



Produced by Jonathan Ingram, David Cortesi, and the Online
Distributed Proofreaders Team at http://www.pgdp.net






TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

This etext contains only characters from the Latin-1 set. The original
work contained a few phrases of Greek text. These are represented here
as Beta-code transliterations in brackets, e.g. [Greek: Liakyra].

The original text used a few other characters not found in the Latin-1
set. These have been represented using bracket notation: [=a], [=i] [=e]
represent those letters with a macron. A few instances of superscript
letters are indicated by carets, as in "Concluded, Canto 2^d, Smyrna,
March 28^th^."

An important feature of this edition is its copious notes, which are of
three types. Notes indexed with a number and a letter, for example
[4.B.], are end-notes provided by Byron or, following Canto IV, by J. C.
Hobhouse. These notes follow each Canto.

Poems and end-notes have footnotes. Footnotes indexed with lowercase
letters (e.g. [c], [bf]) show variant forms of Byron's text from
manuscripts and other sources. Footnotes indexed with arabic numbers
(e.g. [17], [221]) are informational. In the original, footnotes are
printed at the foot of the page on which they are referenced, and their
indices start over on each page. In this etext, footnotes have been
collected at the end of each section, and have been numbered
consecutively throughout the book. Within each block of footnotes are
numbers in braces, e.g. {321}. These represent the page number on which
the following notes originally appeared. To find a note that was
originally printed on page 27, search for {27}.

Text in footnotes and end-notes in square brackets is the work of Editor
E. H. Coleridge. Note text not in brackets is by Byron or Hobhouse. In
certain notes on variant text, the editor showed deleted text struck
through with lines. The struck-through words are noted here with braces
and dashes, as in {-deleted words-}.







                                The Works

                                    OF

                                LORD BYRON.


                  A NEW, REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION,
                            WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.


                              Poetry. Vol. II.

                                  EDITED BY

                     ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE, M.A.



                                   LONDON:
                      JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
                    NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.

                                     1899.




                      PREFACE TO THE SECOND VOLUME.

The text of the present edition of _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_ is based
upon a collation of volume i. of the Library Edition, 1855, with the
following MSS.: (i.) the original MS. of the First and Second Cantos, in
Byron's handwriting [MS. M.]; (ii.) a transcript of the First and Second
Cantos, in the handwriting of R. C. Dallas [D.]; (iii.) a transcript of
the Third Canto, in the handwriting of Clara Jane Clairmont [C.]; (iv.)
a collection of "scraps," forming a first draft of the Third Canto, in
Byron's handwriting [MS.]; (v.) a fair copy of the first draft of the
Fourth Canto, together with the MS. of the additional stanzas, in
Byron's handwriting. [MS. M.]; (vi.) a second fair copy of the Fourth
Canto, as completed, in Byron's handwriting [D.].

The text of the First and Second Cantos has also been collated with the
text of the First Edition of the First and Second Cantos (quarto,
1812); the text of the Third and of the Fourth Cantos with the texts of
the First Editions of 1816 and 1818 respectively; and the text of the
entire poem with that issued in the collected editions of 1831 and 1832.

Considerations of space have determined the position and arrangement of
the notes.

Byron's notes to the First, Second, and Third Cantos, and Hobhouse's
notes to the Fourth Canto are printed, according to precedent, at the
end of each canto.

Editorial notes are placed in square brackets. Notes illustrative of the
text are printed immediately below the variants. Notes illustrative of
Byron's notes or footnotes are appended to the originals or printed as
footnotes. Byron's own notes to the Fourth Canto are printed as
footnotes to the text.

Hobhouse's "Historical Notes" are reprinted without addition or comment;
but the numerous and intricate references to classical, historical, and
archaeological authorities have been carefully verified, and in many
instances rewritten.

In compiling the Introductions, the additional notes, and footnotes, I
have endeavoured to supply the reader with a compendious manual of
reference. With the subject-matter of large portions of the three
distinct poems which make up the five hundred stanzas of _Childe
Harold's Pilgrimage_ every one is more or less familiar, but details
and particulars are out of the immediate reach of even the most
cultivated readers.

The poem may be dealt with in two ways. It may be regarded as a
repertory or treasury of brilliant passages for selection and quotation;
or it may be read continuously, and with some attention to the style and
message of the author. It is in the belief that _Childe Harold_ should
be read continuously, and that it gains by the closest study, reassuming
its original freshness and splendour, that the text as well as Byron's
own notes have been somewhat minutely annotated.

In the selection and composition of the notes I have, in addition to
other authorities, consulted and made use of the following editions of
_Childe Harold's Pilgrimage:_--

i. _Edition Classique_, par James Darmesteter, Docteur-es-lettres.
Paris, 1882.

ii. Byron's _Childe Harold_, edited, with Introduction and Notes, by H.
F. Tozer, M.A. Oxford, 1885 (Clarendon Press Series).

iii. _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_, edited by the Rev. E.C. Everard Owen,
M.A. London, 1897 (Arnold's British Classics).

Particular acknowledgments of my indebtedness to these admirable works
will be found throughout the volume.

I have consulted and derived assistance from Professor Eugen Koelbing's
exhaustive collation of the text of the two first cantos with the Dallas
Transcript in the British Museum (_Zur Textueberlieferung von Byron's
Childe Harold, Cantos I., II. Leipsic_, 1896); and I am indebted to the
same high authority for information with regard to the Seventh Edition
(1814) of the First and Second Cantos. (See _Bemerkungen zu Byron's
Childe Harold, Engl. Stud._, 1896, xxi. 176-186.)

I have again to record my grateful acknowledgments to Dr. Richard
Garnett, C.B., Dr. A. S. Murray, F.R.S., Mr. R. E. Graves, Mr. E. D.
Butler, F.R.G.S., and other officials of the British Museum, for
constant help and encouragement in the preparation of the notes to
_Childe Harold._

I desire to express my thanks to Dr. H. R. Mill, Librarian of the Royal
Geographical Society; Mr. J. C. Baker, F.R.S., Keeper of the Herbarium
and Library of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Mr. Horatio F. Brown
(author of _Venice, an Historical Sketch_, etc.); Mr. P. A. Daniel, Mr.
Richard Edgcumbe, and others, for valuable information on various points
of doubt and difficulty.

On behalf of the Publisher, I beg to acknowledge the kindness of his
Grace the Duke of Richmond, in permitting Cosway's miniature of
Charlotte Duchess of Richmond to be reproduced for this volume.

I have also to thank Mr. Horatio F. Brown for the right to reproduce the
interesting portrait of "Byron at Venice," which is now in his
possession.

                        ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE.

_April_, 1899.




INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST AND SECOND CANTOS OF _CHILDE HAROLD_.

The First Canto of _Childe Harold_ was begun at Janina, in Albania,
October 31, 1809, and the Second Canto was finished at Smyrna, March 28,
1810. The dates were duly recorded on the MS.; but in none of the
letters which Byron wrote to his mother and his friends from the East
does he mention or allude to the composition or existence of such a
work. In one letter, however, to his mother (January 14, 1811,
_Letters_, 1898, i. 308), he informs her that he has MSS. in his
possession which may serve to prolong his memory, if his heirs and
executors "think proper to publish them;" but for himself, he has "done
with authorship." Three months later the achievement of _Hints from
Horace_ and _The Curse of Minerva_ persuaded him to give "authorship"
another trial; and, in a letter written on board the _Volage_ frigate
(June 28, _Letters_, 1898, i. 313), he announces to his literary Mentor,
R. C. Dallas, who had superintended the publication of _English Bards,
and Scotch Reviewers_, that he has "an imitation of the _Ars Poetica_ of
Horace ready for Cawthorne." Byron landed in England on July 2, and on
the 15th Dallas "had the pleasure of shaking hands with him at Reddish's
Hotel, St. James's Street" (_Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron_,
1824, p. 103). There was a crowd of visitors, says Dallas, and no time
for conversation; but the _Imitation_ was placed in his hands. He took
it home, read it, and was disappointed. Disparagement was out of the
question; but the next morning at breakfast Dallas ventured to express
some surprise that he had written nothing else. An admission or
confession followed that "he had occasionally written short poems,
besides a great many stanzas in Spenser's measure, relative to the
countries he had visited." "They are not," he added, "worth troubling
you with, but you shall have them all with you if you like." "So," says
Dallas, "came I by _Childe Harold_. He took it from a small trunk, with
a number of verses."

Dallas was "delighted," and on the evening of the same day (July
16)--before, let us hope, and not after, he had consulted his "Ionian
friend," Walter Rodwell Wright (see _Recollections_, p. 151, and _Diary_
of H.C. Robinson, 1872, i. 17)--he despatched a letter of enthusiastic
approval, which gratified Byron, but did not convince him of the
extraordinary merit of his work, or of its certainty of success. It was,
however, agreed that the MS. should be left with Dallas, that he should
arrange for its publication and hold the copyright. Dallas would have
entrusted the poem to Cawthorne, who had published _English Bards, and
Scotch Reviewers,_ and with whom, as Byron's intermediary, he was in
communication; but Byron objected on the ground that the firm did not
"stand high enough in the trade," and Longmans, who had been offered but
had declined the _English Bards_, were in no case to be approached. An
application to Miller, of Albemarle Street, came to nothing, because
Miller was Lord Elgin's bookseller and publisher (he had just brought
out the _Memorandum on Lord Elgin's Pursuits in Greece_), and _Childe
Harold_ denounced and reviled Lord Elgin. But Murray, of Fleet Street,
who had already expressed a wish to publish for Lord Byron, was willing
to take the matter into consideration. On the first of August Byron lost
his mother, on the third his friend Matthews was drowned in the Cam, and
for some weeks he could devote neither time nor thought to the fortunes
of his poem; but Dallas had bestirred himself, and on the eighteenth was
able to report that he had "seen Murray again," and that Murray was
anxious that Byron's name should appear on the title-page.

To this request Byron somewhat reluctantly acceded (August 21); and a
few days later (August 25) he informs Dallas that he has sent him
"exordiums, annotations, etc., for the forthcoming quarto," and has
written to Murray, urging him on no account to show the MS. to Juvenal,
that is, Gifford. But Gifford, as a matter of course, had been already
consulted, had read the First Canto, and had advised Murray to publish
the poem. Byron was, or pretended to be, furious; but the solid fact
that Gifford had commended his work acted like a charm, and his fury
subsided. On the fifth of September (_Letters_, 1898, ii. 24, note) he
received from Murray the first proof, and by December 14 "the Pilgrimage
was concluded," and all but the preface had been printed and seen
through the press.

The original draft of the poem, which Byron took out of "the little
trunk" and gave to Dallas, had undergone considerable alterations and
modifications before this date. Both Dallas and Murray took exception to
certain stanzas which, on personal, or patriotic, or religious
considerations, were provocative and objectionable. They were
apprehensive, not only for the sale of the book, but for the reputation
of its author. Byron fought his ground inch by inch, but finally
assented to a compromise. He was willing to cut out three stanzas on the
Convention of Cintra, which had ceased to be a burning question, and
four more stanzas at the end of the First Canto, which reflected on the
Duke of Wellington, Lord Holland, and other persons of less note. A
stanza on Beckford in the First Canto, and two stanzas in the second on
Lord Elgin, Thomas Hope, and the "Dilettanti crew," were also omitted.
Stanza ix. of the Second Canto, on the immortality of the soul, was
recast, and "sure and certain" hopelessness exchanged for a pious, if
hypothetical, aspiration. But with regard to the general tenor of his
politics and metaphysics, Byron stood firm, and awaited the issue.

There were additions as well as omissions. The first stanza of the First
Canto, stanzas xliii. and xc., which celebrate the battles of Albuera
and Talavera; the stanzas to the memory of Charles Skinner Matthews,
nos. xci., xcii.; and stanzas ix., xcv., xcvi. of the Second Canto, which
record Byron's grief for the death of an unknown lover or friend,
apparently (letter to Dallas, October 31, 1811) the mysterious Thyrza,
and others (_vide post_, note on the MSS. of the First and Second
Cantos of _Childe Harold_), were composed at Newstead, in the autumn of
1811. _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_, quarto, was published on Tuesday,
March 10, 1812--Moore (_Life_, p. 157) implies that the date of issue
was Saturday, February 29; and Dallas (_Recollections_, p. 220) says
that he obtained a copy on Tuesday, March 3 (but see advertisements in
the _Times_ and _Morning Chronicle_ of Thursday, March 5, announcing
future publication, and in the _Courier_ and _Morning Chronicle_ of
Tuesday, March 10, announcing first appearance)--and in three days an
edition of five hundred copies was sold. A second edition, octavo, with
six additional poems (fourteen poems were included in the First
Edition), was issued on April 17; a third on June 27; a fourth, with the
"Addition to the Preface," on September 14; and a fifth on December 5,
1812,--the day on which Murray "acquainted his friends" (see
advertisement in the _Morning Chronicle_) that he had removed from Fleet
Street to No. 50, Albemarle Street. A sixth edition, identical with the
fifth and fourth editions, was issued August 11, 1813; and, on February
1, 1814 (see letter to Murray, February 4, 1814), _Childe Harold_ made a
"seventh appearance." The seventh edition was a new departure
altogether. Not only were nine poems added to the twenty already
published, but a dedication to Lady Charlotte Harley ("Ianthe"), written
in the autumn of 1812, was prefixed to the First Canto, and ten
additional stanzas were inserted towards the end of the Second Canto.
_Childe Harold_, as we have it, differs to that extent from the _Childe
Harold_ which, in a day and a night, made Byron "famous." The dedication
to Ianthe was the outcome of a visit to Eywood, and his devotion to
Ianthe's mother, Lady Oxford; but the new stanzas were probably written
in 1810. In a letter to Dallas, September 7, 1811 (_Letters_, 1898, ii.
28), he writes, "I had projected an additional canto when I was in the
Troad and Constantinople, and if I saw them again, it would go on." This
seems to imply that a beginning had been made. In a poem, a hitherto
unpublished fragment entitled _Il Diavolo Inamorato_ (_vide post_, vol.
iii.), which is dated August 31, 1812, five stanzas and a half, viz.
stanzas lxxiii. lines 5-9, lxxix., lxxx., lxxxi., lxxxii., xxvii. of the
Second Canto of _Childe Harold_ are imbedded; and these form part of
the ten additional stanzas which were first published in the seventh
edition. There is, too, the fragment entitled _The Monk of Athos_, which
was first published (_Life of Lord Byron_, by the Hon. Roden Noel) in
1890, which may have formed part of this projected Third Canto.

No further alterations were made in the text of the poem; but an
eleventh edition of _Childe Harold_, Cantos I., II., was published in
1819.

The demerits of _Childe Harold_ lie on the surface; but it is difficult
for the modern reader, familiar with the sight, if not the texture, of
"the purple patches," and unattracted, perhaps demagnetized, by a
personality once fascinating and always "puissant," to appreciate the
actual worth and magnitude of the poem. We are "o'er informed;" and as
with Nature, so with Art, the eye must be couched, and the film of
association removed, before we can see clearly. But there is one
characteristic feature of _Childe Harold_ which association and
familiarity have been powerless to veil or confuse--originality of
design. "By what accident," asks the Quarterly Reviewer (George Agar
Ellis), "has it happened that no other English poet before Lord Byron
has thought fit to employ his talents on a subject so well suited to
their display?" The question can only be answered by the assertion that
it was the accident of genius which inspired the poet with a "new song."
_Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_ had no progenitors, and, with the exception
of some feeble and forgotten imitations, it has had no descendants. The
materials of the poem; the Spenserian stanza, suggested, perhaps, by
Campbell's _Gertrude of Wyoming_, as well as by older models; the
language, the metaphors, often appropriated and sometimes stolen from
the Bible, from Shakespeare, from the classics; the sentiments and
reflections coeval with reflection and sentiment, wear a familiar hue;
but the poem itself, a pilgrimage to scenes and cities of renown, a song
of travel, a rhythmical diorama, was Byron's own handiwork--not an
inheritance, but a creation.

But what of the eponymous hero, the sated and melancholy "Childe," with
his attendant page and yeoman, his backward glances on "heartless
parasites," on "laughing dames," on goblets and other properties of "the
monastic dome"? Is Childe Harold Byron masquerading in disguise, or is
he intended to be a fictitious personage, who, half unconsciously,
reveals the author's personality? Byron deals with the question in a
letter to Dallas (October 31): "I by no means intend to identify myself
with _Harold_, but to _deny_ all connection with him. If in parts I may
be thought to have drawn from myself, believe me it is but in parts, and
I shall not own even to that." He adds, with evident sincerity, "I would
not be such a fellow as I have made my hero for all the world." Again,
in the preface, "Harold is the child of imagination." This pronouncement
was not the whole truth; but it is truer than it seems. He was well
aware that Byron had sate for the portrait of Childe Harold. He had
begun by calling his hero Childe Burun, and the few particulars which he
gives of Childe Burun's past were particulars, in the main exact
particulars, of Byron's own history. He had no motive for concealment,
for, so little did he know himself, he imagined that he was not writing
for publication, that he had done with authorship. Even when the mood
had passed, it was the imitation of the _Ars Poetica_, not _Childe
Harold_, which he was eager to publish; and when _Childe Harold_ had
been offered to and accepted by a publisher, he desired and proposed
that it should appear anonymously. He had not as yet come to the pass of
displaying "the pageant of his bleeding heart" before the eyes of the
multitude. But though he shrank from the obvious and inevitable
conclusion that Childe Harold was Byron in disguise, and idly
"disclaimed" all connection, it was true that he had intended to draw a
fictitious character, a being whom he may have feared he might one day
become, but whom he did not recognize as himself. He was not sated, he
was not cheerless, he was not unamiable. He was all a-quiver with youth
and enthusiasm and the joy of great living. He had left behind him
friends whom he knew were not "the flatterers of the festal
hour"--friends whom he returned to mourn and nobly celebrate. Byron was
not Harold, but Harold was an ideal Byron, the creature and avenger of
his pride, which haunted and pursued its presumptuous creator to the
bitter end.

_Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_ was reviewed, or rather advertised, by
Dallas, in the _Literary Panorama_ for March, 1812. To the reviewer's
dismay, the article, which appeared before the poem was out, was shown
to Byron, who was paying a short visit to his old friends at Harrow.
Dallas quaked, but "as it proved no bad advertisement," he escaped
censure. "The blunder passed unobserved, eclipsed by the dazzling
brilliancy of the object which had caused it" (_Recollections_, p. 221).

Of the greater reviews, the _Quarterly_ (No. xiii., March, 1812) was
published on May 12, and the _Edinburgh_ (No. 38, June, 1812) was
published on August 5, 1812.




                  NOTES ON THE MSS. OF _CHILDE HAROLD_.

                               I.

The original MS. of the First and Second Cantos of _Childe Harold_,
consisting of ninety-one folios bound up with a single bluish-grey
cover, is in the possession of Mr. Murray.[1] A transcript from this
MS., in the handwriting of R. C. Dallas, with Byron's autograph
corrections, is preserved in the British Museum (Egerton MSS., No.
2027). The first edition (4to) was printed from the transcript as
emended by the author. The "Addition to the Preface" was first published
in the Fourth Edition.

The following notes in Byron's handwriting are on the outside of the
cover of the original MS.:--

    "Byron--Joannina in Albania
            Begun Oct. 31^st.^ 1809.
    Concluded, Canto 2^d, Smyrna,
            March 28^th^, 1810. BYRON.

     The marginal remarks pencilled occasionally were made by two
     friends who saw the thing in MS. sometime previous to publication.
     1812."

On the verso of the single bluish-grey cover, the lines, "Dear Object of
Defeated Care," have been inscribed. They are entitled, "Written beneath
the picture of J. U. D." They are dated, "Byron, Athens, 1811."

The following notes and memoranda have been bound up with the MS.:--

     "Henry Drury, Harrow. Given me by Lord Byron. Being his original
     autograph MS. of the _first_ canto of _Childe Harold_, commenced at
     Joannina in Albania, proceeded with at Athens, and completed at
     Smyrna."

     "How strange that he did not seem to know that the volume contains
     Cantos I., II., and so written by L^d.^ B.!" [_Note by J. Murray._]

     "Sir,--I desire that you will settle any account for _Childe
     Harold_ with Mr. R. C. Dallas, to whom I have presented the
     copyright.

                           Y^r.^ obed^t.^ Serv^t.,^
                                             BYRON.
    To Mr. John Murray,
      Bookseller,
        32, Fleet Street,
    London, Mar. 17, 1812."

       *       *       *       *       *

     "Received, April 1st, 1812, of Mr. John Murray, the sum of one
     hundred pounds 15/8, being my entire half-share of the profits of
     the 1st Edition of _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_ 4to.

    R. C. DALLAS.

                  { Mem.: This receipt is for the above sum,
      L101:15:8.  { in part of five hundred guineas agreed to
                  { be paid by Mr. Murray for the Copyright
                  { of _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_."


The following poems are appended to the MS. of the First and Second
Cantos of _Childe Harold_:--

1. "Written at Mrs. Spencer Smith's request, in her memorandum-book--

    "'As o'er the cold sepulchral stone.'"

2. "Stanzas written in passing the Ambracian Gulph, November 14, 1809."

3. "Written at Athens, January 16th, 1810--

    "'The spell is broke, the charm is flown.'"

4. "Stanzas composed October 11, 1809, during the night in a
thunderstorm, when the guides had lost the road to Zitza, in the range
of mountains formerly called Pindus, in Albania."

On a blank leaf bound up with the MS. at the end of the volume, Byron
wrote--

    "Dear D^s.,--This is all that was contained in the MS., but the
    outside cover has been torn off by the booby of a binder.
                                Yours ever,
                                          B."

The volume is bound in smooth green morocco, bordered by a single gilt
line. "MS." in gilt lettering is stamped on the side cover.

                              II.

  COLLATION OF FIRST EDITION, QUARTO, 1812, WITH MS. OF THE FIRST CANTO.

The MS. numbers ninety-one stanzas, the First Edition ninety-three
stanzas.

                          OMISSIONS FROM THE MS.

Stanza vii.       "Of all his train there was a henchman page,"--
Stanza viii.      "Him and one yeoman only did he take,"--
Stanza xxii.      "Unhappy Vathek! in an evil hour,"--
Stanza xxv.       "In golden characters right well designed,"--
Stanza xxvii.     "But when Convention sent his handy work,"--
Stanza xxviii.    "Thus unto Heaven appealed the people: Heaven,"--
Stanza lxxxviii.  "There may you read with spectacles on eyes,"--
Stanza lxxxix.    "There may you read--Oh, Phoebus, save Sir John,"--
Stanza xc.        "Yet here of Vulpes mention may be made,"--

                     INSERTIONS IN THE FIRST EDITION.

Stanza i.         "Oh, thou! in Hellas deemed of heavenly birth,"--
Stanza viii.      "Yet oft-times in his maddest mirthful mood,"--
Stanza ix.        "And none did love him!--though to hall and bower,"--
Stanza xliii.     "Oh, Albuera! glorious field of grief!"--
Stanza lxxxv.     "Adieu, fair Cadiz! yea, a long adieu!"--
Stanza lxxxvi.    "Such be the sons of Spain, and strange her Fate,"--
Stanza lxxxviii.  "Flows there a tear of Pity for the dead?"--
Stanza lxxxix.    "Not yet, alas! the dreadful work is done,"--
Stanza xc.        "Not all the blood at Talavera shed,"--
Stanza xci.       "And thou, my friend!--since unavailing woe,"--
Stanza xcii.      "Oh, known the earliest, and esteemed the most,"--

The MS. of the Second Canto numbers eighty stanzas; the First Edition
numbers eighty-eight stanzas.

                          OMISSIONS FROM THE MS.

Stanza viii.      "Frown not upon me, churlish Priest! that I,"--
Stanza xiv.       "Come, then, ye classic Thieves of each degree,"--
Stanza xv.        "Or will the gentle Dilettanti crew,"--
Stanza lxiii.     "Childe Harold with that Chief held colloquy,"--

                     INSERTIONS IN THE FIRST EDITION.

Stanza viii.      "Yet if, as holiest men have deemed, there be,"--
Stanza ix.        "There, Thou! whose Love and Life together fled,"--
Stanza xv.        "Cold is the heart, fair Greece! that looks on Thee,"--
Stanza lii.       "Oh! where, Dodona! is thine aged Grove?"--
Stanza lxiii.     "Mid many things most new to ear and eye,"--
Stanza lxxx.      "Where'er we tread 'tis haunted, holy ground,"--
Stanza lxxxiii.   "Let such approach this consecrated Land,"--
Stanza lxxxiv.    "For thee, who thus in too protracted song,"--
Stanza lxxxv.     "Thou too art gone, thou loved and lovely one!"--
Stanza lxxxvi.    "Oh! ever loving, lovely, and beloved!"--
Stanza lxxxvii.   "Then must I plunge again into the crowd,"--
Stanza lxxxviii.  "What is the worst of woes that wait on Age?"--

                 ADDITIONS TO THE SEVENTH EDITION, 1814.

The Second Canto, in the first six editions, numbers eighty-eight
stanzas; in the Seventh Edition the Second Canto numbers ninety-eight
stanzas.

                                ADDITIONS.

                  The Dedication, To Ianthe.
Stanza xxvii.     "More blest the life of godly Eremite,"--
Stanza lxxvii.    "The city won for Allah from the Giaour,"--
Stanza lxxviii.   "Yet mark their mirth, ere Lenten days begin,"--
Stanza lxxix.     "And whose more rife with merriment than thine,"--
Stanza lxxx.      "Loud was the lightsome tumult on the shore,"--
Stanza lxxxi.     "Glanced many a light Caique along the foam,"--
Stanza lxxxii.    "But, midst the throng' in merry masquerade,"--
Stanza lxxxiii.   "This must he feel, the true-born son of Greece,"--
Stanza lxxxix.    "The Sun, the soil--but not the slave, the same,"--
Stanza xc.        "The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow,"--




                                ITINERARY.

1809.                            CANTO I.

July 2.    Sail from Falmouth in Lisbon packet. (Stanza xii. Letter 125.)

July 6.    Arrive Lisbon. (Stanzas xvi., xvii. Letter 126.)
           Visit Cintra. (Stanzas xviii.-xxvi. Letter 128.)
           Visit Mafra. (Stanza xxix.)

July 17.   Leave Lisbon. (Stanza xxviii. Letter 127.)
           Ride through Portugal and Spain to Seville.
               (Stanzas xxviii.-xlii. Letter 127.)
           Visit Albuera. (Stanza xliii.)

July 21.   Arrive Seville. (Stanzas xlv., xlvi. Letters 127, 128.)

July 25.   Leave Seville.
           Ride to Cadiz, across the Sierra Morena. (Stanza li.)
           Cadiz. (Stanzas lxv.-lxxxiv. Letters 127, 128.)

                                 CANTO II.

Aug. 6.    Arrive Gibraltar. (Letters 127, 128.)

Aug. 17.   Sail from Gibraltar in Malta packet. (Stanzas xvii.-xxviii.)
           Malta. (Stanzas xxix.-xxxv. Letter 130.)

Sept. 19.  Sail from Malta in brig-of-war _Spider_. (Letter 131.)

Sept. 23.  Between Cephalonia and Zante.

Sept. 26.  Anchor off Patras.

Sept. 27.  In the channel between Ithaca and the mainland.
               (Stanzas xxxix.-xlii.)

Sept. 28.  Anchor off Prevesa (7 p.m.). (Stanza xlv.)

Oct. 1.    Leave Prevesa, arrive Salakhora (Salagoura).

Oct. 3.    Leave Salakhora, arrive Arta.

Oct. 4.    Leave Arta, arrive han St. Demetre (H. Dhimittrios).

Oct. 5.    Arrive Janina. (Stanza xlvii. Letter 131.)

Oct. 8.    Ride into the country. First day of Ramazan.

Oct. 11.   Leave Janina, arrive Zitza ("Lines written during
               a Thunderstorm"). (Stanzas xlviii.-li. Letter 131.)

Oct. 13.   Leave Zitza, arrive Mossiani (Moseri).

Oct. 14.   Leave Mossiani, arrive Delvinaki (Dhelvinaki). (Stanza liv.)

Oct. 15.   Leave Delvinaki, arrive Libokhovo.

Oct. 17.   Leave Libokhovo, arrive Cesarades (Kestourataes).

Oct. 18.   Leave Cesarades, arrive Ereeneed (Irindi).

Oct. 19.   Leave Ereeneed, arrive Tepeleni. (Stanzas lv.-lxi.)

Oct. 20.   Reception by Ali Pacha. (Stanzas lxii.-lxiv.)

Oct. 23.   Leave Tepeleni, arrive Locavo (Lacovon).

Oct. 24.   Leave Locavo, arrive Delvinaki.

Oct. 25.   Leave Delvinaki, arrive Zitza.

Oct. 26.   Leave Zitza, arrive Janina.

Oct. 31.   Byron begins the First Canto of _Childe Harold_.

Nov. 3.    Leave Janina, arrive han St. Demetre.

Nov. 4.    Leave han St. Demetre, arrive Arta.

Nov. 5.    Leave Arta, arrive Salakhora.

Nov. 7.    Leave Salakhora, arrive Prevesa.

Nov. 8.    Sail from Prevesa, anchor off mainland near Parga.
               (Stanzas lxvii., lxviii.)

Nov. 9.    Leave Parga, and, returning by land, arrive
               Volondorako (Valanidorakhon). (Stanza lxix.)

Nov. 10.   Leave Volondorako, arrive Castrosikia (Kastrosykia).

Nov. 11.   Leave Castrosikia, arrive Prevesa.

Nov. 13.   Sail from Prevesa, anchor off Vonitsa.

Nov. 14.   Sail from Vonitsa, arrive Lutraki (Loutraki).
               (Stanzas lxx., lxxii., Song "Tambourgi, Tambourgi;"
               stanza written in passing the Ambracian Gulph. Letter 131.)

Nov. 15.   Leave Lutraki, arrive Katuna.

Nov. 16.   Leave Katuna, arrive Makala (? Machalas).


1809.

Nov. 18.   Leave Makala, arrive Guria.

Nov. 19.   Leave Guria, arrive AEtolikon.

Nov. 20.   Leave AEtolikon, arrive Mesolonghi.

Nov. 23.   Sail from Mesolonghi, arrive Patras.

Dec. 4.    Leave Patras, sleep at _Han_ on shore.

Dec. 5.    Leave _Han_, arrive Vostitsa (Oegion).

Dec. 14.   Sail from Vostitsa, arrive Larnaki (? Itea).

Dec. 15.   Leave Larnaki (? Itea), arrive Chryso.

Dec. 16.   Visit Delphi, the Pythian Cave, and stream of Castaly.
               (Canto I. stanza i.)

Dec. 17.   Leave Chryso, arrive Arakhova (Rhakova).

Dec. 18.   Leave Arakhova, arrive Livadia (Livadhia).

Dec. 21.   Leave Livadia, arrive Mazee (Mazi).

Dec. 22.   Leave Mazee, arrive Thebes.

Dec. 24.   Leave Thebes, arrive Skurta.

Dec. 25.   Leave Skurta, pass Phyle, arrive Athens.
               (Stanzas i.-xv., stanza lxxiv.)

Dec. 30.   Byron finishes the First Canto of _Childe Harold_.

1810.

Jan. 13.   Visit Eleusis.

Jan. 16.   Visit Mendeli (Pentelicus). (Stanza lxxxvii.)

Jan. 18.   Walk round the peninsula of Munychia.

Jan. 19.   Leave Athens, arrive Vari.

Jan. 20.   Leave Vari, arrive Keratea.

Jan. 23.   Visit temple of Athene at Sunium. (Stanza lxxxvi.)

Jan. 24.   Leave Keratea, arrive plain of Marathon.

Jan. 25.   Visit plain of Marathon. (Stanzas lxxxix., xc.)

Jan. 26.   Leave Marathon, arrive Athens.

Mar. 5.    Leave Athens, embark on board the _Pylades_ (Letter 136.)

Mar. 7.    Arrive Smyrna. (Letters 132, 133.)

Mar. 13.   Leave Smyrna, sleep at _Han_, near the river Halesus.

Mar. 14.   Leave _Han_, arrive Aiasaluk (near Ephesus).

Mar. 15.   Visit site of temple of Artemis at Ephesus. (Letter 132.)

Mar. 16.   Leave Ephesus, return to Smyrna. (Letter 132.)

Mar. 28.   Byron finishes the Second Canto of _Childe Harold_.

April 11.  Sail from Smyrna in the _Salsette_ frigate. (Letter 134.)

April 12.  Anchor off Tenedos.

April 13.  Visit ruins of Alexandria Troas.

April 14.  Anchor off Cape Janissary.

April 16.  Byron attempts to swim across the Hellespont, explores
               the Troad. (Letters 135, 136.)

April 30.  Visit the springs of Bunarbashi (Bunarbasi).

May 1.     Weigh anchor from off Cape Janissary, anchor eight miles
               from Dardanelles.

May 2.     Anchor off Castle Chanak Kalessia (Kale i Sultaniye).

May 3.     Byron and Mr. Ekenhead swim across the Hellespont
               (lines "Written after swimming," etc.).

May 13.    Anchor off Venaglio Point, arrive Constantinople.
               (Stanzas lxxvii.-lxxxii. Letters 138-145.)

July 14.   Sail from Constantinople in _Salsette_ frigate.

July 18.   Byron returns to Athens.


                           NOTE TO "ITINERARY."

[For dates and names of towns and villages, see _Travels in Albania, and
other Provinces of Turkey, in 1809 and 1810_, by the Right Hon. Lord
Broughton, G.C.B. [John Cam Hobhouse], two volumes, 1858. The
orthography is based on that of Longmans' _Gazetteer of the World_,
edited by G. G. Chisholm, 1895. The alternative forms are taken from
Heinrich Kiepert's _Carte de l'Epire et de la Thessalie_, Berlin, 1897,
and from Dr. Karl Peucker's _Griechenland_, Wien, 1897.]




                           CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

                       CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.


Preface to Vol. II. of the Poems                     v

Introduction to the First and Second Cantos         ix

Notes on the MSS. of the First and Second Cantos   xvi

Itinerary                                          xxi

Preface to the First and Second Cantos               3

To Ianthe                                           11

Canto the First                                     15

Notes                                               85

Canto the Second                                    97

Notes                                              165

Introduction to Canto the Third                    211

Canto the Third                                    215

Notes                                              291

Introduction to Canto the Fourth                   311

Original Draft, etc., of Canto the Fourth          316

Dedication                                         321

Canto the Fourth                                   327

Historical Notes by J. C. Hobhouse                 465




                          LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Ianthe (Lady Charlotte Harley), from an Engraving     _Frontispiece_
by W. Finden, after a Drawing by R. Westall, R.A.

2. The Duchess of Richmond, from a Miniature by
Richard Cosway, in the Possession of His Grace the
Duke of Richmond and Gordon, K.G.
                                                       _To face p._ 228

3. Portrait of Lord Byron at Venice, from a Painting
in Oils by Ruckard, in the Possession of Horatio F.
Brown, Esq.                                                         326

4. The Horses of St. Mark, from a Photograph by
Alinari                                                             338

5. S. Pantaleon, from a Woodcut published at Cremona
in 1493                                                             340

6. The Dying Gaul, from the Original in the Museum of
the Capitol                                                         432




                       CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE

                               _A ROMAUNT_.

       "L'univers est une espece de livre, dont on n'a lu que la
    premiere page quand on n'a vu que son pays. J'en ai feuillete un
    assez grand nombre, que j'ai trouve egalement mauvaises. Cet
    examen ne m'a point ete infructueux. Je haissais ma patrie. Toutes
    les impertinences des peuples divers, parmi lesquels j'ai vecu,
    m'ont reconcilie avec elle. Quand je n'aurais tire d'autre
    benefice de mes voyages que celui-la, je n'en regretterais ni les
    frais ni les fatigues."--_Le Cosmopolite, ou, le Citoyen du
    Monde_, par Fougeret de Monbron. Londres, 1753.




                                PREFACE [a]

                    [TO THE FIRST AND SECOND CANTOS.]


The following poem was written, for the most part, amidst the scenes
which it attempts[b] to describe. It was begun in Albania; and the parts
relative to Spain and Portugal were composed from the author's
observations in those countries. Thus much it may be necessary to state
for the correctness of the descriptions. The scenes attempted to be
sketched are in Spain, Portugal, Epirus, Acarnania and Greece. There,
for the present, the poem stops: its reception will determine whether
the author may venture to conduct his readers to the capital of the
East, through Ionia and Phrygia: these two cantos are merely
experimental.

A fictitious character is introduced for the sake of giving some
connection to the piece; which, however, makes no pretension to
regularity. It has been suggested to me by friends, on whose opinions I
set a high value,[c]--that in this fictitious character, "Childe
Harold," I may incur the suspicion of having intended some real
personage: this I beg leave, once for all, to disclaim--Harold is the
child of imagination, for the purpose I have stated.

In some very trivial particulars, and those merely local, there might
be grounds for such a notion;[d] but in the main points, I should hope,
none whatever.[e]

It is almost superfluous to mention that the appellation "Childe,"[2] as
"Childe Waters," "Childe Childers," etc., is used as more consonant with
the old structure of versification which I have adopted. The "Good
Night" in the beginning of the first Canto, was suggested by Lord
Maxwell's "Good Night"[3] in the _Border Minstrelsy_, edited by Mr.
Scott.

With the different poems[4] which have been published on Spanish
subjects, there may be found some slight coincidence[f] in the first
part, which treats of the Peninsula, but it can only be casual; as, with
the exception of a few concluding stanzas, the whole of the poem was
written in the Levant.

The stanza of Spenser, according to one of our most successful poets,
admits of every variety. Dr. Beattie makes the following observation:--

"Not long ago I began a poem in the style and stanza of Spenser, in
which I propose to give full scope to my inclination, and be either
droll or pathetic, descriptive or sentimental, tender or satirical, as
the humour strikes me; for, if I mistake not, the measure which I have
adopted admits equally of all these kinds of composition."[5]
Strengthened in my opinion by such authority, and by the example of some
in the highest order of Italian poets, I shall make no apology for
attempts at similar variations in the following composition;[g]
satisfied that, if they are unsuccessful, their failure must be in the
execution, rather than in the design sanctioned by the practice of
Ariosto, Thomson, and Beattie.

London, February, 1812.



                         ADDITION TO THE PREFACE.

I have now waited till almost all our periodical journals have
distributed their usual portion of criticism. To the justice of the
generality of their criticisms I have nothing to object; it would ill
become me to quarrel with their very slight degree of censure, when,
perhaps, if they had been less kind they had been more candid.
Returning, therefore, to all and each my best thanks for their
liberality, on one point alone I shall venture an observation. Amongst
the many objections justly urged to the very indifferent character of
the "vagrant Childe" (whom, notwithstanding many hints to the contrary,
I still maintain to be a fictitious personage), it has been stated,
that, besides the anachronism, he is very _unknightly_, as the times of
the Knights were times of Love, Honour, and so forth.[6] Now it so
happens that the good old times, when "l'amour du bon vieux tems,
l'amour antique," flourished, were the most profligate of all possible
centuries. Those who have any doubts on this subject may consult
Sainte-Palaye, _passim_, and more particularly vol. ii. p. 69.[7] The
vows of chivalry were no better kept than any other vows whatsoever; and
the songs of the Troubadours were not more decent, and certainly were
much less refined, than those of Ovid. The "Cours d'Amour, parlemens
d'amour, ou de courtoisie et de gentilesse" had much more of love than
of courtesy or gentleness. See Rolland[8] on the same subject with
Sainte-Palaye.

Whatever other objection may be urged to that most unamiable personage
Childe Harold, he was so far perfectly knightly in his attributes--"No
waiter, but a knight templar."[9] By the by, I fear that Sir Tristrem
and Sir Lancelot were no better than they should be, although very
poetical personages and true knights, "sans peur," though not "sans
reproche." If the story of the institution of the "Garter" be not a
fable, the knights of that order have for several centuries borne the
badge of a Countess of Salisbury, of indifferent memory. So much for
chivalry. Burke need not have regretted that its days are over, though
Marie-Antoinette was quite as chaste as most of those in whose honour
lances were shivered, and knights unhorsed.[10]

Before the days of Bayard, and down to those of Sir Joseph Banks[11]
(the most chaste and celebrated of ancient and modern times) few
exceptions will be found to this statement; and I fear a little
investigation will teach us not to regret these monstrous mummeries of
the middle ages.

I now leave "Childe Harold" to live his day such as he is; it had been
more agreeable, and certainly more easy, to have drawn an amiable
character. It had been easy to varnish over his faults, to make him do
more and express less, but he never was intended as an example, further
than to show, that early perversion of mind and morals leads to satiety
of past pleasures and disappointment in new ones, and that even the
beauties of nature and the stimulus of travel (except ambition, the most
powerful of all excitements) are lost on a soul so constituted, or
rather misdirected. Had I proceeded with the Poem, this character would
have deepened as he drew to the close; for the outline which I once
meant to fill up for him was, with some exceptions, the sketch of a
modern Timon,[12] perhaps a poetical Zeluco.[13]




                        CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE

                             CANTO THE FIRST.


                            TO IANTHE.[h][14]

    Not in those climes where I have late been straying,
      Though Beauty long hath there been matchless deemed,
      Not in those visions to the heart displaying
      Forms which it sighs but to have only dreamed,
      Hath aught like thee in Truth or Fancy seemed:
      Nor, having seen thee, shall I vainly seek
      To paint those charms which varied as they beamed--
      To such as see thee not my words were weak;
    To those who gaze on thee what language could they speak?

    Ah! may'st thou ever be what now thou art,
      Nor unbeseem the promise of thy Spring--
      As fair in form, as warm yet pure in heart,
      Love's image upon earth without his wing,[15]
      And guileless beyond Hope's imagining!
      And surely she who now so fondly rears
      Thy youth, in thee, thus hourly brightening,
      Beholds the Rainbow of her future years,
    Before whose heavenly hues all Sorrow disappears.

    Young Peri of the West!--'tis well for me
      My years already doubly number thine;[16]
      My loveless eye unmoved may gaze on thee,
      And safely view thy ripening beauties shine;
      Happy, I ne'er shall see them in decline;
      Happier, that, while all younger hearts shall bleed,
      Mine shall escape the doom thine eyes assign
      To those whose admiration shall succeed,
    But mixed with pangs to Love's even loveliest hours decreed.

    Oh! let that eye, which, wild as the Gazelle's,
      Now brightly bold or beautifully shy,
      Wins as it wanders, dazzles where it dwells,[17]
      Glance o'er this page, nor to my verse deny
      That smile for which my breast might vainly sigh
      Could I to thee be ever more than friend:
      This much, dear Maid, accord; nor question why
      To one so young my strain I would commend,
    But bid me with my wreath one matchless Lily blend.

    Such is thy name[18] with this my verse entwined;
      And long as kinder eyes a look shall cast[i]
      On Harold's page, Ianthe's here enshrined
      Shall thus be _first_ beheld, forgotten _last_:
      My days once numbered--should this homage past
      Attract thy fairy fingers near the Lyre
      Of him who hailed thee loveliest, as thou wast--
      Such is the most my Memory may desire;
    Though more than Hope can claim, could Friendship less require?[j]




       *       *       *       *       *

                       CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.

                                A ROMAUNT.

       *       *       *       *       *




                             CANTO THE FIRST.

                             I.[19]

    Oh, thou! in Hellas deemed of heavenly birth,[k]
      Muse! formed or fabled at the Minstrel's will!
      Since shamed full oft by later lyres on earth,[l][20]
      Mine dares not call thee from thy sacred Hill:
      Yet there I've wandered by thy vaunted rill;[m]
      Yes! sighed o'er Delphi's long deserted shrine,[1.B.]
      Where, save that feeble fountain, all is still;
      Nor mote my shell awake the weary Nine
    To grace so plain a tale--this lowly lay of mine.

                              II.

    Whilome in Albion's isle there dwelt a youth,
      Who ne in Virtue's ways did take delight;
      But spent his days in riot most uncouth,
      And vexed with mirth the drowsy ear of Night.
      Ah me! in sooth he was a shameless wight,
      Sore given to revel and ungodly glee;[n]
      Few earthly things found favour in his sight[o]
      Save concubines and carnal companie,
    And flaunting wassailers of high and low degree.[21]

                              III.

    Childe Harold was he hight:[22]--but whence his name[p]
      And lineage long, it suits me not to say;
      Suffice it, that perchance they were of fame,
      And had been glorious in another day:
      But one sad losel soils a name for ay,[23]
      However mighty in the olden time;
      Nor all that heralds rake from coffined clay,
      Nor florid prose, nor honied lies of rhyme,[q]
    Can blazon evil deeds, or consecrate a crime.

                              IV.

    Childe Harold basked him in the Noontide sun,[r]
      Disporting there like any other fly;
      Nor deemed before his little day was done
      One blast might chill him into misery.
      But long ere scarce a third of his passed by,
      Worse than Adversity the Childe befell;
      He felt the fulness of Satiety:
      Then loathed he in his native land to dwell,
    Which seemed to him more lone than Eremite's sad cell.

                               V.

    For he through Sin's long labyrinth had run,[s]
      Nor made atonement when he did amiss,
      Had sighed to many though he loved but one,[t][24]
      And that loved one, alas! could ne'er be his.
      Ah, happy she! to 'scape from him whose kiss
      Had been pollution unto aught so chaste;
      Who soon had left her charms for vulgar bliss,
      And spoiled her goodly lands to gild his waste,
    Nor calm domestic peace had ever deigned to taste.

                              VI.

    And now Childe Harold was sore sick at heart,[u]
      And from his fellow Bacchanals would flee;
      'Tis said, at times the sullen tear would start,
      But Pride congealed the drop within his ee:[25]
      Apart he stalked in joyless reverie,[v]
      And from his native land resolved to go,
      And visit scorching climes beyond the sea;[26]
      With pleasure drugged, he almost longed for woe,
    And e'en for change of scene would seek the shades below.

                              VII.

    The Childe departed from his father's hall:
      It was a vast and venerable pile;
      So old, it seemed only not to fall,
      Yet strength was pillared in each massy aisle.
      Monastic dome! condemned to uses vile![w]
      Where Superstition once had made her den
      Now Paphian girls were known to sing and smile;[x]
      And monks might deem their time was come agen,[27]
    If ancient tales say true, nor wrong these holy men.

                            VIII.[y]

    Yet oft-times in his maddest mirthful mood
      Strange pangs would flash along Childe Harold's brow,[z]
      As if the Memory of some deadly feud
      Or disappointed passion lurked below:
      But this none knew, nor haply cared to know;
      For his was not that open, artless soul
      That feels relief by bidding sorrow flow,
      Nor sought he friend to counsel or condole,
    Whate'er this grief mote be, which he could not control.

                            IX.[aa]

    And none did love him!--though to hall and bower[28]
      He gathered revellers from far and near,
      He knew them flatterers of the festal hour,
      The heartless Parasites of present cheer.
      Yea! none did love him--not his lemans dear--[ab][29]
      But pomp and power alone are Woman's care,
      And where these are light Eros finds a feere;[30]
      Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,
    And Mammon wins his way where Seraphs might despair.

                               X.

    Childe Harold had a mother--not forgot,[ac]
      Though parting from that mother he did shun;
      A sister whom he loved, but saw her not[31]
      Before his weary pilgrimage begun:
      If friends he had, he bade adieu to none.[ad]
      Yet deem not thence his breast a breast of steel:[ae][32]
      Ye, who have known what 'tis to dote upon
      A few dear objects, will in sadness feel
    Such partings break the heart they fondly hope to heal.

                              XI.

    His house, his home, his heritage, his lands,[af]
      The laughing dames in whom he did delight,[ag]
      Whose large blue eyes, fair locks, and snowy hands,
      Might shake the Saintship of an Anchorite,
      And long had fed his youthful appetite;
      His goblets brimmed with every costly wine,
      And all that mote to luxury invite,
      Without a sigh he left, to cross the brine,
    And traverse Paynim shores, and pass Earth's central line.[ah][33]

                              XII.

    The sails were filled, and fair the light winds blew,[ai]
      As glad to waft him from his native home;
      And fast the white rocks faded from his view,
      And soon were lost in circumambient foam:
      And then, it may be, of his wish to roam
      Repented he, but in his bosom slept[34]
      The silent thought, nor from his lips did come
      One word of wail, whilst others sate and wept,
    And to the reckless gales unmanly moaning kept.

                             XIII.

    But when the Sun was sinking in the sea
      He seized his harp, which he at times could string,
      And strike, albeit with untaught melody,
      When deemed he no strange ear was listening:
      And now his fingers o'er it he did fling,
      And tuned his farewell in the dim twilight;
      While flew the vessel on her snowy wing,
      And fleeting shores receded from his sight,
    Thus to the elements he poured his last "Good Night."[35]


                       CHILDE HAROLD'S GOOD NIGHT.

                               1.

    "Adieu, adieu! my native shore
      Fades o'er the waters blue;
    The night-winds sigh, the breakers roar,
      And shrieks the wild sea-mew.
    Yon Sun that sets upon the sea
      We follow in his flight;
    Farewell awhile to him and thee,
      My native Land--Good Night!

                               2.

    "A few short hours and He will rise
      To give the Morrow birth;
    And I shall hail the main and skies,
      But not my mother Earth.
    Deserted is my own good Hall,
      Its hearth is desolate;
    Wild weeds are gathering on the wall;
      My Dog howls at the gate.

                               3.

    "Come hither, hither, my little page[36]
      Why dost thou weep and wail?
    Or dost thou dread the billows' rage,
      Or tremble at the gale?
    But dash the tear-drop from thine eye;
      Our ship is swift and strong:
    Our fleetest falcon scarce can fly[aj]
      More merrily along."[ak]

                               4.

    "Let winds be shrill, let waves roll high,[al]
      I fear not wave nor wind:
    Yet marvel not, Sir Childe, that I
      Am sorrowful in mind;[37]
    For I have from my father gone,
      A mother whom I love,
    And have no friend, save these alone,
      But thee--and One above.

                               5.

    'My father blessed me fervently,
      Yet did not much complain;
    But sorely will my mother sigh
      Till I come back again.'--
    "Enough, enough, my little lad!
      Such tears become thine eye;
    If I thy guileless bosom had,
      Mine own would not be dry.

                               6.

    "Come hither, hither, my staunch yeoman,[38]
      Why dost thou look so pale?
    Or dost thou dread a French foeman?
      Or shiver at the gale?"--
    'Deem'st thou I tremble for my life?
      Sir Childe, I'm not so weak;
    But thinking on an absent wife
      Will blanch a faithful cheek.

                               7.

    'My spouse and boys dwell near thy hall,
      Along the bordering Lake,
    And when they on their father call,
      What answer shall she make?'--
    "Enough, enough, my yeoman good,[am]
      Thy grief let none gainsay;
    But I, who am of lighter mood,
      Will laugh to flee away.

                               8.

    "For who would trust the seeming sighs[an]
      Of wife or paramour?
    Fresh feeres will dry the bright blue eyes
      We late saw streaming o'er.
    For pleasures past I do not grieve,
      Nor perils gathering near;
    My greatest grief is that I leave
      No thing that claims a tear.[39]

                               9.

    "And now I'm in the world alone,
      Upon the wide, wide sea:
    But why should I for others groan,
      When none will sigh for me?
    Perchance my Dog will whine in vain,
      Till fed by stranger hands;
    But long ere I come back again,
      He'd tear me where he stands.[ao][40]

                              10.

    "With thee, my bark, I'll swiftly go
      Athwart the foaming brine;
    Nor care what land thou bear'st me to,
      So not again to mine.
    Welcome, welcome, ye dark-blue waves!
      And when you fail my sight,
    Welcome, ye deserts, and ye caves!
      My native Land--Good Night!"

                              XIV.

    On, on the vessel flies, the land is gone,
      And winds are rude in Biscay's sleepless bay.
      Four days are sped, but with the fifth, anon,
      New shores descried make every bosom gay;
      And Cintra's mountain[41] greets them on their way,
      And Tagus dashing onward to the Deep,
      His fabled golden tribute[42] bent to pay;
      And soon on board the Lusian pilots leap,
    And steer 'twixt fertile shores where yet few rustics reap.[ap]

                              XV.

    Oh, Christ! it is a goodly sight to see
      What Heaven hath done for this delicious land![aq]
      What fruits of fragrance blush on every tree!
      What goodly prospects o'er the hills expand!
      But man would mar them with an impious hand:
      And when the Almighty lifts his fiercest scourge
      'Gainst those who most transgress his high command,
      With treble vengeance will his hot shafts urge
    Gaul's locust host, and earth from fellest foemen purge[ar]

                              XVI.

    What beauties doth Lisboa[43] first unfold![as]
      Her image floating on that noble tide,
      Which poets vainly pave with sands of gold,[at]
      But now whereon a thousand keels did ride
      Of mighty strength, since Albion was allied,
      And to the Lusians did her aid afford:
      A nation swoln with ignorance and pride,[44]
      Who lick yet loathe the hand that waves the sword[au]
    To save them from the wrath of Gaul's unsparing lord.

                             XVII.

    But whoso entereth within this town,
      That, sheening far, celestial seems to be,
      Disconsolate will wander up and down,
      'Mid many things unsightly to strange ee;[av]
      For hut and palace show like filthily:[aw]
      The dingy denizens are reared in dirt;[ax]
      Ne personage of high or mean degree
      Doth care for cleanness of surtout or shirt,
    Though shent with Egypt's plague, unkempt, unwashed, unhurt.

                             XVIII.

    Poor, paltry slaves! yet born 'midst noblest scenes--
      Why, Nature, waste thy wonders on such men?
      Lo! Cintra's glorious Eden intervenes[45]
      In variegated maze of mount and glen.
      Ah, me! what hand can pencil guide, or pen,
      To follow half on which the eye dilates
      Through views more dazzling unto mortal ken[ay]
      Than those whereof such things the Bard relates,
    Who to the awe-struck world unlocked Elysium's gates.

                              XIX.

    The horrid crags, by toppling convent crowned,[az]
      The cork-trees hoar that clothe the shaggy steep,
      The mountain-moss by scorching skies imbrowned,
      The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep,
      The tender azure[46] of the unruffled deep,
      The orange tints that gild the greenest bough,
      The torrents that from cliff to valley leap,[ba]
      The vine on high, the willow branch below,
    Mixed in one mighty scene, with varied beauty glow.

                              XX.

    Then slowly climb the many-winding way,
      And frequent turn to linger as you go,
      From loftier rocks new loveliness survey,
      And rest ye at "Our Lady's house of Woe;"[47][2.B.]
      Where frugal monks their little relics show,
      And sundry legends to the stranger tell:
      Here impious men have punished been, and lo!
      Deep in yon cave Honorius long did dwell,
    In hope to merit Heaven by making earth a Hell.

                              XXI.

    And here and there, as up the crags you spring,
      Mark many rude-carved crosses near the path:[48]
      Yet deem not these Devotion's offering--
      These are memorials frail of murderous wrath:
      For wheresoe'er the shrieking victim hath
      Pour'd forth his blood beneath the assassin's knife,
      Some hand erects a cross of mouldering lath;
      And grove and glen with thousand such are rife
    Throughout this purple land, where Law secures not life.[3.B.]

                             XXII.

    On sloping mounds, or in the vale beneath,[49]
      Are domes where whilome kings did make repair;
      But now the wild flowers round them only breathe:
      Yet ruined Splendour still is lingering there.
      And yonder towers the Prince's palace fair:
      There thou too, Vathek! England's wealthiest son,[bb][50]
      Once formed thy Paradise, as not aware
      When wanton Wealth her mightiest deeds hath done,[bc]
    Meek Peace voluptuous lures was ever wont to shun.

                             XXIII.

    Here didst thou dwell, here schemes of pleasure plan,
      Beneath yon mountain's ever beauteous brow:
      But now, as if a thing unblest by Man,[bd]
      Thy fairy dwelling is as lone as Thou!
      Here giant weeds a passage scarce allow
      To Halls deserted, portals gaping wide:
      Fresh lessons to the thinking bosom, how
      Vain are the pleasaunces on earth supplied;[be]
    Swept into wrecks anon by Time's ungentle tide!

                             XXIV.

    Behold the hall where chiefs were late convened![4.B.]
      Oh! dome displeasing unto British eye!
      With diadem hight Foolscap, lo! a Fiend,
      A little Fiend that scoffs incessantly,
      There sits in parchment robe arrayed, and by[bf]
      His side is hung a seal and sable scroll,
      Where blazoned glare names known to chivalry,[bg]
      And sundry signatures adorn the roll,[bh]
    Whereat the Urchin points and laughs with all his soul.[bi]

                              XXV.

    Convention is the dwarfish demon styled[51]
      That foiled the knights in Marialva's dome:
      Of brains (if brains they had) he them beguiled,
      And turned a nation's shallow joy to gloom.
      Here Folly dashed to earth the victor's plume,
      And Policy regained what arms had lost:
      For chiefs like ours in vain may laurels bloom!
      Woe to the conquering, not the conquered host,
    Since baffled Triumph droops on Lusitania's coast.

                             XXVI.

    And ever since that martial Synod met,
      Britannia sickens, Cintra! at thy name;
      And folks in office at the mention fret,[bj]
      And fain would blush, if blush they could, for shame.
      How will Posterity the deed proclaim!
      Will not our own and fellow-nations sneer,
      To view these champions cheated of their fame,
      By foes in fight o'erthrown, yet victors here,
    Where Scorn her finger points through many a coming year?

                             XXVII.

    So deemed the Childe, as o'er the mountains he
      Did take his way in solitary guise:
      Sweet was the scene, yet soon he thought to flee,
      More restless than the swallow in the skies:[bk]
      Though here awhile he learned to moralise,
      For Meditation fixed at times on him;
      And conscious Reason whispered to despise
      His early youth, misspent in maddest whim;
    But as he gazed on truth his aching eyes grew dim.[52]

                            XXVIII.

    To horse! to horse! he quits, for ever quits[53]
      A scene of peace, though soothing to his soul:[bl]
      Again he rouses from his moping fits,
      But seeks not now the harlot and the bowl.[bm]
      Onward he flies, nor fixed as yet the goal
      Where he shall rest him on his pilgrimage;
      And o'er him many changing scenes must roll
      Ere toil his thirst for travel can assuage,[bn]
    Or he shall calm his breast, or learn experience sage.

                             XXIX.

    Yet Mafra shall one moment claim delay,[5.B.]
      Where dwelt of yore the Lusians' luckless queen;[bo][54]
      And Church and Court did mingle their array,
      And Mass and revel were alternate seen;
      Lordlings and freres--ill-sorted fry I ween!
      But here the Babylonian Whore hath built
      A dome, where flaunts she in such glorious sheen,
      That men forget the blood which she hath spilt,
    And bow the knee to Pomp that loves to varnish guilt.

                              XXX.

    O'er vales that teem with fruits, romantic hills,
      (Oh, that such hills upheld a freeborn race!)
      Whereon to gaze the eye with joyaunce fills,
      Childe Harold wends through many a pleasant place.[bp]
      Though sluggards deem it but a foolish chase,
      And marvel men should quit their easy chair,
      The toilsome way, and long, long league to trace,
      Oh! there is sweetness in the mountain air,
    And Life, that bloated Ease can never hope to share.

                             XXXI.

    More bleak to view the hills at length recede,
      And, less luxuriant, smoother vales extend:[bq]
      Immense horizon-bounded plains succeed!
      Far as the eye discerns, withouten end,
      Spain's realms appear whereon her shepherds tend
      Flocks, whose rich fleece right well the trader knows--
      Now must the Pastor's arm his _lambs_ defend:
      For Spain is compassed by unyielding foes,
    And _all_ must shield their _all_, or share Subjection's woes.

                             XXXII.

    Where Lusitania and her Sister meet,
      Deem ye what bounds the rival realms divide?[br]
      Or ere the jealous Queens of Nations greet,
      Doth Tayo interpose his mighty tide?
      Or dark Sierras rise in craggy pride?
      Or fence of art, like China's vasty wall?--
      Ne barrier wall, ne river deep and wide,
      Ne horrid crags, nor mountains dark and tall,
    Rise like the rocks that part Hispania's land from Gaul:[55]

                            XXXIII.

    But these between a silver streamlet[56] glides,
      And scarce a name distinguisheth the brook,
      Though rival kingdoms press its verdant sides:
      Here leans the idle shepherd on his crook,
      And vacant on the rippling waves doth look,
      That peaceful still 'twixt bitterest foemen flow;
      For proud each peasant as the noblest duke:
      Well doth the Spanish hind the difference know
    'Twixt him and Lusian slave, the lowest of the low.[6.B.]

                             XXXIV.

    But ere the mingling bounds have far been passed,[bs]
      Dark Guadiana rolls his power along
      In sullen billows, murmuring and vast,
      So noted ancient roundelays among.[bt]
      Whilome upon his banks did legions throng
      Of Moor and Knight, in mailed splendour drest:
      Here ceased the swift their race, here sunk the strong;
      The Paynim turban and the Christian crest
    Mixed on the bleeding stream, by floating hosts oppressed.[57]

                             XXXV.

    Oh, lovely Spain! renowned, romantic Land!
      Where is that standard[58] which Pelagio bore,[bu]
      When Cava's traitor-sire first called the band
      That dyed thy mountain streams with Gothic gore?[7.B.]
      Where are those bloody Banners which of yore
      Waved o'er thy sons, victorious to the gale,
      And drove at last the spoilers to their shore?[59]
      Red gleamed the Cross, and waned the Crescent pale,[bv]
    While Afric's echoes thrilled with Moorish matrons' wail.

                             XXXVI.

    Teems not each ditty with the glorious tale?[60]
      Ah! such, alas! the hero's amplest fate!
      When granite moulders and when records fail,
      A peasant's plaint prolongs his dubious date.[bw]
      Pride! bend thine eye from Heaven to thine estate,
      See how the Mighty shrink into a song!
      Can Volume, Pillar, Pile preserve thee great?
      Or must thou trust Tradition's simple tongue,
    When Flattery sleeps with thee, and History does thee wrong?

                            XXXVII.

    Awake, ye Sons of Spain! awake! advance!
      Lo! Chivalry, your ancient Goddess, cries,
      But wields not, as of old, her thirsty lance,
      Nor shakes her crimson plumage in the skies:
      Now on the smoke of blazing bolts she flies,
      And speaks in thunder through yon engine's roar:
      In every peal she calls--"Awake! arise!"
      Say, is her voice more feeble than of yore,
    When her war-song was heard on Andalusia's shore?

                            XXXVIII.

    Hark!--heard you not those hoofs of dreadful note?
      Sounds not the clang of conflict on the heath?
      Saw ye not whom the reeking sabre smote,
      Nor saved your brethren ere they sank beneath
      Tyrants and Tyrants' slaves?--the fires of Death,
      The Bale-fires flash on high:--from rock to rock![bx]
      Each volley tells that thousands cease to breathe;
      Death rides upon the sulphury Siroc,[61]
    Red Battle stamps his foot, and Nations feel the shock.

                             XXXIX.

    Lo! where the Giant on the mountain stands,
      His blood-red tresses deepening in the Sun,
      With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands,
      And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon;
      Restless it rolls, now fixed, and now anon
      Flashing afar,--and at his iron feet
      Destruction cowers, to mark what deeds are done;
      For on this morn three potent Nations meet,
    To shed before his Shrine the blood he deems most sweet.

                              XL.

    By Heaven! it is a splendid sight to see[62]
      (For one who hath no friend, no brother there)
      Their rival scarfs of mixed embroidery,[by]
      Their various arms that glitter in the air!
      What gallant War-hounds rouse them from their lair,
      And gnash their fangs, loud yelling for the prey!
      All join the chase, but few the triumph share;[63]
      The Grave shall bear the chiefest prize away,
    And Havoc scarce for joy can number their array.

                              XLI.

    Three hosts combine to offer sacrifice;
      Three tongues prefer strange orisons on high;
      Three gaudy standards flout the pale blue skies;[64]
      The shouts are France, Spain, Albion, Victory!
      The Foe, the Victim, and the fond Ally
      That fights for all, but ever fights in vain,[65]
      Are met--as if at home they could not die--
      To feed the crow on Talavera's plain,
    And fertilise the field that each pretends to gain.

                             XLII.

    There shall they rot--Ambition's honoured fools![bz]
      Yes, Honour decks the turf that wraps their clay![66]
      Vain Sophistry! in these behold the tools,[ca]
      The broken tools, that Tyrants cast away
      By myriads, when they dare to pave their way
      With human hearts--to what?--a dream alone.
      Can Despots compass aught that hails their sway?[cb]
      Or call with truth one span of earth their own,
    Save that wherein at last they crumble bone by bone?

                             XLIII.

    Oh, Albuera! glorious field of grief![cc][67]
      As o'er thy plain the Pilgrim pricked his steed,
      Who could foresee thee, in a space so brief,
      A scene where mingling foes should boast and bleed![cd]
      Peace to the perished! may the warrior's meed[ce]
      And tears of triumph their reward prolong![cf]
      Till others fall where other chieftains lead
      Thy name shall circle round the gaping throng,
    And shine in worthless lays, the theme of transient song.[cg][68]

                             XLIV.

    Enough of Battle's minions! let them play
      Their game of lives, and barter breath for fame:
      Fame that will scarce reanimate their clay,
      Though thousands fall to deck some single name.
      In sooth 'twere sad to thwart their noble aim
      Who strike, blest hirelings! for their country's good,[ch]
      And die, that living might have proved her shame;
      Perished, perchance, in some domestic feud,
    Or in a narrower sphere wild Rapine's path pursued.[ci]

                              XLV.

    Full swiftly Harold wends his lonely way[cj][69]
      Where proud Sevilla triumphs unsubdued:[ck]
      Yet is she free? the Spoiler's wished-for prey!
      Soon, soon shall Conquest's fiery foot intrude,
      Blackening her lovely domes with traces rude.
      Inevitable hour! 'Gainst fate to strive
      Where Desolation plants her famished brood
      Is vain, or Ilion, Tyre might yet survive,
    And Virtue vanquish all, and Murder cease to thrive

                             XLVI.

    But all unconscious of the coming doom,[70]
      The feast, the song, the revel here abounds;
      Strange modes of merriment the hours consume,
      Nor bleed these patriots with their country's wounds:
      Nor here War's clarion, but Love's rebeck[71] sounds;[cl]
      Here Folly still his votaries inthralls;
      And young-eyed Lewdness walks her midnight rounds:[cm]
      Girt with the silent crimes of Capitals,
    Still to the last kind Vice clings to the tott'ring walls.

                             XLVII.

    Not so the rustic--with his trembling mate
      He lurks, nor casts his heavy eye afar,
      Lest he should view his vineyard desolate,
      Blasted below the dun hot breath of War.
      No more beneath soft Eve's consenting star
      Fandango twirls his jocund castanet:[72]
      Ah, Monarchs! could ye taste the mirth ye mar,
      Not in the toils of Glory would ye fret;[cn]
    The hoarse dull drum would sleep, and Man be happy yet!

                            XLVIII.

    How carols now the lusty muleteer?
      Of Love, Romance, Devotion is his lay,
      As whilome he was wont the leagues to cheer,
      His quick bells wildly jingling on the way?
      No! as he speeds, he chants "Viv[=a] el Rey!"[8.B.]
      And checks his song to execrate Godoy,
      The royal wittol Charles, and curse the day
      When first Spain's queen beheld the black-eyed boy,
    And gore-faced Treason sprung from her adulterate joy.

                             XLIX.

    On yon long level plain, at distance crowned[73]
      With crags, whereon those Moorish turrets rest,
      Wide-scattered hoof-marks dint the wounded ground;
      And, scathed by fire, the greensward's darkened vest
      Tells that the foe was Andalusia's guest:
      Here was the camp, the watch-flame, and the host,
      Here the bold peasant stormed the Dragon's nest;
      Still does he mark it with triumphant boast,
    And points to yonder cliffs, which oft were won and lost.

                               L.

    And whomsoe'er along the path you meet
      Bears in his cap the badge of crimson hue,
      Which tells you whom to shun and whom to greet:[9.B.]
      Woe to the man that walks in public view
      Without of loyalty this token true:
      Sharp is the knife, and sudden is the stroke;
      And sorely would the Gallic foeman rue,
      If subtle poniards, wrapt beneath the cloke,
    Could blunt the sabre's edge, or clear the cannon's smoke.

                              LI.

    At every turn Morena's dusky height[74]
      Sustains aloft the battery's iron load;
      And, far as mortal eye can compass sight,
      The mountain-howitzer, the broken road,
      The bristling palisade, the fosse o'erflowed,
      The stationed bands, the never-vacant watch,[co]
      The magazine in rocky durance stowed,
      The bolstered steed beneath the shed of thatch,
    The ball-piled pyramid, the ever-blazing match,[10.B.]

                              LII.

    Portend the deeds to come:--but he whose nod
      Has tumbled feebler despots from their sway,
      A moment pauseth ere he lifts the rod;
      A little moment deigneth to delay:
      Soon will his legions sweep through these their way;
      The West must own the Scourger of the world.[cp]
      Ah! Spain! how sad will be thy reckoning-day,
      When soars Gaul's Vulture, with his wings unfurled,[cq]
    And thou shall view thy sons in crowds to Hades hurled.

                             LIII.

    And must they fall? the young, the proud, the brave,
      To swell one bloated Chiefs unwholesome reign?[75]
      No step between submission and a grave?
      The rise of Rapine and the fall of Spain?
      And doth the Power that man adores ordain
      Their doom, nor heed the suppliant's appeal?
      Is all that desperate Valour acts in vain?
      And Counsel sage, and patriotic Zeal--
    The Veteran's skill--Youth's fire--and Manhood's heart of steel?

                              LIV.

    Is it for this the Spanish maid, aroused,
      Hangs on the willow her unstrung guitar,
      And, all unsexed, the Anlace[76] hath espoused,
      Sung the loud song, and dared the deed of war?
      And she, whom once the semblance of a scar
      Appalled, an owlet's 'larum chilled with dread,[77]
      Now views the column-scattering bay'net jar,[cr]
      The falchion flash, and o'er the yet warm dead
    Stalks with Minerva's step where Mars might quake to tread.

                              LV.

    Ye who shall marvel when you hear her tale,
      Oh! had you known her in her softer hour,
      Marked her black eye that mocks her coal-black veil,
      Heard her light, lively tones in Lady's bower,
      Seen her long locks that foil the painter's power,
      Her fairy form, with more than female grace,
      Scarce would you deem that Saragoza's tower
      Beheld her smile in Danger's Gorgon face,
    Thin the closed ranks, and lead in Glory's fearful chase.

                              LVI.

    Her lover sinks--she sheds no ill-timed tear;
      Her Chief is slain--she fills his fatal post;
      Her fellows flee--she checks their base career;
      The Foe retires--she heads the sallying host:
      Who can appease like her a lover's ghost?
      Who can avenge so well a leader's fall?
      What maid retrieve when man's flushed hope is lost?
      Who hang so fiercely on the flying Gaul,
    Foiled by a woman's hand, before a battered wall?[11.B.]

                             LVII.

    Yet are Spain's maids no race of Amazons,
      But formed for all the witching arts of love:
      Though thus in arms they emulate her sons,
      And in the horrid phalanx dare to move,
      'Tis but the tender fierceness of the dove,
      Pecking the hand that hovers o'er her mate:
      In softness as in firmness far above
      Remoter females, famed for sickening prate;
    Her mind is nobler sure, her charms perchance as great.

                             LVIII.

    The seal Love's dimpling finger hath impressed[cs]
      Denotes how soft that chin which bears his touch:[12.B.]
      Her lips, whose kisses pout to leave their nest,
      Bid man be valiant ere he merit such:
      Her glance how wildly beautiful! how much
      Hath Phoebus wooed in vain to spoil her cheek,
      Which glows yet smoother from his amorous clutch!
      Who round the North for paler dames would seek?
    How poor their forms appear! how languid, wan, and weak![78]

                              LIX.

    Match me, ye climes! which poets love to laud;
      Match me, ye harems of the land! where now
      I strike my strain, far distant, to applaud
      Beauties that ev'n a cynic must avow;[ct]
      Match me those Houries, whom ye scarce allow
      To taste the gale lest Love should ride the wind,
      With Spain's dark-glancing daughters--deign to know,
      There your wise Prophet's Paradise we find,
    His black-eyed maids of Heaven, angelically kind.

                              LX.

    Oh, thou Parnassus! whom I now survey,[79][13.B.]
      Not in the phrensy of a dreamer's eye,
      Not in the fabled landscape of a lay,[cu]
      But soaring snow-clad through thy native sky,
      In the wild pomp of mountain-majesty!
      What marvel if I thus essay to sing?
      The humblest of thy pilgrims passing by
      Would gladly woo thine Echoes with his string,
    Though from thy heights no more one Muse will wave her wing.

                              LXI.

    Oft have I dreamed of Thee! whose glorious name
      Who knows not, knows not man's divinest lore:
      And now I view thee--'tis, alas, with shame
      That I in feeblest accents must adore.
      When I recount thy worshippers of yore
      I tremble, and can only bend the knee;
      Nor raise my voice, nor vainly dare to soar,
      But gaze beneath thy cloudy canopy
    In silent joy to think at last I look on Thee![80]

                             LXII.

    Happier in this than mightiest Bards have been,
      Whose Fate to distant homes confined their lot,
      Shall I unmoved behold the hallowed scene,
      Which others rave of, though they know it not?
      Though here no more Apollo haunts his Grot,
      And thou, the Muses' seat, art now their grave,
      Some gentle Spirit still pervades the spot,
      Sighs in the gale, keeps silence in the Cave,
    And glides with glassy foot o'er yon melodious wave.[cv]

                             LXIII.

    Of thee hereafter.--Ev'n amidst my strain
      I turned aside to pay my homage here;
      Forgot the land, the sons, the maids of Spain;
      Her fate, to every freeborn bosom dear;
      And hailed thee, not perchance without a tear.
      Now to my theme--but from thy holy haunt
      Let me some remnant, some memorial bear;[cw]
      Yield me one leaf of Daphne's deathless plant,
    Nor let thy votary's hope be deemed an idle vaunt.

                             LXIV.

    But ne'er didst thou, fair Mount! when Greece was young,
      See round thy giant base a brighter choir,[81]
      Nor e'er did Delphi, when her Priestess sung
      The Pythian hymn with more than mortal fire,
      Behold a train more fitting to inspire
      The song of love, than Andalusia's maids,
      Nurst in the glowing lap of soft Desire:
      Ah! that to these were given such peaceful shades
    As Greece can still bestow, though Glory fly her glades.

                              LXV.

    Fair is proud Seville; let her country boast
      Her strength, her wealth, her site of ancient days;[14.B.]
      But Cadiz, rising on the distant coast,[82]
      Calls forth a sweeter, though ignoble praise.
      Ah, Vice! how soft are thy voluptuous ways!
      While boyish blood is mantling, who can 'scape[cx]
      The fascination of thy magic gaze?
      A Cherub-Hydra round us dost thou gape,
    And mould to every taste thy dear delusive shape.

                             LXVI.

    When Paphos fell by Time--accursed Time!
      The Queen who conquers all must yield to thee--
      The Pleasures fled, but sought as warm a clime;
      And Venus, constant to her native Sea,
      To nought else constant, hither deigned to flee,
      And fixed her shrine within these walls of white:
      Though not to one dome circumscribeth She
      Her worship, but, devoted to her rite,
    A thousand Altars rise, for ever blazing bright.[83]

                             LXVII.

    From morn till night, from night till startled Morn[84]
      Peeps blushing on the Revel's laughing crew,
      The Song is heard, the rosy Garland worn;
      Devices quaint, and Frolics ever new,
      Tread on each other's kibes.[85] A long adieu
      He bids to sober joy that here sojourns:
      Nought interrupts the riot, though in lieu[cy]
      Of true devotion monkish incense burns,
    And Love and Prayer unite, or rule the hour by turns.[cz]

                            LXVIII.

    The Sabbath comes, a day of blessed rest:
      What hallows it upon this Christian shore?
      Lo! it is sacred to a solemn Feast:
      Hark! heard you not the forest-monarch's roar?
      Crashing the lance, he snuffs the spouting gore
      Of man and steed, o'erthrown beneath his horn;
      The thronged arena shakes with shouts for more;
      Yells the mad crowd o'er entrails freshly torn,
    Nor shrinks the female eye, nor ev'n affects to mourn.

                           LXIX.[86]

    The seventh day this--the Jubilee of man!
      London! right well thou know'st the day of prayer:
      Then thy spruce citizen, washed artisan,
      And smug apprentice gulp their weekly air:
      Thy coach of hackney, whiskey,[87] one-horse chair,
      And humblest gig through sundry suburbs whirl,[da]
      To Hampstead, Brentford, Harrow make repair;
      Till the tired jade the wheel forgets to hurl,
    Provoking envious gibe from each pedestrian churl.[db]

                              LXX.

    Some o'er thy Thamis row the ribboned fair,[dc]
      Others along the safer turnpike fly;
      Some Richmond-hill ascend, some scud to Ware,
      And many to the steep of Highgate hie.
      Ask ye, Boeotian Shades! the reason why?[15.B.]
      'Tis to the worship of the solemn Horn,[88]
      Grasped in the holy hand of Mystery,
      In whose dread name both men and maids are sworn,
    And consecrate the oath with draught, and dance till morn.

                             LXXI.

    All have their fooleries--not alike are thine,
      Fair Cadiz, rising o'er the dark blue sea![89]
      Soon as the Matin bell proclaimeth nine,
      Thy Saint-adorers count the Rosary:
      Much is the VIRGIN teased to shrive them free
      (Well do I ween the only virgin there)
      From crimes as numerous as her beadsmen be;
      Then to the crowded circus forth they fare:
    Young, old, high, low, at once the same diversion share.

