of April, 1814. A
second edition followed immediately, but as publications of less than a
sheet were liable to the stamp tax on newspapers, at Murray's request,
another stanza, the fifth, was inserted in a later (between the second
and the twelfth) edition, and, by this means, the pamphlet was extended
to seventeen pages. The concluding stanzas xvii., xviii., xix., which
Moore gives in a note (_Life_, p. 249), were not printed in Byron's
lifetime, but were first included, in a separate poem, in Murray's
edition of 1831, and first appended to the Ode in the seventeen-volume
edition of 1832.

Although he had stipulated that the _Ode_ should be published
anonymously, Byron had no objection to "its being said to be mine."
There was, in short, no secret about it, and notices on the whole
favourable appeared in the _Morning Chronicle_, April 21, in the
_Examiner_, April 24 (in which Leigh Hunt combated Byron's condemnation
of Buonaparte for not "dying as honour dies"), and in the _Anti-Jacobin_
for May, 1814 (_Letters_, 1899, iii. 73, note 3).

Byron's repeated resolutions and promises to cease writing and
publishing, which sound as if they were only made to be broken, are
somewhat exasperating, and if, as he pleaded in his own behalf, the
occasion (of Napoleon's abdication) was _physically_ irresistible, it is
to be regretted that he did not _swerve_ from his self-denying ordinance
to better purpose. The note of disillusionment and disappointment in the
_Ode_ is but an echo of the sentiments of the "general." Napoleon on his
own "fall" is more original and more interesting: "Il ceda," writes
Leonard Gallois (_Histoire de Napoleon d'apres lui-meme_, 1825, pp. 546,
547), "non sans de grands combats interieurs, et la dicta en ces termes.

'Les puissances alliees ayant proclame que l'empereur Napoleon
etait le seul obstacle au retablissement, de la paix en Europe,
l'empereur Napoleon fidele a son serment, declare qu'il renonce,
pour lui et ses heritiers, aux trones de France et d'Italie, parce
qu'il n'est aucun sacrifice personnel, meme celui de la vie, qu'il
ne soit pret a faire a l'interet de la France.

Napoleon.'"

ODE TO NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE.

I.

'Tis done--but yesterday a King!
And armed with Kings to strive--
And now thou art a nameless thing:
So abject--yet alive!
Is this the man o