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Another evening;-yon red cloud, which rests | Appear'd to skirt the horizon, yet they stood
On Eigher's pinnacle, so rested then,- Within a bowshot-where the Cæsars dwelt,
So like that it might be the same; the wind And dwell the tuneless birds of night amidst
Was faint and gusty,and the mountain-snows A grove which springs through levell'd
Began to glitter with the climbing moon;
battlements,
Count Manfred was, as now, within his

tower,

How occupied, we knew not, but with him
The sole companion of his wanderings
And watchings-her, whom of all earthly
things

That lived, the only thing he seem'd to love,-
As he, indeed, by blood was bound to do,
The lady Astarte, his-Hush! who comes
here?

Enter the ABBOT.

Abbot. Where is your master?
Herm. Yonder, in the tower.
Abbot. I must speak with him.
Manuel. Tis impossible,

And twines its roots with the imperial

hearths,

Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth;-
But the gladiator's bloody Circus stands,
A noble wreck in ruinous perfection!
While Caesar's chambers, and the Augustan
halls,

Grovel on earth in indistinct decay.-
And thou didst shine,thou rolling Moon, upon
All this, and cast a wide and tender light,
Which soften'd down the hoar austerity
Of rugged desolation, and fill'd up,
As 'twere anew, the gaps of centuries;
Leaving that beautiful which still was so,
And making that which was not,till the place
Became religion, and the heart ran o'er

He is most private, and must not be thus With silent worship of the great of old!—
Intruded on.

Abbot. Upon myself I take

The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule

The forfeit of my fault, if fault there be- Our spirits from their urns. Twas such

But I must see him.

Herm. Thou hast seen him once

This eve already.

Abbot. Herman! I command thee,
Knock, and apprize theCount of my approach.

Herm.

We dare not.

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a night!

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Thyself and me-but I do fear him not. Manf. Thou hast no cause he shall not harm thee- but

His sight may shock thine old limbs into palsy.

I say to thee-Retire!
Abbot. And I reply-
Never-till I have battled with this fiend-
What doth he here?

Manf. Why-ay-what doth he here?
I did not send for him,-he is unbidden.
Abbot. Alas! lost mortal! what with
guests like these

Hast thou to do? I tremble for thy sake. Why doth he gaze on thee, and thou on him? Ah! he unveils his aspect; on his brow The thunder-scars are graven; from his eye Glares forth the immortality of hellAvaunt!

Manf. Pronounce-what is thy mission? Spirit. Come!

Abbot. What art thou, unknown being? answer! - speak!

Spirit. The genius of this mortal. — Come! 'tis time.

Manf. I am prepared for all things, but deny

The power which summons me. Who sent thee here?

Spirit. Thou'lt know anon-Come! come! Manf. I have commanded Things of an essence greater far than thine, And striven with thy masters. Get thee hence!

Spirit. Mortal! thine hour is comeAway! I say.

Manf. I knew, and know my hour is come, but not

To render up my soul to such as thee: Away! I'll die as I have lived – alone. Spirit. Then I must summon up my

brethren. - Rise

[Other Spirits rise up. Abbot. Avaunt! ye evil ones!- Avaunt! I say,

Ye have no power where piety hath power, And I do charge ye in the name —

Spirit. Old man!

We know ourselves, our mission, and thine order;

Waste not thy holy words on idle uses,
It were in vain; this man is forfeited.
Once more I summon him-Away! away!
Manf. I do defy ye, though I feel my soul
Is ebbing from me, yet I do defy ye;
Nor will I hence, while I have earthly breath
To breathe my scorn upon ye-earthly
strength

To wrestle, though with spirits; what ye take
Shall be ta'en limb by limb.

Spirit. Reluctant mortal!

Is this the Magian who would so pervade The world invisible, and make himself

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Almost our equal? - Can it be that thou Art thus in love with life? the very life Which made thee wretched!

Manf. Thou false fiend, thou liest! My life is in its last hour, that I know, Nor would redeem a moment of that hour, I do not combat against death, but thee And thy surrounding angels; my past power Was purchased by no compact with thy crew, But by superior science-penance-daringAnd length of watching-strength of mind -and skill

In knowledge of our fathers-when the earth Saw men and spirits walking side by side, And gave ye no supremacy: I stand Upon my strength-I do defy-denySpurn back, and scorn ye!—

Spirit. But thy many crimes Have made thee

Manf. What are they to such as thee? Must crimes be punish'd but by other crimes, And greater criminals?— Back to thy hell! Thou hast no power upon me, that I feel; Thou never shalt possess me, that I know: What I have done is done; I bear within A torture which could nothing gain from thine:

