso, boxed the ears of the bishop, who was somewhat tardy in bringing the Host. For this, honest Sanuto "saddles him with a judgment," as Thwackum did Square; but he does not tell us whether he was punished or rebuked by the Senate for this outrage at the time of its commission. He seems, indeed, to have been afterwards at peace with the church, for we find him ambassador at Rome, and invested with the fief of Val di Marino, in the march of Treviso, and with the title of count, by Lorenzo, Count-bishop of Ceneda. For these facts my authorities are Sanuto, Vettor, Sandi, Andrea Navagero, and the account of the siege of Zara, first published by the indefatigable Abate Morelli, in his Monumenti Veneziani di varia Letteratura, printed in 1796, all of which I have looked over in the original language. The moderns, Darù, Sismondi, and Laugier, nearly agree with the ancient chroniclers. Sismondi attributes the conspiracy to his jealousy; but I find this nowhere asserted by the national historians. Vettor Sandi, indeed, says that "Altri scrissero che gelosa suspizion di esso Doge siasi fatto (Michel Steno) staccar con violenza," etc. etc.; but this appears to have been by no means the general opinion, nor is it alluded to

dalla

by Sanuto, or by Navagero; and Sandi himself adds, a moment after, that "per altre Veneziane memorie traspiri, che non il solo desiderio di vendetta lo dispose alla congiura ma anche la innata abituale ambizion sua, per cui anelava a farsi principe independente." The first motive appears to have been excited by the gross affront of the words written by Michel Steno on the ducal chair, and by the light and inadequate sentence of the Forty on the offender, who was one of their "tre Capi." The attentions of Steno himself appear to have been directed towards one of her damsels, and not to the "Dogaressa "? herself, against whose fame not the slightest insinuation appears, while she is praised for her beauty, and remarked for her youth. Neither do I find it asserted (unless the hint of Sandi be an assertion), that the Doge was actuated by jealousy of his wife; but rather by respect for her, and for his own honour, warranted by his past services and present dignity.

2

I know not that the historical facts are: alluded to in English, unless by Dr Moore in his View of Italy. His account is false and flippant, full of stale jests about old men and young wives, and wondering at so great an effect from so slight a cause. How so acute and severe an observer of mankind as the author of Zeluco could wonder at this is inconceivable. He knew that a basin o' water spilt on Mrs Masham's gown deprived the Duke of Marlborough of his command, and led to the inglorious peace of Utrecht that Louis XIV. was plunged into the most desolating || wars, because his minister was nettled at his finding fault with a window, and wished to give him another occupatio:

that Helen lost Troy that Lucretia expelled the Tarquins from Rome

and that Cava brought the Moors to Spain that an insulted husband led the Gauls to Clusium, and thence to Rome that a single verse of Frederick II. of Prussia on the Abbé de Bernis, and a jest on Madame de Pompadour,2 led to the battle of Rosbach - that the elopement of Dearbhorgil with Mac Murchad conducted the English to the slavery of Ireland, that a personal pique between Maria Antoinette and the Duke of Orleans precipitated the first expulsion of the Bourbons - and, not to multiply instances of the teterrima causa, that Commodus, Domitian, and Caligula fell victims not to their public tyranny, but to private vengeance and that an order to make Cromwell disembark from the ship in which he would have sailed to America destroyed both King and Commonwealth. After these instances, on the least reflection, it is indeed extraordinary in Dr Moore to seem surprised that a man used to command, who had served and swayed in the most important offices, should fiercely resent, in a fierce age, an unpunished affront, the grossest that can be offered to a man, be he prince or peasant. The age of Faliero is little to the purpose, unless to favour it

"The young man's wrath is like [light] straw on fire,

But like red hot steel is the old man's ire." [Davie Gellatley's song in Waverley, chap. xiv.] "Young men soon give and soon forget affronts, Old age is slow at both."

Laugier's reflections are more philosophical: "Tale fù il fine ignominioso di un' uomo, che la sua nascità, la sua età, il suo carattere dovevano tener lontano dalle passioni produttricidi grandi delitti. I suoi talenti per lungo tempo esercitati ne' maggiori impieghi, la sua capacità sperimentata governi e nelle ambasciate, gli avevano acquistato la stima e la fiducia de' cittadini, ed avevano uniti i suffragj per collocarlo alla testa della repubblica. Innalzato ad un grado che terminava

ne'

["Evitez de Bernis la stérile abondance."] ["Je ne la connais pas."]

