Night," which was published in The Liberal (No. i., October 14, 1822, pp. 123-137), had been read to him, and had attracted his attention. The Deformed Transformed is "a Faustish kind of drama;" and Goethe, who maintained that Byron's play as a whole was "no imitation," but "new and original, close, genuine, and spirited," could not fail to perceive that "his devil was suggested by my Mephistopheles" (Conversations, 1874, p. 174). The tempter who cannot resist the temptation of sneering at his own wiles, who mocks for mocking's sake, is not Byron's creation, but Goethe's. Lucifer talked at the clergy, if he did not "talk like a clergyman; but the "bitter hunchback," even when he is solus, sneers as the river wanders, "at his own sweet will." He is not a doctor, but a spirit of unbelief! The second part of The Deformed Transformed represents, in three scenes, the Siege and Sack of Rome in 1527. Byron had read Robertson's Charles the Fifth (ed. 1798, ii. 313-329) in his boyhood (Life, p. 47), but it is on record that he had studied, more or less closely, the narratives of contemporary authorities. A note to The Prophecy of Dante (Poetical Works, 1901, iv. 258) refers to the Sacco di Roma, descritto da Luigi Guicciardini, and the Ragguaglio Storico . . sacco di Roma dell' anno MDXXVII. of Jacopo Buonaparte; and it is evident that he was familiar with Cellini's story of the marvellous gests and exploits quorum maxima pars fuit, which were wrought at "the walls by the Campo Santo," or on the ramparts of the Castle of San Angelo. The Sack of Rome was a great national calamity, and it was something more: it was a profanation and a sacrilege. The literature which it evoked was a cry of anguish, a prophetic burden of despair. "Chants populaires," writes M. Emile Gebhart (De Italie, "Le Sac de Rome en 1527," 1876, pp. 267, sq.), " Nouvelles de Giraldi Cintio, en forme de Décaméron . . . récits historiques ... de César Grollier, Dialogues anonymes .. poésies de Pasquin, toute une littérature se developpa sur ce thème douloureux. . . . Le Lamento di Roma, œuvre étrange, d'inspiration gibeline, rappelle les espérances politiques exprimées jadis par Dante ... Bien que César m'ait dépouillée de liberté, nous avons toujours été d'accord dans une même volonté. Je ne me lamenterais pas si lui régnait ; mais je crois qu'il est ressuscité, ou qu'il ressuscitera véritablement, car souvent un Ange m'a annoncé qu'un César viendrait me délivrer.' . . . Enfin, voici une chanson française que répétaient en repassant les monts les soldats du Marquis de Saluces : "Parlons de la déffaicte Aussi de la complaincte De notre père saint. "O noble roy de France, L'Eglise en ballance. . "Le dernier monument," adds M. Gebhart, in a footnote, "de cette littérature, est le singulier drame de Byron, The Deformed Transformed, dont Jules César est le héros, et le Sac de Rome le cadre." It is unlikely that Byron, who read everything he could lay his hands upon, and spared no trouble to master his period," had not, either at first or second hand, acquainted himself with specimens of this popular literature. (For La Presa e Lamento di Roma, Roma Lamentatio, etc., see Lamenti Storici dei Secoli xiv., xv. (Medin e Fratri), Scelta di Curiosità, etc., 235, 236, 237, Bologna, 1890, vol. iii. See, too, for "Chanson sur la Mort du Connétable de Bourbon," Recueil de Chants historiques français, par A. J. V. Le Roux de Lincy, 1842, ii. 99.) The Deformed Transformed was published by John Hunt, February 20, 1824. A third edition appeared February 23, 1824. It was reviewed, unfavourably, in the London Magazine, March, 1824, vol. 9, pp. 315-321; the Scots Magazine, March, 1824, N.S. vol. xiv. pp. 353-356; and in the Monthly Review, March, 1824, Enlarged Series, 103, pp. 321, 324One reviewer, however (London Magazine), had the candour to admit that "Lord Byron may write below himself, but he can never write below us!" For the unfinished third part, vide post, pp. 532-534. ADVERTISEMENT. THIS production is founded partly on the story of a novel called "The Three Brothers," published many 1. [The Three Brothers, by Joshua Pickersgill, junior, was published in 1803. There is no copy of The Three Brothers in the British Museum. The following extracts are taken from a copy in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (vol. 4, cap. xi. pp. 229–350) : "Arnaud, the natural son of the Marquis de Souvricour, was a child 'extraordinary in Beauty and Intellect.' When, travelling with his parents to Languedoc, Arnaud being 8 years old, he was shot at by banditti, and forsaken by his parents. The Captain of the band nursed him. 