ed the
wit, they might have given him "the sobriquet of _Le Diable Boiteux_"
(letter to Moore, April 2, 1823, _Letters_, 1901, vi. 179). It was no
wonder that so poignant, so persistent a calamity should be "reproduced
in his poetry" (_Life_, p. 13), or that his passionate impatience of
such a "thorn in the flesh" should picture to itself a mysterious and
unhallowed miracle of healing. It is true, as Moore says (_Life_, pp.
45, 306), that "the trifling deformity of his foot" was the embittering
circumstance of his life, that it "haunted him like a curse;" but it by
no means follows that he seriously regarded his physical peculiarity as
a stamp of the Divine reprobation, that "he was possessed by an _idee
fixe_ that every blessing would be 'turned into a curse' to him" (letter
of Lady Byron to H. C. Robinson, _Diary, etc._, 1869, in. 435, 436). No
doubt he indulged himself in morbid fancies, played with the
extravagances of a restless imagination, and wedded them to verse; but
his intellect, "brooding like the day, a master o'er a slave," kept
guard. He would never have pleaded on his own behalf that the tyranny of
an _idee fixe_, a delusion that he was predestined to evil, was an
excuse for his shortcomings or his sins.

Byron's very considerable obligations to _The Three Brothers_ might have
escaped notice, but the resemblance between his "Stranger," or "Caesar,"
and the Mephistopheles of "the great Goethe" was open and palpable.

If Medwin may be trusted (_Conversations_, 1824, p. 210), Byron had read
"_Faust_ in a sorry French translation," and it is probable that
Shelley's inspired rendering of "May-day Night," which was published in
_The Liberal_ (No. i., October 14, 1822, pp. 123-137), had been read to
him, and had attracted his attention. _The Deformed Transformed_ is "a
_Faustish_ kind of drama;" and Goethe, who maintained that Byron's play
as a whole was "no imitation," but "new and original, close, genuine,
and spirited," could not fail to perceive that "his devil was suggested
by my Mephistopheles" (_Conversations_, 1874, p. 174). The tempter who
cannot resist the temptation of sneering at his own wiles, who mocks for
mocking's sake, is not Byron's creation, but Goethe's. Lucifer talked
_at_ the clergy, if he did not "talk like a clergyman;" but the "bitter
hunchback," even when he is _solus_, sneers as the river wanders, "at
his own sweet will." He is not a doctor, but a spirit of unbelief!

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