s wished to meet with the love, jealousy, and
other passions common to their age and country; but Lord Byron would
only give them what he found in history. Thence, no love and no
jealousy; but a proud, violent character, coming in collision with a
government proud and violent as itself; one of those men that are
exceptional but real, in whom extremes of good and evil meet; one of
those dramatic natures that fastened strongly on his imagination,
producing a shock which kindled the flame of genius:--

"It is now four years that I have meditated this work, and before I had
sufficiently examined the records, I was rather disposed to have made it
turn on a jealousy in Faliero. But perceiving no foundation for this in
historical truth, and aware that jealousy is an exhausted passion in the
drama, I have given it a more historical form."[199]

As to the motives for the conspiracy, the clearness of certainty only
came to him a year after his drama had been published. But there was
such an attraction between his mind and truth that his intuition had
supplied the want of material certainty. And when a year afterward, at
Ravenna, he received the document so long desired, he was happy in
sending Murray a copy of this document translated from an ancient
chronicle by Sir Francis Palgrave, the learned author of the "History of
the Anglo-Saxons," to be able to write:--

"Inclosed is the best account of the 'Doge Faliero,' which was only sent
to me from an old MS. the other day. Get it translated, and append it as
a note to the next edition. You will perhaps be pleased to see that my
conceptions of his character were correct, though I regret not having
met with this extract before. You will perceive that he himself said
exactly what he is made to say about the Bishop of Treviso. You will
also see that 'he spoke very little,' and these only words of rage and
disdain, after his arrest, which is the case in the play, except when he
breaks out at the close of Act V. But his speech to the conspirators is
better in the MS. than in the play. I wish that I had met with it in
time."

The historical inaccuracies of authors, their carelessness about truth,
whether the result of malice or inattention, revolted Lord Byron, and
especially if such untruths tended to asperse a great character. The
lies of Dr. Moore about the "Doge Faliero" almost made him angry:--

"Where did Dr. Moore find that Marino Faliero begged his life? I have
searched the