Act i. sc. 3, _s.f._ _Works of the Earl of Orford_, 1798, i. 55.]

Act i. sc. 3, s.f. Works of the Earl of Orford, 1798, i. 55.]

[379] {340}[Byron received a copy of Goethe's review of Manfred, which appeared in Kunst und Alterthum (ii. 2. 191) in May, 1820. In a letter to Murray, dated October 17, 1820 (Letters, 1901, v. 100), he enclosed a letter to Goethe, headed "For Marino Faliero. Dedication to Baron Goethe, etc., etc., etc." It is possible that Murray did not take the "Dedication" seriously, but regarded it as a jeu d'esprit, designed for the amusement of himself and his "synod." At any rate, the "Dedication" did not reach Goethe's hand till 1831, when it was presented to him at Weimar by John Murray the Third. "It is written," says Moore, who printed a mutilated version in his Letters and Journals, etc., 1830, ii. 356-358, "in the poet's most whimsical and mocking mood; and the unmeasured severity poured out in it upon the two favourite objects of his wrath and ridicule, compels me to deprive the reader of its most amusing passages." The present text, which follows the MS., is reprinted from Letters, 1901, v. 100-104--

 "Dedication to Baron Goethe, etc., etc., etc.

 "Sir--In the Appendix to an English work lately translated into
 German and published at Leipsic, a judgment of yours upon English
 poetry is quoted as follows: 'That in English poetry, great genius,
 universal power, a feeling of profundity, with sufficient
 tenderness and force, are to be found; but that _altogether these
 do not constitute poets_,' etc., etc.

 "I regret to see a great man falling into a great mistake. This
 opinion of yours only proves that the '_Dictionary of Ten Thousand
 living English Authors_'[A] has not been translated into German.
 You will have read, in your friend Schlegel's version, the dialogue
 in _Macbeth_--

                "'There are _ten thousand!_
_Macbeth_. _Geese_, villain?
_Answer_.                       _Authors_, sir.'[B]

 Now, of these 'ten thousand authors,' there are actually nineteen
 hundred and eighty-seven poets, all alive at this moment, whatever
 their works may be, as their booksellers well know: and amongst
 these there are several who possess a far greater reputation than
 mine, though considerably less than yours. It is owing to this
 neglect on the part of your German translators that you are not
 aware of the works of William Wordsworth, who has a baronet in
 London[C] who draws him frontispieces and leads him about to
 dinners and to the play; and a Lord in the country,[D] who gave him
 a place in the Excise--and a cover at his table. You do not know
 perhaps that this Gentleman is the greatest of all poets
 past--present and to come--besides which he has written an '_Opus
 Magnum_' in prose--during the late election for Westmoreland.[E]
 His principal publication is entitled '_Peter Bell_' which he had
 withheld from the public for '_one and twenty years_'--to the
 irreparable loss of all those who died in the interim, and will
 have no opportunity of reading it before the resurrection. There is
 also another named Southey, who is more than a poet, being actually
 poet Laureate,--a post which corresponds with what we call in Italy
 Poeta Cesareo, and which you call in German--I know not what; but
 as you have a '_Caesar_'--probably you have a name for it. In
 England there is no _Caesar_--only the Poet.

 "I mention these poets by way of sample to enlighten you. They form
 but two bricks of our Babel, (Windsor bricks, by the way) but may
 serve for a specimen of the building.

 "It is, moreover, asserted that 'the predominant character of the
 whole body of the present English poetry is a _disgust_ and
 _contempt_ for life.' But I rather suspect that by one single work
 of _prose_, _you_ yourself have excited a greater contempt for life
 than all the English volumes of poesy that ever were written.
 Madame de Stäel says, that 'Werther has occasioned more suicides
 than the most beautiful woman;' and I really believe that he has
 put more individuals out of this world than Napoleon
 himself,--except in the way of his profession. Perhaps, Illustrious
 Sir, the acrimonious judgment passed by a celebrated northern
 journal[F] upon you in particular, and the Germans in general, has
 rather indisposed you towards English poetry as well as criticism.
 But you must not regard our critics, who are at bottom good-natured
 fellows, considering their two professions,--taking up the law in
 court, and laying it down out of it. No one can more lament their
 hasty and unfair judgment, in your particular, than I do; and I so
 expressed myself to your friend Schlegel, in 1816, at Coppet.