'But those perfections to which Arnaud owed his existence, ceased to adorn it. The ball had gored his shoulder, and the fall had dislocated it; by the latter misadventure his spine likewise was so fatally injured as to be irrecoverable to its pristine uprightness. Injuries so compound confounded the Captain, who sorrowed to see a creature so charming, at once deformed by a crooked back and an excrescent shoulder.' Arnaud was found and taken back to his parents. The bitterest consciousness of his deformity was derived from their indelicate, though, perhaps, insensible alteration of conduct. . . . Of his person he continued to speak as of an abhorrent enemy. "Were a blessing submitted to my choice, I would say, [said Árnaud] be it my immediate dissolution." "I think," said his mother, . "that you could wish better." "Yes," adjoined Arnaud, "for that wish should be that I ever had remained unborn." He polishes the broken blade of a sword, and views himself therein; the sight so horrifies him that he determines to throw himself over a precipice, but draws back at the last moment. He goes to a cavern, and conjures up the prince of hell. "Arnaud knew himself to be interrogated. What he required. What was that answer the effects explain. There passed in liveliest portraiture the various men distinguished for that beauty and grace which Arnaud so much desired, that he was ambitious to purchase them with his soul. He felt that it was his part to chuse whom he would resemble, yet he remained unresolved, though the spectator of an hundred shades of renown, among which glided by Alexander, Alcibiades, and Hephestion: at length appeared the supernatural effigy of a man, whose perfections human artist never could depict or insculp-Demetrius, the son of Antigonus. Arnaud's heart heaved quick with preference, and strait he found within his hand the " years ago, from which M. G. Lewis's "Wood Demon was also taken; and partly on the "Faust" of the great Goëthe. The present publication contains the two first Parts only, and the opening chorus of the third. The rest may perhaps appear hereafter. resemblance of a poniard, its point inverted towards his breast. A mere automaton in the hands of the Demon, he thrust the point through his heart, and underwent a painless death. During his trance, his spirit metempsychosed from the body of his detestation to that of his admiration. Arnaud awoke a Julian !'"] 1. [For a résumé of M. G. Lewis's Wood Demon (afterwards re-cast as One O'clock; or, The Knight and the Wood-Demon, 1811), see First Visit to the Theatre in London," Poems, by Hartley Coleridge, 1851, i., Appendix C, pp. cxcix.-cciii. The Wood Demon in its original form was never published.] 2. [Mrs. Shelley inscribed the following note on the fly-leaf of her copy of The Deformed Transformed :— This had long been a favourite subject with Lord Byron. I think that he mentioned it also in Switzerland. I copied it-he sending a portion of it at a time, as it was finished, to me. At this time he had a great horror of its being said that he plagiarised, or that he studied for ideas, and wrote with difficulty. Thus he gave Shelley Aikins' edition of the British poets, that it might not be found in his house by some English lounger, and reported home; thus, too, he always dated when he began and when he ended a poem, to prove hereafter how quickly it was done. I do not think that he altered a line in this drama after he had once written it down. He composed and corrected in his mind. I do not know how he meant to finish it; but he said himself that the whole conduct of the story was already conceived. It was at this time that a brutal paragraph alluding to his lameness appeared, which he repeated to me lest I should hear it from some one else. No action of Lord Byron's life-scarce a line he has written-but was influenced by his personal defect."] * *It is possible that Mrs. Shelley alludes to a sentence in the Memoirs, etc., of Lord Byron (by Dr. John Watkin), 1822, p. 46: “A malformation of one of his feet, and other indications of a rickety constitution, served as a plea for suffering him to range the hills and to wander about at his pleasure on the seashore, that his frame might be invigorated by air and exercise.' " |