B y r o n ’s Childe Harold ’s Pilgrimage IV and Shelley ’s “ O d e t o
L i b e r t y ” :
The Poetic Voice of the Exile s a n d t h e i r Aspirations for F r e e d o m
Hiroshi HARATA
In the middle of December 1818, Shelley sent a letter from
Naples to his friend, Thomas Love Peacock:
I entirely agree with what you say about Childe Harold.
The spirit in which it is written is, if insane, the most
wicked & mischievous insanity that ever was given
forth. . . I r emonstrated with him in vain on the tone of
mind from which such a view of things alone arises. 1
In this letter Shelley condemn s the Fourth Canto of C h i l d e
H a ro l d ’s Pilgrimage s i n c e h e t h i n k s that Byron indulged himself in lamenting over the d e c l i n e o f Ve n i c e sentimentally a s i f h e w e r e a passive onlooke r. Shelley assume s t h a t B y r o n ’s n i h i l i s m came from his own wild debauchery with Italian girls and w o m e n 2 ( 5 8 ) that led him to “the most wicked & mischievous i n s a n i t y ” under the mental condition of which the poem was w r i t t e n . S h e l l e y ’s indignation against Byron ’s moral corruption became all the more h a r s h because his “ i n s a n e s p i r i t ” s p o i l e d t h e d i v i n e s o c i a l mission of poetry that Shelley always advocated.
1 Byron’s “insane” attitude toward the world may have occupied
Shelley’s mind seriously. In the next year Shelley composed a conversation poem, Julian and Maddalo , which reflects the d i s c u s s i o n between Julian / Shelley and Maddalo / B y r o n t h a t t o o k place in Venice l a t e in August 1818 , when they first re - u n i t e d a f t e r t h e y had parted in G e n e v a in the summer of 1816. 3 I n t h e
‘ P r e f a c e ’ to the poem, S h e l l e y criticizes M a d d a l o ’s n e g a t i v e philosophy of h u m a n life, though in the manner of m o r e m o d e s t and sophisticated than in that letter:
He [Count Maddalo] is a person of the most consummate
genius, and capable, if he would direct his energies to
such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded
country. But it is his weakness to be proud: he derives,
from a comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the
dwarfish intellects that surround him, an intense
apprehension of the nothingness of human life. 4
However, it is also very important for us to suppose that
Shelley’s great anger might ha ve blinded him to Byron’s strategy that he had carefully embedded his political assertion of transnational freedom in the central, Roman stanzas (78 - 9 8 ) o f
Canto the Fourth. 5 When he wrote to Peacock i n 1 8 1 8 , I surmise t h a t S h e l l e y slightly browsed the Canto, in particular only both its beginning part where Byron deplores the fall of Venice
2 melancholically and its closing part where he heartily sympathizes with “deep and dark blue Ocean” ( 1 6 0 3 ). 6
Undoubtedly, Shelley read the ending of the Canto because, in the same letter to Peacock, he admires Byron’s genius as a poet:
“he [Byron] is a great poet, I think, the address to Ocean proves”
( 5 8 ) . By the summer of 1819, when h e c o m p l e t e d Julian and
M a d d a l o , in which Julian / S h e l l e y a n d M a d d a l o / Byron sharply r e f u t e the other statement about such issues as destiny, free will,
God and so on, Shelley must have (re)read the whole of C h i l d e
Harold’s Pilgrimage I V, a n d f o u n d o u t in those core stanzas
(78- 9 8 ) B y r o n ’s f i r m argument that political freedom should be p r e v a l e n t i n Europe. And in the middle of 1820, when he wrote
Ode to Liberty , Shelley adopted, as its epigraph, the first two lines from the s t a n z a 9 8 : “ Ye t , Freedom! Yet thy banner, torn, but flying, / Streams lik e the thunder - storm against the wind.” 7
In this respect, it would be not be unsafe to s a y that Shelley publicly expressed his political alliance with Byron, leaving aside both his indignation against Byron’s mental nihilism and the difference between their philosophical opinions.
As an exile i n I t a l y, Byron wrote Canto the Fourth during the latter part of 1817 , w h e n t h e d e s p o t i c a n c i e n r é g i m e h a d a l r e a d y b e e n r e s t o r e d i n E u r o p e after the Congress of Vienna h e l d in the years between 1 8 1 4 a n d 1815. 8 W h a t i s t h e m o s t strikingly different from the three previous Cantos is that Byron c o m p o s e d t h i s C a n t o as h e f e l t p r o f o u n d d e j e c t i o n concerning the
3 p o l i t i c a l s t a t u s q u o o f E u r o p e and the mutability of human mind.