 "In behalf of my 'ten thousand' living brethren, and of myself, I
 have thus far taken notice of an opinion expressed with regard to
 'English poetry' in general, and which merited notice, because it
 was yours.

 "My principal object in addressing you was to testify my sincere
 respect and admiration of a man, who, for half a century, has led
 the literature of a great nation, and will go down to posterity as
 the first literary Character of his Age.

 "You have been fortunate, Sir, not only in the writings which have
 illustrated your name, but in the name itself, as being
 sufficiently musical for the articulation of posterity. In this you
 have the advantage of some of your countrymen, whose names would
 perhaps be immortal also--if anybody could pronounce them.

 "It may, perhaps, be supposed, by this apparent tone of levity,
 that I am wanting in intentional respect towards you; but this will
 be a mistake: I am always flippant in prose. Considering you, as I
 really and warmly do, in common with all your own, and with most
 other nations, to be by far the first literary Character which has
 existed in Europe since the death of Voltaire, I felt, and feel,
 desirous to inscribe to you the following work,--_not_ as being
 either a tragedy or a _poem_, (for I cannot pronounce upon its
 pretensions to be either one or the other, or both, or neither,)
 but as a mark of esteem and admiration from a foreigner to the man
 who has been hailed in Germany 'the great Goethe.'

 "I have the honour to be,

 With the truest respect,

 Your most obedient and

 Very humble servant,

 Byron,

 "Ravenna, 8^bre^ 14º, 1820.

 "P.S.--I perceive that in Germany, as well as in Italy, there is a
 great struggle about what they call '_Classical_' and
 '_Romantic_,'--terms which were not subjects of classification in
 England, at least when I left it four or five years ago. Some of
 the English Scribblers, it is true, abused Pope and Swift, but the
 reason was that they themselves did not know how to write either
 prose or verse; but nobody thought them worth making a sect of.
 Perhaps there may be something of the kind sprung up lately, but I
 have not heard much about it, and it would be such bad taste that I
 shall be very sorry to believe it."

Another Dedication, to be prefixed to a Second Edition of the play was found amongst Byron's papers. It remained in MS. till 1832, when it was included in a prefatory note to Marino Faliero, Works of Lord Byron, 1832, xii. 50.

 "Dedication of _Marino Faliero_.

 "To the Honourable Douglas Kinnaird.

 "My dear Douglas,--I dedicate to you the following tragedy, rather
 on account of your good opinion of it, than from any notion of my
 own that it may be worthy of your acceptance. But if its merits
 were ten times greater than they possibly can be, this offering
 would still be a very inadequate acknowledgment of the active and
 steady friendship with which, for a series of years, you have
 honoured your obliged and affectionate friend,

                                       "BYRON.
     "Ravenna, Sept. 1st, 1821."

[A][A Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors of Great Britain and Ireland, etc., London, 1816, 8vo.]

[B] [Macbeth. Where got'st thou that goose look? Servant. There is ten thousand-- Macbeth. Geese, villain? Servant. Soldiers, sir." Macbeth, act v. sc. 3, lines 12, 13.]

[C][Sir George Beaumont. See Professor W. Knight, Life of Wordsworth, ii. (Works, vol. x.) 56.]

[D][Lord Lonsdale (ibid., p. 209).]

[E][Two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmoreland, 1818.]

[F][See an article on Goethe's Aus Meinem Leben, etc., in the Edinburgh Review for June, 1816, vol. xxvi. pp. 304-337.] ]

[cv] {345} Are none yet of the Messengers returned?--[MS. M.]

[380] [The Consiglio Minore, which originally consisted of the Doge and his six councillors, was afterwards increased, by the addition of the three Capi of the Quarantia Criminale, and was known as the Serenissima Signoria (G. Cappelletti, Storia della Repubblica di Venezia, 1850, i. 483). The Forty who were "debating on Steno's accusation" could not be described as the "Signory."]

[cw] With seeming patience.--[MS. M.]

[cx] He sits as deep--[MS. M.]

[cy] {346}Or aught that imitates--.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]

[cz] Young, gallant--.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]

[381] [Bertuccio Faliero was a distant connection of the Doge, not his nephew. Matters of business and family affairs seem to have brought them together, and it is evident that they were on intimate terms.--La Congiura, p. 84.]