                             LXXII.

    The lists are oped, the spacious area cleared,[90]
      Thousands on thousands piled are seated round;
      Long ere the first loud trumpet's note is heard,
      Ne vacant space for lated wight is found:
      Here Dons, Grandees, but chiefly Dames abound,
      Skilled in the ogle of a roguish eye,
      Yet ever well inclined to heal the wound;
      None through their cold disdain are doomed to die,
    As moon-struck bards complain, by Love's sad archery.

                            LXXIII.

    Hushed is the din of tongues--on gallant steeds,
      With milk-white crest, gold spur, and light-poised lance,
      Four cavaliers prepare for venturous deeds,
      And lowly-bending to the lists advance;
      Rich are their scarfs, their chargers featly prance:
      If in the dangerous game they shine to-day,
      The crowd's loud shout and ladies' lovely glance,
      Best prize of better acts! they bear away,
    And all that kings or chiefs e'er gain their toils repay.

                             LXXIV.

    In costly sheen and gaudy cloak arrayed.
      But all afoot, the light-limbed Matadore
      Stands in the centre, eager to invade
      The lord of lowing herds; but not before
      The ground, with cautious tread, is traversed o'er,
      Lest aught unseen should lurk to thwart his speed:
      His arms a dart, he fights aloof, nor more
      Can Man achieve without the friendly steed--
    Alas! too oft condemned for him to bear and bleed.

                             LXXV.

    Thrice sounds the Clarion; lo! the signal falls,
      The den expands, and Expectation mute
      Gapes round the silent circle's peopled walls.
      Bounds with one lashing spring the mighty brute,
      And, wildly staring, spurns, with sounding foot,
      The sand, nor blindly rushes on his foe:
      Here, there, he points his threatening front, to suit
      His first attack, wide-waving to and fro
    His angry tail; red rolls his eye's dilated glow.

                             LXXVI.

    Sudden he stops--his eye is fixed--away--
      Away, thou heedless boy! prepare the spear:
      Now is thy time, to perish, or display
      The skill that yet may check his mad career!
      With well-timed croupe[91] the nimble coursers veer;
      On foams the Bull, but not unscathed he goes;
      Streams from his flank the crimson torrent clear:
      He flies, he wheels, distracted with his throes;
    Dart follows dart--lance, lance--loud bellowings speak his woes.

                            LXXVII.

    Again he comes; nor dart nor lance avail,
      Nor the wild plunging of the tortured horse;
      Though Man and Man's avenging arms assail,
      Vain are his weapons, vainer is his force.
      One gallant steed is stretched a mangled corse;
      Another, hideous sight! unseamed appears,
      His gory chest unveils life's panting source;
      Though death-struck, still his feeble frame he rears;
    Staggering, but stemming all, his Lord unharmed he bears.

                            LXXVIII.

    Foiled, bleeding, breathless, furious to the last,
      Full in the centre stands the Bull at bay,
      Mid wounds, and clinging darts, and lances brast,[92]
      And foes disabled in the brutal fray:
      And now the Matadores[93] around him play,
      Shake the red cloak, and poise the ready brand:
      Once more through all he bursts his thundering way--
      Vain rage! the mantle quits the conynge hand,
    Wraps his fierce eye--'tis past--he sinks upon the sand![dd]

                             LXXIX.

    Where his vast neck just mingles with the spine,
      Sheathed in his form the deadly weapon lies.
      He stops--he starts--disdaining to decline:
      Slowly he falls, amidst triumphant cries,
      Without a groan, without a struggle dies.
      The decorated car appears--on high
      The corse is piled--sweet sight for vulgar eyes--[de][94]
      Four steeds that spurn the rein, as swift as shy,
    Hurl the dark bulk along, scarce seen in dashing by.

                             LXXX.

    Such the ungentle sport that oft invites
      The Spanish maid, and cheers the Spanish swain.
      Nurtured in blood betimes, his heart delights
      In vengeance, gloating on another's pain.
      What private feuds the troubled village stain!
      Though now one phalanxed host should meet the foe,
      Enough, alas! in humble homes remain,
      To meditate 'gainst friend the secret blow,
   For some slight cause of wrath, whence Life's warm stream must flow.[95]

                             LXXXI.

    But Jealousy has fled: his bars, his bolts,
      His withered Centinel,[96] Duenna sage!
      And all whereat the generous soul revolts,[df]
      Which the stern dotard deemed he could encage,
      Have passed to darkness with the vanished age.
      Who late so free as Spanish girls were seen,
      (Ere War uprose in his volcanic rage,)
      With braided tresses bounding o'er the green,
    While on the gay dance shone Night's lover-loving Queen?

                            LXXXII.

    Oh! many a time and oft, had Harold loved,
      Or dreamed he loved, since Rapture is a dream;
      But now his wayward bosom was unmoved,
      For not yet had he drunk of Lethe's stream;
      And lately had he learned with truth to deem
      Love has no gift so grateful as his wings:
      How fair, how young, how soft soe'er he seem,
      Full from the fount of Joy's delicious springs[dg]
    Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings.[16.B.]

                            LXXXIII.

    Yet to the beauteous form he was not blind,
      Though now it moved him as it moves the wise;
      Not that Philosophy on such a mind
      E'er deigned to bend her chastely-awful eyes:
      But Passion raves herself[97] to rest, or flies;
      And Vice, that digs her own voluptuous tomb,
      Had buried long his hopes, no more to rise:[dh]
      Pleasure's palled Victim! life-abhorring Gloom
    Wrote on his faded brow curst Cain's unresting doom.[98]

                            LXXXIV.

    Still he beheld, nor mingled with the throng;
      But viewed them not with misanthropic hate:
      Fain would he now have joined the dance, the song;
      But who may smile that sinks beneath his fate?
      Nought that he saw his sadness could abate:
      Yet once he struggled 'gainst the Demon's sway,
      And as in Beauty's bower he pensive sate,
      Poured forth his unpremeditated lay,
    To charms as fair as those that soothed his happier day.


                               TO INEZ.[99]

                               1.

    Nay, smile not at my sullen brow;
      Alas! I cannot smile again:
    Yet Heaven avert that ever thou
      Shouldst weep, and haply weep in vain.

                               2.

    And dost thou ask what secret woe
      I bear, corroding Joy and Youth?
    And wilt thou vainly seek to know
      A pang, ev'n thou must fail to soothe?

                               3.

    It is not love, it is not hate,
      Nor low Ambition's honours lost,
    That bids me loathe my present state,
      And fly from all I prized the most:

                               4.

    It is that weariness which springs
      From all I meet, or hear, or see:
    To me no pleasure Beauty brings;
      Thine eyes have scarce a charm for me.

                               5.

    It is that settled, ceaseless gloom
      The fabled Hebrew Wanderer bore;
    That will not look beyond the tomb,
      But cannot hope for rest before.

                               6.

    What Exile from himself can flee?[100]
      To zones though more and more remote,[di]
    Still, still pursues, where'er I be,
      The blight of Life--the Demon Thought.[101]

                               7.

    Yet others rapt in pleasure seem,
      And taste of all that I forsake;
    Oh! may they still of transport dream,
      And ne'er--at least like me--awake!

                               8.

    Through many a clime 'tis mine to go,
      With many a retrospection curst;
    And all my solace is to know,
      Whate'er betides, I've known the worst.

                               9.

    What is that worst? Nay do not ask--
      In pity from the search forbear:
    Smile on--nor venture to unmask
      Man's heart, and view the Hell that's there.

                                                   Jan. 25. 1810.--[MS.]


                             LXXXV.

    Adieu, fair Cadiz! yea, a long adieu!
      Who may forget how well thy walls have stood?
      When all were changing thou alone wert true,
      First to be free and last to be subdued;[102]
      And if amidst a scene, a shock so rude,
      Some native blood was seen thy streets to dye,
      A Traitor only fell beneath the feud: [17.B.]
      Here all were noble, save Nobility;
    None hugged a Conqueror's chain, save fallen Chivalry!

                            LXXXVI.

    Such be the sons of Spain, and strange her Fate!
      They fight for Freedom who were never free,
      A Kingless people for a nerveless state;[103]
      Her vassals combat when their Chieftains flee,
      True to the veriest slaves of Treachery:
      Fond of a land which gave them nought but life,
      Pride points the path that leads to Liberty;
      Back to the struggle, baffled in the strife,
    War, war is still the cry, "War even to the knife!"[18.B.]

                            LXXXVII.

    Ye, who would more of Spain and Spaniards know[dj]
      Go, read whate'er is writ of bloodiest strife:
      Whate'er keen Vengeance urged on foreign foe
      Can act, is acting there against man's life:
      From flashing scimitar to secret knife,
      War mouldeth there each weapon to his need--
      So may he guard the sister and the wife,
      So may he make each curst oppressor bleed--
    So may such foes deserve the most remorseless deed!

                         LXXXVIII.[104]

    Flows there a tear of Pity for the dead?
      Look o'er the ravage of the reeking plain;
      Look on the hands with female slaughter red;
      Then to the dogs resign the unburied slain,
      Then to the vulture let each corse remain,
      Albeit unworthy of the prey-bird's maw;
      Let their bleached bones, and blood's unbleaching stain,
      Long mark the battle-field with hideous awe:
    Thus only may our sons conceive the scenes we saw!

                            LXXXIX.

    Nor yet, alas! the dreadful work is done;
      Fresh legions pour adown the Pyrenees:
      It deepens still, the work is scarce begun,
      Nor mortal eye the distant end foresees.
      Fall'n nations gaze on Spain; if freed, she frees
      More than her fell Pizarros once enchained:
      Strange retribution! now Columbia's ease
      Repairs the wrongs that Quito's sons sustained,[105]
    While o'er the parent clime prowls Murder unrestrained.

                              XC.

    Not all the blood at Talavera shed,
      Not all the marvels of Barossa's fight,
      Not Albuera lavish of the dead,
      Have won for Spain her well asserted right.
      When shall her Olive-Branch be free from blight?
      When shall she breathe her from the blushing toil?
      How many a doubtful day shall sink in night,
      Ere the Frank robber turn him from his spoil,
    And Freedom's stranger-tree grow native of the soil![106]

                              XCI.

    And thou, my friend!--since unavailing woe[dk][107][19.B.]
      Bursts from my heart, and mingles with the strain--
     Had the sword laid thee with the mighty low,
      Pride might forbid e'en Friendship to complain:
      But thus unlaurelled to descend in vain,
      By all forgotten, save the lonely breast,
      And mix unbleeding with the boasted slain,
      While Glory crowns so many a meaner crest!
    What hadst thou done to sink so peacefully to rest?

                             XCII.

    Oh, known the earliest, and esteemed the most![dl][108]
      Dear to a heart where nought was left so dear![dm]
      Though to my hopeless days for ever lost,
      In dreams deny me not to see thee here!
      And Morn in secret shall renew the tear
      Of Consciousness awaking to her woes,
      And Fancy hover o'er thy bloodless bier,[dn]
      Till my frail frame return to whence it rose,
    And mourned and mourner lie united in repose.

                             XCIII.

    Here is one fytte[109] of Harold's pilgrimage:
      Ye who of him may further seek to know,
      Shall find some tidings in a future page,
      If he that rhymeth now may scribble moe.
      Is this too much? stern Critic! say not so:
      Patience! and ye shall hear what he beheld
      In other lands, where he was doomed to go:
      Lands that contain the monuments of Eld,
    Ere Greece and Grecian arts by barbarous hands were quelled.



FOOTNOTES:

[1] "The first and second cantos of _Childe Harold_ were written in
separate portions by the noble author. They were afterwards arranged for
publication; and when thus arranged, the whole was copied. This copy was
placed in Lord Byron's hands, and he made various alterations,
corrections, and large additions. These, together with the notes, are in
his Lordship's own handwriting. The manuscript thus corrected was sent
to the press, and was printed under the direction of Robt. Chas. Dallas,
Esq., to whom Lord Byron had given the copyright of the poem. The MS.,
as it came from the printers, was preserved by Mr. Dallas, and is now in
the possession of his son, the Rev. Alex. Dallas."

[See Dallas Transcript, p. 1. Mus. Brit. Bibl. Egerton, 2027. Press 526.
H. T.]

[a] {3} _Advertisement to be prefixed y^e Poem_.--[MS. B.M.]

[b] _Professes to describe_.--[MS. B.M.]

[c] ----_that in the fictitious character of "Childe Harold" I may incur
the suspicion of having drawn "from myself." This I beg leave once for
all to disclaim. I wanted a character to give some connection to the
poem, and the one adopted suited my purpose as well as any other_.--[MS.
B.M.]

[d] {4} _Such an idea_.--[MS. B.M.]

[e] _My readers will observe that where the author speaks in his own
person he assumes a very different tone from that of_

    "_The cheerless thing, the man without a friend_,"

_at least, till death had deprived him of his nearest connections_.

_I crave pardon for this Egotism, which proceeds from my wish to discard
any probable imputation of it to the text_.--[MS. B.M.]

[2] ["In the 13th and 14th centuries the word 'child,' which signifies a
youth of gentle birth, appears to have been applied to a young noble
awaiting knighthood, e.g. in the romances of _Ipomydon_, _Sir Tryamour_,
etc. It is frequently used by our old writers as a title, and is
repeatedly given to Prince Arthur in the _Faerie Queene_"--(_N. Eng.
Dict._, art. "Childe").

Byron uses the word in the Spenserian sense, as a title implying youth
and nobility.]

[3] [John, Lord Maxwell, slew Sir James Johnstone at Achmanhill, April
6, 1608, in revenge for his father's defeat and death at Dryffe Sands,
in 1593. He was forced to flee to France. Hence his "Good Night."
Scott's ballad is taken, with "some slight variations," from a copy in
Glenriddel's MSS.--_Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, 1810, i.
290-300.]

[4] [Amongst others, _The Battle of Talavera_, by John Wilson Croker,
appeared in 1809; _The Vision of Don Roderick_, by Walter Scott, in
1811; and _Portugal, a Poem_, by Lord George Grenville, in 1812.]

[f] _Some casual coincidence_.--[MS. B.M.]

[5] {5} Beattie's Letters. [See letter to Dr. Blacklock, September 22,
1766 (_Life of Beattie_, by Sir W. Forbes, 1806, i. 89).]

[g] _Satisfied that their failure_.--[MS. B.M.]

[6] [See _Quarterly Review_, March, 1812, vol. vii. p. 191: "The moral
code of chivalry was not, we admit, quite pure and spotless, but its
laxity on some points was redeemed by the noble spirit of gallantry
which courted personal danger in the defence of the sovereign ... of
women because they are often lovely, and always helpless; and of the
priesthood.... Now, _Childe Harold_, if not absolutely craven and
recreant, is at least a mortal enemy to all martial exertion, a scoffer
at the fair sex, and, apparently, disposed to consider all religions as
different modes of superstition." The tone of the review is severer than
the Preface indicates. Nor does Byron attempt to reply to the main issue
of the indictment, an unknightly aversion from war, but rides off on a
minor point, the licentiousness of the Troubadours.]

[7] {6} [See _Memoires sur l'Ancienne Chevalerie_, par M. De la Curne de
Sainte-Palaye, Paris, 1781: "Qu'on lise dans l'auteur du roman de Gerard
de Roussillon, en Provencal, les details tres-circonstancies dans
lesquels il entre sur la reception faite par le Comte Gerard a
l'ambassadeur du roi Charles; on y verra des particularites singulieres
qui donnent une etrange idee des moeurs et de la politesse de ces
siecles aussi corrompus qu'ignorans" (ii. 69). See, too, _ibid., ante_,
p. 65: "Si l'on juge des moeurs d'un siecle par les ecrits qui nous en
sont restes, nous serons en droit de juger que nos ancetres observerent
mal les loix que leur prescrivirent la decence et l'honnetete."]

[8] [See _Recherches sur les Prerogatives des Dames chez les Gaulois sur
les Cours d'Amours_, par M. le President Rolland [d'Erceville], de
l'Academie d'Amiens. Paris, 1787, pp. 18-30, 117, etc.]

[9] [The phrase occurs in _The Rovers, or the Double Arrangement_
(_Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin_, 1854, p. 199), by J. Hookham Frere, a
skit on the "moral inculcated by the German dramas--the reciprocal
duties of one or more husbands to one or more wives." The waiter at the
Golden Eagle at Weimar is a warrior in disguise, and rescues the hero,
who is imprisoned in the abbey of Quedlinburgh.]

[10] {7} ["But the age of chivalry is gone--the unbought grace of life,
the cheap defence of nations," etc. (_Reflections on the Revolution in
France_, by the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, M.P., 1868, p. 89).]

[11] [Passages relating to the Queen of Tahiti, in _Hawkesworth's
Voyages, drawn from journals kept by the several commanders, and from
the papers of Joseph Banks, Esq._ (1773, ii. 106), gave occasion to
malicious and humorous comment. (See _An Epistle from Mr. Banks,
Voyager, Monster-hunter, and Amoroso, To Oberea, Queen of Otaheite_, by
A.B.C.) The lampoon, "printed at Batavia for Jacobus Opani" (the Queen's
Tahitian for "Banks"), was published in 1773. The authorship is assigned
to Major John Scott Waring (1747-1819).]

[12] {8} [Compare _Childish Recollections: Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 84,
_var_. i.--

    "Weary of love, of life, devour'd with spleen,
    I rest a perfect Timon, not nineteen."]

[13] [John Moore (1729-1802), the father of the celebrated Sir John
Moore, published _Zeluco. Various views of Human Nature, taken from Life
and Manners, Foreign and Domestic_, in 1789. Zeluco was an unmitigated
scoundrel, who led an adventurous life; but the prolix narrative of his
villanies does not recall _Childe Harold_. There is, perhaps, some
resemblance between Zeluco's unbridled childhood and youth, due to the
indulgence of a doting mother, and Byron's early emancipation from
discipline and control.]

[h] {11} _To the Lady Charlotte Harley_.--[MS. M.]

[14] [The Lady Charlotte Mary Harley, second daughter of Edward, fifth
Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, was born 1801. She married, in 1823,
Captain Anthony Bacon (died July 2, 1864), who had followed "young,
gallant Howard" (see _Childe Harold_, III. xxix.) in his last fatal
charge at Waterloo, and who, subsequently, during the progress of the
civil war between Dom Miguel and Maria da Gloria of Portugal (1828-33),
held command as colonel of cavalry in the Queen's forces, and finally as
a general officer. Lady Charlotte Bacon died May 9, 1880. Byron's
acquaintance with her probably dated from his visit to Lord and Lady
Oxford, at Eywood House, in Herefordshire, in October-November, 1812.
Her portrait, by Westall, which was painted at his request, is included
among the illustrations in Finden's _Illustrations of the Life and Works
of Lord Byron_, ii. See _Gent. Mag_., N.S., vol. xvii. (1864) p. 261;
and an obituary notice in the Times, May 10, 1880, See, too, letter to
Murray, March 29, 1813 (_Letters_, 1898, ii. 200).]

[15] {12} [The reference is to the French proverb, _L'Amitie est l'Amour
sans Ailes_, which suggested the last line (line 412) of _Childish
Recollections_, "And Love, without his pinion, smil'd on youth," and
forms the title of one of the early poems, first published in 1832
(_Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 106, 220).]

[16] [In 1814, when the dedication was published, Byron completed his
twenty-sixth year, Ianthe her thirteenth.]

[17] {13} [For the modulation of the verse, compare Pope's lines--

    "Correctly cold, and regularly low."
                                         _Essay on Criticism_, line 240.

    "Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes."
                                                     _Ibid_., line 198.]

[18] [Ianthe ("Flower o' the Narcissus") was the name of a Cretan girl
wedded to one Iphis (_vid_. Ovid., _Metamorph_., ix. 714). Perhaps
Byron's dedication was responsible for the Ianthe of _Queen Mab_ (1812,
1813), who in turn bestowed her name on Shelley's eldest daughter (Mrs.
Esdaile, d. 1876), who was born June 28, 1813.]

[i]
    _And long as kinder eyes shall deign to cast_
    _A look along my page, that name enshrined_
    _Shalt thou be_ first _beheld, forgotten_ last.--[MS.]

[j] {13} _Though more than Hope can claim--Ah! less could I
require?_--[MS.]

[19] {15} [The MS. does not open with stanza i., which was written after
Byron returned to England, and appears first in the Dallas Transcript
(see letter to Murray, September 5, 1811). Byron and Hobhouse visited
Delphi, December 16, 1809, when the First Canto (see stanza lx.) was
approaching completion (_Travels in Albania_, by Lord Broughton, 1858,
i. 199).]

[k] _Oh, thou of yore esteemed_----.--[D.]

[l] _Since later lyres are only strung on earth_.--[D.]

[20] [For the substitution of the text for _vars_. ii., iii., see letter
to Dallas, September 21, 1811 (_Letters_, 1898, ii. 43).]

[m]
        ----_thy glorious rill_.--[D.]
    or, --_wooed thee, drank the vaunted rill_.--[D.]

[n] {16} _Sore given to revel and to Pageantry_.--[MS. erased.]

[o]
    _He chused the bad, and did the good affright_
    _With concubines_----.--[MS.]
    _No earthly things_----.--[D.]

[21] ["We [i.e. Byron and C.S. Matthews] went down [April, 1809] to
Newstead together, where I had got a famous cellar, and _Monks'_ dresses
from a masquerade warehouse. We were a company of some seven or eight,
... and used to sit up late in our friars' dresses, drinking burgundy,
claret, champagne, and what not, out of the _skull-cup_, and all sorts
of glasses, and buffooning all round the house, in our conventual
garments" (letter to Murray, November 19, 1820. See, too, the account of
this visit which Matthews wrote to his sister in a letter dated May 22,
1809 [_Letters_, 1898, i. 150-160, and 153, note]). Moore (_Life_, p.
86) and other apologists are anxious to point out that the Newstead
"wassailers" were, on the whole, a harmless crew of rollicking
schoolboys "--were, indeed, of habits and tastes too intellectual for
mere vulgar debauchery." And as to the "alleged 'harems,'" the "Paphian
girls," there were only one or two, says Moore, "among the ordinary
menials." But, even so, the "wassailers" were not impeccable, and it is
best to leave the story, fact or fable, to speak for itself.]

[22] {17} ["Hight" is the preterite of the passive "hote," and means
"was called." "Childe Harold he hight" would be more correct. Compare
Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, bk. i. c. ix. 14. 9, "She Queene of Faeries
hight." But "hight" was occasionally used with the common verbs "is,"
"was." Compare _The Ordinary_, 1651, act iii. sc. 1--

            "... the goblin
    That is _hight_ Good-fellow Robin."
                                       Dodsley (ed. Hazlitt), xii. 253.]

[p] _Childe Burun_------.--[MS.]

[23] [William, fifth Lord Byron (the poet's grand-uncle), mortally
wounded his kinsman, Mr. Chaworth, in a duel which was fought, without
seconds or witnesses, at the Star and Garter Tavern, Pall Mall, January
29, 1765. He was convicted of wilful murder by the coroner's jury, and
of manslaughter by the House of Lords; but, pleading his privilege as a
peer, he was set at liberty. He was known to the country-side as the
"wicked Lord," and many tales, true and apocryphal, were told to his
discredit (_Life of Lord Byron_, by Karl Elze, 1872, pp. 5, 6).]

[q] ------_nor honied glose of rhyme_.--[D. pencil.]

[r] _Childe Burun_------.--[MS.]

[s] {18} _For he had on the course too swiftly run_.--[MS. erased.]

[t] _Had courted many_----.--[MS. erased.]

[24] [Mary Chaworth. (Compare "Stanzas to a Lady, on leaving England,"
passim: _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 285.)]

[u] ----_Childe Burun_----.--[MS.]

[25] {19} [Compare _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, Canto I,
stanza ix. 9--

    "And burning pride and high disdain
    Forbade the rising tears to flow."]

[v]
    _And strait he fell into a reverie_.--[MS.]
    ----_sullen reverie_.--[D.]

[26] [_Vide post_, stanza xi. line 9, note.]

[w] _Strange fate directed still to uses vile_.--[MS. erased.]

[x]
    _Now Paphian jades were heard to sing and smile_.--[MS. erased.]
    _Now Paphian nymphs_----.--[D. pencil.]

[27] [The brass eagle which was fished out of the lake at Newstead in
the time of Byron's predecessor contained, among other documents, "a
grant of full pardon from Henry V. of every possible crime ... which the
monks might have committed previous to the 8th of December preceding
(_Murdris_, per ipsos _post decimum nonum Diem Novembris_, ultimo
praeteritum perpetratis, si quae fuerint, _exceptis_)" (_Life_, p. 2,
note). The monks were a constant source of delight to the Newstead
"revellers." Francis Hodgson, in his "Lines on a Ruined Abbey in a
Romantic Country" (_Poems_, 1809), does not spare them--

    "'Hail, venerable pile!' whose ivied walls
      Proclaim the desolating lapse of years:
    And hail, ye hills, and murmuring waterfalls,
      Where yet her head the ruin'd Abbey rears.
    No longer now the matin tolling bell,
      Re-echoing loud among the woody glade,
    Calls the fat abbot from his drowsy cell,
      And warns the maid to flee, if yet a maid.
    No longer now the festive bowl goes round,
      Nor monks get drunk in honour of their God."]

[y] {20} The original MS. inserts two stanzas which were rejected during
the composition of the poem:--

          _Of all his train there was a henchman page,_
                 _peasant_              _served_
            _A {-dark eyed-} boy, who {-loved-} his master well;_
          _And often would his pranksome prate engage_
                    _Harold's_
            _Childe {-Burun's-} ear, when his proud heart did swell_
          _With sable thoughts that he disdained to tell_.
                                           _Alwin_
            _Then would he smile on him, as {-Rupert-} smiled,_
                                          _{-Robin-}_
          _When aught that from his young lips archly fell_
                                 _Harold's_
            _The gloomy film from {-Burun's-} eye beguiled;_
        _And pleased the Childe appeared nor ere the boy reviled_.}
        _And pleased for a glimpse appeared the woeful Childe_.   }

          _Him and one yeoman only did he take_
            _To travel Eastward to a far countree;_
          _And though the boy was grieved to leave the lake_
            _On whose firm banks he grew from Infancy,_
          _Eftsoons his little heart beat merrily_
            _With hope of foreign nations to behold,_
          _And many things right marvellous to see,_
                        _vaunting_
            _Of which our {-lying-} voyagers oft have told,_
        _{-From Mandevilles' and scribes of similar mold.-}_ }
    or, _In tomes pricked out with prints to monied ... sold_}
        _In many a tome as true as Mandeville's of old_.     }

[z] ----_Childe Burun_----.--[MS.]

[aa] {21} Stanza ix. was the result of much elaboration. The first
draft, which was pasted over the rejected stanzas (_vide supra_, p. 20,
_var_. i.), retains the numerous erasures and emendations. It ran as
follows:--

    _And none did love him though to hall and bower_
       _{-few could-}_
    _Haughty he gathered revellers from far and near_
    _{-An evil smile just bordering on a sneer-}_
    _He knew them flatterers of the festal hour_
    _{-Curled on his lip-}_
    _The heartless Parasites of present cheer,_
    _As if_
    _{-And deemed no mortal wight his peer-}_
    _Yea! none did love him not his lemmans dear_
    _{-To gentle Dames still less he could be dear-}_
    _{-Were aught-} But pomp and power alone are Woman's care_
    _{-But-} And where these are let no Possessor fear_
    _{-The sex are slaves-} Maidens like moths are ever caught by glare_
    _{-Love shrinks outshone by Mammons dazzling-} glare_
    _And Mammon_
    _{-That Demon-} wins his_ [MS. torn] _where Angels might despair._

[28] [The "trivial particular" which suggested to Byron the
friendlessness and desolation of the Childe may be explained by the
refusal of an old schoolfellow to spend the last day with him before he
set out on his travels. The friend, possibly Lord Delawarr, excused
himself on the plea that "he was engaged with his mother and some ladies
to go shopping." "Friendship!" he exclaimed to Dallas. "I do not believe
I shall leave behind me, yourself and family excepted, and, perhaps, my
mother, a single being who will care what becomes of me" (Dallas,
_Recollections, etc._, pp. 63, 64). Byron, to quote Charles Lamb's
apology for Coleridge, was "full of fun," and must not be taken too
seriously. Doubtless he was piqued at the moment, and afterwards, to
heighten the tragedy of Childe Harold's exile, expanded a single act of
negligence into general abandonment and desertion at the hour of trial.]

[ab] {22} _No! none did love him_----.--[D. pencil.]

[29] The word "lemman" is used by Chaucer in both senses, but more
frequently in the feminine.--[_MS. M._]

[30] "Feere," a consort or mate. [Compare the line, "What when lords go
with their _feires_, she said," in "The Ancient Fragment of the Marriage
of Sir Gawaine" (Percy's _Reliques_, 1812, iii. 416), and the lines--

                  "As with the woful _fere_,
    And father of that chaste dishonoured dame."
                                      _Titus Andronicus_, act iv. sc. 1.

Compare, too, "That woman and her fleshless Pheere" (_The Rime of the
Ancyent Marinere_, line 180 of the reprint from the first version in the
_Lyrical Ballads_, 1798; _Poems_ by S. T. Coleridge, 1893, App. E, p.
515).]

[ac] {23} _Childe Burun_----.--[MS.]

[31] [In a suppressed stanza of "Childe Harold's Good Night" (see p. 27,
_var._ ii.), the Childe complains that he has not seen his sister for
"three long years and moe." Before her marriage, in 1807, Augusta Byron
divided her time between her mother's children, Lady Chichester and the
Duke of Leeds; her cousin, Lord Carlisle; and General and Mrs. Harcourt.
After her marriage to Colonel Leigh, she lived at Newmarket. From the
end of 1805 Byron corresponded with her more or less regularly, but no
meeting took place. In a letter to his sister, dated November 30, 1808
(_Letters_, 1898, i. 203), he writes, "I saw Col. Leigh at Brighton in
July, where I should have been glad to have seen you; I only know your
husband by sight." Colonel Leigh was his first cousin, as well as his
half-sister's husband, and the incidental remark that "he only knew him
by sight" affords striking proof that his relations and connections were
at no pains to seek him out, but left him to fight his own way to social
recognition and distinction. (For particulars of "the Hon. Augusta
Byron," see _Letters_, 1898, i. 18, note.)]

[ad] _Of friends he had but few, embracing none_.--[MS. erased.]

[ae] _Yet deem him not from this with breast of steel_.--[MS. D.]

[32] [Compare Campbell's _Gertrude of Wyoming_, ii. 8. 1--"Yet deem not
Gertrude sighed for foreign joy."]

[af] {24} _His house, his home, his vassals, and his lands_.--[MS. D.]

[ag]

    _The Dalilahs_----.--[MS. D.]
    _His damsels all_----.--[MS. erased.]

[ah] ----_where brighter sunbeams shine_.--[MS. erased.]

[33] "Your objection to the expression 'central line' I can only meet by
saying that, before Childe Harold left England, it was his full
intention to traverse Persia, and return by India, which he could not
have done without passing the equinoctial" (letter to Dallas, September
7, 1811; see, too, letter to his mother, October 7, 1808: _Letters_,
1898, i. 193; ii. 27).

[ai] _The sails are filled_----.--[MS.]

[34] He experienced no such emotion on the resumption of his Pilgrimage
in 1816. With reference to the confession, he writes (Canto III. stanza
i. lines 6-9)--

                             "... I depart,
      Whither I know not; but the hour's gone by,
    When Albion's lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye."

[35] {25} [See Lord Maxwell's "Good Night" in Scott's _Minstrelsy of the
Scottish Border_ (_Poetical Works_, ii. 141, ed. 1834): "Adieu, madam,
my mother dear," etc. [MS.]. Compare, too, Armstrong's "Good Night"
_ibid._--

    "This night is my departing night,
      For here nae langer mun I stay;
    There's neither friend nor foe of mine,
      But wishes me away.
    What I have done thro' lack of will,
       I never, never can recall;
    I hope ye're a' my friends as yet.
      Good night, and joy be with you all."]

[36] {26} [Robert Rushton, the son of one of the Newstead tenants.
"Robert I take with me; I like him, because, like myself, he seems a
friendless animal. Tell Mr. Rushton his son is well, and doing well"
(letter to Mrs. Byron, Falmouth, June 22, 1809: _Letters_, 1898, i.
224).]

[aj] {27}

    _Our best gos-hawk can hardly fly_
      _So merrily along_.--[MS.]
    _Our best greyhound can hardly fly_.--[D. erased.]

[ak] Here follows in the MS. the following erased stanza:--

    _My mother is a high-born dame_,
      _And much misliketh me;_
    _She saith my riot bringeth shame_
      _On all my ancestry_.
    _I had a sister once I ween_,
      _Whose tears perhaps will flow;_
    _But her fair face I have not seen_
      _For three long years and moe._

[al]
    _Oh master dear I do not cry_
      _From fear of wave or wind_.--[MS.]

[37] [Robert was sent back from Gibraltar under the care of Joe Murray
(see letter to Mr. Rushton, August 15, 1809: _Letters_, 1898, i. 242).]

[38] {28} [William Fletcher, Byron's valet. He was anything but
"staunch" in the sense of the song (see Byron's letters of November 12,
1809, and June 28, 1810) (_Letters_, 1898, i. 246, 279); but for twenty
years he remained a loyal and faithful servant, helped to nurse his
master in his last illness, and brought his remains back to England.]

[am] {29}
    _Enough, enough, my yeoman good_.
      _All this is well to say;_
    _But if I in thy sandals stood_
      _I'd laugh to get away_.--[MS. erased, D.]

[an]
    _For who would trust a paramour_
      _Or e'en a wedded feere_--
    _Though her blue eyes were streaming o'er_,
      _And torn her yellow hair?_--[MS.]

[39] ["I leave England without regret--I shall return to it without
pleasure. I am like Adam, the first convict sentenced to transportation,
but I have no Eve, and have eaten no apple but what was sour as a crab"
(letter to F. Hodgson, Falmouth, June 25, 1809, _Letters_, 1898, i.
230). If this _Confessio Amantis_, with which compare the "Stanzas to a
Lady, on leaving England," is to be accepted as _bona fide_, he leaves
England heart-whole, but for the bitter memory of Mary Chaworth.]

[ao] {30} Here follows in the MS., erased:--

    _Methinks it would my bosom glad_,
      _To change my proud estate_,
    _And be again a laughing lad_
      _With one beloved playmate_.
    _Since youth I scarce have pass'd an hour_
      _Without disgust or pain_,
    _Except sometimes in Lady's bower_,
      _Or when the bowl I drain_.

[40] ["I do not mean to exchange the ninth verse of the 'Good Night.' I
have no reason to suppose my dog better than his brother brutes,
mankind; and Argus we know to be a fable" (letter to Dallas, September
23, 1811: _Letters_, 1898, ii. 44).

Byron was recalling an incident which had befallen him some time
previously (see letter to Moore, January 19, 1815): "When I thought he
was going to enact Argus, he bit away the backside of my breeches, and
never would consent to any kind of recognition, in despite of all kinds
of bones which I offered him." See, too, for another thrust at Argus,
_Don Juan_, Canto III. stanza xxiii. But he should have remembered that
this particular Argus "was half a _wolf_ by the she side." His portrait
is preserved at Newstead (see _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 280, _Edition
de Luxe_).

For the expression of a different sentiment, compare _The Inscription on
the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog_ (first published in Hobhouse's
_Imit. and Transl_., 1809), and the prefatory inscription on Boatswain's
grave in the gardens of Newstead, dated November 16, 1808 (_Life_, p.
73).]

[41] {31} [Cintra's "needle-like peaks," to the north-west of Lisbon,
are visible from the mouth of the Tagus.]

[42] [Compare Ovid, _Amores_, i. 15, and Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, iv. 22.
Small particles of gold are still to be found in the sands of the Tagus,
but the quantity is, and perhaps always was, inconsiderable.]

[ap] ----_where thronging rustics reap_.--[MS. erased.]

[aq] {32} _What God hath done_--[MS. D.]

[ar] _Those Lusian brutes and earth from worst of wretches
purge_.--[MS.]

[43] ["_Lisboa_ is the Portuguese word, consequently the very best.
Ulissipont is pedantic; and as I have _Hellas_ and _Eros_ not very long
before, there would be something like an affectation of Greek terms,
which I wish to avoid" (letter to Dallas, September 23, 1811: _Letters_,
1898, ii. 44. See, too, _Poetical Works_, 1883, p. 5).]

[as] _Ulissipont, or Lisbona_.--[MS. pencil.]

[at]
    _Which poets, prone to lie, have paved with gold_.--[MS.]
    _Which poets sprinkle o'er with sands of gold_.--[MS. pencil.]
    _Which fabling poets_--[D. pencil.]

[44] {33} [For Byron's estimate of the Portuguese, see _The Curse of
Minerva_, lines 233, 234, and note to line 231 (_Poetical Works_, 1898,
i. 469, 470). In the last line of the preceding stanza, the substitution
of the text for _var._ i. was no doubt suggested by Dallas in the
interests of prudence.]

[au]
      _Who hate the very hand that waves the sword_
    _To shield them, etc_.--[MS. D.]
    _To guard them, etc_.--[MS. pencil.]

[av]
    _Mid many things that grieve both nose and ee_.--[MS.]
    _Midst many_----.--[MS. D.]

[aw] ----_smelleth filthily_.--[MS. D.]

[ax] ----_dammed with dirt_.--[MS. erased.]

[45] {34} [For a fuller description of Cintra, see letter to Mrs. Byron,
dated August 11, 1808 (_Life_, p. 92; _Letters_, 1898, i. 237). Southey,
not often in accord with Byron, on his return from Spain (1801)
testified that "for beauty all English, perhaps all existing, scenery
must yield to Cintra" (_Life and Corr. of R. Southey_, ii. 161).]

[ay] ----_views too sweet and vast_----.--[MS. erased.]

[az]
    ----_by tottering convent crowned_.--[MS. erased.]
    _Alcornoque_.--[Note (pencil).]

[46] "The sky-worn robes of tenderest blue." Collins' _Ode to Pity_ [MS.
and D.].

[ba] _The murmur that the sparkling torrents keep_.--[MS. erased.]

[47] {35} [The convent of Nossa Senora (now the Palazio) da Pena, and
the Cork Convent, were visited by Beckford (circ. 1780), and are
described in his _Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal_ (8vo,
1834), the reissue of his _Letters Picturesque and Poetical_ (4to,
1783).

"Our first object was the convent of Nossa Senhora da Penha, the little
romantic pile of white building I had seen glittering from afar when I
first sailed by the coast of Lisbon. From this pyramidical elevation the
view is boundless; you look immediately down upon an immense expanse of
sea.

... A long series of detached clouds of a dazzling whiteness suspended
low over the waves had a magic effect, and in pagan times might have
appeared, without any great stretch of fancy, the cars of marine
divinities, just risen from the bosom of their element."--_Italy, etc._,
p. 249.

"Before the entrance, formed by two ledges of ponderous rock, extends a
smooth level of greensward.... The Hermitage, its cell, chapel, and
refectory, are all scooped out of the native marble, and lined with the
bark of the cork tree. Several of the passages are not only roofed, but
floored with the same material ... The shrubberies and garden-plots
dispersed amongst the mossy rocks ... are delightful, and I took great
pleasure in ... following the course of a transparent rill, which was
conducted through a rustic water-shoot, between bushes of lavender and
roses, many of the tenderest green."--_Ibid._, p. 250.

The inscription to the memory of Honorius (d. 159, aet. 95) is on a stone
in front of the cave--

    "Hic Honorius vitam finivit;
    Et ideo cum Deo in coelis revivit."]

[48] {36} "I don't remember any crosses there."--[Pencilled note by J.C.
Hobhouse.]

[The crosses made no impression upon Hobhouse, who, no doubt, had
realized that they were nothing but guideposts. For an explanation, see
letter of Mr. Matthew Lewtas to the _Athenaeum_, July 19, 1873: "The
track from the main road to the convent, rugged and devious, leading up
to the mountain, is marked out by numerous crosses now, just as it was
when Byron rode along it in 1809, and it would appear he fell into the
mistake of considering that the crosses were erected to show where
assassinations had been committed."]

[49] [Beckford, describing the view from the convent, notices the wild
flowers which adorned "the ruined splendour." "Amidst the crevices of
the mouldering walls ... I noticed some capillaries and polypodiums of
infinite delicacy; and on a little flat space before the convent a
numerous tribe of pinks, gentians, and other Alpine plants, fanned and
invigorated by the fresh mountain air."--_Italy, etc.,_ 1834, p. 229.

The "Prince's palace" (line 5) may be the royal palace at Cintra, "the
Alhambra of the Moorish kings," or, possibly, the palace (_vide post_,
stanza xxix. line 7) at Mafra, ten miles from Cintra.]

[bb] {37} _There too proud Vathek--England's wealthiest son_.--[MS. D.]

[50] [William Beckford, 1760 (?1759)-1844, published _Vathek_ in French
in 1784, and in English in 1787. He spent two years (1794-96) in
retirement at Quinta da Monserrate, three miles from Cintra. Byron
thought highly of _Vathek_. "I do not know," he writes (_The Giaour_, l.
1328, note), "from what source the author ... may have drawn his
materials ... but for correctness of costume ... and power of
imagination, it surpasses all European imitations.... As an Eastern
tale, even _Rasselas_ must bow before it; his happy valley will not bear
a comparison with the 'Hall of Eblis.'" In the MS. there is an
additional stanza reflecting on Beckford, which Dallas induced him to
omit. It was afterwards included by Moore among the _Occasional Pieces_,
under the title of _To Dives: a Fragment_ (_Poetical Works_, 1883, p.
548). (For Beckford, see _Letters_, 1898, i. 228, note 1; and with
regard to the "Stanzas on Vathek," see letter to Dallas, September 26,
1811: _Letters_, 1898, ii. 47.)]

[bc]
    _When Wealth and Taste their worst and best have done_,
    _Meek Peace pollution's lure voluptuous still must shun_.--[MS.]

[bd]
    _But now thou blasted Beacon unto man_.--[MS.]
    ----_thou Beacon unto erring man_.--[MS. D.]

[be] {38} _Vain are the pleasaunces by art supplied_.--[MS. D.]

[bf] ----_yclad, and by_.--[MS. D.]

[bg] _Where blazoned glares a name spelt "Wellesley."_--[MS. D.]

[bh] ----_are on the roll_.--[MS. erased, D.]

[bi] The following stanzas, which appear in the MS., were excluded at
the request of Dallas (see his letter of October 10, 1811,
_Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron_, 1824, pp. 173-187),
_Letters_, 1898, ii. 51:--

    In golden characters right well designed
      First on the list appeareth one "Junot;"
      Then certain other glorious names we find,
      (Which Rhyme compelleth me to place below:)
      Dull victors! baffled by a vanquished foe,
      Wheedled by conynge tongues of laurels due,
      Stand, worthy of each other in a row--
      Sirs Arthur, Harry, and the dizzard Hew
    Dalrymple, seely wight, sore dupe of t'other tew.

    Convention is the dwarfy demon styled
      That failed the knights in Marialva's dome:
      Of brains (if brains they had) he them beguiled,
      And turned a nation's shallow joy to gloom.
      For well I wot, when first the news did come
      That Vimiera's field by Gaul was lost,
      For paragraph ne paper scarce had room,
      Such Paeans teemed for our triumphant host,
    In Courier, Chronicle, and eke in Morning Post.

    But when Convention sent his handy work
      Pens, tongues, feet, hands combined in wild uproar;
      Mayor, Aldermen, laid down the uplifted fork;
      The Bench of Bishops half forgot to snore;
      Stern Cobbett,[Sec.]--who for one whole week forbore
      To question aught, once more with transport leapt,
      And bit his devilish quill agen, and swore
      With foes such treaty never should be kept,
    While roared the blatant Beast,[Sec.Sec.] and roared, and raged, and--slept!!

    Thus unto Heaven appealed the people: Heaven
      Which loves the lieges of our gracious King,
      Decreed that ere our Generals were forgiven,
      Enquiry should be held about the thing.
      But Mercy cloaked the babes beneath her wing;
      And as they spared our foes so spared we them;
      (Where was the pity of our Sires for Byng?)[Sec.Sec.Sec.]
      Yet knaves, not idiots should the law condemn;
    Then live ye gallant Knights! and bless your Judges' phlegm!

[Sec.] [Sir Hew Dalrymple's despatch on the so-called Convention of Cintra
is dated September 3, and was published in the _London Gazette
Extraordinary_, September 16, 1808. The question is not alluded to in
the _Weekly Political Register_ of September 17, but on the 24th Cobbett
opened fire with a long article (pp. 481-502) headed, "Conventions in
Portugal," which was followed up by articles on the same subject in the
four succeeding issues. Articles iii., iv., v., vi., of the "Definitive
Convention" provided for the restoration of the French troops and their
safe convoy to France, with their artillery, equipments, and cavalry.
"Did the men," asks Cobbett (September 24), "who made this promise beat
the Duke d'Abrantes [Junot], or were they like curs, who, having felt
the bite of the mastiff, lose all confidence in their number, and,
though they bark victory, suffer him to retire in quiet, carrying off
his bone to be disposed of at his leisure? No, not so; for they
complaisantly carry the bone for him." The rest of the article is
written in a similar strain.]

[Sec.Sec.] "'Blatant beast.'[*] A figure for the mob. I think first used by
Smollett, in his _Adventures of an Atom_.[**] Horace has the 'bellua
multorum capitum.'[***] In England, fortunately enough, the illustrious
mobility has not even one."--[MS.]

[*] [Spenser (_Faerie Queene_, bk. vi. cantos iii. 24; xii. 27, sq.)
personifies the _vox populi_, with its thousand tongues, as the "blatant
beast."]

[**][In _The History and Adventures of an Atom_ (Smollett's Works, 1872,
vi. 385), Foksi-Roku (Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland) passes judgment
on the populace. "The multitude, my lords, is a many-headed monster, it
is a Cerberus that must have a sop; it is a wild beast, so ravenous that
nothing but blood will appease its appetite; it is a whale, that must
have a barrel for its amusement; it is a demon, to which we must offer
human sacrifice.... Bihn-Goh must be the victim--happy if the sacrifice
of his single life can appease the commotions of his country."
Foksi-Roku's advice is taken, and Bihn-Goh (Byng) "is crucified for
cowardice."]

[***][Horace, _Odes_, II. xiii. 34: "Bellua centiceps."]

[Sec.Sec.Sec.] "By this query it is not meant that our foolish generals should have
been shot, but that Byng [Admiral John Byng, born 1704, was executed
March 14, 1757] might have been spared; though the one suffered and the
others escaped, probably for Candide's reason 'pour encourager les
autres.'"[*]--[MS.]

[*]["Dans ce pays-ci il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral
pour encourager les autres."--_Candide_, xxii.]

[51] {39} [On August 21, 1808, Sir Harry Burrard (1755-1813) superseded
in command Sir Arthur Wellesley, who had, on the same day, repulsed
Junot at Vimiera. No sooner had he assumed his position as
commander-in-chief, than he countermanded Wellesley's order to give
pursuit and make good the victory. The next day (August 22) Sir Hew
Dalrymple in turn superseded Burrard, and on the 23rd, General Kellerman
approached the English with certain proposals from Junot, which a week
later were formulated by the so-called Convention of Cintra, to which
Kellerman and Wellesley affixed their names. When the news reached
England that Napoleon's forces had been repulsed with loss, and yet the
French had been granted a safe exit from Portugal, the generals were
assailed with loud and indiscriminate censure. Burrard's interference
with Wellesley's plans was no doubt ill-judged and ill-timed; but the
opportunity of pursuit having been let slip, the acceptance of Junot's
terms was at once politic and inevitable. A court of inquiry, which was
held in London in January, 1809, upheld both the armistice of August 22
and the Convention; but neither Dalrymple nor Burrard ever obtained a
second command, and it was not until Talavera (July 28, 1809) had
effaced the memories of Cintra that Wellesley was reinstated in popular
favour.]

[bj] {41} ----_at the mention sweat_.--[MS. D.]

[bk] {42} _More restless than the falcon as he flies_.--[MS. erased.]

[52] [With reference to this passage, while yet in MS., an early reader
(?Dallas) inquires, "What does this mean?" And a second (?Hobhouse)
rejoins, "What does the question mean? It is one of the finest stanzas I
ever read."]

[53] [Byron and Hobhouse sailed from Falmouth, July 2, 1809; reached
Lisbon on the 6th or 7th; and on the 17th started from Aldea Galbega
("the first stage from Lisbon, which is only accessible by water") on
horseback for Seville. "The horses are excellent--we rode seventy miles
a day" (see letters of August 6 to F. Hodgson, and August 11, 1809, to
Mrs. Byron; _Letters_, 1898, i. 234, 236).]

[bl] ----_long foreign to his soul_.--[MS. erased.]

[bm] ----_the strumpet and the bowl_.--[MS. D]

[bn] {43} _And countries more remote his hopes engage_.--[MS. erased.]

[bo]
    _Where dwelt of yore the Lusians' crazy queen_,--[MS.]
    _Where dwelt of yore Lusania's_----.--[D.]

[54] [Her luckless Majesty went subsequently mad; and Dr. Willis, who so
dexterously cudgelled kingly pericraniums, could make nothing of hers.
(For the Rev. Francis Willis, see _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 416.)

Maria I. (b. 1734), who married her uncle, Pedro III., reigned with him
1777-86, and, as sole monarch, from 1786 to 1816. The death of her
husband, of her favourite confessor, Ignatio de San Caetano, who had
been raised by Pombal from the humblest rank to the position of
archbishop _in partibus_, and of her son, turned her brain, and she
became melancholy mad. She was only queen in name after 1791, and in
1799 her son, Maria Jose Luis, was appointed regent. Beckford saw her in
1787, and was impressed by her dignified bearing. "Justice and
clemency," he writes, "the motto so glaringly misapplied on the banner
of the abhorred Inquisition, might be transferred, with the strictest
truth, to this good princess" (_Italy, with Sketches of Spain and
Portugal_, 1834, p. 256). Ten years later, Southey, in his _Letters from
Spain_, 1797, p. 541, ascribes the "gloom" of the court of Lisbon to
"the dreadful malady of the queen." When the Portuguese royal family
were about to embark for Brazil in November, 1807, the queen was once
more seen in public after an interval of sixteen years. "She had to wait
some while upon the quay for the chair in which she was to be carried to
the boat, and her countenance, in which the insensibility of madness was
only disturbed by wonder, formed a striking contrast to the grief which
appeared in every other face" (Southey's _History of the Peninsular
War_, i. 110).]

[bp] {44} _Childe Burun_----.--[MS.]

[bq]
    _Less swoln with culture soon the vales extend_
    _And long horizon-bounded realms appear_.--[MS. erased.]

[br] {45} _Say Muse what bounds_----.--[MS. D.]

[55] The Pyrenees.--[MS.]

[56] [If, as stanza xliii. of this canto (added in 1811) intimates,
Byron passed through "Albuera's plain" on his way from Lisbon to
Seville, he must have crossed the frontier at a point between Elvas and
Badajoz. In that case the "silver streamlet" may be identified as the
Caia. Beckford remarks on "the rivulet which separates the two kingdoms"
(_Italy, etc_., 1834, p. 291).]

[bs] {46} _But eer the bounds of Spain have far been passed_.--[MS. D.]

[bt]
    _For ever famed--in many a native song_.--[MS. erased.]
    ----_a noted song_.--[MS. D.]

[57] [Compare Virgil, _AEneid_, i. 100--

            "Ubi tot Simois correpta sub undis
    Scuta virum galeasque et fortia corpora volvit."]

[58] [The standard, a cross made of Asturian oak (_La Cruz de la
Victoria_), which was said to have fallen from heaven before Pelayo
gained the victory over the Moors at Cangas, in A.D. 718, is preserved
at Oviedo. Compare Southey's _Roderick_, XXV.: _Poetical Works_, 1838,
ix. 241, and note, pp. 370, 371.]

[bu] --_which Pelagius bore_.--[MS. D.]

[59] {47} [The Moors were finally expelled from Granada in 1492, in the
reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.]

[bv] ----_waxed the Crescent pale_.--[MS. erased.]

[60] [The reference is to the Romanceros and Caballerias of the
sixteenth century.]

[bw] ----_thy little date_.--[MS. erased.]

[bx]
                      ----_from rock to rock_
    _Blue columns soaring loft in sulphury wreath_
    _Fragments on fragments in contention knock_.--[MS. erased, D.]

[61] "The Siroc is the violent hot wind that for weeks together blows
down the Mediterranean from the Archipelago. Its effects are well known
to all who have passed the Straits of Gibraltar."--[MS. D.]

[62] {49} [The battle of Talavera began July 27, 1809, and lasted two
days. As Byron must have reached Seville by the 21st or 22nd of the
month, he was not, as might be inferred, a spectator of any part of the
engagement. Writing to his mother, August 11, he says, "You have heard
of the battle near Madrid, and in England they would call it a
victory--a pretty victory! Two hundred officers and five thousand men
killed, all English, and the French in as great force as ever. I should
have joined the army, but we have no time to lose before we get up the
Mediterranean."--_Letters_, i. 241.]

[by]
    _Their rival scarfs that shine so gloriously_.--[MS. erased.]
    _Their rural scarfs_----.--[MS. D.]

[63] [Compare Campbell's "Hohenlinden"--"Few, few shall part where many
meet."]

[64] {50} [Compare _Macbeth_, act i. sc. 2, line 51--"Where the Norweyan
banners flout the sky."]

[65] [In a letter to Colonel Malcolm, December 3, 1809, the Duke admits
that the spoils of conquest were of a moral rather than of a material
kind. "The battle of Talavera was certainly the hardest fought of modern
days.... It is lamentable that, owing to the miserable inefficiency of
the Spaniards, ... the glory of the action is the only benefit which we
have derived from it.... I have in hand a most difficult task.... In
such circumstances one may fail, but it would be dishonourable to shrink
from the task."--_Wellington Dispatches_, 1844, iii. 621.]

[bz]
    _There shall they rot--while rhymers tell the fools_
    _How honour decks the turf that wraps their clay!_
    _Liars avaunt!_----.--[MS.]

[66] Two lines of Collins' _Ode_, "How sleep the brave," etc., have been
compressed into one--

    "There Honour comes a pilgrim grey,
    To bless the turf that wraps their clay."

[ca] _But Reason's elf in these beholds_----.--[D.]

[cb] {51}
                             ----_a fancied throne_
    _As if they compassed half that hails their sway_.--[MS. erased.]

[cc] ----_glorious sound of grief_.--[D.]

[67] [The battle of Albuera (May 16, 1811), at which the English, under
Lord Beresford, repulsed Soult, was somewhat of a Pyrrhic victory.
"Another such a battle," wrote the Duke, "would ruin us. I am working
hard to put all right again." The French are said to have lost between
8000 and 9000 men, the English 4158, the Spaniards 1365.]

[cd] _A scene for mingling foes to boast and bleed_.--[D.]

[ce] _Yet peace be with the perished_---.--[D. erased.]

[cf] _And tears and triumph make their memory long_.--[D. erased.]

[cg] ----_there sink with other woes_.--[D. erased.]

[68] [Albuera was celebrated by Scott, in his _Vision of Don Roderick_.
_The Battle of Albuera_, a Poem (anon.), was published in October,
1811.]

[ch] {52} _Who sink in darkness_----.--[MS. erased.]

[ci] ----_swift Rapines path pursued_.--[MS. D.]

[cj] _To Harold turn we as_----.--[MS. erased.]

[69] [In this "particular" Childe Harold did not resemble his _alter
ego_. Hobhouse and "part of the servants" (Joe Murray, Fletcher, a
German, and the "page" Robert Rushton, constituted his "whole suite"),
accompanied Byron in his ride across Spain from Lisbon to Gibraltar.
(See _Letters_, 1898, i. 224, 236.)]

[ck] _Where proud Sevilha_----.--[MS. D.]

[70] {53} [Byron, _en route_ for Gibraltar, passed three days at Seville
at the end of July or the beginning of August, 1809. By the end of
January, 1810, the French had appeared in force before Seville. Unlike
Zaragoza and Gerona, the pleasure-loving city, "after some negotiations,
surrendered, with all its stores, foundries, and arsenal complete, and
on the 1st of February the king [Joseph] entered in triumph" (Napier's
_History of the War in the Peninsula_, ii. 295).]

[71] [A kind of fiddle with only two strings, played on by a bow, said
to have been brought by the Moors into Spain.]

[cl] _Not here the Trumpet, but the rebeck sounds_.--[MS. erased.]

[cm] _And dark-eyed Lewdness_----.--[MS. erased.]

[72] [See _The Waltz: Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 492, note 1.]

[cn] {54} _Not in the toils of Glory would ye sweat._--[MS. erased, D.]

[73] [The scene is laid on the heights of the Sierra Morena. The
travellers are looking across the "long level plain" of the Guadalquivir
to the mountains of Ronda and Granada, with their "hill-forts ...perched
everywhere like eagles' nests" (Ford's _Handbook for Spain_, i. 252).
The French, under Dupont, entered the Morena, June 2, 1808. They stormed
the bridge at Alcolea, June 7, and occupied Cordoba, but were defeated
at Bailen, July 19, and forced to capitulate. Hence the traces of war.
The "Dragon's nest" (line 7) is the ancient city of Jaen, which guards
the skirts of the Sierras "like a watchful Cerberus." It was taken by
the French, but recaptured by the Spanish, early in July, 1808 (_History
of the War in the Peninsula_, i. 71-80).]

[74] {55} [The Sierra Morena gets its name from the classical _Montes
Mariani_, not, as Byron seems to imply, from its dark and dusky aspect.]

[co] {56} ----_the never-changing watch_.--[MS. D.]

[cp] _The South must own_----.--[MS. D.]

[cq] _When soars Gaul's eagle_----.--[MS. D.]

[75] [As time went on, Byron's sentiments with regard to Napoleon
underwent a change, and he hesitates between sympathetic admiration and
reluctant disapproval. At the moment his enthusiasm was roused by
Spain's heroic resistance to the new Alaric, "the scourger of the
world," and he expresses himself like Southey "or another" (_vide post_,
Canto III., pp. 238, 239).]

[76] {57} ["A short two-edged knife or dagger ... formerly worn at the
girdle" (_N. Eng. Dict._, art. "Anlace"). The "anlace" of the Spanish
heroines was the national weapon, the _punal_, or _cuchillo_, which was
sometimes stuck in the sash (_Handbook for Spain_, ii. 803).]

[77] [Compare _Macbeth_, act v. sc. 5, line 10--

    "The Time has been, my senses would have cooled
    To hear a night-shriek."]

[cr]
    -----_the column-scattering bolt afar,_
    _The falchion's flash_--[MS. erased, D.]

[cs] {59}
    _The seal Love's rosy finger has imprest_
    _On her fair chin denotes how soft his touch:_
    _Her lips where kisses make voluptuous nest_.--[MS. erased.]

[78] [Writing to his mother (August 11, 1809), Byron compares "the
Spanish style" of beauty to the disadvantage of the English: "Long black
hair, dark languishing eyes, _clear_ olive complexions, and forms more
graceful in motion than can be conceived by an Englishman ... render a
Spanish beauty irresistible" (_Letters_, 1898, i. 239). Compare, too,
the opening lines of _The Girl of Cadiz_, which gave place to the
stanzas _To Inez_, at the close of this canto--

    "Oh never talk again to me
    Of northern climes and British ladies."

But in _Don Juan_, Canto XII. stanzas lxxiv.-lxxvii., he makes the
_amende_ to the fair Briton--

    "She cannot step as doth an Arab barb,
      Or Andalusian girl from mass returning.

           *       *       *       *       *

    But though the soil may give you time and trouble,
    Well cultivated, it will render double."]

[ct] {60}

    _Beauties that need not fear a broken vow_.--[MS. erased.]
                        ----_a lecher's vow_.--[MS.]

[79] [The summit of Parnassus is not visible from Delphi or the
neighbourhood. Before he composed "these stanzas" (December 16), (see
note 13.B.) at the foot of Parnassus, Byron had first surveyed its
"snow-clad" majesty as he sailed towards Vostizza (on the southern shore
of the Gulf of Corinth), which he reached on the 5th, and quitted on the
14th of December. "The Echoes" (line 8) which were celebrated by the
ancients (Justin, _Hist._, lib. xxiv. cap. 6), are those made by the
Phaedriades, or "gleaming peaks," a "lofty precipitous escarpment of red
and grey limestone" at the head of the valley of the Pleistus, facing
southwards.--_Travels in Albania_, i. 188, 199; _Geography of Greece_,
by H. F. Tozer, 1873, p. 230.]

[cu] _Not in the landscape of a fabled lay_.--[MS. D.]

[80] {61} ["Upon Parnassus, going to the fountain of Delphi (Castri) in
1809, I saw a flight of twelve eagles (Hobhouse said they were
vultures--at least in conversation), and I seized the omen. On the day
before, I composed the lines to Parnassus [in _Childe Harold_] and, on
beholding the birds, had a hope that Apollo had accepted my homage. I
have, at least, had the name and fame of a poet during the poetical
period of life (from twenty to thirty). Whether it will last is another
matter; but I have been a votary of the deity and the place, and am
grateful for what he has done in my behalf, leaving the future in his
hands, as I left the past" (B. _Diary_, 1821).]

[cv] {62} _And walks with glassy steps o'er Aganippe's wave_.--[MS.
erased.]

[cw]
    _Let me some remnant of thy Spirit bear_
    _Some glorious thought to my petition grant_.--[MS. erased, D.]

[81] ["Parnassus ... is distinguished from all other Greek mountains by
its mighty mass. This, with its vast buttresses, almost fills up the
rest of the country" (_Geography of Greece_, by H.F. Tozer, 1873, p.
226).]

[82] {63} [In his first letter from Spain (to F. Hodgson, August 6,
1809) Byron exclaims, "Cadiz, sweet Cadiz!--it is the first spot in the
creation ... Cadiz is a complete Cythera." See, too, letter to Mrs.
Byron, August 11, 1809 (Letters, 1898, i. 234, 239).]

[cx]
    _While boyish blood boils gaily, who can 'scape_
    _The lurking lures of thy enchanting gaze_.--[MS. erased.]

[83] {64} [It must not be supposed that the "thousand altars" of Cadiz
correspond with and are in contrast to the "one dome" of Paphos. The
point is that where Venus fixes her shrine, at Paphos or at Cadiz,
altars blaze and worshippers abound (compare _AEneid_, i. 415-417)--

    "Ipsa Paphum sublimis abit, sedesque revisit
    Laeta suas, ubi templum illi, centumque Sabaeo
    Ture calent arae."]

[84] [Compare Milton's _Paradise Lost_, i.--

    ... from morn
        To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve.]

[85] [It was seldom that Byron's memory played him false, but here a
vague recollection of a Shakespearian phrase has beguiled him into a
blunder. He is thinking of Hamlet's jibe on the corruption of manners,
"The age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near
the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe" (act v. sc. 1, line 150),
and he forgets that a kibe is not a heel or a part of a heel, but a
chilblain.]

[cy]
                     ----_though in lieu_
    _Of true devotion monkish temples share_
    _The hours misspent, and all in turns is Love or Prayer_.----
    [_MS. erased_.]

[cz] ----_or rule the hour in turns_.----[D.]

[86] {65} [As he intimates in the Preface to _Childe Harold_, Byron had
originally intended to introduce "variations" in his poem of a droll or
satirical character. Beattie, Thomson, Ariosto, were sufficient
authorities for these humorous episodes. The stanzas on the Convention
of Cintra (stanzas xxv.-xxviii. of the MS.), and the four stanzas on Sir
John Carr; the concluding stanzas of the MS., which were written in this
lighter vein, were suppressed at the instance of Dallas, or Murray, or
Gifford. From a passage in a letter to Dallas (August 21, 1811), it
appears that Byron had almost made up his mind to leave out "the two
stanzas of a buffooning cast on London's Sunday" (_Letters_, 1898, i.
335). But, possibly, owing to their freedom from any compromising
personalities, or because wiser counsels prevailed, they were allowed to
stand, and continued (wrote Moore in 1832) to "disfigure the poem."]

[87] [A whiskey is a light carriage in which the traveller is _whisked_
along.]

[da] {66} _And humbler gig_----.--[MS.]

[db] _And droughty man alights and roars for "Roman Purl."_[Sec.]--[MS. D.]

[Sec.] A festive liquor so called. Query why "Roman"? [Query if "Roman"?
"'Purl Royal,' Canary wine with a dash of the tincture of wormwood"
(Grose's _Class. Dict._).]

----_for Punch or Purl_.--[D.]

[dc] _Some o'er thy Thames convoy_----.--[MS. D.]

[88] [Hone's _Everyday Book_ (1827, ii. 80-87) gives a detailed account
of the custom of "swearing on the horns" at Highgate. "The horns, fixed
on a pole of about five feet in length, were erected by placing the pole
upright on the ground near the person to be sworn, who is requested to
take off his hat," etc. The oath, or rather a small part of it, ran as
follows: "Take notice what I am saying unto you, for _that_ is the first
word of your oath--mind _that_! You must acknowledge me [the landlord]
to be your adopted father, etc.... You must not eat brown bread while
you can get white, except you like the brown best. You must not drink
small beer while you can get strong, except you like the small best. You
must not kiss the maid while you can kiss the mistress, but sooner than
lose a good chance you may kiss them both," etc. Drovers, who frequented
the "Gate House" at the top of the hill, and who wished to keep the
tavern to themselves, are said to have been responsible for the rude
beginnings of this tedious foolery.]

[89] {67} [M. Darmesteter quotes a striking passage from Gautier's
_Voyage en Espagne_ (xv.), in appreciation of Cadiz and Byron: "L'aspect
de Cadix, en venant du large, est charmant. A la voir ainsi etincelante
de blancheur entre l'azur de la mer et l'azur du ciel, on dirait une
immense couronne de filigrane d'argent; le dome de la cathedrale, peint
en jaune, semble une tiare de vermeil posee au milieu. Les pots de
fleurs, les volutes et les tourelles qui terminent les maisons, varient
a l'infini la dentelure. Byron a merveilleusement caracterise la
physionomie de Cadix en une seule touche:

"Brillante Cadix, qui t'eleves vers le ciel du milieu du bleu fonce de
la mer."]

[90] [The actors in a bull-fight consist of three or four classes: the
_chulos_ or footmen, the _banderilleros_ or dart-throwers, the
_picadores_ or horsemen, the _matadores_ or _espadas_ the executioners.
Each bull-fight, which lasts about twenty minutes, is divided into three
stages or acts. In the first act the _picadores_ receive the charge of
the bull, defending themselves, but not, as a rule, attacking the foe
with their lances or _garrochas_. In the second act the _chulos_, who
are not mounted, wave  cloaks or handkerchiefs in the bull's
face, and endeavour to divert his fury from the _picadores_, in case
they have been thrown or worsted in the encounter. At the same time, the
_banderilleros_ are at pains to implant in either side of the bull's
neck a number of barbed darts ornamented with cut paper, and, sometimes,
charged with detonating powder. It is _de rigeur_ to plant the barbs
exactly on either side. In the third and final act, the protagonist, the
_matador_ or _espada_, is the sole performer. His function is to entice
the bull towards him by waving the _muleta_ or red flag, and, standing
in front of the animal, to inflict the death-wound by plunging his sword
between the left shoulder and the blade. "The teams of mules now enter,
glittering with flags and tinkling with bells, whose gay decorations
contrast with the stern cruelty and blood; the dead bull is carried off
at a rapid gallop, which always delights the populace."--_Handbook for
Spain_, by Richard Ford, 1898, i. 67-76.]

[91] {70} "The croupe is a particular leap taught in the manege."--[MS.]
[_Croupe_, or _croup_, denotes the hind quarters of a horse. Compare
Scott's ballad of "Young Lochinvar"--"So light to the croupe the fair
lady he swung." Here it is used for "croupade," "a high curvet in which
the hind legs are brought up under the belly of the horse" (_N. Eng.
Dict._, art. "Croupade.")]

[92] {71} ["Brast" for "burst" is found in Spenser (_Faerie Queene_, i.
9. 21. 7), and is still current in Lancashire dialect. See _Lanc.
Gloss._ (E. D. S. "brast").]

[93] [One bull-fight, one matador. In describing the last act Byron
confuses the _chulos_ or cloak-waving footmen, who had already played
their part, with the single champion, the matador, who is about to
administer the _coup de grace_.]

[dd] ----_he lies along the sand._--[MS. erased.]

[de]
        _The trophy corse is reared--disgusting prize_.
    or, _The corse is reared--sparkling the chariot flies_.--[MS. M.]

[94] [Compare Virgil, _AEneid_, viii. 264--

                "Pedibusque informe cadaver
    Protrahitur. Nequeunt expleri corda tuendo--"]

[95] {72} "The Spaniards are as revengeful as ever. At Santa Otella, I
heard a young peasant threaten to stab a woman (an old one, to be sure,
which mitigates the offence), and was told, on expressing some small
surprise, that this ethic was by no means uncommon."--[MS.]

[96] [Byron's "orthodoxy" of the word "centinel" was suggested by the
Spanish _centinela_, or, perhaps, by Spenser's "centonell" (_Faerie
Queene_, bk. i. c. ix. st. 41, line 8).]

[df]
    _And all whereat the wandering soul revolts_
    _Which that stern dotard dreamed he could encage_.--[MS. erased.]

[dg] {73}
    _Full from the heart of Joy's delicious springs_
    _Some Bitter bubbles up, and even on Roses stings_.--[MS.]

[97] [The Dallas Transcript reads "itself," but the MS. and earlier
editions "herself."]

[dh] {74}
      _Had buried then his hopes, no more to rise:_
      _Drugged with dull pleasure! life-abhorring Gloom_
    _Wrote on his faded brow curst Cain's wandering doom_.--
                                                      [MS. erased.]
      _Had buried there_.--[MS. D.]

[98] [Byron's belief or, rather, haunting dread, that he was predestined
to evil is to be traced to the Calvinistic teaching of his boyhood
(compare _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza lxx. lines 8, 9; and Canto
IV. stanza xxxiv. line 6). Lady Byron regarded this creed of despair as
the secret of her husband's character, and the source of his
aberrations. In a letter to H. C. Robinson, March 5, 1855, she writes,
"Not merely from casual expressions, but from the whole tenour of Lord
Byron's feelings, I could not but conclude he was a believer in the
inspiration of the Bible, and had the gloomiest Calvinistic tenets. To
that unhappy view of the relation of the creature to the Creator, I have
always ascribed the misery of his life.... Instead of being made happier
by any apparent good, he felt convinced that every blessing would be
'turned into a curse' to him. Who, possessed by such ideas, could lead a
life of love and service to God or man? They must in a measure realize
themselves. 'The worst of it is, I _do_ believe,' he said. I, like all
connected with him, was broken against the rock of predestination."]

[99] {75} "Stanzas to be inserted after stanza 86th in _Childe Harold's
Pilgrimage_, instead of the song at present in manuscript."-[MS. note to
"To Inez."] [The stanzas _To Inez_ are dated January 25, 1810, on which
day Byron and Hobhouse visited Marathon. Most likely they were addressed
to Theresa Macri, the "Maid of Athens," or some favourite of the moment,
and not to "Florence" (Mrs. Spencer Smith), whom he had recently
(January 16) declared _emerita_ to the tune of "The spell is broke, the
charm is flown." A fortnight later (February 10), Hobhouse, accompanied
by the Albanian Vasilly and the Athenian Demetrius, set out for the
Negroponte. "Lord Byron was unexpectedly detained at Athens" (_Travels
in Albania_, i. 390). (For the stanzas to _The Girl of Cadiz_, which
were suppressed in favour of those _To Inez,_ see _Poetical Works_,
1891, p. 14, and vol. iii. of the present issue.)]

[100] {76} [Compare Horace, _Odes_, II. xvi. 19, 20--

               "Patriae quis exsul
    Se quoque fugit?"]

[di]
      _To other zones howe'er remote_
    _Still, still pursuing clings to me._--[MS. erased.]

[101] [Compare Prior's _Solomon_, bk. iii. lines 85, 86--

    "In the remotest wood and lonely grot
    Certain to meet that worst of evils--_thought."_]

[102] {77} [Cadiz was captured from the Moors by Alonso el Sabio, in
1262. It narrowly escaped a siege, January-February, 1810. Soult
commenced a "serious bombardment," May 16, 1812, but, three months
later, August 24, the siege was broken up. Stanza lxxxv. is not in the
original MS.]

[103] {78} [Charles IV. abdicated March 19, 1808, in favour of his son
Ferdinand VII.; and in the following May, Charles once more abdicated on
his own behalf, and Ferdinand for himself and his heirs, in favour of
Napoleon. Thenceforward Charles was an exile, and Ferdinand a prisoner
at Valencay, and Spain, so far as the Bourbons were concerned, remained
"kingless," until motives of policy procured the release of the latter,
who re-entered his kingdom March 22, 1814.]

[dj]
    Ye, who would more of Spain and Spaniards know,
      Sights, Saints, Antiques, Arts, Anecdotes and War,
      Go hie ye hence to Paternoster Row--
      Are they not written in the Boke of Carr,[Sec.1]
      Green Erin's Knight and Europe's wandering star!
      Then listen, Readers, to the Man of Ink,
      Hear what he did, and sought, and wrote afar;
      All those are cooped within one Quarto's brink,
    This borrow, steal,--don't buy,--and tell us what you think.

    There may you read with spectacles on eyes,
      How many Wellesleys did embark for Spain,[Sec.2]
      As if therein they meant to colonise,
      How many troops y-crossed the laughing main
      That ne'er beheld the said return again:
      How many buildings are in such a place,
      How many leagues from this to yonder plain,
      How many relics each cathedral grace,
    And where Giralda stands on her gigantic base.[Sec.3]

    There may you read (Oh, Phoebus, save Sir John!
      That these my words prophetic may not err)[Sec.4]
      All that was said, or sung, and lost, or won,
      By vaunting Wellesley or by blundering Frere,[Sec.a]
      He that wrote half the "Needy Knife-Grinder,"[Sec.5]
      Thus Poesy the way to grandeur paves--[Sec.b]
      Who would not such diplomatists prefer?
      But cease, my Muse, thy speed some respite craves,
    Leave legates to the House, and armies to their graves.

    Yet here of Vulpes mention may be made,[Sec.c][Sec.6]
      Who for the Junta modelled sapient laws,
      Taught them to govern ere they were obeyed:
      Certes fit teacher to command, because
      His soul Socratic no Xantippe awes;
      Blest with a Dame in Virtue's bosom nurst,--
      With her let silent Admiration pause!--
      True to her second husband and her first:
    On such unshaken fame let Satire do its worst.

[Sec.1] "Porphyry said that the prophecies of Daniel were written after
their completion, and such may be my fate here; but it requires no
second sight to foretell a tome; the first glimpse of the knight was
enough."--[MS.]

["I have seen Sir John Carr at Seville and Cadiz, and, like Swift's
barber, have been down on my knees to beg he would not put me into black
and white" (letter to Hodgson, August 6, 1809, _Letters_, 1898, i. 235,
note).]

[Sec.2] "I presume Marquis and Mr. and Pole and Sir A. are returned by this
time, and eke the bewildered Frere whose conduct was canvassed by the
Commons."--[MS.]

[A motion which had been brought forward in the House of Commons,
February 24, 1809, "to inquire into the causes ...of the late campaign
in Spain," was defeated, but the Government recalled J. Hookham Frere,
British Minister to the Supreme Junta, and nominated the Marquis
Wellesley Ambassador Extraordinary to Seville. Wellesley landed in Spain
early in August, but a duel which took place, September 21, between
Perceval and Canning led to changes in the ministry, and, with a view to
taking office, he left Cadiz November 10, 1809. His brother, Henry
Wellesley (1773-1847, first Baron Cowley), succeeded him as Envoy
Extraordinary. If "Mr." stands for Henry Wellesley, "Pole" may be
William Wellesley Pole, afterwards third Earl of Mornington.]

[Sec.3] [The base of the Giralda, the cathedral tower at Seville, is a
square of fifty feet. The pinnacle of the filigree belfry, which
surmounts the original Moorish tower, "is crowned with _El Girardillo_,
a bronze statue of _La Fe_, The Faith.... Although 14 feet high, and
weighing 2800 lbs., it turns with the slightest breeze."--Ford's
_Handbook for Spain_, i. 174.]

[Sec.4] [_Vide ante_, p. 78, note 2.]

[Sec.a] _By shrivelled Wellesley_----.--[MS. erased.]

[Sec.b]
    _None better known for doing things by halves_
    _As many in our Senate did aver_.--[MS. erased.]

[Sec.c] _Yet surely Vulpes merits some applause_.--[MS. erased.]

[Sec.5] "The Needy Knife-grinder," in the _Anti-Jacobin_, was a joint
production of Messrs. Frere and Canning.

[Sec.6] [Henry Richard Vassall Fox, second Lord Holland (1773-1840),
accompanied Sir David Baird to Corunna, September, 1808, and made a
prolonged tour in Spain, returning in the autumn of 1809. He suggested
to the Junta of Seville to extend their functions as a committee of
defence, and proposed a new constitution. His wife, Elizabeth Vassall,
the daughter of a rich Jamaica planter, was first married (June 27,
1786) to Sir Godfrey Webster, Bart. Sir Godfrey divorced his wife July
3, 1797, and three days later she was married to Lord Holland. She had
lived with him for some time previously, and before the divorce had
borne him a son, Charles Richard Fox (1796-1873), who was acknowledged
by Lord Holland.]