It is true t h a t when he composed Canto the Third t r a v e l i n g through the Continent along the Rhine and s t a y i n g a t Vi l l a
D i o d a t i in 1816, he was already an exile, and that the European p o l i t i c a l environment o f 1 8 1 6 w a s , at large, l i t t l e d i fferent from that of 1817 . However, the Rhine, Lake Leman, and the Alps provided him with the sublime s c e n e r y to turn his eye to outward natural grandeur, rather than to inward reflection on European political issues. In particular, G e n e v a , surrounded w i t h L a k e
Leman and the Alps , w a s a k i n d o f a n earthly Elysium, i n w h i c h
B y r o n could almost every day enjoy a lively conversation with the Shelleys and Polidori , stimulating Mary into the creation of her substantial virgin work , w h i c h later came to fruition as
Frankenstein i n 1 8 1 8 . He could afford to s i n g of t h e b e a u t y of a sunset reflecting on the lake, h i s p l e a s a n t cruise around the lake while reading Rousseau’s J u l i e , or the New Heloise , a n d , finally, h i s w a r m f a t h e r l i k e feelings toward h i s s e p a r a t e d d a u g h t e r. I n this respect, the Third Canto can unquestionably be called a sequel of the two previous Cantos , a n d the three poems p r e s e r v e t h e s o - called genuine Byronic travel writings. Byron’s witty, brilliant and captivating power in narrating , for instance, h i s admiration of the S panish maid i n C a n t o I ( 558- 6 11 ) , a n d h i s r e v e r i e a b o u t the glory of ancient Athens walking about among i t s r u i n s in Canto II ( 7 8 3 - 8 8 1 ) m a d e t h e ir r e a d e r s turn a page after page impatiently w i t h o u t taking into consideration w h a t
4 Byron thought E u r o p e a n politics should be like; so did Canto the
T h i r d . 9
U n l i k e t h e t h r e e p r e v i o u s C a n t o s C a n t o the Fourth presents as its foreground the poet’s melancholic feelings and t h o u g h t s a b o u t the mutability b o t h of h u m a n m i n d a n d o f
European history t h a t swu n g b e t w e e n democratic republicanism and monarchical or imperial despotism. This change from his amusing and entertaining n a r r a t i o n t o t h e serious and s e l f - reflective tone of his voice originate, I suppose , in t h e f a c t t h a t h e was no longer a c a r e f r e e t r a v e l e r in foreign countries b u t a resident as an exile , whether he likes it or not, in a foreign c o u n t r y, Italy, which was substantially a d i v i d e d n a t i o n r u l e d b y the foreign powers, a s a r e s u l t of the aftermath of the fall of
Napoleon and of the restoration of a ncien régime . 10
Consequently, Byron the exile directly face d the complicated political state of Italy, in which he h a d t o live as a poet.
Traveling had once been a circular movement for him who had k e p t a homeland to return; this time it was a linear p i l g r i m a g e without returning to the starting point. H e r e i n this Canto, i n particular in the kernel , R o m a n s t a n z a s ( 78- 98) , the reader h e a r s the narrator’s / B y r o n ’s v o i c e t h a t s e r i o u s l y c a l l s f o r p o l i t i c a l f r e e d o m i n E u r o p e .
Needless to say, this voice does not come from a Whig member of the House of Lords, who used to have a f i r m p o l i t i c a l f o o t i n g i n E n g l a n d , but from a mere exile wandering from Ve n i c e
5 t o R o m e , being deprived of substantial parliamentary activities.
H o w e v e r, n ow that I come t o think of it, i t would not be unsafe to a r g u e t h a t B y r o n w a s a born exile not only in his family, but a l s o in his political s o c i e t y ; i n a w o r d , he was a maverick. H o w e v e r, even a maverick needs an object his lonely soul speaks to . F o r
Byron, that was Rome: “Oh Rome! My country! City of the soul!
