Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte

E. H. Coleridge's notes to The Works of Lord Byron, Poetry, Vol. III (John Murray, 1900; Project Gutenberg #21811). Bracketed passages are the editor's; unbracketed are Byron's own or earlier editors'. Lettered variant readings (manuscript and edition collations) are not harvested here, matching the treatment of Coleridge's Don Juan notes.

1. Stanza 1, line 7 ["I don't know--but I think I, even I (an insect compared with this creature), have set my life on casts not a millionth part of this man's. But, after all, a crown may not be worth dying for. Yet, to outlive Lodi for this!!! Oh that Juvenal or Johnson could rise from the dead! 'Expende--quot libras in duce summo invenies?' I knew they were light in the balance of mortality; but I thought their living dust weighed more carats. Alas! this imperial diamond hath a flaw in it, and is now hardly fit to stick in a glazier's pencil;--the pen of the historian won't rate it worth a ducat. Psha! 'something too much of this.' But I won't give him up even now; though all his admirers have, 'like the thanes, fallen from him.'"--Journal, April 9, 1814, Letters, 1898, ii. 409.]
2. Stanza 1, line 8 [Compare "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!"--Isaiah xiv. 12.]
3. Stanza 2 [Stanzas ii. and iii. were added in Proof iv.]
4. Stanza 3, line 5 [A "spell" may be broken, but it is difficult to understand how, like the two halves of a seal or amulet, a broken spell can "unite again."]
5. Stanza 4, line 2 "Certaminis gaudia"--the expression of Attila in his harangue to his army, previous to the battle of Chalons, given in Cassiodorus. ["Nisi ad certaminis hujus gaudia praeparasset."--Attilae Oratio ad Hunnos, caput xxxix., Appendix ad Opera Cassiodori, Migne, lxix. 1279.]
6. Stanza 5, line 1 [The first four lines of stanza v. were quoted by "Mr. Miller in the House of Representatives of the United States," in a debate on the Militia Draft Bill (Weekly Messenger, Boston, February 10, 1815). "Take warning," he went on to say, "by this example. Bonaparte split on this rock of conscription," etc. This would have pleased Byron, who confided to his Journal, December 3, 1813 (Letters, 1898, ii. 360), that the statement that "my rhymes are very popular in the United States," was "the first tidings that have ever sounded like Fame to my ears."]
7. Stanza 6, line 2 ["Like Milo, he would rend the oak; but it closed again, wedged his hands, and now the beasts--lion, bear, down to the dirtiest jackal--may all tear him."--Journal, April 8, 1814, Letters, 1898, ii. 408. For the story of Milo and the Oak, see Valerius Maximus, Factorum, Dictorumque Memorabilium, lib. ix. cap. xii. Part II. example 9.]
8. Stanza 7, line 1 Sylla. [We find the germ of this stanza in the Diary of the evening before it was written: "I mark this day! Napoleon Buonaparte has abdicated the throne of the world. 'Excellent well.' Methinks Sylla did better; for he revenged, and resigned in the height of his sway, red with the slaughter of his foes--the finest instance of glorious contempt of the rascals upon record. Dioclesian did well too--Amurath not amiss, had he become aught except a dervise--Charles the Fifth but so so; but Napoleon worst of all."--Journal, April 9, 1814, Letters, 1898, ii. 409.]
9. Stanza 8, line 2 ["Alter 'potent spell' to 'quickening spell:' the first (as Polonius says) 'is a vile phrase,' and means nothing, besides being commonplace and Rosa-Matildaish."--Letter to Murray, April 11, 1814, Letters, 1899, iii. 68.]
10. Stanza 8, line 7 [Charles V. resigned the kingdom to his son Philip, circ. October, 1555, and the imperial crown to his brother Ferdinand, August 27, 1556, and entered the Jeronymite Monastery of St. Justus at Placencia in Estremadura. Before his death (September 21, 1558) he dressed himself in his shroud, was laid in his coffin, "joined in the prayers which were offered up for the rest of his soul, mingling his tears with those which his attendants shed, as if they had been celebrating a real funeral."--Robertson's Charles V., 1798, iv. 180, 205, 254.]
11. Stanza 13, line 9 [Count Albert Adam de Neipperg, born 1774, an officer in the Austrian Army, and, 1811, Austrian envoy to the Court of Stockholm, was presented to Marie Louise a few days after Napoleon's abdication, became her chamberlain; and, according to the Nouvelle Biographie Universelle, "plus tard il l'epousa." The count, who is said to have been remarkably plain (he had lost an eye in a scrimmage with the French), died April 12, 1829.]
12. Stanza 14, line 8 ["Dionysius at Corinth was yet a king to this."--Diary, April 9. Dionysius the Younger, on being for the second time banished from Syracuse, retired to Corinth (B.C. 344), where "he is said to have opened a school for teaching boys to read" (see Plut., Timal., c. 14), but not, apparently, with a view to making a living by pedagogy.--Grote's Hist. of Greece, 1872, ix. 152.]
13. Stanza 15, line 1 The cage of Bajazet, by order of Tamerlane.
    
