“We find thus in this tragedy the quintessence of the most astonishing talent born to be its own tormentor.  The character of Lord Byron’s life and poetry hardly permits a just and equitable appreciation.  He has often enough confessed what it is that torments him.  He has repeatedly pourtrayed it; and scarcely any one feels compassion for this intolerable suffering, over which he is ever laboriously ruminating.  There are, properly speaking, two females whose phantoms for ever haunt him, and which, in this piece also, perform principal parts—­one under the name of Astarte, the other without form or actual presence, and merely a voice.  Of the horrid occurrence which took place with the former, the following is related:—­When a bold and enterprising young man, he won the affections of a Florentine lady.  Her husband discovered the amour, and murdered his wife; but the murderer was the same night found dead in the street, and there was no one on whom any suspicion could be attached.  Lord Byron removed from Florence, and these spirits haunted him all his life after.

“This romantic incident is rendered highly probable by innumerable allusions to it in his poems.  As, for instance, when turning his sad contemplations inwards, he applies to himself the fatal history of the king of Sparta.  It is as follows:—­Pausanias, a Lacedemonian general, acquires glory by the important victory at Plataea, but afterwards forfeits the confidence of his countrymen through his arrogance, obstinacy, and secret intrigues with the enemies of his country.  This man draws upon himself the heavy guilt of innocent blood, which attends him to his end; for, while commanding the fleet of the allied Greeks, in the Black Sea, he is inflamed with a violent passion for a Byzantine maiden.  After long resistance, he at length obtains her from her parents, and she is to be delivered up to him at night.  She modestly desires the servant to put out the lamp, and, while groping her way in the dark, she overturns it.  Pausanias is awakened from his sleep—­apprehensive of an attack from murderers, he seizes his sword, and destroys his mistress.  The horrid sight never leaves him.  Her shade pursues him unceasingly, and he implores for aid in vain from the gods and the exorcising priests.

“That poet must have a lacerated heart who selects such a scene from antiquity, appropriates it to himself, and burdens his tragic image with it.  The following soliloquy, which is overladen with gloom and a weariness of life, is, by this remark, rendered intelligible.  We recommend it as an exercise to all friends of declamation.  Hamlet’s soliloquy appears improved upon here."[76]

[Footnote 76:  The critic here subjoins the soliloquy from Manfred, beginning “We are the fools of time and terror,” in which the allusion to Pausanias occurs.]

* * * * *

LETTER 378.  TO MR. MOORE.