/ The orphans of the hea r t must turn to thee, / Lo ne mother of dead empires! ( 7 8 : 6 9 4 - 96) . T h e s tanzas between 78 a n d 9 8 m a y be called Byron i c ‘ o d e t o f r e e d o m , ’ in which he contrasts the l i g h t of republicanism with the s h a d o w of despotism, praising the literary and intellectual w r i t e r s such as Cicero, Vergil, a n d
Livy whose prime activities w e r e m o s t l y in republic Rome i n s t a n z a 8 2 :
Alas! The lofty city! And alas!
The trebly hundred triumphs! And the day
When Brutus made the dagger’s edge surpass
The conqueror’s sword in bearing fame away!
Alas, for Tully’s voice, and Virgil’s lay,
And Livy’s pictured page — but these shall be
Her resurrection; all beside — d e c a y.
A l a s , for Earth, for never shall we see
That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free!
( 7 3 0 - 38)
6 W h i l e recollecting the magnificent b u t v a i n s p e c t a c l e s o f
Roman history, B y r o n c o n d e m n s the two eminent h i s t o r i c al f i g u r e s who turned their coat from a liberator to a conqueror or a d e s p o t . T h e o n e i s Oliver Cromwell in stanzas 85 - 86:
Sylla was first of victors; but our own
The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell, he
Too swept off senates while he hew’d the t h r o n e
Down to block — immortal rebel! See
What crimes it costs to be a moment free
And famous through all ages! . . .
......
And show’d not Fortune thus how fame and sway,
And all we deem delightful, and consume
Our souls to compass through each arduous way,
Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb ?
Were they not but so in man’s, how different were
his [Cromwell’s] doom!
( 757- 7 4 )
A nd the other i s Napoleon Bonaparte in stanzas 89 - 9 2 :
......
Save one vain man [Napoleon], who is not in the grave,
7 But, vanquish’d by himself, to his own slaves a slave —
The fool of false dominio n — a n d a k i n d
Of bastard Caesar, following him of old
With steps unequal; . . . .
......
With but one weakest weakness — v a n i t y,
Coquettish in ambition — still he aim’d —
At what can he avouch — or answer what he c l a i m ’ d ?
......
F o r t h i s the conqueror
[Napoleon] rears
The arch of triumph! And for this the tears
And blood of earth flow on as they have flow’d,
An universal deluge, which appears
Without an oak for wretched man’s abode,
And ebbs but to reflow! — Renew thy rainbow, God!
( 800- 2 8 )
I n stanza 93, B y r o n raises a question of what we sho u l d learn from “this barren” ( 829) world in which “. . . m e n g r o w pale / lest their own judgments should become too bright, / And t h e i r f r e e thoughts be crimes. . . .” ( 835- 7). Although he does not g ive any concrete answer t o t h i s , B y r o n points out their
8 degeneration from father to son, from age t o a g e ( 8 3 8 - 40).
However, Byron seems to cherish his last hope of freedom not only in America, but also in Europe:
Can tyrants but by tyrants conquer’d be
And Freedom find no champion and no child
Such as Columbia saw arise . . .
......
. . . . nursing Nature smiled
On infant Washington? Has no Earth no more
Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no such shore?
( 856- 6 4 )
A n d he conclude his ‘ode to freedom’ in the hope that the seed of freedom wait s t o b l o o m i n s p r i n g b y c o mparing freedom to the tree cut down by an axe in stanza 98:
The tree hath lost its blossom, and the rind,
Chopp’d by the axe, looks rough and little worth,
But the sap lasts, and still the seed we find
Sown deep, even in the bosom of the Nort h;
So shall a better spring less bitter fruit bring forth.
( 878- 8 2 )
T h e s y m b o l i c resurrection of nature may easily remind us o f
9 Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind.”
What I would like to maintain here is that Shelley’s “ O d e t o L i b e r t y ” is a congenial sequel or response to Byron’s Canto the Fourth, in particular to those central stanzas that appeal to the advocates of the spirit of freedom. S h e l l e y w r o t e “ O d e t o
L i b e r t y ” in the middle of 1820, three years after Byron’s composition of Canto the Forth. D uring the years , some political events took place. For instance , the despotic monarchy was replaced by the constitutional monarchy i n S p a i n , a n d a n e p h e w to Louis XVIII was assassinated i n F r a n c e . These revolts against despotism may, of course, have motivated Shelley to start the
“ O de. ” None the less, th e action that Byron t o o k t o p u b l i s h
“ Venice. An Ode ” at the end of M a z e p p a i n J u n e 1 8 1 9 , in order to e n c o u r a g e V e n i c e to restore the glorious autonomous republic it h a d once enjoyed w a s a w e l c o m e m e s s a g e to Shelley. Unlike pessimistic M a d d a l o B y r o n e x p r e s s e s i n the ending of t h i s p o e m a n a s s e r t i v e o p i n i o n in proposing a suggestion to the rebirth of
V e n i c e . S h e l l e y u n d o u b t e d l y r e a d t h i s p o e m ; f o r it was his wife,
Mary Shelley, who transcribed a fair copy of it for Byron.
