Microsoft Word Byron and Scott 1809-1824

100: CHP III 84, 6. 
101: CHP III 88, 1. 
102: CHP III 93, 3 
103: CHP III 92, 5.
104: CHP III 118, 6-9. 

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rigour of the closest captivity. But it has not been the purpose of Lord Byron to paint the peculiar 
character of Bonnivard, nor do we find any thing to remind us of the steady firmness and patient 
endurance of one suffering for conscience-sake. The object of the poem, like that of Sterne’s celebrated 
sketch of the prisoner,
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is to consider captivity in the abstract, and to mark it 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 capital punishments [p.201] are 
never inflicted, and where solitary confinement for life is substituted in the case of enormous crimes, 
something like it may be witnessed. On particular days in the course of the year, these victims of a 
jurisprudence 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 change of the silence of a dungeon 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. 
But they who are subjected to such a dreadful punishment are generally, like most perpetrators of gross 
crimes, men of feeble internal resources. Men of talents like Trenck
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have been known, in the deepest 
seclusion, and most severe confinement, to battle the foul fiend melancholy, and to come off 
conquerors, during a captivity of years. Those who suffer imprisonment for the sake of their country or 
their religion have yet a stronger support, and may exclaim, though in a different sense from that of 
Othello— 
‘It is the cause—it is the cause, my soul.’ 
And hence the early history of the church is filled with martyrs, who, confident in the justice of their 
cause, and the certainty of their future reward, endured with patience the rigour of protracted and 
solitary captivity, as well as the bitterness of torture, and of death itself. This, however, is not the view 
which Lord Byron has taken of the character and captivity of Bonnivard, for which he has offered an 
apology in the following passage in the notes. ‘When the foregoing poem was composed, I was not 
sufficiently aware of the history of Bonnivard, or I would have endeavoured to dignify the subject by 
an attempt to celebrate his courage and his virtues.’ The theme of the poem is therefore the gradual 
effect of protracted captivity upon a man of powerful mind, tried at the same time by the successive 
deaths of his two brethren. 
Bonnivard is represented as imprisoned with his brothers in a terrific dungeon in the Castle of 
Chillon. The second— 
 
‘ ————————— pure of mind, 
But formed to combat with his kind;
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[p.202] first drooped under the effects of protracted imprisonment, more bitter to one bred a warrior 
and a huntsman. The sickness and pining of the other, a youth of a milder and more affectionate 
character, is feelingly described. 
VIII.