[382] [The Avogadori, three in number, were the conductors of criminal prosecutions on the part of the State; and no act of the councils was valid, unless sanctioned by the presence of one of them; but they were not, as Byron seems to imply, a court of first instance. The implied reproach that they preferred to send the case to appeal because Steno was a member of the "Quarantia," is based on an error of Sanudo's (vide ante, p. 333).]

[da] {348} ----Marin! Falieræ [sic].--[MS. M.]

[383] ["Marin Faliero, dalla bella moglie--altri la gode, ed egli la mantien."--Marino Samuto, Vitæ Ducum Venetorum, apud Muratori, Rerum Italicurum Scriptores, 1733, xxii. 628-638]. Navagero, in his Storia della Repubblica Veneriana, ibid., xxiii. 1040, gives a coarser rendering of Steno's Lampoon.--"Becco Marino Fallier dalla belta mogier;" and there are older versions agreeing in the main with that Faliero's by Sanudo. It is, however, extremely doubtful whether Faliro's conspiracy was, in any sense, the outcome of a personal insult. The story of the Lampoon first appears in the Chronicle of Lorenzo de Monaci, who wrote in the latter half of the fifteenth century. "Fama fuit ... quia aliqui adolescentuli nobiles scripserunt in angulis interioris palatii aliqua verba ignominiosa, et quod ipse (il Doge) magis incanduit quoniam adolescentuli illi parva fuerant animadversione puniti." In course of time the "noble youths" became a single noble youth, whose name occurred in the annals, and the derivation or evolution of the "verba ignominiosa," followed by a natural process.--La Congiura, Nuona Archivio Veneto, 1897, tom. xiii. pt. ii. p. 347.]

[384] {349}[Sanudo gives two versions of Steno's punishment: (1) that he should be imprisoned for two months, and banished from Venice for a year; (2) that he should be imprisoned for one month, flogged with a fox's tail, and pay one hundred lire to the Republic.]

[385] {350}[Vide ante, p. 331.]

[386] {351}[Faliero's appeal to the "law" is a violation of "historical accuracy." The penalty for an injury to the Doge was not fixed by law, but was decided from time to time by the Judge, in accordance with unwritten custom.--La Congiura, p. 60.]

[db] {352}Who threw his sting into a poisonous rhyme.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]

[387] [For the story of Cæsar, Pompeia, and Clodius, see Plutarch's Lives, "Cæsar," Langhorne's translation, 1838, p. 498.]

[dc]----Enrico.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]

[388] [According to Sanudo (Vitæ Ducum Venetorum, apud Muratori, Rerum Ital. Script., 1733, xxii. 529), it was Ser Pantaleone Barbo who intervened, when (A.D. 1204) the election to the Empire of Constantinople lay between the Doge "Arrigo Dandolo" and "Conte Baldovino di Fiandra."]

[dd] {354} ----in olden days.--[MS. M.]

[389] {356}[According to the much earlier, and, presumably, more historical narrative of Lorenzo de Monaci, Bertuccio Isarello was not chief of the Arsenalotti, but simply the patron, that is the owner, of a vessel (paron di nave), and consequently a person of importance amongst sailors and naval artisans; and the noble who strikes the fatal blow is not Barbaro, but a certain Giovanni Dandolo, who is known, at that time, to have been "sopracomito and consigliere del capitano da mar." If the Admiral of the Arsenal had been engaged in the conspiracy, the fact could hardly have escaped the notice of contemporary chroniclers. Signor Lazzarino suggests that the name Gisello, or Girello, which has been substituted for that of Israel Bertuccio, is a corruption of Isarello.--La Congiura, p. 74.]

[390] [The island of Sapienza lies about nine miles to the north-west of Capo Gallo, in the Morea. The battle in which the Venetians under Nicolò Pisani were defeated by the Genoese under Paganino Doria was fought November 4, 1354. (See Venice, an Historical Sketch, by Horatio F. Brown, 1893, p. 201.)]

[391] An historical fact. See Marin Sanuto's Lives of the Doges. ["Sanuto says that Heaven took away his senses for this buffet, and induced him to conspire:--'Però fu permesso che il Faliero perdesse l'intelletto.'"--B. Letters (Works, etc., 1832, xii. 82. note 1).

