FRANCESCA DA RIMINI.

DANTE, L'INferno.

CANTO V.

"SIEDE la terra dove nata fui

Su la marina, dove il Po discende,
Per aver pace coi seguaci sui,
Amor, che al cor gentil ratto s' apprende,
Prese costui della bella persona

Che mi fu tolta ; e il modo ancor m'offende.
Amor, che a null' amato amar perdona,

Mi prese del costui piacer si forte,
Che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona;
Amor condusse noi ad una morte:

Caiua attende chi in vita ci spense :"
Queste parole da lor ci fur porte.
Da ch' io intesi quell' anime offense
Chinai il viso, e tanto il tenni basso

(1) This translation, of what is generally considered the most exquisitely pathetic episode in the Divina Commedia, was executed in March, 1820, at Ravenna, where, just five centuries before, and in the very house in which the unfortunate lady was born, Dante's poem had been composed.

FRANCESCA OF RIMINI.

FROM THE INFERNO OF DANTE.(1)
CANTO V.

"THE land where I was born (2) sits by the seas,
Upon that.shore to which the Po descends,
With all his followers, in search of peace.
Love, which the gentle heart soon apprehends,
Seized him for the fair person which was ta'en(3)
From me, and me even yet the mode offends.
Love, who to none beloved to love again

Remits, seized me with wish to please, so strong,
That, as thou seest, yet, yet it doth remain.
Love to one death conducted us along,

But Cainà (4) waits for him our life who ended:"
These were the accents utter'd by her tongue.
Since I first listen'd to these souls offended,
I bow'd my visage, and so kept it till-

feelings.' Of gentle feelings!-and Francesca of Rimini-and the father's feelings in Ugolino-and Beatrice-and 'La Pia!' Why, there is a gentleness in Dante beyond all gentleness, when he is tender. It is true that, treating of the Christian Hades, or Hell, there is not much scope or site for gentleness: but who but Dante could have introduced any 'gentleness' at all into Hell? Is there any in Milton's? No-and Dante's Heaven is all love, and glory, and majesty."

Francesca, daughter of Guido da Polenta, Lord of Ravenna and of Cervia, was given by her father in marriage to Lanciotto, son of Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, a man of extraordinary cou

In mitigation of the crime of Francesca, Boccaccio relates, that "Guido engaged to give his daughter in marriage to Lanciotto, the eldest son of his enemy, the master of Rimini. Lanciolto, who was hideously deformed in countenance and figure, foresaw that, if he presented himself in person, he should be rejected by the lady. He therefore resolved to marry her by proxy, and sent as his representative his younger brother, Paolo, the hand-rage, but deformed in his person. His brother Paolo, who unsomest 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. The friends of Guido addressed him in strong remonstrances, and mournful predictions of the dangers to which he exposed a daughter, whose high spirit would never brook to be sacrificed with impunity. But Guido was no longer in a condition to make war; and the necessities of the politician overcame the feelings of the father."

In transmitting his version to Mr. Murray, Lord Byron says "Enclosed you will find, line for line, in third rhyme (terza rima), of which your British blackguard reader as yet understands nothing, Fanny of Rimini. You know that she was born here, and married, and slain, from Cary, Boyd, and such people. I have done it into cramp English, line for line, and rhyme for rhyme, to try possibility. If it is published, publish it with the original."

In one of the poet's MS. Diaries we find the following passage: -"January 29, 1821, past midnight-one of the clock. I have been reading Frederick Schlegel till now, and I can make out nothing. He evidently shows a great power of words, but there is nothing to be taken hold of. He is like Hazlitt in English, who talks pimples; a red and white corruption rising up (in little imitation of mountains upon maps), but containing nothing. and discharging nothing, except their own humours. I like him the worse (that is Schlegel), because he always seems upon the verge of meaning; and, lo! he goes down like sunset, or melts like a rainbow, leaving a rather rich confusion. Of Dante, he says, that at no time has the greatest and most national of all Italian poets ever been much the favourite of his countrymen!' 'Tis false. There have been more editors and commentators (and imitators ultimately) of Dante, than of all their poets put together. Not a favourite! Why, they talk Dante-write Dante-and think and dream Dante, at the moment (1821), to an excess which would be ridiculous, but that he deserves it. He says also that Dante's 'chief defect is a want, in a word, of gentle *Lectures on the History of Literature, Ancient and Modern.

happily possessed those graces which the husband of Francesca wanted, engaged her affections; and being taken in adultery, they were both put to death by the enraged Lanciotto. The interest of this pathetic narrative is much increased, when it is recollected that the father of this unfortunate lady was the beloved friend and generous protector of Dante during his latter days. See ante, p. 373, and also Canto xxvii. of the Inferno, where Dante, speaking of Ravenna, says

"L'aquila da Polenta la si cova

Si che Cervia ricopre co' suoi vanni."
--"There Polenta's eagle broods,

And in his broad circumference of plume
O'ershadows Cervia."-Cary.

