an).

_The Prisoner of Chillon_ was reviewed (together with the Third Canto of
_Childe Harold_) by Sir Walter Scott (_Quarterly Review_, No. xxxi.,
October, 1816), and by Jeffrey (_Edinburgh Review_, No. liv., December,
1816).

With the exception of the _Eclectic_ (March, 1817, N.S., vol. vii. pp.
298-304), the lesser reviews were unfavourable. For instance, the
_Critical Review_ (December, 1816, Series V. vol. iv. pp. 567-581)
detected the direct but unacknowledged influence of Wordsworth on
thought and style; and the _Portfolio_ (No. vi. pp. 121-128), in an
elaborate skit, entitled "Literary Frauds," assumed, and affected to
prove, that the entire poem was a forgery, and belonged to the same
category as _The Right Honourable Lord Byron's Pilgrimage to the Holy
Land, etc._

For extracts from these and other reviews, see Koelbing, _Prisoner of
Chillon, and Other Poems_, Weimar, 1896, excursus i. pp. 3-55.

SONNET ON CHILLON

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind![1]
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art:
For there thy habitation is the heart--
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consigned--
To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Their country conquers with their martyrdom,
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.
Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,
And thy sad floor an altar--for 'twas trod,
Until his very steps have left a trace
Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod,
By Bonnivard!--May none those marks efface!
For they appeal from tyranny to God.[2]

ADVERTISEMENT

When this poem[a] was composed, I was not sufficiently aware of the
history of Bonnivard, or I should have endeavoured to dignify the
subject by an attempt to celebrate his courage and his virtues. With
some account of his life I have been furnished, by the kindness of a
citizen of that republic, which is still proud of the memory of a man
worthy of the best age of ancient freedom:--

"Francois De Bonnivard, fils de Louis De Bonnivard, originaire de
Seyssel et Seigneur de Lunes, naquit en 1496. Il fit ses etudes a Turin:
en 1510 Jean Aime de Bonnivard, son oncle, lui resigna le Prieure de St.
Victor, qui aboutissoit aux murs de Geneve, et qui formait un benefice
considerable....

"Ce grand homme--(Bonnivard merite ce litre par la force de son