"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. (1) (1) ["I send you an additional motto from Gibbon, which you will find singularly appropriate."-Lord B. to Mr. M. April 12. 1814.] ODE TO NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE. (1) I. 'Tis done - but yesterday a King! Is this the man of thousand thrones, (1) [The reader has seen that Lord Byron, when publishing "The Corsair," in January, 1814, announced an apparently quite serious resolution to withdraw, for some years at least, from poetry. His letters of the February and March following abound in repetitions of the same determination. On the morning of the ninth of April, he writes-" No more rhyme for- or rather from-me. I have taken my leave of that stage, and henceforth will mountebank it no longer." In the evening, a Gazette Extraordinary announced the abdication of Fontainebleau, and the poet violated his vows next morning, by composing this Ode, which he immediately published, though without his name. His diary says, " April 10. To-day I have boxed one hour-written an Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte-copied it—eaten six biscuits-drunk four bottles of soda water, and redde away the rest of my time."-E] (2) ["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, Since he, miscall'd the Morning Star, II. Ill-minded man! why scourge thy kind With might unquestion'd,-power to save,- III. Thanks for that lesson-it will teach That led them to adore Those Pagod things of sabre sway, 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?' I knew they were light in the balance of mortality; but I thought their living dust weighed more carats. Alas! this imperial diamond hath a flaw in it, and is now hardly fit to stick in a glazier's pencil; -the pen of the historian won't rate it worth a ducat. Psha! something too much of this.' But I won't give him up even now; though all his admirers have, like the Thanes, fallen from him."-B. Diary, April 9.] |