The mind which is immortal makes itself
Requital for its good or evil thoughts –
Is its own origin of ill and end-
And its own place and time-its innate sense,
When stripp'd of this mortality, derives
No colour from the fleeting things without;
But is absorb'd in sufferance or in joy,
Born from the knowledge of its own desert.
Thou didst not tempt me, and thou couldst

not tempt me;

I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy preyBut was my own destroyer, and will be My own hereafter.-Back, ye baffled fiends! The hand of death is on me-but not yours! [The Demons disappear. Abbot. Alas! how pale thou art - thy lips are white

And thy breast heaves-and in thy gasping throat

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MARINO FALIERO.

"Duz inquietl turbidus Adriæ."

PREFACE.

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THE Conspiracy of the Doge Marino Faliero is one of the most remarkable events in the annals of the most singular government, city, and people of modern history. It Occurred in the year 1355. Every thing about Venice is, or was, extraordinary her aspect is like a dream, and her history is like a romance. The story of this Doge is to be found in all her Chronicles, and particularly detailed in the "Lives of the Doges," by Marin Sanuto, which is given in the Appendix. It is simply and clearly related, and is, perhaps, more dramatic in itself than any scenes which can be founded upon the subject.

lished by the indefatigable Abbate Morelli, in his "Monumenti Veneziani di varia letteratura," printed in 1796, all of which I have looked over in the original language. The moderns, Daru, Sismondi, and Laugier, nearly agree with the ancient chroniclers. Sismondi attributes the conspiracy to his jealousy; but I find this nowhere asserted by the national historians. Vettor Sandi, indeed, says, that "Altri scrissero che............. dalla gelosa suspizion di esso Doge siasi fatto (Michel Steno) staccar con violenza,” etc. etc.; but this appears to have been by no means the general opinion, nor is it alluded to by Sanuto or by Navagero; and Sandi himself adds a moment after, that "per altre Veneziane memorie traspiri, che non il solo desiderio di vendetta lo dispose alla congiura, ma anche la innata abituale ambizion sua, per cui anelava a farsi principe indipendente." The first motive appears to have been excited by the gross affront of the words written by Michel Steno on the ducal chair, and by the light and inadequate sentence of the Forty on the offender, who was one of their "tre Capi." The attentions of Steno himself appear to have been directed towards one of her damsels, and not to the "Dogaressa" herself, against whose fame not the slightest insinuation appears, while she is praised for her beauty, and remarked for her youth. Neither do I find it asserted (unless the hint of Sandi be an assertion) that the Doge was actuated by jealousy of his wife; but rather by respect for her, and for his own honour, warranted by his past services and present dignity.

Marino Faliero appears to have been a man of talents and of courage. I find him commander in chief of the land-forces at the siege of Zara, where he beat the King of Hungary and his army of 80,000 men, killing 8000 men and keeping the besieged at the same time in check, an exploit to which I know none similar in history, except that of Cæsar at Alesia, and of Prince Eugene at Belgrade. He was afterwards commander of the fleet in the same war. He took Capo d'Istria. He was ambassador at Genoa and Rome, at which last he received the news of his election to the Dukedom; his absence being a proof that he sought it by no intrigue, since he was apprized of his predecessor's death and his own succession at the same moment. But he appears to have been of an ungovernable temper. A story is told by Sanuto, of his having, many years before, when podesta and captain at Treviso, boxed I know not that the historical facts are the ears of the bishop, who was somewhat alluded to in English, unless by Dr. Moore tardy in bringing the Host. For this honest in his View of Italy. His account is false Sanuto "saddles him with a judgment," as and flippant, full of stale jests about old Thwackum did Square; but he does not men and young wives, and wondering at tell us whether he was punished or rebuked so great an effect from so slight a cause. by the Senate for this outrage at the time How so acute and severe an observer of of its commission. He seems, indeed, to mankind as the author of Zeluco could have been afterwards at peace with the wonder at this is inconceivable. He knew church, for we find him ambassador at Rome, that a basin of water spilt on Mrs. Masham's and invested with the fief of Val di Marino, gown deprived the Duke of Marlborough in the March of Treviso, and with the title of his command, and led to the inglorious of Count, by Lorenzo, Count - Bishop of peace of Utrecht that Louis XIV. was Ceneda. For facts my authorities are, Sa- plunged into the most desolating wars beauto, Vettor Sandi, Andrea Navagero, and cause his minister was nettled at his finding the account of the siege of Zara, first pub-fault with a window, and wished to give

