28 The Rice Institute Pamphlet
country might rid itself of tyrants and achieve the freedom it
deserves. The idea of revolution versus tyranny was much
on his mind, and the drought of one seemed to lead to an
expression of the other. Thus there are several discussions of
each in Childe Harold.
For example, he speaks of the tripartite war of Spain,
France, and England, and regrets the loss of life which paves
the way for the tyrant. He deplores the outcome of Waterloo
for the same reason. The world is not more free because Gaul
is in fetters. There is no reason for man to pay homage to the
wolf which struck the Hon down. The result of Waterloo
seems to him to be a revival of thralldom, which is to be the
“patch’d-up idol of enlightened days.”
The tendency toward revolution is expressed in a letter to
Tom Moore, dated April 20, 1814. Byron explains that he re-
fused to see Louis XVIII make his triumphal entry into Lon-
don; but, he says, ‘Tn some coming year of Hegira, I should
not dislike to see the place where he had reigned, shortly
after the second revolution and a happy sovereignty of two
months, the last six weeks being civil war.”15
The “Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte,” which was published
in 1814, is in keeping with the spirit of this letter. The ode
is an occasional poem, written at the time of Napoleon’s
first exile. Byron indicates the power which Napoleon held
when tyrants of Europe had bowed to him and thanked him
for a crown. He had both France and the rest of the world
in his possession. Why, then, did he fail? One reason for his
failure is best summed up in these lines :
But thou, forsooth, must be a king
And don the purple vest,
As if that foolish robe could wring
Remembrance from thy breast.16
Now Napoleon’s return in 1815 placed Byron’s ode in a
very strange light. In a letter to Moore the poet says that he