Guido was the son of Ostasio da Polenta, and made himself
master of Ravenna in 1265. In 1322, he was deprived of his
sovereignty, and died at Bologna in the year following. He is
enumerated, by Tiraboschi, among the poets of his time.-E.
(2) Ravenna.

(3) Among Lord Byron's unpublished letters we find the following:-" Varied readings of the translation from Dante. Seized him for the fair person, which in its Bloom was ta'en from me, yet the mode offends.

from whence there is no
Resurrection

for the Days-whatever there may
for the Dust-

the Thirty-Third Year
of an ill-spent life,
which, after

be

a lingering disease of many months,
sunk into a lethargy,

and expired,

January 22d 1821, A. D.
Leaving a Successor
Inconsolable

for the very loss which

occasioned its
Existence.

(1) In Lord Byron's MS. Diary of the preceding day, we find the following entry:-" January 21,1821. Dined-visited-came home-read. Remarked on an anecdote in Grimm's Correspondence, which says, that 'Regnard et la plupart des poètes comiques étaient gens bilieux et mélancoliques; et que M. de Voltaire, qui est très gai, n'a jamais fait que des tragédies-et que la comédie gaie est le seul genre où il n'ait point réussi. C'est que celui qui rit et celui qui fait rire sont deux hommes fort différents!' At this moment I feel as bilious as the best comic writer of them all (even as Regnard himself, the next to Molière, who has written some of the best comedies in any lan-mean to present an address at Brandenburg House, 'in armour,' guage,and who is supposed to have committed suicide), and am not in spirits to continue my proposed tragedy. To-morrow is my birth-day-that is to say, at twelve o' the clock, midnight; i. e in twelve minutes, I shall have completed thirty-and-three years of age!!!-and I go to my bed with a heaviness of heart at having lived so long, and to so little purpose.

* . It

is three minutes past twelve-Tis the middle of night by the
castle clock,' and I am now thirty-three!-

Eheu, fugaces, Posthume, Posthume,
Labuntur anni;'-

but I don't regret them so much for what I have done, as for what
I might have done."

He then adds the following singular

ЕРІТАРН.

1821.

Here lies

interred in the eternity
of the Past,

(2) "Have you heard that the 'Brasiers' Company' have, or

and with all possible variety and splendour of brazen apparel?" Lord B to Mr. Moore, Ravenna, 1821.-E.

(5) "There is an epigram for you, is it not?-worthy

Of Wordsworth, the grand metaquizzical poet,

A man of vast merit, though few people know it;
The persual of whom (as I told you at Mestri)
I owe, in great part, to my passion for pastry."
B. Letters, January 22, 1821.-E.

(4) "Are you aware that Shelley has written an Elegy on John Keats?"-entitled Adonais-“and accuses the Quarterly Review of killing him." Letter to Murray.

(5) "I composed these stanzas (except the fourth, added now) a few days ago, on the road from Florence to Pisa." B. Diary, Pisa, 6th Nov. 1821.-E.

"I enclose you some lines written not long ago, which you may do what you like with, as they are very harmless. Only, if copied, or printed, or set, I could write it more correctly than

Then away with all such from the head that is hoary!
What care I for the wreaths that can only give
glory?

OH FAME!(1)-if I e'er took delight in thy praises,
'Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases,
Than to see the bright eyes of the dear one discover
She thought that I was not unworthy to love her.
There chiefly I sought thee, there only I found thee;
Her glance was the best of the rays that surround
thee;
[my story,
When its spark led o'er aught that was bright in
I knew it was love, and I felt it was glory.

EPIGRAMS.

OH, Castlereagh! thou art a patriot now;
Cato died for his country, so didst thou:
He perish'd rather than see Rome enslaved,
Thou cult'st thy throat that Britain may be saved!

