[This drama was begun at Pisa in 1821, but was not pub. lished till January, 1824. Mr. Medwin says, "On my calling on Lord Byron one morning, he produced the Deformed Transformed.' Handing it to Shelley, he said Shelley, I have been writing a Faustish kind of drama tell me what you think of it. After reading it attentively, Shelley returned it. 'Well,' said Lord B., how do you like it? Least,' replied he, of any thing I ever saw of yours. It is a bad imitation of Faust,' and besides, there are two entire lines of Southey's in it.' Lord Byron changed colour immediately, and asked hastily, what lines?' Shelley repeated, And water shall see thee, And fear thee, and flee thee.' They are in the Curse of Kehama.' His Lordship instantly threw the poem into the fire. He seemed to feel no chagrin at seeing it consume—at least his countenance betrayed none, and his conversation became more gay and lively than usual. Whether it was hatred of Southey, or respect for Shelley's opinion, which made him commit the act that I considered a sort of suicide, was always doubtful to me. I was never more surprised than to see, two years afterwards, The Deformed Transformed' announced (supposing it to have perished at Pisa); but it seems that he must have had another copy of the manuscript, or that he had re-written it perhaps, without changing a word, except omitting the Kehama lines. His memory was remarkably retentive of his own writings. I be lieve he could have quoted almost every line he ever wrote." Mrs. Shelley, whose copy of "The Deformed Transformed" lies before us, has written as follows on the fly-leaf: "This had long been a favourite subject with Lord Byron. I think that he mentioned it also in Switzerland. I copied ithe 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 Aikin's 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 re And never seen the light! Bert. But as thou hast - hence, hence - and do thy best! That back of thine may bear its burthen; 'tis More high, if not so broad as that of others. Arn. It bears its burthen; but, my heart! Will it Sustain that which you lay upon it, mother? I love, or, at the least, I loved you: nothing peated to me; lest I should hear it first from some one else. No action of Lord Byron's life scarce a line he has written -but was influenced by his personal defect."] 2 [Published in 1803, the work of a Joshua Pickersgill, jun.] 3 [A clever anonymous critic thus sarcastically opens his notice of this poem: "The reader has no doubt often heard of the Devil and Dr. Faustus: this is but a new birth of the same unrighteous couple, who are christened, however, by the noble hierophant who presides over the infernal ceremony, Julius Cæsar and Count Arnold. The drama opens with a scene between the latter, who is to all appearance a well-disposed young man, of a very deformed person, and his mother: this good lady, with somewhat less maternal piety about her than adorns the mother-ape in the fable, turns her dutiful incubus of a son out of doors to gather wood. Arnold, upon this, proceeds incontinently to kill himself, by falling, after the manner of Brutus, on his wood-knife: he is, however, piously dissuaded from this guilty act, by whom does the reader think? A monk, perhaps, or a methodist preacher? no;-but by the Devil himself, in the shape of a tall black man, who rises, like an African water god, out of a fountain. To this stranger, after the exchange of a few sinister compliments, Arnold, without more ado, sells his soul, for the privilege of wearing the beautiful form of Achilles. In the midst of all this absurdity, we still, however, recognise the master-mind of our great poet: his bold and beautiful spirit flashes at intervals through the surrounding horrors, into which he has chosen to plunge after Goethe, his magnus Apollo."] 4["One of the few pages of Lord Byron's Memoranda,' which related to his early days, was where, in speaking of his own sensitiveness on the subject of his deformed foot, he described the feeling of horror and humiliation that came over him, when his mother, in one of her fits of passion, called him a lame brat!' It may be questioned, whether this drama was not indebted for its origin to this single recollection." MoORE. "Lord Byron's own mother, when in ill humour with him, used to make the deformity in his foot the subject of taunts and reproaches. She would (we quote from a letter written by one of her relations in Scotland) pass from passionate caresses to the repulsion of actual disgust; then devour him with kisses again, and swear his eyes were as beautiful as his father's." Quar. Rev.] Save you, in nature, can love aught like me. : Arn. As the free chase they follow, do not spurn me ; Bert. [Exit BERTHA. She is gone, and I [must do Arn. (solus). Oh mother! Her bidding; -wearily but willingly I would fulfil it, could I only hope A kind word in return. What shall I do? [ARNOLD begins to cut wood: in doing this he wounds one of his hands. My labour for the day is over now. At home-What home? I have no home, no kin, me! Or that the devil, to whom they liken me, [ARNOLD goes to a spring, and stoops to wash They are right; and Nature's mirror shows me, Hideous wretch That I am! The very waters mock me with [He pauses. And make a world for myriads of new worms! [This is now generally believed to be a vulgar error; the smallness of the animal's mouth rendering it incapable of the Vile form-from the creation, as it hath The green bough from the