Shelley begins t h e first stanza of “Ode to Liberty” w i t h the praise of the vibration of liberty o v e r the nations , a n d p r o m i s e s to record “A voice out of the deep” as if he were a h i e r o p h a n t :
A glorious people vibrated again
10 The lightning of the nations; Liberty
From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o’er Spain,
Scattering contagious fire into the sky,
Gleamed. My soul spu rned the chains of its dismay,
And in the plumes of song
Clothed itself, sublime and strong;
As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among,
Hovering in verse o’er its accustomed prey;
Till from its station in the heaven of fame
T h e Spirit’s whirlwind rapt it, and the ray
Of the remotest sphere of living flame
Which paves the void was from behind it flung,
As foam from a ship’s swiftness, when there came
A voice out of the deep: I will record the same.
( 1 - 1 5 )
Shelley’s phrase “there came / A voice out of the deep” ( 14- 5 ) reminds me of Byron’s call for listening i n the stanza of 167
“Hark! Forth from the abyss a voice proceeds, / A long low distant murmur of dread sound ” ( 1 4 9 5 - 6 ) . S h e l l e y c l e v e r l y parodies a n a t i o n a l voice of mourning on the death of Princess
Charlotte into a mysterious voice which prophesizes the coming of liberty. Late in 1817, only a few days after Princess Charlotte h a d d i e d , S h e l l e y began a pamphlet under the title , An Address to the People on the Death of the Princess Charlotte , i n w h i c h
11 S h e l l e y , alt h o u g h h e w e l l acknowledged the Princess as sympathetic toward reforms, calmly parallels her death with those of poor, nameless women and those of three laborers who were sent to t h e s c a f f o l d j u s t the next day of h e r d e a t h . 11
Byron’s sympathy with the death of the Princess C h a r l o t t e i s m o r e humane and patriotic , whereas Shelley’s i n s i g h t i n t o t h e d e c e p t i ve contrivance of the body politic ruled by the
Establishment is more rational and s y s t e m a t i c . In the subsequent s t a n z a s S h e l l e y describes the progress of liberty after the creation of the universe, whereas Byron seems to stress t h e f a l l and decline of freedom after the assassination o f C a e s a r i n h i s kernel, Roman stanzas (78 - 98) of Canto the Fourth. A l t h o u g h
Shelley’s “Ode to Liberty” i s a sequel to t h e m , i t i s p r e c i s e l y a
Shelleyan revision of Byronic skepticism about the o p t i m i s t i c view of history. Anyway, Shelley must have agreed with Byron i n t h a t h e h e l d aspirations for the immortality and rebirth of f r e e d o m . Thus Shelley ’ s Ode to Liberty can be regarded as a f r i e n d l y homage to Byron, who a l s o proved himself a perseverant champion of freedom.
A s i n Canto the Fourth and Venice. An Ode , the poet’s voice in Ode to Liberty comes from an exile i n I t a l y , not from the eldest son of a member of the House of Commons of England.
L i k e B y r o n Shelley was a born exile and m a v e r i c k , a n d l i k e
B y r o n h e u s u a l l y t o o k his political activities in harmony w i t h t h e
F o x i t e Whigs due to t h e influence of Duke of Norfolk, a political
12 guardian of the Shelley family. A l t h o u g h Byron and Shelley were deprived of their firm political footing in Italy, they never abandoned their enthusiasm for emancipation and liberation from oppression anywhere they lived because they w e r e intellectual e x i l e s . Concerning “ intellectual exile s ” E d w a r d W . S a i d c l a i m s i n h i s Representation of the Intellectual t h a t t r u e intellectuals s h o u l d or cannot but be exiles wherever they are. S a i d d i v i d e s intellectuals into two groups:
Even intellectuals who are lifelong members of a society
can, in a manner of speaking, be divided into insiders and
outsiders: those on the one hand who belong fully to the
society as it is, who flourish in it without an
overwhelming sense of dissonance or dissent, those who
can be called yea - sayers; and on the other hand, the
n a y - sayers, the individuals at odds with the society and
therefore outsiders and exiles so far as priv i leges, power,
and honors are concerned. 12
At the risk of losing their high social status, Byron and Shelley t r i e d t o retain their i n d i vidual freedom b y b e i n g a n a y - s a y e r a g a i n s t the European s t a t u s q u o that, of course, i n c l u d e d t h e i r home, England, and Italy, where they were wandering around.
Said gives examples of intellectual exiles, such as
Jonathan Swift , M a r c o Polo, Theodore Wisengrund Ador no, e t c .
13 They were all exiles and represented their philosophical view of life, directly or allegorically , in their writings . However, for
Byron and Shelley as an exile in Italy, e a r l i e r I t a l i a n writers like
Dante, Petrarch, B o c c a c c i o , and Tasso may be m o r e r e l e v a n t historical personages b e c a u s e t h e y gave deep influence to t h e poets in terms of a free, independent life with the continuous production of l i t e r a r y w r i t i n g s . M ost of them, in particular Dante and Tasso, experienced, more or l e s s , t o b e i n the situation of exile for a certain period in life in order to preserve the freedom of thought, faith, and w r i t i n g . The reason why Byron mentions each of them in Canto the Fourth is not only to attract the attention of readers to the distinguished writers Italy produced, but also to desire to live a literary life on the models of them.
According to Said’s term they can be called true i n t e l l e c t u a l s a s well as humanists . Very interes t i n g l y , t h e OED s a y s t h a t B y r o n ’ s s o u r c e ( 1 8 1 3 ) i s the second oldest n o u n - usage of the word
“intellectual” which is defined as “an intellectual being; a person possessing or supposed to possess superior powers of i n t e l l e c t . ” Byron and Shelley c a n be regarded as a forerunning example of what S a i d c l a i m s t h e m o d e r n intellectual should be l i k e . Having severed themselves from their native aristocratic connections, the two poets advocated the realization of political f r e e d o m / l i b e r t y in Europe only by means of t h e i r w r i t i n g a c t i v i t i e s , w i t h f i r m c o n f i d e n ce in t h e i r o w n intellectual power s .
Conclusively, w hat makes us feel difficult to understand
14 B y r o n ’ s Childe Harold ’s Pilgrimage IV and Shelley ’s O d e t o
L i b e r t y is, probably, the mysterious or p i t i f u l ending of the two p o e m s . In the former, H a r o l d / B y r o n , the narrator , s u d d e n l y offers an invocation to t h e O c e a n and prays to it to accept him as if he forgot narrating the social history of Venice and Rome and arguing the c ause of freedom to his fellow citizens :
......
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I s t e a l
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet can not all conceal.
( 1 5 9 6 - 1 6 0 2 )
Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been —
A sound which make us linger; — y e t — f a r e w e l l !
Ye! Who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell
A thought which once was his; if on ye swell
A single recollection. . . .
( 1 6 6 6 - 1 6 7 1 )
15 The conclusion of Canto the Fourth m u s t h a v e s o u n d ed s u p e r b l y sentimental to E n g l i s h r e a d e r s b e c a use the narrator/“the Pilgrim ” c o u l d n o t return to his native shores, only sending o v e r s e a s t o his homeland “a word” and “A sound” that memorized “A thought” of his pilgrimage i n e x i l e . Byron’s so phisticated narrative d e x t e r i t y penetrates the whole Canto. On the other hand, i n t h e final stanza o f “Ode to Liberty,” Shelley suddenly stops p a y i n g homage to personified Liberty and begins to talk about himself s i n k i n g into the waters as if he were a wild swan killed by a thunderbolt :
. . . and the spirit of that migh t y s i n g i n g
To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn;
Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging
Its path athwart the thunder - smoke of dawn,
Sinks headlong through the aerial golden light
On the heavy - sounding plain,
When the bolt has pierced its brain;
......
My song, its pinions disarrayed o f m i g h t ,
Drooped; o’er it closed the echoes far away
Of the great voice which did its flight sustain,
As waves which lately paved his watery way
Hiss round a drowner’s head in their tempestuous play.