So Castlereagh has cut his throat!-The worst
Of this is, that his own was not the first.

So he has cut his throat at last!-He! Who?
The man who cut his country's long ago.

EPITAPH.

POSTERITY will ne'er survey

A nobler grave than this:
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh :
Stop, traveller, and——

in the usual way in which one's nothings are 'monstered,' as
Coriolanus says." Lord B to Mr. Moore, 1821.-E.

TO MR. MURRAY.

FOR Orford (2) and for Waldegrave (3)
You give much more than me you gave;
Which is not fairly to behave,
My Murray.
Because if a live dog, 't is said,
Be worth a lion fairly sped,
A live lord must be worth two dead,
My Murray.

And if, as the opinion goes,
Verse hath a better sale than prose-
Certes, I should have more than those,
My Murray.

But now this sheet is nearly cramm'd,
So, if you will, I shan't be shamm'd;
And if you won't, you may be damn'd,
My Murray.(4)

THE CHARITY BALL. (5)

WHAT matter the pangs of a husband and father,
If his sorrows in exile be great or be small,
So the pharisee's glories around her she gather,
And the saint patronises her "Charity Ball!"
What matters!—a heart which, though faulty, was
feeling,

Be driven to excesses which once could appal-
That the sinner should suffer is only fair dealing,
As the saint keeps her charity back for "the ball!'

ELEGY ON THE RECOVERY OF LADY ****.
BEHOLD the blessings of a lucky lot,
My play (6) is damn'd, and Lady ***
**** is not!

have had my share: it has, indeed, been leavened by other hu-
man contingencies; and this in a greater degree than has oc-
curred to most literary men of a decent rank in life; but, on the
whole, I take it that such equipoise is the condition of humanity."
B. Diary.

(2) Horace Walpole's Memoirs of the last Nine Years of the Reign of George II.-E.

(3) Memoirs by James Earl Waldegrave, Governor of

(1) As far as FAME goes (that is to say, living Fame), I have had my share, perhaps-indeed, certainly-more than my deserts. Some odd instances have occurred to my own experience of the wild and strange places to which a name may penetrate,and where it may impress. Two years ago-(almost three, being in August, or July, 1819)-I received at Ravenna a letter in English verse from Drontheim in Norway,written by a Norwegian, and full of the usual compliments, etc. etc. In the same month I received an invi-George III. when Prince of Wales.-E. tation into Holstein, from a Mr. Jacobson, I think, of Hamburgh; also (by the same medium) a translation of Medora's song in the Corsair, by a Westphalian baroness (not Thunderton-tronck'), with some original verses of hers (very pretty and Klopstockish), and a prose translation annexed to them, on the subject of my wife. As they concerned her more than me, I sent them to her with Mr Jacobson's letter. It was odd enough to receive an invitation to pass the summer in Holstein, while in Italy, from people I never knew. The letter was addressed to Venice. Mr. J. talked to me of the wild roses growing in the Holstein summer:' why, then, did the Cimbri and the Teutones emigrate ?What a strange thing is life and man! Were I to present myself at the door of the house where my daughter now is, the door would be shut in my face, unless (as is not impossible) I knocked down the porter; and if I had gone in that year (and perhaps now) to Drontheim (the furthest in Norway) or into Holstein, I should have been received with open arms into the mansions of strangers and foreigners-attached to me by no tie but that of mind and rumour. As far as Fame goes, I

be arranged with Mr. Douglas Kinnaird. He is my trustee, and (4) "Can't accept your courteous offer. These matters must

a man of honour. To him you can state all your mercantile reasons, which you might not like to state to me personally, such as heavy season'-'flat public'—' don't go off'-lordship writes too much'-' won't take advice'-'declining popularity''deduction for the trade'-'make very little'-'generally lose by him-pirated edition-foreign edition'-severe criticisms,' etc. with other hints and howls for an oration, which I leave Douglas, who is an orator, to answer."-Lord B. to Mr. Murray, Aug. 23, 1821.-E

"The argument of the above [stanzas] is that he wanted to stint me of my sizeings,' as Lear says,—that is to say, not to propose an extravagant price for an extravagant poem, as is becoming." Lord B. to Mr. Moore, Ravenna, 1822 —E.

(5) These lines were written on reading in the newspapers, that Lady Byron had been patroness of a ball in aid of some charity at Hinckley.-E.

(6) Marino Faliero, which failed on the stage.-E.