[392] {358}["The number of their constant Workmen is 1200; and all these Artificers have a Superior Officer called Amiraglio, who commands the Bucentaure on Ascension Day, when the Duke goes in state to marry the sea. And here we cannot but notice, that by a ridiculous custom this Admiral makes himself Responsible to the Senat for the inconstancy of the Sea, and engages his Life there shall be no Tempest that day. 'Tis this Admiral who has the Guard of the Palais, St. Mark, with his Arsenalotti, during the interregnum. He carries the Red Standard before the Prince when he makes his Entry, by virtue of which office he has his Cloak, and the two Basons (out of which the Duke throws the money to the People) for his fee."--The History of the Government of Venice, written in the year 1675, by the Sieur Amelott de la Houssaie, London, 1677, p. 63.]

[393] [Vide ante, p. 356, note 1.]

[394] {360}[The famous measure known as the closing of the Great Council was carried into force during the Dogeship (1289-1311) of Pietro Gradenigo. On the last day of February, 1297, a law was proposed and passed, "That the Council of Forty are to ballot, one by one, the names of all those who during the last four years have had a seat in the Great Council.... Three electors shall be chosen to submit names of fresh candidates for the Great Council, on the ... approval of the Doge." But strict as these provisions were, they did not suffice to restrict the government to the aristocracy. It was soon decreed "that only those who could prove that a paternal ancestor had sat on the Great Council, after its creation in 1176, should now be eligible as members.... It is in this provision that we find the essence of the Serrata del Maggior Consiglio.... The work was not completed at one stroke.... In 1315 a list of all those who were eligible ... was compiled. The scrutiny ... was entrusted to the Avogadori di Comun, and became ... more and more severe. To ensure the purity of blood, they opened a register of marriages and births.... Thus the aristocracy proceeded to construct itself more and more upon a purely oligarchical basis."--Venice, an Historical Sketch, by Horatio F. Brown, 1893, pp. 162-164.]

[395] {362}[To "partake" this or that is an obsolete construction, but rests on the authority of Dryden and other writers of the period. Byron's "have partook" cannot come under the head of "good, sterling, genuine English"! (See letter to Murray, October 8, 1820, Letters, 1901, v. 89.)]

[396] {363}[The bells of San Marco were never rung but by order of the Doge. One of the pretexts for ringing this alarm was to have been an announcement of the appearance of a Genoese fleet off the Lagune. According to Sanudo, "on the appointed day they [the followers of the sixteen leaders of the conspiracy] were to make affrays amongst themselves, here and there, in order that the Duke might have a pretence for tolling the bells of San Marco." (See, too, Sketches from Venetian History, 1831, i. 266, note.)]

[397] ["Le Conseil des Dix avail ses prisons speciales dites camerotti; celles non officiellement appelées les pozzi et les piombi, les puits et les plombs, étaient de son redoubtable domaine. Les Camerotti di sotto (les puits) étaient obscurs mais non accessibles à l'eau du canal, comme on l'a fait croire en des récits dignes d'Anne Radcliffe; les camerotti di soprà (les plombs) étaient des cellules fortement doublées de bois mais non privées de lumière."--Les Archives de Venise, par Armand Baschet, 1870, p. 535. For the pozzi and the "Bridge of Sighs" see note by Hobhouse, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 465; and compare Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanza i. line 1 (and The Two Foscari, act iv. sc. 1), Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 327, note 2.]

[398] {365}[For "Sapienza," vide ante, p. 356. According to the genealogies, Marin Falier, by his first wife, had a daughter Lucia, who was married to Franceschino Giustiniani; but there is no record of a son. (See La Congiura, p. 21.)]

[399] {366}["The Doges were all buried in St. Mark's before Faliero: it is singular that when his predecessor, Andrea Dandolo, died, the Ten made a law that all the future Doges should be buried with their families in their own churches,--one would think by a kind of presentiment. So that all that is said of his Ancestral Doges, as buried at St. John's and Paul's, is altered from the fact, they being in St. Mark's. Make a note of this, and put Editor as the subscription to it. As I make such pretensions to accuracy, I should not like to be twitted even with such trifles on that score. Of the play they may say what they please, but not so of my costume and dram. pers.--they having been real existences."--Letter to Murray, October 12, 1820, Letters, 1901, v. 95. Byron's injunction was not carried out till 1832.]