[104] {81} [Stanzas lxxxviii.-xciii., which record the battles of
Barossa (March 5, 1811) and Albuera (May 16, 1811), and the death of
Byron's school-friend Wingfield (May 14, 1811), were written at Newstead
in August, 1811, and take the place of four omitted stanzas (_q.v.
supra_).]

[105] [Francisco Pizarro (1480-1541), with his brothers, Hernando, Juan
Gonzalo, and his half-brother Martin de Alcantara, having revisited
Spain, set sail for Panama in 1530. During his progress southward from
Panama, he took the island of Puna, which formed part of the province of
Quito. His defeat and treacherous capture of Atuahalpa, King of Quito,
younger brother of Huascar the Supreme Inca, took place in 1532, near
the town of Caxamarca, in Peno (_Mod. Univ. History_, 1763, xxxviii.
295, _seq._). Spain's weakness during the Napoleonic invasion was the
opportunity of her colonies. Quito, the capital of Ecuador, rose in
rebellion, August 10, 1810, and during the same year Mexico and La Plata
began their long struggle for independence.]

[106] {82} [During the American War of Independence (1775-83), and
afterwards during the French Revolution, it was the custom to plant
trees as "symbols of growing freedom." The French trees were decorated
with "caps of Liberty." No such trees had ever been planted in Spain.
(See note by the Rev. E.C. Everard Owen, _Childe Harold_, 1897, p.
158.)]

[dk]
    _And thou, my friend! since thus my selfish woe_
                            {_to weaken in_
    _Bursts from my heart,_ {_however light my strain,_
                            {_for ever light the_----.--[D.]
    _Had the sword laid thee, with the mighty, low_
    _Pride had forbade me of thy fall to plain_.--[MS. D.]

[107] [Compare the In Memoriam stanzas at the end of Beattie's
_Minstrel_--"And am I left to unavailing woe?" II. 63, line 2.]

[dl] {83} ----_belov'd the most_.--[MS. D.]

[108] [With reference to this stanza, Byron wrote to Dallas, October 25,
1811 (_Letters_, 1898, ii. 58, 59), "I send you a conclusion to the
_whole_. In a stanza towards the end of Canto I. in the line,

    "Oh, known the earliest and _beloved_ the most,

I shall alter the epithet to '_esteemed_ the most.'"]

[dm] ----_where none so long was dear_.--[MS. D.]

[dn] _And fancy follow to_----.--[MS. D.]

[109] "Fytte" means "part."--[Note erased.]

       *       *       *       *       *




                   NOTES TO CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.

                                 CANTO I.

                               1.

    Yes! sighed o'er Delphi's long deserted shrine.
                                                     Stanza i. line 6.

The little village of Castri stands partially on the site of Delphi.
Along the path of the mountain, from Chrysso, are the remains of
sepulchres hewn in and from the rock:--"One," said the guide, "of a king
who broke his neck hunting." His majesty had certainly chosen the
fittest spot for such an achievement.

A little above Castri is a cave, supposed the Pythian, of immense depth;
the upper part of it is paved, and now a cowhouse.

On the other side of Castri stands a Greek monastery; some way above
which is the cleft in the rock, with a range of caverns difficult of
ascent, and apparently leading to the interior of the mountain; probably
to the Corycian Cavern mentioned by Pausanias. From this part descend
the fountain and the "Dews of Castalie."

[Byron and Hobhouse slept at Crissa December 15, and visited Delphi
December 16, 1809.--_Travels in Albania_, i. 199-209.]

                               2.

    And rest ye at "Our Lady's house of Woe."
                                                    Stanza xx. line 4.

The convent of "Our Lady of Punishment," _Nossa Senora de Pena_, on the
summit of the rock. Below, at some distance, is the Cork Convent, where
St. Honorius dug his den, over which is his epitaph. From the hills, the
sea adds to the beauty of the view.--[_Note to First Edition_.] Since
the publication of this poem, I have been informed [by W. Scott, July 1,
1812] of the misapprehension of the term _Nossa Senora de Pena_. It was
owing to the want of the _tilde_, or mark over the _n_, which alters the
signification of the word: with it, _Pena_ signifies a rock; without it,
_Pena_ has the sense I adopted. _I_ do not think it necessary to alter
the passage; as, though the common acceptation affixed to it is "Our
Lady of the Rock," I may well assume the other sense from the severities
practised there.--[_Note to Second Edition._]

                               3.

    Throughout this purple land, where Law secures not life.
                                                   Stanza xxi. line 9.

It is a well-known fact that in the year 1809, the assassinations in the
streets of Lisbon and its vicinity were not confined by the Portuguese
to their countrymen; but that Englishmen were daily butchered: and so
far from redress being obtained, we were requested not to interfere if
we perceived any compatriot defending himself against his allies. I was
once stopped in the way to the theatre at eight o'clock in the evening,
when the streets were not more empty than they generally are at that
hour, opposite to an open shop, and in a carriage with a friend: had we
not fortunately been armed, I have not the least doubt that we should
have "adorned a tale" instead of telling one. The crime of assassination
is not confined to Portugal; in Sicily and Malta we are knocked on the
head at a handsome average nightly, and not a Sicilian or Maltese is
ever punished!

                               4.

    Behold the hall where chiefs were late convened!
                                                  Stanza xxiv. line 1.

The Convention of Cintra was signed in the palace of the Marchese
Marialva. The late exploits of Lord Wellington have effaced the follies
of Cintra. He has, indeed, done wonders; he has perhaps changed the
character of a nation, reconciled rival superstitions, and baffled an
enemy who never retreated before his predecessor.

["The armistice, the negotiations, the convention, the execution of its
provisions, were commenced, conducted, concluded, at the distance of
thirty miles from Cintra, with which place they had not the slightest
connection, political, military, or local. Yet Lord Byron has sung that
the convention was signed in the Marquis of Marialva's house at Cintra"
(Napier's _History of the War in the Peninsula_, i. 161). The
"suspension of arms" is dated "Head Quarters of the British Army, August
22, 1808." The "Definitive Convention for the Evacuation of Portugal by
the British Army" is dated "Head Quarters, Lisbon, August 30, 1808."
(See Wordsworth's pamphlet _Concerning the Relations of Great Britain,
Spain, and Portugal, etc._, 1809, App. pp. 199-201. For sentiments
almost identical with those expressed in stanzas xxiv., xxv., see
_ibid._, p. 49, _et passim_.)]

                               5.

    Yet Mafra shall one moment claim delay.
                                                  Stanza xxix. line 1.

The extent of Mafra is prodigious; it contains a palace, convent, and
most superb church. The six organs are the most beautiful I ever beheld,
in point of decoration: we did not hear them, but were told that their
tones were correspondent to their splendour. Mafra is termed the
Escurial of Portugal.

[Mafra was built by D. Joao V. The foundation-stone was laid November 7,
1717, and the church consecrated October 22, 1730. (For descriptions of
Mafra, see Southey's _Life and Correspondence_, ii. 113; and _Letters_,
1898, i. 237.)]

                               6.

      Well doth the Spanish hind the difference know
    'Twixt him and Lusian slave, the lowest of the low.
                                         Stanza xxxiii. lines 8 and 9.

As I found the Portuguese, so I have characterised them. That they are
since improved, at least in courage, is evident.

[The following "Note on Spain and Portugal," part of the original draft
of Note 3 (p. 86), was suppressed at the instance of Dallas: "We have
heard wonders of the Portuguese lately, and their gallantry. Pray Heaven
it continue; yet 'would it were bed-time, Hal, and all were well!' They
must fight a great many hours, by 'Shrewsbury clock,' before the number
of their slain equals that of our countrymen butchered by these kind
creatures, now metamorphosed into 'Cacadores,' and what not. I merely
state a fact, not confined to Portugal; for in Sicily and Malta we are
knocked on the head at a handsome average nightly, and not a Sicilian or
Maltese is ever punished! The neglect of protection is disgraceful to
our government and governors; for the murders are as notorious as the
moon that shines upon them, and the apathy that overlooks them. The
Portuguese, it is to be hoped, are complimented with the 'Forlorn
Hope,'--if the cowards are become brave (like the rest of their kind, in
a corner), pray let them display it. But there is a subscription for
these [Greek: thrasy/deiloi][110] (they need not be ashamed of the
epithet once applied to the Spartans); and all the charitable
patronymics, from ostentatious A. to diffident Z., and L1 1s. 0d. from
'An Admirer of Valour,' are in requisition for the lists at Lloyd's, and
the honour of British benevolence. Well! we have fought, and subscribed,
and bestowed peerages, and buried the killed by our friends and foes;
and, lo! all this is to be done over again! Like Lien Chi (in
Goldsmith's _Citizen of the World_), as we 'grow older, we grow never
the better.' It would be pleasant to learn who will subscribe for us, in
or about the year 1815, and what nation will send fifty thousand men,
first to be decimated in the capital, and then decimated again (in the
Irish fashion, _nine_ out of _ten_), in the 'bed of honour;' which, as
Serjeant Kite says [in Farquhar's _Recruiting Officer_, act i. sc. 1],
is considerably larger and more commodious than 'the bed of Ware.' Then
they must have a poet to write the 'Vision of Don Perceval,'[111] and
generously bestow the profits of the well and widely printed quarto, to
rebuild the 'Backwynd' and the 'Canongate,' or furnish new kilts for the
half-roasted Highlanders. Lord Wellington, however, has enacted marvels;
and so did his Oriental brother, whom I saw charioteering over the
French flag, and heard clipping bad Spanish, after listening to the
speech of a patriotic cobler of Cadiz, on the event of his own entry
into that city, and the exit of some five thousand bold Britons out of
this 'best of all possible worlds' [Pangloss, in _Candide_]. Sorely were
we puzzled how to dispose of that same victory of Talavera; and a
victory it surely was somewhere, for everybody claimed it. The Spanish
despatch and mob called it Cuesta's, and made no great mention of the
Viscount; the French called it _theirs_[1] (to my great
discomfiture,--for a French consul stopped my mouth in Greece with a
pestilent Paris Gazette, just as I had killed Sebastiani'[112] 'in
buckram,' and King Joseph 'in Kendal green'),--and we have not yet
determined _what_ to call it, or _whose_; for, certes, it was none of
our own. Howbeit, Massena's retreat [May, 1811] is a great comfort; and
as we have not been in the habit of pursuing for some years past, no
wonder we are a little awkward at first. No doubt we shall improve; or,
if not, we have only to take to our old way of retrograding, and there
we are at home."--_Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron_, 1824, pp.
179-185.]

                               7.

    When Cava's traitor-sire first called the band
    That dyed thy mountain streams with Gothic gore.
                                           Stanza xxxv. lines 3 and 4.

Count Julian's daughter, the Helen of Spain. Pelagius preserved his
independence in the fastnesses of the Asturias, and the descendants of
his followers, after some centuries, completed their struggle by the
conquest of Grenada.

[Roderick the Goth violated Florinda, or Caba, or Cava, daughter of
Count Julian, one of his principal lieutenants. In revenge for this
outrage, Julian allied himself with Musca, the Caliph's lieutenant in
Africa, and countenanced the invasion of Spain by a body of Saracens and
Africans commanded by Tarik, from whom Jebel Tarik, Tarik's Rock, that
is, Gibraltar, is said to have been named. The issue was the defeat and
death of Roderick and the Moorish occupation of Spain. A Spaniard,
according to Cervantes, may call his dog, but not his daughter,
Florinda. (See _Vision of Don Roderick_, by Sir W. Scott, stanza iv.
note 5.)]

                               8.

    No! as he speeds, he chants "Viv[=a] el Rey!"
                                                Stanza xlviii. line 5.

"Viv[=a] el Rey Fernando!" Long live King Ferdinand! is the chorus of
most of the Spanish patriotic songs. They are chiefly in dispraise of
the old King Charles, the Queen, and the Prince of Peace. I have heard
many of them: some of the airs are beautiful. Godoy, the _Principe de la
Paz_, of an ancient but decayed family, was born at Badajoz, on the
frontiers of Portugal, and was originally in the ranks of the Spanish
guards; till his person attracted the queen's eyes, and raised him to
the dukedom of Alcudia, etc., etc. It is to this man that the Spaniards
universally impute the ruin of their country.

[Manuel de Godoy (1767-1851) received the title of _Principe de la Paz_,
Prince of the Peace, in 1795, after the Treaty of Basle, which ceded
more than half St. Domingo to France. His tenure of power, as prime
minister and director of the king's policy, coincided with the downfall
of Spanish power, and before the commencement of the Peninsular War he
was associated in the minds of the people with national corruption and
national degradation. He was, moreover, directly instrumental in the
betrayal of Spain to France. By the Treaty of Fontainebleau, October 27,
1807, Portugal was to be divided between the King of Etruria and Godoy
as Prince of the Algarves, Portuguese America was to fall to the King of
Spain, and to bring this about Napoleon's troops were to enter Spain and
march directly to Lisbon. The sole outcome of the treaty was the
occupation of Portugal and subsequent invasion of Spain. Before Byron
had begun his pilgrimage, Godoy's public career had come to an end.
During the insurrection at Aranjuez, March 17-19, 1808, when Charles IV.
abdicated in favour of his son Ferdinand VII., Godoy was only preserved
from the fury of the populace by a timely imprisonment. In the following
May, by which time Ferdinand himself was a prisoner in France, he was
released at the instance of Murat, and ordered to accompany Charles to
Bayonne, for the express purpose of cajoling his master into a second
abdication in favour of Napoleon. The remainder of his long life was
passed, first at Rome, and afterwards at Paris, in exile and dependence.
The execration of Godoy, "who was really a mild, good-natured man,"
must, in Napier's judgment, be attributed to Spanish venom and Spanish
prejudice. The betrayal of Spain was, he thinks, the outcome of
Ferdinand's intrigues no less than of Godoy's unpatriotic ambition.
Another and perhaps truer explanation of popular odium is to be found in
his supposed atheism and well-known indifference to the rites of the
Church, which many years before had attracted the attention of the Holy
Office. The peasants cursed Godoy because the priests triumphed over his
downfall (Napier's _History of the War in the Peninsula_, i. 8;
Southey's _Peninsular War_, i. 85 note, 93, 215, 280).]

                               9.

    Bears in his cap the badge of crimson hue,
    Which tells you whom to shun and whom to greet.
                                              Stanza l. lines 2 and 3.

The red cockade, with "Fernando Septimo" in the centre.

                              10.

    The ball-piled pyramid, the ever-blazing match.
                                                    Stanza li. line 9.

All who have seen a battery will recollect the pyramidal form in which
shot and shells are piled. The Sierra Morena was fortified in every
defile through which I passed in my way to Seville.

                              11.

    Foiled by a woman's hand, before a battered wall.
                                                   Stanza lvi. line 9.

Such were the exploits of the Maid of Saragoza, who by her valour
elevated herself to the highest rank of heroines. When the author was at
Seville, she walked daily on the Prado, decorated with medals and
orders, by command of the Junta.

[The story, as told by Southey (who seems to have derived his
information from _The Narrative of the Siege of Zaragoza_, by Charles
Richard Vaughan, M.B., 1809), is that "Augustina Zaragoza (_sic_), a
handsome woman of the lower class, about twenty-two years of age," a
vivandiere, in the course of her rounds came with provisions to a
battery near the Portello gate. The gunners had all been killed, and, as
the citizens held back, "Augustina sprang over the dead and dying,
snatched a match from the hand of a dead artilleryman, and fired off a
twenty-six pounder; then, jumping upon the gun, made a solemn vow never
to quit it alive during the siege."

After the retreat of the French, "a pension was settled upon Augustina,
and the daily pay of an artilleryman. She was also to wear a small
shield of honour, embroidered upon the sleeve of her gown, with
'Zaragoza' inscribed upon it" (Southey's _Peninsular War_, ii. 14, 34).

Napier, "neither wholly believing nor absolutely denying these
exploits," which he does not condescend to give in detail, remarks "that
for a long time afterwards, Spain swarmed with Zaragoza heroines,
clothed in half-uniforms, and theatrically loaded with weapons."

A picture of "The Defence of Saragossa," painted by Sir David Wilkie,
which contained her portrait, was exhibited in the Royal Academy in
1829, and was purchased by the king (Napier's _History of the War in the
Peninsula_, i. 45; _Life of Sir D. Wilkie_, by John W. Mollett, 1881, p.
83). Compare, too, _The Age of Bronze_, vii. lines 53-56--

                   "... the desperate wall
    Of Saragossa, mightiest in her fall;
    The man nerved to a spirit, and the maid
    Waving her more than Amazonian blade."]

                              12.

    The seal Love's dimpling finger hath impressed
      Denotes how soft that chin which bears his touch.
                                          Stanza lviii. lines 1 and 2.

    "Sigilla in mento impressa Amoris digitulo
      Vestigio demonstrant mollitudinem."
                                                               Aul. Gel.

[The quotation does not occur in Aulus Gellius, but is a fragment in
iambic metre from the Papia papae [Greek: peri\ e)nkomi/on] of M.
Terentius Varro, cited by the grammarian Nonius Marcellus (_De Comp.
Doct_., ii. 135, lines 19-23). _Sigilla_ is a variant of the word in the
text, _laculla_, a diminutive of _lacuna_, signifying a dimple in the
chin. _Lacullum_ is not to be found in Facciolati. (_Vide_ Riese,
_Varro. Satur. Menipp. Rel_., 1865, p. 164.)]

                              13.

    Oh, thou Parnassus!
                                                    Stanza lx. line 1.

These stanzas were written in Castri (Delphos), at the foot of
Parnassus, now called [Greek: Liakyra] (Liakura), Dec. [16], 1809.

                              14.

    Fair is proud Seville; let her country boast
      Her strength, her wealth, her site of ancient days.
                                            Stanza lxv. lines 1 and 2.

Seville was the Hispalis of the Romans.

                              15.

    Ask ye, Boeotian Shades! the reason why?
                                                   Stanza lxx. line 5.

This was written at Thebes, and consequently in the best situation for
asking and answering such a question; not as the birthplace of Pindar,
but as the capital of Boeotia, where the first riddle was propounded and
solved.

[Byron reached Thebes December 22, 1809. By the first riddle he means,
of course, the famous enigma of Oedipus--the prototype of Boeotian wit.]

                              16.

    Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings.
                                                Stanza lxxxii. line 9.

                        "Medio de fonte leporum
    Surgit amari aliquid quod in ipseis floribus angat."
                                                        Lucr., iv. 1133.

                              17.

    A Traitor only fell beneath the feud.
                                                 Stanza lxxxv. line 7.

Alluding to the conduct and death of Solano, the governor of Cadiz, in
May, 1808.

[The Marquis of Solano, commander-in-chief of the forces at Cadiz, was
murdered by the populace. The "Supreme Junta" of Seville had directed
him to attack the French fleet anchored off Cadiz, and Admiral Purvis,
acting in concert with General Spencer, had offered to co-operate, but
Solano was unwilling to take his orders "from a self-constituted
authority, and hesitated to commit his country in war with a power whose
strength he knew better than the temper of his countrymen." "His
abilities, courage, and unblemished character have never been
denied."--Napier's _War in the Peninsula_, i. 20, 21.]

                              18.

    "War even to the knife!"
                                                Stanza lxxxvi. line 9.

"War to the knife." Palafox's answer to the French general at the siege
of Saragoza.

[Towards the close of the first siege of Zaragoza, August 5, 1808,
Marshal Lefebvre (1755-1820), under the impression that the city had
fallen into his hands, "required Palafox to surrender in these words:
'Quartel-general, Santa Engracia. La Capitulation!' ['Head-quarters, St.
Engracia. Capitulation']. The reply was, 'Quartel-general, Zaragoza.
Guerra al cuchillo' ['Head-quarters, Zaragoza. War at the knife's
point']." Subsequently, December, 1808, when Moncey (1754-1842) again
called upon him to surrender, he appealed to the people of Madrid. "The
dogs," he said, "by whom he was beset scarcely left him time to clean
his sword from their blood; but they still found their grave at
Zaragoza." Southey notes that "all Palafox's proclamations had the high
tone and something of the inflection of Spanish romance, suiting the
character of those to whom it was directed" (_Peninsular War_, ii. 25;
iii. 152; _Narrative of the Siege_, by C. R. Vaughan, 1809, pp. 22, 23).
Napier, whose account of the first siege of Zaragoza is based on
Caballero's _Victoires et Conquetes des Francais_, and on the _Journal
of Lefebvre's Operations_ (MSS.), does not record these romantic
incidents. He attributes the raising of the siege to the "bad discipline
of the French, and the system of terror established by the Spanish
leaders." The inspirers and proclaimers of "war even to the knife" were,
he maintains, _Tio_ or Goodman Jorge (Jorge Ibort) and Tio Murin, and
not Palafox, who was ignorant of war, and who, on more than one
occasion, was careful to provide for his own safety (_History of the War
in the Peninsula_, i. 41-46).]

                              19.

    And thou, my friend! etc.
                                                   Stanza xci. line 1.

The Honourable John Wingfield, of the Guards, who died of a fever at
Coimbra (May 14, 1811). I had known him ten years, the better half of
his life, and the happiest part of mine. In the short space of one month
I have lost _her_ who gave me being, and most of those who had made
that being tolerable. To me the lines of Young are no fiction--

    "Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?
    Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain,
    And thrice ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn."
                               _Night Thoughts: The Complaint_, Night i.
                                                   (London, 1825, p. 5).

I should have ventured a verse to the memory of the late Charles Skinner
Matthews, Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, were he not too much
above all praise of mine. His powers of mind, shown in the attainment of
greater honours, against the ablest candidates, than those of any
graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established his fame
on the spot where it was acquired; while his softer qualities live in
the recollection of friends who loved him too well to envy his
superiority. [To an objection made by Dallas to this note, Byron
replied, "I was so sincere in my note on the late Charles Matthews, and
do feel myself so totally unable to do justice to his talents, that the
passage must stand for the very reason you bring against it. To him all
the men I ever knew were pigmies. He was an intellectual giant. It is
true I loved Wingfield better; he was the earliest and the dearest, and
one of the few one could never repent of having loved: but in
ability--ah! you did not know Matthews,!"--_Letters_, 1898, ii. 8. [For
Charles Skinner Matthews, and the Honourable John Wingfield, see
_Letters_, 1898, i. 150 note, 180 note. See, too, "Childish
Recollections," _Poems_, 1898, i. 96, note.]



FOOTNOTES:

[110] {88} [_Vide post_, p. 196, note 1.]

[111] [In a letter to J. B. S. Morritt, April 26, 1811, Sir Walter Scott
writes, "I meditate some wild stanzas referring to the Peninsula; if I
can lick them into any shape, I hope to get something handsome from the
booksellers for the Portuguese sufferers: 'Silver and gold have I none,
but that which I have I will give unto them.' My lyrics are called The
Vision of Don Roderick."--Lockhart's _Mem. of the Life of Sir W. Scott_,
1871, p. 205.]

[112] {89} [Francois Horace Bastien Sebastiani (1772-1851), one of
Napoleon's generals, defeated the Spanish at Ciudad Real, March 17,
1809. In his official report he said that he had sabred more than 3000
Spaniards in flight. At the battle of Talavera, July 27, his corps
suffered heavily; but at Almonacid, August 11, he was again victorious
over the Spanish.]

       *       *       *       *       *

                    CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE

                         CANTO THE SECOND.


                          Childe Harold
                             Canto 2.

                    Byron. Joannina in Albania.
                         Begun Oct. 31st 1809.
                         Concluded Canto 2. Smyrna.
                              March 28^th^, 1810. [MS. D.]

       *       *       *       *       *




                             CANTO THE SECOND

                            I.[113]

    Come, blue-eyed Maid of Heaven!--but Thou, alas!
      Didst never yet one mortal song inspire--
      Goddess of Wisdom! here thy temple was,
      And is, despite of War and wasting fire,[1.B.]
      And years, that bade thy worship to expire:
      But worse than steel, and flame, and ages slow,[2.B.]
      Is the dread sceptre and dominion dire
      Of men who never felt the sacred glow
    That thoughts of thee and thine on polished breasts bestow.

                              II.

    Ancient of days! august Athena! where,[do]
      Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?
      Gone--glimmering through the dream of things that were:[dp]
      First in the race that led to Glory's goal,
      They won, and passed away--is this the whole?
      A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour!
      The Warrior's weapon and the Sophist's stole[114]
      Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower,
    Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.[dq]

                              III.

    Son of the Morning, rise! approach you here!
      Come--but molest not yon defenceless Urn:
      Look on this spot--a Nation's sepulchre!
      Abode of Gods, whose shrines no longer burn.[dr]
      Even Gods must yield--Religions take their turn:
      'Twas Jove's--'tis Mahomet's--and other Creeds
      Will rise with other years, till Man shall learn
      Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds;
    Poor child of Doubt and Death, whose hope is built on reeds.[ds]

                              IV.

    Bound to the Earth, he lifts his eye to Heaven--
      Is't not enough, Unhappy Thing! to know
      Thou art? Is this a boon so kindly given,
      That being, thou would'st be again, and go,
      Thou know'st not, reck'st not to what region, so[115]
      On Earth no more, but mingled with the skies?
      Still wilt thou dream on future Joy and Woe?[dt]
      Regard and weigh yon dust before it flies:
    That little urn saith more than thousand Homilies.

                               V.

    Or burst the vanished Hero's lofty mound;
      Far on the solitary shore he sleeps:[3.B.]
      He fell, and falling nations mourned around;
      But now not one of saddening thousands weeps,
      Nor warlike worshipper his vigil keeps
      Where demi-gods appeared, as records tell.[du][116]
      Remove yon skull from out the scattered heaps:
      Is that a Temple where a God may dwell?
    Why ev'n the Worm at last disdains her shattered cell!

                              VI.

    Look on its broken arch, its ruined wall,
      Its chambers desolate, and portals foul:
      Yes, this was once Ambition's airy hall,
      The Dome of Thought, the Palace of the Soul:
      Behold through each lack-lustre, eyeless hole,
      The gay recess of Wisdom and of Wit[117]
      And Passion's host, that never brooked control:
      Can all Saint, Sage, or Sophist ever writ,
    People this lonely tower, this tenement refit?

                              VII.

    Well didst thou speak, Athena's wisest son![118]
      "All that we know is, nothing can be known."
      Why should we shrink from what we cannot shun?
      Each hath its pang, but feeble sufferers groan
      With brain-born dreams of Evil all their own.
      Pursue what Chance or Fate proclaimeth best;
      Peace waits us on the shores of Acheron:
      There no forced banquet claims the sated guest,
    But Silence spreads the couch of ever welcome Rest.

                           VIII.[119]

    Yet if, as holiest men have deemed, there be[dv]
      A land of Souls beyond that sable shore,
      To shame the Doctrine of the Sadducee
      And Sophists, madly vain of dubious lore;
      How sweet it were in concert to adore
      With those who made our mortal labours light!
      To hear each voice we feared to hear no more!
      Behold each mighty shade revealed to sight,
    The Bactrian, Samian sage, and all who taught the Right!

                            IX.[120]

    There, Thou!--whose Love and Life together fled,
      Have left me here to love and live in vain--
      Twined with my heart, and can I deem thee dead
      When busy Memory flashes on my brain?
      Well--I will dream that we may meet again,
      And woo the vision to my vacant breast:
      If aught of young Remembrance then remain,
      Be as it may Futurity's behest,[dw]
    For me 'twere bliss enough to know thy spirit blest!

                               X.

    Here let me sit upon this massy stone,
      The marble column's yet unshaken base;
      Here, son of Saturn! was thy favourite throne:[4.B.]
      Mightiest of many such! Hence let me trace
      The latent grandeur of thy dwelling-place.
      It may not be: nor ev'n can Fancy's eye
      Restore what Time hath laboured to deface.
      Yet these proud Pillars claim no passing sigh;
    Unmoved the Moslem sits, the light Greek carols by.

                              XI.

    But who, of all the plunderers of yon Fane[121]
      On high--where Pallas linger'd, loth to flee
      The latest relic of her ancient reign--
      The last, the worst, dull spoiler, who was he?[dx]
      Blush, Caledonia! such thy son could be!
      England! I joy no child he was of thine:
      Thy free-born men should spare what once was free;
      Yet they could violate each saddening shrine,
    And hear these altars o'er the long-reluctant brine.[5.B.]

                              XII.

    But most the modern Pict's ignoble boast,[dy][122]
      To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spared:[6.B.]
      Cold as the crags upon his native coast,
      His mind as barren and his heart as hard,
      Is he whose head conceived, whose hand prepared.
      Aught to displace Athenae's poor remains:
      Her Sons too weak the sacred shrine to guard,
      Yet felt some portion of their Mother's pains,[7.B.]
    And never knew, till then, the weight of Despot's chains.

                             XIII.

    What! shall it e'er be said by British tongue,[dz]
      Albion was happy in Athena's tears?
      Though in thy name the slaves her bosom wrung,
      Tell not the deed to blushing Europe's ears;
      The Ocean Queen, the free Britannia, bears
      The last poor plunder from a bleeding land:
      Yes, she, whose generous aid her name endears,
      Tore down those remnants with a Harpy's hand,
    Which envious Eld forbore, and tyrants left to stand.[ea]

                              XIV.

    Where was thine AEgis, Pallas! that appalled[eb]
      Stern Alaric and Havoc on their way?[8.B.]
      Where Peleus' son? whom Hell in vain enthralled.
      His shade from Hades upon that dread day
      Bursting to light in terrible array!
      What! could not Pluto spare the Chief once more,
      To scare a second robber from his prey?
      Idly he wandered on the Stygian shore,
    Nor now preserved the walls he loved to shield before.

                              XV.

    Cold is the heart, fair Greece! that looks on Thee,
      Nor feels as Lovers o'er the dust they loved;
      Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
      Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
      By British hands, which it had best behoved[ec]
      To guard those relics ne'er to be restored:--
      Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved,
      And once again thy hapless bosom gored,
    And snatched thy shrinking Gods to Northern climes abhorred![123]

                              XVI.

    But where is Harold? shall I then forget
      To urge the gloomy Wanderer o'er the wave?
      Little recked he of all that Men regret;
      No loved-one now in feigned lament could rave;[124]
      No friend the parting hand extended gave,
      Ere the cold Stranger passed to other climes:
      Hard is his heart whom charms may not enslave;
      But Harold felt not as in other times,
    And left without a sigh the land of War and Crimes.

                             XVII.

    He that has sailed upon the dark blue sea
      Has viewed at times, I ween, a full fair sight,
      When the fresh breeze is fair as breeze may be,
      The white sail set, the gallant Frigate tight--
      Masts, spires, and strand retiring to the right,
      The glorious Main expanding o'er the bow,
      The Convoy spread like wild swans in their flight,
      The dullest sailer wearing bravely now--
    So gaily curl the waves before each dashing prow.

                             XVIII.

    And oh, the little warlike world within!
      The well-reeved guns, the netted canopy,[9.B.]
      The hoarse command, the busy humming din,
      When, at a word, the tops are manned on high:
      Hark, to the Boatswain's call, the cheering cry!
      While through the seaman's hand the tackle glides;
      Or schoolboy Midshipman that, standing by,
      Strains his shrill pipe as good or ill betides,
    And well the docile crew that skilful Urchin guides.[ed]

                              XIX.

    White is the glassy deck, without a stain,
      Where on the watch the staid Lieutenant walks:
      Look on that part which sacred doth remain[ee]
      For the lone Chieftain, who majestic stalks,
      Silent and feared by all--not oft he talks
      With aught beneath him, if he would preserve
      That strict restraint, which broken, ever balks
      Conquest and Fame: but Britons rarely swerve
    From law, however stern, which tends their strength to nerve[ef].

                              XX.

    Blow! swiftly blow, thou keel-compelling gale!
      Till the broad Sun withdraws his lessening ray:
      Then must the Pennant-bearer slacken sail,
      That lagging barks may make their lazy way.[125]
      Ah! grievance sore, and listless dull delay,
      To waste on sluggish hulks the sweetest breeze!
      What leagues are lost, before the dawn of day,
      Thus loitering pensive on the willing seas,
    The flapping sail hauled down to halt for logs like these!

                              XXI.

    The Moon is up; by Heaven, a lovely eve!
      Long streams of light o'er dancing waves expand;
      Now lads on shore may sigh, and maids believe[eg]:
      Such be our fate when we return to land!
      Meantime some rude Arion's restless hand[eh]
      Wakes the brisk harmony that sailors love;
      A circle there of merry listeners stand
      Or to some well-known measure featly move,
    Thoughtless, as if on shore they still were free to rove.

                             XXII.

    Through Calpe's straits survey the steepy shore;[ei]
      Europe and Afric on each other gaze![126]
      Lands of the dark-eyed Maid and dusky Moor
      Alike beheld beneath pale Hecate's blaze:
      How softly on the Spanish shore she plays![127]
      Disclosing rock, and <DW72>, and forest brown,[128]
      Distinct, though darkening with her waning phase;
      But Mauritania's giant-shadows frown,
    From mountain-cliff to coast descending sombre down.

                             XXIII.

    'Tis night, when Meditation bids us feel
      We once have loved, though Love is at an end:
      The Heart, lone mourner of its baffled zeal,[ej]
      Though friendless now, will dream it had a friend.
      Who with the weight of years would wish to bend,
      When Youth itself survives young Love and Joy?
      Alas! when mingling souls forget to blend,
      Death hath but little left him to destroy!
    Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a boy?[ek]

                             XXIV.

    Thus bending o'er the vessel's laving side,
      To gaze on Dian's wave-reflected sphere,[el]
      The Soul forgets her schemes of Hope and Pride,[em]
      And flies unconscious o'er each backward year;
      None are so desolate but something dear,[en]
      Dearer than self, possesses or possessed
      A thought, and claims the homage of a tear;
      A flashing pang! of which the weary breast
    Would still, albeit in vain, the heavy heart divest.

                          XXV.[eo][129]

    To sit on rocks--to muse o'er flood and fell--
      To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
      Where things that own not Man's dominion dwell,
      And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;
      To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
      With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
      Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;[ep]
      This is not Solitude--'tis but to hold
    Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled.

                             XXVI.

    But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,
      To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,
      And roam along, the World's tired denizen,
      With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;
      Minions of Splendour shrinking from distress![130]
      None that, with kindred consciousness endued,
      If we were not, would seem to smile the less,
      Of all that flattered--followed--sought, and sued:
    This is to be alone--This, This is Solitude![eq]

                          XXVII.[131]

    More blest the life of godly Eremite,
      Such as on lonely Athos may be seen,
      Watching at eve upon the Giant Height,
      Which looks o'er waves so blue, skies so serene,
      That he who there at such an hour hath been
      Will wistful linger on that hallowed spot;
      Then slowly tear him from the 'witching scene,
      Sigh forth one wish that such had been his lot,
    Then turn to hate a world he had almost forgot.

                            XXVIII.

    Pass we the long unvarying course, the track
      Oft trod, that never leaves a trace behind;
      Pass we the calm--the gale--the change--the tack,
      And each well known caprice of wave and wind;
      Pass we the joys and sorrows sailors find,
      Cooped in their winged sea-girt citadel;
      The foul--the fair--the contrary--the kind--
      As breezes rise and fall and billows swell,
    Till on some jocund morn--lo, Land! and All is well!

                             XXIX.

    But not in silence pass Calypso's isles,[10.B.]
      The sister tenants of the middle deep;
      There for the weary still a Haven smiles,
      Though the fair Goddess long hath ceased to weep,
      And o'er her cliffs a fruitless watch to keep
      For him who dared prefer a mortal bride:
      Here, too, his boy essayed the dreadful leap
      Stern Mentor urged from high to yonder tide;
    While thus of both bereft, the Nymph-Queen doubly sighed.[132]

                              XXX.

    Her reign is past, her gentle glories gone:
      But trust not this; too easy Youth, beware!
      A mortal Sovereign holds her dangerous throne,
      And thou may'st find a new Calypso there.
      Sweet Florence[133] could another ever share
      This wayward, loveless heart, it would be thine:
      But checked by every tie, I may not dare
      To cast a worthless offering at thy shrine,
    Nor ask so dear a breast to feel one pang for _mine_.

                             XXXI.

    Thus Harold deemed, as on that Lady's eye
      He looked, and met its beam without a thought,
      Save Admiration glancing harmless by:
      Love kept aloof, albeit not far remote,
      Who knew his Votary often lost and caught,
      But knew him as his Worshipper no more,
      And ne'er again the Boy his bosom sought:
      Since now he vainly urged him to adore,
    Well deemed the little God his ancient sway was o'er.

                             XXXII.

    Fair Florence found, in sooth with some amaze,
      One who, 'twas said, still sighed to all he saw,
      Withstand, unmoved, the lustre of her gaze,
      Which others hailed with real or mimic awe,
      Their hope, their doom, their punishment, their law;
      All that gay Beauty from her bondsmen claims:
      And much she marvelled that a youth so raw
      Nor felt, nor feigned at least, the oft-told flames,
    Which though sometimes they frown, yet rarely anger dames.

                            XXXIII.

    Little knew she that seeming marble heart,
      Now masked in silence or withheld by Pride,
      Was not unskilful in the spoiler's art,
      And spread its snares licentious far and wide;[134]
      Nor from the base pursuit had turned aside,
      As long as aught was worthy to pursue:
      But Harold on such arts no more relied;
      And had he doted on those eyes so blue,
    Yet never would he join the lover's whining crew.

                             XXXIV.

    Not much he kens, I ween, of Woman's breast,
      Who thinks that wanton thing is won by sighs;
      What careth she for hearts when once possessed?
      Do proper homage to thine Idol's eyes;
      But not too humbly, or she will despise
      Thee and thy suit, though told in moving tropes:
      Disguise ev'n tenderness, if thou art wise;
      Brisk Confidence still best with woman copes:[er]
    Pique her and soothe in turn--soon Passion crowns thy hopes.

                             XXXV.

    'Tis an old lesson--Time approves it true,
      And those who know it best, deplore it most;
      When all is won that all desire to woo,
      The paltry prize is hardly worth the cost:
      Youth wasted--Minds degraded--Honour lost--[es]
      These are thy fruits, successful Passion! these![135]
      If, kindly cruel, early Hope is crost,
      Still to the last it rankles, a disease,
    Not to be cured when Love itself forgets to please.

                             XXXVI.

    Away! nor let me loiter in my song,
      For we have many a mountain-path to tread,
      And many a varied shore to sail along,
      By pensive Sadness, not by Fiction, led--
      Climes, fair withal as ever mortal head[et]
      Imagined in its little schemes of thought;[eu]
      Or e'er in new Utopias were ared,[136]
      To teach Man what he might be, or he ought--
    If that corrupted thing could ever such be taught.

                            XXXVII.

    Dear Nature is the kindest mother still!
      Though always changing, in her aspect mild;
      From her bare bosom let me take my fill,
      Her never-weaned, though not her favoured child.[ev]
      Oh! she is fairest in her features wild,
      Where nothing polished dares pollute her path:
      To me by day or night she ever smiled,
      Though I have marked her when none other hath,
    And sought her more and more, and loved her best in wrath.[137]

                            XXXVIII.

    Land of Albania! where Iskander rose,[138]
      Theme of the young, and beacon of the wise,[139]
      And he his namesake, whose oft-baffled foes
      Shrunk from his deeds of chivalrous emprize:
      Land of Albania! let me bend mine eyes[11.B.]
      On thee, thou rugged Nurse of savage men!
      The Cross descends, thy Minarets arise,
      And the pale Crescent sparkles in the glen,
    Through many a cypress-grove within each city's ken.

                             XXXIX.

    Childe Harold sailed, and passed the barren spot,[140]
      Where sad Penelope o'erlooked the wave;[12.B.]
      And onward viewed the mount, not yet forgot,
      The Lover's refuge, and the Lesbian's grave.
      Dark Sappho! could not Verse immortal save
      That breast imbued with such immortal fire?
      Could she not live who life eternal gave?
      If life eternal may await the lyre,
    That only Heaven to which Earth's children may aspire.[141]

                              XL.

    'Twas on a Grecian autumn's gentle eve
      Childe Harold hailed Leucadia's cape afar;
      A spot he longed to see, nor cared to leave:
      Oft did he mark the scenes of vanished war,
      Actium--Lepanto--fatal Trafalgar;[13.B.]
      Mark them unmoved, for he would not delight
      (Born beneath some remote inglorious star)[142]
      In themes of bloody fray, or gallant fight,
    But loathed the bravo's trade, and laughed at martial wight.[ew]

                              XLI.

    But when he saw the Evening star above
      Leucadia's far-projecting rock of woe,
      And hailed the last resort of fruitless love,[14.B.]
      He felt, or deemed he felt, no common glow:
      And as the stately vessel glided slow[143]
      Beneath the shadow of that ancient mount,
      He watched the billows' melancholy flow,
      And, sunk albeit in thought as he was wont,[ex]
    More placid seemed his eye, and smooth his pallid front.

                             XLII.

    Morn dawns; and with it stern Albania's hills,
      Dark Suli's rocks, and Pindus' inland peak,[144]
      Robed half in mist, bedewed with snowy rills,
      Arrayed in many a dun and purple streak,
      Arise; and, as the clouds along them break,
      Disclose the dwelling of the mountaineer:
      Here roams the wolf--the eagle whets his beak--
      Birds--beasts of prey--and wilder men appear,
    And gathering storms around convulse the closing year.

                             XLIII.

    Now Harold felt himself at length alone,
      And bade to Christian tongues a long adieu;
      Now he adventured on a shore unknown,[145]
      Which all admire, but many dread to view:
      His breast was armed 'gainst fate, his wants were few
      Peril he sought not, but ne'er shrank to meet:
      The scene was savage, but the scene was new;
      _This_ made the ceaseless toil of travel sweet,
    Beat back keen Winter's blast, and welcomed Summer's heat.

                             XLIV.

    Here the red Cross, for still the Cross is here,
      Though sadly scoffed at by the circumcised,
      Forgets that Pride to pampered priesthood dear;
      Churchman and Votary alike despised.
      Foul Superstition! howsoe'er disguised,
      Idol--Saint--Virgin--Prophet--Crescent--Cross--
      For whatsoever symbol thou art prized,
      Thou sacerdotal gain, but general loss!
    Who from true Worship's gold can separate thy dross?

                              XLV.

    Ambracia's gulf behold, where once was lost
      A world for Woman, lovely, harmless thing![ey][146]
      In yonder rippling bay, their naval host
      Did many a Roman chief and Asian King[15.B.]
      To doubtful conflict, certain slaughter bring:
      Look where the second Caesar's trophies rose![147][16.B.]
      Now, like the hands that reared them, withering:
      Imperial Anarchs, doubling human woes![ez]
    GOD! was thy globe ordained for such to win and lose?

                             XLVI.

    From the dark barriers of that rugged clime,
      Ev'n to the centre of Illyria's vales,
      Childe Harold passed o'er many a mount sublime,
      Through lands scarce noticed in historic tales:
      Yet in famed Attica such lovely dales
      Are rarely seen; nor can fair Tempe boast
      A charm they know not; loved Parnassus fails,
      Though classic ground and consecrated most,
    To match some spots that lurk within this lowering coast.

                             XLVII.

    He passed bleak Pindus, Acherusia's lake,[17.B.]
      And left the primal city of the land,
      And onwards did his further journey take[148]
      To greet Albania's Chief, whose dread command[18.B.]
      Is lawless law; for with a bloody hand
      He sways a nation,--turbulent and bold:
      Yet here and there some daring mountain-band
      Disdain his power, and from their rocky hold
    Hurl their defiance far, nor yield, unless to gold.[19.B.]

                            XLVIII.

    Monastic Zitza![149] from thy shady brow,[20.B.]
      Thou small, but favoured spot of holy ground!
      Where'er we gaze--around--above--below,--
      What rainbow tints, what magic charms are found!
      Rock, river, forest, mountain, all abound,
      And bluest skies that harmonise the whole:
      Beneath, the distant Torrent's rushing sound
      Tells where the volumed Cataract doth roll
    Between those hanging rocks, that shock yet please the soul.

                             XLIX.

    Amidst the grove that crowns yon tufted hill,
      Which, were it not for many a mountain nigh
      Rising in lofty ranks, and loftier still,
      Might well itself be deemed of dignity,
      The Convent's white walls glisten fair on high:
      Here dwells the caloyer, nor rude is he,[21.B.]
      Nor niggard of his cheer;[150] the passer by
      Is welcome still; nor heedless will he flee
    From hence, if he delight kind Nature's sheen to see.

                               L.

    Here in the sultriest season let him rest,
      Fresh is the green beneath those aged trees;
      Here winds of gentlest wing will fan his breast,[fa]
      From Heaven itself he may inhale the breeze:
      The plain is far beneath--oh! let him seize
      Pure pleasure while he can; the scorching ray
      Here pierceth not, impregnate with disease:
      Then let his length the loitering pilgrim lay,
    And gaze, untired, the Morn--the Noon--the Eve away.

                              LI.

    Dusky and huge, enlarging on the sight,
      Nature's volcanic Amphitheatre,[22.B.]
      Chimaera's Alps extend from left to right:
      Beneath, a living valley seems to stir;
      Flocks play, trees wave, streams flow, the mountain-fir
      Nodding above; behold black Acheron![23.B.]
      Once consecrated to the sepulchre.
      Pluto! if this be Hell I look upon,
    Close shamed Elysium's gates, my shade shall seek for none[fb].

                              LII.

    Ne city's towers pollute the lovely view;
      Unseen is Yanina, though not remote,
      Veiled by the screen of hills: here men are few,
      Scanty the hamlet, rare the lonely cot:
      But, peering down each precipice, the goat[fc]
      Browseth; and, pensive o'er his scattered flock,
      The little shepherd in his white capote[24.B.]
      Doth lean his boyish form along the rock,
    Or in his cave awaits the Tempest's short-lived shock.[fd]

                             LIII.

    Oh! where, Dodona![151] is thine aged Grove,
      Prophetic Fount, and Oracle divine?
      What valley echoed the response of Jove?
      What trace remaineth of the Thunderer's shrine?
      All, all forgotten--and shall Man repine
      That his frail bonds to fleeting life are broke?[152]
      Cease, Fool! the fate of Gods may well be thine:
      Wouldst thou survive the marble or the oak?
    When nations, tongues, and worlds must sink beneath the stroke!

                              LIV.

    Epirus' bounds recede, and mountains fail;[153]
      Tired of up-gazing still, the wearied eye
      Reposes gladly on as smooth a vale
      As ever Spring yclad in grassy dye:[154]
      Ev'n on a plain no humble beauties lie,
      Where some bold river breaks the long expanse,
      And woods along the banks are waving high,
      Whose shadows in the glassy waters dance,
    Or with the moonbeam sleep in Midnight's solemn trance.

                              LV.

    The Sun had sunk behind vast Tomerit,[25.B.]
      And Laos wide and fierce came roaring by;[26.B.]
      The shades of wonted night were gathering yet,
      When, down the steep banks winding warily,
      Childe Harold saw, like meteors in the sky,[155]
      The glittering minarets of Tepalen,
      Whose walls o'erlook the stream; and drawing nigh,
      He heard the busy hum of warrior-men
    Swelling the breeze that sighed along the lengthening glen.

                              LVI.

    He passed the sacred Haram's silent tower,
      And underneath the wide o'erarching gate
      Surveyed the dwelling of this Chief of power,
      Where all around proclaimed his high estate.
      Amidst no common pomp the Despot sate,
      While busy preparation shook the court,
      Slaves, eunuchs, soldiers, guests, and santons[156] wait;[fe]
      Within, a palace, and without, a fort:
    Here men of every clime appear to make resort.

                             LVII.

    Richly caparisoned, a ready row
      Of armed horse, and many a warlike store,
      Circled the wide-extending court below;
      Above, strange groups adorned the corridore;
      And oft-times through the area's echoing door
      Some high-capped Tartar spurred his steed away:
      The Turk--the Greek--the Albanian--and the Moor,
      Here mingled in their many-hued array,
    While the deep war-drum's sound announced the close of day.[ff]

                             LVIII.

    The wild Albanian kirtled to his knee,
      With shawl-girt head and ornamented gun,
      And gold-embroidered garments, fair to see;
      The crimson-scarfed men of Macedon;
      The Delhi with his cap of terror on,
      And crooked glaive--the lively, supple Greek
      And swarthy Nubia's mutilated son;
      The bearded Turk that rarely deigns to speak,
    Master of all around, too potent to be meek,

                              LIX.

    Are mixed conspicuous: some recline in groups,[157]
      Scanning the motley scene that varies round;
      There some grave Moslem to devotion stoops,
      And some that smoke, and some that play, are found;
      Here the Albanian proudly treads the ground;
      Half-whispering there the Greek is heard to prate;
      Hark! from the Mosque the nightly solemn sound,
      The Muezzin's call doth shake the minaret,
    "There is no god but God!--to prayer--lo! God is great!"

                              LX.

    Just at this season Ramazani's fast[158]
      Through the long day its penance did maintain:
      But when the lingering twilight hour was past,
      Revel and feast assumed the rule again:
      Now all was bustle, and the menial train
      Prepared and spread the plenteous board within;
      The vacant Gallery now seemed made in vain,
      But from the chambers came the mingling din,
    As page and slave anon were passing out and in.[159]

                              LXI.

    Here woman's voice is never heard: apart,
      And scarce permitted, guarded, veiled, to move,[fg]
      She yields to one her person and her heart,
      Tamed to her cage, nor feels a wish to rove:
      For, not unhappy in her Master's love,[fh]
      And joyful in a mother's gentlest cares,
      Blest cares! all other feelings far above!
      Herself more sweetly rears the babe she bears
    Who never quits the breast--no meaner passion shares.

                             LXII.

    In marble-paved pavilion, where a spring
      Of living water from the centre rose,
      Whose bubbling did a genial freshness fling,
      And soft voluptuous couches breathed repose,
      ALI reclined, a man of war and woes:[160]
      Yet in his lineaments ye cannot trace,
      While Gentleness her milder radiance throws[161]
      Along that aged venerable face,
    The deeds that lurk beneath, and stain him with disgrace.

                             LXIII.

    It is not that yon hoary lengthening beard
      Ill suits the passions which belong to Youth;[fi]
      Love conquers Age--so Hafiz hath averr'd,
      So sings the Teian, and he sings in sooth[162]--
      But crimes that scorn the tender voice of ruth,[fj][163]
      Beseeming all men ill, but most the man
      In years, have marked him with a tiger's tooth;
      Blood follows blood, and, through their mortal span,
    In bloodier acts conclude those who with blood began.[fk][164]

                             LXIV.

    'Mid many things most new to ear and eye[fl]
      The Pilgrim rested here his weary feet,
      And gazed around on Moslem luxury,
      Till quickly, wearied with that spacious seat
      Of Wealth and Wantonness, the choice retreat
      Of sated Grandeur from the city's noise:
      And were it humbler it in sooth were sweet;
      But Peace abhorreth artificial joys,
    And Pleasure, leagued with Pomp, the zest of both destroys.

                              LXV.

    Fierce are Albania's children, yet they lack
      Not virtues, were those virtues more mature.
      Where is the foe that ever saw their back?
      Who can so well the toil of War endure?
      Their native fastnesses not more secure
      Than they in doubtful time of troublous need:
      Their wrath how deadly! but their friendship sure,
      When Gratitude or Valour bids them bleed,
    Unshaken rushing on where'er their Chief may lead.

                             LXVI.

    Childe Harold saw them in their Chieftain's tower
      Thronging to War in splendour and success;
      And after viewed them, when, within their power,
      Himself awhile the victim of distress;
      That saddening hour when bad men hotlier press:
      But these did shelter him beneath their roof,
      When less barbarians would have cheered him less,
      And fellow-countrymen have stood aloof--[27.B.]
    In aught that tries the heart, how few withstand the proof!

                             LXVII.

    It chanced that adverse winds once drove his bark
      Full on the coast of Suli's shaggy shore,[165]
      When all around was desolate and dark;
      To land was perilous, to sojourn more;
      Yet for awhile the mariners forbore,
      Dubious to trust where Treachery might lurk:
      At length they ventured forth, though doubting sore
      That those who loathe alike the Frank and Turk
    Might once again renew their ancient butcher-work.

                            LXVIII.

    Vain fear! the Suliotes stretched the welcome hand,
      Led them o'er rocks and past the dangerous swamp,
      Kinder than polished slaves though not so bland,
      And piled the hearth, and wrung their garments damp,
      And filled the bowl, and trimmed the cheerful lamp,
      And spread their fare; though homely, all they had:
      Such conduct bears Philanthropy's rare stamp:
      To rest the weary and to soothe the sad,
    Doth lesson happier men, and shames at least the bad.

                             LXIX.

    It came to pass, that when he did address
      Himself to quit at length this mountain-land,
      Combined marauders half-way barred egress,
      And wasted far and near with glaive and brand;
      And therefore did he take a trusty band
      To traverse Acarnania's forest wide,
      In war well-seasoned, and with labours tanned,
      Till he did greet white Achelous' tide,
    And from his further bank AEtolia's wolds espied.[166]

                              LXX.

    Where lone Utraikey forms its circling cove,[167]
      And weary waves retire to gleam at rest,
      How brown the foliage of the green hill's grove,
      Nodding at midnight o'er the calm bay's breast,
      As winds come lightly whispering from the West,
      Kissing, not ruffling, the blue deep's serene:--
      Here Harold was received a welcome guest;
      Nor did he pass unmoved the gentle scene,
    For many a joy could he from Night's soft presence glean.

                             LXXI.

    On the smooth shore the night-fires brightly blazed,
      The feast was done, the red wine circling fast,[28.B.]
      And he that unawares had there ygazed
      With gaping wonderment had stared aghast;
      For ere night's midmost, stillest hour was past,
      The native revels of the troop began;
      Each Palikar his sabre from him cast,[29.B.]
      And bounding hand in hand, man linked to man,
    Yelling their uncouth dirge, long daunced the kirtled clan.[168]

                             LXXII.

    Childe Harold at a little distance stood
      And viewed, but not displeased, the revelrie,
      Nor hated harmless mirth, however rude:
      In sooth, it was no vulgar sight to see
      Their barbarous, yet their not indecent, glee;
      And, as the flames along their faces gleamed,
      Their gestures nimble, dark eyes flashing free,
      The long wild locks that to their girdles streamed,
    While thus in concert they this lay half sang,
                                               half screamed:--[169][30.B.]


                               1.

    Tambourgi![170] Tambourgi! thy 'larum afar[fm][31.B.]
    Gives hope to the valiant, and promise of war;
    All the Sons of the mountains arise at the note,
    Chimariot, Illyrian, and dark Suliote!

                               2.

    Oh! who is more brave than a dark Suliote,
    In his snowy camese[171] and his shaggy capote?
    To the wolf and the vulture he leaves his wild flock,
    And descends to the plain like the stream from the rock.

                               3.

    Shall the sons of Chimari, who never forgive[fn]
    The fault of a friend, bid an enemy live?
    Let those guns so unerring such vengeance forego?
    What mark is so fair as the breast of a foe?[172]

                               4.

    Macedonia sends forth her invincible race;
    For a time they abandon the cave and the chase:
    But those scarfs of blood-red shall be redder, before
    The sabre is sheathed and the battle is o'er.

                               5.

    Then the Pirates of Parga that dwell by the waves,
    And teach the pale Franks what it is to be slaves,
    Shall leave on the beach the long galley and oar,
    And track to his covert the captive on shore.

                               6.

    I ask not the pleasures that riches supply,
    My sabre shall win what the feeble must buy;
    Shall win the young bride with her long flowing hair,[fo]
    And many a maid from her mother shall tear.

                               7.

    I love the fair face of the maid in her youth,[fp]
    Her caresses shall lull me, her music shall soothe;[fq]
    Let her bring from the chamber her many-toned lyre,
    And sing us a song on the fall of her Sire.

                               8.

    Remember the moment when Previsa fell,[173][32.B.]
    The shrieks of the conquered, the conquerors' yell;
    The roofs that we fired, and the plunder we shared,
    The wealthy we slaughtered, the lovely we spared.

                               9.

    I talk not of mercy, I talk not of fear;
    He neither must know who would serve the Vizier:
    Since the days of our Prophet the Crescent ne'er saw
    A chief ever glorious like Ali Pashaw.

                              10.

    Dark Muchtar his son to the Danube is sped,[174]
    Let the yellow-haired[175] Giaours[176]
                                      view his horse-tail[177] with dread;
    When his Delhis[178] come dashing in blood o'er the banks,
    How few shall escape from the Muscovite ranks!

                              11.

    Selictar![179] unsheathe then our chief's Scimit[=a]r;
    Tambourgi! thy 'larum gives promise of War.[fr]
    Ye Mountains, that see us descend to the shore,
    Shall view us as Victors, or view us no more!

                            LXXIII.

    Fair Greece! sad relic of departed Worth![33.B.]
      Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great!
      Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth,
      And long accustomed bondage uncreate?
      Not such thy sons who whilome did await,
      The helpless warriors of a willing doom,
      In bleak Thermopylae's sepulchral strait--
      Oh! who that gallant spirit shall resume,
    Leap from Eurotas' banks, and call thee from the tomb?[180]

                             LXXIV.

    Spirit of Freedom! when on Phyle's brow[34.B.]
      Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train,
      Couldst thou forebode the dismal hour which now
      Dims the green beauties of thine Attic plain?
      Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain,
      But every carle can lord it o'er thy land;
      Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain,
      Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand,
    From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned.[fs]

                             LXXV.

    In all save form alone, how changed! and who
      That marks the fire still sparkling in each eye,
      Who but would deem their bosoms burned anew
      With thy unquenched beam, lost Liberty![ft]
      And many dream withal the hour is nigh
      That gives them back their fathers' heritage:
      For foreign arms and aid they fondly sigh,
      Nor solely dare encounter hostile rage,
    Or tear their name defiled from Slavery's mournful page.

                             LXXVI.

    Hereditary Bondsmen! know ye not
      _Who_ would be free _themselves_ must strike the blow?
      By their right arms the conquest must be wrought?[181]
      Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye? No!
      True--they may lay your proud despoilers low,
      But not for you will Freedom's Altars flame.
      Shades of the Helots! triumph o'er your foe!
      Greece! change thy lords, thy state is still the same;
    Thy glorious day is o'er, but not thine years of shame.

                            LXXVII.

    The city won for Allah from the Giaour
      The Giaour from Othman's race again may wrest;
      And the Serai's impenetrable tower
      Receive the fiery Frank, her former guest;[35.B.]
      Or Wahab's[182] rebel brood who dared divest
      The Prophet's tomb of all its pious spoil,[36.B.]
      May wind their path of blood along the West;
      But ne'er will Freedom seek this fated soil,
    But slave succeed to slave through years of endless toil.

                            LXXVIII.

    Yet mark their mirth--ere Lenten days begin,
      That penance which their holy rites prepare
      To shrive from Man his weight of mortal sin,
      By daily abstinence and nightly prayer;
      But ere his sackcloth garb Repentance wear,
      Some days of joyaunce are decreed to all,
      To take of pleasaunce each his secret share,
      In motley robe to dance at masking ball,
    And join the mimic train of merry Carnival.

                          LXXIX.[183]

    And whose more rife with merriment than thine,
      Oh Stamboul! once the Empress of their reign?
      Though turbans now pollute Sophia's shrine,
      And Greece her very altars eyes in vain:
      (Alas! her woes will still pervade my strain!)
      Gay were her minstrels once, for free her throng,
      All felt the common joy they now must feign,
      Nor oft I've seen such sight, nor heard such song,
    As wooed the eye, and thrilled the Bosphorus along.

                             LXXX.

    Loud was the lightsome tumult on the shore,[184]
      Oft Music changed, but never ceased her tone,
      And timely echoed back the measured oar,
      And rippling waters made a pleasant moan:
      The Queen of tides on high consenting shone,
      And when a transient breeze swept o'er the wave,
      'Twas, as if darting from her heavenly throne,
      A brighter glance her form reflected gave,
    Till sparkling billows seemed to light the banks they lave.

                             LXXXI.

    Glanced many a light Caique along the foam,
      Danced on the shore the daughters of the land,
      No thought had man or maid of rest or home,
      While many a languid eye and thrilling hand
      Exchanged the look few bosoms may withstand,
      Or gently prest, returned the pressure still:
      Oh Love! young Love! bound in thy rosy band,
      Let sage or cynic prattle as he will,
    These hours, and only these, redeem Life's years of ill![185]

                            LXXXII.

    But, midst the throng in merry masquerade,
      Lurk there no hearts that throb with secret pain,
      Even through the closest searment[186] half betrayed?
      To such the gentle murmurs of the main
      Seem to re-echo all they mourn in vain;
      To such the gladness of the gamesome crowd
      Is source of wayward thought and stern disdain:
      How do they loathe the laughter idly loud,
    And long to change the robe of revel for the shroud!

                            LXXXIII.

    This must he feel, the true-born son of Greece,
      If Greece one true-born patriot still can boast:
      Not such as prate of War, but skulk in Peace,
      The bondsman's peace, who sighs for all he lost,
      Yet with smooth smile his Tyrant can accost,
      And wield the slavish sickle, not the sword:
      Ah! Greece! they love thee least who owe thee most--
      Their birth, their blood, and that sublime record[187]
    Of hero Sires, who shame thy now degenerate horde!

                            LXXXIV.

    When riseth Lacedemon's Hardihood,
      When Thebes Epaminondas rears again,
      When Athens' children are with hearts endued,[fu]
      When Grecian mothers shall give birth to men,
      Then may'st thou be restored; but not till then.
      A thousand years scarce serve to form a state;
      An hour may lay it in the dust: and when
      Can Man its shattered splendour renovate,
    Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate?

                             LXXXV.

    And yet how lovely in thine age of woe,
      Land of lost Gods and godlike men, art thou!
      Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow,[37.B.]
      Proclaim thee Nature's varied favourite now:
      Thy fanes, thy temples to thy surface bow,
      Commingling slowly with heroic earth,
      Broke by the share of every rustic plough:
      So perish monuments of mortal birth,
    So perish all in turn, save well-recorded _Worth_:[188]

                            LXXXVI.

    Save where some solitary column[189] mourns
      Above its prostrate brethren of the cave;[38.B.]
      Save where Tritonia's[190] airy shrine adorns
      Colonna's cliff,[191] and gleams along the wave;
      Save o'er some warrior's half-forgotten grave,
      Where the gray stones and unmolested grass
      Ages, but not Oblivion, feebly brave;
      While strangers, only, not regardless pass,
    Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, and sigh "Alas!"

                            LXXXVII.

    Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild;
      Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields,
      Thine olive ripe as when Minerva[192] smiled,
      And still his honied wealth Hymettus[193] yields;
      There the blithe Bee his fragrant fortress builds,
      The free-born wanderer of thy mountain-air;
      Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,
      Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare:[fv]
    Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.

                         LXXXVIII.[194]

    Where'er we tread 'tis haunted, holy ground;
      No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould,
      But one vast realm of Wonder spreads around,
      And all the Muse's tales seem truly told,
      Till the sense aches with gazing to behold
      The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon;
      Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold
      Defies the power which crushed thy temples gone:
    Age shakes Athenae's tower, but spares gray Marathon.[195]

                            LXXXIX.

    The Sun, the soil--but not the slave, the same;--
      Unchanged in all except its foreign Lord,
      Preserves alike its bounds and boundless fame[fw]
      The Battle-field, where Persia's victim horde
      First bowed beneath the brunt of Hellas' sword,
      As on the morn to distant Glory dear,
      When Marathon became a magic word;[39.B.]
      Which uttered, to the hearer's eye appear[fx]
    The camp, the host, the fight, the Conqueror's career,[fy]

                              XC.

    The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow--[fz][196]
      The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear;
      Mountains above--Earth's, Ocean's plain below--
      Death in the front, Destruction in the rear!
      Such was the scene--what now remaineth here?
      What sacred Trophy marks the hallowed ground,
      Recording Freedom's smile and Asia's tear?[ga]
      The rifled urn, the violated mound,[197]
    The dust thy courser's hoof, rude stranger! spurns around.

                              XCI.

    Yet to the remnants of thy Splendour past[gb]
      Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied, throng;
      Long shall the voyager, with th' Ionian blast,[198]
      Hail the bright clime of Battle and of Song:
      Long shall thine annals and immortal tongue
      Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore;
      Boast of the aged! lesson of the young!
      Which Sages venerate and Bards adore,
    As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore.

                             XCII.

    The parted bosom clings to wonted home,
      If aught that's kindred cheer the welcome hearth;
      He that is lonely--hither let him roam,
      And gaze complacent on congenial earth.
      Greece is no lightsome land of social mirth:
      But he whom Sadness sootheth may abide,
      And scarce regret the region of his birth,
      When wandering slow by Delphi's sacred side,
    Or gazing o'er the plains where Greek and Persian died.[199]

                             XCIII.

    Let such approach this consecrated Land,
      And pass in peace along the magic waste;
      But spare its relics--let no busy hand
      Deface the scenes, already how defaced!
      Not for such purpose were these altars placed:
      Revere the remnants Nations once revered:
      So may our Country's name be undisgraced,
      So may'st thou prosper where thy youth was reared,
    By every honest joy of Love and Life endeared!

                             XCIV.

    For thee, who thus in too protracted song
      Hast soothed thine Idlesse with inglorious lays,
      Soon shall thy voice be lost amid the throng
      Of louder Minstrels in these later days:
      To such resign the strife for fading Bays--
      Ill may such contest now the spirit move
      Which heeds nor keen Reproach nor partial Praise,[gc]
      Since cold each kinder heart that might approve--
    And none are left to please when none are left to love.

                              XCV.

    Thou too art gone, thou loved and lovely one!
      Whom Youth and Youth's affections bound to me;
      Who did for me what none beside have done,
      Nor shrank from one albeit unworthy thee.
      What is my Being! thou hast ceased to be!
      Nor staid to welcome here thy wanderer home,
      Who mourns o'er hours which we no more shall see--
      Would they had never been, or were to come!
    Would he had ne'er returned to find fresh cause to roam![gd][200]

                             XCVI.

    Oh! ever loving, lovely, and beloved!
      How selfish Sorrow ponders on the past,
      And clings to thoughts now better far removed!
      But Time shall tear thy shadow from me last.[ge]
      All thou couldst have of mine, stern Death! thou hast;
      The Parent, Friend, and now the more than Friend:
      Ne'er yet for one thine arrows flew so fast,[201]
      And grief with grief continuing still to blend,
    Hath snatched the little joy that Life had yet to lend.

                             XCVII.

    Then must I plunge again into the crowd,
      And follow all that Peace disdains to seek?
      Where Revel calls, and Laughter, vainly loud,
      False to the heart, distorts the hollow cheek,
      To leave the flagging spirit doubly weak;
      Still o'er the features, which perforce they cheer,
      To feign the pleasure or conceal the pique:
      Smiles form the channel of a future tear,
    Or raise the writhing lip with ill-dissembled sneer.

                            XCVIII.

    What is the worst of woes that wait on Age?
      What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow?
      To view each loved one blotted from Life's page,
      And be alone on earth, as I am now.
      Before the Chastener humbly let me bow,
      O'er Hearts divided and o'er Hopes destroyed:
      Roll on, vain days! full reckless may ye flow,
      Since Time hath reft whate'er my soul enjoyed,[gf]
    And with the ills of Eld mine earlier years alloyed.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Note.--The MS. closes with stanza xcii. Stanzas xciii.-xcviii. were
added after _Childe Harold_ was in the press. Byron sent them to Dallas,
October 11, 1811, and, apparently, on the same day composed the _Epistle
to a Friend_ (F. Hodgson) _in answer to some lines exhorting the Author
to be cheerful, and to "Banish Care,"_ and the first poem _To Thyrza_
("Without a stone to mark the Spot"). "I have sent," he writes, "two or
three additional stanzas for both '_Fyttes_.' I have been again shocked
with a _death_, and have lost one very dear to me in happier times; but
'I have almost forgot the taste of grief,' and 'supped full of horrors'
till I have become callous, nor have I a tear left for an event which,
five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. It seems as
though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of age. My
friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am
withered." In one respect he would no longer disclaim identity with
Childe Harold. "Death had deprived him of his nearest connections." He
had seen his friends "around him fall like leaves in wintry weather." He
felt "like one deserted;" and in the "dusky shadow" of that early
desolation he was destined to walk till his life's end. It is not
without cause when "a man of great spirit grows melancholy."

In connection with this subject, it may be noted that lines 6 and 7 of
stanza xcv. do not bear out Byron's contention to Dallas (_Letters_,
October 14 and 31, 1811), that in these three _in memoriam_ stanzas
(ix., xcv., xcvi.) he is bewailing an event which took place _after_ he
returned to Newstead. The "more than friend" had "ceased to be" before
the "wanderer" returned. It is evident that Byron did not take Dallas
into his confidence.]



FOOTNOTES:

[113] {99} [Stanzas i.-xv. form a kind of dramatic prologue to the
Second Canto of the Pilgrimage. The general meaning is clear enough, but
the unities are disregarded. The scene shifts more than once, and there
is a moral within a moral. The poet begins by invoking Athena (Byron
wrote Athenae) to look down on the ruins of "her holy and beautiful
house," and bewails her unreturning heroes of the sword and pen. He then
summons an Oriental, a "Son of the Morning," Moslem or "light Greek,"
possibly a _Canis venaticus_, the discoverer or vendor of a sepulchral
urn, and, with an adjuration to spare the sacred relic, points to the
Acropolis, the cemetery of dead divinities, and then once more to the
urn at his feet. "'Vanity of vanities--all is vanity!' Gods and men may
come and go, but Death 'goes on for ever.'" The scene changes, and he
feigns to be present at the rifling of a barrow, the "tomb of the
Athenian heroes" on the plain of Marathon, or one of the lonely tumuli
on Sigeum and Rhoeteum, "the great and goodly tombs" of Achilles and
Patroclus ("they twain in one golden urn"); of Antilochus, and of
Telamonian Ajax. Marathon he had already visited, and marked "the
perpendicular cut" which at Fauvel's instigation had been recently
driven into the large barrow; and he had, perhaps, read of the real or
pretended excavation by Signor Ghormezano (1787) of a tumulus at the
Sigean promontory. The "mind's eye," which had conjured up "the
shattered heaps," images a skull of one who "kept the world in awe,"
and, after moralizing in Hamlet's vein on the humorous catastrophe of
decay, the poet concludes with the Preacher "that there is no work, nor
device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave." After this profession
of unfaith, before he returns to Harold and his pilgrimage, he takes up
his parable and curses Elgin and all his works. The passage as a whole
suggests the essential difference between painting and poetry. As a
composition, it recalls the frontispiece of a seventeenth-century
classic. The pictured scene, with its superfluity of accessories, is
grotesque enough; but the poetic scenery, inconsequent and yet vivid as
a dream, awakens, and fulfills the imagination. (_Travels in Albania_,
by Lord Broughton, 1858, i. 380; ii. 128, 129, 138; _The Odyssey_, xxiv.
74, _sq_. See, too, Byron's letters to his mother, April 17, and to H.
Drury, May 3, 1810: _Letters_, 1898, i. 262.)]

[do] {100} _Ancient of days! august Athenae! where_.--[MS. D.]

[dp] _Gone--mingled with the waste_----.--[MS. erased.]

[114] {101} ["Stole," apart from its restricted use as an ecclesiastical
vestment, is used by Spenser and other poets as an equivalent for any
long and loosely flowing robe, but is, perhaps inaccurately, applied to
the short cloak (_tribon_), the "habit" of Socrates when he lived, and,
after his death, the distinctive dress of the cynics.]

[dq] ----_gray flits the Ghost of Power_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[dr] ----_whose altars cease to burn_.--[D.]

[ds] ----_whose Faith is built on reeds_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[115] {102} [Compare Shakespeare, _Measure for Measure_, act iii, sc. 1,
lines 5-7--

                 "Reason thus with life:
    If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
    That none but fools would keep."]

[dt] _Still wilt thou harp_----.--[MS. D. erased.]

[du] _Though 'twas a God, as graver records tell_.--[MS. erased.]

[116] [The demigods Erechtheus and Theseus "appeared" at Marathon, and
fought side by side with Miltiades (Grote's _History of Greece_, iv.
284).]

[117] {103} [Compare Shakespeare, _Hamlet_, act v. sc. 1, _passim_.]

[118] [Socrates affirmed that true self-knowledge was to know that we
know nothing, and in his own case he denied any other knowledge; but
"this confession of ignorance was certainly not meant to be a sceptical
denial of all knowledge." "The idea of knowledge was to him a boundless
field, in the face of which he could not but be ignorant" (_Socrates and
the Socratic Schools_, by Dr. E. Zeller, London, 1868, p. 102).]

[119] [Stanzas viii. and ix. are not in the MS.

The expunged lines (see _var._ i.) carried the Lucretian tenets of the
preceding stanza to their logical conclusion. The end is silence, not a
reunion with superior souls. But Dallas objected; and it may well be
that, in the presence of death, Byron could not "guard his unbelief," or
refrain from a renewed questioning of the "Grand Perhaps." Stanza for
stanza, the new version is an improvement on the original. (See
_Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron_, 1824, p. 169. See, too,
letters to Hodgson, September 3 and September 13, 1811: _Letters_, 1898,
ii. 18, 34.)]

[dv]

    _Frown not upon me, churlish Priest! that I_
      _Look not for Life, where life may never be:_
      _I am no sneerer at thy phantasy;_
      _Thou pitiest me, alas! I envy thee,_
      _Thou bold Discoverer in an unknown sea_
      _Of happy Isles and happier Tenants there;_
      _I ask thee not to prove a Sadducee;_[Sec.1]
      _Still dream of Paradise, thou know'st not where,_[Sec.2]
    _Which if it be thy sins will never let thee share_.[Sec.3]
                            --[MS. D. erased.]_

[Sec.1] The Sadducees did not believe in the Resurrection.--[MS. D.]

[Sec.2]

    _But look upon a scene that once was fair_.--[Erased.]
    _Zion's holy hill which thou wouldst fancy fair_.--[Erased.]

[Sec.3]

    _As those, which thou delight'st to rear in upper air_.--[Erased.]
    _Yet lovs't too well to bid thine erring brother share_.--[D. erased.]

[120] {104} [Byron forwarded this stanza in a letter to Dallas, dated
October 14, 1811, and was careful to add, "I think it proper to state to
you, that this stanza alludes to an event which has taken place since my
arrival here, and not to the death of any _male_ friend" (_Letters_.
1898, ii. 57). The reference is not to Edleston, as Dallas might have
guessed, and as Wright (see _Poetical Works_, 1891, p. 17) believed.
Again, in a letter to Dallas, dated October 31, 1811 (_ibid_., ii. 65),
he sends "a few stanzas," presumably the lines "To Thyrza," which are
dated October 31, 1811, and says that "they refer to the death of one to
whose name you are a _stranger_, and, consequently, cannot be interested
(_sic_) ... They relate to the same person whom I have mentioned in Canto
2nd, and at the conclusion of the poem." It follows from this second
statement that we have Byron's authority for connecting stanza ix. with
stanzas xcv., xcvi., and, inferentially, his authority for connecting
stanzas ix., xcv., xcvi. with the group of "Thyrza" poems. And there our
knowledge ends. We must leave the mystery where Byron willed that it
should be left. "All that we know is, nothing can be known."]

[dw] {105}

    _Whate'er beside_}
                     } _Futurity's behest_.[Sec.]
    _Howe'er may be_ }
    Or seeing thee no more to sink in sullen rest_.--[MS. D.]

[Sec.] [See letter to Dallas, October 14, 1811.]

[121] {106} [For note on the "Elgin Marbles," see _Introduction to the
Curse of Minerva: Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 453-456.]

[dx]
      _The last, the worst dull Robber, who was he?_
      _Blush Scotland such a slave thy son could be_--
      _England! I joy no child he was of thine:_
      _Thy freeborn men revere what once was free,_
      _Nor tear the Sculpture from its saddening shrine,_
    _Nor bear the spoil away athwart the weeping Brine_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[dy]
    _This be the wittol Picts ignoble boast_.--[MS. D.]
    _To rive what Goth and Turk, and Time hath spared:_
    _Cold and accursed as his native coast_.--[MS. D. erased]

[122] ["On the plaster wall of the Chapel of Pandrosos adjoining the
Erechtheum, these words have been very deeply cut--

    'Quod non fecerunt Goti,
      Hoc fecerunt Scoti'"

(_Travels in Albania_, 1858, i. 299). M. Darmesteter quotes the
original: "mot sur les Barberini" ("Quod non fecere Barbari, Fecere
Barberini"). It may be added that Scotchmen are named among the
volunteers who joined the Hanoverian mercenaries in the Venetian
invasion of Greece in 1686. (See _The Curse of Minerva: Poetical Works_,
1898, i. 463, note 1; Finlay's _Hist. of Greece_, v. 189.)]

[dz] {107}

    What! shall it e'er be said by British tongue,
      Albion was happy while Athenae mourned?
      Though in thy name the slave her bosom wrung,
      Albion! I would not see thee thus adorned
      With gains thy generous spirit should have scorned,
      From Man distinguished by some monstrous sign,
      Like Attila the Hun was surely horned,[Sec.1]
      Who wrought the ravage amid works divine:
    Oh that Minerva's voice lent its keen aid to mine.--[MS. D. erased.]