Where did Dr Moore find that Marino Faliero begged his life? I have searched the chroniclers, and find nothing of the kind: it is true that he avowed all. He was conducted to the place of torture, but there is no mention made of any application for mercy on his part; and the very circumstance of their having taken him to the rack seems to argue any thing but his having shown a want of firmness, which would doubtless have been also mentioned by those minute historians, who by no means favour him: such, indeed, would be contrary to his character as a soldier, to the age in which he lived, and at which he died, as it is to the truth of history. I know no justification, at any distance of time, for calumniating an historical character: surely truth belongs to the dead, and to the unfortunate: and they who have died upon a scaffold have generally had faults enough of their own, without attributing to them that which the very incurring of the perils which conducted them to their violent death renders, of all others, the most improbable. The black veil which is painted over the place of Marino Faliero amongst the Doges, and the Giants' Staircase, where he was crowned, and discrowned, and decapitated, struck forcibly upon my imagination; as did his fiery character and strange story. I went, in 1819, in search of his tomb more than once to the church San Giovanni e San Paolo; and, as I was standing before the monument of another family, a priest came up to me and said, "I can show you finer monuments than that." I told him that I was in search of that of the Faliero family, and particularly of the Doge Marino's.

66

Oh," said he, "I will show it you;' and, conducting me to the outside, pointed out a sarcophagus in the wall with an illegible inscription. He said that it had been in a convent adjoining, but was removed after the French came, and placed in its present situation; that he had seen the tomb opened at its removal; there were still some bones remaining, but no positive vestige of the decapitation. The eques

trian statue of which I have made mention in the third act as before that church is not, however, of a Faliero, but of some other now obsolete warrior, although of a later date. There were two other Doges of this family prior to Marino; Ordelafo, who fell in battle at Zara, in 1117 (where his descendant afterwards conquered the Huns), and Vital Faliero, who reigned in 1082. The family, originally from Fano, was of the most illustrious in blood and wealth in the city of once the most wealthy and still the most ancient families in Europe. The length I have gone into on this subject will show the interest I have taken in it. Whether I have succeeded or not in the tragedy, I have at least transferred into our language an historical fact worthy of commemoration.

It is now four years that I have meditated this work; and before I had sufficiently examined the records, I was rather disposed to have made it turn on a jealousy in Faliero. But, perceiving no foundation for this in historical truth, and aware that jealousy is an exhausted passion in the drama, I have given it a more historical form. I was, besides, well advised by the late Matthew Lewis on that point, in talking with him of my intention at Venice in 1817. "If you make him jealous," said he, "recollect that you have to contend with established writers, to say nothing of Shakespeare, and an exhausted subject: stick to the old fiery Doge's natural

[In the Campo in front of the church is the equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, designed by Andrea Veroccio, and cast in 1496 by Alessandro Leopardi. - Handbook: Northern Italy, p. 374.]

I cannot conceive any man of irritable feeling putting himself at the mercies of an audience. The sneering reader, and the loud critic, and the tart review, are scattered and distant calamities; but the trampling of an intelligent or of an ignorant audience on a production which, be it good or bad, has been a mental labour to the writer, is a palpable and immediate grievance, heightened by a man's doubt of their competency to judge, and his certainty of his own imprudence in electing them his judges. Were I capable of writing a play which could be deemed stage-worthy, success would give me no pleasure, and failure great pain. It is for this reason that, even during the time of being one of the committee of one of the theatres, I never made the attempt, and never will.'

But

While I was in the sub-committee of Drury Lane Theatre, I can vouch for my colleagues, and I hope for myself, that we did our best to bring back the legitimate drama. I tried what I could to get De Montfort revived, but in vain, and equally in vain in favour of Sotheby's Ivan, which was thought an acting play; and I endeavoured also to wake Mr Coleridge to write us a tragedy. Those who are not in the secret will hardly believe that the School for Scandal is the play which has brought the least money, averaging the number of times it has been acted since its production; so Manager Dibdin assured me. Of what has occurred since Maturin's Bertram I am not aware; so that I may be traducing, through ignorance, some excellent new writers; if so, I beg their pardon. I have been absent from England nearly five years, and, till last year, I never read an English newspaper since my departure, and am now only aware of theatrical matters through the medium of the Parisian Gazette of Galignani, and only for the last twelve months. Let me, then, deprecate all offence to tragic or comic writers, to whom I wish well, and of whom I know nothing. The long complaints of the actual state of the drama arise. however, from no fault of the performers. I can