[400] A gondola is not like a common boat, but is as easily rowed with one oar as with two (though, of course, not so swiftly), and often is so from motives of privacy; and, since the decay of Venice, of economy.

[401] {367}["What Gifford says (of the first act) is very consolatory. 'English, sterling genuine English,' is a desideratum amongst you, and I am glad that I have got so much left; though Heaven knows how I retain it: I hear none but from my Valet, and his is Nottinghamshire; and I see none but in your new publications, and theirs is no language at all, but jargon.... Gifford says that it is 'good, sterling, genuine English,' and Foscolo says that the characters are right Venetian."--Letters to Murray, Sept. 11, Oct. 8, 1820, Letters, 1901, v. 75-89.]

[402] [Byron admits (vide ante, p. 340) that the character of the "Dogaressa" is more or less his own creation. It may be remarked that in Casimir Delavigne's version of the story, the Duchess (Elena) cherishes a secret and criminal attachment for Bertuccio Faliero, and that in Mr. Swinburne's tragedy, while innocent in act, she is smitten with remorse for a passion which overmasters her loyalty to her husband. Byron's Angiolina is "faultily faultless, ... splendidly null."

In a letter to Murray, dated January 4, 1821 (Letters, 1901, v. 218), he says, "As I think that love is not the principal passion for tragedy, you will not find me a popular writer. Unless it is Love, furious, criminal, and hapless [as in The Mysterious Mother, or in Alfieri's Mirra, or Shelley's Cenci], it ought not to make a tragic subject. When it is melting and maudlin, it does, but it ought not to do; it is then for the gallery and second-price boxes." It is probable that he owed these sentiments to the theory and practice of Vittorio Alfieri. "It is extraordinary," writes M. de Fallette Barrol (Monthly Magazine, April, 1805, reprinted in Preface to Tragedie di Alfieri, A. Montucci, Edinburgh, 1805, i. xvi. sq.), "that a man whose soul possessed an uncommon share of ardour and sensibility, and had experienced all the violence of the passions, should scarcely have condescended to introduce love into his tragedies; or, when he does, that he should only employ it with a kind of reserve and severity.... He probably regarded it as a hackneyed agent; for in ... Myrrha it appears in such a strange character, that all the art of the writer is not capable of divesting it of an air at once ludicrous and disgusting."

But apart from the example of Alfieri, there was another motive at work--a determination to prove to the world that he was the master of his own temperament, and that, if he chose, he could cast away frivolity and cynicism, and clothe himself with austerity "as with a garment." He had been taken to task for "treating well-nigh with equal derision the most pure of virtues, and the most odious of vices" (Blackwood's Edin. Mag., August, 1819), and here was an "answer to his accusers!"]

[403] {368}[The exact date of Marin Falier's birth is a matter of conjecture, but there is reason to believe that he Was under seventy-five years of age at the time of the conspiracy. The date assigned is 1280-1285 A.D.]

[de] {369} ----has he been doomed?--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]

[404] {370}[According to Dio Cassius, the last words of Brutus were, Ὦ τλῆμον ἀρετή, λόγος ἄρ᾽ ἦσθ᾽ [ἄλλως], ἐγὼ δὲ ὡς ἕργων ἥσκουν' σὺ δ᾽ ἀρ᾽ ἐδούλευες τύχῃ --Hist. Rom., lib. xlvii. c. 49, ed. v., P. Boissevain, 1898, ii. 246.]

[df] {375}

_Doth Heaven forgive her own? is Satan saved?_
_But be it so?_--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]

[405] [There is no MS. authority for "From wrath eternal."]

[dg] Oh do not speak thus rashly.-[Alternative reading. MS. M.]

[406] {377}

["Beg Heaven to cleanse the leprosy of lust."

                              _'Tis Pity she's a Whore_, by John Ford.
                               Lamb's _Dramatic Poets_, 1835, i. 265.]

[407] {378}[The Dogaressa Aluica was the daughter of Nicolò Gradenigo. It was the Doge who inherited the "blood of Loredano" through his mother Beriola.]