    What! shall it e'er be said by British tongue,
      Albion was happy in Athenae's tears?
      Though in thy name the slave her bosom wrung,
      Let it not vibrate in pale Europe's ears,[Sec.2]
      The Saviour Queen, the free Britannia, wears
      The last poor blunder of a bleeding land:
      That she, whose generous aid her name endears,
      Tore down those remnants with a Harpy's hand,
    Which Envious Eld forbore and Tyrants left to stand.--[MS. D.][Sec.3]

[Sec.1] Attila was horned, if we may trust contemporary legends, and the
etchings of his visage in Lavater.--[M.S.]

[Sec.2] Lines 5-9 in the Dallas transcript are in Byron's handwriting.

[Sec.3] _Which centuries forgot_----.--[D. erased.]

[ea] {108} After stanza xiii. the MS. inserts the two following
stanzas:--

    Come then, ye classic Thieves of each degree,
      Dark Hamilton[Sec.1] and sullen Aberdeen,
      Come pilfer all the Pilgrim loves to see,
      All that yet consecrates the fading scene:
      Ah! better were it ye had never been,
      Nor ye, nor Elgin, nor that lesser wight.
      The victim sad of vase-collecting spleen.
      House-furnisher withal, one Thomas[Sec.2] hight,
    Than ye should bear one stone from wronged Athenae's site.

    Or will the gentle Dilettanti crew
      Now delegate the task to digging Gell,[Sec.3]
      That mighty limner of a bird's eye view,
      How like to Nature let his volumes tell:
      Who can with him the folio's limit swell
      With all the Author saw, or said he saw?
      Who can topographize or delve so well?
      No boaster he, nor impudent and raw,
    His pencil, pen, and spade, alike without a flaw.--[D. erased.]

[Sec.1] [William Richard Hamilton (1777-1859) was the son of Anthony
Hamilton, Archdeacon of Colchester, etc., and grandson of Richard
Terrick, Bishop of London. In 1799, when Lord Elgin was appointed
Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, Hamilton accompanied him as private
secretary. After the battle of Ramassieh (Alexandria, March 20, 1801),
and the subsequent evacuation of Egypt by the French (August 30, 1801),
Hamilton, who had been sent on a diplomatic mission, was successful in
recapturing the Rosetta Stone, which, in violation of a specified
agreement, had been placed on board a French man-of-war. He was
afterwards employed by Elgin as agent plenipotentiary in the purchase,
removal, and deportation of marbles. He held office (1809-22) as
Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and as Minister at the Court of
Naples (1822-25). From 1838 to 1858 he was a Trustee of the British
Museum. He published, in 1809, _AEgyptiaca, or Some Account of the
Ancient and Modern State of Egypt_; and, in 1811, his _Memorandum on the
Subject of the Earl of Elgin's Pursuits in Greece_. (For Hamilton, see
_English Bards_, etc., line 509; _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 336, note
2.)]

[Sec.2] Thomas Hope, Esqr., if I mistake not, the man who publishes quartos
on furniture and costume.

[Thomas Hope (1770-1831) (see _Hints from Horace_, line 7: _Poetical
Works_, 1898, i. 390, note 1) published, in 1805, a folio volume
entitled, _Household Furniture and Internal Decoration_. It was severely
handled in the _Edinburgh Review_ (No. xx.) for July, 1807.]

[Sec.3] It is rumoured Gell is coming out to dig in Olympia. I wish him
more success than he had at Athens. According to Lusieri's account, he
began digging most furiously without a firmann, but before the
resurrection of a single sauce-pan, the Painter countermined and the
Way-wode countermanded and sent him back to bookmaking.--[MS. D.]

[See _English Bards, etc._, lines 1033, 1034: _Poetical Works_, 1898, i.
379, _note_ 1.]

[eb] _Where was thine AEgis, Goddess_----.--[MS. D. erased]

[ec] {110} ----_which it had well behoved_.--[MS. D.]

[123] [The Athenians believed, or feigned to believe, that the marbles
themselves shrieked out in shame and agony at their removal from their
ancient shrines.]

[124] [Byron is speaking of his departure from Spain, but he is thinking
of his departure from Malta, and his half-hearted amour with Mrs.
Spencer Smith.]

[ed] {111} ----_that rosy urchin guides_.--[MS.]

[ee] _Save on that part_----.--[MS. erased.]

[ef] {112}
    _From Discipline's stern law_----.--[MS.]
       ----_keen law_----.--[MS. D.]

[125] An additional "misery to human life!"--lying to at sunset for a
large convoy, till the sternmost pass ahead. Mem.: fine frigate, fair
wind likely to change before morning, but enough at present for ten
knots!--[MS. D.]

[eg] ----_their melting girls believe_.--[MS.]

[eh] {113}
    _Meantime some rude musician's restless hand_
    _Ply's the brisk instrument that sailors love_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[ei] _Through well-known straits behold the steepy shore_.--[MS.
erased.]

[126] [Compare Coleridge's reflections, in his diary for April 19, 1804,
on entering the Straits of Gibraltar: "When I first sat down, with
Europe on my left and Africa on my right, both distinctly visible, I
felt a quickening of the movements in the blood, but still felt it as a
pleasure of _amusement_ rather than of thought and elevation; and at the
same time, and gradually winning on the other, the nameless silent forms
of nature were working in me, like a tender thought in a man who is
hailed merrily by some acquaintance in his work, and answers it in the
same tone" (_Anima Poetae_, 1895, pp. 70, 71).]

[127] ["The moon is in the southern sky as the vessel passes through the
Straits; consequently, the coast of Spain is in light, that of Africa in
shadow" (_Childe Harold_, edited by H. F. Tozer, 1885, p. 232).]

[128] [Campbell, in _Gertrude of Wyoming_, Canto I. stanza ii. line 6,
speaks of "forests brown;" but, as Mr. Tozer points out, "'brown' is
Byron's usual epithet for landscape seen in moonlight." (Compare Canto
II. stanza lxx. line 3; _Parisina_, i. 10; and _Siege of Corinth_, ii.
1.)]

[ej] {114}
        _Bleeds the lone heart, once boundless in its zeal_.--[D.]
        _And friendless now, yet dreams it had a friend_.--[MS.]
    or, _Far from affection's chilled or changing zeal_.--[MS.]
        _Divided far by fortune, wave or steel_
        _Though friendless now we once have had a friend_.--
                                              [MS. D. erased.]

[ek] _Ah! happy years! I would I were once more a boy_.--[MS.]

[el] _To gaze on Dian's wan reflected sphere_.--[MS. D]

[em] ----_her dreams of hope and pride_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[en] {115} _None are so wretched[Sec.] but that_----.--[MS.D.]

[Sec.] "Desolate."--[MS. pencil.]

[eo] _T.t.b._ [tres tres bien], _but why insert here_.--[MS. pencil.]

[129] [In this stanza M. Darmesteter detects "l'accent Wordsworthien"
prior to any "doses" as prescribed by Shelley, and quotes as a possible
model the following lines from Beattie's _Minstrel_:--

    "And oft the craggy cliff he lov'd to climb,
      When all in mist the world below was lost,
      What dreadful pleasure! there to stand sublime,
      Like shipwreck'd mariner on desert coast,
      And view th' enormous waste of vapour, tost
      In billows, lengthening to th' horizon round,
      Now scoop'd in gulfs, with mountains now emboss'd!
      And hear the voice of mirth, and song rebound,
    Flocks, herds, and waterfalls, along the hoar profound."

In felicity of expression, the copy, if it be a copy, surpasses the
original; but in the scope and originality of the image, it is vastly
inferior. Nor are these lines, with the possible exception of line
3--"Where things that own not Man's dominion dwell," at all
Wordsworthian. They fail in that imaginative precision which the Lake
poets regarded as essential, and they lack the glamour and passion
without which their canons of art would have profited nothing. Six years
later, when Byron came within sound of Wordsworth's voice, he struck a
new chord--a response, not an echo. Here the motive is rhetorical, not
immediately poetical.]

[ep] {116} ----_and foaming linns to lean_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[130] [There are none to bless us, for when we are in distress the
great, the rich, the gay, shrink from us; and when we are popular and
prosperous those who court us care nothing for us apart from our
success. Neither do they bless us, or we them.]

[eq] _This is to live alone--This, This is solitude_.--[MS. D.]

[131] [The MS. of stanza xxvii. is on the fly-leaf of a bound volume of
proof-sheets entitled "Additions to Childe Harold," It was first
published in the seventh edition, 1814. It may be taken for granted that
Byron had seen what he describes. There is, however, no record of any
visit to Mount Athos, either in his letters from the East or in
Hobhouse's journals.

The actual mount, "the giant height [6350 feet], rears itself in
solitary magnificence, an insulated cone of white limestone." "When it
is seen from a distance, the peninsula [of which the southern portion
rises to a height of 2000 feet] is below the horizon, and the peak rises
quite solitary from the sea." Of this effect Byron may have had actual
experience; but Hobhouse, in describing the prospect from Cape
Janissary, is careful to record that "Athos itself is said to be
sometimes visible in the utmost distance (circ. 90 miles), but it was
not discernible during our stay on the spot." (Murray's _Handbook for
Greece_, p. 843; _Childe Harold_, edited by H. F. Tozer, p. 233;
_Travels in Albania_, 1858, ii. 103. Compare, too, the fragment entitled
the _Monk of Athos_, first published in the Hon. Roden Noel's _Life of
Lord Byron_, 1890.)]

[132] {118} ["Le sage Mentor, poussant Telemaque, qui etait assis sur le
bord du rocher, le precipite dans le mer et s'y jette avec lui....
Calypso inconsolable, rentra dans sa grotte, qu'elle remplit de ses
hurlements."--Fenelon's _Telemaque_, vi., Paris, 1837. iii. 43.]

[133] [For Mrs. Spencer Smith, see _Letters_, 1898, i. 244, 245, note.
Moore (_Life_, pp. 94, 95) contrasts stanzas xxx.-xxxv., with their
parade of secret indifference and plea of "a loveless heart," with the
tenderness and warmth of his after-thoughts in Albania ("Lines composed
during a Thunderstorm," etc.), and decides the coldness was real, the
sentiment assumed. He forgets the flight of time. The lines were written
in October, 1809, within a month of his departure from "Calypso's
isles," and the _Childe Harold_ stanzas belong to the early spring of
1810. "Ou sont les neiges d'antan?" Moreover, he speaks by the card.
Writing at Athens, January 16, 1810, he tells us, "The spell is broke,
the charm is flown."]

[134] {120} [More than one commentator gravely "sets against" this
line--Byron's statement to Dallas (_Corr. of Lord Byron_, Paris, 1824,
iii. 91), "I am not a Joseph or a Scipio; but I can safely affirm that
never in my life I seduced any woman." Compare _Memoirs of Count Carlo
Gozzi_, 1890, ii. 12, "Never have I employed the iniquitous art of
seduction ... Languishing in soft and thrilling sentiments, I demanded
from a woman a sympathy and inclination of like nature with my own. If
she fell ... I should have remembered how she made for me the greatest
of all sacrifices.... I should have worshipped her like a deity. I could
have spent my life's blood in consoling her; and without swearing
eternal constancy, I should have been most stable on my side in loving
such a mistress."]

[er] {121} _Brisk Impudence_----.--[MS.]

[es] _Youth wasted, wretches born_----.--[MS. erased.]

[135] [Compare Lucretius, iv. 1121-4--

    "Adde quod absumunt viris pereuntque labore,

           *       *       *       *       *

    Labitur interea res, et Babylonica fiunt:
    Languent officia, atque aegrotat fama vacillans."]

[et] {122} _Climes strange withal as ever mortal head_.--[MS.]

[eu] _Suspected in its little pride of thought_.--[MS. erased.]

[136] ["Were counselled or advised." The passive "were ared" seems to
lack authority. (See _N. Eng. Dict._, art. "Aread.")]

[ev]
        _Her not unconscious though her weakly child_.
    or, ----_her rudest child_.--[MS. erased.]

[137] [Compare the description of the thunderstorm in the Alps (Canto
III. stanzas xcii.-xcvi., pp. 273-275); and _Manfred_, act ii. sc. 2--

    "My joy was in the wilderness; to breathe
    The difficult air of the iced mountain-top--
           *       *       *       *       *
    In them my early strength exulted; or
    To follow through the night the moving moon,
    The stars and their development; or catch
    The dazzling lightnings till my eyes grew dim."

Beattie, who describes the experiences of his own boyhood in the person
of Edwin in _The Minstrel_, had already made a like protestation--

    "In sooth he was a strange and wayward youth.
    Fond of each gentle and each dreadful scene.
    In darkness and in storm he found delight;
    Not less than when on ocean-wave serene
    The Southern sun diffus'd his dazzling sheen;
    Even sad vicissitude amus'd his soul."

Kirke White, too, who was almost Byron's contemporary, and whose verses
he professed to admire--

                    "Would run a visionary boy
    When the hoarse tempest shook the vaulted sky."

This love of Nature in her wilder aspects, which was perfectly genuine,
and, indeed, meritorious, was felt to be out of the common, a note of
the poetic temperament, worth recording, but unlikely to pass without
questioning and remonstrance.]

[138] {123} [Alexander's mother, Olympias, was an Epiriote. She had a
place in the original draft of Tennyson's _Palace of Art_ (_Life of Lord
Tennyson_,. 119)--

    "One was Olympias; the floating snake
      Roll'd round her ankles, round her waist
      Knotted," etc.

Plutarch (_Vitae_, Lipsiae:, 1814, vi. 170) is responsible for the legend:
[Greek: O)\phthe de/ pote kai\ dra/kon koimome/nes te~s O)lympia/dou
parektetame/ns to~| so/mati], "Now, one day, when Olympias lay abed,
beside her body a dragon was espied stretched out at full length."
(Compare, too, Dryden's _Alexander's Feast_, stanza ii.)]

[139] [Mr. Tozer (_Childe Harold_, p. 236) takes this line to mean "whom
the young love to talk of, and the wise to follow as an example," and
points to Alexander's foresight as a conqueror, and the "extension of
commerce and civilization" which followed his victories. But, surely,
the antithesis lies between Alexander the ideal of the young, and
Alexander the deterrent example of the old. The phrase, "beacon of the
wise," if Hector in _Troilus and Cressida_ (act ii. sc. 2, line 16) is
an authority, is proverbial.

           " ... The wound of peace is surety,
    Surety secure; but modest doubt is call'd
    The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches
    To the bottom of the worst."

The beauty, the brilliance, the glory of Alexander kindle the enthusiasm
of the young; but the murder of Clytus and the early death which he
brought upon himself are held up by the wise as beacon-lights to save
others from shipwreck.]

[140] [Byron and Hobhouse sailed for Malta in the brig-of-war _Spider_
on Tuesday, September 19, 1809 (Byron, in a letter to his mother,
November 12, says September 21), and anchored off Patras on the night of
Sunday, the 24th. On Tuesday, the 26th, they were under way at 12 noon,
and on the evening of that day they saw the sun set over Mesalonghi. The
next morning, September 27, they were in the channel between Ithaca and
the mainland, with Ithaca, then in the hands of the French, to the left.
"We were close to it," says Hobhouse, "and saw a few shrubs on a brown
heathy land, two little towns in the hills scattered among trees." The
travellers made "but little progress this day," and, apparently, having
redoubled Cape St. Andreas, the southern extremity of Ithaca, they
sailed (September 28) through the channel between Ithaca and Cephalonia,
passed the hill of AEtos, on which stood the so-called "Castle of
Ulysses," whence Penelope may have "overlooked the wave," and caught
sight of "the Lover's refuge" in the distance. Towards the close of the
same day they doubled Cape Ducato ("Leucadia's cape," the scene of
Sappho's leap), and, sailing under "the ancient mount," the site of the
Temple of Apollo, anchored off Prevesa at seven in the evening. Poetry
and prose are not always in accord. If, as Byron says, it was "an
autumn's eve" when they hailed "Leucadia's cape afar," if the evening
star shone over the rock when they approached it, they must have sailed
fast to reach Prevesa, some thirty miles to the north, by seven o'clock.
But _de minimis_, the Muse is as disregardful as the Law. And, perhaps,
after all, it was Hobhouse who misread his log-book. (_Travels in
Albania_, i. 4, 5; Murray's _Handbook for Greece_, pp. 40, 46.)]

[141] {125} [The meaning of this passage is not quite so obvious as it
seems. He has in his mind the words, "He saved others, Himself He cannot
save," and, applying this to Sappho, asks, "Why did she who conferred
immortality on herself by her verse prove herself mortal?" Without Fame,
and without verse the cause and keeper of Fame, there is no heaven, no
immortality, for the sons of men. But what security is there for the
eternity of verse and Fame? "_Quis custodiet custodes_?"]

[142] {126} [For Byron's "star" similes, see Canto III. stanza xxxviii.
line 9.]

[ew] ----_and looked askance on Mars_.--[MS. erased.]

[143] [Compare the line in Tennyson's song, _Break, break, break,_ "And
the stately ships go on."]

[ex]
    _And roused him more from thought than he was wont_
    _While Pleasure almost seemed to smooth his pallid front_.--[MS. D.]
    _While Pleasure almost smiled along_----.--[MS. erased.]

[144] [By "Suli's rocks" Byron means the mountainous district in the
south of the Epirus. The district of Suli formed itself into a small
republic at the close of the last century, and offered a formidable
resistance to Ali Pacha. "Pindus' inland peak," Monte Metsovo, which
forms part of the ridge which divides Epirus from Thessaly, is not
visible from the sea-coast.]

[145] {127} ["Shore unknown." (See Byron's note to stanza xxxviii. line
5.)]

[ey] {128} ----_lovely harmful thing_.--[MS. pencil.]

[146] [Compare Byron's _Stanzas written on passing the Ambracian
Gulph_.]

[147] [Nicopolis, "the city of victory," which Augustus, "the second
Caesar," built to commemorate Actium, is some five miles to the north of
Prevesa. Byron and Hobhouse visited the ruins on the 30th of September,
and again on the 12th of November (see Byron's letter to Mrs. Byron.
November 12, 1809: _Letters_, 1898, i. 251).]

[ez]
    _Imperial wretches, doubling human woes!_
    _God!--was thy globe ere made_----.--[MS. erased.]

[148] {129} [The travellers left Prevesa on October 1, and arrived at
Janina on October 5. They left Janina on October 11, and reached Zitza
at nightfall (Byron at 3 a.m., October 12). They left Zitza on October
13, and arrived at Tepeleni on October 19.]

[149] [On the evening of October 11, as the party was approaching Zitza,
Hobhouse and the Albanian, Vasilly, rode on, leaving "Lord Byron and the
baggage behind." It was getting dark, and just as the luckier Hobhouse
contrived to make his way to the village, the rain began to fall in
torrents. Before long, "the thunder roared as it seemed without any
intermission; for the echoes of one peal had not ceased to roll in the
mountains before another crash burst over our heads." Byron, dragoman,
and baggage were not three miles from Zitza when the storm began, and
they lost their way. After many wanderings and adventures they were
finally conducted by ten men with pine torches to the hut; but by that
time it was three o'clock in the morning. Hence the "Stanzas composed
during a Thunderstorm."--Hobhouse's _Travels in Albania_, i. 69-71.]

[150] {130} ["The prior of the monastery, a humble, meek-mannered man,
entertained us in a warm chamber with grapes and a pleasant white wine
...We were so well pleased with everything about us that we agreed to
lodge with him."--Hobhouse's _Travels in Albania_, i. 73.]

[fa] _Here winds, if winds there be, will fan his breast_.--[MS. D.
erased.]

[fb] _Keep Heaven for better souls, my shade shall seek for none_.--[MS.
erased.]

[fc] {132}
    _But frequent is the lamb, the kid, the goat_--
    _And watching pensive with his browsing flock_.--[MS. erased.]

[fd] _Counting the hours beneath yon skies unerring shock_.--[MS.
erased.]

[151] [The site of Dodona, a spot "at the foot of Mount Tomaros" (Mount
Olytsika) in the valley of Tcharacovista, was finally determined, in
1876, by excavations carried out, at his own expense, by M. Constantin
Carapanos, a native of Arta. In his monograph, _Dodone et ses Ruines_
(Paris, 1878, 4to), M. Carapanos gives a detailed description of the
theatre, the twofold Temenos (I. _L'Enceinte du Temple_, II. _Temenos_,
pp. 13-28), including the Temple of Zeus and a sanctuary of Aphrodite,
and of the numerous _ex voto_ offerings and inscriptions on lead which
were brought to light during the excavations, and helped to identify the
ruins. An accompanying folio volume of plates contains (Planches, i.,
ii.) a map of the valley of Tcharacovista, and a lithograph of Mount
Tomaros, "d'un aspect majestueux et pittoresque ... un roc nu sillonne
par le lit de nombreux torrents" (p. 8). Behind Dodona, on the summit of
the many-named chain of hills which confronts Mount Tomaros, are
"bouquets de chene," sprung it may be from the offspring of the [Greek:
prose/goroi dry/es] (AEsch., _Prom._, 833), the "talking oaks," which
declared the will of Zeus. For the "prophetic fount" (line 2), Servius,
commenting on Virgil, _AEneid_, iii. 41-66, seems to be the authority:
"Circa hoc templum quercus immanis fuisse dicitur ex cujus radicibus
fons manebat, qui suo murmure instinctu Deorum diversis oracula
reddebat" (_Virgilii Opera_, Leovardiae, 1717, i. 548).

Byron and Hobhouse, on one of their excursions from Janina, explored and
admired the ruins of the "amphitheatre," but knew not that "here and
nowhere else" was Dodona (_Travels in Albania_, i. 53-56).]

[152] {133} [The sentiment that man, "whose breath is in his nostrils,"
should consider the impermanence of all that is stable and durable
before he cries out upon his own mortality, may have been drawn
immediately from the famous letter of consolation sent by Sulpitius
Severus to Cicero, which Byron quotes in a note to Canto IV. stanza
xliv., or, in the first instance, from Tasso's _Gerusalemme Liberata_,
xv. 20--

    "Giace l'alta Cartago; appena i segni
    Dell' alte sue ruini il lido serba.
    Muojono le citta; muojono i regni:
    Copre i fasti, e le pompe, arena ed erba;
    E l'uom d'esser mortal par cue si sdegni!"

Compare, too, Addison's "Reflections in Westminster Abbey," _Spectator_,
No. 26.]

[153] [The six days' journey from Zitza to Tepeleni is compressed into a
single stanza. The vale (line 3) may be that of the Kalama, through
which the travellers passed (October 13) soon after leaving Zitza, or,
more probably, the plain of Deropoli ("well-cultivated, divided by rails
and low hedges, and having a river flowing through it to the south"),
which they crossed (October 15) on their way from Delvinaki, the
frontier village of Illyria, to Libokhovo.]

[154] {134} ["Yclad," used as a preterite, not a participle (compare
Coleridge's "I wis" [_Christabel_, part i. line 92]), is a
Byronism--"archaisme incorrect," says M. Darmesteter.]

[155] ["During the fast of the Ramazan, ... the gallery of each minaret
is decorated with a circlet of small lamps. When seen from a distance,
each minaret presents a point of light, 'like meteors in the sky;' and
in a large city, where they are numerous, they resemble a swarm of
fireflies."--H.F. Tozer. (Compare _The Giaour_, i. 449-452--

    "When Rhamazan's last sun was set,
    And flashing from each minaret.
    Millions of lamps proclaimed the feast
    Of Bairam through the boundless East.")]

[156] {135} ["A kind of dervish or recluse ... regarded as a
saint."--_Cent. Dict._, art. "Santon."]

[fe] ----_guests and vassals wait_.--[MS. erased.]

[ff] _While the deep Tocsin's sound_----.--[MS. D. erased.]

[157] {136} ["We were disturbed during the night by the perpetual
carousal which seemed to be kept up in the gallery, and by the drum, and
the voice of the 'muezzinn,' or chanter, calling the Turks to prayers
from the minaret of the mosck attached to the palace. This chanter was a
boy, and he sang out his hymn is a sort of loud melancholy recitative.
He was a long time repeating the Eraun. The first exclamation was
repeated four times, the remaining words twice; and the long and
piercing note in which he concluded his confession of faith, by twice
crying out the word 'hou!' ['At solemn sound of "Alla Hu!"' _Giaour_, i.
734] still rings in my ears."--Hobhouse's _Travels in Albania_, i. 95.
D'Ohsonn gives the Eraun at full length: "Most high God! [four times
repeated]. I acknowledge that there is no other God except God! I
acknowledge that there is no other God except God! I acknowledge that
Mohammed is the prophet of God! Come to prayer! Come to prayer! Come to
the temple of salvation! Come to the temple of salvation! Great God!
great God! There is no God except God!"--_Oriental Antiquities_
(Philadelphia, 1788), p. 341.]

[158] {137} ["The Ramazan, or Turkish Lent, which, as it occurs in each
of the thirteen months in succession, fell this year in October ...
Although during this month the strictest abstinence, even from tobacco
and coffee, is observed in the daytime, yet with the setting of the sun
the feasting commences."--_Travels in Albania_, i. 66. "The Ramadan or
Rhamazan is the ninth month of the Mohammedan year. As the Mohammedans
reckon by lunar time, it begins each year eleven days earlier than in
the preceding year, so that in thirty-three years it occurs successively
in all the seasons."--_Imp. Dictionary_.]

[159] [The feast was spread within the courtyard, "in the part farthest
from the dwelling," and when the revelry began the "immense large
gallery" or corridor, which ran along the front of the palace and was
open on one side to the court, was deserted. "Opening into the gallery
were the doors of several apartments," and as the servants passed in and
out, the travellers standing in the courtyard could hear the sound of
voices.--_Travels in Albania_, i. 93.]

[fg] {138}
    ----_even for health to move_.--[MS.]
    _She saves for one_----.--[MS. erased.]

[fh]
    _For boyish minions of unhallowed love_
    _The shameless torch of wild desire is lit_,
    _Caressed, preferred even to woman's self above_,
    _Whose forms for Nature's gentler errors fit_
    _All frailties mote excuse save that which they commit_.
                                                     --[MS. D. erased.]

[160] [For an account of Ali Pasha (1741-1822), see _Letters_, 1898, i.
246, note.]

[161] [In a letter to his mother, November 12, 1809, Byron writes, "He
[Ali] said he was certain I was a man of birth, because I had small
ears, curling hair, and little white hands. ... He told me to consider
him as a father whilst I was in Turkey, and said he looked on me as his
son. Indeed, he treated me like a child, sending me almonds and sugared
sherbet, fruit and sweetmeats, twenty times a day." Many years after, in
the first letter _On Bowles' Strictures_, February 7, 1821, he
introduces a reminiscence of Ali: "I never judge from manners, for I
once had my pocket picked by the civillest gentleman I ever met with;
and one of the mildest persons I ever saw was Ali Pasha" (_Life_, p.
689).]

[fi] {139} _Delights to mingle with the lips of youth_.--[MS. D.
erased.]

[162] [Anacreon sometimes bewails, but more often defies old age.
(_Vide_ Carmina liv., xi., xxxiv.)

The paraphrase "Teian Muse" recurs in the song, "The Isles of Greece,"
_Don Juan_, Canto III.]

[fj] _But 'tis those ne'er forgotten acts of ruth_.--[MS. D.]

[163] [In the first edition the reading (see _var_. ii.) is, "But
crimes, those ne'er forgotten crimes of ruth." The mistake was pointed
out in the _Quarterly Review_ (March, 1812, No. 13, vol. vii. p. 193).

But in Spenser "ruth" means sorrow as well as pity, and three weeks
after _Childe Harold_ was published, Ali committed a terrible crime, the
outcome of an early grief. On March 27, 1812, in revenge for wrongs done
to his mother and sister nearly thirty years before, he caused 670
Gardhikiots to be massacred in the khan of Valiare, and followed up the
act of treachery by sacking, plundering, and burning the town of
Gardiki, and, "in direct violation of the Mohammedan law," carrying off
and reducing to slavery the women and children.--Finlay's _Hist. of
Greece_ (edited by Rev. H. F. Tozer, 1877), vi. 67, 68.]

[fk] {140} _Those who in blood begin in blood conclude their
span_.--[MS. erased.]

[164] [This was prophetic. "On the 5th of February, 1822, a meeting took
place between Ali and Mohammed Pasha.... When Mohammed rose to depart,
the two viziers, being of equal rank, moved together towards the
door.... As they parted Ali bowed low to his visitor, and Mohammed,
seizing the moment when the watchful eye of the old man was turned away,
drew his hanjar, and plunged it in Ali's heart. He walked on calmly to
the gallery, and said to the attendants, 'Ali of Tepalen is dead.' ...
The head of Ali was exposed at the gate of the serai."--Finlay's _Hist.
of Greece_, 1877, vi. 94, 95.]

[fl]
    _Childe Harold with that chief held colloquy_
    _Yet what they spake it boots not to repeat;_
    _Converse may little charm strange ear or eye;_
    _Albeit he rested on that spacious seat,_
    _Of Moslem luxury the choice retreat_.--[MS. D. erased.]
    _Four days he rested on that worthy seat_.-[MS. erased.]

[165] {141} [The travellers left Janina on November 3, and reached
Prevesa November 7. At midday November 9 they set sail for Patras in a
galliot of Ali's, "a vessel of about fifty tons burden, with three short
masts and a large lateen sail." Instead of doubling Cape Ducato, they
were driven out to sea northward, and, finally, at one o'clock in the
morning, anchored off the Port of Phanari on the Suliote coast. Towards
the evening of the next day (November 10) they landed in "the marshy
bay" (stanza lxviii. line 2) and rode to Volondorako, where they slept.
"Here they were well received by the Albanian primate of the place and
by the Vizier's soldiers quartered there." Instead of re-embarking in
the galliot, they returned to Prevesa by land (November 11). As the
country to the north of the Gulf of Arta was up in arms, and bodies of
robbers were abroad, they procured an escort of thirty-seven Albanians,
hired another galliot, and on Monday, the 13th, sailed across the
entrance of the gulf as far as the fortress of Vonitsa, where they
anchored for the night. By four o'clock in the afternoon of November 14
they reached Utraikey or Lutraki, "situated in a deep bay surrounded
with rocks at the south-east corner of the Gulf of Arta." The courtyard
of a barrack on the shore is the scene of the song and dance (stanzas
lxx.-lxxii.). Here, in the original MS., the pilgrimage abruptly ends,
and in the remaining stanzas the Childe moralizes on the fallen fortunes
and vanished heroism of Greece.--_Travels in Albania_, i. 157-165.]

[166] {143} [The route from Utraikey to Gouria (November 15-18) lay
through "thick woods of oak," with occasional peeps of the open
cultivated district of AEtolia on the further side of the Aspropotamo,
"white Achelous' tide." The Albanian guard was not dismissed until the
travellers reached Mesolonghi (November 21).]

[167] [With this description Mr. Tozer compares Virgil, _AEneid_, i.
159-165, and Tasso's imitation in _Gerus. Lib._, canto xv. stanzas 42,
43. The following lines from Hoole's translation (_Jerusalem Delivered_,
bk. xv. lines 310, 311, 317, 318) may be cited:--

    "Amidst these isles a lone recess is found,
    Where circling shores the subject flood resound ...
    Within the waves repose in peace serene;
    Black forests nod above, a silvan scene!"]

[168] {144} ["In the evening the gates were secured, and preparations
were made for feeding our Albanians. A goat was killed and roasted
whole, and four fires were kindled in the yard, round which the soldiers
seated themselves in parties. After eating and drinking, the greater
part of them assembled round the largest of the fires, and, whilst
ourselves and the elders of the party were seated on the ground, danced
round the blaze to their own songs, in the manner before described, but
with astonishing energy. All their songs were relations of some robbing
exploits. One of them ... began thus: 'When we set out from Parga there
were sixty of us!' then came the burden of the verse--

    'Robbers all at Parga!
    Robbers all at Parga!'
    [Greek: Kle/phteis pote\ Pa/rga!]
    [Greek: Kle/phteis pote\ Pa/rga!]

And as they roared out this stave, they whirled round the fire, dropped,
and rebounded from their knees, and again whirled round as the chorus
was again repeated."--_Travels in Albania_, i. 166, 167.]

[169] {145} [This was not Byron's first experience of an Albanian
war-song. At Salakhora, on the Gulf of Arta (nine miles north-east of
Prevesa), which he reached on October 1, the Albanian guard at the
custom-house entertained the travellers by "singing some songs." "The
music is extremely monotonous and nasal; and the shrill scream of their
voices was increased by each putting his hand behind his ear and cheek,
to give more force to the sound."--_Travels in Albania_, i. 28.

Long afterwards, in 1816, one evening, on the Lake of Geneva, Byron
entertained Shelley, Mary, and Claire with "an Albanian song." They seem
to have felt that such melodies "unheard are sweeter." Hence, perhaps,
his _petit nom_, "Albe," that is, the "Albaneser."--_Life of Shelley_,
by Edward Dowden, 1896, p. 309.]

[170] {146} [Tambourgi, "drummer," a Turkish word, formed by affixing
the termination _-gi_, which signifies "one who discharges any
occupation," to the French _tambour_ (H. F. Tozer, _Childe Harold_, p.
246).]

[fm] ----_thy tocsin afar_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[171] [The _camese_ is the _fustanella_ or white kilt of the Toska, a
branch of the Albanian, or Shkipetar, race. Spenser has the forms
"camis," "camus." The Arabic _quam[=i]c_ occurs in the Koran, but is
thought to be an adaptation of the Latin _camisia, camisa_.--Finlay's
_Hist, of Greece_, vi. 39; _N. Eng. Dict._, art. "Camis." (For "capote,"
_vide post_, p. 181.)]

[fn] _Shall the sons of Chimaera_----.--[MS. D.]

[172] [The Suliotes, after a protracted and often successful resistance,
were finally reduced by Ali, in December, 1803. They are adjured to
forget their natural desire for vengeance, and to unite with the
Albanians against their common foe, the Russians.]

[fo] {147} _Shall win the young minions_----.--[MS. D.]

[fp] ----_the maid and the youth_.--[MS.]

[fq] _Their caresses shall lull us, their voices shall soothe_.--[MS. D.
erased.]

[173] {148} [So, too, at Salakhora (October 1): "One of the songs was on
the taking of Prevesa, an exploit of which the Albanians are vastly
proud; and there was scarcely one of them in which the name of Ali Pasha
was not roared out and dwelt upon with peculiar energy."--_Travels in
Albania_, i. 29.

Prevesa, which, with other Venetian possessions, had fallen to the
French in 1797, was taken in the Sultan's name by Ali, in October, 1798.
The troops in the garrison (300 French, 460 Greeks) encountered and were
overwhelmed by 5000 Albanians, on the plain of Nicopolis. The victors
entered and sacked the town.]

[174] [Ali's eldest son, Mukhtar, the Pasha of Berat, had been sent
against the Russians, who, in 1809, invaded the trans-Danubian provinces
of the Ottoman Empire.]

[175] Yellow is the epithet given to the Russians.

[176] Infidel.

[177] The insignia of a Pacha.

[178] {149} [The literal meaning of Delhi or Deli, is, says M.
Darmesteter, "fou" ["properly madmen" (D'Herbelot)], a title bestowed on
Turkish warriors _honoris causu_. Byron suggests "forlorn hope" as an
equivalent; but there is a wide difference between the blood-drunkenness
of the Turk and the "foolishness" of British chivalry.]

[179] Sword-bearer.

[fr] _Tambourgi! thy tocsin_----.--[MS. D. erased]

[180] [Compare "The Isles of Greece," stanza 7 (_Don Juan_, Canto
III.)--

    "Earth! render back from out thy heart
      A remnant of our Spartan dead!
    Of the three hundred grant but three
      To make a new Thermopylae!"

The meaning is, "When shall another Lysander spring from Laconia
('Eurotas' banks') and revive the heroism of the ancient Spartans?"]

[fs] {150} _A fawning feeble race, untaught, enslaved, unmanned_.--[MS.
erased.]

[ft] ----_fair Liberty_.--[MS. erased, D.]

[181] {151} [Compare _The Age of Bronze_, vi. lines 39-46.]

[182] [The Wahabees, who took their name from the Arab sheik Mohammed
ben Abd-el-Wahab, arose in the province of Nedj, in Central Arabia,
about 1760. Half-socialists, half-puritans, they insisted on fulfilling
to the letter the precepts of the Koran. In 1803-4 they attacked and
ravaged Mecca and Medinah, and in 1808 they invaded Syria and took
Damascus. During Byron's residence in the East they were at the height
of their power, and seemed to threaten the very existence of the Turkish
empire.]

[183] {152} [Byron spent two months in Constantinople (Stamboul, i.e.
[Greek: ei)s te po/lin] )--from May 14 to July 14, 1810. The "Lenten
days," which were ushered in by a carnival, were those of the second
"great" Lent of the Greek Church, that of St. Peter and St. Paul, which
begins on the first Monday after Trinity, and ends on the 29th of June.]

[184] {153} [These _al-fresco_ festivities must, it is presumed, have
taken place on the two days out of the seven when you "might not 'damn
the climate' and complain of the spleen." Hobhouse records excursions to
the Valley of Sweet Waters; to Belgrade, where "the French minister gave
a sort of _fete-champetre_," when "the carousal lasted four days," and
when "night after night is kept awake by the pipes, tabors, and fiddles
of these moonlight dances;" and to the grove of
Fanar-Baktchesi.--_Travels in Albania_, ii. 242-258.]

[185]
    ["There's nothing like young Love, No! No!
      There's nothing like young love at last."]

[186] {154} [It has been assumed that "searment" is an incorrect form of
"cerement," the cloth dipped "in melting wax, in which dead bodies were
enfolded when embalmed" (_Hamlet_, act i. sc. 4), but the sense of the
passage seems rather to point to "cerecloth," "searcloth," a plaster to
cover up a wound. The "robe of revel" does but half conceal the sore and
aching heart.]

[187] [For the accentuation of the word, compare Chaucer, "The
Sompnour's Tale" (_Canterbury Tales_, line 7631)--

    "And dronkennesse is eke a foul record
    Of any man, and namely of a lord."]

[fu] _When Athens' children are with arts endued_.--[MS. D.]

[188] [Compare _Ecclus._ xliv. 8, 9: "There be of them, that have left a
name behind them, that their praises might be reported. And some there
be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never
been."]

[189] {156} [The "solitary column" may be that on the shore of the
harbour of Colonna, in the island of Kythnos (Thermia), or one of the
detached columns of the Olympeion.]

[190] [Tritonia, or Tritogenia, one of Athena's names of uncertain
origin. Hofmann's _Lexicon Universale_, Tooke's _Pantheon_, and Smith's
_Classical Dictionary_ are much in the same tale. Lucan (_Pharsalia_,
lib. ix. lines 350-354) derives the epithet from Lake Triton, or
Tritonis, on the Mediterranean coast of Libya--

    "Hanc et Pallas amat: patrio quae vertice nata
    Terrarum primum Libyen (nam proxima coelo est,
    Ut probat ipse calor) tetigit, stagnique quieta
    Vultus vidit aqua, posuitque in margine plantas,
    Et se dilecta Tritonida dixit ab unda."]

[191] [Hobhouse dates the first visit to Cape Colonna, January 24,
1810.]

[192] {157} [Athene's dower of the olive induced the gods to appoint her
as the protector and name-giver of Athens. Poseidon, who had proffered a
horse, was a rejected candidate. (See note by Rev. E. C. Owen, _Childe
Harold_, 1897, p. 175.)]

[193] ["The wild thyme is in great abundance; but there are only two
stands of bee-hives on the mountains, and very little of the real honey
of Hymettus is to be now procured at Athens.... A small pot of it was
shown to me as a rarity" (_Travels in Albania_, i. 341). There is now, a
little way out of Athens, a "honey-farm, where the honey from Hymettus
is prepared for sale" (_Handbook for Greece_, p. 500).]

[fv] ----_Pentele's marbles glare_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[194] [Stanzas lxxxviii.-xc. are not in the MS., but were first included
in the seventh edition, 1814.]

[195] [Byron and Hobhouse, after visiting Colonna, slept at Keratea, and
proceeded to Marathon on January 25, returning to Athens on the
following day.]

[fw] {158} _Preserve alike its form_----.--[MS. L.]

[fx] _When uttered to the listener's eye_----.--[MS. L.]

[fy] _The host, the plain, the fight_----.--[MS. L.]

[fz] _The shattered Mede who flies with broken bow_.--[MS. L.]

[196] ["The plain of Marathon is enclosed on three sides by the rocky
arms of Parnes and Pentelicus, while the fourth is bounded by the sea."
After the first rush, when the victorious wings, where the files were
deep, had drawn together and extricated the shallower and weaker centre,
which had been repulsed by the Persians and the Sakae, "the pursuit
became general, and the Persians were chased to their ships, ranged in
line along the shore. Some of them became involved in the impassable
marsh, and there perished." (See _Childe Harold_, edited by H. F. Tozer,
1885, p. 253; Grote's _History of Greece_, iv. 276. See, too, _Travels
in Albania_, i. 378-384.)]

[ga] _To tell what Asia troubled but to hear_.--[MS. L.]

[197] [See note to Canto II. stanzas i.-xv., pp. 99, 100.]

[gb] _Long to the remnants_--.----[D.]

[198] [The "Ionian blast" is the western wind that brings the voyager
across the Ionian Sea.]

[199] {160} [The original MS. closes with this stanza.]

[gc] _Which heeds nor stern reproach_----.--[D.]

[gd] {161}_Would I had ne'er returned_----.--[D.]

[200]
                 "To Mr. Dallas.
The 'he' refers to 'Wanderer' and anything is better than
_I I I I_ always _I_.
                                   Yours,
                                      BYRON."
[4th Revise B.M.]

[ge] _But Time the Comforter shall come at last_.--[MS. erased.]

[201] [Compare Young's _Night Thoughts_ ("The Complaint," Night i.).
_Vide ante_, p. 95.]

[gf]

    _Though Time not yet hath ting'd my locks with snow,_[Sec.]
    _Yet hath he reft whate'er my soul enjoy'd_.--[D.]

[Sec.] "To Mr. Dallas.

If Mr. D. wishes me to adopt the former line so be it. I prefer the
other I confess, it has less egotism--the first sounds affected.

Yours,

B."

[Dallas assented, and directed the printer to let the Roll stand.]

       *       *       *       *       *




                   NOTES TO CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.

                                CANTO II.

                               1.

    Despite of War and wasting fire.
                                                       Stanza i. line 4.

Part of the Acropolis was destroyed by the explosion of a magazine
during the Venetian siege.

[In 1684, when the Venetian Armada threatened Athens, the Turks removed
the Temple of Victory, and made use of the materials for the
construction of a bastion. In the autumn of 1687, when the city was
besieged by the Venetians under Francesco Morosini (1618-1694; Doge of
Venice, 1688), "mortars were planted ... near the north-east corner of
the rock, which threw their shells at a high angle, with a low charge,
into the Acropolis.... On the 25th of September, a Venetian bomb blew up
a small powder-magazine in the Propylaea, and on the following evening
another fell in the Parthenon, where the Turks had deposited ... a
considerable quantity of powder.... A terrific explosion took place; the
central columns of the peristyle, the walls of the cella, and the
immense architraves and cornices they supported, were scattered around
the remains of the temple. The Propylaea had been partly destroyed in
1656 by the explosion of a magazine which was struck by
lightning."--Finlay's _History of Greece_, 1887, i. 185.]

                               2.

    But worse than steel, and flame, and ages slow,
    Is the dread sceptre and dominion dire.
                                                   Stanza i. lines 6, 7.

We can all feel, or imagine, the regret with which the ruins of cities,
once the capitals of empires, are beheld: the reflections suggested by
such objects are too trite to require recapitulation. But never did the
littleness of man, and the vanity of his very best virtues, of
patriotism to exalt, and of valour to defend his country appear more
conspicuous than in the record of what Athens was, and the certainty of
what she now is. This theatre of contention between mighty factions, of
the struggles of orators, the exaltation and deposition of tyrants, the
triumph and punishment of generals, is now become a scene of petty
intrigue and perpetual disturbance, between the bickering agents of
certain British nobility and gentry. "The wild foxes, the owls and
serpents in the ruins of Babylon,"[202] were surely less degrading than
such inhabitants. The Turks have the plea of conquest for their tyranny,
and the Greeks have only suffered the fortune of war, incidental to the
bravest; but how are the mighty fallen, when two painters[203] contest
the privilege of plundering the Parthenon, and triumph in turn,
according to the tenor of each succeeding firman! Sylla could but
punish, Philip subdue, and Xerxes burn Athens; but it remained for the
paltry antiquarian, and his despicable agents, to render her
contemptible as himself and his pursuits. The Parthenon, before its
destruction, in part, by fire during the Venetian siege, had been a
temple, a church, and a mosque.[204] In each point of view it is an
object of regard: it changed its worshippers; but still it was a place
of worship thrice sacred to devotion: its violation is a triple
sacrifice. But--

                            "Man, proud man,
    Drest in a little brief authority,
    Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven
    As make the angels weep."
                                    [Shakespeare, _Measure for Measure_,
                                          act ii. sc. 2, lines 117-122.]

                               3.

    Far on the solitary shore he sleeps.
                                                       Stanza v. line 2.

It was not always the custom of the Greeks to burn their dead; the
greater Ajax, in particular, was interred entire. Almost all the chiefs
became gods after their decease; and he was indeed neglected, who had
not annual games near his tomb, or festivals in honour of his memory by
his countrymen, as Achilles, Brasidas, etc., and at last even Antinous,
whose death was as heroic as his life was infamous.

                               4.

    Here, son of Saturn! was thy favourite throne.
                                                       Stanza x. line 3.

The Temple of Jupiter Olympius, of which sixteen columns, entirely of
marble, yet survive; originally there were one hundred and fifty. These
columns, however, are by many supposed to have belonged to the Pantheon.

[The Olympieion, or Temple of Zeus Olympius, on the south-east of the
Acropolis, some five hundred yards from the foot of the rock, was begun
by Pisistratos, and completed seven hundred years later by Hadrian. It
was one of the three or four largest temples of antiquity. The cella had
been originally enclosed by a double row of twenty columns at the sides,
and a triple row of eight columns at each front, making a hundred and
four columns in all; but in 1810 only sixteen "lofty Corinthian columns"
were standing. Mr. Tozer points out that "'base' is accurate, because
Corinthian columns have bases, which Doric columns have not," and notes
that the word "'unshaken' implies that the column itself had fallen, but
the base remains."--_Childe Harold_, 1888, p. 228.]

                               5.

    And bear these altars o'er the long-reluctant brine.
                                                      Stanza xi. line 9.

The ship was wrecked in the Archipelago.

[The _Mentor_, which Elgin had chartered to convey to England a cargo
consisting of twelve chests of antiquities, was wrecked off the Island
of Cerigo, in 1803. His secretary, W. R. Hamilton, set divers to work,
and rescued four chests; but the remainder were not recovered till
1805.]

                               6.

    To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spared.
                                                     Stanza xii. line 2.

At this moment (January 3, 1810), besides what has been already
deposited in London, an Hydriot vessel is in the Pyraeus to receive every
portable relic. Thus, as I heard a young Greek observe, in common with
many of his countrymen--for, lost as they are, they yet feel on this
occasion--thus may Lord Elgin boast of having ruined Athens. An Italian
painter of the first eminence, named Lusieri[205], is the agent of
devastation; and like the Greek _finder_[206] of Verres in Sicily, who
followed the same profession, he has proved the able instrument of
plunder. Between this artist and the French Consul Fauvel[207], who
wishes to rescue the remains for his own government, there is now a
violent dispute concerning a car employed in their conveyance, the wheel
of which--I wish they were both broken upon it!--has been locked up by
the Consul, and Lusieri has laid his complaint before the Waywode. Lord
Elgin has been extremely happy in his choice of Signer Lusieri. During a
residence of ten years in Athens, he never had the curiosity to proceed
as far as Sunium (now Cape Colonna),[208] till he accompanied us in our
second excursion. However, his works, as far as they go, are most
beautiful: but they are almost all unfinished. While he and his patrons
confine themselves to tasting medals, appreciating cameos, sketching
columns, and cheapening gems, their little absurdities are as harmless
as insect or fox-hunting, maiden-speechifying, barouche-driving, or any
such pastime; but when they carry away three or four shiploads of the
most valuable and massy relics that time and barbarism have left to the
most injured and most celebrated of cities: when they destroy, in a vain
attempt to tear down, those works which have been the admiration of
ages, I know no motive which can excuse, no name which can designate,
the perpetrators of this dastardly devastation. It was not the least of
the crimes laid to the charge of Verres, that he had plundered Sicily,
in the manner since imitated at Athens. The most unblushing impudence
could hardly go farther than to affix the name of its plunderer to the
walls of the Acropolis; while the wanton and useless defacement of the
whole range of the basso-relievos, in one compartment of the temple,
will never permit that name to be pronounced by an observer without
execration.

On this occasion I speak impartially: I am not a collector or admirer of
collections, consequently no rival; but I have some early prepossession
in favour of Greece, and do not think the honour of England advanced by
plunder, whether of India or Attica.

Another noble Lord [Aberdeen] has done better, because he has done less:
but some others, more or less noble, yet "all honourable men," have done
_best_, because, after a deal of excavation and execration, bribery to
the Waywode, mining and countermining, they have done nothing at all. We
had such ink-shed, and wine-shed, which almost ended in bloodshed![209]
Lord E.'s "prig"--see Jonathan Wild for the definition of
"priggism"[210]--quarrelled with another, _Gropius_[211] by name (a very
good name too for his business), and muttered something about
satisfaction, in a verbal answer to a note of the poor Prussian: this
was stated at table to Gropius, who laughed, but could eat no dinner
afterwards. The rivals were not reconciled when I left Greece. I have
reason to remember their squabble, for they wanted to make me their
arbitrator.

                               7.

    Her Sons too weak the sacred shrine to guard,
    Yet felt some portion of their Mother's pains.
                                              Stanza xii. lines 7 and 8.

I cannot resist availing myself of the permission of my friend Dr.
Clarke, whose name requires no comment with the public, but whose
sanction will add tenfold weight to my testimony, to insert the
following extract from a very obliging letter of his to me, as a note to
the above lines:--"When the last of the Metopes was taken from the
Parthenon, and, in moving of it, great part of the superstructure with
one of the triglyphs was thrown down by the workmen whom Lord Elgin
employed, the Disdar, who beheld the mischief done to the building, took
his pipe from his mouth, dropped a tear, and in a supplicating tone of
voice, said to Lusieri, [Greek: Telos]!--I was present." The Disdar
alluded to was the father of the present Disdar.

[Disdar, or Dizdar, i.e. castle-holder--the warden of a castle or fort
(_N. Eng. Dict_., art. "Dizdar"). The story is told at greater length in
_Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa_, by Edward
Daniel Clarke, LL.D., 1810-14, Part II. sect. ii. p. 483.]

                               8.

    Where was thine AEgis, Pallas! that appalled
      Stern Alaric and Havoc on their way?
                                              Stanza xiv. lines i and 2.

According to Zosimus, Minerva and Achilles frightened Alaric from the
Acropolis: but others relate that the Gothic king was nearly as
mischievous as the Scottish peer.--See Chandler.

[Zosimus, _Historiae_, lib. v. cap. 6, _Corp. Scr. Byz_., 1837, p. 253.
As a matter of fact, Alaric, King of the Visigoths, occupied Athens in
A.D. 395 without resistance, and carried off the movable treasures of
the city, though he did not destroy buildings or works of art.--Note by
Rev. E. C. Owen, _Childe Harold_, 1898, p. 162.]

                               9.

    The netted canopy.
                                                   Stanza xviii. line 2.

To prevent blocks or splinters from falling on deck during action.

                              10.

    But not in silence pass Calypso's isles.
                                                    Stanza xxix. line 1.

Goza is said to have been the island of Calypso.

[Strabo (Paris, 1853), lib. i. cap. ii. 57 and lib. vii. cap. iii. 50,
says that Apollodorus blamed the poet Callimachus, who was a grammarian
and ought to have known better, for his contention that Gaudus, i.e.
Gozo, was Calypso's isle. Ogygia (_Odyssey_, i. 50) was

                                "a sea-girt isle,
    Where is the navel of the sea, a woodland isle."

It was surely as a poet, not as a grammarian, that Callimachus was at
fault.]

                              11.

    Land of Albania! let me bend mine eyes
    On thee, thou rugged Nurse of savage men!
                                          Stanza xxxviii. lines 5 and 6.

Albania comprises part of Macedonia, Illyria, Chaonia, and Epirus.
Iskander is the Turkish word for Alexander; and the celebrated
Scanderbeg[212] (Lord Alexander) is alluded to in the third and fourth
lines of the thirty-eighth stanza. I do not know whether I am correct
in making Scanderbeg the countryman of Alexander, who was born at Pella
in Macedon, but Mr. Gibbon terms him so, and adds Pyrrhus to the list,
in speaking of his exploits.

Of Albania Gibbon remarks that a country "within sight of Italy is less
known than the interior of America." Circumstances, of little
consequence to mention, led Mr. Hobhouse and myself into that country
before we visited any other part of the Ottoman dominions; and with the
exception of Major Leake,[213] then officially resident at Joannina, no
other Englishmen have ever advanced beyond the capital into the
interior, as that gentleman very lately assured me. Ali Pacha was at
that time (October, 1809) carrying on war against Ibrahim Pacha, whom he
had driven to Berat, a strong fortress, which he was then besieging: on
our arrival at Joannina we were invited to Tepaleni, his highness's
birthplace, and favourite Serai, only one day's distance from Berat; at
this juncture the Vizier had made it his headquarters. After some stay
in the capital, we accordingly followed; but though furnished with every
accommodation, and escorted by one of the Vizier's secretaries, we were
nine days (on account of the rains) in accomplishing a journey which, on
our return, barely occupied four. On our route we passed two cities,
Argyrocastro and Libochabo, apparently little inferior to Yanina in
size; and no pencil or pen can ever do justice to the scenery in the
vicinity of Zitza and Delvinachi, the frontier village of Epirus and
Albania Proper.

On Albania and its inhabitants I am unwilling to descant, because this
will be done so much better by my fellow-traveller, in a work which may
probably precede this in publication, that I as little wish to follow as
I would to anticipate him.[214] But some few observations are necessary
to the text. The Arnaouts, or Albanese, struck me forcibly by their
resemblance to the Highlanders of Scotland, in dress, figure, and manner
of living. Their very mountains seemed Caledonian, with a kinder
climate. The kilt, though white; the spare, active form; their dialect,
Celtic in its sound; and their hardy habits, all carried me back to
Morven. No nation are so detested and dreaded by their neighbours as the
Albanese; the Greeks hardly regard them as Christians, or the Turks as
Moslems; and in fact they are a mixture of both, and sometimes neither.
Their habits are predatory--all are armed; and the red-shawled Arnaouts,
the Montenegrins, Chimariots, and Gegdes, are treacherous;[215] the
others differ somewhat in garb, and essentially in character. As far as
my own experience goes, I can speak favourably. I was attended by two,
an Infidel and a Mussulman, to Constantinople and every other part of
Turkey which came within my observation; and more faithful in peril, or
indefatigable in service, are rarely to be found. The Infidel was named
Basilius; the Moslem, Dervish Tahiri; the former a man of middle age,
and the latter about my own. Basili was strictly charged by Ali Pacha in
person to attend us; and Dervish was one of fifty who accompanied us
through the forests of Acarnania to the banks of Achelous, and onward to
Messalonghi in AEtolia. There I took him into my own service, and never
had occasion to repent it till the moment of my departure.

When, in 1810, after the departure of my friend Mr. Hobhouse for
England, I was seized with a severe fever in the Morea, these men saved
my life by frightening away my physician, whose throat they threatened
to cut if I was not cured within a given time. To this consolatory
assurance of posthumous retribution, and a resolute refusal of Dr.
Romanelli's prescriptions, I attributed my recovery.[gg] I had left my
last remaining English servant at Athens; my dragoman was as ill as
myself, and my poor Arnaouts nursed me with an attention which would
have done honour to civilization. They had a variety of adventures; for
the Moslem, Dervish, being a remarkably handsome man, was always
squabbling with the husbands of Athens; insomuch that four of the
principal Turks paid me a visit of remonstrance at the Convent on the
subject of his having taken a woman from the bath--whom he had lawfully
bought, however--a thing quite contrary to etiquette. Basili also was
extremely gallant amongst his own persuasion, and had the greatest
veneration for the church, mixed with the highest contempt of churchmen,
whom he cuffed upon occasion in a most heterodox manner. Yet he never
passed a church without crossing himself; and I remember the risk he
ran in entering St. Sophia, in Stambol, because it had once been a place
of his worship. On remonstrating with him on his inconsistent
proceedings, he invariably answered, "Our church is holy, our priests
are thieves:" and then he crossed himself as usual, and boxed the ears
of the first "papas" who refused to assist in any required operation, as
was always found to be necessary where a priest had any influence with
the Cogia Bashi[216] of his village. Indeed, a more abandoned race of
miscreants cannot exist than the lower orders of the Greek clergy.

When preparations were made for my return, my Albanians were summoned to
receive their pay. Basili took his with an awkward show of regret at my
intended departure, and marched away to his quarters with his bag of
piastres. I sent for Dervish, but for some time he was not to be found;
at last he entered, just as Signor Logotheti,[217] father to the
ci-devant Anglo-consul of Athens, and some other of my Greek
acquaintances, paid me a visit. Dervish took the money in his hand, but
on a sudden dashed it to the ground; and clasping his hands, which he
raised to his forehead, rushed out of the room weeping bitterly. From
that moment to the hour of my embarkation, he continued his
lamentations, and all our efforts to console him only produced this
answer, "[Greek: M'apheinei]", "He leaves me." Signer Logotheti, who
never wept before for anything less than the loss of a para (about the
fourth of a farthing), melted; the padre of the convent, my attendants,
my visitors--and I verily believe that even Sterne's "foolish fat
scullion" would have left her "fish-kettle" to sympathize with the
unaffected and unexpected sorrow of this barbarian.[218]

For my own part, when I remembered that, a short time before my
departure from England, a noble and most intimate associate had excused
himself from taking leave of me because he had to attend a female
relation "to a milliner's,"[219] I felt no less surprised than
humiliated by the present occurrence and the past recollection. That
Dervish would leave me with some regret was to be expected; when master
and man have been scrambling over the mountains of a dozen provinces
together, they are unwilling to separate; but his present feelings,
contrasted with his native ferocity, improved my opinion of the human
heart. I believe this almost feudal fidelity is frequent amongst them.
One day, on our journey over Parnassus, an Englishman in my service gave
him a push in some dispute about the baggage, which he unluckily mistook
for a blow; he spoke not, but sat down leaning his head upon his hands.
Foreseeing the consequences, we endeavoured to explain away the affront,
which produced the following answer:--"I _have been_ a robber; I _am_ a
soldier; no captain ever struck me; _you_ are my master, I have eaten
your bread, but by _that_ bread! (a usual oath) had it been otherwise, I
would have stabbed the dog, your servant, and gone to the mountains." So
the affair ended, but from that day forward he never thoroughly forgave
the thoughtless fellow who insulted him. Dervish excelled in the dance
of his country, conjectured to be a remnant of the ancient Pyrrhic: be
that as it may, it is manly, and requires wonderful agility. It is very
distinct from the stupid Romaika,[220] the dull round-about of the
Greeks, of which our Athenian party had so many specimens.

The Albanians in general (I do not mean the cultivators of the earth in
the provinces, who have also that appellation, but the mountaineers)
have a fine cast of countenance; and the most beautiful women I ever
beheld, in stature and in features, we saw _levelling_ the _road_ broken
down by the torrents between Delvinachi and Libochabo. Their manner of
walking is truly theatrical; but this strut is probably the effect of
the capote, or cloak, depending from one shoulder. Their long hair
reminds you of the Spartans, and their courage in desultory warfare is
unquestionable. Though they have some cavalry amongst the Gegdes, I
never saw a good Arnaout horseman; my own preferred the English saddles,
which, however, they could never keep. But on foot they are not to be
subdued by fatigue.

                              12.

                And passed the barren spot,
    Where sad Penelope o'erlooked the wave.
                                            Stanza xxxix. lines 1 and 2.

Ithaca.

                              13.

    Actium--Lepanto--fatal Trafalgar.
                                                      Stanza xl. line 5.

Actium and Trafalgar need no further mention. The battle of Lepanto
[October 7, 1571], equally bloody and considerable, but less known, was
fought in the Gulf of Patras. Here the author of Don Quixote lost his
left hand.

["His [Cervantes'] galley the _Marquesa_, was in the thick of the fight,
and before it was over he had received three gun-shot wounds, two in the
breast and one on the left hand or arm." In consequence of his wound "he
was seven months in hospital before he was discharged. He came out with
his left hand permanently disabled; he had lost the use of it, as
Mercury told him in the 'Viaje del Parnase,' for the greater glory of
the right."--_Don Quixote_, A Translation by John Ormsby, 1885,
_Introduction_, i. 13.]

                              14.

    And hailed the last resort of fruitless love.
                                                     Stanza xli. line 3.

Leucadia, now Santa Maura. From the promontory (the Lover's Leap) Sappho
is said to have thrown herself.

[Strabo (lib. x. cap. 2, ed. Paris, 1853, p. 388) gives Menander as an
authority for the legend that Sappho was the first to take the "Lover's
Leap" from the promontory of Leucate. Writers, he adds, better versed in
antiquities [Greek: a)rchaiologiko/teroi], prefer the claims of one
Cephalus. Another legend, which he gives as a fact, perhaps gave birth
to the later and more poetical fiction. The Leucadians, he says, once a
year, on Apollo's day, were wont to hurl a criminal from the rock into
the sea by way of expiation and propitiation. Birds of all kinds were
attached to the victim to break his fall, and, if he reached the sea
uninjured, there was a fleet of little boats ready to carry him to other
shores. It is possible that dim memories of human sacrifice lingered in
the islands, that in course of time victims were transformed into
"lovers," and it is certain that poets and commentators, "prone to lie,"
are responsible for names and incidents.]

                              15.

    Many a Roman chief and Asian King.
                                                     Stanza xlv. line 4.

It is said, that on the day previous to the battle of Actium, Antony had
thirteen kings at his levee.

[Plutarch, in his _Antonius_, gives the names of "six auxiliary kings
who fought under his banners," and mentions six other kings who did not
attend in person but sent supplies. Shakespeare (_Anthony and
Cleopatra_, act iii. sc. 6, lines 68-75), quoting Plutarch almost
_verbatim_, enumerates ten kings who were "assembled" in Anthony's
train--

    "Bocchus, the king of Libya; Archelaus,
    Of Cappadocia; Philadelphos, king
    Of Paphlagonia; the Thracian king, Adallas;
    King Malchus of Arabia; king of Pont;
    Herod of Jewry; Mithridates, king
    Of Comagene; Polemon and Amintas,
    The kings of Mede and Lycaonia,
    With a more larger list of sceptres."

Other authorities for the events of the campaign and battle of Actium
(Dion Cassius, Appian, and Orosius) are silent as to "kings;" but Florus
(iv. 11) says that the wind-tossed waters "vomited back" to the shore
gold and purple, the spoils of the Arabians and Sabaeans, and a thousand
other peoples of Asia.]

                              16.

    Look where the second Caesar's trophies rose.
                                                     Stanza xlv. line 6.

Nicopolis, whose ruins are most extensive, is at some distance from
Actium, where the wall of the Hippodrome survives in a few fragments.
These ruins are large masses of brickwork, the bricks of which are
joined by interstices of mortar, as large as the bricks themselves, and
equally durable.

                              17.

    Acherusia's lake.
                                                   Stanza xlvii. line 1.

According to Pouqueville, the lake of Yanina; but Pouqueville is always
out.

[The lake of Yanina (Janina or Joannina) was the ancient Pambotis. "At
the mouth of the gorge [of Suli], where it suddenly comes to an end, was
the marsh, the Palus Acherusia, in the neighbourhood of which was the
Oracle."--_Geography of Greece_, by H. F. Tozer, 1873, p. 121.]

                              18.

    To greet Albania's Chief.
                                                   Stanza xlvii. line 4.

The celebrated Ali Pacha. Of this extraordinary man there is an
incorrect account in Pouqueville's _Travels_. [For note on Ali Pasha
(1741-1822), see _Letters_, 1898, i. 246.]

                              19.

      Yet here and there some daring mountain-band
      Disdain his power, and from their rocky hold
    Hurl their defiance far, nor yield, unless to gold.
                                        Stanza xlvii. lines 7, 8, and 9.

Five thousand Suliotes, among the rocks and in the castle of Suli,
withstood thirty thousand Albanians for eighteen years; the castle at
last was taken by bribery. In this contest there were several acts
performed not unworthy of the better days of Greece.

[Ali Pasha assumed the government of Janina in 1788, but it was not till
December 12, 1803, that the Suliotes, who were betrayed by their
leaders, Botzaris and Koutsonika and others, finally
surrendered.--Finlay's _History of Greece_, 1877, vi. 45-50.]

                              20.

    Monastic Zitza! etc.
                                                  Stanza xlviii. line 1.

The convent and village of Zitza are four hours' journey from Joannina,
or Yanina, the capital of the Pachalick. In the valley the river Kalamas
(once the Acheron) flows, and, not far from Zitza, forms a fine
cataract. The situation is perhaps the finest in Greece, though the
approach to Delvinachi and parts of Acarnania and AEtolia may contest the
palm. Delphi, Parnassus, and, in Attica, even Cape Colonna and Port
Raphti, are very inferior; as also every scene in Ionia, or the Troad: I
am almost inclined to add the approach to Constantinople; but, from the
different features of the last, a comparison can hardly be made.

                              21.

    Here dwells the caloyer.
                                                    Stanza xlix. line 6.

The Greek monks are so called.

[_Caloyer_ is derived from the late Greek [Greek: kalo/geros], "good in
old age," through the Italian _caloieso_. Hence the accent on the last
syllable.--_N. Eng. Dict._]

                              22.

    Nature's volcanic Amphitheatre.
                                                      Stanza li. line 2.

The Chimariot mountains appear to have been volcanic.

[By "Chimaera's Alps" Byron probably meant the Ceraunian Mountains, which
are "woody to the top, but disclose some wide chasms of red rock"
(_Travels in Albania_, i. 73) to the north of Jannina,--not the
Acroceraunian (Chimariot) Mountains, which run from north to south-west
along the coast of Mysia. "The walls of rock (which do not appear to be
volcanic) rise in tiers on every side, like the seats and walls of an
amphitheatre" (H. F. Tozer). The near distance may have suggested an
amphitheatre; but he is speaking of the panorama which enlarged on his
view, and uses the word not graphically, but metaphorically, of the
entire "circle of the hills."]

                              23.

    Behold black Acheron!
                                                      Stanza li. line 6.

Now called Kalamas.

                              24.

    In his white capote.
                                                     Stanza lii. line 7.

Albanese cloak.

[The _capote_ (feminine of _capot_, masculine diminutive of _cope_,
cape) was a long shaggy cloak or overcoat, with a hood, worn by
soldiers, etc.--_N. Eng. Dict_., art. "Capote."]

                              25.

    The Sun had sunk behind vast Tomerit.
                                                      Stanza lv. line 1.

Anciently Mount Tomarus.

["Mount Tomerit, or Tomohr," says Mr. Tozer, "lies north-east of
Tepalen, and therefore the sun could not set behind it" (_Childe
Harold_, 1885, p. 272). But, writing to Drury, May 3, 1810, Byron says
that "he penetrated as far as Mount Tomarit." Probably by "Tomarit" he
does not mean Mount Tomohr, which lies to the north-east of Berat, but
Mount Olytsika, ancient Tomaros (_vide ante_, p. 132, note 1), which
lies to the west of Janina, between the valley of Tcharacovista and the
sea. "Elle domine," writes M. Carapanos, "toutes les autres montagnes
qui l'entourent." "Laos," Mr. Tozer thinks, "is a mere blunder for Aoeus,
the Viosa (or Voioussa), which joins the Derapuli a few miles south of
Tepaleni, and flows under the walls of the city" (_Dodone et ses
Ruines_, 1878, p. 8). (For the Aoeus and approach to Tepeleni, see
_Travels in Albania_, i. 91.)]

                              26.

    And Laos wide and fierce came roaring by.
                                                      Stanza lv. line 2.

The river Laos was full at the time the author passed it; and,
immediately above Tepaleen, was to the eye as wide as the Thames at
Westminster; at least in the opinion of the author and his
fellow-traveller. In the summer it must be much narrower. It certainly
is the finest river in the Levant; neither Achelous, Alpheus, Acheron,
Scamander, nor Cayster, approached it in breadth or beauty.

                              27.

    And fellow-countrymen have stood aloof.
                                                    Stanza lxvi. line 8.

Alluding to the wreckers of Cornwall.

                              28.

    The red wine circling fast.
                                                    Stanza lxxi. line 2.

The Albanian Mussulmans do not abstain from wine, and, indeed, very few
of the others.

                              29.

    Each Palikar his sabre from him cast.
                                                    Stanza lxxi. line 7.

Palikar, shortened when addressed to a single person, from [Greek:
Palikari] [[Greek: palleka/ri]], a general name for a soldier amongst
the Greeks and Albanese, who speak Romaic: it means, properly, "a lad."

                              30.

    While thus in concert, etc.
                                                   Stanza lxxii. line 9.

As a specimen of the Albanian or Arnaout dialect of the Illyric, I here
insert two of their most popular choral songs, which are generally
chanted in dancing by men or women indiscriminately. The first words are
merely a kind of chorus without meaning, like some in our own and all
other languages.

 1. Bo, Bo, Bo, Bo, Bo, Bo,      1. Lo, Lo, I come, I come;
    Naciarura, popuso.               be thou silent.

 2. Naciarura na civin           2. I come, I run; open the
    Ha pen derini ti hin.            door that I may enter.

 3. Ha pe uderi escrotini        3. Open the door by halves,
    Ti vin ti mar servetini.         that I may take my turban.

 4. Caliriote me surme           4. Caliriotes[Sec.] with the dark
    Ea ha pe pse dua tive.           eyes, open the gate that
                                     I may enter.

 5. Buo, Bo, Bo, Bo, Bo,         5. Lo, Lo, I hear thee, my soul.
    Gi egem spirta esimiro.

 6. Caliriote vu le funde        6. An Arnaout girl, in costly
    Ede vete tunde tunde.            garb, walks with graceful pride.

 7. Caliriote me surme           7. Caliriot maid of the dark
    Ti mi put e poi mi le.           eyes, give me a kiss.

 8. Se ti puta citi mora         8. If I have kissed thee,
                                     what hast thou gained?
    Si mi ri ni veti udo gia.        My soul is consumed with fire.

 9. Va le ni il che cadale       9. Dance lightly, more
    Celo more, more celo.            gently, and gently still.

10. Plu hari ti tirete          10. Make not so much dust
    Plu huron cia pra seti.          to destroy your embroidered hose.

[Sec.]The Albanese, particularly the women, are frequently termed
"Caliriotes," for what reason I inquired in vain.

The last stanza would puzzle a commentator: the men have certainly
buskins of the most beautiful texture, but the ladies (to whom the above
is supposed to be addressed) have nothing under their little yellow
boots and slippers but a well-turned and sometimes very white ankle. The
Arnaout girls are much handsomer than the Greeks, and their dress is far
more picturesque. They preserve their shape much longer also, from being
always in the open air. It is to be observed, that the Arnaout is not a
_written_ language: the words of this song, therefore, as well as the
one which follows, are spelt according to their pronunciation. They are
copied by one who speaks and understands the dialect perfectly, and who
is a native of Athens.

1. Ndi sefda tinde ulavossa    1. I am wounded by thy love, and
    Vettimi upri vi lofsa.         have loved but to scorch myself.

2. Ah vaisisso mi privi lofse  2. Thou hast consumed me! Ah, maid!
    Si mi rini mi la vosse.        thou has struck me to the heart.

3. Uti tasa roba stua          3. I have said I wish no dowry,
    Sitti eve tulati dua.        but thine eyes and eyelashes.

4. Roba stinori ssidua         4. The accursed dowry I
    Qu mi sini vetti dua.          want not, but thee only.

5. Qurmini dua civileni        5. Give me thy charms, and
    Roba ti siarmi tildi eni.     let the portion feed the flames.

6. Utara pisa vaisisso me      6. I have loved thee, maid,
    simi rin ti hapti              with a sincere soul, but
   Eti mi bire a piste si gui      thou hast left me like
    dendroi tiltati.               a withered tree.

7. Udi vura udorini udiri      7. If I have placed my hand on
    cicova cilti mora              thy bosom, what have I gained?
  Udorini talti hollna u ede       my hand is withdrawn, but
    caimoni mora.                  retains the flame.

I believe the two last stanzas, as they are in a different measure,
ought to belong to another ballad. An idea something similar to the
thought in the last lines was expressed by Socrates, whose arm having
come in contact with one of his "[Greek: hupokolpioi]," Critobulus or
Cleobulus, the philosopher complained of a shooting pain as far as his
shoulder for some days after, and therefore very properly resolved to
teach his disciples in future without touching them.

                              31.

    Tambourgi! Tambourgi! thy 'larum afar.
                                                 Song, stanza 1, line 1.

These stanzas are partly taken from different Albanese songs, as far as
I was able to make them out by the exposition of the Albanese in Romaic
and Italian.

                              32.

    Remember the moment when Previsa fell.
                                                 Song, stanza 8, line 1.

It was taken by storm from the French [October, 1798].

                              33.

    Fair Greece! sad relic of departed Worth! etc.
                                                  Stanza lxxiii. line 1.

Some thoughts on this subject will be found in the subjoined papers, pp.
187-208.

                              34.

    Spirit of Freedom! when on Phyle's brow
      Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train.
                                            Stanza lxxiv. lines 1 and 2.

Phyle, which commands a beautiful view of Athens, has still considerable
remains: it was seized by Thrasybulus, previous to the expulsion of the
Thirty.

[Byron and Hobhouse caught their first glance of Athens from this spot,
December 25, 1809. (See Byron's note.) "The ruins," says Hobhouse, "are
now called Bigla Castro, or The Watchtower."]

                              35.

    Receive the fiery Frank, her former guest.
                                                  Stanza lxxvii. line 4.

When taken by the Latins, and retained for several years. See Gibbon.
[From A.D. 1204 to 1261.]

                              36.

    The Prophet's tomb of all its pious spoil.
                                                  Stanza lxxvii. line 6.

Mecca and Medina were taken some time ago by the Wahabees, a sect yearly
increasing. [_Vide supra_, p. 151.]

                              37.

    Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow.
                                                   Stanza lxxxv. line 3.

On many of the mountains, particularly Liakura, the snow never is
entirely melted, notwithstanding the intense heat of the summer; but I
never saw it lie on the plains, even in winter.

[This feature of Greek scenery, in spring, may, now and again, be
witnessed in our own country in autumn--a blue lake, bordered with
summer greenery in the foreground, with a rear-guard of "hills of snow"
glittering in the October sunshine.]

                              38.

    Save where some solitary column mourns
      Above its prostrate brethren of the cave.
                                           Stanza lxxxvi. lines 1 and 2.

Of Mount Pentelicus, from whence the marble was dug that constructed the
public edifices of Athens. The modern name is Mount Mendeli. An immense
cave, formed by the quarries, still remains, and will till the end of
time.

[Mendeli is the ancient Pentelicus. "The white lines marking the
projecting veins" of marble are visible from Athens (_Geography of
Greece_, by H.F. Tozer, 1873, p. 129).]

                              39.

    When Marathon became a magic word.
                                                  Stanza lxxxix. line 7.

"Siste Viator--heroa calcas!" was the epitaph on the famous Count
Merci;[221]--what then must be our feelings when standing on the
tumulus of the two hundred (Greeks) who fell on Marathon? The principal
barrow has recently been opened by Fauvel: few or no relics, as vases,
etc. were found by the excavator. The plain of Marathon[222] was offered
to me for sale at the sum of sixteen thousand piastres, about nine
hundred pounds! Alas!--"Expende[223]--quot _libras_ in duce
summo--invenies!"--was the dust of Miltiades worth no more? It could
scarcely have fetched less if sold by _weight_.


                      PAPERS REFERRED TO BY NOTE 33.

                            I.[224]

Before I say anything about a city of which every body, traveller or
not, has thought it necessary to say something, I will request Miss
Owenson,[225] when she next borrows an Athenian heroine for her four
volumes, to have the goodness to marry her to somebody more of a
gentleman than a "Disdar Aga" (who by the by is not an Aga), the most
impolite of petty officers, the greatest patron of larceny[226] Athens
ever saw (except Lord E.), and the unworthy occupant of the Acropolis,
on a handsome annual stipend of 150 piastres (eight pounds sterling),
out of which he has only to pay his garrison, the most ill-regulated
corps in the ill-regulated Ottoman Empire. I speak it tenderly, seeing I
was once the cause of the husband of "Ida of Athens" nearly suffering
the bastinado; and because the said "Disdar" is a turbulent husband, and
beats his wife; so that I exhort and beseech Miss Owenson to sue for a
separate maintenance in behalf of "Ida." Having premised thus much, on a
matter of such import to the readers of romances, I may now leave Ida to
mention her birthplace.

