ODE TO NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE. "Expende Annibalem :-quot libras in duce summo * * "The Emperor Nepos was acknowledged by the Senate, by the Italians, and by the Provincials of Gaul; his moral virtues, and military talents, were loudly celebrated; and those who derived any private benefit from his government announced in prophetic strains the restoration of public felicity. By this shameful abdication, he protracted his life a few years, in a very ambiguous state, between an Emperor and an Exile, till "-GIBBON'S Decline and Fall, vol. vi., p. 220.+ *["Great Hannibal within the balance lay, And tell how many pounds his ashes weigh."-Dryden. Sir John Paterson had the curiosity to weigh the ashes of a person discovered a few years since in the parish of Eccles. Wonderful to relate, he found the whole did not exceed in weight one ounce and a half! Alas! the quot libras itself is a satirical exaggeration.-GIFFORD.] +["I send you an additional motto from Gibbon, which you will find singularly appropriate."-Lord B. to Mr. Murray, April 12, 1814.] VOL. II. B INTRODUCTION TO THE ODE TO NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE. On the morning of the ninth of April, 1814, Lord Byron reiterated the resolution he formed, on the publication of "The Corsair," to cease from versifying till he was turned of thirty. "No more rhyme for-or rather from-me. I have taken my leave of the stage, and henceforth will mountebank it no longer." In the evening came the news of the abdication of Fontainebleau, and the next day the poet violated his vow by composing this Ode. It originally consisted of only eleven stanzas, and the subsequent additions, which were requested by Mr. Murray to avoid the stamp duty then imposed on a single sheet, are of an inferior cast. The three last stanzas were never printed during the poet's life. "I don't," he said, "like them at all, and they had better be left out. The fact is I can't do anything I am asked to do, however gladly I would; and at the end of a week my interest in a composition goes off." While refusing in the face of his total-abstinence pledge to put his name to the Ode, he directed Mr. Murray to proclaim openly whose it was, and declared his intention of incorporating it with his avowed productions. "Nothing," he said, "but the occasion which was physically irresistible made me swerve; and I thought an anonyme within my pact with the public." He was prophetic as well as poetic on the event. "I shall think higher of rhyme and reason, and very humbly of your heroic people, till-Elba become a volcano, and sends him out again. I can't think it all over yet." Southey confessed that there was in the "Ode to Napoleon," as in all Lord Byron's poems, great spirit and originality, though the meaning was not always clearly developed-which is strong praise from a hostile quarter, however inadequate to the merits of a piece that contains such grand and energetic stanzas. Lord Byron once asked Southey in conversation if he did not think Napoleon a great man in his villany. The Laureate replied, "No-that he was a mean-minded villain," and on the publication of the Ode he exclaimed that Lord Byron had come round to this opinion. With Southey's conception of the character of Napoleon we have nothing to do, but we can see no ground for his imputing a change of sentiment to Lord Byron, who appears to us to have been consistent with himself. To say that a person is a great man, and a villain, can only signify that he is intellectually great, and morally the reverse-an estimate confirmed and not contradicted by the Ode. The main objection to the poet's doctrine is that he adopts an unworthy standard of heroism when he inveighs against Napoleon for refusing to fling away life with fortune, which, -not to urge any higher argument, is the resource of the cowardly, the feebleminded, and the insane. ODE TO NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE. I. 'Tis done-but yesterday a King! Is this the man of thousand thrones, Since he, miscall'd the Morning Star, Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far. II. Ill-minded man! why scourge thy kind Who bow'd so low the knee? By gazing on thyself grown blind, Thou tanght'st the rest to see. With might unquestion'd,-power to save,-- To those that worshipp'd thee; 1 ["I don't know-but I think I, even I (an insect compared with this creature), have set my life on casts not a millionth part of this man's. But, after all, a crown may not be worth dying for. Yet, to outlive Lodi for this!!! Oh that Juvenal or Johnson could rise from the dead! 'Expende-quot libras in duce summo invenies?' |