ABSTRACT
The writings of both Madame de Stael and Lord Byron encompassed a variety of geographical/cultural settings. In Byron's poem, however, the Pantheon is invoked at a point where the speaker has come to terms with the sources of his earlier gloom and pessimism, and has done so particularly through gaining renewed confidence in the creative imagination. Byron's letters over the period leading up to and encompassing his writing of the Venetian plays show him intensely concerned with Britain's political situation, eager for reform, and even fitfully inclined to return to Britain and play a political role. Byron is of course drawing on the stereotype of the grasping Jewish moneylender – cosmopolitan, indeed, but in the sense of having immense power as a 'citizen of the world', and yet no specific national allegiance. Such a state of affairs undermines the power of would-be 'heroes' – the financiers exert more influence than 'The shade of Bonaparte's noble daring'.