Setting aside the magic of the name, and all those associations which it
would be pedantic and superfluous to recapitulate, the very situation of
Athens would render it the favourite of all who have eyes for art or
nature. The climate, to me at least, appeared a perpetual spring; during
eight months I never passed a day without being as many hours on
horseback: rain is extremely rare, snow never lies in the plains, and a
cloudy day is an agreeable rarity. In Spain, Portugal, and every part of
the East which I visited, except Ionia and Attica, I perceived no such
superiority of climate to our own; and at Constantinople, where I passed
May, June, and part of July (1810), you might "damn the climate, and
complain of spleen," five days out of seven.[227]

The air of the Morea is heavy and unwholesome, but the moment you pass
the isthmus in the direction of Megara the change is strikingly
perceptible. But I fear Hesiod will still be found correct in his
description of a Boeotian winter.[228]

We found at Livadia an "esprit fort" in a Greek bishop, of all
free-thinkers! This worthy hypocrite rallied his own religion with great
intrepidity (but not before his flock), and talked of a mass as a
"coglioneria."[229] It was impossible to think better of him for this;
but, for a Boeotian, he was brisk with all his absurdity. This
phenomenon (with the exception indeed of Thebes, the remains of
Chaeronea, the plain of Platea, Orchomenus, Livadia, and its nominal
cave of Trophonius) was the only remarkable thing we saw before we
passed Mount Cithaeron.

The fountain of Dirce turns a mill: at least my companion (who,
resolving to be at once cleanly and classical, bathed in it) pronounced
it to be the fountain of Dirce,[230] and any body who thinks it worth
while may contradict him. At Castri we drank of half a dozen streamlets,
some not of the purest, before we decided to our satisfaction which was
the true Castalian, and even that had a villanous twang, probably from
the snow, though it did not throw us into an epic fever, like poor Dr.
Chandler.[231]

From Fort Phyle, of which large remains still exist, the plain of
Athens, Pentelicus, Hymettus, the AEgean, and the Acropolis, burst upon
the eye at once; in my opinion, a more glorious prospect than even
Cintra or Istambol. Not the view from the Troad, with Ida, the
Hellespont, and the more distant Mount Athos, can equal it, though so
superior in extent.

I heard much of the beauty of Arcadia, but excepting the view from the
Monastery of Megaspelion (which is inferior to Zitza in a command of
country), and the descent from the mountains on the way from Tripolitza
to Argos, Arcadia has little to recommend it beyond the name.

    "Sternitur, et _dulces_ moriens reminiscitur Argos."
                                                        _AEneid_, x. 782.

Virgil could have put this into the mouth of none but an Argive, and
(with reverence be it spoken) it does not deserve the epithet. And if
the Polynices of Statius, "In mediis audit duo litora campis"
(_Thebaidos_, i. 335), did actually hear both shores in crossing the
isthmus of Corinth, he had better ears than have ever been worn in such
a journey since.

"Athens," says a celebrated topographer, "is still the most polished
city of Greece."[232] Perhaps it may of _Greece_, but not of the
_Greeks_; for Joannina in Epirus is universally allowed, amongst
themselves, to be superior in the wealth, refinement, learning, and
dialect of its inhabitants. The Athenians are remarkable for their
cunning; and the lower orders are not improperly characterised in that
proverb, which classes them with the "Jews of Salonica, and the Turks of
the Negropont."

Among the various foreigners resident in Athens, French, Italians,
Germans, Ragusans, etc., there was never a difference of opinion in
their estimate of the Greek character, though on all other topics they
disputed with great acrimony.

M. Fauvel, the French Consul, who has passed thirty years principally at
Athens, and to whose talents as an artist, and manners as a gentleman,
none who have known him can refuse their testimony, has frequently
declared in my hearing, that the Greeks do not deserve to be
emancipated; reasoning on the grounds of their "national and individual
depravity!" while he forgot that such depravity is to be attributed to
causes which can only be removed by the measure he reprobates.

M. Roque,[233] a French merchant of respectability long settled in
Athens, asserted with the most amusing gravity, "Sir, they are the same
_canaille_ that existed _in the days of Themistocles!_" an alarming
remark to the "Laudator temporis acti." The ancients banished
Themistocles; the moderns cheat Monsieur Roque; thus great men have ever
been treated!

In short, all the Franks who are fixtures, and most of the Englishmen,
Germans, Danes, etc., of passage, came over by degrees to their opinion,
on much the same grounds that a Turk in England would condemn the nation
by wholesale, because he was wronged by his lacquey, and overcharged by
his washerwoman.

Certainly it was not a little staggering when the Sieurs Fauvel and
Lusieri, the two greatest demagogues of the day, who divide between them
the power of Pericles and the popularity of Cleon, and puzzle the poor
Waywode with perpetual differences, agreed in the utter condemnation,
"nulla virtute redemptum" (Juvenal, lib. i. _Sat._ iv. line 2), of the
Greeks in general, and of the Athenians in particular. For my own humble
opinion, I am loth to hazard it, knowing as I do, that there be now in
MS. no less than five tours of the first magnitude, and of the most
threatening aspect, all in typographical array, by persons of wit and
honour, and regular common-place books: but, if I may say this, without
offence, it seems to me rather hard to declare so positively and
pertinaciously, as almost everybody has declared, that the Greeks,
because they are very bad, will never be better.

Eton and Sonnini[234] have led us astray by their panegyrics and
projects; but, on the other hand, De Pauw and Thornton[235] have debased
the Greeks beyond their demerits.

The Greeks will never be independent; they will never be sovereigns as
heretofore, and God forbid they ever should! but they may be subjects
without being slaves. Our colonies are not independent, but they are
free and industrious, and such may Greece be hereafter.

At present, like the Catholics of Ireland and the Jews throughout the
world, and such other cudgelled and heterodox people, they suffer all
the moral and physical ills that can afflict humanity. Their life is a
struggle against truth; they are vicious in their own defence. They are
so unused to kindness, that when they occasionally meet with it they
look upon it with suspicion, as a dog often beaten snaps at your fingers
if you attempt to caress him. "They are ungrateful, notoriously,
abominably ungrateful!"--this is the general cry. Now, in the name of
Nemesis! for what are they to be grateful? Where is the human being that
ever conferred a benefit on Greek or Greeks? They are to be grateful to
the Turks for their fetters, and to the Franks for their broken promises
and lying counsels. They are to be grateful to the artist who engraves
their ruins, and to the antiquary who carries them away; to the
traveller whose janissary flogs them, and to the scribbler whose journal
abuses them. This is the amount of their obligations to foreigners.


                              II.

           Franciscan Convent, Athens, _January_ 23, 1811.[236]

Amongst the remnants of the barbarous policy of the earlier ages, are
the traces of bondage which yet exist in different countries; whose
inhabitants, however divided in religion and manners, almost all agree
in oppression.

The English have at last compassionated their <DW64>s, and under a less
bigoted government, may probably one day release their Catholic
brethren; but the interposition of foreigners alone can emancipate the
Greeks, who, otherwise, appear to have as small a chance of redemption
from the Turks, as the Jews have from mankind in general.

Of the ancient Greeks we know more than enough; at least the younger men
of Europe devote much of their time to the study of the Greek writers
and history, which would be more usefully spent in mastering their own.
Of the moderns, we are perhaps more neglectful than they deserve; and
while every man of any pretensions to learning is tiring out his youth,
and often his age, in the study of the language and of the harangues of
the Athenian demagogues in favour of freedom, the real or supposed
descendants of these sturdy republicans are left to the actual tyranny
of their masters, although a very slight effort is required to strike
off their chains.

To talk, as the Greeks themselves do, of their rising again to their
pristine superiority, would be ridiculous: as the rest of the world must
resume its barbarism, after reasserting the sovereignty of Greece: but
there seems to be no very great obstacle, except in the apathy of the
Franks, to their becoming an useful dependency, or even a free state,
with a proper guarantee;--under correction, however, be it spoken, for
many and well-informed men doubt the practicability even of this.

The Greeks have never lost their hope, though they are now more divided
in opinion on the subject of their probable deliverers. Religion
recommends the Russians; but they have twice been deceived and abandoned
by that power, and the dreadful lesson they received after the Muscovite
desertion in the Morea has never been forgotten. The French they
dislike; although the subjugation of the rest of Europe will, probably,
be attended by the deliverance of continental Greece. The islanders look
to the English for succour, as they have very lately possessed
themselves of the Ionian republic, Corfu excepted.[237] But whoever
appear with arms in their hands will be welcome; and when that day
arrives, Heaven have mercy on the Ottomans; they cannot expect it from
the Giaours.

But instead of considering what they have been, and speculating on what
they may be, let us look at them as they are.

And here it is impossible to reconcile the contrariety of opinions:
some, particularly the merchants, decrying the Greeks in the strongest
language; others, generally travellers, turning periods in their eulogy,
and publishing very curious speculations grafted on their former state,
which can have no more effect on their present lot, than the existence
of the Incas on the future fortunes of Peru.

One very ingenious person terms them the "natural allies of Englishmen;"
another no less ingenious, will not allow them to be the allies of
anybody, and denies their very descent from the ancients; a third, more
ingenious than either, builds a Greek empire on a Russian foundation,
and realises (on paper) all the chimeras of Catharine II. As to the
question of their descent, what can it import whether the Mainotes[238]
are the lineal Laconians or not? or the present Athenians as indigenous
as the bees of Hymettus, or as the grasshoppers, to which they once
likened themselves? What Englishman cares if he be of a Danish, Saxon,
Norman, or Trojan blood? or who, except a Welshman, is afflicted with a
desire of being descended from Caractacus?

The poor Greeks do not so much abound in the good things of this world,
as to render even their claims to antiquity an object of envy; it is
very cruel, then, in Mr. Thornton to disturb them in the possession of
all that time has left them; viz. their pedigree, of which they are the
more tenacious, as it is all they can call their own. It would be worth
while to publish together, and compare, the works of Messrs. Thornton
and De Pauw, Eton and Sonnini; paradox on one side, and prejudice on the
other. Mr. Thornton conceives himself to have claims to public
confidence from a fourteen years' residence at Pera; perhaps he may on
the subject of the Turks, but this can give him no more insight into the
real state of Greece and her inhabitants, than as many years spent in
Wapping into that of the Western Highlands.

The Greeks of Constantinople live in Fanal;[239] and if Mr. Thornton did
not oftener cross the Golden Horn than his brother merchants are
accustomed to do, I should place no great reliance on his information. I
actually heard one of these gentlemen boast of their little general
intercourse with the city, and assert of himself, with an air of
triumph, that he had been but four times at Constantinople in as many
years.

As to Mr. Thornton's voyages in the Black Sea with Greek vessels, they
gave him the same idea of Greece as a cruise to Berwick in a Scotch
smack would of Johnny Groat's house. Upon what grounds then does he
arrogate the right of condemning by wholesale a body of men of whom he
can know little? It is rather a curious circumstance that Mr. Thornton,
who so lavishly dispraises Pouqueville on every occasion of mentioning
the Turks, has yet recourse to him as authority on the Greeks, and terms
him an impartial observer. Now, Dr. Pouqueville is as little entitled to
that appellation as Mr. Thornton to confer it on him.

The fact is, we are deplorably in want of information on the subject of
the Greeks, and in particular their literature; nor is there any
probability of our being better acquainted, till our intercourse becomes
more intimate, or their independence confirmed. The relations of
passing travellers are as little to be depended on as the invectives of
angry factors; but till something more can be attained, we must be
content with the little to be acquired from similar sources.[240]

However defective these may be, they are preferable to the parodoxes of
men who have read superficially of the ancients, and seen nothing of the
moderns, such as De Pauw; who, when he asserts that the British breed of
horses is ruined by Newmarket, and that the Spartans[241] were cowards
in the field,[242] betrays an equal knowledge of English horses and
Spartan men. His "philosophical observations" have a much better claim
to the title of "poetical." It could not be expected that he who so
liberally condemns some of the most celebrated institutions of the
ancient, should have mercy on the modern Greeks; and it fortunately
happens, that the absurdity of his hypothesis on their forefathers
refutes his sentence on themselves.

Let us trust, then, that, in spite of the prophecies of De Pauw, and the
doubts of Mr. Thornton, there is a reasonable hope of the redemption of
a race of men, who, whatever may be the errors of their religion and
policy, have been amply punished by three centuries and a half of
captivity.


                           III.[243]

              Athens, Franciscan Convent, _March_ 17, 1811.

          "I must have some talk with this learned Theban."[244]

Some time after my return from Constantinople to this city I received
the thirty-first number of the _Edinburgh Review_[245] as a great
favour, and certainly at this distance an acceptable one, from the
captain of an English frigate off Salamis. In that number, Art. 3,
containing the review of a French translation of Strabo,[246] there are
introduced some remarks on the modern Greeks and their literature, with
a short account of Coray, a co-translator in the French version. On
those remarks I mean to ground a few observations; and the spot where I
now write will, I hope, be sufficient excuse for introducing them in a
work in some degree connected with the subject. Coray, the most
celebrated of living Greeks, at least among the Franks, was born at Scio
(in the _Review_, Smyrna is stated, I have reason to think,
incorrectly), and besides the translation of Beccaria and other works
mentioned by the Reviewer, has published a lexicon in Romaic and French,
if I may trust the assurance of some Danish travellers lately arrived
from Paris; but the latest we have seen here in French and Greek is that
of Gregory Zolikogloou.[247] Coray has recently been involved in an
unpleasant controversy with M. Gail,[248] a Parisian commentator and
editor of some translations from the Greek poets, in consequence of the
Institute having awarded him the prize for his version of Hippocrates'
"[Greek: Peri\ y(da/ton]," etc., to the disparagement, and consequently
displeasure, of the said Gail. To his exertions, literary and patriotic,
great praise is undoubtedly due; but a part of that praise ought not to
be withheld from the two brothers Zosimado (merchants settled in
Leghorn), who sent him to Paris and maintained him, for the express
purpose of elucidating the ancient, and adding to the modern,
researches of his countrymen. Coray, however, is not considered by his
countrymen equal to some who lived in the two last centuries; more
particularly Dorotheus of Mitylene,[249] whose Hellenic writings are so
much esteemed by the Greeks, that Meletius[250] terms him "[Greek: Meta\
to Thoukydi/den kai\ Xenopho/nta a)/ristos E(lle/non]" (p. 224,
_Ecclesiastical History_, iv.).

Panagiotes Kodrikas, the translator of Fontenelle, and Kamarases,[251]
who translated Ocellus Lucanus on the Universe into French,
Christodoulus,[252] and more particularly Psalida,[253] whom I have
conversed with in Joannina, are also in high repute among their
literati. The last-mentioned has published in Romaic and Latin a work on
_True Happiness_, dedicated to Catherine II. But Polyzois,[254] who is
stated by the Reviewer to be the only modern except Coray who has
distinguished himself by a knowledge of Hellenic, if he be the Polyzois
Lampanitziotes of Yanina, who has published a number of editions in
Romaic, was neither more nor less than an itinerant vender of books;
with the contents of which he had no concern beyond his name on the
title page, placed there to secure his property in the publication; and
he was, moreover, a man utterly destitute of scholastic acquirements. As
the name, however, is not uncommon, some other Polyzois may have edited
the Epistles of Aristaenetus.

It is to be regretted that the system of continental blockade has closed
the few channels through which the Greeks received their publications,
particularly Venice and Trieste. Even the common grammars for children
are become too dear for the lower orders. Amongst their original works
the Geography of Meletius, Archbishop of Athens, and a multitude of
theological quartos and poetical pamphlets, are to be met with; their
grammars and lexicons of two, three, and four languages are numerous and
excellent. Their poetry is in rhyme. The most singular piece I have
lately seen is a satire in dialogue between a Russian, English, and
French traveller, and the Waywode of Wallachia (or Blackbey, as they
term him), an archbishop, a merchant,[255] and Cogia Bachi (or primate),
in succession; to all of whom under the Turks the writer attributes
their present degeneracy. Their songs are sometimes pretty and pathetic,
but their tunes generally unpleasing to the ear of a Frank; the best is
the famous "[Greek: Deu/te, pai~des to~n E(lle/non]," by the unfortunate
Riga.[256] But from a catalogue of more than sixty authors, now before
me, only fifteen can be found who have touched on any theme except
theology.

I am intrusted with a commission by a Greek of Athens named Marmarotouri
to make arrangements, if possible, for printing in London a translation
of Barthelemi's _Anacharsis_ in Romaic, as he has no other opportunity,
unless he dispatches the MS. to Vienna by the Black Sea and Danube.

The Reviewer mentions a school established at Hecatonesi,[257] and
suppressed at the instigation of Sebastiani:[258] he means Cidonies, or,
in Turkish, Haivali; a town on the continent, where that institution for
a hundred students and three professors still exists. It is true that
this establishment was disturbed by the Porte, under the ridiculous
pretext that the Greeks were constructing a fortress instead of a
college; but on investigation, and the payment of some purses to the
Divan, it has been permitted to continue. The principal professor, named
Ueniamin (i.e. Benjamin), is stated to be a man of talent, but a
freethinker. He was born in <DW26>s, studied in Italy, and is master of
Hellenic, Latin, and some Frank languages: besides a smattering of the
sciences.

Though it is not my intention to enter farther on this topic than may
allude to the article in question, I cannot but observe that the
Reviewer's lamentation over the fall of the Greeks appears singular,
when he closes it with these words: "_The change is to be attributed to
their misfortunes rather than to any 'physical degradation.'_" It may be
true that the Greeks are not physically degenerated, and that
Constantinople contained on the day when it changed masters as many men
of six feet and upwards as in the hour of prosperity; but ancient
history and modern politics instruct us that something more than
physical perfection is necessary to preserve a state in vigour and
independence; and the Greeks, in particular, are a melancholy example of
the near connexion between moral degradation and national decay.

The Reviewer mentions a plan "_we believe_" by Potemkin[259] for the
purification of the Romaic; and I have endeavoured in vain to procure
any tidings or traces of its existence. There was an academy in St.
Petersburg for the Greeks; but it was suppressed by Paul, and has not
been revived by his successor.

There is a slip of the pen, and it can only be a slip of the pen, in p.
58, No. 31, of the _Edinburgh Review_, where these words occur: "We are
told that when the capital of the East yielded to _Solyman_"--It may be
presumed that this last word will, in a future edition, be altered to
Mahomet II.[260] The "ladies of Constantinople," it seems, at that
period spoke a dialect, "which would not have disgraced the lips of an
Athenian." I do not know how that might be, but am sorry to say that the
ladies in general, and the Athenians in particular, are much altered;
being far from choice either in their dialect or expressions, as the
whole Attic race are barbarous to a proverb:--

    "[Greek: O) A)the~nai, pro/te cho/ra],
    [Greek: Ti/ gaida/rous tre/pheis to/ra];"[261]

In Gibbon, vol. x. p. 161, is the following sentence:--"The vulgar
dialect of the city was gross and barbarous, though the compositions of
the church and palace sometimes affected to copy the purity of the Attic
models." Whatever may be asserted on the subject, it is difficult to
conceive that the "ladies of Constantinople," in the reign of the last
Caesar, spoke a purer dialect than Anna Comnena[262] wrote, three
centuries before: and those royal pages are not esteemed the best models
of composition, although the princess [Greek: glo~ttan ei~)chen A)KRIBOE
A)ttikisou/san].[263] In the Fanal, and in Yanina, the best Greek is
spoken: in the latter there is a flourishing school under the direction
of Psalida.

There is now in Athens a pupil of Psalida's, who is making a tour of
observation through Greece: he is intelligent, and better educated than
a fellow-commoner of most colleges. I mention this as a proof that the
spirit of inquiry is not dormant among the Greeks.

The Reviewer mentions Mr. Wright,[264] the author of the beautiful poem
_Horae Ionicae_, as qualified to give details of these nominal Romans and
degenerate Greeks; and also of their language: but Mr. Wright, though a
good poet and an able man, has made a mistake where he states the
Albanian dialect of the Romaic to approximate nearest to the Hellenic;
for the Albanians speak a Romaic as notoriously corrupt as the Scotch of
Aberdeenshire, or the Italian of Naples. Yanina, (where, next to the
Fanal, the Greek is purest,) although the capital of Ali Pacha's
dominions, is not in Albania, but Epirus; and beyond Delvinachi in
Albania Proper up to Argyrocastro and Tepaleen (beyond which I did not
advance) they speak worse Greek than even the Athenians. I was attended
for a year and a half by two of these singular mountaineers, whose
mother tongue is Illyric, and I never heard them or their countrymen
(whom I have seen, not only at home, but to the amount of twenty
thousand in the army of Vely Pacha[265]) praised for their Greek, but
often laughed at for their provincial barbarisms.

I have in my possession about twenty-five letters, amongst which some
from the Bey of Corinth, written to me by Notaras, the Cogia Bachi, and
others by the dragoman of the Caimacam[266] of the Morea (which last
governs in Vely Pacha's absence), are said to be favourable specimens of
their epistolary style. I also received some at Constantinople from
private persons, written in a most hyperbolical style, but in the true
antique character.

The Reviewer proceeds, after some remarks on the tongue in its past and
present state, to a paradox (page 59) on the great mischief the
knowledge of his own language has done to Coray, who, it seems, is less
likely to understand the ancient Greek, because he is perfect master of
the modern! This observation follows a paragraph, recommending, in
explicit terms, the study of the Romaic, as "a powerful auxiliary," not
only to the traveller and foreign merchant, but also to the classical
scholar; in short, to every body except the only person who can be
thoroughly acquainted with its uses; and by a parity of reasoning, our
own language is conjectured to be probably more attainable by
"foreigners" than by ourselves! Now, I am inclined to think, that a
Dutch Tyro in our tongue (albeit himself of Saxon blood) would be sadly
perplexed with "Sir Tristram,"[267] or any other given "Auchinleck MS."
with or without a grammar or glossary; and to most apprehensions it
seems evident that none but a native can acquire a competent, far less
complete, knowledge of our obsolete idioms. We may give the critic
credit for his ingenuity, but no more believe him than we do Smollett's
Lismahago,[268] who maintains that the purest English is spoken in
Edinburgh. That Coray may err is very possible; but if he does, the
fault is in the man rather than in his mother tongue, which is, as it
ought to be, of the greatest aid to the native student.--Here the
Reviewer proceeds to business on Strabo's translators, and here I close
my remarks.

Sir W. Drummond, Mr. Hamilton, Lord Aberdeen, Dr. Clarke, Captain Leake,
Mr. Gell, Mr. Walpole,[269] and many others now in England, have all the
requisites to furnish details of this fallen people. The few
observations I have offered I should have left where I made them, had
not the article in question, and above all the spot where I read it,
induced me to advert to those pages, which the advantage of my present
situation enabled me to clear, or at least to make the attempt.

I have endeavoured to waive the personal feelings which rise in despite
of me in touching upon any part of the _Edinburgh Review_; not from a
wish to conciliate the favour of its writers, or to cancel the
remembrance of a syllable I have formerly published, but simply from a
sense of the impropriety of mixing up private resentments with a
disquisition of the present kind, and more particularly at this distance
of time and place.


                      ADDITIONAL NOTE ON THE TURKS.

The difficulties of travelling in Turkey have been much exaggerated, or
rather have considerably diminished, of late years. The Mussulmans have
been beaten into a kind of sullen civility very comfortable to voyagers.

It is hazardous to say much on the subject of Turks and Turkey; since it
is possible to live amongst them twenty years without acquiring
information, at least from themselves. As far as my own slight
experience carried me, I have no complaint to make; but am indebted for
many civilities (I might almost say for friendship), and much
hospitality, to Ali Pacha, his son Vely Pacha of the Morea, and several
others of high rank in the provinces. Suleyman Aga, late Governor of
Athens, and now of Thebes, was a _bon vivant_, and as social a being as
ever sat cross-legged at a tray or a table. During the carnival, when
our English party were masquerading, both himself and his successor were
more happy to "receive masks" than any dowager in Grosvenor-square.[270]

On one occasion of his supping at the convent, his friend and visitor,
the Cadi[271] of Thebes, was carried from table perfectly qualified for
any club in Christendom; while the worthy Waywode himself triumphed in
his fall.

In all money transactions with the Moslems, I ever found the strictest
honour, the highest disinterestedness. In transacting business with
them, there are none of those dirty peculations, under the name of
interest, difference of exchange, commission, etc., etc., uniformly
found in applying to a Greek consul to cash bills, even on the first
houses in Pera.

With regard to presents, an established custom in the East, you will
rarely find yourself a loser; as one worth acceptance is generally
returned by another of similar value--a horse, or a shawl.

In the capital and at court the citizens and courtiers are formed in the
same school with those of Christianity; but there does not exist a more
honourable, friendly, and high-spirited character than the true Turkish
provincial Aga, or Moslem country gentleman. It is not meant here to
designate the governors of towns, but those Agas who, by a kind of
feudal tenure, possess lands and houses, of more or less extent, in
Greece and Asia Minor.

The lower orders are in as tolerable discipline as the rabble in
countries with greater pretensions to civilisation. A Moslem, in walking
the streets of our country-towns, would be more incommoded in England
than a Frank in a similar situation in Turkey. Regimentals are the best
travelling dress.

The best accounts of the religion and different sects of Islamism may be
found in D'Ohsson's[272] French; of their manners, etc., perhaps in
Thornton's English. The Ottomans, with all their defects, are not a
people to be despised. Equal at least to the Spaniards, they are
superior to the Portuguese. If it be difficult to pronounce what they
are, we can at least say what they are _not_: they are _not_
treacherous, they are _not_ cowardly, they do _not_ burn heretics, they
are _not_ assassins, nor has an enemy advanced to _their_ capital. They
are faithful to their sultan till he becomes unfit to govern, and devout
to their God without an inquisition. Were they driven from St. Sophia
to-morrow, and the French or Russians enthroned in their stead, it would
become a question whether Europe would gain by the exchange. England
would certainly be the loser.

With regard to that ignorance of which they are so generally, and
sometimes justly accused, it may be doubted, always excepting France and
England, in what useful points of knowledge they are excelled by other
nations. Is it in the common arts of life? In their manufactures? Is a
Turkish sabre inferior to a Toledo? or is a Turk worse clothed or
lodged, or fed and taught, than a Spaniard? Are their Pachas worse
educated than a Grandee? or an Effendi[273] than a Knight of St. Jago? I
think not.

I remember Mahmout, the grandson of Ali Pacha, asking whether my
fellow-traveller and myself were in the upper or lower House of
Parliament. Now, this question from a boy of ten years old proved that
his education had not been neglected. It may be doubted if an English
boy at that age knows the difference of the Divan from a College of
Dervises; but I am very sure a Spaniard does not. How little Mahmout,
surrounded as he had been entirely by his Turkish tutors, had learned
that there was such a thing as a Parliament, it were useless to
conjecture, unless we suppose that his instructors did not confine his
studies to the Koran.

In all the mosques there are schools established, which are very
regularly attended; and the poor are taught without the church of Turkey
being put into peril. I believe the system is not yet printed (though
there is such a thing as a Turkish press, and books printed on the late
military institution of the Nizam Gedidd);[274] nor have I heard whether
the Mufti and the Mollas have subscribed, or the Caimacan and the
Tefterdar taken the alarm, for fear the ingenuous youth of the turban
should be taught not to "pray to God their way." The Greeks also--a kind
of Eastern Irish <DW7>s--have a college of their own at Maynooth,--no,
at Haivali; where the heterodox receive much the same kind of
countenance from the Ottoman as the Catholic college from the English
legislature. Who shall then affirm that the Turks are ignorant bigots,
when they thus evince the exact proportion of Christian charity which is
tolerated in the most prosperous and orthodox of all possible kingdoms?
But though they allow all this, they will not suffer the Greeks to
participate in their privileges: no, let them fight their battles, and
pay their haratch (taxes), be drubbed in this world, and damned in the
next. And shall we then emancipate our Irish Helots? Mahomet forbid! We
should then be bad Mussulmans, and worse Christians: at present we unite
the best of both--jesuitical faith, and something not much inferior to
Turkish toleration.


                                APPENDIX.

Amongst an enslaved people, obliged to have recourse to foreign presses
even for their books of religion, it is less to be wondered at that we
find so few publications on general subjects than that we find any at
all. The whole number of the Greeks, scattered up and down the Turkish
empire and elsewhere, may amount, at most, to three millions; and yet,
for so scanty a number, it is impossible to discover any nation with so
great a proportion of books and their authors as the Greeks of the
present century. "Aye," but say the generous advocates of oppression,
who, while they assert the ignorance of the Greeks, wish to prevent
them from dispelling it, "ay, but these are mostly, if not all,
ecclesiastical tracts, and consequently good for nothing." Well! and
pray what else can they write about? It is pleasant enough to hear a
Frank, particularly an Englishman, who may abuse the government of his
own country; or a Frenchman, who may abuse every government except his
own, and who may range at will over every philosophical, religious,
scientific, sceptical, or moral subject, sneering at the Greek legends.
A Greek must not write on politics, and cannot touch on science for want
of instruction; if he doubts he is excommunicated and damned; therefore
his countrymen are not poisoned with modern philosophy; and as to
morals, thanks to the Turks! there are no such things. What then is left
him, if he has a turn for scribbling? Religion and holy biography; and
it is natural enough that those who have so little in this life should
look to the next. It is no great wonder then, that in a catalogue now
before me of fifty-five Greek writers, many of whom were lately living,
not above fifteen should have touched on anything but religion. The
catalogue alluded to is contained in the twenty-sixth chapter of the
fourth volume of Meletius' _Ecclesiastical History_.

[The above forms a preface to an Appendix, headed "Remarks on the Romaic
or Modern Greek Language, with Specimens and Translations," which was
printed at the end of the volume, after the "Poems," in the first and
successive editions of _Childe Harold_. It contains (1) a "List of
Romaic Authors;" (2) the "Greek War-Song," [Greek: Deu~te, Pai~des to~n
E(lle/non]; (3) "Romaic Extracts," of which the first, "a Satire in
dialogue" (_vide_ Note III. _supra_), is translated (see _Epigrams,
etc._, vol. vi. of the present issue); (4) scene from [Greek: O
Kaphene\s] (the Cafe), translated from the Italian of Goldoni by
Spiridion Vlanti, with a "Translation;" (5) "Familiar Dialogues" in
Romaic and English; (6) "Parallel Passages from St. John's Gospel;" (7)
"The Inscriptions at Orchomenos from Meletius" (see _Travels in Albania,
etc._, i. 224); (8) the "Prospectus of a Translation of Anacharsis into
Romaic, by my Romaic master, Marmarotouri, who wished to publish it in
England;" (9) "The Lord's Prayer in Romaic" and in Greek.

The Excursus, which is remarkable rather for the evidence which it
affords of Byron's industry and zeal for acquiring knowledge, than for
the value or interest of the subject-matter, has been omitted from the
present issue. The "Remarks," etc., are included in the "Appendix" to
_Lord Byron's Poetical Works_, 1891, pp. 792-797. (See, too, letter to
Dallas, September 21, 1811: _Letters_, ii. 43.)]

       *       *       *       *       *



FOOTNOTES:

[202] {166} ["Owls and serpents" are taken from _Isa._ xiii. 21, 22;
"foxes" from _Lam._ v. 18, "Zion is desolate, the foxes walk upon it."]

[203] [For Herr Gropius, _vide post_, note 6.]

[204] [The Parthenon was converted into a church in the sixth century by
Justinian, and dedicated to the _Divine Wisdom_. About 1460 the church
was turned into a mosque. After the siege in 1687 the Turks erected a
smaller mosque within the original enclosure. "The only relic of the
mosque dedicated by Mohammed the Conqueror (1430-1481) is the base of
the minaret ... at the south-west corner of the Cella" (_Handbook for
Greece_, p. 319).]

[205] {168} ["Don Battista Lusieri, better known as Don Tita," was born
at Naples. He followed Sir William Hamilton "to Constantinople, in 1799,
whence he removed to Athens." "It may be said of Lusieri, as of Claude
Lorraine, 'If he be not the _poet_, he is the historian of
nature.'"--_Travels, etc_., by E. D. Clarke, 1810-1823, Part II. sect.
ii. p. 469, note. See, too, _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 455.]

[206] ["Mirandum in modum (canes venaticos diceres) ita odorabantur
omnia et pervestigabant, ut, ubi quidque esset, aliqua ratione
invenirent" (Cicero, _In Verrem_, Act. II. lib. iv. 13). Verres had two
_finders_: Tlepolemus a worker in wax, and Hiero a painter. (See
_Introduction to The Curse of Minerva: Poems_, 1898, i. 455.)]

[207] [M. Fauvel was born in Burgundy, circ. 1754. In 1787 he was
attached to the suite of the Count Choiseul-Gouffier, French Ambassador
at Constantinople, and is said to have prepared designs and
illustrations for his patron's _Voyage Pittoresque de la Grece_, vol. i.
1787, vol. ii. 1809. He settled at Athens, and was made vice-consul by
the French Government. In his old age, after more than forty years'
service at Athens, he removed finally to Smyrna, where he was appointed
consul-general.--_Biographic des Contemporains_ (Rabbe), 1834, art.
"(N.) Fauvel."]

[208] {169} In all Attica, if we except Athens itself and Marathon,
there is no scene more interesting than Cape Colonna.[Sec.1] To the
antiquary and artist, sixteen columns are an inexhaustible source of
observation and design; to the philosopher, the supposed scene of some
of Plato's conversations will not be unwelcome; and the traveller will
be struck with the beauty of the prospect over "Isles that crown the
AEgean deep:" but, for an Englishman, Colonna has yet an additional
interest, as the actual spot of Falconer's[Sec.2] shipwreck. Pallas and
Plato are forgotten in the recollection of Falconer and Campbell:--

    "Here in the dead of night, by Lonna's steep,[Sec.3]
    The seaman's cry was heard along the deep."

This temple of Minerva may be seen at sea from a great distance. In two
journeys which I made, and one voyage to Cape Colonna, the view from
either side, by land, was less striking than the approach from the
isles. In our second land excursion, we had a narrow escape from a party
of Mainotes, concealed in the caverns beneath. We were told afterwards,
by one of their prisoners, subsequently ransomed, that they were
deterred from attacking us by the appearance of my two Albanians:
conjecturing very sagaciously, but falsely, that we had a complete guard
of these Arnaouts at hand, they remained stationary, and thus saved our
party, which was too small to have opposed any effectual resistance.
Colonna is no less a resort of painters than of pirates; there

    "The hireling artist plants his paltry desk,
    And makes degraded nature picturesque."

See Hodgson's _Lady Jane Grey_, etc.[Sec.4][1809, p. 214].

But there Nature, with the aid of Art, has done that for herself. I was
fortunate enough to engage a very superior German artist; and hope to
renew my acquaintance with this and many other Levantine scenes, by the
arrival of his performances.

[Sec.1] [This must have taken place in 1811, after Hobhouse returned to
England.--_Travels in Albania_, i. 373, note.]

[Sec.2] [William Falconer (1732-1769), second mate of a vessel in the
Levant trade, was wrecked between Alexandria and Venice. Only three of
the crew survived. His poem, _The Shipwreck_, was published in 1762. It
was dedicated to the Duke of York, and through his intervention he was
"rated as a midshipman in the Royal Navy." Either as author or naval
officer, he came to be on intimate terms with John Murray the first, who
thought highly of his abilities, and offered him (October 16, 1768) a
partnership in his new bookselling business in Fleet Street. In
September, 1769, he embarked for India as purser of the _Aurora_
frigate, which touched at the Cape, but never reached her destination.
See _Memoir_, by J. S. Clarke; _The Shipwreck_, 1804, pp. viii.-xlvi.]

[Sec.3] _Yes, at the dead of night_, etc.--_Pleasures of Hope_,
lines 149, 150.

[Sec.4] [The quotation is from Hodgson's "Lines on a Ruined Abbey in a
Romantic Country," _vide ante_, Canto I., p. 20, note.]

[209] {171} ["It was, however, during our stay in the place, to be
lamented that a war, more than civil, was raging on the subject of Lord
Elgin's pursuits in Greece, and had enlisted all the French settlers and
the principal Greeks on one side or the other of the controversy. The
factions of Athens were renewed."--_Travels in Albania, etc._, i. 243.]

[210] This word, in the cant language, signifies thieving.--Fielding's
_History of Jonathan Wild_, i. 3, note.

[211] This Sr. Gropius was employed by a noble Lord for the sole purpose
of sketching, in which he excels: but I am sorry to say, that he has,
through the abused sanction of that most respectable name, been treading
at humble distance in the steps of Sr. Lusieri.--A shipful of his
trophies was detained, and I believe confiscated, at Constantinople in
1810. I am most happy to be now enabled to state, that "this was not in
his bond;" that he was employed solely as a painter, and that his noble
patron disavows all connection with him, except as an artist. If the
error in the first and second edition of this poem has given the noble
Lord a moment's pain, I am very sorry for it: Sr. Gropius has assumed
for years the name of his agent; and though I cannot much condemn myself
for sharing in the mistake of so many, I am happy in being one of the
first to be undeceived. Indeed, I have as much pleasure in contradicting
this as I felt regret in stating it.--[_Note to Third Edition._]

[According to Bryant's _Dict. of Painters_, and other biographical
dictionaries, Karl Wilhelm Gropius (whom Lamartine, in his _Voyage en
Orient_, identifies with the Gropius "injustement accuse par lord Byron
dans ses notes mordantes sur Athenes") was born at Brunswick, in 1793,
travelled in Italy and Greece, making numerous landscape and
architectural sketches, and finally settled at Berlin in 1827, where he
opened a diorama, modelled on that of Daguerre, "in connection with a
permanent exhibition of painting.... He was considered the first wit in
Berlin, where he died in 1870." In 1812, when Byron wrote his note to
the third edition of _Childe Harold_, Gropius must have been barely of
age, and the statement "that he has for years assumed the name of his (a
noble Lord's) agent" is somewhat perplexing.]

[212] {173} [George Castriota (1404-1467) (Scanderbeg, or Scander Bey),
the youngest son of an Albanian chieftain, was sent with his four
brothers as hostage to the Sultan Amurath II. After his father's death
in 1432 he carried on a protracted warfare with the Turks, and finally
established the independence of Albania. "His personal strength and
address were such as to make his prowess in the field resemble that of a
knight of romance." He died at Lissa, in the Gulf of Venice, and when
the island was taken by Mohammed II., the Turks are said to have dug up
his bones and hung them round their necks, either as charms against
wounds or "amulets to transfer his courage to themselves." (Hofmann's
_Lexicon Universale_; Gorton's _Biog. Dict._, art. "Scanderbeg.")]

[213] {174} [William Martin Leake (1777-1860), traveller and
numismatist, published (_inter alia_) _Researches in Greece_, in 1814.
He was "officially resident" in Albania, February, 1809-March, 1810.]

[214] [_A Journey through Albania during the Years 1809-10_, London,
1812.]

[215] {175} [The inhabitants of Albania, of the Shkipetar race, consist
of two distinct branches: the Gueghs, who belong to the north, and are
for the most part Catholics; and the Tosks of the south, who are
generally Mussulmans (Finlay's _History of Greece_, i. 35).]

[gg] _I laughed so much as to induce a violent perspiration to which ...
I attribute my present individuality_.--[D.]

[216] {176} [The mayor of the village; in Greek, [Greek: proestos].]

[217] [The father of the Consulina Teodora Macri, and grandfather of the
"Maid of Athens."]

[218] [_Tristram Shandy_, 1775, iv. 44.]

[219] [See _Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron_, 1824, p.64.]

[220] {177} [Compare _The Waltz_, line 125--"O say, shall dull
_Romaika's_ heavy sound." _Poems_, 1898, i. 492.]

[221] {186} [Francois Mercy de Lorraine, who fought against the
Protestants in the Thirty Years' War, was mortally wounded at the battle
of Nordlingen, August 3, 1645.]

[222] {187} [Byron and Hobhouse visited Marathon, January 25, 1810. The
unconsidered trifle of the "plain" must have been offered to Byron
during his second residence at Athens, in 1811.]

[223] ["Expende Annibalem--quot libras," etc. (Juvenal, x. 147), is the
motto of the _Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte_, which was written April 10,
1814.--_Journal_, 1814; _Life_, p. 325.]

[224] [Compare letter to Hodgson, September 25, 1811: _Letters_, 1898,
ii. 45.]

[225] [Miss Owenson (Sydney, Lady Morgan), 1783-1859, published her
_Woman, or Ida of Athens_, in 4 vols., in 1812. Writing to Murray,
February 20, 1818, Byron alludes to the "cruel work" which an article
(attributed to Croker but, probably, written by Hookham Frere) had made
with her _France_ in the _Quarterly Review_ (vol. xvii. p. 260); and in
a note to _The Two Foscari_, act iii. sc. 1, he points out that his
description of Venice as an "Ocean-Rome" had been anticipated by Lady
Morgan in her "fearless and excellent work upon Italy." The play was
completed July 9, 1821, but the work containing the phrase, "Rome of the
Ocean," had not been received till August 16 (see, too, his letter to
Murray, August 23, 1821). His conviction of the excellence of Lady
Morgan's work was, perhaps strengthened by her outspoken eulogium.]

[226] {188} [For the Disdar's extortions, see _Travels in Albania_, i.
244.]

[227]
    ["The poor ...when once abroad,
      Grow sick, and damn the climate like a lord."
                        Pope, _Imit. of Horace_, Ep. 1, lines 159, 160.]

[228] [_Works and Days_, v. 493, _et seq.; Hesiod. Carm._, C.
Goettlingius (1843), p. 215.]

[229] Nonsense; humbug.

[230] {189} [Hobhouse pronounced it to be the Fountain of Ares, the
Paraporti Spring, "which serves to swell the scanty waters of the
Dirce." The Dirce flows on the west; the Ismenus, which forms the
fountain, to the east of Thebes. "The water was tepid, as I found by
bathing in it" (_Travels in Albania_, i. 233; _Handbook for Greece_, p.
703).]

[231] [_Travels in Greece_, ch. lxvii.]

[232] [Gell's _Itinerary of Greece_ (1810), Preface, p. xi.]

[233] {190} [For M. Roque, see _Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem: Oeuvres
Chateaubriand_, Paris, 1837, ii. 258-266.]

[234] {191} [William Eton published (1798-1809) _A Survey of the Turkish
Empire_, in which he advocated the cause of Greek independence. Sonnini
de Manoncourt (1751-1812), another ardent phil-Hellenist, published his
_Voyage en Grece et en Turquie_ in 1801.]

[235] [Cornelius de Pauw (1739-1799), Dutch historian, published, in
1787, _Recherches philosophiques sur les Grecs_. Byron reflects upon his
paradoxes and superficiality in Note II., _infra_. Thomas Thornton
published, in 1807, a work entitled _Present State of Turkey_ (see Note
II., _infra_).]

[236] {192} [The MSS. of _Hints from Horace_ and _The Curse of Minerva_
are dated, "Athens, Capuchin Convent, March 12 and March 17, 1811."
Proof B of _Hints from Horace_ is dated, "Athens, Franciscan Convent,
March 12, 1811." Writing to Hodgson, November 14, 1810, he says, "I am
living alone in the Franciscan monastery with one 'fri_ar_' (a Capuchin
of course) and one 'fri_er_' (a bandy-legged Turkish cook)" (_Letters_,
1898, i. 307).]

[237] {193} [The Ionian Islands, with the exception of Corfu and Paxos,
fell into the hands of the English in 1809, 1810. Paxos was captured in
1814, but Corfu, which had been blockaded by Napoleon, was not
surrendered till the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815.]

[238] [The Mainotes or Mainates, who take their name from Maina, near
Cape Taenaron, were the Highlanders of the Morea, "remarkable for their
love of violence and plunder, but also for their frankness and
independence." "Pedants have termed the Mainates descendants of the
ancient Spartans," but "they must be either descended from the Helots,
or from the Perioikoi.... To an older genealogy they can have no
pretension."--Finlay's History of Greece, 1877, v. 113; vi. 26.]

[239] {194} [The Fanal, or Phanar, is to the left, Pera to the right, of
the Golden Horn. "The water of the Golden Horn, which flows between the
city and the suburbs, is a line of separation seldom transgressed by the
Frank residents."--_Travels in Albania_, ii. 208.]

[240] {195} A word, _en passant_, with Mr. Thornton and Dr. Pouqueville,
who have been guilty between them of sadly clipping the Sultan's
Turkish.[Sec.1]

Dr. Pouqueville tells a long story of a Moslem who swallowed corrosive
sublimate in such quantities that he acquired the name of "_Suleyman
Yeyen_" i.e. quoth the Doctor, "_Suleyman the eater of corrosive
sublimate_." "Aha," thinks Mr. Thornton (angry with the Doctor for the
fiftieth time), "have I caught you?"[Sec.2]--Then, in a note, twice the
thickness of the Doctor's anecdote, he questions the Doctor's
proficiency in the Turkish tongue, and his veracity in his own.--"For,"
observes Mr. Thornton (after inflicting on us the tough participle of a
Turkish verb), "it means nothing more than '_Suleyman the eater_,' and
quite cashiers the supplementary '_sublimate_.'" Now both are right, and
both are wrong. If Mr. Thornton, when he next resides "fourteen years in
the factory," will consult his Turkish dictionary, or ask any of his
Stamboline acquaintance, he will discover that "_Suleyma'n yeyen_," put
together discreetly, mean the "_Swallower of sublimate_" without any
"Suleyman" in the case: "_Suleyma_" signifying "_corrosive sublimate_"
and not being a proper name on this occasion, although it be an orthodox
name enough with the addition of _n_. After Mr. Thornton's frequent
hints of profound Orientalism, he might have found this out before he
sang such paeans over Dr. Pouqueville.

After this, I think "Travellers _versus_ Factors" shall be our motto,
though the above Mr. Thornton has condemned "hoc genus omne," for
mistake and misrepresentation. "Ne Sutor ultra crepidam," "No merchant
beyond his bales." N.B. For the benefit of Mr. Thornton, "Sutor" is not
a proper name.

[Sec.1][For Pouqueville's story of the "theriakis" or opium-eaters, see
_Voyage en Moree_, 1805, ii. 126.]

[Sec.2][Thornton's _Present State of Turkey_, ii. 173.]

[241] _Recherches Philosophiques sur les Grecs_, 1787, i. 155.

[242] {196} [De Pauw (_Rech. Phil. sur les Grecs_, 1788, ii. 293), in
repeating Plato's statement (_Laches_, 191), that the Lacedaemonians at
Plataea first fled from the Persians, and then, when the Persians were
broken, turned upon them and won the battle, misapplies to them the term
[Greek: thrasy/deiloi] (Arist., _Eth. Nic._, iii. 9.7)--men, that is,
who affect the hero, but play the poltroon.]

[243] [Attached as a note to line 562 _of Hints from Horace_ (MS. M.).]

[244] ["I'll talk a word with this same learned Theban." Shakespeare,
_King Lear_, act iii. sc. 4, line 150.]

[245] [For April, 1810: vol. xvi. pp. 55, _sq_.]

[246] [Diamant or Adamantius Coray (1748-1833), scholar and
phil-Hellenist, declared his views on the future of the Greeks in the
preface to a translation of Beccaria Bonesani's treatise, _Dei Delitti e
delle Pene_ (1764), which was published in Paris in 1802. He began to
publish his _Bibliotheque Hellenique_, in 17 vols., in 1805. He was of
Chian parentage, but was born at Smyrna. [Greek: Korae Au)tobiographia],
Athens, 1891.]

[247] I have in my possession an excellent lexicon "[Greek:
tri/glosson]" which I received in exchange from S. G----, Esq., for a
small gem: my antiquarian friends have never forgotten it or forgiven
me.

[[Greek: Lexiko tri/glosson te~s Gallike~s, I)talike~s, kai\ 'Romaike~s
diale/ktou, k.t.l.], 3 vols., Vienna, 1790. By Georgie Vendoti
(Bentotes, or Bendotes) of Joanina. The book was in Hobhouse's
possession in 1854.]

[248] In Gail's pamphlet against Coray, he talks of "throwing the
insolent Hellenist out of the windows." On this a French critic
exclaims, "Ah, my God! throw an Hellenist out of the window! what
sacrilege!" It certainly would be a serious business for those authors
who dwell in the attics: but I have quoted the passage merely to prove
the similarity of style among the controversialists of all polished
countries; London or Edinburgh could hardly parallel this Parisian
ebullition.

[Jean Baptiste Gail (1755-1829), Professor of Greek in the College de
France, published, in 1810, a quarto volume entitled, _Reclamations de
J. B. Gail, ... et observations sur l'opinion en virtu de laquelle le
juri--propose de decerner un prix a M. Coray, a l'exclusion de la chasse
de Xenophon, du Thucydide, etc., grec-latin-francais, etc._]

[249] {198} Dorotheus of Mitylene (fl. sixteenth century), Archbishop of
Monembasia (Anglice "Malmsey"), on the south-east coast of Laconia, was
the author of a _Universal History_ ([Greek: Biblion I(storiko/n,
k.t.l.]), edited by A. Tzigaras, Venice, 1637, 4to.

[250] Meletius of Janina (1661-1714) was Archbishop of Athens, 1703-14.
His principal work is _Ancient and Modern Geography_, Venice, 1728, fol.
He also wrote an Ecclesiastical History, in four vols., Vienna, 1783-95.

[251] Panagios (Panagiotes) Kodrikas, Professor of Greek at Paris,
published at Vienna, in 1794, a Greek translation of Fontenelle's
_Entretiens sur la Pluralite des Mondes_. John Camarases, a
Constantinopolitan, translated into French the apocryphal treatise, _De
Universi Natura_, attributed to Ocellus Lucanus, a Pythagorean
philosopher, who is said to have flourished in Lucania in the fifth
century B.C.

[252] Christodoulos, an Acarnanian, published a work, [Greek: Peri\
Philoso/phou, Philosophi/as, Physio~n, Metaphysiko~n, k.t.l.], at
Vienna, in 1786.

[253] Athanasius Psalidas published, at Vienna, in 1791, a sceptical
work entitled, _True Felicity_ ([Greek: A)lethe\s Eu)daimoni/a]). "Very
learned, and full of quotations, but written in false taste."--_MS. M._
He was a schoolmaster at Janina, where Byron and Hobhouse made his
acquaintance--"the only person," says Hobhouse, "I ever saw who had what
might be called a library, and that a very small one" (_Travels in
Albania, etc._, i. 508).

[254] Hobhouse mentions a patriotic poet named Polyzois, "the new
Tyrtaeus," and gives, as a specimen of his work, "a war-song of the
Greeks in Egypt, fighting in the cause of Freedom."--_Travels in
Albania, etc._, i. 507; ii. 6, 7.

[255] {199} [By Blackbey is meant Bey of Vlack, i.e. Wallachia. (See a
_Translation_ of this "satire in dialogue"--"Remarks on the Romaic,"
etc., _Poetical Works_, 1891, p. 793.)]

[256] [Constantine Rhigas (born 1753), the author of the original of
Byron's "Sons of the Greeks, arise," was handed over to the Turks by the
Austrians, and shot at Belgrade in 1793, by the orders of Ali Pacha.]

[257] {200} [The Hecatonnesi are a cluster of islands in the Gulf of
Adramyttium, over against the harbour and town of Aivali or Aivalik.
Cidonies may stand for [Greek: e(po/lis kydoni\s], the quince-shaped
city. "At Haivali or Kidognis, opposite to Mytilene, there is a sort of
university for a hundred students and three professors, now
superintended by a Greek of Mytilene, who teaches not only the Hellenic,
but Latin, French, and Italian."--_Travels in Albania_, _etc._, i. 509,
510.]

[258] [Francois Horace Bastien, Conte Sebastiani (1772-1851), was
ambassador to the _Sublime Porte_, May, 1806-June, 1807.]

[259] [Gregor Alexandrovitch Potemkin (1736-1791), the favourite of the
Empress Catherine II.]

[260] {201} In a former number of the _Edinburgh Review_, 1808, it is
observed: "Lord Byron passed some of his early years in Scotland, where
he might have learned that _pibroch_ does not mean a _bagpipe_, any more
than _duet_ means a _fiddle_." Query,--Was it in Scotland that the young
gentlemen of the _Edinburgh Review_ _learned_ that _Solyman_ means
_Mahomet II._ any more than _criticism_ means _infallibility_?--but thus
it is,

    "Caedimus, inque vicem praebemus crura sagittis."
                                                 Persius, _Sat._ iv. 42.

The mistake seemed so completely a lapse of the pen (from the great
_similarity_ of the two words, and the _total absence of error_ from the
former pages of the literary leviathan) that I should have passed it
over as in the text, had I not perceived in the _Edinburgh Review_ much
facetious exultation on all such detections, particularly a recent one,
where words and syllables are subjects of disquisition and
transposition; and the above-mentioned parallel passage in my own case
irresistibly propelled me to hint how much easier it is to be critical
than correct. The _gentlemen_, having enjoyed many a _triumph_ on such
victories, will hardly begrudge me a slight _ovation_ for the present.

[At the end of the review of _Childe Harold_, February, 1812 (xix.,
476), the editor inserted a ponderous retort to this harmless and
good-natured "chaff:" "To those strictures of the noble author we feel
no inclination to trouble our readers with any reply ... we shall merely
observe that if we viewed with astonishment the immeasurable fury with
which the minor poet received the innocent pleasantry and moderate
castigation of our remarks on his first publication, we now feel nothing
but pity for the strange irritability of temperament which can still
cherish a private resentment for such a cause, or wish to perpetuate
memory of personalities as outrageous as to have been injurious only to
their authors."]

[261] ["O Athens, first of all lands, why in these latter days dost thou
nourish asses?"]

[262] [Anna Comnena (1083-1148), daughter of Alexis I., wrote the
_Alexiad_, a history of her father's reign.]

[263] [Zonaras (_Annales_, B 240), lib. viii. cap. 26, A 4. Venice,
1729.]

[264] [See _English Bards, etc._, line 877: _Poems_, 1898, i. 366, _note
1._]

[265] {203} [For Vely Pacha, the son of Ali Pacha, Vizier of the Morea,
see _Letters_, 1898, i. 248, note 1.]

[266] [The Caimacam was the deputy or lieutenant of the grand Vizier.]

[267] [Scott published "_Sir Tristrem, a Metrical Romance of the
Thirteenth Century_, by Thomas of Ercildoun," in 1804.]

[268] [Captain Lismahago, a paradoxical and pedantic Scotchman, the
favoured suitor of Miss Tabitha Bramble, in Smollett's _Expedition of
Humphry Clinker_.]

[269] {204} [Sir William Drummond (1780?-1828) published, _inter alia_,
_A Review of the Government of Athens and Sparta_, in 1795; and
_Herculanensia, an Archaeological and Philological Dissertation
containing a Manuscript found at Herculaneum_, in conjunction with the
Rev. Robert Walpole (see letter to Harness, December 8, 1811. See
_Letters_, 1898, ii. 79, note 3).

For Aberdeen and Hamilton, see _English Bards, etc._, line 509:
_Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 336, note 2, and _Childe Harold_, Canto II.
supplementary stanzas, _ibid._, ii. 108.

Edward Daniel Clarke, LL.D. (1769-1822), published _Travels in Various
Countries_, 1810-1823 (_vide ante_, p. 172, note 7).

For Leake, _vide ante_, p. 174, note 1.

For Gell, see _English Bards, etc._, line 1034, note 1: _Poetical
Works_, 1898, i. 379.

The Rev. Robert Walpole (1781-1856), in addition to his share in
_Herculanensia_, completed the sixth volume of Clarke's _Travels_, which
appeared in 1823.]

[270] {205} [Compare English Bards, etc., line 655, note 2: _Poetical
Works_, 1898, i. 349.]

[271] [The judge of a town or village--the Spanish _alcalde_.--_N. Eng.
Dict._, art. "Cadi."]

[272] {206} [Mouradja D'Ohsson (1740-1804), an Armenian by birth, spent
many years at Constantinople as Swedish envoy. He published at Paris
(1787-90, two vols. fol.) his _Tableau general de l'empire Othoman_, a
work still regarded as the chief authority on the subject.]

[273] ["Effendi," derived from the Greek [Greek: au)the/ntes], through
the Romaic [Greek: a)phe/ntes], an "absolute master," is a title borne
by distinguished civilians.

The Spanish order of St. James of Compostella was founded circ. A.D.
1170.]

[274] {207} [The "Nizam Gedidd," or new ordinance, which aimed at
remodelling the Turkish army on a quasi-European system, was promulgated
by Selim III in 1808.

A "mufti" is an expounder, a "molla" or "mollah" a superior judge, of
the sacred Moslem law. The "tefterdars" or "defterdars" were provincial
registrars and treasurers under the supreme defterdar, or Chancellor of
the Exchequer.]

       *       *       *       *       *



                        CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.


                             CANTO THE THIRD.

     "Afin que cette application vous forcat a penser a autre chose.
     Il n'y a en verite de remede que celui-la et le temps."--_Lettres
     du Roi de Prusse et de M. D'Alembert_.[275] [_Lettre_ cxlvi.
     Sept. 7, 1776.]

       *       *       *       *       *




                     INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD CANTO.

The Third Canto of _Childe Harold_ was begun early in May, and finished
at Ouchy, near Lausanne, on the 27th of June, 1816. Byron made a fair
copy of the first draft of his poem, which had been scrawled on loose
sheets, and engaged the services of "Claire" (Jane Clairmont) to make a
second transcription. Her task was completed on the 4th of July. The
fair copy and Claire's transcription remained in Byron's keeping until
the end of August or the beginning of September, when he consigned the
transcription to "his friend Mr. Shelley," and the fair copy to Scrope
Davies, with instructions to deliver them to Murray (see Letters to
Murray, October 5, 9, 15, 1816). Shelley landed at Portsmouth, September
8, and on the 11th of September he discharged his commission.

"I was thrilled with delight yesterday," writes Murray (September 12),
"by the announcement of Mr. Shelley with the MS. of _Childe Harold_. I
had no sooner got the quiet possession of it than, trembling with
auspicious hope, ... I carried it ... to Mr. Gifford.... He says that
what you have heretofore published is nothing to this effort.... Never,
since my intimacy with Mr. Gifford, did I see him so heartily pleased,
or give one fiftieth part of the praise, with one thousandth part of the
warmth."

The correction of the press was undertaken by Gifford, not without some
remonstrance on the part of Shelley, who maintained that "the revision
of the proofs, and the retention or alteration of certain particular
passages had been entrusted to his discretion" (Letter to Murray,
October 30, 1816).

When, if ever, Mr. Davies, of "inaccurate memory" (Letter to Murray,
December 4, 1816), discharged his trust is a matter of uncertainty. The
"original MS." (Byron's "fair copy") is not forthcoming, and it is
improbable that Murray, who had stipulated (September 20) "for all the
original MSS., copies, and scraps," ever received it. The "scraps" were
sent (October 5) in the first instance to Geneva, and, after many
wanderings, ultimately fell into the possession of Mrs. Leigh, from whom
they were purchased by the late Mr. Murray.

The July number of the _Quarterly Review_ (No. XXX.) was still in the
press, and, possibly, for this reason it was not till October 29 that
Murray inserted the following advertisement in the _Morning Chronicle:_
"Lord Byron's New Poems. On the 23^d of November will be published The
Prisoners (_sic_) of Chillon, a Tale and other Poems. A Third Canto of
Childe Harold...." But a rival was in the field. The next day (October
30), in the same print, another advertisement appeared: "_The R. H. Lord
Byron's Pilgrimage to the Holy Land...._ Printed for J. Johnston,
Cheapside.... Of whom may be had, by the same author, a new ed. (the
third) of _Farewell to England: with three other poems...._" It was, no
doubt, the success of his first venture which had stimulated the
"Cheapside impostor," as Byron called him, to forgery on a larger scale.

The controversy did not end there. A second advertisement (_Morning
Chronicle_, November 15) of "Lord Byron's Pilgrimage," etc., stating
that "the copyright of the work was consigned" to the Publisher
"exclusively by the Noble Author himself, and for which he gives 500
guineas," precedes Murray's second announcement of _The Prisoners of
Chillon_, and the Third Canto of _Childe Harold_, in which he informs
"the public that the poems lately advertised are not written by Lord
Byron. The only bookseller at present authorised to print Lord Byron's
poems is Mr. Murray...." Further precautions were deemed necessary. An
injunction in Chancery was applied for by Byron's agents and
representatives (see, for a report of the case in the _Morning
Chronicle_, November 28, 1816, _Letters_, vol. iv., Letter to Murray,
December 9, 1816, note), and granted by the Chancellor, Lord Eldon.
Strangely enough, Sir Samuel Romilly, whom Byron did not love, was
counsel for the plaintiff.

In spite of the injunction, a volume entitled "_Lord Byron's Pilgrimage
to the Holy Land_, a Poem in Two Cantos. To which is attached a
fragment, _The Tempest_," was issued in 1817. It is a dull and,
apparently, serious production, suggested by, but hardly an imitation
of, _Childe Harold_. The notes are descriptive of the scenery, customs,
and antiquities of Palestine. _The Tempest_, on the other hand, is a
parody, and by no means a bad parody, of Byron at his worst; e.g.--

    "There was a sternness in his eye,
    Which chilled the soul--one knew not why--
    But when returning vigour came,
    And kindled the dark glare to flame,
    So fierce it flashed, one well might swear,
    A thousand souls were centred there."

It is possible that this _Pilgrimage_ was the genuine composition of
some poetaster who failed to get his poems published under his own name,
or it may have been the deliberate forgery of John Agg, or Hewson
Clarke, or C. F. Lawler, the _pseudo_ Peter Pindar--"Druids" who were in
Johnston's pay, and were prepared to compose pilgrimages to any land,
holy or unholy, which would bring grist to their employer's mill. (See
the _Advertisements_ at the end of _Lord Byron's Pilgrimage, etc._)

The Third Canto was published, not as announced, on the 23rd, but on the
18th of November. Murray's "auspicious hope" of success was amply
fulfilled. He "wrote to Lord Byron on the 13th of December, 1816,
informing him that at a dinner at the Albion Tavern, he had sold to the
assembled booksellers 7000 of his Third Canto of _Childe Harold_...."
The reviews were for the most part laudatory. Sir Walter Scott's
finely-tempered eulogium (_Quart. Rev_., No. xxxi., October, 1816
[published February 11, 1817]), and Jeffrey's balanced and cautious
appreciation (_Edin. Rev_., No. liv., December, 1816 [published February
14, 1817]) have been reprinted in their collected works. Both writers
conclude with an aspiration--Jeffrey, that

              "This puissant spirit
               Yet shall reascend,
    Self-raised, and repossess its native seat!"

Scott, in the "tenderest strain" of Virgilian melody--

    "I decus, i nostrum, melioribus utere fatis!"


                     NOTE ON MSS. OF THE THIRD CANTO.

[The following memorandum, in Byron's handwriting, is prefixed to the
Transcription:--

     "This copy is to be printed from--subject to comparison with the
     original MS. (from which this is a transcription) in such parts as
     it may chance to be difficult to decypher in the following. The
     notes in this copy are more complete and extended than in the
     former--and there is also _one stanza more_ inserted and added to
     this, viz. the 33d. B.
                                           Byron. July 10th, 1816.
                                      Diodati, near y^e Lake of Geneva."

The "original MS." to which the memorandum refers is not forthcoming
(_vide ante_, p. 212), but the "scraps" (MS.) are now in Mr. Murray's
possession. Stanzas i.-iii., and the lines beginning, "The castled Crag
of Drachenfels," are missing.

Claire's Transcription (C.) occupies the first 119 pages of a
substantial quarto volume. Stanzas xxxiii. and xcix.-cv. and several of
the notes are in Byron's handwriting. The same volume contains _Sonnet
on Chillon_, in Byron's handwriting; a transcription of the _Prisoners_
(_sic_) _of Chillon_ (so, too, the advertisement in the _Morning
Chronicle_, October 29, 1816); _Sonnet_, "Rousseau," etc., in Byron's
handwriting, and transcriptions of _Stanzas to_----, "Though the day of
my destiny's over;" _Darkness_; _Churchill's Grave_; _The Dream_; _The
Incantation_ (_Manfred_, act ii. sc. 1); and _Prometheus_.]




                             CANTO THE THIRD.

                               I.

    Is thy face like thy mothers, my fair child!
      ADA! sole daughter of my house and heart?[276]
      When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled,
      And then we parted,--not as now we part,
      But with a hope.--
                         Awaking with a start,
      The waters heave around me; and on high
      The winds lift up their voices: I depart,
      Whither I know not; but the hour's gone by,
    When Albion's lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye.[gh]

                              II.

    Once more upon the waters! yet once more![277]
      And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
      That knows his rider.[278] Welcome to their roar!
      Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead!
      Though the strained mast should quiver as a reed,
      And the rent canvass fluttering strew the gale,[gi]
      Still must I on; for I am as a weed,
      Flung from the rock, on Ocean's foam, to sail
    Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail.

                              III.

    In my youth's summer I did sing of One,
      The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind;[279]
      Again I seize the theme, then but begun,
      And bear it with me, as the rushing wind
      Bears the cloud onwards: in that Tale I find
      The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears,
      Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind,
      O'er which all heavily the journeying years
    Plod the last sands of life,--where not a flower appears.

                              IV.

    Since my young days of passion--joy, or pain--
      Perchance my heart and harp have lost a string--
      And both may jar: it may be, that in vain
      I would essay as I have sung to sing[gj]:
      Yet, though a dreary strain, to this I cling;
      So that it wean me from the weary dream
      Of selfish grief or gladness--so it fling
      Forgetfulness around me--it shall seem
    To me, though to none else, a not ungrateful theme.

                               V.

    He, who grown aged in this world of woe,
      In deeds, not years,[280] piercing the depths of life,
      So that no wonder waits him--nor below
      Can Love or Sorrow, Fame, Ambition, Strife,
      Cut to his heart again with the keen knife
      Of silent, sharp endurance--he can tell
      Why Thought seeks refuge in lone caves, yet rife
      With airy images, and shapes which dwell
    Still unimpaired, though old, in the Soul's haunted cell.[gk]

                              VI.

    'Tis to create, and in creating live[281]
      A being more intense that we endow[gl]
      With form our fancy, gaining as we give
      The life we image, even as I do now--
      What am I? Nothing: but not so art thou,
      Soul of my thought! with whom I traverse earth,
      Invisible but gazing, as I glow--
      Mixed with thy spirit, blended with thy birth,
    And feeling still with thee in my crushed feelings' dearth.

                              VII.

    Yet must I think less wildly:--I _have_ thought
      Too long and darkly, till my brain became,
      In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought,
      A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame:[gm]
      And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame,
      My springs of life were poisoned.[282] 'Tis too late:
      Yet am I changed; though still enough the same
      In strength to bear what Time can not abate,[gn]
    And feed on bitter fruits without accusing Fate.

                             VIII.

    Something too much of this:--but now 'tis past,
      And the spell closes with its silent seal--[283]
      Long absent HAROLD re-appears at last;
      He of the breast which fain no more would feel,[go]
      Wrung with the wounds which kill not, but ne'er heal;
      Yet Time, who changes all, had altered him
      In soul and aspect as in age: years steal
      Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb;
    And Life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.

                              IX.

    His had been quaffed too quickly, and he found
      The dregs were wormwood; but he filled again,
      And from a purer fount, on holier ground,
      And deemed its spring perpetual--but in vain!
      Still round him clung invisibly a chain
      Which galled for ever, fettering though unseen,
      And heavy though it clanked not; worn with pain,
      Which pined although it spoke not, and grew keen,
    Entering with every step he took through many a scene.

                               X.

    Secure in guarded coldness, he had mixed[gp]
      Again in fancied safety with his kind,
      And deemed his spirit now so firmly fixed
      And sheathed with an invulnerable mind,
      That, if no joy, no sorrow lurked behind;
      And he, as one, might 'midst the many stand
      Unheeded, searching through the crowd to find
      Fit speculation--such as in strange land
    He found in wonder-works of God and Nature's hand.[gq]

                              XI.

    But who can view the ripened rose, nor seek[gr]
      To wear it? who can curiously behold
      The smoothness and the sheen of Beauty's cheek,
      Nor feel the heart can never all grow old?[gs]
      Who can contemplate Fame through clouds unfold
      The star[284] which rises o'er her steep, nor climb?
      Harold, once more within the vortex, rolled
      On with the giddy circle, chasing Time,
    Yet with a nobler aim than in his Youth's fond prime.[gt][285]

                              XII.

    But soon he knew himself the most unfit[gu]
      Of men to herd with Man, with whom he held
      Little in common; untaught to submit
      His thoughts to others, though his soul was quelled
      In youth by his own thoughts; still uncompelled,
      He would not yield dominion of his mind
      To Spirits against whom his own rebelled,
      Proud though in desolation--which could find
    A life within itself, to breathe without mankind.

                             XIII.

    Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends;[gv]
      Where rolled the ocean, thereon was his home;
      Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends,
      He had the passion and the power to roam;
      The desert, forest, cavern, breaker's foam,
      Were unto him companionship; they spake
      A mutual language, clearer than the tome
      Of his land's tongue, which he would oft forsake
    For Nature's pages glassed by sunbeams on the lake.

                              XIV.

    Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars,[gw]
      Till he had peopled them with beings bright
      As their own beams; and earth, and earth-born jars,
      And human frailties, were forgotten quite:
      Could he have kept his spirit to that flight
      He had been happy; but this clay will sink
      Its spark immortal, envying it the light
      To which it mounts, as if to break the link
    That keeps us from yon heaven which woos us to its brink.[gx]

                              XV.

    But in Man's dwellings he became a thing[gy]
      Restless and worn, and stern and wearisome,
      Drooped as a wild-born falcon with clipt wing,
      To whom the boundless air alone were home:
      Then came his fit again, which to o'ercome,
      As eagerly the barred-up bird will beat
      His breast and beak against his wiry dome
      Till the blood tinge his plumage--so the heat
    Of his impeded Soul would through his bosom eat.

                              XVI.

    Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again,[286]
      With nought of Hope left--but with less of gloom;
      The very knowledge that he lived in vain,
      That all was over on this side the tomb,
      Had made Despair a smilingness assume,
      Which, though 'twere wild,--as on the plundered wreck
      When mariners would madly meet their doom
      With draughts intemperate on the sinking deck,--
    Did yet inspire a cheer, which he forbore to check.

                             XVII.

    Stop!--for thy tread is on an Empire's dust!
      An Earthquake's spoil is sepulchred below!
      Is the spot marked with no colossal bust?[287]
      Nor column trophied for triumphal show?
      None; but _the moral's truth_ tells simpler so.--[gz][288]
      As the ground was before, thus let it be;--[ha]
      How that red rain hath made the harvest grow!
      And is this all the world has gained by thee,
    Thou first and last of Fields! king-making Victory?

                             XVIII.

    And Harold stands upon this place of skulls,
      The grave of France, the deadly Waterloo![hb]
      How in an hour the Power which gave annuls
      Its gifts, transferring fame as fleeting too!--
      In "pride of place" here last the Eagle flew,[1.B.]
      Then tore with bloody talon the rent plain,[hc]
      Pierced by the shaft of banded nations through;
      Ambition's life and labours all were vain--
    He wears the shattered links of the World's broken chain.[hd]

                              XIX.

    Fit retribution! Gaul may champ the bit
      And foam in fetters;--but is Earth more free?[289]
      Did nations combat to make _One_ submit?
      Or league to teach all Kings true Sovereignty?[he]
      What! shall reviving Thraldom again be
      The patched-up Idol of enlightened days?
      Shall we, who struck the Lion down, shall we
      Pay the Wolf homage? proffering lowly gaze
    And servile knees to Thrones? No! _prove_ before ye praise!

                              XX.

    If not, o'er one fallen Despot boast no more!
      In vain fair cheeks were furrowed with hot tears
      For Europe's flowers long rooted up before
      The trampler of her vineyards; in vain, years
      Of death, depopulation, bondage, fears,
      Have all been borne, and broken by the accord
      Of roused-up millions: all that most endears
      Glory, is when the myrtle wreathes a Sword,
    Such as Harmodius[2.B.] drew on Athens' tyrant Lord.

                              XXI.

    There was a sound of revelry by night,[290]
      And Belgium's Capital had gathered then
      Her Beauty and her Chivalry--and bright
      The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men;[hf]
      A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
      Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
      Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
      And all went merry as a marriage bell;[3.B.]
    But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!

                             XXII.

    Did ye not hear it?--No--'twas but the Wind,
      Or the car rattling o'er the stony street;
      On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
      No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
      To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet--
      But hark!--that heavy sound breaks in once more,
      As if the clouds its echo would repeat;
      And nearer--clearer--deadlier than before![hg]
    Arm! Arm! it is--it is--the cannon's opening roar![hh]

                             XXIII.

    Within a windowed niche of that high hall
      Sate Brunswick's fated Chieftain; he did hear[291]
      That sound the first amidst the festival,
      And caught its tone with Death's prophetic ear;
      And when they smiled because he deemed it near,
      His heart more truly knew that peal too well[hi]
      Which stretched his father on a bloody bier,
      And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell;
    He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell.

                             XXIV.

    Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro--
      And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress,[hj]
      And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago
      Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness--
      And there were sudden partings, such as press[hk]
      The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs
      Which ne'er might be repeated; who could guess
      If ever more should meet those mutual eyes,
    Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise![hl]

                              XXV.

    And there was mounting in hot haste--the steed,
      The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
      Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,
      And swiftly forming in the ranks of war--
      And the deep thunder peal on peal afar;
      And near, the beat of the alarming drum
      Roused up the soldier ere the Morning Star;
      While thronged the citizens with terror dumb,[hm]
    Or whispering, with white lips--"The foe! They come! they come!"

                             XXVI.

    And wild and high the "Cameron's Gathering" rose!
      The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn's hills
      Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes;--
      How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills,
      Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills
      Their mountain-pipe, so fill the mountaineers
      With the fierce native daring which instils
      The stirring memory of a thousand years,
    And Evan's--Donald's[4.B.] fame rings in each clansman's ears!

                             XXVII.

    And Ardennes[5.B.] waves above them her green leaves,[hn]
      Dewy with Nature's tear-drops, as they pass--
      Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves,
      Over the unreturning brave,--alas!
      Ere evening to be trodden like the grass
      Which now beneath them, but above shall grow
      In its next verdure, when this fiery mass
      Of living Valour, rolling on the foe
    And burning with high Hope, shall moulder cold and low.

                            XXVIII.

    Last noon beheld them full of lusty life;--
      Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay;
      The Midnight brought the signal-sound of strife,
      The Morn the marshalling in arms,--the Day
      Battle's magnificently-stern array!
      The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which when rent
      The earth is covered thick with other clay
      Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,
    Rider and horse,--friend,--foe,--in one red burial blent!

                             XXIX.

    Their praise is hymned by loftier harps than mine;
      Yet one I would select from that proud throng,
      Partly because they blend me with his line,
      And partly that I did his Sire some wrong,[292]
      And partly that bright names will hallow song;[ho]
      And his was of the bravest, and when showered
      The death-bolts deadliest the thinned files along,
      Even where the thickest of War's tempest lowered,
    They reached no nobler breast than thine, young, gallant Howard![293]

                              XXX.

    There have been tears and breaking hearts for thee,
      And mine were nothing, had I such to give;
      But when I stood beneath the fresh green tree,
      Which living waves where thou didst cease to live,
      And saw around me the wide field revive
      With fruits and fertile promise, and the Spring[294]
      Come forth her work of gladness to contrive,
      With all her reckless birds upon the wing,
    I turned from all she brought to those she could not bring.[6.B.]

                             XXXI.

    I turned to thee, to thousands, of whom each
      And one as all a ghastly gap did make
      In his own kind and kindred, whom to teach
      Forgetfulness were mercy for their sake;
      The Archangel's trump, not Glory's, must awake
      Those whom they thirst for; though the sound of Fame
      May for a moment soothe, it cannot slake
      The fever of vain longing, and the name
    So honoured but assumes a stronger, bitterer claim.

                             XXXII.

    They mourn, but smile at length--and, smiling, mourn:
      The tree will wither long before it fall;
      The hull drives on, though mast and sail be torn;[hp]
      The roof-tree sinks, but moulders on the hall
      In massy hoariness; the ruined wall
      Stands when its wind-worn battlements are gone;
      The bars survive the captive they enthral;
      The day drags through though storms keep out the sun;[hq]
    And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on:[295]

                            XXXIII.

    Even as a broken Mirror,[296] which the glass
      In every fragment multiplies--and makes
      A thousand images of one that was,
      The same--and still the more, the more it breaks;
      And thus the heart will do which not forsakes,
      Living in shattered guise; and still, and cold,
      And bloodless, with its sleepless sorrow aches,
      Yet withers on till all without is old,
    Showing no visible sign, for such things are untold.

                             XXXIV.

    There is a very life in our despair,
      Vitality of poison,--a quick root
      Which feeds these deadly branches; for it were
      As nothing did we die; but Life will suit
      Itself to Sorrow's most detested fruit,
      Like to the apples on the Dead Sea's shore,[7.B.]
      All ashes to the taste: Did man compute
      Existence by enjoyment, and count o'er
    Such hours 'gainst years of life,--say, would he name threescore?

                             XXXV.

    The Psalmist numbered out the years of man:
      They are enough; and if thy tale be _true_,[hr]
      Thou, who didst grudge him even that fleeting span,[297]
      More than enough, thou fatal Waterloo!
      Millions of tongues record thee, and anew
      Their children's lips shall echo them, and say--
      "Here, where the sword united nations drew,[hs]
      Our countrymen were warring on that day!"
    And this is much--and all--which will not pass away.

                             XXXVI.

    There sunk the greatest, nor the worst of men,
      Whose Spirit, antithetically mixed,
      One moment of the mightiest, and again
      On little objects with like firmness fixed;[ht]
      Extreme in all things! hadst thou been betwixt,
      Thy throne had still been thine, or never been;
      For Daring made thy rise as fall: thou seek'st[hu][298]
      Even now to re-assume the imperial mien,[299]
    And shake again the world, the Thunderer of the scene!

                            XXXVII.

