‘A stranger, born far beyond the mountains,
Loves the Lady of the land,’
which was Byron’s meaning. The poet excuses himself for his fickleness on the plea that ‘his blood is all meridian’—in short, that he cannot help loving someone. But we plainly see that his love for Mary Chaworth was still paramount. ‘In spite of tortures ne’er to be forgot’—tortures of which we had a glimpse in ‘Manfred’—he was still her slave. Finally, Byron tells us that it was useless to struggle against the misery his heart endured, and that all his hopes were centred on an early death.
The episode of Francesca and Paolo had made a deep impression on Byron. He likened it to his unfortunate adventure with Mary Chaworth in June and July, 1813. In ‘The Corsair’—written after their intimacy had been broken off—Byron prefixes to each canto a motto from ‘The Inferno’ which seemed to be appropriate to his own case. In the first canto we find:
‘Nessun maggior dolore,
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria.’
In the second canto:
‘Conoscesti i dubbiosi desire?’
In the third canto:
‘Come vedi—ancor non m’ abbandona.’
That Byron had Francesca in his mind when he wrote the stanzas to the Po seems likely; and in the letter which he wrote to Mary from Venice, in the previous month, he compares their misfortunes with those of Paolo and Francesca in plain words.[57]
‘Don Juan’ was begun in the autumn of 1818. That poem, Byron tells us, was inspired almost entirely by his own personal experience. Perhaps he drew a portrait of Mary Chaworth when he described Julia: