The Prisoner of Chillon; A FABLE.(1) SONNET ON CHILLON. ETERNAL Spirit of the chainless Mind! (2) To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, Their country conquers with their martyrdom, And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. Chillon! thy prison is a holy place, And thy sad floor an altar-for 't was trod, (1) When this poem was composed, I was not sufficiently aware of the history of Bonnivard, or I should have endeavoured to dignify the subject by an attempt to celebrate his courage and his virtues. With some account of his life I have been furnished, by the kindness of a citizen of that republic, which is still proud of the memory of a man worthy of the best age of ancient freedom: “ François de Bonnivard, fils de Louis de Bonnivard, originaire de Seyssel et Seigneur de Lunes, naquit en 1496. Il fit ses études à Turin: en 1510 Jean Aimé de Bonnivard, son oncle, lui résigna le prieuré de St. Victor, qui aboutissoit aux murs de Genève, et qui formoit un bénéfice considérable. "Ce grand homme-(Bonnivard mérite ce titre par la force de son àme, la droiture de son cœur, la noblesse de ses intentions, la sagesse de ses conseils, le courage de ses démarches, l'étendue de ses connaissances et la vivacité de son esprit), ce grand homme, qui excitera l'admiration de tous ceux qu'une vertu héroique peut encore émouvoir, inspirera encore la plus vive reconnaissance dans les cœurs des Genevois qui aiment Genève. Bonnivard en fut toujours un des plus fermes appuis: pour assurer la liberté de notre république, il ne craignit pas de perdre souvent la sienne; il oublia son repos; il méprisa les richesses; il ne négligea rien pour affermir le bonheur d'une patrie qu'il honora de son choix : dès ce moment il la chérit comme le plus zelé de ses citoyens; il la servit avec l'intrépidité d'un héros, et il écrivit son Histoire avec la naïveté d'un philosophe et la chaleur d'un patriote. "Il dit dans le commencement de son Histoire de Genève, que des qu'il eut commencé de lire l'histoire des nations, il se sentit entrainé par son goût pour les républiques, dont il épousa toujours les intérets: c'est ce goût pour la liberté qui lui fit sans doute adopter Genève pour sa patrie. "Bonnivard, encore jeune, s'annonça bautement comme le défenseur de Genève contre le Duc de Savoye et l'Evêque. "En 1519, Bonnivard devint le martyr de sa patrie: le Duc de Savoye étant entré dans Genève avec cinq cents hommes, Bonnivard craignit le ressentiment du Duc; il voulut se retirer à Fribourg pour en éviter les suites; mais il fut trahi par deux hommes qui l'accompagnoient, et conduit par ordre du Prince à Grolée, où il resta prisounier pendant deux ans. Bonnivard étoit malheureux dans ses voyages: comme ses malheurs n'avoient point ralenti son zèle pour Genève, il étoit toujours un ennemi redoutable pour ceux qui la menaçoient, et par conséquent il devoit être exposé à leurs coups. Il fat rencontré en 1530 sur le Jura par des voleurs, qui le dépouillèrent, et qui le mirent encore entre les mains du Duc de Savoye: ce prince le fit enfermer dans le Chatean de Chillon, où il resta sans être interrogé jusque en 1536; il fut alors delivré par les Bernois, qui s'emparèrent du Pays de Vaud. "Bonnivard, en sortant de sa captivité, eut le plaisir de trouver Genève libre et réformée: la république s'empressa de lui témoigner sa reconnaissance, et de le dédommager des maux qu'il avoit soufferts; elle le reçut bourgeois de la ville au mois de juin, 1536; elle lui donna la maison habitee autrefois par le Vicaire-général, et elle lui assigna une persion de deux cents écus d'or tant qu'il séjourneroît à Geneva Il fut admis dans le Conseil des Deux-Cents en 1537. "Bonnivard n'a pas fini d'être utile: apres avoir travaille à rendre Genève libre, il réussit à la rendre tolérante. Bennivard engagea le Conseil à accorder aux ecclésiastiques et aux paysans un temps suffisant pour examiner les proposi tions qu'on leur faisoit ; il réussit par sa douceur: on preche toujours le Christianisme avec succès quand on le préche avec charité. “Bonnivard fut savant: ses manuscrits, qui sont dans la Bibliothèque publique, prouvent qu'il avoit bien lu les auteurs classiques latins, et qu'il avoit approfondi la théologie et l'histoire. Ce grand homme aimoit les sciences, et il croyoit qu'elles pouvoient faire la gloire de Genève; aussi l ne négligea rien pour les fixer dans cette ville naissante; en 1551 il donna sa bibliothèque au public; elle fut le commen cement de notre Bibliothèque publique, et ces livres sont en partie les rares et belles editions du quinzième siècle qu'on voit dans notre collection. Enfin, pendant la mène année, ce bon patriote institua la république son héritiert, lege dont on projetoit la fondation. à condition qu'elle employeroit ses biens à entretenir le cal "Il paroit que Bonnivard mourat en 1570; mais on se peut l'assurer, parcequ'il y a une lacune dans le Nécrologe depuis le mois de juillet, 1570, jusqu'en 1571.” [Lord Byron wrote this beautiful poem at a small inn, în the little village of Ouchy, near Lausanne, where he hap pened, in June, 1816, to be detained two days by stress of weather; "thereby adding," says Moore, "one more deathless association to the already immortalized localities of the Lake."