[408] {381}[The lines "and the hour hastens" to "whate'er may urge" are not in the MS.]

[dh] {382}Where Death sits throned----.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]

[409] [Filippo Calendario, who is known to have been one of the principal conspirators, was a master stone-cutter, who worked as a sculptor, and ranked as such. The tradition, to which Byron does not allude, that he was an architect, and designed the new palace begun in 1354, may probably be traced to a document of the fifteenth century, in which Calendario is described as commissario, i.e. executor, of Piero Basejo, who worked as a master stone-cutter for the Republic. The Maggior Consiglio was its own architect, and would not have empowered a tagliapietra, however eminent, to act on his own responsibility.--La Congiura, pp. 76, 77.]

[410] {383}[The sbirri were constables, officers of the police magistrates, the signori di notte. The Italians have a saying, Dir le sue ragioni agli sbirri, that is, to argue with a policeman.]

[411] {384}["It was concerted that sixteen or seventeen leaders should be stationed in various parts of the city, each being at the head of forty men, armed and prepared; but the followers were not to know their destination."--See translation of Sanudo's Narrative, post, p. 464.]

[412] [In the earlier chronicles Beltramo is named Vendrame. He was, according to some authorities, compare with Lioni, i.e. a co-sponsor of the same godchild. Signor Lazzarino (La Congiura, p. 90 (2)) maintains that in all probability Beltramo betrayed his companions from selfish motives, in order to save himself, and not from any "compunctious visitings," or because he was "too full o' the milk of human kindness." According to Sanudo (vide post, p. 465), "Beltramo Bergamasco" was not one of the principal conspirators, but "had heard a word or two of what was to take place." Ser Marco Soranzano (p. 466) was one of the "Zonta" of twenty who were elected as assessors to the Ten, to try the Doge of high treason against the Republic.]

[413] {386}[Compare--

"If we should fail,----We fail.
But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
And we'll not fail."

                                _Macbeth_, act i. sc. 7, lines 59-61.]

[di] In a great cause the block may soak their gore.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]

[dj] If Brutus had not lived? He failed in giving.--[MS. M.]

[414] [At the battle of Philippi, B.C. 42, Brutus lamented over the body of Cassius, and called him the "last of the Romans."--Plutarch's Lives, "Marcus Brutus," Langhorne's translation, 1838, p. 686.]

[415] [The citizens of Aquileia and Padua fled before the invasion of Attila, and retired to the Isle of Gradus, and Rivus Altus, or Rialto. Theodoric's minister, Cassiodorus, who describes the condition of the fugitives some seventy years after they had settled on the "hundred isles," compares them to "waterfowl who had fixed their nests on the bosom of the waves." (See Gibbon's Decline and Fall, etc., 1825, ii. 375, note 6, and 376, notes 1, 2.)]

[416] [Mal bigatto, "vile silkworm," is a term of contempt and reproach = "uomo de maligna intenzione," a knave.]

[417] {388}[Compare--

  "I'll make assurance double sure,
And take a bond of fate."

                              _Macbeth_, act iv. sc. I, lines 83, 84.]

[418] {390}[For Byron's correction of this statement, vide ante, p. 366. The monument of the Doge Vitale Falier (d. 1096) "was at the right side of the principal entrance into the Vestibule." According to G. Meschinello (La Chiesa Ducale, 1753), Ordelafo Falier was buried in the Atrio of St. Mark's. See, too, Venetia città nobilissima ... descritta da F. Sansovino, 1663, pp. 96, 556.]

[dk] We thought to make our peers and not our masters.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]

[dl] ----merit such requital.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]

[419] {391}[Compare--

  "I have set my life upon a cast,
And I will stand the hazard of the die."

                           _Richard III_., act v. sc. 4, lines 9, 10.]

[420] {392}["The equestrian statue of which I have made mention in the third act as before the church, is not ... of a Faliero, but of some other now obsolete warrior, although of a later date."--Vide ante, Preface, p. 336. "In the Campo in front of the church [facing the Rio dei Mendicanti] stands the equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, the second equestrian statue raised in Italy after the revival of the arts....The handsome marble pedestal is lofty, supported and flanked by composite columns."--Handbook: Northern Italy, p. 374.]

[dm] {393}Nor dwindle to a cut-throat without shuddering.--[MS. M. erased.]

