by Lord Byron
There be: I shall know soon. Farewell — Farewell.
[Exeunt Pania and Soldiers.
Myr. These men were honest: it is comfort still 410
That our last looks should be on loving faces.
Sar. And lovely ones, my beautiful! — but hear me!
If at this moment, — for we now are on
The brink, — thou feel’st an inward shrinking from
This leap through flame into the future, say it:
I shall not love thee less; nay, perhaps more,
For yielding to thy nature: and there’s time
Yet for thee to escape hence.
Myr. Shall I light
One of the torches which lie heaped beneath
The ever-burning lamp that burns without, 420
Before Baal’s shrine, in the adjoining hall?
Sar. Do so. Is that thy answer?
Myr. Thou shalt see.
[Exit Myrrha.
Sar. (solus). She’s firm. My fathers! whom I will rejoin,
It may be, purified by death from some
Of the gross stains of too material being,
I would not leave your ancient first abode
To the defilement of usurping bondmen;
If I have not kept your inheritance
As ye bequeathed it, this bright part of it,
Your treasure — your abode — your sacred relics 430
Of arms, and records — monuments, and spoils,
In which they would have revelled, I bear with me
To you in that absorbing element,
Which most personifies the soul as leaving
The least of matter unconsumed before
Its fiery workings: — and the light of this
Most royal of funereal pyres shall be
Not a mere pillar formed of cloud and flame,
A beacon in the horizon for a day,
And then a mount of ashes — but a light 440
To lesson ages, rebel nations, and
Voluptuous princes. Time shall quench full many
A people’s records, and a hero’s acts;
Sweep empire after empire, like this first
Of empires, into nothing; but even then
Shall spare this deed of mine, and hold it up
A problem few dare imitate, and none
Despise — but, it may be, avoid the life
Which led to such a consummation.
Myrrha returns with a lighted Torch in one Hand, and a Cup in the other.
Myr. Lo!
I’ve lit the lamp which lights us to the stars. 450
Sar. And the cup?
Myr.’Tis my country’s custom to
Make a libation to the Gods.
Sar. And mine
To make libations amongst men. I’ve not
Forgot the custom; and although alone,
Will drain one draught in memory of many
A joyous banquet past.
Sardanapalus takes the cup, and after drinking and tinkling the reversed cup, as a drop falls, exclaims —
And this libation
Is for the excellent Beleses.
Myr. Why
Dwells thy mind rather upon that man’s name
Than on his mate’s in villany?
Sar. The other
Is a mere soldier, a mere tool, a kind 460
Of human sword in a friend’s hand; the other
Is master-mover of his warlike puppet;
But I dismiss them from my mind. — Yet pause,
My Myrrha! dost thou truly follow me,
Freely and fearlessly?
Myr. And dost thou think
A Greek girl dare not do for love, that which
An Indian widow braves for custom?
Sar. Then
We but await the signal.
Myr. It is long
In sounding.
Sar. Now, farewell; one last embrace.
Myr. Embrace, but not the last; there is one more. 470
Sar. True, the commingling fire will mix our ashes.
Myr. And pure as is my love to thee, shall they,
Purged from the dross of earth, and earthly passion,
Mix pale with thine. A single thought yet irks me.
Sar. Say it.
Myr. It is that no kind hand will gather
The dust of both into one urn.
Sar. The better:
Rather let them be borne abroad upon
The winds of heaven, and scattered into air,
Than be polluted more by human hands
Of slaves and traitors. In this blazing palace, 480
And its enormous walls of reeking ruin,
We leave a nobler monument than Egypt
Hath piled in her brick mountains, o’er dead kings,
Or kine — for none know whether those proud piles
Be for their monarch, or their ox-god Apis:
So much for monuments that have forgotten
Their very record!
Myr. Then farewell, thou earth!
And loveliest spot of earth! farewell, Ionia!
Be thou still free and beautiful, and far
Aloof from desolation! My last prayer 490
Was for thee, my last thoughts, save one, were of thee!
Sar. And that?
Myr. Is yours.
[The trumpet of Pania sounds without.
Sar. Hark!
Myr. Now!