—L. E.] (2) In the first draught, the sonnet opens thus— Brightest in dungeons, Liberty ! thou art, To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, Their country conquers with their martyrdom.”—LE (3) “I will tell you something about Chillon. A M. de Luc, ninety years old, a Swiss, had it read to him, and is pleased with it-so my sister writes. He said that he was with Rousseau at Chillon, and that the description is perfectly correct. But this is not all; I recollected something of the name, and find the following passage in The Confession, vol. iii. p. 247, liv. viii. De tous ces amusements celui qui me plut davantage fut une promenade autour du Lac, que je fis en bateau avec De Luc père, sa bonne, ses deur fils, et ma Therèse. Nous mimes sept jours à cette tournee par le plus beau temps du monde. J'en gardai le vif son venir des sites qui m'avoient frappé à l'autre extrémite du Lac, et dont je fis la description quelques années après, My limbs are bow'd, though not with toil, But rusted with a vile repose, (1) Proud of Persecution's rage; (2) For the God their foes denied:-- Of whom this wreck is left the last. II. There are seven pillars of Gothic mould, (3) For in these limbs its teeth remain, III. They chain'd us each to a column stone, Fetter'd in hand, but pined in heart; dans La Nouvelle Heloise.' This nonagenarian, De Luc, must be one of the deux fils.' He is in England, infirm, but still in faculty. It is odd that he should have lived so long, and wanting in oddness, that he should have made this voyage with Jean Jacques, and afterwards, at such an interval, read a poem by an Englishman (who made precisely the same circumnavigation) upon the same scenery."-B. Letlers, April 9, 1817.-Jean André de Luc, F. R. S., died at Windsor, in the July following. He was born in 1726, at Geneva, was the author of many geological works, and corresponded with most of the learned societies of Europe. -LE. (4) Ludovico Sforza, and others. The same is asserted of Marie Antoinette's, the wife of Louis the Sixteenth, though not in quite so short a period. Grief is said to have the "T was still some solace, in the dearth But even these at length grew cold- A grating sound-not full and free I was the eldest of the three, The youngest, whom my father loved, Because our mother's brow was given To him-with eyes as blue as heaven, For him my soul was sorely moved: (When day was beautiful to me Its sleepless summer of long light, The snow-clad offspring of the sun: And thus he was as pure and bright, And in his natural spirit gay, With tears for nought but others' ills, And then they flow'd like mountain rills, Unless he could assuage the woe Which he abhorr'd to view below. V. The other was as pure of mind, With joy:-but not in chains to pine: And so perchance in sooth did mine: Had follow'd there the deer and wolf; same effect; to such, and not to fear, this change in hers was to be attributed. (1) In the MS. "But with the inward waste of grief."-L. E. (2) In the MS. "Braving rancour-chains-and rage."-L. E. (3) The fidelity of Lord Byron's description of the dungeon of Chillon, to which he has given a deathless interest, is shown in the engraving in Finden's Illustrations, from Mr. Stanfield's drawing of the interior of the prison.-P. E. (4) "This picture of the first feelings of the three gallant brothers, when bound apart in this living tomb, and of the gradual decay of their cheery fortitude, is full of pity and agony." Jeffrey.-L.E. VI. Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls: The dark vault lies wherein we lay, Sounding o'er our heads it knock'd: And then the very rock hath rock'd, And I have felt it shake, unshock'd, Because I could have smiled to see The death that would have set me free. VII. I said my nearer brother pined, It was not that 'twas coarse and rude, (1) The Château de Chillon is situated between Clarens and Villeneuve, which last is at one extremity of the Lake of Geneva. On its left are the entrances of the Rhone, and opposite are the heights of Meillerie and the range of Alps above Boveret and St.-Gingo. Near it, on a hill behind, is a torrent: below it, washing its walls, the lake has been fathomed to the depth of 800 feet, French measure: within it are a range of dungeons, in which the early reformers, and subsequently prisoners of state, were confined. Across one of the vaults is a beam black with age, on which we were informed that the condemned were formerly executed. In the cells are seven pillars, or, rather, eight, one being half merged in the wall; in some of these are rings for the fetters and the fettered; in the pavement the steps of Bonnivard have left their traces. He was confined here several years. It is by this castle that Rousseau has fixed the catastrophe of his Heloise, in the rescue of one of her children by Julie from the water; the shock of which, and the ill. ness produced by the immersion, is the cause of her death. The château is large, and seen along the lake for a great distance. The walls are white.