[dn] A scourged mechanic----.--[MS. M.] A roused mechanic----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[421] {394}An historical fact. [See Appendix A, p. 464.]

[do]

               / _in_ \

So let them die < > one.--[MS. M.] \ as /

[dp] {397}We are all lost in wonder--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]

[dq] ----of our splendid City.--[MS. M. erased.]

[422] [Compare--

"Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles."

           _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza i. line 9, and _var_. i.]

[dr] {398}But all the worst sins of the Spartan state.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]

[ds] The Lords of old Laconia----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[423] {399}[Compare--

"A king of shreds and patches."

                                  _Hamlet_, act iii. sc. 4, line 102.]

[424] ["The members of the Ten (Il Cousiglio de' Dieci) were elected in the Great Council for one year only, and were not re-eligible for the year after they had held office. Every month the Ten elected three of their own number as chiefs, or Capi of the Council.... The court consisted, besides the Ten, of the Doge and his six councillors, seventeen members in all, of whom twelve were necessary to make a quorum. One of the Avogadori di Comun, or State advocates, was always present, without the power to vote, but to act as clerk to the court, informing it of the law, and correcting it where its procedure seemed informal. Subsequently it became customary to add twenty members to the Council, elected in the Maggior Consiglio, for each important case as it arose."--Venice, an Historical Sketch, by Horatio F. Brown, 1893, pp. 177, 178. (See, too, Les Archives de Venise, par Armand Baschet, 1870, p. 525.)]

[425] {400}[The chronicles are silent as to any embassy or commission from the Republic to Rhodes or Cyprus in which Marin Falier held office or took any part whatever. Cyprus did not pass into the hands of Venice till 1489, and Rhodes was held by the Knights of St. John till 1522.]

[426] {401}[Compare--

"We have scotched the snake, not killed it."

                                   Macbeth, act iii. sc. II, line 13.]

[dt] {402}Fought by my side, and John Grimani shared.--[MS. M. erased.]

[427] [Marc Cornaro did not "share" his Genoese, but his Hungarian embassy.--M. Faliero Avanti il Dogado: Archivio Veneto, 1893, vol. v. pt. i. p. 144.]

[du] {403}My mission to the Pope; I saved the life.--[MS. M. erased.]

[dv]

_Bear witness with me! ye who hear and know,_
_And feel our mutual mass of many wrongs._--[MS. M. erased.]

[428] {404}[The Italian Oimé recalls the Latin Hei mihi and the Greek Οῖμοι [Greek: Oi~moi] ]

[429] [Compare--

"Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven,
Hope sapped, name blighted, Life's life lied away?"

                  _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza cxxxv. lines 5, 6.

And--

"The beings which surrounded him were gone.
Or were at war with him."

              _The Dream_, sect. viii. lines 3, 4, _vide ante_, p. 40]

[dw] Sate grinning Mockery----.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]

[dx] {405}The feelings they abused----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[dy] ----and then perish.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]

[dz] {406}

                                  / _carrion_ \

Nor turn aside to strike at such a < >--[MS. M.] \ wretch /

[ea] {407}You are a patriot, plebeian Gracchus.--[Ed. 1832.] (MS., and First Edition, 1821, insert "a.")

[430] [Compare "Why, Hal, 'tis my vocation, Hal; 'tis no sin for a man to labour in his vocation."--I Henry IV., act i. sc. 2, lines 101, 102.]

[eb] {409}To this now shackled----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[431] {410}[Byron told Medwin that he wrote "Lioni's soliloquy one moonlight night, after coming from the Benzoni's."--Conversations, 1824, p. 177.]

[ec] High o'er the music----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[432] {411}["At present, I am on the invalid regimen myself. The Carnival--that is, the latter part of it, and sitting up late o' nights, had knocked me up a little.... The mumming closed with a masked ball at the Fenice, where I went, as also to most of the ridottos, etc., etc.; and, though I did not dissipate much upon the whole, yet I find 'the sword wearing out the scabbard,' though I have but just turned the corner of twenty-nine.

"So we'll go no more a roving
  So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
  And the moon be still as bright.

"For the sword outwears its sheath,
  And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
  And Love itself have rest.

"Though the night was made for loving,
  And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
  By the light of the moon."