    Conqueror and Captive of the Earth art thou!
      She trembles at thee still, and thy wild name[hv]
      Was ne'er more bruited in men's minds than now
      That thou art nothing, save the jest of Fame,
      Who wooed thee once, thy Vassal, and became[hw]
      The flatterer of thy fierceness--till thou wert
      A God unto thyself; nor less the same
      To the astounded kingdoms all inert,
    Who deemed thee for a time whate'er thou didst assert.

                            XXXVIII.

    Oh, more or less than man--in high or low--
      Battling with nations, flying from the field;
      Now making monarchs' necks thy footstool, now
      More than thy meanest soldier taught to yield;
      An Empire thou couldst crush, command, rebuild,
      But govern not thy pettiest passion, nor,
      However deeply in men's spirits skilled,
      Look through thine own, nor curb the lust of War,
    Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest Star.

                             XXXIX.

    Yet well thy soul hath brooked the turning tide
      With that untaught innate philosophy,
      Which, be it Wisdom, Coldness, or deep Pride,[hx]
      Is gall and wormwood to an enemy.
      When the whole host of hatred stood hard by,
      To watch and mock thee shrinking, thou hast smiled[hy]
      With a sedate and all-enduring eye;--
      When Fortune fled her spoiled and favourite child,
    He stood unbowed beneath the ills upon him piled.

                              XL.

    Sager than in thy fortunes; for in them[hz]
      Ambition steeled thee on too far to show
      That just habitual scorn, which could contemn
      Men and their thoughts; 'twas wise to feel, not so
      To wear it ever on thy lip and brow,
      And spurn the instruments thou wert to use
      Till they were turned unto thine overthrow:
      'Tis but a worthless world to win or lose;
    So hath it proved to thee, and all such lot who choose.

                              XLI.

    If, like a tower upon a headlong rock,
      Thou hadst been made to stand or fall alone,
      Such scorn of man had helped to brave the shock;
      But men's thoughts were the steps which paved thy throne,
      _Their_ admiration thy best weapon shone;
      The part of Philip's son was thine, not then
      (Unless aside thy Purple had been thrown)
      Like stern Diogenes to mock at men--
    For sceptred Cynics Earth were far too wide a den.[8.B.]

                             XLII.

    But Quiet to quick bosoms is a Hell,
      And _there_ hath been thy bane; there is a fire
      And motion of the Soul which will not dwell
      In its own narrow being, but aspire
      Beyond the fitting medium of desire;
      And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore,
      Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire[ia]
      Of aught but rest; a fever at the core,
    Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore.

                             XLIII.

    This makes the madmen who have made men mad
      By their contagion; Conquerors and Kings,
      Founders of sects and systems, to whom add
      Sophists, Bards, Statesmen, all unquiet things
      Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs,[ib]
      And are themselves the fools to those they fool;
      Envied, yet how unenviable! what stings
      Are theirs! One breast laid open were a school
    Which would unteach Mankind the lust to shine or rule:

                             XLIV.

    Their breath is agitation, and their life
      A storm whereon they ride, to sink at last,
      And yet so nursed and bigoted to strife,
      That should their days, surviving perils past,
      Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast[ic]
      With sorrow and supineness, and so die;
      Even as a flame unfed, which runs to waste
      With its own flickering, or a sword laid by,
    Which eats into itself, and rusts ingloriously.

                              XLV.

    He who ascends to mountain-tops, shall find
      The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;
      He who surpasses or subdues mankind,
      Must look down on the hate of those below.[id]
      Though high _above_ the Sun of Glory glow,
      And far _beneath_ the Earth and Ocean spread,
      _Round_ him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
      Contending tempests on his naked head,[ie]
    And thus reward the toils which to those summits led.

                             XLVI.

    Away with these! true Wisdom's world will be[if]
      Within its own creation, or in thine,
      Maternal Nature! for who teems like thee,[ig]
      Thus on the banks of thy majestic Rhine?
      There Harold gazes on a work divine,
      A blending of all beauties; streams and dells,
      Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, cornfield, mountain, vine,
      And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells
    From gray but leafy walls, where Ruin greenly dwells.[ih]

                             XLVII.

    And there they stand, as stands a lofty mind,
      Worn, but unstooping to the baser crowd,
      All tenantless, save to the crannying Wind,
      Or holding dark communion with the Cloud
      There was a day when they were young and proud;
      Banners on high, and battles[300] passed below;
      But they who fought are in a bloody shroud,
      And those which waved are shredless dust ere now,[ii]
    And the bleak battlements shall bear no future blow.

                            XLVIII.

    Beneath these battlements, within those walls,
      Power dwelt amidst her passions; in proud state
      Each robber chief upheld his armed halls,
      Doing his evil will, nor less elate
      Than mightier heroes of a longer date.
      What want these outlaws conquerors should have[ij][9.B.]
      But History's purchased page to call them great?
      A wider space--an ornamented grave?
    Their hopes were not less warm, their souls were full as brave.[ik]

                             XLIX.

    In their baronial feuds and single fields,
      What deeds of prowess unrecorded died!
      And Love, which lent a blazon to their shields,[301]
      With emblems well devised by amorous pride,
      Through all the mail of iron hearts would glide;
      But still their flame was fierceness, and drew on
      Keen contest and destruction near allied,
      And many a tower for some fair mischief won,
    Saw the discoloured Rhine beneath its ruin run.

                               L.

    But Thou, exulting and abounding river!
      Making thy waves a blessing as they flow
      Through banks whose beauty would endure for ever
      Could man but leave thy bright creation so,
      Nor its fair promise from the surface mow[il]
      With the sharp scythe of conflict, then to see
      Thy valley of sweet waters, were to know[302]
      Earth paved like Heaven--and to seem such to me,[im]
    Even now what wants thy stream?--that it should Lethe be.

                              LI.

    A thousand battles have assailed thy banks,
      But these and half their fame have passed away,
      And Slaughter heaped on high his weltering ranks:
      Their very graves are gone, and what are they?[303]
      Thy tide washed down the blood of yesterday,
      And all was stainless, and on thy clear stream
      Glassed, with its dancing light, the sunny ray;[in]
      But o'er the blacken'd memory's blighting dream
    Thy waves would vainly roll, all sweeping as they seem.

                              LII.

    Thus Harold inly said, and passed along,
      Yet not insensible to all which here
      Awoke the jocund birds to early song
      In glens which might have made even exile dear:
      Though on his brow were graven lines austere,
      And tranquil sternness, which had ta'en the place
      Of feelings fierier far but less severe--
      Joy was not always absent from his face,
    But o'er it in such scenes would steal with transient trace.

                             LIII.

    Nor was all Love shut from him, though his days
      Of Passion had consumed themselves to dust.
      It is in vain that we would coldly gaze
      On such as smile upon us; the heart must
      Leap kindly back to kindness, though Disgust[io]
      Hath weaned it from all worldlings: thus he felt,
      For there was soft Remembrance, and sweet Trust
      In one fond breast, to which his own would melt,
    And in its tenderer hour on that his bosom dwelt.[304]

                              LIV.

    And he had learned to love,--I know not why,
      For this in such as him seems strange of mood,
      The helpless looks of blooming Infancy,
      Even in its earliest nurture; what subdued,
      To change like this, a mind so far imbued
      With scorn of man, it little boots to know;
      But thus it was; and though in solitude
      Small power the nipped affections have to grow,
    In him this glowed when all beside had ceased to glow.

                              LV.

    And there was one soft breast, as hath been said,[ip]
      Which unto his was bound by stronger ties
      Than the church links withal; and--though unwed,
      _That_ love was pure--and, far above disguise,[iq]
      Had stood the test of mortal enmities
      Still undivided, and cemented more
      By peril, dreaded most in female eyes;[305]
      But this was firm, and from a foreign shore
    Well to that heart might his these absent greetings pour![ir]

                               1.

    The castled Crag of Drachenfels[306][10.B.]
    Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine,
    Whose breast of waters broadly swells
    Between the banks which bear the vine,
    And hills all rich with blossomed trees,
    And fields which promise corn and wine,
    And scattered cities crowning these,
    Whose far white walls along them shine,
    Have strewed a scene, which I should see
    With double joy wert _thou_ with me.

                               2.

    And peasant girls, with deep blue eyes,
    And hands which offer early flowers,
    Walk smiling o'er this Paradise;
    Above, the frequent feudal towers
    Through green leaves lift their walls of gray;
    And many a rock which steeply lowers,
    And noble arch in proud decay,
    Look o'er this vale of vintage-bowers;
    But one thing want these banks of Rhine,--
    Thy gentle hand to clasp in mine!

                               3.

    I send the lilies given to me--
    Though long before thy hand they touch,
    I know that they must withered be,
    But yet reject them not as such;
    For I have cherished them as dear,
    Because they yet may meet thine eye,
    And guide thy soul to mine even here,
    When thou behold'st them drooping nigh,
    And know'st them gathered by the Rhine,
    And offered from my heart to thine!

                               4.

    The river nobly foams and flows--
    The charm of this enchanted ground,
    And all its thousand turns disclose
    Some fresher beauty varying round:
    The haughtiest breast its wish might bound
    Through life to dwell delighted here;
    Nor could on earth a spot be found
    To Nature and to me so dear--
    Could thy dear eyes in following mine
    Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine!

                              LVI.

    By Coblentz, on a rise of gentle ground,
      There is a small and simple Pyramid,
      Crowning the summit of the verdant mound;
      Beneath its base are Heroes' ashes hid--
      Our enemy's--but let not that forbid
      Honour to Marceau! o'er whose early tomb[is]
      Tears, big tears, gushed from the rough soldier's lid,
      Lamenting and yet envying such a doom,
    Falling for France, whose rights he battled to resume.

                             LVII.

    Brief, brave, and glorious was his young career,--
      His mourners were two hosts, his friends and foes;
      And fitly may the stranger lingering here
      Pray for his gallant Spirit's bright repose;--
      For he was Freedom's Champion, one of those,
      The few in number, who had not o'erstept[307]
      The charter to chastise which she bestows
      On such as wield her weapons; he had kept
    The whiteness of his soul--and thus men o'er him wept.[11.B.]

                             LVIII.

    Here Ehrenbreitstein,[12.B.] with her shattered wall
      Black with the miner's blast, upon her height
      Yet shows of what she was, when shell and ball
      Rebounding idly on her strength did light:--
      A Tower of Victory! from whence the flight
      Of baffled foes was watched along the plain:
      But Peace destroyed what War could never blight,
      And laid those proud roofs bare to Summer's rain--
    On which the iron shower for years had poured in vain.[308]

                              LIX.

    Adieu to thee, fair Rhine! How long delighted
      The stranger fain would linger on his way!
      Thine is a scene alike where souls united
      Or lonely Contemplation thus might stray;
      And could the ceaseless vultures cease to prey[it]
      On self-condemning bosoms, it were here,
      Where Nature, nor too sombre nor too gay,
      Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere,[iu]
    Is to the mellow Earth as Autumn to the year.[309]

                              LX.

    Adieu to thee again! a vain adieu!
      There can be no farewell to scene like thine;
      The mind is  by thy every hue;
      And if reluctantly the eyes resign
      Their cherished gaze upon thee, lovely Rhine!
      'Tis with the thankful glance of parting praise;
      More mighty spots may rise--more glaring shine,[iv]
      But none unite in one attaching maze
    The brilliant, fair, and soft,--the glories of old days,

                              LXI.

    The negligently grand, the fruitful bloom[310]
      Of coming ripeness, the white city's sheen,
      The rolling stream, the precipice's gloom,
      The forest's growth, and Gothic walls between,--
      The wild rocks shaped, as they had turrets been,
      In mockery of man's art; and these withal
      A race of faces happy as the scene,
      Whose fertile bounties here extend to all,
    Still springing o'er thy banks, though Empires near them fall.

                             LXII.

    But these recede. Above me are the Alps,
      The Palaces of Nature, whose vast walls
      Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,[iw]
      And throned Eternity in icy halls
      Of cold Sublimity, where forms and falls[311]
      The Avalanche--the thunderbolt of snow!
      All that expands the spirit, yet appals,
      Gather around these summits, as to show
    How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below.

                             LXIII.

    But ere these matchless heights I dare to scan,
      There is a spot should not be passed in vain,--
      Morat! the proud, the patriot field! where man
      May gaze on ghastly trophies of the slain,
      Nor blush for those who conquered on that plain;
      Here Burgundy bequeathed his tombless host,
      A bony heap, through ages to remain,
      Themselves their monument;[312]--the Stygian coast
    Unsepulchred they roamed, and shrieked each
                                           wandering ghost.[ix][313][13.B.]

                             LXIV.

    While Waterloo with Cannae's carnage vies,[314]
      Morat and Marathon twin names shall stand;
      They were true Glory's stainless victories,
      Won by the unambitious heart and hand
      Of a proud, brotherly, and civic band,
      All unbought champions in no princely cause
      Of vice-entailed Corruption; they no land[iy]
      Doomed to bewail the blasphemy of laws
    Making Kings' rights divine, by some Draconic clause.

                              LXV.

    By a lone wall a lonelier column rears
      A gray and grief-worn aspect of old days;
      'Tis the last remnant of the wreck of years,
      And looks as with the wild-bewildered gaze
      Of one to stone converted by amaze,
      Yet still with consciousness; and there it stands
      Making a marvel that it not decays,
      When the coeval pride of human hands,
    Levelled Aventicum,[14.B.] hath strewed her subject lands.

                             LXVI.

    And there--oh! sweet and sacred be the name!--
      Julia--the daughter--the devoted--gave
      Her youth to Heaven; her heart, beneath a claim
      Nearest to Heaven's, broke o'er a father's grave.
      Justice is sworn 'gainst tears, and hers would crave
      The life she lived in--but the Judge was just--
      And then she died on him she could not save.[iz]
      Their tomb was simple, and without a bust,[ja]
    And held within their urn one mind--one heart--one dust.[15.B.]

                             LXVII.

    But these are deeds which should not pass away,
      And names that must not wither, though the Earth
      Forgets her empires with a just decay,
      The enslavers and the enslaved--their death and birth;
      The high, the mountain-majesty of Worth
      Should be--and shall, survivor of its woe,
      And from its immortality, look forth
      In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow,[16.B.]
    Imperishably pure beyond all things below.

                            LXVIII.

    Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face,
      The mirror where the stars and mountains view
      The stillness of their aspect in each trace
      Its clear depth yields of their far height and hue:[jb]
      There is too much of Man here,[315] to look through
      With a fit mind the might which I behold;
      But soon in me shall Loneliness renew
      Thoughts hid, but not less cherished than of old,
    Ere mingling with the herd had penned me in their fold.

                             LXIX.

    To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind:
      All are not fit with them to stir and toil,
      Nor is it discontent to keep the mind
      Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil[jc][316]
      In the hot throng, where we become the spoil
      Of our infection, till too late and long
      We may deplore and struggle with the coil,
      In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong
    Midst a contentious world, striving where none are strong.[jd]

                              LXX.

    There, in a moment, we may plunge our years[317]
      In fatal penitence, and in the blight
      Of our own Soul turn all our blood to tears,
      And colour things to come with hues of Night;
      The race of life becomes a hopeless flight
      To those that walk in darkness: on the sea
      The boldest steer but where their ports invite--
      But there are wanderers o'er Eternity[je][318]
    Whose bark drives on and on, and anchored ne'er shall be.

                             LXXI.

    Is it not better, then, to be alone,
      And love Earth only for its earthly sake?
      By the blue rushing of the arrowy[319] Rhone,[17.B.]
      Or the pure bosom of its nursing Lake,
      Which feeds it as a mother who doth make
      A fair but froward infant her own care,
      Kissing its cries away as these awake;--[jf]
      Is it not better thus our lives to wear,
    Than join the crushing crowd, doomed to inflict or bear?

                             LXXII.

    I live not in myself, but I become
      Portion of that around me; and to me
      High mountains are a feeling, but the hum[320]
      Of human cities torture: I can see[jg]
      Nothing to loathe in Nature, save to be[jh]
      A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,
      Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee,
      And with the sky--the peak--the heaving plain[ji]
    Of Ocean, or the stars, mingle--and not in vain.

                            LXXIII.

    And thus I am absorbed, and this is life:--
      I look upon the peopled desert past,
      As on a place of agony and strife,
      Where, for some sin, to Sorrow I was cast,
      To act and suffer, but remount at last[jj]
      With a fresh pinion; which I feel to spring,
      Though young, yet waxing vigorous as the Blast
      Which it would cope with, on delighted wing,
    Spurning the clay-cold bonds which round our being cling.[jk][321]

                             LXXIV.

    And when, at length, the mind shall be all free
      From what it hates in this degraded form,[jl]
      Reft of its carnal life, save what shall be
      Existent happier in the fly and worm,--
      When Elements to Elements conform,
      And dust is as it should be, shall I not
      Feel all I see less dazzling but more warm?
      The bodiless thought? the Spirit of each spot?[jm]
    Of which, even now, I share at times the immortal lot?[322]

                             LXXV.

    Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part[jn]
      Of me and of my Soul, as I of them?
      Is not the love of these deep in my heart
      With a pure passion? should I not contemn
      All objects, if compared with these? and stem
      A tide of suffering, rather than forego
      Such feelings for the hard and worldly phlegm
      Of those whose eyes are only turned below,
    Gazing upon the ground, with thoughts which dare not glow?[jo][323]

                             LXXVI.

    But this is not my theme; and I return[jp]
      To that which is immediate, and require
      Those who find contemplation in the urn,
      To look on One, whose dust was once all fire,--
      A native of the land where I respire
      The clear air for a while--a passing guest,
      Where he became a being,--whose desire
      Was to be glorious; 'twas a foolish quest,
    The which to gain and keep, he sacrificed all rest.

                            LXXVII.

    Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau,[jq]
      The apostle of Affliction, he who threw
      Enchantment over Passion, and from Woe
      Wrung overwhelming eloquence, first drew
      The breath which made him wretched; yet he knew
      How to make Madness beautiful, and cast
      O'er erring deeds and thoughts, a heavenly hue[jr]
      Of words, like sunbeams, dazzling as they past
    The eyes, which o'er them shed tears feelingly and fast.

                            LXXVIII.

    His love was Passion's essence--as a tree
      On fire by lightning; with ethereal flame
      Kindled he was, and blasted; for to be
      Thus, and enamoured, were in him the same.[js]
      But his was not the love of living dame,
      Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams,
      But of ideal Beauty, which became
      In him existence, and o'erflowing teems
    Along his burning page, distempered though it seems.

                             LXXIX.

    _This_ breathed itself to life in Julie, _this_
      Invested her with all that's wild and sweet;
      This hallowed, too, the memorable kiss[18.B.]
      Which every morn his fevered lip would greet,
      From hers, who but with friendship his would meet;
      But to that gentle touch, through brain and breast
      Flashed the thrilled Spirit's love-devouring heat;[jt]
      In that absorbing sigh perchance more blest
    Than vulgar minds may be with all they seek possest.

                             LXXX.

    His life was one long war with self-sought foes,
      Or friends by him self-banished;[324] for his mind
      Had grown Suspicion's sanctuary, and chose,
      For its own cruel sacrifice, the kind,[ju]
      'Gainst whom he raged with fury strange and blind.
      But he was phrensied, wherefore, who may know?
      Since cause might be which Skill could never find;[jv]
      But he was phrensied by disease or woe,
    To that worst pitch of all, which wears a reasoning show.

                             LXXXI.

    For then he was inspired,[325] and from him came,
      As from the Pythian's mystic cave of yore,
      Those oracles which set the world in flame,[326]
      Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more:
      Did he not this for France? which lay before
      Bowed to the inborn tyranny of years?[327]
      Broken and trembling to the yoke she bore,
      Till by the voice of him and his compeers,
    Roused up to too much wrath which follows o'ergrown fears?

                            LXXXII.

    They made themselves a fearful monument!
      The wreck of old opinions--things which grew,[jw]
      Breathed from the birth of Time: the veil they rent,
      And what behind it lay, all earth shall view.[jx]
      But good with ill they also overthrew,
      Leaving but ruins, wherewith to rebuild
      Upon the same foundation, and renew
      Dungeons and thrones, which the same hour refilled,
    As heretofore, because Ambition was self-willed.

                            LXXXIII.

    But this will not endure, nor be endured!
      Mankind have felt their strength, and made it felt.
      They might have used it better, but, allured
      By their new vigour, sternly have they dealt
      On one another; Pity ceased to melt
      With her once natural charities. But they,
      Who in Oppression's darkness caved had dwelt,
      They were not eagles, nourished with the day;
    What marvel then, at times, if they mistook their prey?

                            LXXXIV.

    What deep wounds ever closed without a scar?
      The heart's bleed longest, and but heal to wear
      That which disfigures it; and they who war
      With their own hopes, and have been vanquished, bear
      Silence, but not submission: in his lair
      Fixed Passion holds his breath, until the hour
      Which shall atone for years; none need despair:
      It came--it cometh--and will come,--the power
    To punish or forgive--in _one_ we shall be slower.[jy][328]

                             LXXXV.

    Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,
      With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing
      Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake
      Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring.
      This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing
      To waft me from distraction; once I loved
      Torn Ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring
      Sounds sweet as if a Sister's voice reproved,
    That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved.

                            LXXXVI.

    It is the hush of night, and all between
      Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,
      Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seen,
      Save darkened Jura,[329] whose capt heights appear
      Precipitously steep; and drawing near,
      There breathes a living fragrance from the shore,
      Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear
      Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,
    Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more.

                            LXXXVII.

    He is an evening reveller, who makes[jz]
      His life an infancy, and sings his fill;[ka][330]
      At intervals, some bird from out the brakes
      Starts into voice a moment, then is still.
      There seems a floating whisper on the hill,
      But that is fancy--for the Starlight dews
      All silently their tears of Love instil,
      Weeping themselves away, till they infuse
    Deep into Nature's breast the spirit of her hues.[kb]

                           LXXXVIII.

    Ye Stars! which are the poetry of Heaven!
      If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
      Of men and empires,--'tis to be forgiven,
      That in our aspirations to be great,
      Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state,
      And claim a kindred with you; for ye are
      A Beauty and a Mystery, and create
      In us such love and reverence from afar,
    That Fortune,--Fame,--Power,--Life, have named themselves a Star.[331]

                            LXXXIX.

    All Heaven and Earth are still--though not in sleep,
      But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;[332]
      And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep:--
      All Heaven and Earth are still: From the high host
      Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain-coast,
      All is concentered in a life intense,
      Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
      But hath a part of Being, and a sense
    Of that which is of all Creator and Defence.[333]

                              XC.

    Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt[kc]
      In solitude, where we are _least_ alone;
      A truth, which through our being then doth melt,
      And purifies from self: it is a tone,
      The soul and source of Music, which makes known[kd]
      Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm
      Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone,[334]
      Binding all things with beauty;--'twould disarm
    The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm.

                              XCI.

    Not vainly did the early Persian make[335]
      His altar the high places, and the peak
      Of earth-o'ergazing mountains,[19.B.] --and thus take
      A fit and unwalled temple, there to seek
      The Spirit, in whose honour shrines are weak
      Upreared of human hands. Come, and compare
      Columns and idol-dwellings--Goth or Greek--
      With Nature's realms of worship, earth and air--
    Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy prayer!

                             XCII.

    The sky is changed!--and such a change! Oh Night,[20.B.]
      And Storm, and Darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
      Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
      Of a dark eye in Woman![336] Far along,
      From peak to peak, the rattling crags among
      Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud,
      But every mountain now hath found a tongue,
      And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,
    Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!

                             XCIII.

    And this is in the Night:--Most glorious Night![ke]
      Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be
      A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,--
      A portion of the tempest and of thee![kf]
      How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,[kg]
      And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!
      And now again 'tis black,--and now, the glee
      Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth,
    As if they did rejoice o'er a young Earthquake's birth.[kh]

                             XCIV.

    Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves his way between
      Heights which appear as lovers who have parted[ki][337]
      In hate, whose mining depths so intervene,
      That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted:
      Though in their souls, which thus each other thwarted,
      Love was the very root of the fond rage
      Which blighted their life's bloom, and then departed:--
      Itself expired, but leaving them an age
    Of years all winters,--war within themselves to wage:[kj]

                              XCV.

    Now, where the quick Rhone thus hath cleft his way,
      The mightiest of the storms hath ta'en his stand:
      For here, not one, but many, make their play,
      And fling their thunder-bolts from hand to hand,
      Flashing and cast around: of all the band,
      The brightest through these parted hills hath forked
      His lightnings,--as if he did understand,
      That in such gaps as Desolation worked,
    There the hot shaft should blast whatever therein lurked.

                             XCVI.

    Sky--Mountains--River--Winds--Lake--Lightnings! ye!
      With night, and clouds, and thunder--and a Soul
      To make these felt and feeling, well may be
      Things that have made me watchful; the far roll
      Of your departing voices, is the knoll[338]
      Of what in me is sleepless,--if I rest.
      But where of ye, O Tempests! is the goal?
      Are ye like those within the human breast?
    Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, some high nest?

                             XCVII.

    Could I embody and unbosom now
      That which is most within me,--could I wreak
      My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw
      Soul--heart--mind--passions--feelings--strong or weak--
      All that I would have sought, and all I seek,
      Bear, know, feel--and yet breathe--into _one_ word,
      And that one word were Lightning, I would speak;
      But as it is, I live and die unheard,
    With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword.

                            XCVIII.

    The Morn is up again, the dewy Morn,
      With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom--
      Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn,
      And living as if earth contained no tomb,--
      And glowing into day: we may resume
      The march of our existence: and thus I,
      Still on thy shores, fair Leman! may find room
      And food for meditation, nor pass by
    Much, that may give us pause, if pondered fittingly.

                             XCIX.

    Clarens! sweet Clarens[339] birthplace of deep Love!
      Thine air is the young breath of passionate Thought;
      Thy trees take root in Love; the snows above,[kk]
      The very Glaciers have his colours caught,
      And Sun-set into rose-hues sees them wrought[21.B.]
      By rays which sleep there lovingly: the rocks,[kl]
      The permanent crags, tell here of Love, who sought
      In them a refuge from the worldly shocks,
    Which stir and sting the Soul with Hope that woos, then mocks.

                               C.

    Clarens! by heavenly feet thy paths are trod,--[km]
      Undying Love's, who here ascends a throne
      To which the steps are mountains; where the God
      Is a pervading Life and Light,--so shown[kn]
      Not on those summits solely, nor alone
      In the still cave and forest; o'er the flower
      His eye is sparkling, and his breath hath blown,
      His soft and summer breath, whose tender power[ko]
    Passes the strength of storms in their most desolate hour.

                              CI.

    All things are here of _Him_; from the black pines,[340]
      Which are his shade on high, and the loud roar
      Of torrents, where he listeneth, to the vines
      Which <DW72> his green path downward to the shore,
      Where the bowed Waters meet him, and adore,
      Kissing his feet with murmurs; and the Wood,
      The covert of old trees, with trunks all hoar,
      But light leaves, young as joy, stands where it stood,[kp]
    Offering to him, and his, a populous solitude.

                              CII.

    A populous solitude of bees and birds,
      And fairy-formed and many- things,
      Who worship him with notes more sweet than words,[kq]
      And innocently open their glad wings,
      Fearless and full of life: the gush of springs,
      And fall of lofty fountains, and the bend
      Of stirring branches, and the bud which brings
      The swiftest thought of Beauty, here extend
    Mingling--and made by Love--unto one mighty end.

                             CIII.

    He who hath loved not, here would learn that lore,[341]
      And make his heart a spirit; he who knows
      That tender mystery, will love the more;
      For this is Love's recess, where vain men's woes,
      And the world's waste, have driven him far from those,[kr]
      For 'tis his nature to advance or die;
      He stands not still, but or decays, or grows
      Into a boundless blessing, which may vie
    With the immortal lights, in its eternity!

                              CIV.

    'Twas not for fiction chose Rousseau this spot,
      Peopling it with affections; but he found
      It was the scene which Passion must allot
      To the Mind's purified beings; 'twas the ground
      Where early Love his Psyche's zone unbound,[342]
      And hallowed it with loveliness: 'tis lone,
      And wonderful, and deep, and hath a sound,
      And sense, and sight of sweetness; here the Rhone
    Hath spread himself a couch, the Alps have reared a throne.

                              CV.

    Lausanne! and Ferney! ye have been the abodes
      Of Names which unto you bequeathed a name;[22.B.]
      Mortals, who sought and found, by dangerous roads,
      A path to perpetuity of Fame:
      They were gigantic minds, and their steep aim
      Was, Titan-like, on daring doubts to pile
      Thoughts which should call down thunder, and the flame
      Of Heaven again assailed--if Heaven, the while,
    On man and man's research could deign do more than smile.

                              CVI.

    The one was fire and fickleness,[343] a child
      Most mutable in wishes, but in mind
      A wit as various,--gay, grave, sage, or wild,--
      Historian, bard, philosopher, combined;[ks]
      He multiplied himself among mankind,
      The Proteus of their talents: But his own
      Breathed most in ridicule,--which, as the wind,
      Blew where it listed, laying all things prone,--
    Now to o'erthrow a fool, and now to shake a throne.[344]

                             CVII.

    The other, deep and slow, exhausting thought,[kt]
      And hiving wisdom with each studious year,
      In meditation dwelt--with learning wrought,
      And shaped his weapon with an edge severe,
      Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer;
      The lord of irony,--that master-spell,
      Which stung his foes to wrath, which grew from fear[ku][345]
      And doomed him to the zealot's ready Hell,
    Which answers to all doubts so eloquently well.

                             CVIII.

    Yet, peace be with their ashes,--for by them,
      If merited, the penalty is paid;
      It is not ours to judge,--far less condemn;
      The hour must come when such things shall be made
      Known unto all,--or hope and dread allayed
      By slumber, on one pillow, in the dust,[kv]
      Which, thus much we are sure, must lie decayed;
      And when it shall revive, as is our trust,[346]
    'Twill be to be forgiven--or suffer what is just.

                              CIX.

    But let me quit Man's works, again to read
      His Maker's, spread around me, and suspend
      This page, which from my reveries I feed,
      Until it seems prolonging without end.
      The clouds above me to the white Alps tend,
      And I must pierce them, and survey whate'er[347]
      May be permitted, as my steps I bend
      To their most great and growing region, where
    The earth to her embrace compels the powers of air.

                              CX.

    Italia too! Italia! looking on thee,
      Full flashes on the Soul the light of ages,
      Since the fierce Carthaginian almost won thee,
      To the last halo of the Chiefs and Sages
      Who glorify thy consecrated pages;
      Thou wert the throne and grave of empires; still,[348]
      The fount at which the panting Mind assuages
      Her thirst of knowledge, quaffing there her fill,
    Flows from the eternal source of Rome's imperial hill.

                              CXI.

    Thus far have I proceeded in a theme
      Renewed with no kind auspices:--to feel
      We are not what we have been, and to deem
      We are not what we should be,--and to steel
      The heart against itself; and to conceal,
      With a proud caution, love, or hate, or aught,--
      Passion or feeling, purpose, grief, or zeal,--
      Which is the tyrant Spirit of our thought,
    Is a stern task of soul:--No matter,--it is taught.[349]

                             CXII.

    And for these words, thus woven into song,
      It may be that they are a harmless wile,--[kw]
      The colouring of the scenes which fleet along,[kx]
      Which I would seize, in passing, to beguile
      My breast, or that of others, for a while.
      Fame is the thirst of youth,--but I am not[ky]
      So young as to regard men's frown or smile,
      As loss or guerdon of a glorious lot;--
    I stood and stand alone,--remembered or forgot.

                             CXIII.

    I have not loved the World, nor the World me;
      I have not flattered its rank breath,[350] nor bowed
      To its idolatries a patient knee,
      Nor coined my cheek to smiles,--nor cried aloud
      In worship of an echo: in the crowd
      They could not deem me one of such--I stood
      Among them, but not of them[351]--in a shroud
      Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
    Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.[23.B.]

                             CXIV.

    I have not loved the World, nor the World me,--
      But let us part fair foes; I do believe,
      Though I have found them not, that there may be
      Words which are things,--hopes which will not deceive,
      And Virtues which are merciful, nor weave
      Snares for the failing; I would also deem
      O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve--[kz][24.B.]
      That two, or one, are almost what they seem,--
    That Goodness is no name--and Happiness no dream.

                           CXV.[352]

    My daughter! with thy name this song begun!
      My daughter! with thy name thus much shall end!--
      I see thee not--I hear thee not--but none
      Can be so wrapt in thee; Thou art the Friend
      To whom the shadows of far years extend:
      Albeit my brow thou never should'st behold,
      My voice shall with thy future visions blend,
      And reach into thy heart,--when mine is cold,--
    A token and a tone, even from thy father's mould.

                             CXVI.

    To aid thy mind's developement,--to watch
      Thy dawn of little joys,--to sit and see
      Almost thy very growth,--to view thee catch
      Knowledge of objects,--wonders yet to thee!
      To hold thee lightly on a gentle knee,
      And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss,--
      This, it should seem, was not reserved for me--
      Yet this was in my nature:--as it is,
    I know not what is there, yet something like to this.

                             CXVII.

    Yet, though dull Hate as duty should be taught,[353]
      I know that thou wilt love me: though my name
      Should be shut from thee, as a spell still fraught
      With desolation, and a broken claim:
      Though the grave closed between us,--'twere the same,
      I know that thou wilt love me--though to drain[354]
      _My_ blood from out thy being were an aim,
      And an attainment,--all would be in vain,--
    Still thou would'st love me, still that more than life retain.

                            CXVIII.

    The child of Love![355] though born in bitterness,
      And nurtured in Convulsion! Of thy sire
      These were the elements,--and thine no less.
      As yet such are around thee,--but thy fire
      Shall be more tempered, and thy hope far higher!
      Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea
      And from the mountains where I now respire,
      Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee,
    As--with a sigh--I deem thou might'st have been to me![la]



FOOTNOTES:

[275] {209} [D'Alembert (Jean-le-Rond, philosopher, mathematician, and
belletrist, 1717-1783) had recently lost his friend, Mlle. (Claire
Francoise) L'Espinasse, who died May 23, 1776. Frederick prescribes
_quelque probleme bien difficile a resoudre_ as a remedy for vain
regrets (_Oeuvres de Frederic II., Roi de Prusse_, 1790, xiv. 64, 65).]

[276] {215} ["If you turn over the earlier pages of the Huntingdon
peerage story, you will see how common a name Ada was in the early
Plantagenet days. I found it in my own pedigree in the reigns of John
and Henry.... It is short, ancient, vocalic, and had been in my family;
for which reasons I gave it to my daughter."--Letter to Murray, Ravenna,
October 8, 1820.

The Honourable Augusta Ada Byron was born December 10, 1815; was married
July 8, 1835, to William King Noel (1805-1893), eighth Baron King,
created Earl of Lovelace, 1838; and died November 27, 1852. There were
three children of the marriage--Viscount Ockham (d. 1862), the present
Earl of Lovelace, and the Lady Anna Isabella Noel, who was married to
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Esq., in 1869.

"The Countess of Lovelace," wrote a contributor to the _Examiner_,
December 4, 1852, "was thoroughly original, and the poet's temperament
was all that was hers in common with her father. Her genius, for genius
she possessed, was not poetic, but metaphysical and mathematical, her
mind having been in the constant practice of investigation, and with
rigour and exactness." Of her devotion to science, and her original
powers as a mathematician, her translation and explanatory notes of F.
L. Menabrea's _Notices sur le machine Analytique de Mr. Babbage_, 1842,
a defence of the famous "calculating machine," remain as evidence.

"Those who view mathematical science not merely as a vast body of
abstract and immutable truths, ... but as possessing a yet deeper
interest for the human race, when it is remembered that this science
constitutes the language through which alone we can adequately express
the great facts of the natural world ... those who thus think on
mathematical truth as the instrument through which the weak mind of man
can most effectually read his Creator's works, will regard with especial
interest all that can tend to facilitate the translation of its
principles into explicit practical forms." So, for the moment turning
away from algebraic formulae and abstruse calculations, wrote Ada, Lady
Lovelace, in her twenty-eighth year. See "Translator's Notes," signed A.
A. L., to _A Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles
Babbage, Esq._, London, 1843.

It would seem, however, that she "wore her learning lightly as a
flower." "Her manners [_Examiner_], her tastes, her accomplishments, in
many of which, music especially, she was proficient, were feminine in
the nicest sense of the word." Unlike her father in features, or in the
bent of her mind, she inherited his mental vigour and intensity of
purpose. Like him, she died in her thirty-seventh year, and at her own
request her coffin was placed by his in the vault at Hucknall Torkard.
(See, too, _Athenaeum_, December 4, 1852, and _Gent. Mag._, January,
1853.)]

[gh] {216} _could grieve my gazing eye._--[C. erased.]

[277] Compare _Henry V._, act iii. sc. 1, line 1--"Once more unto the
breach, dear friends, once more."

[278] {217} [Compare _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ (now attributed to
Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Massinger), act ii. sc. 1, lines 73, _seq._--

                                    "Oh, never
    Shall we two exercise like twins of Honour
    Our arms again, and feel our fiery horses
    Like proud seas under us."

"Out of this somewhat forced simile," says the editor (John Wright) of
Lord Byron's _Poetical Works_, issued in 1832, "by a judicious
transposition of the comparison, and by the substitution of the more
definite _waves_ for _seas_, Lord Byron's clear and noble thought has
been produced." But the literary artifice, if such there be, is
subordinate to the emotion of the writer. It is in movement, progress,
flight, that the sufferer experiences a relief from the poignancy of his
anguish.]

[gi] _And the rent canvass tattering_----.--[C.]

[279] ["The metaphor is derived from a torrent-bed, which, when dried
up, serves for a sandy or shingly path."--Note by H. F. Tozer, _Childe
Harold_, 1885, p. 257. Or, perhaps, the imagery has been suggested by
the action of a flood, which ploughs a channel for itself through
fruitful soil, and, when the waters are spent, leaves behind it "a
sterile track," which does, indeed, permit the traveller to survey the
desolation, but serves no other purpose of use or beauty.]

[gj] {218} _I would essay of all I sang to sing_.--[MS.]

[280] [Compare Manfred, act ii. sc. 1, lines 51, 52--

    "Think'st thou existence doth depend on time?
    It doth; but actions are our epoch."]

[gk] {219} _Still unimpaired though worn_----.--[MS. erased.]

[281] [It is the poet's fond belief that he can find the true reality in
"the things that are not seen."

    "Out of these create he can
    Forms more real than living man--
    Nurslings of Immortality."

"Life is but thought," and by the power of the imagination he thinks to
"gain a being more intense," to add a cubit to his spiritual stature.
Byron professes the same faith in _The Dream_ (stanza i. lines 19-22),
which also belongs to the summer of 1816--

                          "The mind can make
    Substance, and people planets of its own
    With beings brighter than have been, and give
    A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh."

At this stage of his poetic growth, in part converted by Shelley, in
part by Wordsworth as preached by Shelley, Byron, so to speak, "got
religion," went over for a while to the Church of the mystics. There
was, too, a compulsion from within. Life had gone wrong with him, and,
driven from memory and reflection, he looks for redemption in the new
earth which Imagination and Nature held in store.]

[gl]
    _A brighter being that we thus endow_
    _With form our fancies_----.--[MS.]

[gm] {220} _A dizzy world_----.--[MS. erased.]

[282] [Compare _The Dream_, viii. 6, _seq_.--

                           "Pain was mixed
    In all which was served up to him, until
           *       *       *       *       *
    He fed on poisons, and they had no power,
    But were a kind of nutriment."]

[gn] _To bear unbent what Time cannot abate_.--[MS.]

[283] [Of himself as distinct from Harold he will say no more. On the
tale or spell of his own tragedy is set the seal of silence; but of
Harold, the idealized Byron, he once more takes up the parable. In
stanzas viii.-xv. he puts the reader in possession of some natural
changes, and unfolds the development of thought and feeling which had
befallen the Pilgrim since last they had journeyed together. The
youthful Harold had sounded the depth of joy and woe. Man delighted him
not--no, nor woman neither. For a time, however, he had cured himself of
this trick of sadness. He had drunk new life from the fountain of
natural beauty and antique lore, and had returned to take his part in
the world, inly armed against dangers and temptations. And in the world
he had found beauty, and fame had found him. What wonder that he had
done as others use, and then discovered that he could not fare as others
fared? Henceforth there remained no comfort but in nature, no refuge but
in exile!]

[go] {221}

    _He of the breast that strove no more to feel,_
    _Scarred with the wounds_----.--[MS.]

[gp] {222} _Secure in curbing coldness_----.--[MS.]

[gq] _Shines through the wonder-works--of God and Nature's hand_.--[MS.]

[gr]
    _Who can behold the flower at noon, nor seek_
      _To pluck it? who can stedfastly behold_.--[MS.]

[gs] _Nor feel how Wisdom ceases to be cold_.--[MS. erased.]

[284] [The Temple of Fame is on the summit of a mountain; "Clouds
overcome it;" but to the uplifted eye the mists dispel, and behold the
goddess pointing to her star--the star of glory!]

[gt] {223} _Yet with a steadier step than in his earlier time_.--[MS.
erased.]

[285] [Compare _Manfred_, act ii. sc. 2, lines 50-58--

                      "From my youth upwards
    My spirit walked not with the souls of men,
    Nor looked upon the earth with human eyes;
         *       *       *       *       *
    My joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers
    Made me a stranger; though I wore the form,
    I had no sympathy with breathing flesh."

Compare, too, with stanzas xiii., xiv., _ibid_., lines 58-72.]

[gu] _Fool he not to know_.--[MS. erased.]

[gv]
    _Where there were mountains there for him were friends_.
    _Where there was Ocean--there he was at home_.--[MS.]

[gw] {224}
    _Like the Chaldean he could gaze on stars_.--[MS.]
    ----_adored the stars_.--[MS. erased.]

[gx] _That keeps us from that Heaven on which we love to think_.--[MS.]

[gy]
    _But in Man's dwelling--Harold was a thing_
      _Restless and worn, and cold and wearisome_.--[MS.]

[286] {225} [In this stanza the mask is thrown aside, and "the real Lord
Byron" appears _in propria persona_.]

[287] [The mound with the Belgian lion was erected by William I. of
Holland, in 1823.]

[gz] {226} _None; but the moral truth tells simpler so_.--[MS.]

[288] [Stanzas xvii., xviii., were written after a visit to Waterloo.
When Byron was in Brussels, a friend of his boyhood, Pryse Lockhart
Gordon, called upon him and offered his services. He escorted him to the
field of Waterloo, and received him at his house in the evening. Mrs.
Gordon produced her album, and begged for an autograph. The next morning
Byron copied into the album the two stanzas which he had written the day
before. Lines 5-8 of the second stanza (xviii.) ran thus--

    "Here his last flight the haughty Eagle flew,
    Then tore with bloody beak the fatal plain,
    Pierced with the shafts of banded nations through ..."

The autograph suggested an illustration to an artist, R. R. Reinagle
(1775-1863), "a pencil-sketch of a spirited chained eagle, grasping the
earth with his talons." Gordon showed the vignette to Byron, who wrote
in reply, "Reinagle is a better poet and a better ornithologist than I
am; eagles and all birds of prey attack with their talons and not with
their beaks, and I have altered the line thus--

    "'Then tore with bloody talon the rent plain.'"

(See _Personal Memoirs of Pryse Lockhart Gordon_, 1830, ii. 327, 328.)]

[ha] ----_and still must be_.--[MS.]

[hb] ----_the fatal Waterloo_.--[MS.]

[hc]
    _Here his last flight the haughty eagle flew_.--[MS.]
    _Then bit with bloody beak the rent plain_.--[MS. erased.]
    _Then tore with bloody beak_----.--[MS.]

[hd] {227} _And Gaul must wear the links of her own broken
chain_.--[MS.]

[289] [With this "obstinate questioning" of the final import and outcome
of "that world-famous Waterloo," compare the _Ode from the French_, "We
do not curse thee, Waterloo," written in 1815, and published by John
Murray in _Poems_ (1816). Compare, too, _The Age of Waterloo_, v. 93,
"Oh, bloody and most bootless Waterloo!" and _Don Juan_, Canto VIII.
stanzas xlviii.-l., etc. Shelley, too, in his sonnet on the _Feelings of
a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte_ (1816), utters a like lament
(Shelley's _Works_, 1895, ii. 385)--

                                    "I know
    Too late, since thou and France are in the dust,
    That Virtue owns a more eternal foe
    Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime,
    And bloody Faith, the foulest birth of Time."

Even Wordsworth, after due celebration of this "victory sublime," in his
sonnet _Emperors and Kings, etc._ (_Works_, 1889, p. 557), solemnly
admonishes the "powers"--

    "Be just, be grateful; nor, the oppressor's creed
    Reviving heavier chastisement deserve
    Than ever forced unpitied hearts to bleed."

But the Laureate had no misgivings, and in _The Poet's Pilgrimage_, iv.
60, celebrates the national apotheosis--

    "Peace hath she won ... with her victorious hand
    Hath won thro' rightful war auspicious peace;
    Nor this alone, but that in every land
      The withering rule of violence may cease.
    Was ever War with such blest victory crowned!
    Did ever Victory with such fruits abound!"]

[he] {228} _Or league to teach their kings_----.--[MS.]

[290] [The most vivid and the best authenticated account of the Duchess
of Richmond's ball, which took place June 15, the eve of the Battle of
Quatrebras, in the duke's house in the Rue de la Blanchisserie, is to be
found in Lady de Ros's (Lady Georgiana Lennox) _Personal Recollections
of the Great Duke of Wellington_, which appeared first in _Murray's
Magazine_, January and February, 1889, and were republished as _A Sketch
of the Life of Georgiana, Lady de Ros_, by her daughter, the Hon. Mrs.
J. R. Swinton (John Murray, 1893). "My mother's now famous ball," writes
Lady de Ros (_A Sketch, etc._, pp. 122, 123), "took place in a large
room on the ground-floor on the left of the entrance, connected with the
rest of the house by an ante-room. It had been used by the coachbuilder,
from whom the house was hired, to put carriages in, but it was papered
before we came there; and I recollect the paper--a trellis pattern with
roses.... When the duke arrived, rather late, at the ball, I was
dancing, but at once went up to him to ask about the rumours. 'Yes, they
are true; we are off to-morrow.' This terrible news was circulated
directly, and while some of the officers hurried away, others remained
at the ball, and actually had not time to change their clothes, but
fought in evening costume."]

[hf] {229}

    _The lamps shone on lovely dames and gallant men_.--[MS.]
    _The lamps shone on ladies_----.--[MS. erased.]

[hg] {230} _With a slow deep and dread-inspiring roar_.--[MS. erased.]

[hh]
    _Arm! arm, and out! it is the opening cannon's roar_.--[MS.]
    _Arm--arm--and out--it is--the cannon's opening roar_.--[C.]

[291] [Frederick William, Duke of Brunswick (1771-1815), brother to
Caroline, Princess of Wales, and nephew of George III., fighting at
Quatrebras in the front of the line, "fell almost in the beginning of
the battle." His father, Charles William Ferdinand, born 1735, the
author of the fatal manifesto against the army of the French Republic
(July 15, 1792), was killed at Auerbach, October 14, 1806. In the plan
of the Duke of Richmond's house, which Lady de Ros published in her
_Recollections_, the actual spot is marked (the door of the ante-room
leading to the ball-room) where Lady Georgiana Lennox took leave of the
Duke of Brunswick. "It was a dreadful evening," she writes, "taking
leave of friends and acquaintances, many never to be seen again. The
Duke of Brunswick, as he took leave of me ... made me a civil speech as
to the Brunswickers being sure to distinguish themselves after 'the
honour' done them by my having accompanied the Duke of Wellington to
their review! I remember being quite provoked with poor Lord Hay, a
dashing, merry youth, full of military ardour, whom I knew very well,
for his delight at the idea of going into action ... and the first news
we had on the 16th was that he and the Duke of Brunswick were
killed."--_A Sketch, etc._, pp. 132, 133.]

[hi] {231}
    _His heart replying knew that sound too well_.--[MS.]
    _And the hoped vengeance for a Sire so dear_
    _As him who died on Jena--whom so well_
    _His filial heart had mourned through many a year_
    _Roused him to valiant fury nought could quell_.--[MS. erased.]

[hj] ----_tremors of distress_.--[MS.]

[hk]
    ----_which did press_
    _Like death upon young hearts_----.--[MS.]

[hl] _Oh that on night so soft, such heavy morn should rise_.--[MS.]

[hm] {232}
    _And wakening citizens with terror dumb_
    _Or whispering with pale lips--"The foe--They come, they come."_--[MS.]
    _Or whispering with pale lips--"The Desolation's come."_--[MS. erased.]

[hn]
    _And Soignies waves above them_----.--[MS.]
    _And Ardennes_----.--[C.]

[292] {233} [_Vide ante, English Bards, etc._, line 726, note: _Poetical
Works_, 1898, i. 354.]

[ho] _But chiefly_----.--[MS.]

[293] {234} [The Hon. Frederick Howard (1785-1815), third son of
Frederick, fifth Earl of Carlisle, fell late in the evening of the 18th
of June, in a final charge of the left square of the French Guard, in
which Vivian brought up Howard's hussars against the French. Neither
French infantry nor cavalry gave way, and as the Hanoverians fired but
did not charge, a desperate combat ensued, in which Howard fell and many
of the 10th were killed.--_Waterloo: The Downfall of the First
Napoleon_, G. Hooper, 1861, p. 236.

Southey, who had visited the field of Waterloo, September, 1815, in his
_Poet's Pilgrimage_ (iii. 49), dedicates a pedestrian stanza to his
memory--

    "Here from the heaps who strewed the fatal plain
      Was Howard's corse by faithful hands conveyed;
    And not to be confounded with the slain,
      Here in a grave apart with reverence laid,
    Till hence his honoured relics o'er the seas
    Were borne to England, where they rest in peace."]

[294] [Autumn had been beforehand with spring in the work of renovation.

    "Yet Nature everywhere resumed her course;
    Low <DW29>s to the sun their purple gave,
    And the soft poppy blossomed on the grave."
                                           _Poet's Pilgrimage_, iii. 36.

But the contrast between the continuous action of nature and the doom of
the unreturning dead, which does not greatly concern Southey, fills
Byron with a fierce desire to sum the price of victory. He flings in the
face of the vain-glorious mourners the bitter reality of their abiding
loss. It was this prophetic note, "the voice of one crying in the
wilderness," which sounded in and through Byron's rhetoric to the men of
his own generation.]

[hp] {235} _And dead within behold the Spring return_.--[MS. erased.]

[hq] {236} _It still is day though clouds keep out the Sun_.--[MS.]

[295] [So, too, Coleridge. "Have you never seen a stick broken in the
middle, and yet cohering by the rind? The fibres, half of them actually
broken and the rest sprained, and, though tough, unsustaining? Oh, many,
many are the broken-hearted for those who know what the moral and
practical heart of the man is."--_Anima Poetae_, 1895, p. 303.]

[296] [According to Lady Blessington (_Conversations_, p. 176), Byron
maintained that the image of the broken mirror had in some mysterious
way been suggested by the following quatrain which Curran had once
repeated to him:--

    "While memory, with more than Egypt's art
    Embalming all the sorrows of the heart,
    Sits at the altar which she raised to woe,
    And finds the scene whence tears eternal flow."

But, as M. Darmesteter points out, the true source of inspiration was a
passage in Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_--"the book," as Byron
maintained, "in my opinion most useful to a man who wishes to acquire
the reputation of being well-read with the least trouble" (_Life_, p.
48). Burton is discoursing on injury and long-suffering. "'Tis a Hydra's
head contention; the more they strive, the more they may; and as
Praxiteles did by his glass [see Cardan, _De Consolatione_, lib. iii.],
when he saw a scurvy face in it, break it in pieces; but for the one he
saw, he saw many more as bad in a moment; for one injury done, they
provoke another _cum fanore_, and twenty enemies for one."--_Anatomy of
Melancholy_, 1893, ii. 228. Compare, too, Carew's poem, _The Spark_,
lines 23-26--

    "And as a looking-glass, from the aspect,
    Whilst it is whole doth but one face reflect,
    But being crack'd or broken, there are shewn
    Many half-faces, which at first were one.
                            Anderson's _British Poets_, 1793, iii. 703.]

[hr] {237} _But not his pleasure--such might be a task_.--[MS. erased.]

[297] [The "tale" or reckoning of the Psalmist, the span of threescore
years and ten, is contrasted with the tale or reckoning of the age of
those who fell at Waterloo. A "fleeting span" the Psalmist's; but,
reckoning by Waterloo, "more than enough." Waterloo grudges even what
the Psalmist allows.]

[hs] {238}

    _Here where the sword united Europe drew_
    _I had a kinsman warring on that day_.--[MS.]

[ht] _On little thoughts with equal firmness fixed._--[MS.]

[hu]
    _For thou hast risen as fallen--even now thou seek'st_
    _An hour_----.--[MS.]

[298] [Byron seems to have been unable to make up his mind about
Napoleon. "It is impossible not to be dazzled and overwhelmed by his
character and career," he wrote to Moore (March 17, 1815), when his
Heros de Roman, as he called him, had broken open his "captive's cage"
and was making victorious progress to the capital. In the _Ode to
Napoleon Buonaparte_, which was written in April, 1814, after the first
abdication at Fontainebleau, the dominant note is astonishment mingled
with contempt. It is the lamentation over a fallen idol. In these
stanzas (xxxvi.-xlv.) he bears witness to the man's essential greatness,
and, with manifest reference to his own personality and career,
attributes his final downfall to the peculiar constitution of his genius
and temper. A year later (1817), in the Fourth Canto (stanzas
lxxxix.-xcii.), he passes a severe sentence. Napoleon's greatness is
swallowed up in weakness. He is a "kind of bastard Caesar,"
self-vanquished, the creature and victim of vanity. Finally, in The Age
of Bronze, sections iii.-vi., there is a reversion to the same theme,
the tragic irony of the rise and fall of the "king of kings, and yet of
slaves the slave."

As a schoolboy at Harrow, Byron fought for the preservation of
Napoleon's bust, and he was ever ready, in defiance of national feeling
and national prejudice, to celebrate him as "the glorious chief;" but
when it came to the point, he did not "want him here," victorious over
England, and he could not fail to see, with insight quickened by
self-knowledge, that greatness and genius possess no charm against
littleness and commonness, and that the "glory of the terrestrial" meets
with its own reward. The moral is obvious, and as old as history; but
herein lay the secret of Byron's potency, that he could remint and issue
in fresh splendour the familiar coinage of the world's wit. Moreover, he
lived in a great age, when great truths are born again, and appear in a
new light.]

[299] [The stanza was written while Napoleon was still under the
guardianship of Admiral Sir George Cockburn, and before Sir Hudson Lowe
had landed at St. Helena; but complaints were made from the first that
imperial honours which were paid to him by his own suite were not
accorded by the British authorities.]

[hv] {239}
    ----_and thy dark name_
    _Was ne'er more rife within men's mouths than now_.--[MS.]

[hw] _Who tossed thee to and fro till_----.--[MS. erased.]

[hx] _Which be it wisdom, weakness_----.--[MS.]

[hy]
    _To watch thee shrinking calmly hadst thou smiled._--[MS.]
    _With a sedate tho' not unfeeling eye._--[MS. erased.]

[hz] {241}
    _Greater than in thy fortunes; for in them_
    _Ambition lured thee on too far to show_
    _That true habitual scorn_----.--[MS.]

[ia] {242} _Feeds on itself and all things_----.--[MS.]

[ib]
    _Which stir too deeply_----[MS.]
    _Which stir the blood too boiling in its springs_.--[MS. erased.]

[ic] {243} ----_they rave overcast_.--[MS.]

[id] ----_the hate of all below_.--[MS.]

[ie] ----_on his single head_.--[MS.]

[if] ----_the wise man's World will be_.--[MS.]

[ig] ----_for what teems like thee_.--[MS.]

[ih] {244} _From gray and ghastly walls--where Ruin kindly
dwells_.--[MS.]

[300] [For the archaic use of "battles" for "battalions," compare
_Macbeth_, act v. sc. 4, line 4; and Scott's _Lord of the Isles_,
vi. 10--

    "In battles four beneath their eye,
    The forces of King Robert lie."]

[ii] ----_are shredless tatters now_.--[MS.]

[ij] {245}
    _What want these outlaws that a king should have_
    _But History's vain page_----.--[MS.]

[ik] ----_their hearts were far more brave_.--[MS.]

[301] [The most usual device is a bleeding heart.]

[il]
    _Nor mar it frequent with an impious show_
    _Of arms or angry conflict_----.--[MS.]

[302] {246} [Compare Moore's lines, _The Meeting of the Waters_--

    "There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet
    As that vale in whose bosom the wide waters meet."]

[im]
    _Earth's dreams of Heaven--and such to seem to me_
    _But one thing wants thy stream_----.--[MS.]

[303] [Compare Lucan's _Pharsalia_, ix. 969, "Etiam periere ruinae;" and
the lines from Tasso's _Gerusalemme Liberata_, xv. 20, quoted in
illustration of Canto II. stanza liii.]

[in]
    _Glassed with its wonted light, the sunny ray;_
    _But o'er the mind's marred thoughts--though but a dream_.--[MS.]

[io] {247} _Repose itself on kindness_----[MS.]

[304] [Two lyrics, entitled _Stanzas to Augusta_, and the _Epistle to
Augusta_, which were included in _Domestic Pieces_, published in 1816,
are dedicated to the same subject--the devotion and faithfulness of his
sister.]

[ip] {248} _But there was one_----.--[MS.]

[iq] _Yet was it pure_----.--[MS.]

[305] [It has been supposed that there is a reference in this passage,
and again in _Stanzas to Augusta_ (dated July 24, 1816), to "the only
important calumny"--to quote Shelley's letter of September 29,
1816--"that was even ever advanced" against Byron. "The poems to
Augusta," remarks Elze (_Life of Lord Byron_, p. 174), "prove, further,
that she too was cognizant of the calumnious accusations; for under no
other supposition is it possible to understand their allusions." But the
mere fact that Mrs. Leigh remained on terms of intimacy and affection
with her brother, when he was under the ban of society, would expose her
to slander and injurious comment, "peril dreaded most in female eyes;"
whereas to other calumnies, if such there were, there could be no other
reference but silence, or an ecstasy of wrath and indignation.]

[ir]
    _Thus to that heart did his its thoughts in absence pour_.--[MS.]
    ----_its absent feelings pour_.--[MS. erased.]

[306] {249} [Written on the Rhine bank, May 11, 1816.--MS. M.]

[is] {251} _A sigh for Marceau_----.--[MS.]

[307] [Marceau (_vide post_, note 2, p. 296) took part in crushing the
Vendean insurrection. If, as General Hoche asserts in his memoirs, six
hundred thousand fell in Vendee, Freedom's charter was not easily
overstepped.]

[308] {252} [Compare Gray's lines in _The Fatal Sisters_--

    "Iron-sleet of arrowy shower
    Hurtles in the darken'd air."]

[it] _And could the sleepless vultures_----.--[MS.]

[iu] _Rustic not rude, sublime yet not austere_.--[MS.]

[309] [Lines 8 and 9 may be cited as a crying instance of Byron's faulty
technique. The collocation of "awful" with "austere," followed by
"autumn" in the next line, recalls the afflictive assonance of "high
Hymettus," which occurs in the beautiful passage which he stole from
_The Curse of Minerva_ and prefixed to the third canto of _The Corsair_.
The sense of the passage is that, as in autumn, the golden mean between
summer and winter, the year is at its full, so in the varied scenery of
the Rhine there is a harmony of opposites, a consummation of beauty.]

[iv] {253}
    _More mighty scenes may rise--more glaring shine_
    _But none unite in one enchanted gaze_
    _The fertile--fair--and soft--the glories of old days_.--[MS.]

[310] [The "negligently grand" may, perhaps, refer to the glories of old
days, now in a state of neglect, not to the unstudied grandeur of the
scene taken as a whole; but the phrase is loosely thrown out in order to
convey a general impression, "an attaching maze," an engaging attractive
combination of images, and must not be interrogated too closely.]

[iw] {254}
    _Around in chrystal grandeur to where falls_
    _The avalanche--the thunder-clouds of snow_.--[MS.]

[311] [Compare the opening lines of Coleridge's _Hymn before Sunrise in
the Valley of Chamouni_--

    "Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star
    In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
    On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc!"

The "thunderbolt" (line 6) recurs in _Manfred_, act i. sc. 1--

    "Around his waist are forests braced,
      The Avalanche in his hand;
    But ere its fall, that thundering ball
      Must pause for my command."]

[312] {255} [The inscription on the ossuary of the Burgundian troops
which fell in the battle of Morat, June 14, 1476, suggested this variant
of _Si monumentum quaeris_--

     "Deo Optimo Maximo.

     Inclytissimi et fortissimi Burgundiae ducis exercitus, Moratum
     obsidens, ab Helvetiis caesus, hoc sui monumentum reliquit."]

[ix] _Unsepulchred they roam, and shriek_----[MS.]

[313] [The souls of the suitors when Hermes "roused and shepherded them
followed gibbering" ([Greek: tri/zousai]).--_Od._, xxiv. 5. Once, too,
when the observance of the _dies Parentales_ was neglected, Roman ghosts
took to wandering and shrieking.

    "Perque vias Urbis, Latiosque ululasse per agros
       Deformes animas, vulgus inane ferunt."
                                      Ovid, _Fasti_, ii. lines 553, 554.

The Homeric ghosts gibbered because they were ghosts; the Burgundian
ghosts because they were confined to the Stygian coast, and could not
cross the stream. For once the "classical allusions" are forced and
inappropriate.]

[314] [Byron's point is that at Morat 15,000 men were slain in a
righteous cause--the defence of a republic against an invading tyrant;
whereas the lives of those that fell at Cannae and at Waterloo were
sacrificed to the ambition of rival powers fighting for the mastery.]

[iy] {255}
    ----_their proud land_
    _Groan'd not beneath_----.--[MS.]

[iz] {257} _And thus she died_----.--[MS.]

[ja] _And they lie simply_----.--[MS. erased.]

[jb] _The dear depths yield_----.--[MS.]

[315] ["Haunted and hunted by the British tourist and gossip-monger,
Byron took refuge, on June 10, at the Villa Diodati; but still the
pursuers strove to win some wretched consolation by waylaying him in his
evening drives, or directing the telescope upon his balcony, which
overlooked the lake, or upon the hillside, with its vineyards, where he
lurked obscure" (Dowden's _Life of Shelley_, 1896, p. 309). It is
possible, too, that now and again even Shelley's companionship was felt
to be a strain upon nerves and temper. The escape from memory and
remorse, which could not be always attained in the society of a chosen
few, might, he hoped, be found in solitude, face to face with nature.
But it was not to be. Even nature was powerless to "minister to a mind
diseased." At the conclusion of his second tour (September 29, 1816), he
is constrained to admit that "neither the music of the shepherd, the
crashing of the avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the glacier,
the forest, nor the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon
my heart, nor enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the
majesty, and the power, and the glory, around, above, and beneath me"
(_Life_, p. 315). Perhaps Wordsworth had this confession in his mind
when, in 1834, he composed the lines, "Not in the Lucid Intervals of
Life," of which the following were, he notes, "written with Lord Byron's
character as a past before me, and that of others, his contemporaries,
who wrote under like influences:"--

                             "Nor do words,
    Which practised talent readily affords,
    Prove that his hand has touched responsive chords
    Nor has his gentle beauty power to move
    With genuine rapture and with fervent love
    The soul of Genius, if he dare to take
    Life's rule from passion craved for passion's sake;
    Untaught that meekness is the cherished bent
    Of all the truly great and all the innocent.
      But who is innocent? By grace divine,
    Not otherwise, O Nature! are we thine,
    Through good and evil there, in just degree
    Of rational and manly sympathy."
                             _The Works of W. Wordsworth_, 1889, p. 729.

Wordsworth seems to have resented Byron's tardy conversion to "natural
piety," regarding it, no doubt, as a fruitless and graceless endeavour
without the cross to wear the crown. But if Nature reserves her balms
for "the innocent," her quality of inspiration is not "strained." Byron,
too, was nature's priest--

    "And by that vision splendid
    Was on his way attended."]

[jc] {259} _In its own deepness_----[MS.]

[316] [The metaphor is derived from a hot spring which appears to boil
over at the moment of its coming to the surface. As the particles of
water, when they emerge into the light, break and bubble into a seething
mass; so, too, does passion chase and beget passion in the "hot throng"
of general interests and individual desires.]

[jd] _One of a worthless world--to strive where none are strong._--[MS.]

[317] [The thought which underlies the whole of this passage is that man
is the creature and thrall of fate. In society, in the world, he is
exposed to the incidence of passion, which he can neither resist nor
yield to without torture. He is overcome by the world, and, as a last
resource, he turns to nature and solitude. He lifts up his eyes to the
hills, unexpectant of Divine aid, but in the hope that, by claiming
kinship with Nature, and becoming "a portion of that around" him, he may
forego humanity, with its burden of penitence, and elude the curse.
There is a further reference to this despairing recourse to Nature in
_The Dream_, viii. 10, _seq_.--

                                     " ... he lived
    Through that which had been death to many men,
    And made him friends of mountains: with the stars
    And the quick Spirit of the Universe
    He held his dialogues! and they did teach
    To him the magic of their mysteries."]

[je] {260} ----_through Eternity._--[MS.]

[318] [Shelley seems to have taken Byron at his word, and in the
_Adonais_ (xxx. 3, _seq._) introduces him in the disguise of--

    "The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame
    Over his living head like Heaven is bent,
    An early but enduring monument."

Notwithstanding the splendour of Shelley's verse, it is difficult to
suppress a smile. For better or for worse, the sense of the ludicrous
has asserted itself, and "brother" cannot take "brother" quite so
seriously as in "the brave days of old." But to each age its own humour.
Not only did Shelley and Byron worship at the shrine of Rousseau, but
they took delight in reverently tracing the footsteps of St. Preux and
Julie.]

[319] {261} [The name "Tigris" is derived from the Persian _tir_
(Sanscrit _Tigra_), "an arrow." If Byron ever consulted Hofmann's
_Lexicon Universale_, he would have read, "_Tigris_, a velocitate dictus
quasi _sagitta_;" but most probably he neither had nor sought an
authority for his natural and beautiful simile.]

[jf] _To its young cries and kisses all awake._--[MS.]

[320] [Compare _Tintern Abbey_. In this line, both language and
sentiment are undoubtedly Wordsworth's--

                         "The sounding cataract
    Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
    The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
    Their colours, and their forms, were then to me
    An appetite, a _feeling_, and a love,
    That had no need of a remoter charm."

But here the resemblance ends. With Wordsworth the mood passed, and he
learned

    "To look on Nature, not as in the hour
    Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
    The still, sad music of humanity,
    Not harsh nor grating, but of amplest power
    To chasten and subdue."

He would not question Nature in search of new and untainted pleasure,
but rests in her as inclusive of humanity. The secret of Wordsworth is
acquiescence; "the still, sad music of humanity" is the key-note of his
ethic. Byron, on the other hand, is in revolt. He has the ardour of a
pervert, the rancorous scorn of a deserter. The "hum of human cities" is
a "torture." He is "a link reluctant in a fleshly chain." To him Nature
and Humanity are antagonists, and he cleaves to the one, yea, he would
take her by violence, to mark his alienation and severance from the
other.]

[jg] _Of peopled cities_----[MS.]

[jh] {262}
    ----_but to be_
    _A link reluctant in a living chain_
    _Classing with creatures_----[MS.]

[ji] _And with the air_----[MS.]

[jj] _To sink and suffer_----[MS.]

[jk] ----_which partly round us cling._--[MS.]

[321] [Compare Horace, _Odes_, iii. 2. 23, 24--

                       "Et udam
    Spernit humum fugiente penna."]

[jl] {263} ----_in this degrading form._--[MS.]

[jm] ----_the Spirit in each spot._--[MS.]

[322][The "bodiless thought" is the object, not the subject, of his
celestial vision. "Even now," as through a glass darkly, and with eyes

    "Whose half-beholdings through unsteady tears
    Gave shape, hue, distance to the inward dream,"

his soul "had sight" of the spirit, the informing idea, the essence of
each passing scene; but, hereafter, his bodiless spirit would, as it
were, encounter the place-spirits face to face. It is to be noted that
warmth of feeling, not clearness or fulness of perception, attends this
spiritual recognition.]

[jn] [_Is not_] _the universe a breathing part?_--[MS.]

[jo] {264} _And gaze upon the ground with sordid thoughts and
slow._--[MS.]

[323] [Compare Coleridge's _Dejection. An Ode_, iv. 4-9--

    "And would we aught behold, of higher worth,
      Than that inanimate cold world allowed
      To the poor, loveless, ever-anxious crowd;
    Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth
      A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
        Enveloping the earth."]

[jp] _But this is not a time--I must return._--[MS.]

[jq] _Here the reflecting Sophist_----.--[MS.]

[jr] {265}
      _O'er sinful deeds and thoughts the heavenly hue_
      _With words like sunbeams dazzling as they passed_
    _The eye that o'er them shed deep tears which flowed too fast_.--[MS.]
      _O'er deeds and thoughts of error the bright hue_.--[MS. erased.]

[js] _Like him enamoured were to die the same_.--[MS.]

[jt] {266} ----_self-consuming heat_.--[MS. erased.]

[324] [As, for instance, with Madame de Warens, in 1738; with Madame
d'Epinay; with Diderot and Grimm, in 1757; with Voltaire; with David
Hume, in 1766 (see "Rousseau in England," _Q. R._, No. 376, October,
1898); with every one to whom he was attached or with whom he had
dealings, except his illiterate mistress, Theresa le Vasseur. (See
_Rousseau_, by John Morley, 2 vols., 1888, _passim_.)]

[ju] _For its own cruel workings the most kind_.--[MS. erased.]

[jv] _Since cause might be yet leave no trace behind_.--[MS.]

[325] ["He was possessed, as holier natures than his have been, by an
enthusiastic vision, an intoxicated confidence, a mixture of sacred rage
and prodigious love, an insensate but absolutely disinterested revolt
against the stone and iron of a reality which he was bent on melting in
a heavenly blaze of splendid aspiration and irresistibly persuasive
expression."--_Rousseau_, by John Morley, 1886, i. 137.]

[326] {267} [Rousseau published his _Discourses_ on the influence of the
sciences, on manners, and on inequality (_Sur l'Origine ... de
l'Inegalite parmi les Hommes_) in 1750 and 1753; _Emile, ou, de
l'Education_, and _Du Contrat Social_ in 1762.]

[327] ["What Rousseau's Discourse [_Sur l'Origine ... de l'Inegalite_,
etc.] meant ... is not that all men are born equal. He never says
this.... His position is that the artificial differences, springing from
the conditions of the social union, do not coincide with the differences
in capacity springing from original constitution; that the tendency of
the social union as now organized is to deepen the artificial
inequalities, and make the gulf between those endowed with privileges
and wealth, and those not so endowed, ever wider and wider.... It was
... [the influence of Rousseau ... and those whom he inspired] which,
though it certainly did not produce, yet did as certainly give a deep
and remarkable bias, first to the American Revolution, and a dozen years
afterwards to the French Revolution."--_Rousseau_, 1888, i. 181, 182.]

[jw]
    ----_thoughts which grew_
    _Born with the birth of Time_----.--[MS.]

[jx]
    ----_even let me view_
    _But good alas_----.--[MS.]

[jy] {268} ----_in both we shall lie slower_.--[MS. erased.]

[328] [The substitution of "one" for "both" (see _var._ i.) affords
conclusive proof that the meaning is that the next revolution would do
its work more thoroughly and not leave things as it found them.]

[329] {269} [After sunset the Jura range, which lies to the west of the
Lake, would appear "darkened" in contrast to the afterglow in the
western sky.]

[jz] {270} _He is an endless reveller_----.--[MS. erased.]

[ka] _Him merry with light talking with his mate_.--[MS. erased.]

[330] [Compare Anacreon ([Greek: Ei)s te/ttiga]), _Carm._ xliii. line 15--

    [Greek: To\ de\ ge~ras ou)\ se tei/rei.].]

[kb] _Deep into Nature's breast the existence which they lose_.--[MS.]

[331] [For the association of "Fortune" and "Fame" with a star, compare
stanza xi. lines 5, 6--

    "Who can contemplate Fame through clouds unfold
    The _star_ which rises o'er her steep," etc.?

And the allusion to Napoleon's "star," stanza xxxviii. line 9--

    "Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest _Star_."

Compare, too, the opening lines of the _Stanzas to Augusta_ (July 24,
1816)--

    "Though the day of my destiny's over,
      And the _star_ of my fate has declined."

"Power" is symbolized as a star in _Numb._ xxiv. 17, "There shall come a
_star_ out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel;" and in the
divine proclamation, "I am the root and the offspring of David, and the
bright and morning _star_" (_Rev._ xxii. 16).

The inclusion of "life" among star similes may have been suggested by
the astrological terms, "house of life" and "lord of the ascendant."
Wordsworth, in his Ode (_Intimations of Immortality, etc._) speaks of
the soul as "our life's _star_." Mr. Tozer, who supplies most of these
"comparisons," adds a line from Shelley's _Adonais_, 55. 8 (Pisa,
1821)--

    "The soul of Adonais, like a _star_."]

[332] {271} [Compare Wordsworth's sonnet, "It is a Beauteous," etc.--

    "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
    The holy time is quiet as a nun
    Breathless with adoration."]

[333] [Here, too, the note is Wordsworthian, though Byron represents as
inherent in Nature, that "sense of something far more deeply
interfused," which Wordsworth (in his _Lines_ on Tintern Abbey) assigns
to his own consciousness.]

[kc] {272} _It is a voiceless feeling chiefly felt_.--[MS.]

[kd] _Of a most inward music_----.--[MS.]

[334] [As the cestus of Venus endowed the wearer with magical
attraction, so the immanence of the Infinite and the Eternal in "all
that formal is and fugitive," binds it with beauty and produces a
supernatural charm which even Death cannot resist.]

[335] [Compare Herodotus, i. 131, [Greek: Oi(de\ nomi/zousi Dii) me,
e)pi\ ta\ y(pselo/tata to~n ou)re/on a)nabai/nontes, thysi/as e(/rdein,
to ky/klon pa/nta tou~ y)rano Di/a kale/ontes]. Perhaps, however, "early
Persian" was suggested by a passage in "that drowsy, frowsy poem, _The
Excursion_"--

            "The Persian--zealous to reject
    Altar and image and the inclusive walls
    And roofs and temples built by human hands--
    To loftiest heights ascending, from their tops
    With myrtle-wreathed tiara on his brow,
    Presented sacrifice to moon and stars."

_The Excursion_, iv. (_The Works of Wordsworth_, 1889, p. 461).]

[336] {273} [Compare the well-known song which forms the prelude of the
_Hebrew Melodies_--

    "She walks in beauty, like the night
      Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
    And all that's best of dark and bright
      Meet in her aspect and her eyes."]

[ke]
    ----_Oh glorious Night_
    _That art not sent_----.--[MS.]

[kf] {274} _A portion of the Storm--a part of thee_.--[MS.]

[kg] ----_a fiery sea_.--[MS.]

[kh] _As they had found an heir and feasted o'er his birth_.--[MS.
erased.]

[ki]
    _Hills which look like brethren with twin heights_
    _Of a like aspect_----.--[MS. erased.]

[337] [There can be no doubt that Byron borrowed this metaphor from the
famous passage in Coleridge's _Christabel_ (ii. 408-426), which he
afterwards prefixed as a motto to _Fare Thee Well_.

The latter half of the quotation runs thus--

    "But never either found another
    To free the hollow heart from paining--
    They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
    Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;
    A dreary sea now flows between,
    But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
    Shall wholly do away, I ween,
    The marks of that which once had been."]

[kj] {275} _Of separation drear_----.--[MS. erased.]

[338] [There are numerous instances of the use of "knoll" as an
alternative form of the verb "to knell;" but Byron seems, in this
passage, to be the authority for "knoll" as a substantive.]

[339] [For Rousseau's description of Vevey, see _Julie; ou, La Nouvelle
Heloise_, Partie I. Lettre xxiii., _Oevres de J. J. Rousseau_, 1836, ii.
36: "Tantot d'immenses rochers pendoient en ruines au-dessus de ma tete.
Tantot de hautes et bruyantes cascades m'inondoient de leur epais
brouillard: tantot un torrent eternel ouvroit a mes cotes un abime dont
les yeux n'osoient sonder la profondeur. Quelquefois je me perdois dans
l'obscurite d'un bois touffu. Quelquefois, en sortant d'un gouffre, une
agreable prairie, rejouissoit tout-a-coup mes regards. Un melange
etonnant de la nature sauvage et de la nature cultivee, montroit partout
la main des hommes, ou l'on eut cru qu'ils n'avoient jamais penetre: a
cote d'une caverne on trouvoit des maisons; on voyoit des pampres secs
ou l'on n'eut cherche que des ronces, des vignes dans des terres
eboullees, d'excellens fruits sur des rochers, et des champs dans des
precipices." See, too, Lettre xxxviii. p. 56; Partie IV. Lettre xi. p.
238 (the description of Julie's Elysium); and Partie IV. Lettre xvii. p.
260 (the excursion to Meillerie).

Byron infuses into Rousseau's accurate and charming compositions of
scenic effects, if not the "glory," yet "the freshness of a dream." He
belonged to the new age, with its new message from nature to man, and,
in spite of theories and prejudices, listened and was convinced. He
extols Rousseau's recognition of nature, lifting it to the height of his
own argument; but, consciously or unconsciously, he desires to find, and
finds, in nature a spring of imagination undreamt of by the Apostle of
Sentiment. There is a whole world of difference between Rousseau's
persuasive and delicate patronage of Nature, and Byron's passionate,
though somewhat belated, surrender to her inevitable claim. With
Rousseau, Nature is a means to an end, a conduct of refined and
heightened fancy; whereas, to Byron, "her reward was with her," a
draught of healing and refreshment.]

