"Expende Annibalem :- quot libras in duce summo Invenies?"-Juvenal, Sat. x.* "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.t ["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.] t["I send you an additional motto from Gibbon, which you will find singularly appropriate."-Lord B. to Mr Murray, April 12, 1814-] Introduction to the Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte. LORD BYRON had always been from his early boyhood a great admirer of the "Corsican ogre." "In 1813, after the retreat from Moscow and the battle of Leipsic, the poet writes: "What strange tidings from that Anak of anarchy, Buonaparte. Ever since I defended my bust of him at Harrow against the rascally time-servers when the war broke out in 1803, he has been a 'Heros de Roman' of mine-on the Continent; I don't want him here.... To be beaten by men would be something, but by three stupid, legitimate-old-dynasty boobies of regular bred sovereigns. It must be as Cobbett says, his marriage with the thick lipped and thick headed Antrichienne brood. He had better have kept to her who was kept by Barras." It will be seen that there was a great difference between Lord Byron's sentiments in prose and those of his poetry. The Ode was written the day after the news of the abdication of Fontainebleau reached London. He had just reiterated his resolution to write no more poetry until he was thirty,-and to preserve the appearance of consistency, refrained from putting his name on the title page. The three last stanzas were never printed during the poet's life. He said: "I do not 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." There is no doubt that all Lord Byron's poems written to request are of very inferior merit to the others. The first sixteen stanzas of the Ode are in his best style, and most of the thoughts are beautifully expressed. The description of Marie Louise as "proud Austria's mournful flower," was pirated by a poet of very different calibre, Mr Robert Montgomery. |
