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I stood for a long time by the tomb of Canova, and could not take my eyes off the melancholy lion. And in the Palace of the Doges I was always drawn to the corner where the portrait of the unhappy Marino Faliero was painted over with black. "It is fine to be an artist, a poet, a dramatist," I thought, "but since that is not vouchsafed to me, if only I could go in for mysticism!
But it remains true, that when he tried to represent a character totally different from himself, the result is either unreal or uninteresting. Marino Faliero, begun April, finished July, 1820, and prefixed by a humorous dedication to Goethe which was, however, suppressed was brought on the stage of Drury Lane Theatre early in 1821, badly mangled, appointed, and acted and damned.
I suppose she was thinking of Beatrice Cenci, or of Tasso and Leonora, or of the wife of Marino Faliero, or of some other of those sad old Italian tales of love and woe So easily Prue went to Italy! Thus the spring comes in my heart as well as in the air, and leaps along my veins as well as through the trees. I immediately travel.
His openness to beauty and care for it were always inferior in keenness and in hold upon him to his sense of human interest, and the superiority in certain respects of Marino Faliero, for example, where he handles a social theme in a worthy spirit, over Manfred, where he seeks a something tumultuously beautiful, is due to that subordination in his mind of æsthetic to social intention, which is one of the most strongly distinctive marks of the truly modern spirit.
He felt, but never reasoned. I am led to make these observations by noticing the ungracious, or, more justly, the illiberal spirit in which The Prophecy of Dante, which was published with the Marino Faliero, has been treated by the anonymous author of Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Lord Byron. Of The Prophecy of Dante I am no particular admirer.
The buildings remain much as when the Morosini and Faliero ruled, but comparatively few of the three hundred or so of houses within the walls are inhabited; most of the ruined palaces are of the period of the Ducal Palace, Venice, and some of them have been architecturally remarkable. The walls and towers are in the main of 1420, but were strengthened by the Venetians.
His next move was to Ravenna, where he wrote much, chiefly dramas, including Marino Faliero. In 1821-22 he finished Don Juan at Pisa, and in the same year he joined with Leigh Hunt in starting a short-lived newspaper, The Liberal, in the first number of which appeared The Vision of Judgment.
Then of some years later, at Castle Garden, Battery, I yet recall the splendid seasons of the Havana musical troupe under Maretzek the fine band, the cool sea-breezes, the unsurpass'd vocalism Steffan'one, Bosio, Truffi, Marini in "Marino Faliero," "Don Pasquale," or "Favorita." No better playing or singing ever in New York. It was here too I afterward heard Jenny Lind.
Anselmo, with thy company proceed Straight to the tower; the rest remain with me." Byron, Marino Faliero, lV.ii.23o-35. The conjecture of Judith Hutter, concerning the manner in which the Indian girl had met her death, was accurate in the main. After sleeping several hours, her father and March awoke.
Byron wrote also, in 1818, an "Ode on Venice," a regret for its decay, in spirit not unlike the succeeding Childe Harold stanzas which I do not here quote. Here too he planned Marino Faliero, talking it over with his guest, "Monk" Lewis. Another Venetian play of Byron's was The Two Foscari, and both prove that he attacked the old chronicles to some purpose and with all his brilliant thoroughness.
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