( 271- 8 5 )
16
Legend has it that a swan s ings a most beautiful song only once before it dies. Of course, t h e s w a n r e p r e s e n t s the poet, and
S h e l l e y t h e p o e t p u t s t h e c l o s i n g stanza of “Ode to Liberty” in t h i s f r a m e w o r k . However, who killed the singing swan? J u p i t e r , the metaphor of a despot , t h r o w s a thunderbolt and w i t h i t h e h a s punished the p o e t b e c a u s e he was invoking Liberty and praying h e r to come to the world. T h u s Shelley’s “My song” which i s e q u a l t o B y r o n ’ s “a word,” “A sound,” and “A thought” falls into the ocean, being deprived of its wings. This may be u n d e r s t o o d a s a k i n d o f dramatic irony s i n c e S h e l l e y unconsciously prophesizes his own drown two years later.
It seems to me that Byron and Shelley felt something u n e a s y o r embarrassed about narrating the final Canto of C h i l d e
H a r o l d o r w r i t i n g “Ode to Libe r t y ” i n p u b l i c . B o t h t h e p o e t s g o t o t h e w a t e r s at the end of their composition. The reason why t h e y c o n c l u d e their poems in a similar way is, I s u p p o s e , t h a t , a s a rootless exile, t h e y w e r e n o t always positive o f t h e p r a c t i c a b i l i t y o f their political aspirations . I n the ending of their poems, they u t t e r e d their poetic voice that called for t h e i r u n i t y w i t h N a t u r e / the sublime , a n d t hey also earnestly hoped that the echoes of their fading voice would resound in the hearts o f t h e i r listeners. Certainly, t h e y a r e still vibrat i n g in our minds.
17 N o t e s
1 The letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley , 2 vols. Ed. Frederick L. Jones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1 9 6 4 ) , I I , 5 7 - 8. Page numbers will hereafter be embedded in the text. 2 In the subsequent passage of the above letter, Shelley reveals Byron’s scandalous relations with Italian females who were all available at r a n d o m . 3 F o r f u r t her discussion on the tangled relation between Julian/Shelley and Maddalo/Byron, see Charles E. Robinson, Shelley and Byron: The Snake and Eagle Wreathes in Fight (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), pp.81 - 112 (Ch.5 “Tangled Bo u g h s o f Heaven and Ocean: Two Genii and a Maniac). In the Ch. 4, Robinson c o n t r a s t s The Revolt of Islam w i t h Childe Harold IV. This book established a milestone in this field . 4 Shelley’s Poetry and Prose (Second Edition). Ed. Donald H Reiman a n d N e i l Fraistat (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002), p.120. All quotations from Shelley’s works will hereafter be based on this edition and line numbers will be embedded in t h e t e x t . 5 Itsuyo Higashinaka’s Byron and Italy: A Study of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage IV (Kyoto: Ryukoku Gakkai, 2002) is very informative book on the structure and content of the Canto. 6 All quotations from Childe Harold will hereafter be based on B y r o n ’s Poetry and Prose . Ed. Alice Levine (New York and London: W.W. N o r t o n & Company, 2002). Line numbers will h e r e a f t e r be embedded in t h e t e x t . 7 Shelley’s quotation is correct on the whole except for the italicized a g a i n s t , which assures us that Shelley had a copy of the book at his s i d e . 8 From Paul Stock ’s The Shelley - B y r o n Circle and the Idea of Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) I have learned much about E u r o p e a n s t a t u s q u o during the years 1809- 1824 and about how the two poets were involved in politics by means of writing. 9 Additionally, Byron asked Shelley to de liver his manuscript of Canto III to John Murray late in August when the Shelleys left for England. 10 I do not mean to belittle the value of “travel” and its derived words. These words cannot be stressed too much in Byron studies. We can, for instance, l earn much about their importance from Byron the Traveller: Proceedings of 28 th International Byron Conference (Kyoto: Ryukoku University, 2003). 11 In the conclusive section (XI) of the pamphlet, Shelley cries, “Liberty is dead.” Contrastively, Byron says in st.169, “And Freedom’s heart, grown pale, cease to hoard / Her many griefs for ONE; for she had pour’d / Her orisons for thee [Charlotte]. . . .” (ll.1516 - 1 8 ) . Although there is no evidence that Byron read the pamphlet, the appearance of personified Fre edom is too sudden. It cannot be denied completely that Byron wrote this in bearing the pamphlet in mind. This incident is very interesting but still moot. 12 Edward W. Said, Representations on the Intellectual (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), pp.52 - 3.
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