forest. [ARNOLD places the knife in the ground, with And I can fall upon it. Yet one glance The fountain moves without a wind: but shall [A cloud comes from the fountain. He stands Stran. His brow was girt with laurels more than You see his aspect-choose it, or reject. I can but promise you his form : his fame Stran. Then you are far more difficult to please Than Cato's sister, or than Brutus's mother, Or Cleopatra at sixteen-an age When love is not less in the eye than heart. [The Phantom of Julius Cæsar disappears. Stran. There you err. His substance Left graves enough, and woes enough, and fame More than enough to track his memory; But for his shadow, 'tis no more than yours, the earliest periods of authentic history, the Brocken has been the seat of the marvellous. For a description of the pheno menon alluded to by Lord Byron, see Sir David Brewster's "Natural Magic," p. 128.] But you reject him? Arn. If his form could bring me That which redeem'd it- no. Stran. I have no power To promise that; but you may try, and find it Easier in such a form, or in your own. Arn. No. I was not born for philosophy, Though I have that about me which has need on 't. Let him fleet on. Stran. Be air, thou hemlock-drinker! [The shadow of Socrates disappears : another rises. Arn. What's here? whose broad brow and whose curly beard And manly aspect look like Hercules, 3 Save that his jocund eye hath more of Bacchus Thy Cleopatra 's waiting. [The shade of Anthony disappears: another rises. [In one of Lord Byron's MS. Diaries we find the following passage:-" Alcibiades is said to have been successful in all his battles' but what battles ? Name them! If you mention Cæsar, or Hannibal, or Napoleon, you at once rush upon Pharsalia, Munda, Alesia, Cannæ, Thrasymene, Trebia, Lodi, Marengo, Jena, Austerlitz, Friedland, Wagram, Moskwa: but it is less easy to pitch upon the victories of Alcibiades ; though they may be named too, though not so readily as the Leuctra and Mantina of Epaminondas, the Marathon of Miltiades, the Salamis of Themistocles, and the Thermopyla of Leonidas. Yet, upon the whole, it may be doubted, whether there be a name of antiquity which comes down with such a general charm as that of Alcibiades. Why? I cannot answer. Who can ?"] *["The outside of Socrates was that of a satyr and buffoon, Stran. (addressing the shadow). Get thee to Lamia's lap! [The shade of Demetrius Poliorcetes vanishes : another rises. I'll fit you still, Fear not, my hunchback: if the shadows of That which existed please not your nice taste, I'll animate the ideal marble, till Your soul be reconciled to her new garment. I must commend With sanction'd and with soften'd love, before With some remorse within for Hector slain Arn. I gaze upon him As if I were his soul, whose form shall soon Envelope mine. The greatest Stran. You have done well. Deformity should only barter with The extremest beauty, if the proverb 's true Of mortals, that extremes meet. Arn. I am impatient. Stran. Come! Be quick! As a youthful beauty but his soul was all virtue, and from within him came such divine and pathetic things, as pierced the heart, and drew tears from the hearers." PLATO.] 3 ["His face was as the heavens; and therein stuck A sun and moon; which kept their course, and lighted The little O, the earth. His legs bestrid the ocean: his rear'd arm Crested the world: his voice was propertied As all the tuned spheres," &c. - SHAKSPEARE.] ["The beauty and mien of Demetrius Poliorcetes were so inimitable, that no statuary or painter could hit off a likeness. His countenance had a mixture of grace and dignity, and was at once amiable and awful, and the unsubdued and cager air of youth was blended with the majesty of the hero and the king." PLUTARCH.] Of Anak? Arn. Why not? Glorious ambition! A new-found mammoth; and their cursed engines, By heart and soul, and make itself the equal- All that the others cannot, in such things They woo with fearless deeds the smiles of fortune, Form'd as thou art. I may dismiss the mould Have done the best which spirit may to make The eyes of happier man. I would have look'd !["Whosoever," says Lord Bacon," hath any thing fixed in his person that doth induce contempt, hath also a perpetual spur in himself to rescue and deliver himself from scorn; therefore, all deformed persons are extreme bold; first, as in their own defence, as being exposed to scorn, but in process of time by a general habit: also it stirreth in them industry, and especially of this kind, to watch and observe the weakness of others, that they may have somewhat to repay. Again, in their superiors, it quencheth jealousy towards thein, as persons that they think they may at pleasure despise: and it layeth their competitors and emulators asleep, as never be lieving they should be in possibility of advancement till they In turn, because of this vile crooked clog, see them in possession: so that upon the matter, in a great wit, deformity is an advantage to rising." — Essay lv.] 2 ["Lord Byron's chief incentive, when a boy, to distinction, was that mark of deformity, by an acute sense of which he was first stung into the ambition of being great. In one of his letters to Mr. Hunt, he declares it to be his own opinion that an addiction to poetry is very generally the result of an uneasy mind in an uneasy body; disease or deformity,' he adds, have been the attendants of many of our best: Collins mad-Chatterton, I think, mad- Cowper mad- l'ope crooked-Milton blind,' &c. &c." MOORE] |