Sar. Adieu, Assyria!
I loved thee well, my own, my fathers’ land,
And better as my country than my kingdom.
I sated thee with peace and joys; and this
Is my reward! and now I owe thee nothing,
Not even a grave. [He mounts the pile.
Now, Myrrha!
Myr. Art thou ready?
Sar. As the torch in thy grasp.
[Myrrha fires the pile.
Myr.’Tis fired! I come.
As Myrrha springs forward to throw herself into the flames, the Curtain falls.
THE TWO FOSCARI
AN HISTORICAL TRAGEDY.
“The father softens, but the governor’s resolved.” — Critic.
[The Two Foscari was produced at Drury Lane Theatre April 7, and again on April 18 and April 25, 1838. Macready played “Frances Foscari,” Mr. Anderson “Jacopo Foscari,” and Miss Helen Faucit “Marina.”
According to the Times, April 9, 1838, “Miss Faucit’s Marina, the most energetic part of the whole, was clever, and showed a careful attention to the points which might be made.”
Macready notes in his diary, April 7, 1838 (Reminiscences, 1875, ii. 106): “Acted Foscari very well. Was very warmly received … was called for at the end of the tragedy, and received by the whole house standing up and waving handkerchiefs with great enthusiasm. Dickens, Forster, Procter, Browning, Talfourd, all came into my room.”]
INTRODUCTION
The Two Foscari was begun on June 12, and finished, within the month, on July 9, 1821. Byron was still in the vein of the historic drama, though less concerned with “ancient chroniclers” and original “authorities” (vide ante, Preface to Marino Faliero, vol. iv. p. 332) than heretofore. “The Venetian play,” he tells Murray, July 14, 1821, is “rigidly historical;” but he seems to have depended for his facts, not on Sanudo or Navagero, but on Daru’s Histoire de la République de Vénise (1821, ii. 520-537), and on Sismondi’s Histoire des Républiques … du Moyen Age (1815, x. 36-46). The story of the Two Doges, so far as it concerns the characters and action of Byron’s play, may be briefly re-told. It will be found to differ in some important particulars from the extracts from Daru and Sismondi which Byron printed in his “Appendix to the Two Foscari” (Sardanapalus, etc., 1821, pp. 305-324), and no less from a passage in Smedley’s Sketches from Venetian History (1832, ii. 93-105), which was substituted for the French “Pièces justificative
s,” in the collected edition of 1832-1835, xiii. 198-202, and the octavo edition of 1837, etc., pp. 790, 791.
Francesco, son of Nicolò Foscari, was born in 1373. He was nominated a member of the Council of Ten in 1399, and, after holding various offices of state, elected Doge in 1423. His dukedom, the longest on record, lasted till 1457. He was married, in 1395, to Maria, daughter of Andrea Priuli, and, en secondes noces, to Maria, or Marina, daughter of Bartolommeo Nani. By his two wives he was the father of ten children — five sons and five daughters. Of the five sons, four died of the plague, and the fifth, Jacopo, lived to be the cause, if not the hero, of a tragedy.
The younger of the “Two Foscari” was a man of some cultivation, a collector and student of Greek manuscripts, well-mannered, and of ready wit, a child and lover of Venice, but indifferent to her ideals and regardless of her prejudices and restrictions. He seems to have begun life in a blaze of popularity, the admired of all admirers. His wedding with Lucrezia Contarini (January, 1441) was celebrated with a novel and peculiar splendour. Gorgeous youths, Companions of the Hose (della calza), in jackets of crimson velvet, with slashed sleeves lined with squirrel fur, preceded and followed the bridegroom’s train. A hundred bridesmaids accompanied the bride. Her dowry exceeded 16,000 ducats, and her jewels, which included a necklace worn by a Queen of Cyprus, were “rich and rare.” And the maiden herself was a pearl of great price. “She behaved,” writes her brother, “and does behave, so well beyond what could have been looked for. I believe she is inspired by God!”