[kk] {277} _The trees have grown from Love_----.--[MS. erased.]

[kl] {278} _By rays which twine there_----.--[MS.]

[km]
    _Clarens--sweet Clarens--thou art Love's abode_--
    _Undying Love's--who here hath made a throne_.--[MS.]

[kn]
    _And girded it with Spirit which is shown_
    _From the steep summit to the rushing Rhone_.--[MS. erased.]

[ko]
                         ----_whose searching power_
    _Surpasses the strong storm in its most desolate hour_.--[MS.]

[340] [Compare _La Nouvelle Heloise_, Partie IV. Lettre xvii, _Oeuvres,
etc._, ii. 262: "Un torrent, forme par la fonte des neiges, rouloit a
vingt pas de nous line eau bourbeuse, et charrioit avec bruit du limon,
du sable et des pierres.... Des forets de noirs sapins nous ombrageoient
tristement a droite. Un grand bois de chenes etoit a gauche au-dela du
torrent."]

[kp] {279} _But branches young as Heaven_----[MS. erased,]

[kq] ----_with sweeter voice than words_.--[MS.]

[341] [Compare the _Pervigilium Veneris_--

    "Cras amet qui nunquam amavit,
      Quique amavit eras amet."
    ("Let those love now, who never loved before;
    Let those who always loved, now love the more.")

Parnell's _Vigil of Venus: British Poets_, 1794, vii. 7.]

[kr] {279} ----_driven him to repose._--[MS.]

[342] [Compare _Confessions of J. J. Rousseau_, lib. iv., _passim._]

[343] {281} [In his appreciation of Voltaire, Byron, no doubt, had in
mind certain strictures of the lake school--"a school, as it is called,
I presume, from their education being still incomplete." Coleridge, in
_The Friend_ (1850, i. 168), contrasting Voltaire with Erasmus, affirms
that "the knowledge of the one was solid through its whole extent, and
that of the other extensive at a chief rate in its superficiality," and
characterizes "the wit of the Frenchman" as being "without imagery,
without character, and without that pathos which gives the magic charm
to genuine humour;" and Wordsworth, in the second book of _The
Excursion_ (_Works of Wordsworth_, 1889, p. 434), "unalarmed" by any
consideration of wit or humour, writes down Voltaire's _Optimist_
(_Candide, ou L'Optimisme_), which was accidentally discovered by the
"Wanderer" in the "Solitary's" pent-house, "swoln with scorching damp,"
as "the dull product of a scoffer's pen." Byron reverts to these
contumelies in a note to the Fifth Canto of _Don Juan_ (see _Life_,
Appendix, p. 809), and lashes "the school" _secundum artem._]

[ks]
    _Coping with all and leaving all behind_
    _Within himself existed all mankind_--
    _And laughing at their faults betrayed his own_
    _His own was ridicule which as the Wind_.--[MS.]

[344] {282} [In his youth Voltaire was imprisoned for a year (1717-18)
in the Bastille, by the regent Duke of Orleans, on account of certain
unacknowledged lampoons (_Regnante Puero, etc._); but throughout his
long life, so far from "shaking thrones," he showed himself eager to
accept the patronage and friendship of the greatest monarchs of the
age--of Louis XV., of George II. and his queen, Caroline of Anspach, of
Frederick II., and of Catharine of Russia. Even the Pope Benedict XIV.
accepted the dedication of _Mahomet_ (1745), and bestowed an apostolical
benediction on "his dear son." On the other hand, his abhorrence of war,
his protection of the oppressed, and, above all, the questioning spirit
of his historical and philosophical writings (e.g. _Les Lettres sur les
Anglais_, 1733; _Annales de l'Empire depuis Charlemagne_, 1753, etc.)
were felt to be subversive of civil as well as ecclesiastical tyranny,
and, no doubt, helped to precipitate the Revolution.

The first half of the line may be illustrated by his quarrel with
Maupertuis, the President of the Berlin Academy, which resulted in the
production of the famous _Diatribe of Doctor Akakia, Physician to the
Pope_ (1752), by a malicious attack on Maupertuis's successor, Le Franc
de Pompignan, and by his caricature of the critic Elie Catharine Freron,
as _Frelon_ ("Wasp"), in _L'Ecossaise_, which was played at Paris in
1760.--_Life of Voltaire_, by F. Espinasse, 1892, pp. 94, 114, 144.]

[kt]
    ----_concentering thought_
    _And gathering wisdom_----.--[MS.]

[ku] {283} _Which stung his swarming foes with rage and fear_.--[MS.]

[345] [The first three volumes of Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire_, contrary to the author's expectation, did not escape
criticism and remonstrance. The Rev. David Chetsum (in 1772 and
(enlarged) 1778) published _An Examination of, etc._, and Henry Edward
Davis, in 1778, _Remarks on_ the memorable Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Chapters. Gibbon replied by a _Vindication_, issued in 1779. Another
adversary was Archdeacon George Travis, who, in his _Letter_, defended
the authenticity of the text on "Three Heavenly Witnesses" (1 _John_ v.
7), which Gibbon was at pains to deny (ch. xxxvii. note 120). Among
other critics and assailants were Joseph Milner, Joseph Priestley, and
Richard Watson afterwards Bishop of Llandaff. (For Porson's estimate of
Gibbon, see preface to _Letters to Mr. Archdeacon Travis, etc._, 1790.)]

[kv] _In sleep upon one pillow_----.--[MS.]

[346] [There is no reason to suppose that this is to be taken
ironically. He is not certain whether the "secrets of all hearts shall
be revealed," or whether all secrets shall be kept in the silence of
universal slumber; but he looks to the possibility of a judgment to
come. He is speaking for mankind generally, and is not concerned with
his own beliefs or disbeliefs.]

[347] {284} [The poet would follow in the wake of the clouds. He must
pierce them, and bend his steps to the region of their growth, the
mountain-top, where earth begets and air brings forth the vapours.
Another interpretation is that the Alps must be pierced in order to
attain the great and ever-ascending regions of the mountain-tops
("greater and greater as we proceed"). In the next stanza he pictures
himself looking down from the summit of the Alps on Italy, the goal of
his pilgrimage.]

[348] [The Roman Empire engulfed and comprehended the great empires of
the past--the Persian, the Carthaginian, the Greek. It fell, and
kingdoms such as the Gothic (A.D. 493-554), the Lombardic (A.D. 568-774)
rose out of its ashes, and in their turn decayed and passed away.]

[349] {285} [The task imposed upon his soul, which dominates every other
instinct, is the concealment of any and every emotion--"love, or hate,
or aught," not the concealment of the particular emotion "love or hate,"
which may or may not be the "master-spirit" of his thought. He is
anxious to conceal his feelings, not to keep the world in the dark as to
the supreme feeling which holds the rest subject.]

[kw] _They are but as a self-deceiving wile_.-[MS. erased.]

[kx] _The shadows of the things that pass along_.--[MS.]

[ky] {286}
    _Fame is the dream of boyhood--I am not_
    _So young as to regard the frown or smile_
    _Of crowds as making an immortal lot_.--[MS. (lines 6, 7 erased).]

[350] [Compare Shakespeare, _Coriolanus_, act iii. sc. 1, lines 66, 67--

    "For the mutable, rank-scented many, let them
    Regard me as I do not flatter."]

[351] [Compare _Manfred_, act ii. sc. 2, lines 54-57--

    "My spirit walked not with the souls of men,
    Nor looked upon the earth with human eyes;
    The thirst of their ambition was not mine,
    The aim of their existence was not mine."]

[kz] {287} _O'er misery unmixedly some grieve_.--[MS.]

[352] [Byron was at first in some doubt whether he should or should not
publish the "concluding stanzas of _Childe Harold_ (those to my
_daughter_);" but in a letter to Murray, October 9, 1816, he reminds him
of his later determination to publish them with "the rest of the
Canto."]

[353] {288} ["His allusions to me in _Childe Harold_ are cruel and cold,
but with such a semblance as to make _me_ appear so, and to attract
sympathy to himself. It is said in this poem that hatred of him will be
taught as a lesson to his child. I might appeal to all who have ever
heard me speak of him, and still more to my own heart, to witness that
there has been no moment when I have remembered injury otherwise than
affectionately and sorrowfully. It is not my duty to give way to
hopeless and wholly unrequited affection, but so long as I live my chief
struggle will probably be not to remember him too kindly."--(_Letter of
Lady Byron to Lady Anne Lindsay_, extracted from Lord Lindsay's letter
to the _Times_, September 7, 1869.)

According to Mrs. Leigh (see her letter to Hodgson, Nov., 1816, _Memoirs
of Rev. F. Hodgson_, 1878, ii. 41), Murray paid Lady Byron "the
compliment" of showing her the transcription of the Third Canto, a day
or two after it came into his possession. Most probably she did not know
or recognize Claire's handwriting, but she could not fail to remember
that but one short year ago she had herself been engaged in transcribing
_The Siege of Corinth_ and _Parisina_ for the press. Between the making
of those two "fair copies," a tragedy had intervened.]

[354] {289} [The Countess Guiccioli is responsible for the statement
that Byron looked forward to a time when his daughter "would know her
father by his works." "Then," said he, "shall I triumph, and the tears
which my daughter will then shed, together with the knowledge that she
will have the feelings with which the various allusions to herself and
me have been written, will console me in my darkest hours. Ada's mother
may have enjoyed the smiles of her youth and childhood, but the tears of
her maturer age will be for me."--_My Recollections of Lord Byron_, by
the Countess Guiccioli, 1869, p. 172.]

[355] [For a biographical notice of Ada Lady Lovelace, including
letters, elsewhere unpublished, to Andrew Crosse, see _Ada Byron_, von
E. Koelbing, _Englische Studien_, 1894, xix. 154-163.]

[la]

    _End of Canto Third_.
                             _Byron. July 4, 1816, Diodati_.--[C.]




                   NOTES TO CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.

                                CANTO III.

                               1.

    In "pride of place" here last the Eagle flew.
                                                   Stanza xviii. line 5.

"Pride of place" is a term of falconry, and means the highest pitch of
flight. See _Macbeth_, etc.--

    "An eagle towering in his pride of place
    Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and killed."

    ["A falcon towering in her pride of place," etc.
                                     _Macbeth_, act ii. sc. 4, line 12.]

                               2.

    Such as Harmodius drew on Athens' tyrant Lord.
                                                      Stanza xx. line 9.

See the famous song on Harmodius and Aristogeiton. The best English
translation is in Bland's _Anthology_, by Mr. Denman--

    "With myrtle my sword will I wreathe," etc.

[_Translations chiefly from the Greek Anthology, etc._, 1806, pp. 24,
25. The _Scholium_, attributed to Callistratus (_Poetae Lyrici Graeci_,
Bergk. Lipsiae, 1866, p. 1290), begins thus--

    E)n my/rtou kladi\ to\ xi/phos phore/so,
    O(\sper A(rmo/dios kai\ A)ristogei/ton,
    O(/te to\n y/rannon ktaneten
    I)sono/mous t' A)the/nas e)poiesa/ten

"Hence," says Mr. Tozer, "'the sword in myrtles drest' (Keble's
_Christian Year_, Third Sunday in Lent) became the emblem of assertors
of liberty."--_Childe Harold_, 1885, p. 262.]

                               3.

    And all went merry as a marriage bell.
                                                     Stanza xxi. line 8.

On the night previous to the action, it is said that a ball was given at
Brussels. [See notes to the text.]

                               4.

    And Evan's--Donald's fame rings in each clansman's ears!
                                                    Stanza xxvi. line 9.

Sir Evan Cameron, and his descendant, Donald, the "gentle Lochiel" of
the "forty-five."

[Sir Evan Cameron (1629-1719) fought against Cromwell, finally yielding
on honourable terms to Monk, June 5, 1658, and for James II. at
Killiecrankie, June 17, 1689. His grandson, Donald Cameron of Lochiel
(1695-1748), celebrated by Campbell, in _Lochiel's Warning_, 1802, was
wounded at Culloden, April 16, 1746. His great-great-grandson, John
Cameron, of Fassieferne (b. 1771), in command of the 92nd Highlanders,
was mortally wounded at Quatre-Bras, June 16, 1815. Compare Scott's
stanzas, _The Dance of Death_, lines 33, _sq_.--

    "Where through battle's rout and reel,
    Storm of shot and hedge of steel,
    Led the grandson of Lochiel,
        Valiant Fassiefern.
           *       *       *       *       *
        And Morven long shall tell,
    And proud Ben Nevis hear with awe,
    How, upon bloody Quatre-Bras,
    Brave Cameron heard the wild hurra
        Of conquest as he fell."

Compare, too, Scott's _Field of Waterloo_, stanza xxi. lines 14, 15--

    "And Cameron, in the shock of steel.
    Die like the offspring of Lochiel."]

                               5.

    And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves.
                                                   Stanza xxvii. line 1.

The wood of Soignies is supposed to be a remnant of the forest of
Ardennes, famous in Bojardo's _Orlando_, and immortal in Shakspeare's
_As You Like It_. It is also celebrated in Tacitus, as being the spot of
successful defence by the Germans against the Roman encroachments. I
have ventured to adopt the name connected with nobler associations than
those of mere slaughter.

[It is a far cry from Soignies in South Brabant to Ardennes in
Luxembourg. Possibly Byron is confounding the "saltus quibus nomen
Arduenna" (Tacitus, _Ann._, 3. 42), the scene of the revolt of the
Treviri, with the "saltus Teutoburgiensis" (the Teutoburgen or Lippische
Wald, which divides Lippe Detmold from Westphalia), where Arminius
defeated the Romans (Tacitus, _Ann_., 1. 60). (For Boiardo's "Ardenna,"
see _Orlando Innamorato_, lib. i. canto 2, st. 30.) Shakespeare's Arden,
the "immortal" forest, in _As You Like It_, "favours" his own Arden in
Warwickshire, but derived its name from the "forest of Arden" in Lodge's
_Rosalynd_.]

                               6.

    I turned from all she brought to those she could not bring.
                                                     Stanza xxx. line 9.

My guide from Mount St. Jean over the field seemed intelligent and
accurate. The place where Major Howard fell was not far from two tall
and solitary trees (there was a third cut down, or shivered in the
battle), which stand a few yards from each other at a pathway's side.
Beneath these he died and was buried. The body has since been removed to
England. A small hollow for the present marks where it lay, but will
probably soon be effaced; the plough has been upon it, and the grain is.
After pointing out the different spots where Picton and other gallant
men had perished; the guide said, "Here Major Howard lay: I was near him
when wounded." I told him my relationship, and he seemed then still more
anxious to point out the particular spot and circumstances. The place is
one of the most marked in the field, from the peculiarity of the two
trees above mentioned. I went on horseback twice over the field,
comparing it with my recollection of similar scenes. As a plain,
Waterloo seems marked out for the scene of some great action, though
this may be mere imagination: I have viewed with attention those of
Platea, Troy, Mantinea, Leuctra, Chaeronea, and Marathon; and the field
around Mount St. Jean and Hougoumont appears to want little but a better
cause, and that undefinable but impressive halo which the lapse of ages
throws around a celebrated spot, to vie in interest with any or all of
these, except, perhaps, the last mentioned.

[For particulars of the death of Major Howard, see _Personal Memoirs,
etc._, by Pryse Lockhart Gordon, 1830, ii. 322, 323.]

                               7.

    Like to the apples on the Dead Sea's shore.
                                                   Stanza xxxiv. line 6.

The (fabled) apples on the brink of the lake Asphaltites were said to be
fair without, and, within, ashes.

[Compare Tacitus, _Histor._, lib. v. 7, "Cuncta sponte edita, aut manu
sata, sive herbae tenues, aut flores, ut solitam in speciem adolevere,
atra et inania velut in cinerem vanescunt." See, too, _Deut._ xxxii. 32,
"For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah:
their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter."

They are a species of gall-nut, and are described by Curzon (_Visits to
Monasteries of the Levant_, 1897, p. 141), who met with the tree that
bears them, near the Dead Sea, and, mistaking the fruit for a ripe plum,
proceeded to eat one, whereupon his mouth was filled "with a dry bitter
dust."

"The apple of Sodom ... is supposed by some to refer to the fruit of
_Solanum Sodomeum_ (allied to the tomato), by others to the _Calotropis
procera_" (_N. Eng. Dict._, art. "Apple").]

                               8.

    For sceptred Cynics Earth were far too wide a den.
                                                     Stanza xli. line 9.

The great error of Napoleon, "if we have writ our annals true," was a
continued obtrusion on mankind of his want of all community of feeling
for or with them; perhaps more offensive to human vanity than the active
cruelty of more trembling and suspicious tyranny. Such were his speeches
to public assemblies as well as individuals; and the single expression
which he is said to have used on returning to Paris after the Russian
winter had destroyed his army, rubbing his hands over a fire, "This is
pleasanter than Moscow," would probably alienate more favour from his
cause than the destruction and reverses which led to the remark.

                               9.

    What want these outlaws conquerors should have?
                                                  Stanza xlviii. line 6.

"What wants that knave that a king should have?" was King James's
question on meeting Johnny Armstrong and his followers in full
accoutrements. See the Ballad.

[Johnie Armstrong, the laird of Gilnockie, on the occasion of an
enforced surrender to James V. (1532), came before the king somewhat too
richly accoutred, and was hanged for his effrontery--

    "There hang nine targats at Johnie's hat,
        And ilk ane worth three hundred pound--
      'What wants that knave a king suld have
        But the sword of honour and the crown'?"
                     _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, 1821, i. 127.]

                              10.

    The castled Crag of Drachenfels.
                                                 Song, stanza 1, line 1.

The castle of Drachenfels stands on the highest summit of "the Seven
Mountains," over the Rhine banks; it is in ruins, and connected with
some singular traditions. It is the first in view on the road from Bonn,
but on the opposite side of the river: on this bank, nearly facing it,
are the remains of another, called the Jew's Castle, and a large cross,
commemorative of the murder of a chief by his brother. The number of
castles and cities along the course of the Rhine on both sides is very
great, and their situations remarkably beautiful.

[The castle of Drachenfels (Dragon's Rock) stands on the summit of one,
but not the highest, of the Siebengebirge, an isolated group of volcanic
hills on the right bank of the Rhine between Remagen and Bonn. The
legend runs that in one of the caverns of the rock dwelt the dragon
which was slain by Siegfried, the hero of the Nibelungen Lied. Hence the
_vin du pays_ is called _Drachenblut_.]

                              11.

    The whiteness of his soul--and thus men o'er him wept.
                                                    Stanza lvii. line 9.

The monument of the young and lamented General Marceau (killed by a
rifle-ball at Alterkirchen, on the last day of the fourth year of the
French Republic) still remains as described. The inscriptions on his
monument are rather too long, and not required: his name was enough;
France adored, and her enemies admired; both wept over him. His funeral
was attended by the generals and detachments from both armies. In the
same grave General Hoche is interred, a gallant man also in every sense
of the word; but though he distinguished himself greatly in battle, he
had not the good fortune to die there: his death was attended by
suspicions of poison.

A separate monument (not over his body, which is buried by Marceau's) is
raised for him near Andernach, opposite to which one of his most
memorable exploits was performed, in throwing a bridge to an island on
the Rhine [April 18, 1797]. The shape and style are different from that
of Marceau's, and the inscription more simple and pleasing.

    "The Army of the Sambre and Meuse
          to its Commander-in-Chief
                   Hoche."

This is all, and as it should be. Hoche was esteemed among the first of
France's earlier generals, before Buonaparte monopolised her triumphs.
He was the destined commander of the invading army of Ireland.

[The tomb of Francois Severin Desgravins Marceau (1769-1796, general of
the French Republic) bears the following epitaph and inscription:--

     "'Hic cineres, ubique nomen.'

     "Ici repose Marceau, ne a Chartres, Eure-et-Loir, soldat a seize
     ans, general a vingtdeux ans. Il mourut en combattant pour sa
     patrie, le dernier jour de l'an iv. de la Republique francaise. Qui
     que tu sois, ami ou ennemi de ce jeune heros, respecte ces
     cendres."

A bronze statue at Versailles, raised to the memory of General Hoche
(1768-1797) bears a very similar record--

     "A Lazare Hoche, ne a Versailles le 24 juin, 1768, sergent a seize
     ans, general en chef a vingt-cinq, mort a vingt-neuf, pacificateur
     de la Vendee."]

                              12.

    Here Ehrenbreitstein with her shattered wall.
                                                   Stanza lviii. line 1.

Ehrenbreitstein, i.e. "the broad stone of honour," one of the strongest
fortresses in Europe, was dismantled and blown up by the French at the
truce of Leoben. It had been, and could only be, reduced by famine or
treachery. It yielded to the former, aided by surprise. After having
seen the fortifications of Gibraltar and Malta, it did not much strike
by comparison; but the situation is commanding. General Marceau besieged
it in vain for some time, and I slept in a room where I was shown a
window at which he is said to have been standing observing the progress
of the siege by moonlight, when a ball struck immediately below it.

[Ehrenbreitstein, which had resisted the French under Marshal Boufflers
in 1680, and held out against Marceau (1795-96), finally capitulated to
the French after a prolonged siege in 1799. The fortifications were
dismantled when the French evacuated the fortress after the Treaty of
Luneville in 1801. The Treaty of Leoben was signed April 18, 1797.]

                              13.

    Unsepulchred they roamed, and shrieked each wandering ghost.
                                                   Stanza lxiii. line 9.

The chapel is destroyed, and the pyramid of bones diminished to a small
number by the Burgundian Legion in the service of France; who anxiously
effaced this record of their ancestors' less successful invasions. A few
still remain, notwithstanding the pains taken by the Burgundians for
ages (all who passed that way removing a bone to their own country), and
the less justifiable larcenies of the Swiss postilions, who carried them
off to sell for knife-handles; a purpose for which the whiteness imbibed
by the bleaching of years had rendered them in great request. Of these
relics I ventured to bring away as much as may have made a quarter of a
hero, for which the sole excuse is, that if I had not, the next
passer-by might have perverted them to worse uses than the careful
preservation which I intend for them.

[Charles the Bold was defeated by the Swiss at the Battle of Morat, June
22, 1476. It has been computed that more than twenty thousand
Burgundians fell in the battle. At first, to avoid the outbreak of a
pestilence, the bodies were thrown into pits. "Nine years later ... the
mouldering remains were unearthed, and deposited in a building ... on
the shore of the lake, near the village of Meyriez.... During three
succeeding centuries this depository was several times rebuilt.... But
the ill-starred relics were not destined even yet to remain undisturbed.
At the close of the last century, when the armies of the French Republic
were occupying Switzerland, a regiment consisting mainly of Burgundians,
under the notion of effacing an insult to their ancestors, tore down the
'bone-house' at Morat, covered the contents with earth, and planted on
the mound 'a tree of liberty.' But the tree had no roots; the rains
washed away the earth; again the remains were exposed to view, and lay
bleaching in the sun for a quarter of a century. Travellers stopped to
gaze, to moralize, and to pilfer; postilions and poets scraped off
skulls and thigh-bones.... At last, in 1822, the vestiges were swept
together and resepulchred, and a simple obelisk of marble was erected,
to commemorate a victory well deserving of its fame as a military
exploit, but all unworthy to be ranked with earlier triumphs, won by
hands pure as well as strong, defending freedom and the
right."--_History of Charles the Bold_, by J. F. Kirk, 1868, iii. 404,
405.

Mr. Murray still has in his possession the parcel of bones--the "quarter
of a hero"--which Byron sent home from the field of Morat.]

                              14.

    Levelled Aventicum, hath strewed her subject lands.
                                                     Stanza lxv. line 9.

Aventicum, near Morat, was the Roman capital of Helvetia, where Avenches
now stands.

[Avenches (Wiflisburg) lies due south of the Lake of Morat, and about
five miles east of the Lake of Neuchatel. As a Roman colony it bore the
name of _Pia Flavia Constans Emerita_, and circ. 70 A.D. contained a
population of sixty thousand inhabitants. It was destroyed first by the
Alemanni and, afterwards, by Attila. "The Emperor Vespasian--son of the
banker of the town," says Suetonius (lib. viii. i)--"surrounded the city
by massive walls, defended it by semicircular towers, adorned it with a
capitol, a theatre, a forum, and granted it jurisdiction over the
outlying dependencies....

"To-day plantations of tobacco cover the forgotten streets of Avenches,
and a single Corinthian column ['the lonelier column,' the so-called
_Cicognier_], with its crumbling arcade, remains to tell of former
grandeur."--_Historic Studies in Vaud, Berne, and Savoy_, by General
Meredith Read, 1897, i. 16.]

                              15.

    And held within their urn one mind--one heart--one dust.
                                                    Stanza lxvi. line 9.

Julia Alpinula, a young Aventian priestess, died soon after a vain
endeavour to save her father, condemned to death as a traitor by Aulus
Caecina. Her epitaph was discovered many years ago;--it is thus:--"Julia
Alpinula: Hic jaceo. Infelicis patris, infelix proles. Deae Aventiae
Sacerdos. Exorare patris necem non potui: Male mori in fatis ille erat.
Vixi annos XXIII."--I know of no human composition so affecting as this,
nor a history of deeper interest. These are the names and actions which
ought not to perish, and to which we turn with a true and healthy
tenderness, from the wretched and glittering detail of a confused mass
of conquests and battles, with which the mind is roused for a time to a
false and feverish sympathy, from whence it recurs at length with all
the nausea consequent on such intoxication.

[A mutinous outbreak among the Helvetii, which had been provoked by the
dishonest rapacity of the twenty-first legion, was speedily quelled by
the Roman general Aulus Caecina. Aventicum surrendered (A.D. 69), but
Julius Alpinus, a chieftain and supposed ring-leader, was singled out
for punishment and put to death. "The rest," says Tacitus, "were left to
the ruth or ruthlessness of Vitellius" (_Histor_., i. 67, 68). Julia
Alpinula and her epitaph were the happy inventions of a
sixteenth-century scholar. "It appears," writes Lord Stanhope, "that
this inscription was given by one Paul Wilhelm, a noted forger
(_falsarius_), to Lipsius, and by Lipsius handed over to Gruterus.
Nobody, either before or since Wilhelm, has even pretended to have seen
the stone ... as to any son or daughter of Julius Alpinus, history is
wholly silent" (_Quarterly Review_, June, 1846, vol. lviii. p. 61;
_Historical Essays_, by Lord Mahon, 1849, pp. 297, 298).]

                              16.

    In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow.
                                                   Stanza lxvii. line 8.

This is written in the eye of Mont Blanc (June 3rd, 1816), which even at
this distance dazzles mine.--(July 20th.) I this day observed for some
time the distinct reflection of Mont Blanc and Mont Argentiere in the
calm of the lake, which I was crossing in my boat; the distance of these
mountains from their mirror is sixty miles.

[The first lines of the note dated June 3, 1816, were written at
"Dejean's Hotel de l'Angleterre, at Secheron, a small suburb of Geneva,
on the northern side of the lake." On the 10th of June Byron removed to
the Campagne Diodati, about two miles from Geneva, on the south shore of
the lake (_Life of Shelley_, by Edward Dowden, 1896, pp. 307-309).]

                              17.

    By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone.
                                                    Stanza lxxi. line 3.

The colour of the Rhone at Geneva is blue, to a depth of tint which I
have never seen equalled in water, salt or fresh, except in the
Mediterranean and Archipelago.

[The blueness of the Rhone, which has been attributed to various causes,
is due to the comparative purity of the water. The yellow and muddy
stream, during its passage through the lake, is enabled to purge itself
to a very great extent of the solid matter held in suspension--the
glacial and other detritus---and so, on leaving its vast natural
filtering-bed, it flows out clear and blue: it has regained the proper
colour of pure water.]

                              18.

    This hallowed, too, the memorable kiss.
                                                   Stanza lxxix. line 3.

This refers to the account, in his _Confessions_, of his passion for the
Comtesse d'Houdetot (the mistress of St. Lambert), and his long walk
every morning, for the sake of the single kiss which was the common
salutation of French acquaintance. Rousseau's description of his
feelings on this occasion may be considered as the most passionate, yet
not impure, description and expression of love that ever kindled into
words; which, after all, must be felt, from their very force, to be
inadequate to the delineation; a painting can give no sufficient idea of
the ocean.

[Here is Rousseau's "passionate, yet not impure," description of his
sensations: "J'ai dit qu'il y avoit loin de l'Hermitage a Eaubonne; je
passois par les coteaux d'Andilly qui sont charmans. Je revois en
marchant a celle que j'allois voir, a l'accueil caressant qu'elle me
feroit, au baiser qui m'attendoit a mon arrivee. Ce seul baiser, ce
baiser funeste avant meme de le recevoir, m'embrasoit le sang a tel
point, que ma tete se troubloit, un eblouissement m'aveugloit, mes
genoux tremblants ne pouroient me soutenir; j'etois force de m'arreter,
de m'asseoir; toute ma machine etoit dans un desordre inconcevable;
j'etois pret a m'evanouir.... A l'instant que je la voyois, tout etoit
repare; je ne sentois plus aupres d'elle que l'importunite d'une vigueur
inepuisable et toujours inutile."--_Les Confessions_, Partie II. livre
ix.; _Oeuvres Completes de J.J. Rousseau_, 1837, i. 233.

Byron's mother "would have it" that her son was like Rousseau, but he
disclaimed the honour antithetically and with needless particularity
(see his letter to Mrs. Byron, and a quotation from his _Detached
Thoughts, Letters_, 1898, i. 192, note). There was another point of
unlikeness, which he does not mention. Byron, on the passion of love,
does not "make for morality," but he eschews nastiness. The loves of Don
Juan and Haidee are chaste as snow compared with the unspeakable
philanderings of the elderly Jean Jacques and the "mistress of St.
Lambert."

Nevertheless, his mother was right. There was a resemblance, and
consequently an affinity, between Childe Burun and the "visionary of
Geneva"--delineated by another seer or visionary as "the dreamer of
love-sick tales, and the spinner of speculative cobwebs; shy of light as
the mole, but as quick-eared too for every whisper of the public
opinion; the teacher of Stoic pride in his principles, yet the victim of
morbid vanity in his feelings and conduct."--_The Friend_; _Works_ of S.
T. Coleridge, 1853, ii. 124.]

                              19.

    Of earth-o'ergazing mountains, and thus take.
                                                     Stanza xci. line 3.

It is to be recollected, that the most beautiful and impressive
doctrines of the divine Founder of Christianity were delivered, not in
the _Temple_, but on the _Mount_. To waive the question of devotion, and
turn to human eloquence,--the most effectual and splendid specimens were
not pronounced within walls. Demosthenes addressed the public and
popular assemblies. Cicero spoke in the forum. That this added to their
effect on the mind of both orator and hearers, may be conceived from the
difference between what we read of the emotions then and there produced,
and those we ourselves experience in the perusal in the closet. It is
one thing to read the _Iliad_ at Sigaeum and on the tumuli, or by the
springs with Mount Ida above, and the plain and rivers and Archipelago
around you; and another to trim your taper over it in a snug
library--_this_ I know. Were the early and rapid progress of what is
called Methodism to be attributed to any cause beyond the enthusiasm
excited by its vehement faith and doctrines (the truth or error of which
I presume neither to canvass nor to question), I should venture to
ascribe it to the practice of preaching in the _fields_, and the
unstudied and extemporaneous effusions of its teachers. The Mussulmans,
whose erroneous devotion (at least in the lower orders) is most sincere,
and therefore impressive, are accustomed to repeat their prescribed
orisons and prayers, wherever they may be, at the stated hours--of
course, frequently in the open air, kneeling upon a light mat (which
they carry for the purpose of a bed or cushion as required); the
ceremony lasts some minutes, during which they are totally absorbed, and
only living in their supplication: nothing can disturb them. On me the
simple and entire sincerity of these men, and the spirit which appeared
to be within and upon them, made a far greater impression than any
general rite which was ever performed in places of worship, of which I
have seen those of almost every persuasion under the sun; including most
of our own sectaries, and the Greek, the Catholic, the Armenian, the
Lutheran, the Jewish, and the Mahometan. Many of the <DW64>s, of whom
there are numbers in the Turkish empire, are idolaters, and have free
exercise of their belief and its rites; some of these I had a distant
view of at Patras; and, from what I could make out of them, they
appeared to be of a truly Pagan description, and not very agreeable to a
spectator.

[For this profession of "natural piety," compare Rousseau's
_Confessions_, Partie II. livre xii. (_Oeuvres Completes_, 1837, i.
341)--

     "Je ne trouve pas de plus digne hommage a la Divinite que cette
     admiration muette qu'excite la contemplation de ses oeuvres, et qui
     ne s'exprime point par des actes developpes. Je comprends comment
     les habitants des villes, qui ne voient que des murs, des rues et
     des crimes, ont peu de foi; mais je ne puis comprendre comment des
     campagnards, et surtout des solitaires, peuvent n'en point avoir.
     Comment leur ame ne s'eleve-t-elle pas cent fois le jour avec
     extase a l'Auteur des merveilles qui les frappent? ... Dans ma
     chambre je prie plus rarement et plus sechement; mais a l'aspect
     d'un beau paysage je me sens emu sans pourvoir dire de quoi."

Compare, too, Coleridge's lines "To Nature"--

    "So will I build my altar in the fields,
    And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
    And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields,
    Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee,
    Thee only, God! and Thou shalt not despise
    Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice."
                                        _Poetical Works_, 1893, p. 190.]

                              20.

    The sky is changed!--and such a change! Oh Night!
                                                    Stanza xcii. line 1.

The thunder-storm to which these lines refer occurred on the 13th of
June, 1816, at midnight. I have seen, among the Acroceraunian mountains
of Chimari, several more terrible, but none more beautiful.

                              21.

    And Sun-set into rose-hues sees them wrought.
                                                    Stanza xcix. line 5.

Rousseau's _Heloise_, Lettre 17, Part IV., note. "Ces montagnes sont si
hautes, qu'une demi-heure apres le soleil couche, leurs sommets sont
eclaires de ses rayons, dont le rouge forme sur ces cimes blanches _une
belle couleur de rose_, qu'on apercoit de fort loin."[356] This applies
more particularly to the heights over Meillerie.--"J'allai a Vevay loger
a la Clef;[357] et pendant deux jours que j'y restai sans voir personne,
je pris pour cette ville un amour qui m'a suivi dans tous mes voyages,
et qui m'y a fait etablir enfin les heros de mon roman. Je dirois
volontiers a ceux qui ont du gout et qui sont sensibles: Allez a
Vevay--visitez le pays, examinez les sites, promenez-vous sur le lac, et
dites si la Nature n'a pas fait ce beau pays pour une Julie, pour une
Claire,[358] et pour un St. Preux; mais ne les y cherchez pas."--_Les
Confessions_, [P. I. liv. 4, _Oeuvres, etc._, 1837, i. 78].--In July
[June 23-27], 1816, I made a voyage round the Lake of Geneva;[359] and,
as far as my own observations have led me in a not uninterested nor
inattentive survey of all the scenes most celebrated by Rousseau in his
_Heloise_, I can safely say, that in this there is no exaggeration. It
would be difficult to see Clarens (with the scenes around it, Vevay,
Chillon, Boveret, St. Gingo, Meillerie, Evian,[360] and the entrances of
the Rhone) without being forcibly struck with its peculiar adaptation to
the persons and events with which it has been peopled. But this is not
all; the feeling with which all around Clarens, and the opposite rocks
of Meillerie, is invested, is of a still higher and more comprehensive
order than the mere sympathy with individual passion; it is a sense of
the existence of love in its most extended and sublime capacity, and of
our own participation of its good and of its glory: it is the great
principle of the universe, which is there more condensed, but not less
manifested; and of which, though knowing ourselves a part, we lose our
individuality, and mingle in the beauty of the whole.--If Rousseau had
never written, nor lived, the same associations would not less have
belonged to such scenes. He has added to the interest of his works by
their adoption; he has shown his sense of their beauty by the selection;
but they have done that for him which no human being could do for
them.--I had the fortune (good or evil as it might be) to sail from
Meillerie[361] (where we landed for some time) to St. Gingo during a
lake storm, which added to the magnificence of all around, although
occasionally accompanied by danger to the boat, which was small and
overloaded. It was over this very part of the lake that Rousseau has
driven the boat of St. Preux and Madame Wolmar to Meillerie for shelter
during a tempest. On gaining the shore at St. Gingo, I found that the
wind had been sufficiently strong to blow down some fine old chestnut
trees on the lower part of the mountains. On the opposite height of
Clarens is a chateau[362] [Chateau des Cretes]. The hills are covered
with vineyards, and interspersed with some small but beautiful woods;
one of these was named the "Bosquet de Julie;" and it is remarkable
that, though long ago cut down by the brutal selfishness of the monks of
St. Bernard (to whom the land appertained), that the ground might be
enclosed into a vineyard for the miserable drones of an execrable
superstition, the inhabitants of Clarens still point out the spot where
its trees stood, calling it by the name which consecrated and survived
them. Rousseau has not been particularly fortunate in the preservation
of the "local habitations" he has given to "airy nothings." The Prior of
Great St. Bernard has cut down some of his woods for the sake of a few
casks of wine, and Buonaparte has levelled part of the rocks of
Meillerie in improving the road to the Simplon. The road is an excellent
one; but I cannot quite agree with a remark which I heard made, that "La
route vaut mieux que les souvenirs."

                              22.

    Of Names which unto you bequeathed a name.
                                                      Stanza cv. line 2.

Voltaire and Gibbon.

[Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694-1778) lived on his estate at
Fernex, five miles north of Geneva, from 1759 to 1777. "In the garden at
Fernex is a long _berceau_ walk, closely arched over with clipped
horn-beam--a verdant cloister, with gaps cut here and there, admitting a
glimpse of the prospect. Here Voltaire used to walk up and down, and
dictate to his secretary."--_Handbook for Switzerland_, p. 174.

Previous to this he had lived for some time at Lausanne, at "Monrepos, a
country house at the end of a suburb," at Monrion, "a square building of
two storeys, and a high garret, with wings, each fashioned like the
letter L," and afterwards, in the spring of 1757, at No. 6, Rue du
Grand Chene.--_Historic Studies_, ii. 210, 218, 219.

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) finished (1788) _The Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire_ at "La Grotte, an ancient and spacious mansion behind the
church of St. Francis, at Lausanne," which was demolished by the Swiss
authorities in 1879. Not only has the mansion ceased to exist, but the
garden has been almost entirely changed. The wall of the Hotel Gibbon
occupies the site of the famous wooden pavilion, or summer-house, and of
the "berceau of plum trees, which formed a verdant gallery completely
arched overhead," and which "were called after Gibbon, La
Gibboniere."--_Historic Studies_, i. I; ii. 493.

In 1816 the pavilion was "utterly decayed," and the garden neglected,
but Byron gathered "a sprig of _Gibbon's acacia_," and some rose leaves
from his garden and enclosed them in a letter to Murray (June 27, 1816).
Shelley, on the contrary, "refrained from doing so, fearing to outrage
the greater and more sacred name of Rousseau; the contemplation of whose
imperishable creations had left no vacancy in my heart for mortal
things. Gibbon had a cold and unimpassioned spirit."--_Essays, etc._,
1840, ii. 76.]

                              23.

    Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.
                                                   Stanza cxiii. line 9.

                    "----If't be so,
    For Banquo's issue have I _filed_ my mind."
                                   _Macbeth_, [act iii. sc. 1, line 64].

                              24.

    O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve.
                                                    Stanza cxiv. line 7.

It is said by Rochefoucault, that "there is _always_ something in the
misfortunes of men's best friends not displeasing to them."

["Dans l'adversite de nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons toujours quelque
chose qui ne nous deplait pas."--_Appendice aux Maximes de La
Rochefoucauld, Pantheon Litteraire_, Paris, 1836, p. 460.]



FOOTNOTES:

[356] {303} [_Julie, ou La Nouvelle Heloise_: _Oeuvres Completes de J.
J. Rousseau_, Paris, 1837, ii. 262.]

[357] [The Clef, is now a cafe on the Grande Place, and still
distinguished by the sign of the Key. But Vevey had other associations
for Rousseau, more powerful and more persuasive than a solitary visit to
an inn. "Madame Warens," says General Read, "possessed a charming
country resort midway between Vevey and Chillon, just above the
beautiful village of Clarens. It was situated at the Bassets, amid
scenery whose exquisite features inspired some of the fine imagery of
Rousseau. It is now called the Bassets de Pury. ... The exterior of the
older parts has not been changed. ... The stairway leads to a large
_salon_, whose windows command a view of Meillerie, St. Gingolph, and
Bouveret, beyond the lake. Communicating with this _salon_ is a large
dining-room.

"These two rooms open to the east, upon a broad terrace. At a corner of
the terrace is a large summer-house, and through the chestnut trees one
sees as far as Les Cretes, the hillocks and bosquets described by
Rousseau. Near by is a dove-cote filled with cooing doves.... In the
last century this site (Les Cretes) was covered with pleasure-gardens,
and some parts are even pointed out as associated with Rousseau and
Madame de Warens."--_Historic Sketches of Vaud, etc._, by General
Meredith Read, 1897, i. 433-437. There was, therefore, some excuse for
the guide (see Byron's _Diary_, September 18, 1816) "confounding
Rousseau with St. Preux, and mixing the man with the book."]

[358] {304} [Claire, afterwards Madame Orbe, is Julie's cousin and
confidante. She is represented as whimsical and humorous. It is not
impossible that "Claire," in _La Nouvelle Heloise_, "bequeathed her
name" to Claire, otherwise Jane Clairmont.]

[359] [Byron and Shelley sailed round the Lake of Geneva towards the end
of June, 1816. Writing to Murray, June 27, he says, "I have traversed
all Rousseau's ground with the _Heloise_ before me;" and in the same
letter announces the completion of a third canto of _Childe Harold_. He
revisited Clarens and Chillon in company with Hobhouse in the following
September (see extracts from a Journal, September 18, 1816, _Life_, pp.
311, 312).]

[360] [Bouveret, St. Gingolph, Evian.]

[361] {305} [Byron mentions the "squall off Meillerie" in a letter to
Murray, dated Ouchy, near Lausanne, June 27, 1816. Compare, too,
Shelley's version of the incident: "The wind gradually increased in
violence until it blew tremendously; and as it came from the remotest
extremity of the lake, produced waves of a frightful height, and covered
the whole surface with a chaos of foam.... I felt in this near prospect
of death a mixture of sensations, among which terror entered, though but
subordinately. My feelings would have been less painful had I been
alone; but I know that my companion would have attempted to save me, and
I was overcome with humiliation, when I thought that his life might have
been risked to preserve mine."--_Letters from Abroad_, etc.; _Essays_,
by Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Mrs. Shelley, 1840, ii. 68, 69.]

[362] [Byron and Shelley slept at Clarens, June 26, 1816. The windows of
their inn commanded a view of the _Bosquet de Julie_. "In the evening we
walked thither. It is, indeed, Julia's wood ... the trees themselves
were aged but vigorous.... We went again (June 27) to the _Bosquet de
Julie_, and found that the precise spot was now utterly obliterated, and
a heap of stones marked the place where the little chapel had once
stood. Whilst we were execrating the author of this brutal folly, our
guide informed us that the land belonged to the Convent of St. Bernard,
and that this outrage had been committed by their orders. I knew before
that if avarice could harden the hearts of men, a system of prescriptive
religion has an influence far more inimical to natural sensibility. I
know that an isolated man is sometimes restrained by shame from
outraging the venerable feelings arising out of the memory of genius,
which once made nature even lovelier than itself; but associated man
holds it as the very sacrament of this union to forswear all delicacy,
all benevolence, all remorse; all that is true, or tender, or
sublime."--_Essays, etc._, 1840, ii. 75.]

       *       *       *       *       *

                       CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.

                            CANTO THE FOURTH.

                  "Visto ho Toscana Lombardia Romagna,
                     Quel monte che divide, e quel che serra
                   Italia, e un mare e l'altro che la bagna."

                            _Ariosto_, Satira iv. lines 58-60.

       *       *       *       *       *




                    INTRODUCTION TO THE FOURTH CANTO.

The first draft of the Fourth Canto of _Childe Harold_, which embodies
the original and normal conception of the poem, was the work of
twenty-six days. On the 17th of June, 1817, Byron wrote to Murray: "You
are out about the Third Canto: I have not done, nor designed, a line of
continuation to that poem. I was too short a time at Rome for it, and
have no thought of recommencing." But in spite of this assertion, "the
numbers came," and on June 26 he made a beginning. Thirty stanzas "were
roughened off" on the 1st of July, fifty-six were accomplished by the
9th, "ninety and eight" by the 13th, and on July 20 he announces "the
completion of the fourth and ultimate canto of _Childe Harold_. It
consists of 126 stanzas." One stanza (xl.) was appended to the fair
copy. It suggested a parallel between Ariosto "the Southern Scott," and
Scott "the Northern Ariosto," and excited some misgiving.

In commending his new poem to Murray (July 20, August 7), Byron notes
three points in which it differed from its predecessors: it is "the
longest of the four;" "it treats more of works of art than of nature;"
"there are no metaphysics in it--at least, I think not." In other words,
"The Fourth Canto is not a continuation of the Third. I have parted
company with Shelley and Wordsworth. Subject-matter and treatment are
alike new."

The poem as it stood was complete, and, as a poem, it lost as well as
gained by the insertion of additional stanzas and groups of stanzas,
"purple patch" on "purple patch," each by itself so attractive and so
splendid. The pilgrim finds himself at Venice, on the "Bridge of Sighs."
He beholds in a vision the departed glories of "a thousand years." The
"long array of shadows," the "beings of the mind," come to him "like
truth," and repeople the vacancy. But he is an exile, and turns homeward
in thought to "the inviolate island of the sage and free." He is an
exile and a sufferer. He can and will endure his fate, but "ever and
anon" he feels the prick of woe, and with the sympathy of despair would
stand "a ruin amidst ruins," a desolate soul in a land of desolation and
decay. He renews his pilgrimage. He passes Arqua, where "they keep the
dust of Laura's lover," lingers for a day at Ferrara, haunted by
memories of "Torquato's injured shade," and, as he approaches "the fair
white walls" of Florence, he re-echoes the "Italia! oh, Italia!" of
Filicaja's impassioned strains. At Florence he gazes, "dazzled and drunk
with beauty," at the "goddess in stone," the Medicean Venus, but
forbears to "describe the indescribable," to break the silence of Art by
naming its mysteries. Santa Croce and the other glories "in Arno's dome
of Art's most princely shrine," he passes by unsung, if not unseen; but
Thrasymene's "sheet of silver," the "living crystal" of Clitumnus'
"gentlest waters," and Terni's "matchless cataract," on whose verge "an
Iris sits," and "lone Soracte's ridge," not only call forth his spirit's
homage, but receive the homage of his Muse.

And now the Pilgrim has reached his goal, "Rome the wonderful," the
sepulchre of empire, the shrine of art.

Henceforth the works of man absorb his attention. Pompey's "dread
statue;" the Wolf of the Capitol; the Tomb of Cecilia Metella; the
Palatine; the "nameless column" of the Forum; Trajan's pillar; Egeria's
Grotto; the ruined Colosseum, "arches on arches," an "enormous
skeleton," the Colosseum of the poet's vision, a multitudinous ring of
spectators, a bloody Circus, and a dying Gladiator; the Pantheon; S.
Nicola in Carcere, the scene of the Romana Caritas; St. Peter's "vast
and wondrous dome,"--are all celebrated in due succession. Last of all,
he "turns to the Vatican," to view the Laocoon and the Apollo Belvidere,
the counterfeit presentments of ideal suffering and ideal beauty. His
"shrine is won;" but ere he bids us farewell he climbs the Alban Mount,
and as the Mediterranean once more bursts upon his sight, he sums the
moral of his argument. Man and all his works are as a drop of rain in
the Ocean, "the image of eternity, the throne of the Invisible"!

Byron had no sooner completed "this fourth and ultimate canto," than he
began to throw off additional stanzas. His letters to Murray during the
autumn of 1817 announce these successive lengthenings; but it is
impossible to trace the exact order of their composition. On the 7th of
August the canto stood at 130 stanzas, on the 21st at 133; on the 4th of
September at 144, on the 17th at 150; and by November 15 it had reached
167 stanzas. Of nineteen stanzas which were still to be added, six--on
the death of the Princess Charlotte (died November 6, 1817)--were
written at the beginning of December, and two stanzas (clxxvii.,
clxxviii.) were forwarded to Murray in the early spring of 1818.

Of these additions the most notable are four stanzas on Venice
(including stanza xiii. on "The Horses of St. Mark"); "The sunset on the
Brenta" (stanzas xxvii.-xxix.); The tombs in Santa Croce,--the
apostrophe to "the all Etruscan three," Petrarch, Dante, Boccaccio
(stanzas liv.-lx.); "Rome a chaos of ruins--antiquarian ignorance"
(stanzas lxxx.-lxxxii.); "The nothingness of Man--the hope of the
future--Freedom" (stanzas xciii.-xcviii.); "The Tarpeian Rock--the
Forum--Rienzi" (stanzas cxii.-cxiv.); "Love, Life, and Reason" (stanzas
cxx.-cxxvii.); "The Curse of Forgiveness" (stanzas cxxxv.-cxxxvii.);
"The Mole of Hadrian" (stanza clii.); "The death of the Princess
Charlotte" (stanzas clxvii.-clxxii.); "Nemi" (stanzas clxxiii.,
clxxiv.); "The Desert and one fair Spirit" (stanzas clxxvii.,
clxxviii.).

Some time during the month of December, 1817, Byron wrote out a fair
copy of the entire canto, numbering 184 stanzas _(MS. D.)_; and on
January 7, 1818, Hobhouse left Venice for England, with the "whole of
the MSS.," viz. _Beppo_ (begun October, 1817), and the Fourth Canto of
_Childe Harold_, together with a work of his own, a volume of essays on
Italian literature, the antiquities of Rome, etc., which he had put
together during his residence in Venice (July--December, 1817), and
proposed to publish as an appendix to _Childe Harold_. In his preface to
_Historical Illustrations_, etc., 1818, Hobhouse explains that on his
return to England he considered that this "appendix to the Canto would
be swelled to a disproportioned bulk," and that, under this impression,
he determined to divide his material into two parts. The result was that
"such only of the notes as were more immediately connected with the
text" were printed as "Historical Notes to Canto the Fourth," and that
his longer dissertations were published in a separate volume, under his
own name, as _Historical Illustrations to the Fourth Canto of Childe
Harold_. To these "Historical Notes" an interest attaches apart from any
consideration of their own worth and importance; but to understand the
relation between the poem and the notes, it is necessary to retrace the
movements of the poet and his annotator.

Byron and Hobhouse left the Villa Diodati, October 5, 1816, crossed the
Simplon, and made their way together, via Milan and Verona, to Venice.
Early in December the friends parted company. Byron remained at Venice,
and Hobhouse proceeded to Rome, and for the next four months devoted
himself to the study of Italian literature, in connection with
archaeology and art. Byron testifies (September 14, 1817) that his
researches were "indefatigable," that he had "more real knowledge of
Rome and its environs than any Englishman who has been there since
Gibbon." Hobhouse left Rome for Naples, May 21; returned to Rome, June
9; arrived at Terni, July 2; and early in July joined Byron on the
Brenta, at La Mira. The latter half of the year (July--December, 1817)
was occupied in consulting "the best authorities" in the Ducal Library
at Venice, with a view to perfecting his researches, and giving them to
the world as an illustrative appendix to _Childe Harold_. It is certain
that Byron had begun the fourth canto, and written some thirty or more
stanzas, before Hobhouse rejoined him at his villa of La Mira on the
banks of the Brenta, in July, 1817; and it would seem that, although he
had begun by saying "that he was too short a time in Rome for it," he
speedily overcame his misgivings, and accomplished, as he believed, the
last "fytte" of his pilgrimage. The first draft was Byron's unaided
composition, but the "additional stanzas" were largely due to Hobhouse's
suggestions in the course of conversation, if not to his written
"researches." Hobhouse himself made no secret of it. In his preface (p.
5) to _Historical Illustrations_ he affirms that both "illustrations"
and notes were "for the most part written while the noble author was yet
employed in the composition of the poem. They were put into the hands of
Lord Byron much in the state in which they now appear;" and, writing to
Murray, December 7, 1817, he says, "I must confess I feel an affection
for it [Canto IV.] more than ordinary, as part of it was begot as it
were under my own eyes; for although your poets are as shy as elephants
and camels ... yet I have, not unfrequently, witnessed his lordship's
coupleting, and some of the stanzas owe their birth to our morning walk
or evening ride at La Mira." Forty years later, in his revised and
enlarged "Illustrations" (_Italy: Remarks made in Several Visits from
the year 1816 to 1854_, by the Right Hon. Lord Broughton, G.C.B., 1859,
i. p. iv.), he reverts to this collaboration: "When I rejoined Lord
Byron at La Mira ... I found him employed upon the Fourth Canto of
_Childe Harold_, and, later in the autumn, he showed me the first sketch
of the poem. It was much shorter than it afterwards became, and it did
not remark on several objects which appeared to me peculiarly worthy of
notice. I made a list of these objects, and in conversation with him
gave him reasons for the selection. The result was the poem as it now
appears, and he then engaged me to write the notes."

As the "delicate spirit" of Shelley suffused the third canto of _Childe
Harold_, so the fourth reveals the presence and co-operation of
Hobhouse. To his brother-poet he owed a fresh conception, perhaps a
fresh appreciation of nature; to his lifelong friend, a fresh enthusiasm
for art, and a host of details, "dry bones ... which he awakened into
the fulness of life."

The Fourth Canto was published on Tuesday, April 28, 1818. It was
reviewed by [Sir] Walter Scott in the _Quarterly Review_, No. xxxvii.,
April, 1818, and by John Wilson in the _Edinburgh Review_, No. 59, June,
1818. Both numbers were published on the same day, September 26, 1818.




            CHILDE HAROLD, CANTO IV. ORIGINAL DRAFT. [MS. M.]

                        [June 26--July 19. 1817.]

Stanza i. "I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs,"--

Stanza iii.-xi. "In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,"--"The spouseless
Adriatic mourns her Lord,"--

Stanza xv. "Statues of glass--all shivered--the long file,"--

Stanza xviii.-xxvi. "I loved her from my boyhood--she to me,"--"The
Commonwealth of Kings--the Men of Rome!"--

Stanza xxx.-xxxix. "There is a tomb in Arqua;--reared in air,"--"Peace
to Torquato's injured shade! 'twas his,"--

Stanza xlii.-xlvi. "Italia! oh, Italia! thou who hast,"--"That page is
now before me, and on mine,"--

Stanza xlviii.-l. "But Arno wins us to the fair white walls,"--"We gaze
and turn away, and know not where,"--

Stanza liii. "I leave to learned fingers, and wise hands,"--

Stanza lxi.-lxxix. "There be more things to greet the heart and
eyes,"--"The Niobe of nations! there she stands,"--

Stanza lxxxiii. "Oh, thou, whose chariot rolled on Fortune's wheel,"--

Stanza lxxxiv. "The dictatorial wreath--couldst thou divine,"--

Stanza lxxxvii.-xcii. "And thou, dread Statue! yet existent in,"--"And
would be all or nothing--nor could wait,"--

Stanza xcix.-cviii. "There is a stern round tower of other
days,"--"There is the moral of all human tales,"--

Stanza cx. "Tully was not so eloquent as thou,"--

Stanza cxi. "Buried in air, the deep blue sky of Rome,"--

Stanza cxv.-cxix. "Egeria! sweet creation of some heart,"--"And didst
thou not, thy breast to his replying,"--

Stanza cxxviii.-cxxxiv. "Arches on arches! as it were that Rome,"--"And
if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now,"--

Stanza cxxxviii.-cli. "The seal is set.--Now welcome, thou dread
Power!"--"The starry fable of the Milky Way,"--

Stanza cliii.-clxvi. "But lo! the Dome--the vast and wondrous
Dome,"--"And send us prying into the abyss,"--

Stanza clxxv. "But I forget.--My Pilgrim's shrine is won,"--

Stanza clxxvi. "Upon the blue Symplegades: long years,"--

Stanza clxxix. "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll!"--

Stanza clxxx. "His steps are not upon thy paths,--thy fields,"--

Stanza clxxxiii.-clxxxvi. "Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's
form,"--"Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been,"--


                            ADDITIONAL STANZA.

Stanza xl. "Great as thou art, yet paralleled by those,"--

                              (127 stanzas.)


                      ADDITIONS BOUND UP WITH MS. M.

Stanza ii. "She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from Ocean,"--

Stanza xii.-xiv. "The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns,"
--(November 10, 1817.)--"In youth She was all glory,--a new Tyre,"--

Stanza xvi. "When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse,"--

Stanza xvii. "Thus, Venice! if no stronger claim were thine,"--

Stanza xxvii.-xxix. "The Moon is up, and yet it is not night,"--"Filled
with the face of heaven, which, from afar,"--

Stanza xlvii. "Yet, Italy! through every other land,"--

Stanza li. "Appear'dst thou not to Paris in this guise?"--

Stanza lii. "Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love,"--

Stanza liv.-lx. "In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie,"--"What is her
Pyramid of precious stones?"--

Stanza lxxx.-lxxxii. "The Goth, the Christian--Time--War--Flood, and
Fire,"--"Alas! the lofty city! and alas!"--

Stanza lxxxv. "Sylla was first of victors; but our own,"--

Stanza lxxxvi. "The third of the same Moon whose former course,"--

Stanza xciii.-xcvi. "What from this barren being do we reap?"--"Can
tyrants but by tyrants conquered be,"--

Stanza cix. "Admire--exult--despise--laugh--weep,--for here,"--

Stanza cxii.-cxiv. "Where is the rock of Triumph, the high
place,"--"Then turn we to her latest Tribune's name,"--

Stanza cxxiii. "Who loves, raves--'tis youth's frenzy--but the cure,"--

Stanza cxxv.-cxxvii. "Few--none--find what they love or could have
loved,"--"Yet let us ponder boldly--'tis a base,"--

Stanza cxxxv.-cxxxvii. "That curse shall be Forgiveness,--Have I
not,"--"But I have lived, and have not lived in vain,"--

Stanza clii. "Turn to the Mole which Hadrian reared on high,"--

Stanza clxvii.-clxxii. "Hark! forth from the abyss a voice
proceeds,"--(On the death of the Princess Charlotte, November 6,
1817.)--"These might have been her destiny--but no,"--

Stanza clxxiii. "Lo, Nemi! navelled in the woody hills,"--

Stanza clxxiv. "And near, Albano's scarce divided waves,"--

Stanza clxxvii. "Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,"--(1818.)

Stanza clxxviii. "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,"--(1818.)

Stanza clxxxi. "The armaments which thunderstrike the walls,"--

Stanza clxxxii. "Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee,"--

                              (52 stanzas.)

         ADDITIONS INCLUDED IN MS. D.,[363] BUT NOT AMONG MSS. M.

Stanza xli. "The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust,"--

Stanza xcvii. "But France got drunk with blood to vomit crime,"--

Stanza xcviii. "Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying,"--

Stanza cxx. "Alas! our young affections run to waste,"--

Stanza cxxi. "Oh, Love! no habitant of earth thou art,"--

Stanza cxxii. "Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,"--

Stanza cxxiv. "We wither from our youth, we gasp away,"--

                             (Seven stanzas.)

       *       *       *       *       *

                                    TO

                    JOHN HOBHOUSE, ESQ., A.M., F.R.S.,

                              &c., &c., &c.
                                              Venice, _January_ 2, 1818.

       *       *       *       *       *

My dear Hobhouse,

After an interval of eight years between the composition of the first
and last cantos of _Childe Harold_, the conclusion of the poem is about
to be submitted to the public. In parting with so old a friend,[364] it
is not extraordinary that I should recur to one still older and
better,--to one who has beheld the birth and death of the other, and to
whom I am far more indebted for the social advantages of an enlightened
friendship, than--though not ungrateful--I can, or could be, to _Childe
Harold_, for any public favour reflected through the poem on the
poet,--to one, whom I have known long, and accompanied far, whom I have
found wakeful over my sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my
prosperity and firm in my adversity, true in counsel and trusty in
peril,--to a friend often tried and never found wanting;--to yourself.

In so doing, I recur from fiction to truth; and in dedicating to you in
its complete, or at least concluded state, a poetical work which is the
longest, the most thoughtful and comprehensive of my compositions, I
wish to do honour to myself by the record of many years' intimacy with a
man of learning, of talent, of steadiness, and of honour. It is not for
minds like ours to give or to receive flattery; yet the praises of
sincerity have ever been permitted to the voice of friendship; and it is
not for you, nor even for others, but to relieve a heart which has not
elsewhere, or lately, been so much accustomed to the encounter of
good-will as to withstand the shock firmly, that I thus attempt to
commemorate your good qualities, or rather the advantages which I have
derived from their exertion. Even the recurrence of the date of this
letter, the anniversary of the most unfortunate day of my past
existence,[365] but which cannot poison my future while I retain the
resource of your friendship, and of my own faculties, will henceforth
have a more agreeable recollection for both, inasmuch as it will remind
us of this my attempt to thank you for an indefatigable regard, such as
few men have experienced, and no one could experience without thinking
better of his species and of himself.

It has been our fortune to traverse together, at various periods, the
countries of chivalry, history, and fable--Spain, Greece, Asia Minor,
and Italy; and what Athens and Constantinople were to us a few years
ago, Venice and Rome have been more recently. The poem also, or the
pilgrim, or both, have accompanied me from first to last; and perhaps it
may be a pardonable vanity which induces me to reflect with complacency
on a composition which in some degree connects me with the spot where it
was produced, and the objects it would fain describe; and however
unworthy it may be deemed of those magical and memorable abodes, however
short it may fall of our distant conceptions and immediate impressions,
yet as a mark of respect for what is venerable, and of feeling for what
is glorious, it has been to me a source of pleasure in the production,
and I part with it with a kind of regret, which I hardly suspected that
events could have left me for imaginary objects.

With regard to the conduct of the last canto, there will be found less
of the pilgrim than in any of the preceding, and that little slightly,
if at all, separated from the author speaking in his own person. The
fact is, that I had become weary of drawing a line which every one
seemed determined not to perceive: like the Chinese in Goldsmith's
_Citizen of the World_,[366] whom nobody would believe to be a Chinese,
it was in vain that I asserted, and imagined that I had drawn, a
distinction between the author and the pilgrim; and the very anxiety to
preserve this difference, and disappointment at finding it unavailing,
so far crushed my efforts in the composition, that I determined to
abandon it altogether--and have done so. The opinions which have been,
or may be, formed on that subject are _now_ a matter of indifference:
the work is to depend on itself, and not on the writer; and the author,
who has no resources in his own mind beyond the reputation, transient or
permanent, which is to arise from his literary efforts, deserves the
fate of authors.

In the course of the following canto it was my intention, either in the
text or in the notes, to have touched upon the present state of Italian
literature, and perhaps of manners. But the text, within the limits I
proposed, I soon found hardly sufficient for the labyrinth of external
objects, and the consequent reflections: and for the whole of the notes,
excepting a few of the shortest, I am indebted to yourself,[367] and
these were necessarily limited to the elucidation of the text.

It is also a delicate, and no very grateful task, to dissert upon the
literature and manners of a nation so dissimilar; and requires an
attention and impartiality which would induce us,--though perhaps no
inattentive observers, nor ignorant of the language or customs of the
people amongst whom we have recently abode--to distrust, or at least
defer our judgment, and more narrowly examine our information. The state
of literary, as well as political party, appears to run, or to _have_
run, so high, that for a stranger to steer impartially between them is
next to impossible. It may be enough, then, at least for my purpose, to
quote from their own beautiful language--"Mi pare che in un paese tutto
poetico, che vanta la lingua la piu nobile ed insieme la piu dolce,
tutte tutte le vie diverse si possono tentare, e che sinche la patria di
Alfieri e di Monti non ha perduto l'antico valore, in tutte essa
dovrebbe essere la prima." Italy has great names still--Canova,[368]
Monti, Ugo Foscolo, Pindemonte, Visconti, Morelli, Cicognara, Albrizzi,
Mezzofanti, Mai, Mustoxidi, Aglietti, and Vacca, will secure to the
present generation an honourable place in most of the departments of
Art, Science, and Belles Lettres; and in some the very
highest--Europe--the World--has but one Canova.

It has been somewhere said by Alfieri, that "La pianta uomo nasce piu
robusta in Italia che in qualunque altra terra--e che gli stessi atroci
delitti che vi si commettono ne sono una prova." Without subscribing to
the latter part of his proposition, a dangerous doctrine, the truth of
which may be disputed on better grounds, namely, that the Italians are
in no respect more ferocious than their neighbours, that man must be
wilfully blind, or ignorantly heedless, who is not struck with the
extraordinary capacity of this people, or, if such a word be admissible,
their _capabilities_,[369] the facility of their acquisitions, the
rapidity of their conceptions, the fire of their genius, their sense of
beauty, and, amidst all the disadvantages of repeated revolutions, the
desolation of battles, and the despair of ages, their still unquenched
"longing after immortality,"[370]--the immortality of independence. And
when we ourselves, in riding round the walls of Rome, heard the simple
lament of the labourers' chorus, "Roma! Roma! Roma! Roma non e piu come
era prima!"[371] it was difficult not to contrast this melancholy dirge
with the bacchanal roar of the songs of exultation still yelled from the
London taverns, over the carnage of Mont St. Jean,[372] and the betrayal
of Genoa, of Italy, of France, and of the world, by men whose conduct
you yourself have exposed in a work worthy of the better days of our
history.[373] For me,--

    "Non movero mai corda
    Ove la turba di sue ciance assorda."

What Italy has gained by the late transfer of nations, it were useless
for Englishmen to enquire, till it becomes ascertained that England has
acquired something more than a permanent army and a suspended Habeas
Corpus;[374] it is enough for them to look at home. For what they have
done abroad, and especially in the South, "Verily they _will have_ their
reward," and at no very distant period.

Wishing you, my dear Hobhouse, a safe and agreeable return to that
country whose real welfare can be dearer to none than to yourself, I
dedicate to you this poem in its completed state; and repeat once more
how truly I am ever

    Your obliged
          And affectionate friend,
                              BYRON.




CANTO THE FOURTH[375]

                               I.

    I stood in Venice, on the "Bridge of Sighs;"[376][1.H.]
      A Palace and a prison on each hand:
      I saw from out the wave her structures rise
      As from the stroke of the Enchanter's wand:[377]
      A thousand Years their cloudy wings expand
      Around me, and a dying Glory smiles
      O'er the far times, when many a subject land
      Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles,
    Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles![lb]

                              II.

    She looks a sea Cybele,[378] fresh from Ocean,
      Rising with her tiara of proud towers
      At airy distance, with majestic motion,
      A Ruler of the waters and their powers:
      And such she was;--her daughters had their dowers
      From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East[lc]
      Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.[379]
      In purple was she robed,[380] and of her feast
    Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.[ld]

                              III.

    In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,[2.H.]
      And silent rows the songless Gondolier;[381]
      Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
      And Music meets not always now the ear:
      Those days are gone--but Beauty still is here.
      States fall--Arts fade--but Nature doth not die,
      Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
      The pleasant place of all festivity,[le]
    The Revel of the earth--the Masque of Italy!

                              IV.

    But unto us she hath a spell beyond
      Her name in story, and her long array
      Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond
      Above the Dogeless city's vanished sway;
      Ours is a trophy which will not decay
      With the Rialto;[382] Shylock and the Moor,
      And Pierre,[383] can not be swept or worn away--
      The keystones of the Arch! though all were o'er,
    For us repeopled were the solitary shore.

                               V.

    The Beings of the Mind are not of clay:
      Essentially immortal, they create
      And multiply in us a brighter ray
      And more beloved existence:[384] that which Fate
      Prohibits to dull life in this our state[lf]
      Of mortal bondage, by these Spirits supplied,
      First exiles, then replaces what we hate;
      Watering the heart whose early flowers have died,
    And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.

                              VI.

    Such is the refuge of our youth and age--
      The first from Hope, the last from Vacancy;[385]
      And this wan feeling peoples many a page--[lg]
      And, may be, that which grows beneath mine eye:[lh]
      Yet there are things whose strong reality
      Outshines our fairy-land; in shape and hues[li]
      More beautiful than our fantastic sky,
      And the strange constellations which the Muse
    O'er her wild universe is skilful to diffuse:

                              VII.

    I saw or dreamed of such,--but let them go,--
      They came like Truth--and disappeared like dreams;
      And whatsoe'er they were--are now but so:
      I could replace them if I would; still teems
      My mind with many a form which aptly seems
      Such as I sought for, and at moments found;
      Let these too go--for waking Reason deems
      Such over-weening phantasies unsound,
    And other voices speak, and other sights surround.

                             VIII.

    I've taught me other tongues--and in strange eyes
      Have made me not a stranger; to the mind
      Which is itself, no changes bring surprise;
      Nor is it harsh to make, nor hard to find
      A country with--aye, or without mankind;
      Yet was I born where men are proud to be,--
      Not without cause; and should I leave behind[lj]
      The inviolate Island of the sage and free,
    And seek me out a home by a remoter sea,[lk]

                              IX.

    Perhaps I loved it well; and should I lay
      My ashes in a soil which is not mine,
      My Spirit shall resume it--if we may[ll]
      Unbodied choose a sanctuary.[386] I twine
      My hopes of being remembered in my line
      With my land's language: if too fond and far
      These aspirations in their scope incline,--
      If my Fame should be, as my fortunes are,
    Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar

                               X.

    My name from out the temple where the dead
      Are honoured by the Nations--let it be--
      And light the Laurels on a loftier head!
      And be the Spartan's epitaph on me--
      "Sparta hath many a worthier son than he."[387]
      Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need--
      The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree
      I planted,--they have torn me,--and I bleed:
    I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.

                              XI.

    The spouseless Adriatic mourns her Lord,[lm]
      And annual marriage now no more renewed--
      The Bucentaur[388] lies rotting unrestored,
      Neglected garment of her widowhood!
      St. Mark yet sees his Lion[389] where he stood[3.H.]
      Stand, but in mockery of his withered power,
      Over the proud Place where an Emperor sued,[ln][390]
      And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour
    When Venice was a Queen with an unequalled dower.

                              XII.

    The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns--[4.H.]
      An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt;
      Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains
      Clank over sceptred cities; Nations melt
      From Power's high pinnacle, when they have felt
      The sunshine for a while, and downward go
      Like Lauwine loosened from the mountain's belt;
      Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo![391][5.H.]
    Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe.[lo][392]

                             XIII.

    Before St. Mark still glow his Steeds of brass,
      Their gilded collars glittering in the sun;
      But is not Doria's menace[393] come to pass?[6.H.]
      Are they not bridled?--Venice, lost and won,
      Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,
      Sinks, like a sea-weed, unto whence she rose![lp][394]
      Better be whelmed beneath the waves, and shun,
      Even in Destruction's depth, her foreign foes,[lq]
    From whom Submission wrings an infamous repose.

                              XIV.

    In youth She was all glory,--a new Tyre,--
      Her very by-word sprung from Victory,
      The "Planter of the Lion,"[395] which through fire
      And blood she bore o'er subject Earth and Sea;
      Though making many slaves, Herself still free,
      And Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite;[396]
      Witness Troy's rival, Candia![397] Vouch it, ye
      Immortal waves that saw Lepanto's fight![398]
    For ye are names no Time nor Tyranny can blight.

                              XV.

    Statues of glass--all shivered--the long file
      Of her dead Doges are declined to dust;
      But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pile
      Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust;
      Their sceptre broken, and their sword in rust,
      Have yielded to the stranger: empty halls,
      Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must
      Too oft remind her who and what enthrals,[7.H.]
    Have flung a desolate cloud o'er Venice' lovely walls.

                              XVI.

    When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse,
      And fettered thousands bore the yoke of war,
      Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse,[399]
      Her voice their only ransom from afar:[lr]
      See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car
      Of the o'ermastered Victor stops--the reins
      Fall from his hands--his idle scimitar
      Starts from its belt--he rends his captive's chains,
    And bids him thank the Bard for Freedom and his strains.[ls]

                             XVII.

    Thus, Venice! if no stronger claim were thine,
      Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot--
      Thy choral memory of the Bard divine,
      Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot[lt]
      Which ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot
      Is shameful to the nations,--most of all,
      Albion! to thee:[400] the Ocean queen should not
      Abandon Ocean's children; in the fall
    Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall.[lu]

                             XVIII.

    I loved her from my boyhood--she to me
      Was as a fairy city of the heart,
      Rising like water-columns from the sea--
      Of Joy the sojourn, and of Wealth the mart;
      And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakespeare's art,[lv][401]
      Had stamped her image in me, and even so,
      Although I found her thus, we did not part;[lw]
      Perchance even dearer in her day of woe,
    Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show.

                              XIX.

    I can repeople with the past--and of
      The present there is still for eye and thought,
      And meditation chastened down, enough;
      And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought;
      And of the happiest moments which were wrought
      Within the web of my existence, some
      From thee, fair Venice![402] have their colours caught:
      There are some feelings Time can not benumb,[lx]
    Nor Torture shake, or mine would now be cold and dumb.

                              XX.

    But from their nature will the Tannen[403] grow[ly]
      Loftiest on loftiest and least sheltered rocks,
      Rooted in barrenness, where nought below
      Of soil supports them 'gainst the Alpine shocks
      Of eddying storms; yet springs the trunk, and mocks
      The howling tempest, till its height and frame
      Are worthy of the mountains from whose blocks
      Of bleak, gray granite into life it came,[lz]
    And grew a giant tree;--the Mind may grow the same.

                              XXI.

    Existence may be borne, and the deep root
      Of life and sufferance make its firm abode
      In bare and desolated bosoms: mute[ma]
      The camel labours with the heaviest load,
      And the wolf dies in silence--not bestowed
      In vain should such example be; if they,
      Things of ignoble or of savage mood,
      Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay
    May temper it to bear,--it is but for a day.

                             XXII.

    All suffering doth destroy, or is destroyed,[404]
      Even by the sufferer--and, in each event,
      Ends:--Some, with hope replenished and rebuoyed,
      Return to whence they came--with like intent,
      And weave their web again; some, bowed and bent,
      Wax gray and ghastly, withering ere their time,
      And perish with the reed on which they leant;
      Some seek devotion--toil--war--good or crime,
    According as their souls were formed to sink or climb.

                             XXIII.

    But ever and anon of griefs subdued
      There comes a token like a Scorpion's sting,
      Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued;
      And slight withal may be the things which bring
      Back on the heart the weight which it would fling
      Aside for ever: it may be a sound--[405]
      A tone of music--summer's eve--or spring--[mb]
      A flower--the wind--the Ocean--which shall wound,
    Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound;

                             XXIV.

    And how and why we know not, nor can trace
      Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind,
      But feel the shock renewed, nor can efface
      The blight and blackening which it leaves behind,
      Which out of things familiar, undesigned,
      When least we deem of such, calls up to view
      The Spectres whom no exorcism can bind,--
      The cold--the changed--perchance the dead, anew--
    The mourned--the loved--the lost--too many! yet how few![406]

                              XXV.

    But my Soul wanders; I demand it back
      To meditate amongst decay, and stand
      A ruin amidst ruins; there to track
      Fall'n states and buried greatness, o'er a land
      Which _was_ the mightiest in its old command,
      And _is_ the loveliest, and must ever be
      The master-mould of Nature's heavenly hand;
      Wherein were cast the heroic and the free,--
    The beautiful--the brave--the Lords of earth and sea,

                             XXVI.

    The Commonwealth of Kings--the Men of Rome!
      And even since, and now, fair Italy!
      Thou art the Garden of the World, the Home
      Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree;
      Even in thy desert, what is like to thee?
      Thy very weeds are beautiful--thy waste
      More rich than other climes' fertility;
      Thy wreck a glory--and thy ruin graced
    With an immaculate charm which cannot be defaced.

                             XXVII.

    The Moon is up, and yet it is not night--
      Sunset divides the sky with her--a sea
      Of glory streams along the Alpine height
      Of blue Friuli's mountains;[407] Heaven is free
      From clouds, but of all colours seems to be,--
      Melted to one vast Iris of the West,--
      Where the Day joins the past Eternity;
      While, on the other hand, meek Dian's crest
    Floats through the azure air--an island of the blest![408]

                            XXVIII.

    A single star is at her side, and reigns
      With her o'er half the lovely heaven; but still
      Yon sunny Sea heaves brightly, and remains
      Rolled o'er the peak of the far Rhaetian hill,
      As Day and Night contending were, until
      Nature reclaimed her order:--gently flows
      The deep-dyed Brenta,[409] where their hues instil
      The odorous purple of a new-born rose,
    Which streams upon her stream, and glassed within it glows,

                             XXIX.

    Filled with the face of heaven, which, from afar,
      Comes down upon the waters! all its hues,
      From the rich sunset to the rising star,
      Their magical variety diffuse:
      And now they change--a paler Shadow strews
      Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting Day
      Dies like the Dolphin, whom each pang imbues
      With a new colour as it gasps away--
    The last still loveliest, till--'tis gone--and all is gray.

                              XXX.

    There is a tomb in Arqua;--reared in air,
      Pillared in their sarcophagus, repose
      The bones of Laura's lover: here repair
      Many familiar with his well-sung woes,
      The Pilgrims of his Genius. He arose
      To raise a language, and his land reclaim
      From the dull yoke of her barbaric foes:
      Watering the tree which bears his Lady's name[410][8.H.]
    With his melodious tears, he gave himself to Fame.