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rack seems to argue any thing but his having shown a want of firmness, which would doubtless have been also mentioned by those minute historians who by no means favour him: such, indeed, would be contrary to his character as a soldier, to the age in which he lived, and at which he died, as it is to the truth of history. I know no justification at any distance of time for calumniating an historical character; surely truth belongs to the dead and to the unfortunate, and they who have died upon a scaffold have generally had faults enough of their own, without attributing to them that which the very incurring of the perils which conducted them to their violent death renders, of all others, the most improbable. The black veil which is painted over the place of Marino Faliero amongst the doges, and the Giant's Staircase, where he was crowned, and discrowned, and decapitated, struck forcibly upon my imagination, as did his fiery character and strange story. I went in 1819,

him another occupation — that Helen lost Troy--that Lucretia expelled the Tarquins from Rome and that Cava brought the Moors to Spain-that an insulted husband led the Gauls to Clusium, and thence to Rome that a single verse of Frederic II. of Prussia on the Abbé de Bernis, and a jest on Madame de Pompadour, led to the battle of Rosbach-that the elopement of Dearbhorgil with Mac Murchad conducted the English to the slavery of Ireland-that a personal pique between Maria Antoinette and the Duke of Orleans precipitated the first expulsion of the Bourbons-and, not to multiply instances, that Commodus, Domitian, and Caligula fell victims, not to their public tyranny, but to private vengeance and that an order to make Cromwell disembark from the ship in which he would have sailed to America, destroyed both King and Commonwealth. After these instances, on the least reflection, it is indeed extraordinary in Dr. Moore to seem surprised that a man, used to command, who had served and swayed in the most important in search of his tomb, more than once, to offices, should fiercely resent, in a fierce age, an unpunished affront, the grossest that can be offered to a man, be he prince or peasant. The age of Faliero is little to the purpose, unless to favour it.

"The young man's wrath is like straw on fire, "But like red-hot steel is the old man's ire."

"Young men soon give and soon forget affronts, "Old age is slow at both."

the church San Giovanni e San Paolo; and as I was standing before the monument of another family, a priest came up to me and said, “I can show you finer monuments than that." I told him that I was in search of that of the Faliero family, and particularly of the Doge Marino's. "Oh," said he, "I will show it you;" and conducting me to the outside, pointed out a Sarcophagus in the wall, with an illegible inscription. He said that it had been in a convent adLaugier's reflections are more philoso- joining, but was removed after the French phical:–“Tale fù il fine ignominioso di came, and placed in its present situation; un' uomo, che la sua nascita, la sua età, that he had seen the tomb opened at its il suo carattere dovevano tener lontano dalle removal; there were still some bones repassioni produttrici di grandi delitti. I suoi maining, but no positive vestige of the detalenti per lungo tempo esercitati ne' mag-capitation. The equestrian statue of which giori impieghi, la sua capacità sperimentata I have made mention in the third act as ne' governi e nelle ambasciate, gli avevano before that church, is not, however, of a acquistato la stima e la fiducia de' cittadini, Faliero, but of some other now obsolete ed avevano uniti i suffragj per collocarlo warrior, although of a later date. There alla testa della republica. Innalzato ad un were two other Doges of this family prior grado che terminava gloriosamenta la sua to Marino: Ordelafo, who fell in battle at vita, il risentimento di un' ingiuria leggiera Zara, in 1117, (where his descendant afterinsinuò nel suo cuore tal veleno che bastò wards conquered the Huns) and Vital a corrompere le antiche sue qualita, e a Faliero, who reigned in 1082. The family, condurlo al termine dei scellerati; serio originally from Fano, was of the most ilesempio, che prova non esservi età, in cui lustrious in blood and wealth in the city la prudenza umana sia sicura, e che nell' of once the most wealthy and still the most uomo restano sempre passioni capaci a dis- ancient families in Europe. The length I onorarlo, quando non invigili sopra se stesso." have gone into on this subject will show Laugier, Italian translation, vol. iv. p. 30. the interest I have taken in it. Whether Where did Dr. Moore find that Marino I have succeeded or not in the tragedy, I Faliero begged his life? I have searched have at least transferred into our language the chroniclers, and find nothing of the an historical fact worthy of commemoration. kind; it is true that he avowed all. He It is now four years that I have meditated was conducted to the place of torture, but this work, and before I had sufficiently there is no mention made of any application examined the records, I was rather dispo for mercy on his part; and the very cir-sed to have made it turn on a jealousy in cumstance of their having taken him to the Faliero. But perceiving no foundation for