Jacopo had everything which fortune could bestow, but he lacked a capacity for right conduct. Four years after his marriage (February 17, 1445) an accusation was laid before the Ten (Romanin, Storia, etc., iv. 266) that, contrary to the law embodied in the Ducal Promissione, he had accepted gifts of jewels and money, not only from his fellow-citizens, but from his country’s bitterest enemy, Filippo Visconti, Duke of Milan. Jacopo fled to Trieste, and in his absence the Ten, supported by a giunta of ten, on their own authority and independently of the Doge, sentenced him to perpetual banishment at Nauplia, in Roumania. One of the three Capi di’ dieci was Ermolao (or Veneticé Almoro) Donato, of whom more hereafter. It is to be noted that this sentence was never carried into effect. At the end of four months, thanks to the intervention of five members of the Ten, he was removed from Trieste to Treviso, and, two years later (September 13, 1447), out of consideration to the Doge, who pleaded that the exile of his only son prevented him from giving his whole heart and soul to the Republic, permitted to return to Venice. So ends the first chapter of Jacopo’s misadventures. He stands charged with unlawful, if not criminal, appropriation of gifts and moneys. He had been punished, but less than he deserved, and, for his father’s sake, the sentence of exile had been altogether remitted.
Three years went by, and once again, January, 1451, a charge was preferred against Jacopo Foscari, and on this occasion he was arrested and brought before the Ten. He was accused of being implicated in the murder of Ermolao Donato, who was assassinated November 5, 1450, on leaving the Ducal Palace, where he had been attending the Council of the Pregadi. On the morning after the murder Benedetto Gritti, one of the “avvogadori di Commun,” was at Mestre, some five miles from Venice, and, happening to accost a servant of Jacopo’s who was loading a barge with wood, asked for the latest news from Venice, and got as answer, “Donato has been murdered!” The possession of the news some hours before it had been made public, and the fact that the newsmonger had been haunting the purlieus of the Ducal Palace on the previous afternoon, enabled the Ten to convict Jacopo. They alleged (Decree of X., March 26, 1451) that other evidence (“testificationes et scripturæ”) was in their possession, and they pointed to the prisoner’s obstinate silence on the rack — a silence unbroken save by “several incantations and magic words which fell from him,” as a confirmation of his guilt. Moreover, it was “for the advantage of the State from many points of view” that convicted and condemned he should be. The question of his innocence or guilt (complicated by the report or tradition that one Nicolò Erizzo confessed on his death-bed that he had assassinated Donato for reasons of his own) is still under discussion. Berlan (I due Foscari, etc., 1852, p. 36) sums up against him. It may, however, be urged in favour of Jacopo that the Ten did not produce or quote the scripturæ et testificationes which convinced them of his guilt; that they stopped short of the death-penalty, and pronounced a sentence inadequate to the crime; and, lastly, that not many years before they had taken into consideration the possibility and advisability of poisoning Filippo Visconti, an event which would, no doubt, have been “to the advantage of the State from many points of view.”
Innocent or guilty, he was sentenced to perpetual banishment to the city of Candia, on the north coast of the island of Crete; and, guilty or innocent, Jacopo was not the man to make the best of what remained to him and submit to fate. Intrigue he must, and, five years later (June, 1456), a report reached Venice that papers had been found in his possession, some relating to the Duke of Milan, calculated to excite “nuovi scandali e disordini,” and others in cypher, which the Ten could not read. Over and above these papers there was direct evidence that Jacopo had written to the Imperatore dei Turchi, imploring him to send his galley and take him away from Candia. Here was a fresh instance of treachery to the Republic, and, July 21, 1456, Jacopo returned to Venice under the custody of Lorenzo Loredano.
According to Romanin (Storia, etc., iv. 284), he was not put to the torture, but confessed his guilt spontaneously, pleading, by way of excuse, that the letter to the Duke of Milan had been allowed to fall into the hands of spies, with a view to his being recalled to Venice and obtaining a glimpse of his parents and family, even at a risk of a fresh trial. On the other hand, the Dolfin Cronaca, the work of a kinsman of the Foscari, which records Jacopo’s fruitless appeal to the sorrowful but inexorable Doge, and other incidents of a personal nature, testifies, if not to torture on the rack, “to mutilation by thirty strokes of the lash.” Be that as it may, he was once more condemned to lifelong exile, with the additional penalty that he should be imprisoned for a year. He sailed for Venice July 31, 1456, and died at Candia, January 12, 1457. Jacopo’s misconduct and consequent misfortune overshadowed the splendour of his father’s reign, and, in very truth “brought his gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.”
