de smoke
therewith. The which smell when the evil spirit had smelled, he fled
into the utmost parts of Egypt."--_Tobit_ iii. 7, 8; viii. 2, 3.]

[dt] {528} _The first born who burst the winter sun_.--[MS.]

[du] ----_through the brine_.--[MS.]

[252] {533}[Lucifer or Mephistopheles, renamed Caesar, wears the shape of
the Deformed Arnold. It may be that Byron intended to make Olimpia
bestow her affections, not on the glorious Achilles, but the witty and
interesting Hunchback.]

THE AGE OF BRONZE;

OR,

CARMEN SECULARE ET ANNUS HAUD MIRABILIS.[dv]

"Impar _Congressus_ Achilli."[253]

INTRODUCTION TO _THE AGE OF BRONZE_.

_The Age of Bronze_ was begun in December, 1822, and finished on January
10, 1823. "I have sent," he writes (letter to Leigh Hunt, _Letters_,
1901, vi. 160), "to Mrs. S[helley], for the benefit of being copied, a
poem of about seven hundred and fifty lines length--The Age of
Bronze,--or _Carmen Seculare et Annus haud Mirabilis_, with this
Epigraph--'Impar _Congressus_ Achilli.' It is calculated for the reading
part of the million, being all on politics, etc., etc., etc., and a
review of the day in general,--in my early _English Bards_ style, but a
little more stilted, and somewhat too full of 'epithets of war' and
classical and historical allusions. If notes are necessary, they can be
added."

On March 5th he forwarded the "Proof in Slips" ("and certainly the
_Slips_ are the most conspicuous part of it") to his new publisher, John
Hunt; and, on April 1, 1823, _The Age of Bronze_ was published, but not
with the author's name.

Ten years had gone by since he had published, only to disclaim, the
latest of his boyish satires, _The Waltz_, and more than six years since
he had written, "at the request of Douglas Kinnaird," the stilted and
laboured _Monody on the Death of ... Sheridan_. In the interval
(1816-1822) he had essayed any and every measure but the heroic, and, at
length, as a tardy recognition of his allegiance to "the great moral
poet of all times, of all climes, of all feelings, and of all stages of
existence" (_Observations upon "Observations,"_ _Letters_, 1901, v.
590), he reverts, as he believes, to his "early _English Bards_ style,"
the style of Pope.

The brazen age, the "Annus Haud Mirabilis," which the satirist would
hold up to scorn, was 1822, the