The name is absent

32 The Rice Institute Pamphlet

if, at times, they mistake their prey. We notice also how
closely this idea parallels some of the remarks Byron made in
his speech on behalf of the frame-breakers. Certainly, his
thinking on the subject had not become less serious in the
intervening years.

The cause of liberty and laments for its loss are no less
ardent in the last canto of the poem than they had been in
the first three. Italy is the object of the poet’s description, and
he leads off with an account of his impressions of Venice.
After a few introductory remarks he returns to his old theme.
He regrets that Venice, after thirteen hundred years of free-
dom, is now in submission to foreign foes. Possibly Byron had
not learned enough of the history of the city to form as defi-
nite an opinion about its freedom as he did at a later date.
At any rate, in a drama which we shall examine presently, he
began to realize that in the instance of the Venetian Govern-
ment of the fourteenth century the word “republic” was not
synonymous with “freedom.”

He also expresses another idea which he was to elaborate
in a later poem. In one stanza he states that in her love for
Tasso, Venice should have cut the knot which bound her to
a foreign tyrant. He speaks of Petrarch as one who arose to
raise the language of his country from her barbaric foes. He
also suggests that “Tulley’s voice, Virgil’s lay, and Livy’s
pictured page” will bring about the resurrection of fallen
Rome. The idea that the hope for Italy lay in her art was
reiterated and developed more fully in The Prophecy of
Dante.

In 1819, before he had completed the fifth canto of Don
Juan, Byron was wi'iting another poem, which, though not
as well known, is nevertheless important to the problem at
hand. On February 21, 1820, he wrote to John Murray that

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