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this in historical truth, and aware that | Baillie, and Milman, and John Wilson jealousy is an exhausted passion in the exist. The "City of the Plague" and the drama, I have given it a more historical "Fall of Jerusalem" are full of the best form. I was, besides, well advised by the materiel" for tragedy that has been seen late Matthew Lewis on that point, in talk- since Horace Walpole, except passages of ing with him of my intention, at Venice, Ethwald and De Montfort. It is the fashion in 1817. "If you make him jealous," said to underrate Horace Walpole; firstly, he, "recollect that you have to contend because he was a nobleman, and secondly, with established writers, to say nothing because he was a gentleman; but, to say of Shakspeare, and an exhausted subject; nothing of the composition of his incom-stick to the old fiery Doge's natural parable letters, and of the Castle of character, which will bear you out, if pro- Otranto, he is the "Ultimus Romanorum," perly drawn ; and make your plot as regular the author of the Mysterious Mother, a as you can." Sir William Drummond gave tragedy of the highest order, and not a me nearly the same counsel. How far I puling love-play. He is the father of the have followed these instructions, or whether first romance, and of the last tragedy in they have availed me, is not for me to our language, and surely worthy of a higher decide. I have had no view to the stage; place than any living writer, be be who in its present state it is, perhaps, not a he may. very exalted object of ambition; besides, I have been too much behind the scenes to have thought it not at any time. And I cannot conceive any man of irritable feeling putting himself at the mercies of an audience;-the sneering reader, and the loud critic, and the tart review, are scattered and distant calamities; but the trampling of an intelligent or of an ignorant audience on a production which, be it good or bad, has been a mental labour to the writer, is a palpable and immediate grievance,height-incidents, and almost the time, which was ened by a man's doubt of their competency to judge, and his certainty of his own imprudence in electing them his judges. Were I capable of writing a play which could be deemed stage-worthy, success would give me no pleasure, and failure great pain. It is for this reason that, even during the time of being one of the committee of one of the theatres, I never made the attempt, and never will.) But surely there is dramatic power somewhere, where Joanna

"While I was in the sub-committee of Drury Lane Theatre, I can vouch for my colleagues, and I hope for myself, that we did our best to bring back the legitimate drama. I tried what I could to get "De Montfort" revived, but in vain, and equally in vain in favour of Sotheby's "Ivan," which was thought an acting play; and I endeavoured also to wake Mr. Coleridge to write a tragedy. Those who are not in the secret will hardly believe that the "School for Scandal is the play which has brought least money, averaging the number of times it has been acted since its production; so Manager Dibdin asared me. Of what has occured since Maturin's "Bertram," I am not aware; so that I may be traduring, through ignorance, some excellent new writers: if so, I beg their pardon. I have been absent from England nearly five years, and, till last year, I never read an English newspaper since my departure, and am now only aware of theatrical matters through the medium of the Parisian English Gazette of Galignani, and only for the last twelve months. Let me then deprecate all offence to tragie or comic writers, to whom I wish well,

In speaking of the drama of Marino Faliero, I forgot to mention that the desire of preserving, though still too remote, a nearer approach to unity than the irregularity, which is the reproach of the English theatrical compositions, permits, has induced me to represent the conspiracy as already formed, and the Doge acceding to it, whereas, in fact, it was of his own preparation and that of Israel Bertuccio. The other characters (except that of the duchess),

wonderfully short for such a design in real life,are strictly historical,except that all the consultations took place in the palace. Had I followed this, the unity would have been better preserved; but I wished to produce the Doge in the full assembly of the conspirators, instead of monotonously placing him always in dialogue with the same individuals. For the real facts, I refer to the extracts given in the Appendix in Italian, with a translation.

and of whom I know nothing. The long complaints of the actual state of the drama arise, however, from no fault of the performers. I can conceive nothing better than Kemble, Cooke, and Kean, in their very different manners, or than Elliston in gentleman's comedy, and in some parts of tragedy. Miss O'Neill I never saw, having made and kept a determination to see nothing which should divide or disturb my recollection of Siddons. Siddons and Kemble were the ideal of tragic action; I never saw any thing at all resembling them, even in person for this reason, we shall never see again Coriolanus or Macbeth. When Kean is blamed for want of dignity, we should remember that it is a grace and not an art, and not to be attained by study. In all not SUPERnatural parts he is perfect; even his very defects belong, or seem to belong, to the parts themselves, and appear truer to nature. But of Kemble we may say, with reference to his acting, what the Cardinal de Retz said of the Marquis of Montrose, "that he was the only man he ever saw who reminded him of the heroes of Plutarch."

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