After his son’s death, the aged Doge, now in his eighty-fifth year, retired to his own apartments, and refused to preside at Councils of State. The Ten, who in 1446 had yielded to the Doge’s plea that a father fretting for an exiled son could not discharge his public duties, were instant that he should abdicate the dukedom on the score of decrepitude. Accounts differ as to the mode in which he received the sentence of deposition. It is certain that he was compelled to abdicate on Sunday morning, October 23, 1457, but was allowed a breathing-space of a few days to make his arrangements for quitting the Ducal Palace.
On Monday, October 24, the Great Council met to elect his successor, and sat with closed doors till Sunday, October 30.
On Thursday, October 27, Francesco, heedless of a suggestion that he should avoid the crowd, descended the Giants’ Staircase for the last time, and, says the Dolfin Cronaca, “after crossing the courtyard, went out by the door leading to the prisons, and entered his boat by the Ponte di Paglia.” “He was dressed,” says another chronicle (August. Cod. I, cl. vii.), “in a scarlet mantle, from which the fur lining had been taken,” surmounted by a scarlet hood, an old friend which he had worn when his ducal honours were new, and which he had entrusted to his wife’s care to be preserved for “red” days and festivals of State. “In his hand he held his staff, as he walked very slowly. His brother Marco was by his side, behind him were cousins and grandsons … and in this way he went to his own house.”
On Sunday, October 30, Pasquale Malipiero was declared Doge, and two days after, All Saints’ Day, at the first hour of the morning, Francesco Foscari died. If the interval between ten o’clock on Su
nday night and one o’clock on Tuesday morning disproves the legend that the discrowned Doge ruptured a blood-vessel at the moment when the bell was tolling for the election of his successor, the truth remains that, old as he was, he died of a broken heart.
His predecessor, Tomaso Mocenigo, had prophesied on his death-bed that if the Venetians were to make Foscari Doge they would forfeit their “gold and silver, their honour and renown.” “From your position of lords,” said he, “you will sink to that of vassals and servants to men of arms.” The prophecy was fulfilled. “If we look,” writes Mr. H. F. Brown (Venice, etc., 1893, p. 306), “at the sum-total of Foscari’s reign … we find that the Republic had increased her land territory by the addition of two great provinces, Bergamo and Brescia … But the price had been enormous … her debt rose from 6,000,000 to 13,000,000 ducats. Venetian funds fell to 18 ½.... Externally there was much pomp and splendour…. But underneath this bravery there lurked the official corruption of the nobles, the suspicion of the Ten, the first signs of bank failures, the increase in the national debt, the fall in the value of the funds. Land wars and landed possessions drew the Venetians from the sea to terra ferma…. The beginning of the end had arrived.” (See Two Doges of Venice, by Alethea Wiel, 1891; I due Foscari, Memorie Storicho Critiche, di Francesco Berlan, 1852; Storia Documentata di Venezia, di S. Romanin, 1855, vol.iv.; Die beiden Foscari, von Richard Senger, 1878. For reviews, etc., of The Two Foscari, vide ante, “Introduction to Sardanapalus,” .)
Both Jeffrey in the Edinburgh, and Heber in the Quarterly Review, took exception to the character of Jacopo Foscari, in accordance with the Horatian maxim, “Incredulus odi.” “If,” said Jeffrey, “he had been presented to the audience wearing out his heart in exile, ... we might have caught some glimpse of the nature of his motives.” As it is (in obedience to the “unities”) “we first meet with him led from the ‘Question,’ and afterwards … clinging to the dungeon walls of his native city, and expiring from his dread of leaving them.” The situation lacks conviction.
“If,” argued Heber, “there ever existed in nature a case so extraordinary as that of a man who gravely preferred tortures and a dungeon at home, to a temporary residence in a beautiful island and a fine climate; it is what few can be made to believe, and still fewer to sympathize with.”