“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. What! wait till they were in his capital, and then talk of his readiness to give up what is already gone!! ‘What whining monk art thou—what holy cheat?’ ’Sdeath!—Dionysius at Corinth was yet a king to this. The ‘Isle of Elba’ to retire to!—Well—if it had been Caprea, I should have marvelled less. ‘I see men’s minds are but a parcel of their fortunes.’ I am utterly bewildered and confounded.
“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 be not 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
* He adopted this thought afterwards in his Ode to Napoleon, as well as most of the historical examples in the following paragraph. |
| A. D. 1814. | LIFE OF LORD BYRON. | 513 |
“Psha! ‘something too much of this.’ But I won’t give him up even now; though all his admirers have, ‘like the Thanes, fall’n from him.’