    [The story of the cage is said to be a fable. After the battle of Angora, July 20, 1402, Bajazet, whose escape from prison had been planned by one of his sons, was chained during the night, and placed in a kafes (kafess), a Turkish word, which signifies either a cage or a grated room or bed. Hence the legend.--Hist. de l'Empire Othoman, par J. von Hammer-Purgstall, 1836, ii. 97.]
14. Stanza 15, line 5 [Presumably another instance of "careless and negligent ease."]
15. Stanza 15, line 6 ["Have you heard that Bertrand has returned to Paris with the account of Napoleon's having lost his senses? It is a report; but, if true, I must, like Mr. Fitzgerald and Jeremiah (of lamentable memory), lay claim to prophecy."--Letter to Murray, June 14, 1814, Letters, 1899, iii. 95.]
16. Stanza 16, line 1 Prometheus.
17. Stanza 16, line 7 "O! 'tis the spite of hell, the fiend's arch-mock, To lip a wanton in a secure couch, And to suppose her chaste!" Othello, act iv. sc. 1, lines 69-71.
    
    [We believe there is no doubt of the truth of the anecdote here alluded to--of Napoleon's having found leisure for an unworthy amour, the very evening of his arrival at Fontainebleau.--Note to Edition 1832.
    
    A consultation of numerous lives and memoirs of Napoleon has not revealed the particulars of this "unworthy amour." It is possible that Murray may have discovered the source of Byron's allusion among the papers "in the possession of one of Napoleon's generals, a friend of Miss Waldie," which were offered him "for purchase and publication," in 1815.--See Memoir of John Murray, 1891, i. 279.]
18. Stanza 16, line 9 [Of Prometheus--
    
    "Unlike the offence, though like would be the fate-- His to give life, but thine to desolate; He stole from Heaven the flame for which he fell, Whilst thine be stolen from thy native Hell."
    
    --Attached to Proof v., April 25.]
19. Stanza 18, line 7 [Byron had recently become possessed of a "fine print" (by Raphael Morghen, after Gerard) of Napoleon in his imperial robes, which (see Journal, March 6, 1814, Letters, 1898, ii. 393, note 2) became him "as if he had been hatched in them." According to the catalogue of Morghen's works, the engraving represents "the head nearly full-face, looking to the right, crowned with laurel. He wears an enormous velvet robe embroidered with bees--hanging over it the collar and jewel of the Legion of Honour." It was no doubt this "fine print" which suggested "the star, the string [i.e. the chain of enamelled eagles], the crest."]
20. Stanza 19, line 9 ["The two stanzas which I now send you were, by some mistake, omitted in the copies of Lord Byron's spirited and poetical 'Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte,' already published. One of 'the devils' in Mr. Davison's employ procured a copy of this for me, and I give you the chance of first discovering them to the world.
    
    "Your obedient servant,
    
    "J. R."
    
    "Yes! better to have stood the storm, A Monarch to the last! Although that heartless fireless form Had crumbled in the blast: Than stoop to drag out Life's last years, The nights of terror, days of tears For all the splendour past; Then,--after ages would have read Thy awful death with more than dread.
    
    "A lion in the conquering hour! In wild defeat a hare! Thy mind hath vanished with thy power, For Danger brought despair. The dreams of sceptres now depart, And leave thy desolated heart The Capitol of care! Dark Corsican, 'tis strange to trace Thy long deceit and last disgrace." Morning Chronicle, April 27, 1814.]