-["The early history of this castle," says Mr. Tennant, who went over it in 1821, "is, I believe, involved in doubt. By some historians it is said to be built in the year 1120, and according to others, in the year 1236; but by whom it was built seems not to be known. It is said, however, in history, that Charles the Fifth, Duke of Savoy, stormed and took it in 1536; that he He died-and they unlock'd his chain, VIII. But he, the favourite and the flower, So softly worn, so sweetly weak, there found great hidden treasures, and many wretched beings pining away their lives in these frightful dungeons, amongst whom was the good Bonnivard. On the pillar to which this unfortunate man is said to have been chained, I observed, cut out of the stone, the name of one whose beautiful poem has done much to heighten the interest of this dreary spot, and will, perhaps, do more towards rescuing from oblivion the names of Chillon' and 'Bonnivard,' than all the cruel sufferings which that injured man endured within its damp and gloomy walls."-L. E.) Simond, in his Journal of a Tour in Switzerland, gives a sketch of Chillon. Among other things he says:-"It grieves me to contradict poets or picturesque and sentimental travellers; but really the dungeon of Chillon is not under water, and besides is absolutely a comfortable sort of dwageon enough, full forty feet long, fifteen or twenty feet wide, and fifteen feet high, with several narrow slits into the thick wall above reach, but admitting air and light, and even some rays of the sun. A row of stone pillars divides it: to one of them an iron ring is fastened, and looks much rubbed it is marked by tradition as the place where poer Bonnivard was chained for six long years."-P. E(2) In the MS. "But why withhold the blow?—he died."-L. E. (3) In the MS. "To break or bite."-L. E. Whose tints as gently sunk away I could not die, I had no earthly hope-but faith, And that forbade a selfish death. IX. What next befell me then and there I had no thought, no feeling-none- It was not even the dungeon-light, So hateful to my heavy sight, But vacancy absorbing space, There were no stars-no earth-no time No check-no change--no good—no crime— Which neither was of life nor death; Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless! It ceased, and then it came again, But then by dull degrees came back . But through the crevice where it came That bird was perch'd, as fond and tame, And tamer than upon the tree; A lovely bird, with azure wings, I never saw its like before, I ne'er shall see its likeness more: Or broke its cage to perch on mine, Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine! Or if it were, in winged guise, "A visitant from Paradise; For-Heaven forgive that thought! the while I sometimes deem'd that it might be A single cloud on a sunny day, When skies are blue, and earth is gay. XI. A kind of change came in my fate, And tread it over every part; My brothers' graves without a sod; I saw them--and they were the same, The only one in view; A small green isle, it seem'd no more, The fish swam by the castle wall, (4) It has not been the purpose of Lord Byron to paint the peculiar character of Bonnivard. The object of the poem, like that of Sterne's celebrated sketch of the prisoner, is to consider captivity in the abstract, and to mark its effects in gradually chilling the mental powers as it benumbs and freezes the animal frame, until the unfortunate victim becomes, as it were, a part of his dungeon, and identified with his chains. This transmutation we believe to be founded on fact: at least, in the Low Countries, where solitude for life is substituted for capital punishments, something like it may be witnessed. On particular days in the course of the year, these victims of a jurispru As then to me he seem'd to fly, XIV. It might be months, or years, or days, I had no hope my eyes to raise, I ask'd not why, and reck'd not where: I learn'd to love despair. . Had power to kill-yet, strange to tell! dence which calls itself humane, are presented to the public eye, upon a stage erected in the open market-place, apparently to prevent their guilt and their punishment from being forgotten. It is scarcely possible to witness a sight more degrading to humanity than this exhibition-with matted hair, wild looks and haggard features, with eyes dazzled by the unwonted light of the sun, and ears deafened and astounded by the sudden exchange of the silence of a dangeon for the busy hum of men, the wretches sit more like rude images fashioned to a fantastic imitation of humanity, than like living and reflecting beings. In the course of time we are assured they generally become either madmen or idiots, as mind or matter happens to predominate, when the mysterious balance between them is destroyed. It will readily be allowed that this singular poem is more powerful than pleasing. The dungeon of Bonnivard is, like that of Ugolino, a subject too dismal for even the power of the painter or poet to counteract its horrors. It is the more disagreeable as affording human hope no anchor to rest ' upon, and describing the sufferer, though a man of talents and virtues, as altogether inert and powerless under his accumulated sufferings: yet, as a picture, however gloomy the colouring, it may rival any which Lord Byron has drawn; nor is it possible to read it without a sinking of ' the heart, corresponding with that which he describes the victim to have suffered." Sir Walter Scott.-L. E. |