Excerpt from University Library of Autobiography: Including All the Great Autobiographies and the Autobiographical Data Left by the World's Famous Men and Women Metternich's memoirs are therefore famous; his estimates of Napoleon and other contemporaries have become classic. Yet there is a narrowness about all his views, the craftiness of the aged politician shows everywhere in his judgments; and, as men ventured to say even in his own day of repression, if Europe had only been saved from Napoleon to be handed over to Metternich, it might just as well have been left un saved. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The poem offers a complicated mixture of self-assertion and deference, of shrewdness and wisdom, of self-respect and selfless love. Essays placing the "Memorandum" in its historical, literary, and theoretical contexts follow the text of the poem itself.