                             XXXI.

    They keep his dust in Arqua,[411] where he died--[9.H.]
      The mountain-village where his latter days
      Went down the vale of years; and 'tis their pride--
      An honest pride--and let it be their praise,
      To offer to the passing stranger's gaze
      His mansion and his sepulchre--both plain[mc]
      And venerably simple--such as raise
      A feeling more accordant with his strain
    Than if a Pyramid formed his monumental fane.[md]

                             XXXII.

    And the soft quiet hamlet where he dwelt
      Is one of that complexion which seems made
      For those who their mortality[412] have felt,
      And sought a refuge from their hopes decayed
      In the deep umbrage of a green hill's shade,
      Which shows a distant prospect far away
      Of busy cities, now in vain displayed,
      For they can lure no further; and the ray[413]
    Of a bright Sun can make sufficient holiday,

                            XXXIII.

    Developing the mountains, leaves, and flowers,
      And shining in the brawling brook, where-by,
      Clear as its current, glide the sauntering hours
      With a calm languor, which, though to the eye
      Idlesse it seem, hath its morality--
      If from society we learn to live,[me]
      'Tis Solitude should teach us how to die;
      It hath no flatterers--Vanity can give
    No hollow aid; alone--man with his God must strive:[mf]

                             XXXIV.

    Or, it may be, with Demons,[414] who impair
      The strength of better thoughts, and seek their prey
      In melancholy bosoms--such as were
      Of moody texture from their earliest day,
      And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay
      Deeming themselves predestined to a doom
      Which is not of the pangs that pass away;[mg]
      Making the Sun like blood, the Earth a tomb,
    The tomb a hell--and Hell itself a murkier gloom.[mh]

                             XXXV.

    Ferrara![415] in thy wide and grass-grown streets,
      Whose symmetry was not for solitude,
      There seems as 'twere a curse upon the Seats
      Of former Sovereigns, and the antique brood
      Of Este,[416] which for many an age made good
      Its strength within thy walls, and was of yore
      Patron or Tyrant, as the changing mood
      Of petty power impelled, of those who wore
    The wreath which Dante's brow alone had worn before.

                             XXXVI.

    And Tasso is their glory and their shame--
      Hark to his strain! and then survey his cell![417]
      And see how dearly earned Torquato's fame,
      And where Alfonso bade his poet dwell:
      The miserable Despot could not quell
      The insulted mind he sought to quench, and blend
      With the surrounding maniacs, in the hell
      Where he had plunged it. Glory without end
    Scattered the clouds away--and on that name attend

                            XXXVII.

    The tears and praises of all time, while thine
      Would rot in its oblivion--in the sink
      Of worthless dust, which from thy boasted line
      Is shaken into nothing--but the link
      Thou formest in his fortunes bids us think
      Of thy poor malice, naming thee with scorn:
      Alfonso! how thy ducal pageants shrink
      From thee! if in another station born,[mi]
    Scarce fit to be the slave of him thou mad'st to mourn:

                            XXXVIII.

    _Thou!_ formed to eat, and be despised, and die,
      Even as the beasts that perish--save that thou
      Hadst a more splendid trough and wider sty:--
      _He!_ with a glory round his furrowed brow,
      Which emanated then, and dazzles now,
      In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire,[418][10.H.]
      And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow[mj]
      No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre,
    That whetstone of the teeth--Monotony in wire![mk][419]

                             XXXIX.

    Peace to Torquato's injured shade! 'twas his
      In life and death to be the mark where Wrong
      Aimed with her poisoned arrows,--but to miss.
      Oh, Victor unsurpassed in modern song!
      Each year brings forth its millions--but how long
      The tide of Generations shall roll on,
      And not the whole combined and countless throng
      Compose a mind like thine? though all in one[ml]
    Condensed their scattered rays--they would not form a Sun.[mm]

                              XL.

    Great as thou art, yet paralleled by those,
      Thy countrymen, before thee born to shine,
      The Bards of Hell and Chivalry: first rose
      The Tuscan Father's Comedy Divine;
      Then, not unequal to the Florentine,
      The southern Scott, the minstrel who called forth
      A new creation with his magic line,
      And, like the Ariosto of the North,[420]
    Sang Ladye-love and War, Romance and Knightly Worth.

                              XLI.

    The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust[11.H.]
      The iron crown of laurel's mimicked leaves;
      Nor was the ominous element unjust,
      For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves[12.H.]
      Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves,
      And the false semblance but disgraced his brow;
      Yet still, if fondly Superstition grieves,
      Know, that the lightning sanctifies below[13.H.]
    Whate'er it strikes;--yon head is doubly sacred now.

                             XLII.

    Italia! oh, Italia! thou who hast[421]
      The fatal gift of Beauty, which became
      A funeral dower of present woes and past--
      On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame,[mn]
      And annals graved in characters of flame.
      Oh, God! that thou wert in thy nakedness
      Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim
      Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press
    To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress;

                             XLIII.

    Then might'st thou more appal--or, less desired,
      Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored[mo]
      For thy destructive charms; then, still untired,
      Would not be seen the armed torrents poured
      Down the deep Alps; nor would the hostile horde
      Of many-nationed spoilers from the Po
      Quaff blood and water; nor the stranger's sword
      Be thy sad weapon of defence--and so,
    Victor or vanquished, thou the slave of friend or foe.

                             XLIV.

    Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him,
      The Roman friend of Rome's least-mortal mind,[422]
      The friend of Tully: as my bark did skim
      The bright blue waters with a fanning wind,
      Came Megara before me, and behind
      AEgina lay--Piraeus on the right,
      And Corinth on the left; I lay reclined
      Along the prow, and saw all these unite
    In ruin--even as he had seen the desolate sight;

                              XLV.

    For Time hath not rebuilt them, but upreared
      Barbaric dwellings on their shattered site,
      Which only make more mourned and more endeared
      The few last rays of their far-scattered light,
      And the crashed relics of their vanished might.
      The Roman saw these tombs in his own age,
      These sepulchres of cities, which excite[mp]
      Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page
    The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage.

                             XLVI.

    That page is now before me, and on mine
      _His_ Country's ruin added to the mass
      Of perished states he mourned in their decline,
      And I in desolation: all that _was_
      Of then destruction _is_; and now, alas!
      Rome--Rome imperial, bows her to the storm,[423]
      In the same dust and blackness, and we pass
      The skeleton of her Titanic form,[424]
    Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm.

                             XLVII.

    Yet, Italy! through every other land
      Thy wrongs should ring--and shall--from side to side;[425]
      Mother of Arts! as once of Arms! thy hand
      Was then our Guardian, and is still our Guide;
      Parent of our Religion! whom the wide
      Nations have knelt to for the keys of Heaven!
      Europe, repentant of her parricide,
      Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven,
    Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven.

                            XLVIII.

    But Arno wins us to the fair white walls,
      Where the Etrurian Athens claims and keeps
      A softer feeling for her fairy halls:
      Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps
      Her corn, and wine, and oil--and Plenty leaps
      To laughing life, with her redundant Horn.
      Along the banks where smiling Arno sweeps
      Was modern Luxury of Commerce born,[mq][426]
    And buried Learning rose, redeemed to a new Morn.

                             XLIX.

    There, too, the Goddess loves in stone, and fills[mr][427][14.H.]
      The air around with Beauty--we inhale[ms]
      The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils
      Part of its immortality--the veil
      Of heaven is half undrawn--within the pale
      We stand, and in that form and face behold
      What Mind can make, when Nature's self would fail;
      And to the fond Idolaters of old
    Envy the innate flash which such a Soul could mould:

                               L.

    We gaze and turn away, and know not where,
      Dazzled and drunk with Beauty,[428] till the heart
      Reels with its fulness; there--for ever there--
      Chained to the chariot of triumphal Art,
      We stand as captives, and would not depart.
      Away!--there need no words, nor terms precise,
      The paltry jargon of the marble mart,
      Where Pedantry gulls Folly--we have eyes:
    Blood--pulse--and breast confirm the Dardan Shepherd's prize.

                              LI.

    Appear'dst thou not to Paris in this guise?
      Or to more deeply blest Anchises? or,
      In all thy perfect Goddess-ship, when lies
      Before thee thy own vanquished Lord of War?
      And gazing in thy face as toward a star,
      Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn,
      Feeding on thy sweet cheek![429] while thy lips are
      With lava kisses melting while they burn,
    Showered on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn!

                              LII.

    Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love--[mt][430]
      Their full divinity inadequate
      That feeling to express, or to improve--
      The Gods become as mortals--and man's fate[mu]
      Has moments like their brightest; but the weight
      Of earth recoils upon us;--let it go!
      We can recall such visions, and create,
      From what has been, or might be, things which grow
    Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below.

                             LIII.

    I leave to learned fingers, and wise hands,
      The Artist and his Ape, to teach and tell
      How well his Connoisseurship understands
      The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell:
      Let these describe the undescribable:
      I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream
      Wherein that Image shall for ever dwell--
      The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream
    That ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam.

                              LIV.

    In Santa Croce's[431] holy precincts lie[15.H.]
      Ashes which make it holier, dust which is
      Even in itself an immortality,
      Though there were nothing save the past, and this,
      The particle of those sublimities
      Which have relapsed to chaos:--here repose
      Angelo's--Alfieri's[432] bones--and his,[16.H.]
      The starry Galileo, with his woes;
    Here Machiavelli's earth returned to whence it rose.[17.H.]

                              LV.

    These are four minds, which, like the elements,
      Might furnish forth creation:--Italy![mv]
      Time, which hath wronged thee with ten thousand rents
      Of thine imperial garment, shall deny[mw]
      And hath denied, to every other sky,
      Spirits which soar from ruin:--thy Decay
      Is still impregnate with divinity,
      Which gilds it with revivifying ray;
    Such as the great of yore, Canova[433] is to-day.

                              LVI.

    But where repose the all Etruscan three--
      Dante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less than they,
      The Bard of Prose, creative Spirit! he[mx]
      Of the Hundred Tales of Love--where did they lay
      Their bones, distinguished from our common clay
      In death as life? Are they resolved to dust,
      And have their Country's Marbles nought to say?
      Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust?
    Did they not to her breast their filial earth entrust?

                             LVII.

    Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,[434][18.H.]
      Like Scipio buried by the upbraiding shore:[435][19.H.]
      Thy factions, in their worse than civil war,[436]
      Proscribed the Bard whose name for evermore
      Their children's children would in vain adore
      With the remorse of ages; and the crown[437][20.H.]
      Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore,
      Upon a far and foreign soil had grown,
    His Life, his Fame, his Grave, though rifled--not thine own.[438]

                             LVIII.

    Boccaccio[439] to his parent earth bequeathed[my][21.H.]
      His dust,--and lies it not her Great among,
      With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed
      O'er him who formed the Tuscan's siren tongue?[440]
      That music in itself, whose sounds are song,
      The poetry of speech? No;--even his tomb
      Uptorn, must bear the hyaena bigot's wrong,
      No more amidst the meaner dead find room,
    Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for _whom!_

                              LIX.

    And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust;
      Yet for this want more noted, as of yore
      The Caesar's pageant,[441] shorn of Brutus' bust,
      Did but of Rome's best Son remind her more:
      Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore,
      Fortress of falling Empire! honoured sleeps[mz]
      The immortal Exile;--Arqua, too, her store
      Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps,
    While Florence vainly begs her banished dead and weeps.[442]

                              LX.

    What is her Pyramid of precious stones?[22.H.]
      Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues
      Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones
      Of merchant-dukes?[443] the momentary dews
      Which, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuse
      Freshness in the green turf that wraps the dead,
      Whose names are Mausoleums of the Muse,
      Are gently prest with far more reverent tread
    Than ever paced the slab which paves the princely head.

                              LXI.

    There be more things to greet the heart and eyes
      In Arno's dome of Art's most princely shrine,
      Where Sculpture with her rainbow Sister vies;[444]
      There be more marvels yet--but not for mine;
      For I have been accustomed to entwine
      My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields,
      Than Art in galleries: though a work divine
      Calls for my Spirit's homage, yet it yields
    Less than it feels, because the weapon which it wields

                             LXII.

    Is of another temper, and I roam
      By Thrasimene's lake,[445] in the defiles
      Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home;
      For there the Carthaginian's warlike wiles
      Come back before me, as his skill beguiles
      The host between the mountains and the shore,
      Where Courage falls in her despairing files,[na]
      And torrents, swoll'n to rivers with their gore,
    Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scattered o'er.

                             LXIII.

    Like to a forest felled by mountain winds;
      And such the storm of battle on this day,
      And such the frenzy, whose convulsion blinds
      To all save Carnage, that, beneath the fray,
      An Earthquake[446] reeled unheededly away![23.H.]
      None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet,
      And yawning forth a grave for those who lay
      Upon their bucklers for a winding sheet--
    Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations meet!

                             LXIV.

    The Earth to them was as a rolling bark
      Which bore them to Eternity--they saw
      The Ocean round, but had no time to mark
      The motions of their vessel; Nature's law,
      In them suspended, recked not of the awe
      Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds
      Plunge in the clouds for refuge, and withdraw[nb]
      From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing herds
    Stumble o'er heaving plains--and Man's dread hath no words.

                              LXV.

    Far other scene is Thrasimene now;
      Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain
      Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough;
      Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain
      Lay where their roots are; but a brook hath ta'en--
      A little rill of scanty stream and bed--
      A name of blood from that day's sanguine rain;
      And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead
    Made the earth wet, and turned the unwilling waters red.[nc]

                             LXVI.

    But thou, Clitumnus[447]! in thy sweetest wave
      Of the most living crystal that was e'er
      The haunt of river-Nymph, to gaze and lave
      Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear
      Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer[448]
      Grazes--the purest God of gentle waters!
      And most serene of aspect, and most clear;
      Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters--
    A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters!

                             LXVII.

    And on thy happy shore a Temple[449] still,
      Of small and delicate proportion, keeps
      Upon a mild declivity of hill,[nd]
      Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps
      Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps
      The finny darter with the glittering scales,[450]
      Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;
      While, chance, some scattered water-lily sails[ne]
    Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales.

                            LXVIII.

    Pass not unblest the Genius of the place!
      If through the air a Zephyr more serene
      Win to the brow, 'tis his; and if ye trace
      Along his margin a more eloquent green,
      If on the heart the freshness of the scene
      Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust
      Of weary life a moment lave it clean
      With Nature's baptism,--'tis to him ye must
    Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust.[451]

                             LXIX.

    The roar of waters!--from the headlong height
      Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;
      The fall of waters! rapid as the light
      The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;
      The Hell of Waters! where they howl and hiss,
      And boil in endless torture; while the sweat
      Of their great agony, wrung out from this
      Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet
    That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,

                              LXX.

    And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again
      Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,
      With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,
      Is an eternal April to the ground,
      Making it all one emerald:--how profound[nf]
      The gulf! and how the Giant Element
      From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,[ng]
      Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent
    With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent

                             LXXI.

    To the broad column which rolls on, and shows
      More like the fountain of an infant sea
      Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes
      Of a new world, than only thus to be
      Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,
      With many windings, through the vale:--Look back!
      Lo! where it comes like an Eternity,
      As if to sweep down all things in its track,
    Charming the eye with dread,--a matchless cataract,[452]

                             LXXII.

    Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,
      From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,
      An Iris[453] sits, amidst the infernal surge,
      Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn
      Its steady dyes, while all around is torn
      By the distracted waters, bears serene
      Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn:
      Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene,
    Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.

                            LXXIII.

    Once more upon the woody Apennine--
      The infant Alps, which--had I not before
      Gazed on their mightier Parents, where the pine
      Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar[nh]
      The thundering Lauwine[454]--might be worshipped more;
      But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear[ni]
      Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar
      Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc both far and near--
    And in Chimari heard the Thunder-Hills of fear,

                             LXXIV.

    Th' Acroceraunian mountains of old name;
      And on Parnassus seen the Eagles fly
      Like Spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame.
      For still they soared unutterably high:
      I've looked on Ida with a Trojan's eye;
      Athos--Olympus--AEtna.--Atlas--made
      These hills seem things of lesser dignity;
      All, save the lone Soracte's height, displayed
    Not _now_ in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid

                             LXXV.

    For our remembrance, and from out the plain
      Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break,
      And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vain
      May he, who will, his recollections rake,
      And quote in classic raptures, and awake
      The hills with Latian echoes--I abhorred
      Too much, to conquer for the Poet's sake,[455]
      The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word
    In my repugnant youth,[456] with pleasure to record

                             LXXVI.

    Aught that recalls the daily drug which turned
      My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught
      My mind to meditate what then it learned,[nj]
      Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought[nk]
      By the impatience of my early thought,
      That, with the freshness wearing out before
      My mind could relish what it might have sought,
      If free to choose, I cannot now restore
    Its health--but what it then detested, still abhor.[nl]

                            LXXVII.

    Then farewell, Horace--whom I hated so,
      Not for thy faults, but mine: it is a curse
      To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,
      To comprehend, but never love thy verse;
      Although no deeper Moralist rehearse
      Our little life, nor Bard prescribe his art,
      Nor livelier Satirist the conscience pierce,
      Awakening without wounding the touched heart,
    Yet fare thee well--upon Soracte's ridge we part.

                            LXXVIII.

    Oh, Rome! my Country! City of the Soul!
      The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
      Lone Mother of dead Empires! and control
      In their shut breasts their petty misery.
      What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see
      The cypress--hear the owl--and plod your way
      O'er steps of broken thrones and temples--Ye!
      Whose agonies are evils of a day--
    A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.

                             LXXIX.

    The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
      Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;[nm]
      empty urn within her withered hands,
      Whose holy dust was scattered long ago;
      The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;[457]
      The very sepulchres lie tenantless[458]
      Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,
      Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?
    Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress.[459]

                             LXXX.

    The Goth, the Christian--Time--War--Flood, and Fire,[460]
      Have dealt upon the seven-hilled City's pride;
      She saw her glories star by star expire,[nn]
      And up the steep barbarian Monarchs ride,
      Where the car climbed the Capitol;[461] far and wide
      Temple and tower went down, nor left a site:
      Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void,
      O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,
    And say, "here was, or is," where all is doubly night?

                             LXXXI.

    The double night of ages, and of her,[no]
      Night's daughter, Ignorance,[462] hath wrapt and wrap
      All round us; we but feel our way to err:
      The Ocean hath his chart, the Stars their map,
      And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap;
      But Rome is as the desert--where we steer
      Stumbling o'er recollections; now we clap
      Our hands, and cry "Eureka!" "it is clear"--
    When but some false Mirage of ruin rises near.

                            LXXXII.

    Alas! the lofty city! and alas!
      The trebly hundred triumphs![463] and the day
      When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass
      The Conqueror's sword in bearing fame away!
      Alas, for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay,[np]
      And Livy's pictured page!--but these shall be
      Her resurrection; all beside--decay.
      Alas, for Earth, for never shall we see
    That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free!

                            LXXXIII.

    Oh, thou, whose chariot rolled on Fortune's wheel,
      Triumphant Sylla![464] Thou, who didst subdue
      Thy country's foes ere thou wouldst pause to feel
      The wrath of thy own wrongs, or reap the due
      Of hoarded vengeance till thine Eagles flew
      O'er prostrate Asia;--thou, who with thy frown
      Annihilated senates;--Roman, too,
      With all thy vices--for thou didst lay down
    With an atoning smile a more than earthly crown,

                            LXXXIV.

    Thy dictatorial wreath--couldst thou divine
      To what would one day dwindle that which made
      Thee more than mortal? and that so supine
      By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid?[nq]
      She who was named Eternal, and arrayed
      Her warriors but to conquer--she who veiled
      Earth with her haughty shadow, and displayed,[nr]
      Until the o'er-canopied horizon failed,
    Her rushing wings--Oh! she who was Almighty hailed!

                             LXXXV.

    Sylla was first of victors; but our own,[ns]
      The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell!--he
      Too swept off senates while he hewed the throne
      Down to a block--immortal rebel! See
      What crimes it costs to be a moment free,
      And famous through all ages! but beneath
      His fate the moral lurks of destiny;
      His day of double victory and death
    Beheld him win two realms, and, happier, yield his breath.[465]

                            LXXXVI.

    The third of the same Moon whose former course
      Had all but crowned him, on the selfsame day
      Deposed him gently from his throne of force,
      And laid him with the Earth's preceding clay.
      And showed not Fortune thus how fame and sway,
      And all we deem delightful, and consume
      Our souls to compass through each arduous way,
      Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb?
    Were they but so in Man's, how different were his doom!

                            LXXXVII.

    And thou, dread Statue![466] yet existent in[24.H.]
      The austerest form of naked majesty--
      Thou who beheldest, 'mid the assassins' din,
      At thy bathed base the bloody Caesar lie,
      Folding his robe in dying dignity--
      An offering to thine altar from the Queen
      Of gods and men, great Nemesis! did he die,
      And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye been
    Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene?

                           LXXXVIII.

    And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome![467][25.H.]
      She-wolf! whose brazen-imaged dugs impart
      The milk of conquest yet within the dome
      Where, as a monument of antique art,
      Thou standest:--Mother of the mighty heart,
      Which the great Founder sucked from thy wild teat,
      Scorched by the Roman Jove's ethereal dart,
      And thy limbs black with lightning--dost thou yet
    Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget?

                            LXXXIX.

    Thou dost;--but all thy foster-babes are dead--
      The men of iron; and the World hath reared
      Cities from out their sepulchres: men bled
      In imitation of the things[468] they feared,
      And fought and conquered, and the same course steered,
      At apish distance; but as yet none have,
      Nor could, the same supremacy have neared,
      Save one vain Man, who is not in the grave--
    But, vanquished by himself, to his own slaves a slave--[469]

                              XC.

    The fool of false dominion--and a kind
      Of bastard Caesar, following him of old
      With steps unequal; for the Roman's mind
      Was modelled in a less terrestrial mould,[26.H.]
      With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold,[470]
      And an immortal instinct which redeemed
      The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold--
      Alcides with the distaff now he seemed
    At Cleopatra's feet,--and now himself he beamed,

                              XCI.

    And came--and saw--and conquered![471] But the man
      Who would have tamed his Eagles down to flee,
      Like a trained falcon, in the Gallic van,[472]
      Which he, in sooth, long led to Victory,
      With a deaf heart which never seemed to be
      A listener to itself, was strangely framed;
      With but one weakest weakness--Vanity--[nt]
      Coquettish in ambition--still he aimed--
    And what? can he avouch, or answer what he claimed?[nu]

                             XCII.

    And would be all or nothing--nor could wait
      For the sure grave to level him; few years
      Had fixed him with the Caesars in his fate
      On whom we tread: For _this_ the conqueror rears
      The Arch of Triumph! and for this the tears
      And blood of earth flow on as they have flowed,
      An universal Deluge, which appears
      Without an Ark for wretched Man's abode,
    And ebbs but to reflow!--Renew thy rainbow, God![nv]

                             XCIII.

    What from this barren being do we reap?[473]
      Our senses narrow, and our reason frail,
      Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep,
      And all things weighed in Custom's falsest scale;[474]
      Opinion an Omnipotence,--whose veil
      Mantles the earth with darkness, until right
      And wrong are accidents, and Men grow pale
      Lest their own judgments should become too bright,
    And their free thoughts be crimes, and Earth have too much light.

                             XCIV.

    And thus they plod in sluggish misery,[nw]
      Rotting from sire to son, and age to age,[475]
      Proud of their trampled nature, and so die,[nx]
      Bequeathing their hereditary rage
      To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage
      War for their chains, and rather than be free,
      Bleed gladiator-like, and still engage
      Within the same Arena where they see
    Their fellows fall before, like leaves of the same tree.

                              XCV.

    I speak not of men's creeds--they rest between
      Man and his Maker--but of things allowed,
      Averred, and known, and daily, hourly seen--
      The yoke that is upon us doubly bowed,
      And the intent of Tyranny avowed,
      The edict of Earth's rulers, who are grown
      The apes of him who humbled once the proud,
      And shook them from their slumbers on the throne;
    Too glorious, were this all his mighty arm had done.

                             XCVI.

    Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be,
      And Freedom find no Champion and no Child[476]
      Such as Columbia saw arise when she
      Sprung forth a Pallas, armed and undefined?
      Or must such minds be nourished in the wild,
      Deep in the unpruned forest, 'midst the roar[ny]
      Of cataracts, where nursing Nature smiled
      On infant Washington? Has Earth no more
    Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no such shore?

                             XCVII.

    But France got drunk with blood to vomit crime;[nz]
      And fatal have her Saturnalia been[oa]
      To Freedom's cause, in every age and clime;
      Because the deadly days which we have seen,
      And vile Ambition, that built up between
      Man and his hopes an adamantine wall,
      And the base pageant[477] last upon the scene,
      Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall
    Which nips Life's tree, and dooms Man's worst--his second fall.[478]

                            XCVIII.

    Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying,
      Streams like the thunder-storm _against_ the wind;[479]
      Thy trumpet voice, though broken now and dying,
      The loudest still the Tempest leaves behind;
      Thy tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind,
      Chopped by the axe, looks rough and little worth,
      But the sap lasts,--and still the seed we find
      Sown deep, even in the bosom of the North;
    So shall a better spring less bitter fruit bring forth.

                             XCIX.

    There is a stern round tower of other days[480]
      Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone,
      Such as an army's baffled strength delays,
      Standing with half its battlements alone,
      And with two thousand years of ivy grown,
      The garland of Eternity, where wave
      The green leaves over all by Time o'erthrown;--
      What was this tower of strength? within its cave
    What treasure lay so locked, so hid?--A woman's grave.[ob]

                               C.

    But who was she, the Lady of the dead,
      Tombed in a palace? Was she chaste and fair?
      Worthy a king's--or more--a Roman's bed?
      What race of Chiefs and Heroes did she bear?
      What daughter of her beauties was the heir?
      How lived--how loved--how died she? Was she not
      So honoured--and conspicuously there,
      Where meaner relics must not dare to rot,
    Placed to commemorate a more than mortal lot?

                              CI.

    Was she as those who love their lords, or they
      Who love the lords of others? such have been
      Even in the olden time, Rome's annals say.
      Was she a matron of Cornelia's mien,
      Or the light air of Egypt's graceful Queen,
      Profuse of joy--or 'gainst it did she war,
      Inveterate in virtue? Did she lean
      To the soft side of the heart, or wisely bar
    Love from amongst her griefs?--for such the affections are.[oc]

                              CII.

    Perchance she died in youth--it may be, bowed
      With woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb
      That weighed upon her gentle dust: a cloud
      Might gather o'er her beauty, and a gloom
      In her dark eye, prophetic of the doom
      Heaven gives its favourites[481]--early death--yet shed
      A sunset charm around her, and illume
      With hectic light, the Hesperus of the dead,
    Of her consuming cheek the autumnal leaf-like red.

                             CIII.

    Perchance she died in age--surviving all,
      Charms--kindred--children--with the silver gray
      On her long tresses, which might yet recall,
      It may be, still a something of the day
      When they were braided, and her proud array
      And lovely form were envied, praised, and eyed
      By Rome--But whither would Conjecture stray?[482]
      Thus much alone we know--Metella died,
    The wealthiest Roman's wife: Behold his love or pride!

                              CIV.

    I know not why--but standing thus by thee
      It seems as if I had thine inmate known,
      Thou Tomb! and other days come back on me
      With recollected music, though the tone
      Is changed and solemn, like the cloudy groan
      Of dying thunder on the distant wind;
      Yet could I seat me by this ivied stone
      Till I had bodied forth the heated mind[od]
    Forms from the floating wreck which Ruin leaves behind:

                              CV.

    And from the planks, far shattered o'er the rocks,
      Built me a little bark of hope, once more
      To battle with the Ocean and the shocks
      Of the loud breakers, and the ceaseless roar
      Which rushes on the solitary shore
      Where all lies foundered that was ever dear:
      But could I gather from the wave-worn store
      Enough for my rude boat, where should I steer?
    There woos no home, nor hope, nor life, save what is here.[oe]

                              CVI.

    Then let the Winds howl on! their harmony
      Shall henceforth be my music, and the Night
      The sound shall temper with the owlets' cry,
      As I now hear them, in the fading light
      Dim o'er the bird of darkness' native site,
      Answering each other on the Palatine,
      With their large eyes, all glistening gray and bright,
      And sailing pinions.--Upon such a shrine
    What are our petty griefs?--let me not number mine.

                             CVII.

    Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower grown[483]
      Matted and massed together--hillocks heaped
      On what were chambers--arch crushed, column strown
      In fragments--choked up vaults, and frescos steeped
      In subterranean damps, where the owl peeped,[of]
      Deeming it midnight:--Temples--Baths--or Halls?
      Pronounce who can: for all that Learning reaped
      From her research hath been, that these are walls--
    Behold the Imperial Mount! 'tis thus the Mighty falls.[484]

                             CVIII.

    There is the moral of all human tales;[485]
      'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,
      First Freedom, and then Glory--when that fails,
      Wealth--Vice--Corruption,--Barbarism at last.
      And History, with all her volumes vast,
      Hath but _one_ page,--'tis better written here,
      Where gorgeous Tyranny hath thus amassed
      All treasures, all delights, that Eye or Ear,
    Heart, Soul could seek--Tongue ask--Away with words! draw near,

                              CIX.

    Admire--exult--despise--laugh--weep,--for here
      There is such matter for all feeling:--Man![og]
      Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear,
      Ages and Realms are crowded in this span,
      This mountain, whose obliterated plan
      The pyramid of Empires pinnacled,
      Of Glory's gewgaws shining in the van[oh]
      Till the Sun's rays with added flame were filled!
    Where are its golden roofs?[486] where those who dared to build?

                              CX.

    Tully was not so eloquent as thou,
      Thou nameless column[487] with the buried base!
      What are the laurels of the Caesar's brow?
      Crown me with ivy from his dwelling-place.
      Whose arch or pillar meets me in the face,
      Titus or Trajan's? No--'tis that of Time:
      Triumph, arch, pillar, all he doth displace[oi]
      Scoffing; and apostolic statues[488] climb
    To crush the imperial urn, whose ashes slept sublime,

                              CXI.

    Buried in air, the deep blue sky of Rome,
      And looking to the stars: they had contained
      A Spirit which with these would find a home,
      The last of those who o'er the whole earth reigned,
      The Roman Globe--for, after, none sustained,
      But yielded back his conquests:--he was more
      Than a mere Alexander, and, unstained
      With household blood and wine, serenely wore
    His sovereign virtues--still we Trajan's[489] name adore.

                             CXII.

    Where is the rock of Triumph,[490] the high place
      Where Rome embraced her heroes?--where the steep
      Tarpeian?--fittest goal of Treason's race,
      The Promontory whence the Traitor's Leap[oj]
      Cured all ambition?[491] Did the conquerors heap
      Their spoils here? Yes; and in yon field below,
      A thousand years of silenced factions sleep--
      The Forum, where the immortal accents glow,
    And still the eloquent air breathes-burns with Cicero![ok][492]

                             CXIII.

    The field of Freedom--Faction--Fame--and Blood:
      Here a proud people's passions were exhaled,
      From the first hour of Empire in the bud
      To that when further worlds to conquer failed;
      But long before had Freedom's face been veiled,
      And Anarchy assumed her attributes;
      Till every lawless soldier who assailed
      Trod on the trembling Senate's slavish mutes,
    Or raised the venal voice of baser prostitutes.

                             CXIV.

    Then turn we to her latest Tribune's name,
      From her ten thousand tyrants turn to thee,
      Redeemer of dark centuries of shame--
      The friend of Petrarch--hope of Italy--
      Rienzi! last of Romans![493] While the tree
      Of Freedom's withered trunk puts forth a leaf,
      Even for thy tomb a garland let it be--
      The Forum's champion, and the people's chief--
    Her new-born Numa thou--with reign, alas! too brief.

                              CXV.

    Egeria! sweet creation of some heart[27.H.]
      Which found no mortal resting-place so fair
      As thine ideal breast; whate'er thou art
      Or wert,--a young Aurora of the air,
      The nympholepsy[494] of some fond despair--[ol]
      Or--it might be--a Beauty of the earth,
      Who found a more than common Votary there
      Too much adoring--whatsoe'er thy birth,
    Thou wert a beautiful Thought, and softly bodied forth.

                             CXVI.

    The mosses of thy Fountain[495] still are sprinkled
      With thine Elysian water-drops; the face
      Of thy cave-guarded Spring, with years unwrinkled,
      Reflects the meek-eyed Genius of the place,
      Whose green, wild margin now no more erase
      Art's works; nor must the delicate waters sleep
      Prisoned in marble--bubbling from the base
      Of the cleft statue, with a gentle leap
    The rill runs o'er--and round, fern, flowers, and ivy, creep

                             CXVII.

    Fantastically tangled: the green hills
      Are clothed with early blossoms--through the grass
      The quick-eyed lizard rustles--and the bills
      Of summer-birds sing welcome as ye pass;
      Flowers fresh in hue, and many in their class,
      Implore the pausing step, and with their dyes
      Dance in the soft breeze in a fairy mass;
      The sweetness of the Violet's deep blue eyes,
    Kissed by the breath of heaven, seems  by its skies.[496]

                            CXVIII.

    Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover,[497]
      Egeria! thy all heavenly bosom beating
      For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover;
      The purple Midnight veiled that mystic meeting
      With her most starry canopy[498]--and seating
      Thyself by thine adorer, what befel?
      This cave was surely shaped out for the greeting
      Of an enamoured Goddess, and the cell
    Haunted by holy Love--the earliest Oracle!

                             CXIX.

    And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying,
      Blend a celestial with a human heart;[om]
      And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing,
      Share with immortal transports? could thine art
      Make them indeed immortal, and impart
      The purity of Heaven to earthly joys,
      Expel the venom and not blunt the dart--
      The dull satiety which all destroys--
    And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys?

                              CXX.

    Alas! our young affections run to waste,
      Or water but the desert! whence arise
      But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste,
      Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes
      Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies,
      And trees whose gums are poison; such the plants
      Which spring beneath her steps as Passion flies
      O'er the World's wilderness, and vainly pants
    For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants.

                             CXXI.

    Oh, Love! no habitant of earth thou art--[on]
      An unseen Seraph, we believe in thee,--
      A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart,--
      But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see
      The naked eye, thy form, as it should be;[499]
      The mind hath made thee, as it peopled Heaven,
      Even with its own desiring phantasy,
      And to a thought such shape and image given,
    As haunts the unquenched soul--parched--wearied--wrung--and riven.

                             CXXII.

    Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,
      And fevers into false creation:--where,
      Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized?
      In him alone. Can Nature show so fair?
      Where are the charms and virtues which we dare
      Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men,
      The unreached Paradise of our despair,
      Which o'er-informs[500] the pencil and the pen,
    And overpowers the page where it would bloom again?

                            CXXIII.

    Who loves, raves[501]--'tis youth's frenzy--but the cure
      Is bitterer still, as charm by charm unwinds
      Which robed our idols, and we see too sure
      Nor Worth nor Beauty dwells from out the mind's
      Ideal shape of such; yet still it binds
      The fatal spell, and still it draws us on,
      Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds;
      The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun,
    Seems ever near the prize--wealthiest when most undone.

                             CXXIV.

    We wither from our youth, we gasp away--
      Sick--sick; unfound the boon--unslaked the thirst,
      Though to the last, in verge of our decay,
      Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first--
      But all too late,--so are we doubly curst.
      Love, Fame, Ambition, Avarice--'tis the same,
      Each idle--and all ill--and none the worst--
      For all are meteors with a different name,[oo]
    And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame.

                             CXXV.

    Few--none--find what they love or could have loved,
      Though accident, blind contact, and the strong
      Necessity of loving, have removed
      Antipathies--but to recur, ere long,
      Envenomed with irrevocable wrong;
      And Circumstance, that unspiritual God
      And Miscreator, makes and helps along
      Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,[502]
    Whose touch turns Hope to dust,--the dust we all have trod.

                             CXXVI.

    Our life is a false nature--'tis not in
      The harmony of things,--this hard decree,
      This uneradicable taint of Sin,
      This boundless Upas, this all-blasting tree,
      Whose root is Earth--whose leaves and branches be
      The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew--
      Disease, death, bondage--all the woes we see,
      And worse, the woes we see not--which throb through
    The immedicable soul,[503] with heart-aches ever new.

                            CXXVII.

    Yet let us ponder boldly--'tis a base
      Abandonment of reason[504] to resign
      Our right of thought--our last and only place
      Of refuge; this, at least, shall still be mine:
      Though from our birth the Faculty divine
      Is chained and tortured--cabined, cribbed, confined,
      And bred in darkness,[505] lest the Truth should shine
      Too brightly on the unprepared mind,
    The beam pours in--for Time and Skill will couch the blind.

                            CXXVIII.

    Arches on arches![506] as it were that Rome,
      Collecting the chief trophies of her line,
      Would build up all her triumphs in one dome,
      Her Coliseum stands;[507] the moonbeams shine
      As 'twere its natural torches--for divine
      Should be the light which streams here,--to illume
      This long-explored but still exhaustless mine
      Of Contemplation; and the azure gloom
    Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume

                             CXXIX.

    Hues which have words, and speak to ye of Heaven,
      Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument,
      And shadows forth its glory. There is given
      Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent,
      A Spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant
      His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power
      And magic in the ruined battlement,
      For which the Palace of the present hour
    Must yield its pomp, and wait till Ages are its dower.

                             CXXX.

    Oh, Time! the Beautifier of the dead,
      Adorner of the ruin[508]--Comforter
      And only Healer when the heart hath bled;
      Time! the Corrector where our judgments err,
      The test of Truth, Love--sole philosopher,
      For all beside are sophists--from thy thrift,
      Which never loses though it doth defer--
      Time, the Avenger! unto thee I lift
    My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift:

                             CXXXI.

    Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine
      And temple more divinely desolate--
      Among thy mightier offerings here are mine,
      Ruins of years--though few, yet full of fate:--
      If thou hast ever seen me too elate,
      Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne
      Good, and reserved my pride against the hate
      Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn
    This iron in my soul in vain--shall _they_ not mourn?

                            CXXXII.

    And Thou, who never yet of human wrong
      Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis![509][28.H.]
      Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long--
      Thou, who didst call the Furies from the abyss,
      And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss
      For that unnatural retribution--just,
      Had it but been from hands less near--in this
      Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust!
    Dost thou not hear my heart?--Awake! thou shalt, and must.

                            CXXXIII.

    It is not that I may not have incurred,
      For my ancestral faults or mine, the wound[op]
      I bleed withal; and, had it been conferred
      With a just weapon, it had flowed unbound;
      But now my blood shall not sink in the ground--
      To thee I do devote it--_Thou_ shalt take
      The vengeance, which shall yet be sought and found--
      Which if _I_ have not taken for the sake--
    But let that pass--I sleep--but Thou shalt yet awake.

                            CXXXIV.

    And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now[oq]
      I shrink from what is suffered: let him speak
      Who hath beheld decline upon my brow,
      Or seen my mind's convulsion leave it weak;
      But in this page a record will I seek.
      Not in the air shall these my words disperse,
      Though I be ashes; a far hour shall wreak
      The deep prophetic fulness of this verse,
    And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse!

                             CXXXV.

    That curse shall be Forgiveness.--Have I not--
      Hear me, my mother Earth! behold it, Heaven!--
      Have I not had to wrestle with my lot?
      Have I not suffered things to be forgiven?
      Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven,
      Hopes sapped, name blighted, Life's life lied away?
      And only not to desperation driven,
      Because not altogether of such clay
    As rots into the souls of those whom I survey.

                          CXXXVI.[or]

    From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy
      Have I not seen what human things could do?
      From the loud roar of foaming calumny
      To the small whisper of the as paltry few--
      And subtler venom of the reptile crew,
      The Janus glance[510] of whose significant eye,
      Learning to lie with silence, would _seem_ true--
      And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh,
    Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy.

                            CXXXVII.

    But I have lived, and have not lived in vain:
      My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,
      And my frame perish even in conquering pain;
      But there is that within me which shall tire
      Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire;
      Something unearthly, which they deem not of,
      Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre,
      Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move
    In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of Love.

                           CXXXVIII.

    The seal is set.--Now welcome, thou dread Power!
      Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here
      Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight hour
      With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear;
      Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear
      Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene
      Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear
      That we become a part of what has been,
    And grow upon the spot--all-seeing but unseen.

                            CXXXIX.

    And here the buzz of eager nations ran,
      In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause,
      As man was slaughtered by his fellow man.
      And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but because
      Such were the bloody Circus' genial laws,
      And the imperial pleasure.--Wherefore not?
      What matters where we fall to fill the maws
      Of worms--on battle-plains or listed spot?
    Both are but theatres--where the chief actors rot.

                              CXL.

    I see before me the Gladiator[511] lie:
      He leans upon his hand--his manly brow[os]
      Consents to death, but conquers agony,
      And his drooped head sinks gradually low--
      And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
      From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,[ot]
      Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now[ou]
      The arena swims around him--he is gone,[ov]
    Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.

                             CXLI.

    He heard it, but he heeded not--his eyes
      Were with his heart--and that was far away;
      He recked not of the life he lost nor prize,
      But where his rude hut by the Danube lay--
      _There_ were his young barbarians all at play,
      _There_ was their Dacian mother--he, their sire,
      Butchered to make a Roman holiday--[ow][29.H.]
      All this rushed with his blood--Shall he expire
    And unavenged?--Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!

                             CXLII.

    But here, where Murder breathed her bloody steam;--
      And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways,
      And roared or murmured like a mountain stream
      Dashing or winding as its torrent strays;
      Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise
      Was Death or Life--the playthings of a crowd--[ox][30.H.]
      My voice sounds much--and fall the stars' faint rays[oy]
      On the arena void--seats crushed--walls bowed--
    And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud.

                            CXLIII.

    A Ruin--yet what Ruin! from its mass
      Walls--palaces--half-cities, have been reared;
      Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,[oz]
      And marvel where the spoil could have appeared.
      Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared?
      Alas! developed, opens the decay,
      When the colossal fabric's form is neared:
      It will not bear the brightness of the day,
    Which streams too much on all--years--man--have reft away.

                             CXLIV.

    But when the rising moon begins to climb
      Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there--
      When the stars twinkle through the loops of Time,
      And the low night-breeze waves along the air
      The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear,[pa]
      Like laurels on the bald first Caesar's head--[512]
      When the light shines serene but doth not glare--
      Then in this magic circle raise the dead;--
    Heroes have trod this spot--'tis on their dust ye tread.[pb]

                             CXLV.

    "While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand:[513]
      When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
      And when Rome falls--the World." From our own land
      Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall
      In Saxon times, which we are wont to call
      Ancient; and these three mortal things are still
      On their foundations, and unaltered all--
      Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill--
    The World--the same wide den--of thieves, or what ye will.

                             CXLVI.

    Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime--[514]
      Shrine of all saints and temple of all Gods,
      From Jove to Jesus--spared and blest by Time--
      Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods
      Arch--empire--each thing round thee--and Man plods
      His way through thorns to ashes--glorious Dome!
      Shalt thou not last? Time's scythe and Tyrants' rods
      Shiver upon thee--sanctuary and home
    Of Art and Piety--Pantheon!--pride of Rome![pc]

                            CXLVII.

    Relic of nobler days, and noblest arts!
      Despoiled yet perfect! with thy circle spreads
      A holiness appealing to all hearts;
      To Art a model--and to him who treads
      Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds
      Her light through thy sole aperture; to those
      Who worship, here are altars for their beads--
      And they who feel for Genius may repose
    Their eyes on honoured forms, whose busts around them close.[515]

                            CXLVIII.

    There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light[516]
      What do I gaze on? Nothing--Look again!
      Two forms are slowly shadowed on my sight--
      Two insulated phantoms of the brain:[pd]
      It is not so--I see them full and plain--
      An old man, and a female young and fair,
      Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein
      The blood is nectar:--but what doth she there,
    With her unmantled neck, and bosom white and bare?[pe]

                             CXLIX.

    Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life,
      Where _on_ the heart and _from_ the heart we took
      Our first and sweetest nurture--when the wife,
      Blest into mother, in the innocent look,
      Or even the piping cry of lips that brook[pf]
      No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives[pg]
      Man knows not--when from out its cradled nook
      She sees her little bud put forth its leaves--
    What may the fruit be yet?--I know not--Cain was Eve's.

                              CL.

    But here Youth offers to Old Age the food,
      The milk of his own gift: it is her Sire
      To whom she renders back the debt of blood
      Born with her birth:--No--he shall not expire
      While in those warm and lovely veins the fire
      Of health and holy feeling can provide
      Great Nature's Nile, whose deep stream rises higher
      Than Egypt's river:--from that gentle side
    Drink--drink, and live--Old Man! Heaven's realm holds no such tide.

                              CLI.

    The starry fable of the Milky Way[517]
      Has not thy story's purity; it is
      A constellation of a sweeter ray,
      And sacred Nature triumphs more in this
      Reverse of her decree, than in the abyss
      Where sparkle distant worlds:--Oh, holiest Nurse!
      No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss
      To thy Sire's heart, replenishing its source[ph]
    With life, as our freed souls rejoin the Universe.

                             CLII.

    Turn to the Mole[518] which Hadrian reared on high,
      Imperial mimic of old Egypt's piles,
      Colossal copyist of deformity--
      Whose travelled phantasy from the far Nile's
      Enormous model, doomed the artist's toils
      To build for Giants, and for his vain earth,
      His shrunken ashes, raise this Dome: How smiles
      The gazer's eye with philosophic mirth,[pi]
    To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth!

                          CLIII.[519]

    But lo! the Dome--the vast and wondrous Dome,[pj][520]
      To which Diana's marvel was a cell--
      Christ's mighty shrine above His martyr's tomb![pk]
      I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle--[521]
      Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell
      The hyaena and the jackal in their shade;[522]
      I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell[pl]
      Their glittering mass i' the Sun, and have surveyed[pm]
    Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem prayed;[523]

                             CLIV.

    But thou, of temples old, or altars new,
      Standest alone--with nothing like to thee--
      Worthiest of God, the Holy and the True!
      Since Zion's desolation, when that He
      Forsook his former city, what could be,
      Of earthly structures, in His honour piled,
      Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty--
      Power--Glory--Strength--and Beauty all are aisled
    In this eternal Ark of worship undefiled.

                              CLV.

    Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not;
      And why? it is not lessened--but thy mind,
      Expanded by the Genius of the spot,
      Has grown colossal, and can only find
      A fit[524] abode wherein appear enshrined
      Thy hopes of Immortality--and thou
      Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined
      See thy God face to face, as thou dost now
    His Holy of Holies--nor be blasted by his brow.[pn]

                             CLVI.

    Thou movest--but increasing with the advance,[525]
      Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise,
      Deceived by its gigantic elegance--
      Vastness which grows, but grows to harmonize--[po]
      All musical in its immensities;
      Rich marbles, richer painting--shrines where flame[pp]
      The lamps of gold--and haughty dome which vies
      In air with Earth's chief structures, though their frame
    Sits on the firm-set ground--and this the clouds must claim.

                             CLVII.

    Thou seest not all--but piecemeal thou must break,
      To separate contemplation, the great whole;
      And as the Ocean many bays will make
      That ask the eye--so here condense thy soul
      To more immediate objects, and control
      Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart
      Its eloquent proportions, and unroll[pq]
      In mighty graduations, part by part,
    The Glory which at once upon thee did not dart,

                            CLVIII.

    Not by its fault--but thine: Our outward sense[pr]
      Is but of gradual grasp--and as it is
      That what we have of feeling most intense
      Outstrips our faint expression; even so this
      Outshining and o'erwhelming edifice
      Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great
      Defies at first our Nature's littleness,
      Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate
    Our Spirits to the size of that they contemplate.

                             CLIX.

    Then pause, and be enlightened; there is more
      In such a survey than the sating gaze
      Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore
      The worship of the place, or the mere praise
      Of Art and its great Masters, who could raise
      What former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan:[ps]
      The fountain of Sublimity displays
      Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of Man[pt]
    Its golden sands, and learn what great Conceptions can.[pu]

                              CLX.

    Or, turning to the Vatican, go see
      Laocooen's[526] torture dignifying pain--
      A Father's love and Mortal's agony
      With an Immortal's patience blending:--Vain
      The struggle--vain, against the coiling strain
      And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp,
      The Old Man's clench; the long envenomed chain[pv]
      Rivets the living links,--the enormous Asp
    Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp.[pw]

                             CLXI.

    Or view the Lord of the unerring bow,[527]
      The God of Life, and Poesy, and Light--
      The Sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow
      All radiant from his triumph in the fight;
      The shaft hath just been shot--the arrow bright
      With an Immortal's vengeance--in his eye
      And nostril beautiful Disdain, and Might
      And Majesty, flash their full lightnings by,
    Developing in that one glance the Deity.

                             CLXII.

    But in his delicate form--a dream of Love,[528]
      Shaped by some solitary Nymph, whose breast
      Longed for a deathless lover from above,
      And maddened in that vision[529]--are exprest
      All that ideal Beauty ever blessed
      The mind with in its most unearthly mood,
      When each Conception was a heavenly Guest--
      A ray of Immortality--and stood,
    Starlike, around, until they gathered to a God![px]

                            CLXIII.

    And if it be Prometheus stole from Heaven
      The fire which we endure[530]--it was repaid
      By him to whom the energy was given
      Which this poetic marble hath arrayed
      With an eternal Glory--which, if made
      By human hands, is not of human thought--
      And Time himself hath hallowed it, nor laid
      One ringlet in the dust--nor hath it caught
    A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which 'twas wrought.

                             CLXIV.

    But where is he, the Pilgrim of my Song,
      The Being who upheld it through the past?
      Methinks he cometh late and tarries long.
      He is no more--these breathings are his last--
      His wanderings done--his visions ebbing fast,
      And he himself as nothing:--if he was
      Aught but a phantasy, and could be classed
      With forms which live and suffer--let that pass--
    His shadow fades away into Destruction's mass,[py]

                             CLXV.

    Which gathers shadow--substance--life, and all
      That we inherit in its mortal shroud--
      And spreads the dim and universal pall
      Through which all things grow phantoms; and the cloud
      Between us sinks and all which ever glowed,
      Till Glory's self is twilight, and displays
      A melancholy halo scarce allowed
      To hover on the verge of darkness--rays
    Sadder than saddest night, for they distract the gaze,

                             CLXVI.

    And send us prying into the abyss,
      To gather what we shall be when the frame
      Shall be resolved to something less than this--
      Its wretched essence; and to dream of fame,
      And wipe the dust from off the idle name
      We never more shall hear,--but never more,
      Oh, happier thought! can we be made the same:--
      It is enough in sooth that _once_ we bore
    These fardels[531] of the heart--the heart whose sweat was gore.

                            CLXVII.

    Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds,[532]
      A long low distant murmur of dread sound,
      Such as arises when a nation bleeds
      With some deep and immedicable wound;--
      Through storm and darkness yawns the rending ground--
      The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the Chief
      Seems royal still, though with her head discrowned,
      And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief--
    She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief.

                            CLXVIII.

    Scion of Chiefs and Monarchs, where art thou?
      Fond Hope of many nations, art thou dead?
      Could not the Grave forget thee, and lay low
      Some less majestic, less beloved head?
      In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled,
      The mother of a moment, o'er thy boy,
      Death hushed that pang for ever: with thee fled
      The present happiness and promised joy
    Which filled the Imperial Isles so full it seemed to cloy.

                             CLXIX.

    Peasants bring forth in safety.--Can it be,
      Oh thou that wert so happy, so adored!
      Those who weep not for Kings shall weep for thee,
      And Freedom's heart, grown heavy, cease to hoard
      Her many griefs for _One_; for she had poured
      Her orisons for thee, and o'er thy head[pz]
      Beheld her Iris.--Thou, too, lonely Lord,
      And desolate Consort--vainly wert thou wed!
    The husband of a year! the father of the dead!

                             CLXX.

    Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made;
      Thy bridal's fruit is ashes[533]: in the dust
      The fair-haired Daughter of the Isles is laid,
      The love of millions! How we did entrust
      Futurity to her! and, though it must
      Darken above our bones, yet fondly deemed
      Our children should obey her child, and blessed
      Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seemed
    Like stars to shepherd's eyes:--'twas but a meteor beamed.[534]

                             CLXXI.

    Woe unto us--not her--for she sleeps well:[535]
      The fickle reek of popular breath,[536] the tongue
      Of hollow counsel, the false oracle,
      Which from the birth of Monarchy hath rung
      Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstung
      Nations have armed in madness--the strange fate
      Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns,[537] and hath flung
      Against their blind omnipotence a weight
    Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late,--[qa]

                            CLXXII.

    These might have been her destiny--but no--
      Our hearts deny it: and so young, so fair,
      Good without effort, great without a foe;
      But now a Bride and Mother--and now _there!_
      How many ties did that stern moment tear!
      From thy Sire's to his humblest subject's breast
      Is linked the electric chain of that despair,
      Whose shock was as an Earthquake's,[538] and opprest
    The land which loved thee so that none could love thee best.

                            CLXXIII.

    Lo, Nemi![539] navelled in the woody hills
      So far, that the uprooting Wind which tears
      The oak from his foundation, and which spills
      The Ocean o'er its boundary, and bears
      Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares
      The oval mirror of thy glassy lake;
      And calm as cherished hate, its surface wears[qb]
      A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake,
    All coiled into itself and round, as sleeps the snake.

                            CLXXIV.

    And near, Albano's scarce divided waves
      Shine from a sister valley;--and afar[31.H.]
      The Tiber winds, and the broad Ocean laves
      The Latian coast where sprung the Epic war,
      "Arms and the Man," whose re-ascending star
      Rose o'er an empire:--but beneath thy right[540]
      Tully reposed from Rome;--and where yon bar
      Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight[qc]
    The Sabine farm was tilled, the weary Bard's delight.

                             CLXXV.

    But I forget.--My Pilgrim's shrine is won,
      And he and I must part,--so let it be,--
      His task and mine alike are nearly done;
      Yet once more let us look upon the Sea;
      The Midland Ocean breaks on him and me,
      And from the Alban Mount we now behold
      Our friend of youth, that Ocean, which when we
      Beheld it last by Calpe's rock[541] unfold
    Those waves, we followed on till the dark Euxine rolled

                            CLXXVI.

    Upon the blue Symplegades:[32.H.] long years--
      Long, though not very many--since have done
      Their work on both; some suffering and some tears[qd]
      Have left us nearly where we had begun:
      Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run--
      We have had our reward--and it is here,--
      That we can yet feel gladdened by the Sun,
      And reap from Earth--Sea--joy almost as dear
    As if there were no Man to trouble what is clear.[542]

                            CLXXVII.

    Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,[543]
      With one fair Spirit for my minister,
      That I might all forget the human race,
      And, hating no one, love but only her!
      Ye elements!--in whose ennobling stir
      I feel myself exalted--Can ye not
      Accord me such a Being? Do I err
      In deeming such inhabit many a spot?
    Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.

                           CLXXVIII.

    There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
      There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
      There is society, where none intrudes,
      By the deep Sea, and Music in its roar:
      I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
      From these our interviews, in which I steal
      From all I may be, or have been before,
      To mingle with the Universe,[544] and feel
    What I can ne'er express--yet can not all conceal.

                            CLXXIX.

    Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll!
      Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
      Man marks the earth with ruin--his control
      Stops with the shore;--upon the watery plain
      The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
      A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
      When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
      He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan--
    Without a grave--unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.[qe]

                             CLXXX.

    His steps are not upon thy paths,--thy fields
      Are not a spoil for him,--thou dost arise
      And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
      For Earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
      Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies--[545]
      And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
      And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies
      His petty hope in some near port or bay,
    And dashest him again to Earth:--there let him lay.[qf][546]

                            CLXXXI.

    The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
      Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
      And Monarchs tremble in their Capitals,
      The oak Leviathans,[547] whose huge ribs make[qg]
      Their clay creator the vain title take
      Of Lord of thee, and Arbiter of War--
      These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
      They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
    Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar.[548]

                            CLXXXII.

    Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee--
      Assyria--Greece--Rome--Carthage--what are they?[549]
      Thy waters washed[550] them power while they were free,[qh]
      And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
      The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
      Has dried up realms to deserts:--not so thou,
      Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play,[qi]
      Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow--
    Such as Creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

                           CLXXXIII.

    Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
      Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
      Calm or convulsed--in breeze, or gale, or storm--
      Icing the Pole, or in the torrid clime
      Dark-heaving--boundless, endless, and sublime--
      The image of Eternity-the throne[qj]
      Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime[551]
      The monsters of the deep are made--each Zone
    Obeys thee--thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

                            CLXXXIV.

    And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
      Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
      Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy[552]
      I wantoned with thy breakers--they to me
      Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
      Made them a terror--'twas a pleasing fear,
      For I was as it were a Child of thee,
      And trusted to thy billows far and near,
    And laid my hand upon thy mane--as I do here.[553]

                            CLXXXV.

    My task is done--my song hath ceased--my theme
      Has died into an echo; it is fit[qk]
      The spell should break of this protracted dream.
      The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit
      My midnight lamp--and what is writ, is writ,--
      Would it were worthier! but I am not now
      That which I have been--and my visions flit
      Less palpably before me--and the glow
    Which in my Spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low.

                            CLXXXVI.

    Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been--
      A sound which makes us linger;--yet--farewell![ql]
      Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene[qm]
      Which is his last--if in your memories dwell
      A thought which once was his--if on ye swell
      A single recollection--not in vain
      He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell;
      Farewell! with _him_ alone may rest the pain,
    If such there were--with _you_, the Moral of his Strain.[554]



FOOTNOTES:

[363] {319} _MS. D._, Byron's final fair copy, is in the possession
of the Lady Dorchester.

[364] {321} [Compare Canto IV. stanza clxiv.--

    "But where is he, the Pilgrim of my Song....
      He is no more--these breathings are his last."]

[365] {322} [His marriage. Compare the epigram, "On my Wedding-Day,"
sent in a letter to Moore, January 2, 1820--

    "Here's a happy new year!--but with reason
      I beg you'll permit me to say--
    Wish me _many_ returns of the _season_,
      But as _few_ as you please of the _day_."]

[366] {323} [Some fancy me no Chinese, because I am formed more like a
man than a monster; and others wonder to find one born five thousand
miles from England, endued with common sense.... He must be some
Englishman in disguise."--_The Citizen of the World; or a Series of
Letters from a Chinese Philosopher at London, to his Friends in the
East_, 1762, Letter xxxiii.]

[367] [_Vide ante_, Introduction to Canto IV., p. 315.]

[368] {324} [Antonio Canova, sculptor, 1757-1822; Vincenzo Monti,
1754-1828; Ugo Foscolo, 1776-1827 (see _Life_, p. 456, etc.); Ippolito
Pindemonte, 1753-1828 (see Letter to Murray, June 4, 1817), poets;
Ennius Quirinus Visconti, 1751-1818, the valuer of the Elgin marbles,
archaeologist; Giacomo Morelli, 1745-1819, bibliographer and scholar (the
architect Cosimo Morelli, born 1732, died in 1812); Leopoldo Conte de
Cicognara, 1767-1834, archaeologist; the Contessa Albrizzi, 1769?-1836,
authoress of _Ritratti di Uomini Illustri_ (see _Life_, pp. 331, 413,
etc.); Giuseppe Mezzofanti, 1774-1849, linguist; Angelo Mai (cardinal),
1782-1854, philologist; Andreas Moustoxides, 1787-1860, a Greek
archaeologist, who wrote in Italian; Francesco Aglietti (see _Life_, p.
378, etc.), 1757-1836; Andrea Vacca Berlinghieri, 1772-1826 (see _Life_,
p. 339).

For biographical essays on Monti, Foscolo, and Pindemonte, see "Essay on
the Present Literature of Italy" (Hobhouse's _Historical Illustrations
of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold_, 1818, pp. 347, _sq._). See, too,
_Italian Literature_, by R. Garnett, C.B., LL.D., 1898, pp. 333-337,
337-341, 341-342.]

[369] {325} [Shelley (notes M. Darmesteter), in his preface to the
_Prometheus Unbound_, "emploie le mot sans demander pardon." "The mass
of capabilities remains at every period materially the same; the
circumstances which awaken it to action perpetually change."
"Capability" in the sense of "undeveloped faculty or property; a
condition physical or otherwise, capable of being converted or turned to
use" (_N. Eng. Dict._), appertains rather to material objects. To apply
the term figuratively to the forces inherent in national character
savoured of a literary indecorum. Hence the apology.]

[370] [Addison, _Cato_, act v. sc. 1, line 3--

    "It must be so--_Plato_, thou reason'st well!--
    Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
    This longing after immortality?"]

[371] [Shelley chose this refrain as the motto to his unfinished lines
addressed to his infant son--

    "My lost William, thou in whom
      Some bright spirit lived----"]

[372] [Scott commented severely on this opprobrious designation of "the
great and glorious victory of Waterloo," in his critique on the Fourth
Canto, _Q. R._, No. xxxvii., April, 1818.]

[373] {326} [_The substance of some letters written by an Englishman
resident in Paris during the last Reign of the Emperor Napoleon_. 1816.
2 vols.]

[374] [In 1817.]

[375] {327}

        [Venice and La Mira on the Brenta.
               Copied, August, 1817.
    Begun, June 26. Finished, July 29th. MS. M.]

[376] [Byron sent the first stanza to Murray, July 1, 1817, "the shaft
of the column as a specimen." Gifford, Frere, and many more to whom
Murray "ventured to show it," expressed their approval (_Memoir of John
Murray_, i. 385).

"'The Bridge of Sighs,'" he explains (i.e. _Ponte de' Sospiri_), "is
that which divides, or rather joins, the palace of the Doge to the
prison of the state." Compare _The Two Foscari_, act iv. sc. 1--

               "In Venice '_but_'s' a traitor.
    But me no '_buts_,' unless you would pass o'er
    The Bridge which few repass."

This, however, is an anachronism. The Bridge of Sighs was built by
Antonio da Ponte, in 1597, more than a century after the death of
Francesco Foscari. "It is," says Mr. Ruskin, "a work of no merit and of
a late period, owing the interest it possesses chiefly to its pretty
name, and to the ignorant sentimentalism of Byron" (_Stones of Venice_,
1853, ii. 304; in. 359).]

[377] [Compare _Mysteries of Udolpho_, by Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, 1794, ii.
35, 36--

"Its terraces crowned with airy yet majestic fabrics ... appeared as if
they had been called up from the Ocean by the wand of an enchanter."]

[lb] {328} ----_throned on her Seventy Isles_.--[MS. M. altern. reading,
D.]

[378] Sabellicus, describing the appearance of Venice, has made use of
the above image, which would not be poetical were it not true.--"Quo fit
ut qui superne [ex specula aliqua eminentiore] urbem contempletur,
turritam telluris imaginem medio Oceano figuratam se putet inspicere."
[_De Venetae Urbis situ Narratio_, lib. i. _Ital. Ill. Script._, 1600, p.
4. Marcus Antonius Coccius Sabellicus (1436-1506) wrote, _inter alia_, a
_History of Venice_, published in folio in 1487, and _Rhapsodiae
Historiarum Enneades, a condito mundo, usque ad_ A.C. 1504. His
description of Venice (_vide supra_) was published after his death in
1527. Hofmann does not give him a good character: "Obiit A.C. 1506,
turpi morbo confectus, aetat. 70, relicto filio notho." But his [Greek:
Au)toepita/phion] implies that he was satisfied with himself.

    "Quem non res hominum, non omnis ceperat aetas,
        Scribentem capit haec Coccion urna brevis."


Cybele (sometimes written Cybelle and Cyb[=e]le), the "mother of the
Goddesses," was represented as wearing a mural crown--"coronamque
turritam gestare dicitur" (Albricus Phil., _De Imag. Deor._, xii.).
Venice with her tiara of proud towers is the earth-goddess Cybele,
having "suffered a sea-change."]

[lc] {329} _From spoils of many nations and the East_.--[MS. M., D.
erased.]

[379] ["Gems wrought into drinking-vessels, among which the least
precious were framed of turquoise, jasper, or amethyst ... unnumbered
jacinths, emeralds, sapphires, chrysolites, and topazes, and, lastly,
those matchless carbuncles which, placed on the High Altar of St.
Mark's, blazed with intrinsic light, and scattered darkness by their own
beams;--these are but a sample of the treasures which accrued to Venice"
(Villehardouin, lib. in. p. 129). (See _Sketches from Venetian History_,
1831, i. 161.)]

[380] [After the fall of Constantinople, in 1204, "the illustrious
Dandolo ... was permitted to tinge his buskins in the purple hue
distinctive of the Imperial Family, to claim exemption from all feudal
service to the Emperor, and to annex to the title of Doge of Venice the
proud style of Despot of Romania, and Lord of One-fourth and One-eighth
of the Roman Empire" (_ibid._, 1831, i. 167).]

[ld] _Monarchs sate down_----.--[D. erased.]

[381] [The gondoliers (see Hobhouse's note ii.) used to sing alternate
stanzas of the _Gerusalemme Liberata_, capping each other like the
shepherds in the _Bucolics_. The rival reciters were sometimes attached
to the same gondola; but often the response came from a passing
gondolier, a stranger to the singer who challenged the contest. Rogers,
in his _Italy_, laments the silence which greeted the swan-song of his
own gondolier--

                                 "He sung,
    As in the time when Venice was Herself,
    Of Tancred and Erminia. On our oars
    We rested; and the verse was verse divine!
    We could not err--Perhaps he was the last--
    For none took up the strain, none answer'd him;
    And, when he ceased, he left upon my ear
    A something like the dying voice of Venice!"
                                  _The Gondola_ (_Poems_, 1852, ii. 79).

Compare, too, Goethe's "Letters from Italy," October 6, 1786: "This
evening I bespoke the celebrated _song_ of the mariners, who chaunt
Tasso and Ariosto to melodies of their own. This must actually be
ordered, as it is not to be heard as a thing of course, but rather
belongs to the half-forgotten traditions of former times. I entered a
gondola by moonlight, with one _singer_ before and the other behind me.
They _sing_ their _song_, taking up the verses alternately....

"Sitting on the shore of an island, on the bank of a canal, or on the
side of a boat, a gondolier will sing away with a loud penetrating
voice--the multitude admire force above everything--anxious only to be
heard as far as possible. Over the silent mirror it travels
far."--_Travels in Italy_, 1883, p. 73.]

[le] {330} _The pleasure-place of all festivity_.--[MS. M.]

[382] {331} [The Rialto, or Rivo alto, "the middle group of islands
between the shore and the mainland," on the left of the Grand Canal, was
the site of the original city, and till the sixteenth century its formal
and legal designation. The Exchange, or Banco Giro, was held in the
piazza, opposite the church of San Giacomo, which stands at the head of
the canal to the north of the Ponto di Rialto. It was on the Rialto that
Antonio rated Shylock about his "usances." "What news on the Rialto?"
asks Solanio (_Merchant of Venice_, act i. sc. 3, line 102; act iii. sc.
1, line 1). Byron uses the word symbolically for Venetian commerce.]

[383] [Pierre is the hero of Otway's _Venice Preserved_. Shylock and the
Moor stand where they did, but what of Pierre? If the name of
Otway--"master of the tragic art"--and the title of his
masterpiece--_Venice Preserved, or The Plot Discovered_ (first played
1682)--are not wholly forgotten, Pierre and Monimia and Belvidera have
"decayed," and are memorable chiefly as favourite characters of great
actors and actresses. Genest notes twenty revivals of the _Venice
Preserved_, which was played as late as October 27, 1837, when Macready
played "Pierre," and Phelps "Jaffier." "No play that I know," says
Hartley Coleridge (Essays, 1851, ii. 56), "gains so much by acting as
_Venice Preserved_.... Miss O'Neill, I well remember, made me weep with
Belvidera; but she would have done the same had she spoken in an unknown
tongue." Byron, who professed to be a "great admirer of Otway," in a
letter to Hodgson, August 22, 1811 (_Letters_, 1898, i. 339, note 1),
alludes to some lines from _Venice Preserved_ (act ii. sc. 3), which
seem to have taken his fancy. Two lines spoken by Belvidera (act ii.),
if less humorous, are more poetical--

                                   "Oh, the day
    Too soon will break, and wake us to our sorrow;
    Come, come to bed, and bid thy cares Good night!"]

[384] {332} [Compare _The Dream_, i.--

                         "The mind can make
    Substance, and people planets of its own
    With beings brighter than have been, and give
    A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh."

The ideal personages of the poet's creations have the promise of
immortality. The ideal forms which people his imagination transfigure
and supplant the dull and grievous realities of his mortal being and
circumstance; but there are "things" more radiant, more enchanting
still, the "strong realities" of the heart and soul--hope, love, joy.
But they pass! We wake, and lo! it was a dream.]

[lf] _Denies to the dull trick of life_----.--[MS. erased.]

[385]

    ["In youth I wrote because my mind was full,
    And now because I feel it growing dull."
                                        _Don Juan_, Canto XIV. stanza x.

In youth the poet takes refuge, in the ideal world, from the crowd and
pressure of blissful possibilities; and in age, when hope is beyond
hope, he peoples the solitude with beings of the mind.]

[lg] {333} _And this worn feeling_----.--[Editions 1816-1891.]

[lh]
                           / _springs_ \
_And, may be, that which_ {             } ----.--[MS. M.]
                           \ _spreads_ /

[li] _Outshines our Fairies--things in shape and hue_.--[MS. M.]

[lj] {334} ----_and though I leave behind_.--[MS. M.]

[lk] _And make myself a home beside a softer sea_.--[MS. erased.]

[ll]
                                ----_to pine_
    _Albeit is not my nature, and I twine_.--[MS. M. erased]

[386] [In another mood he wrote to Murray (June 7, 1819), "I trust they
won't think of 'pickling, and bringing me home to Clod or Blunderbuss
Hall' [see _The Rivals_, act v. sc. 3]. I am sure my bones would not
rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of that
country." In this half-humorous outburst he deprecates, or pretends to
deprecate, the fate which actually awaited his remains--burial in the
family vault at Hucknall Torkard. There is, of course, no reference to a
public funeral and a grave in Westminster Abbey. In the next stanza (x.
line 1) he assumes the possibility of his being excluded from the Temple
of Fame; but there is, perhaps, a tacit reference to burial in the
Abbey. If the thought, as is probable, occurred to him, he veils it in a
metaphor.]

[387] {335} The answer of the mother of Brasidas, the Lacedaemonian
general, to the strangers who praised the memory of her son.

[[Greek: Brasi/das ga\r e~)n me\n a)ne\r a)gatho\s], polloi\ d'
e)kei/nou krei/ssones e)n te~| Spa/rte|]. Plutarchi _Moralia,
Apophthegmata Laconica_ (Tauchnitz, 1820), ii. 127.]

[lm] _The widowed Adriatic mourns her Doge_.--[MS. M erased.]

[388] [The Bucentaur, "the state barge in which, on Ascension Day, the
Doge of Venice used to wed the Adriatic by dropping a ring into it," was
broken up and rifled by the French in 1797 (note, by Rev. E. C. Owen,
_Childe Harold_, 1897, p. 197).

Compare Goethe's "Letters from Italy," October 5, 1786: "To give a
notion of the Bucentaur in one word, I should say that it is a
state-galley. The older one, of which we still have drawings, justified
this appellation still more than the present one, which, by its
splendour, makes us forget the original....

"The vessel is all ornament; we ought to say, it is overladen with
ornament; it is altogether one piece of gilt carving, for no other
use.... This state-galley is a good index to show what the Venetians
were, and what they considered themselves."--_Travels in Italy_, 1883,
p. 68.

Compare, too, Wordsworth's sonnet "On the Extinction of the Venetian
Republic"--

    "She was a maiden City, bright and free;
      No guile seduced, no force could violate;
      And when she took unto herself a Mate,
    She must espouse the everlasting Sea."
                                                 _Works_, 1888, p. 180.]

[389] {336} [For "Lion," see Hobhouse's note iii. The "Horses of St.
Mark" (_vide post_, stanza xiii. line 1), which, according to history or
legend, Augustus "conveyed" from Alexandria to Rome, Constantine from
Rome to Constantinople, Dandolo, in 1204, from Constantinople to Venice,
Napoleon, in 1797, from Venice to Paris, and which were restored to the
Venetians by the Austrians in 1815, were at one time supposed to belong
to the school of Lysippus. Haydon, who published, in 1817, a curious
etching of "The Elgin Horse's Head," placed side by side with the "Head
of one of the Horses ... now at Venice," subscribes the following
critical note: "It is astonishing that the great principles of nature
should have been so nearly lost in the time between Phidias and
Lysippus. Compare these two heads. The Elgin head is all truth, the
other all manner." Hobhouse pronounces the "Horses" to be "irrevocably
Chian," but modern archaeologists regard both "school" and exact period
as uncertain.]

[ln] _Even on the pillar_----.--[MS. M., D. erased.]

[390] [According to Milman (_Hist. of Lat. Christianity_, v. 144), the
humiliation of Barbarossa at the Church of St. Mark took place on
Tuesday, July 24, 1177. _A propos_ of the return of the Pope and Emperor
to the ducal palace, he quotes "a curious passage from a newly recovered
poem, by Godfrey of Viterbo, an attendant on the Emperor. So great was
the press in the market that the aged Pope was thrown down--

      "Jam Papa perisset in arto,
    Caesar ibi vetulum ni relevasset eum."

"This," he remarks, "is an odd contrast of real life with romance."]

[391] {337} ["Oh, for one hour of Dundee!" was the exclamation of a
Highland chieftain at the battle of Sheriff-muir, November 13, 1715
(Scott's _Tales of a Grandfather_, III. Series, chap. x.; _Prose Works_,
Paris, 1830, vii. 768). Wordsworth makes the words his own in the
sonnet, "In the Pass of Killicranky (an Invasion being expected,
October, 1803)" (_Works_, 1888, p. 201)--

    "O for a single hour of that Dundee,
    Who on that day the word of onset gave!"

And Coleridge, in a letter to Wordsworth (February 8, 1804), thinking,
perhaps, less of the chieftain than the sonnet, exclaims, "'Oh for one
hour of Dundee!' How often shall I sigh, 'Oh for one hour of _The
Recluse!_'"--an aspiration which Byron would have worded differently.]

[lo]
    ----_who quelled the imperial foe_.--[MS. M. erased.]
    ----_empire's all-conquering foe_.--[MS. M.]

[392] [Compare _Marino Faliero_, act iv. sc. 2, lines 157, 158--

    "Doge Dandolo survived to ninety summers,
    To vanquish empires, and refuse their crown."

"The vessels that bore the bishops of Soissons and Troyes, the
_Paradise_ and the _Pilgrim_, were the first which grappled with the
Towers of Constantinople [April, 1204].... The bishops of Soissons and
of Troyes would have placed the blind old Doge Dandolo on the imperial
throne; his election was opposed by the Venetians.... But probably the
wise patriotism of Dandolo himself, and his knowledge of the Venetian
mind, would make him acquiesce in the loss of an honour so dangerous to
his country.... Venice might have sunk to an outpost, as it were, of the
Eastern Empire."--Milman's _Hist. of Lat. Christianity_, v. 350, 353,
354.]

[393] {338} [Hobhouse's version (see _Hist. Notes_, No. vi.) of the war
of Chioggia is not borne out by modern research. For example, the long
speech which Chinazzo attributes to the Genoese admiral, Pietro Doria,
is probably mythical. The actual menace of the "bitting and bridling the
horses of St. Mark" is assigned by other historians to Francesco
Carrara. Doria was not killed by a stone bullet from the cannon named
The Trevisara, but by the fall of the Campanile in Chioggia, which had
been struck by the bullet. (_Venice, an Historical Sketch of the
Republic_, by Horatio F. Brown, 1893, pp. 225-234.)]

[lp] ----_into whence she rose_.--[Editions 1818-1891.]

[394] [Compare the opening lines of Byron's _Ode on Venice_--

    "Oh Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls
      Are level with the waters, there shall be
    A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls,
      A loud lament along the sweeping sea!"

Shelley, too, in his _Lines written among the Euganean Hills_, bewailed
the approaching doom of the "sea-girt city." But threatened cities, like
threatened men, live long, and since its annexation to Italy, in 1866, a
revival of trade and the re-establishment of the arsenal have brought
back a certain measure of prosperity.]

[lq] {339} _Even in Destruction's heart_----.--[MS. M.]

[395] That is, the Lion of St. Mark, the standard of the republic, which
is the origin of the word Pantaloon--Piantaleone, Pantaleon, Pantaloon.

[The Venetians were nicknamed Pantaloni. Byron, who seems to have relied
on the authority of a Venetian glossary, assumes that the "by-word" may
be traced to the patriotism of merchant-princes "who were reputed to
hoist flags with the Venetian lion waving to the breeze on every rock
and barren headland of Levantine waters" (_Memoirs of Count Carlo
Gozzi_, translated by J. Addington Symonds, 1890, Introd. part ii. p.
44), and that in consequence of this spread-eagleism the Venetians were
held up to scorn by their neighbours as "planters of the lion"--a
reproach which conveyed a tribute to their prowess. A more probable
explanation is that the "by-word," with its cognates "Pantaleone," the
typical masque of Italian comedy--progenitor of our "Pantaloon;" and
"pantaloni," "pantaloons," the typical Venetian costume--derive their
origin from the baptismal name "Pantaleone," frequently given to
Venetian children, in honour of St. Pantaleon of Nicomedia, physician
and martyr, whose cult was much in vogue in Northern Italy, and
especially in Venice, where his relics, which "coruscated with
miracles," were the object of peculiar veneration.

St. Pantaleon was known to the Greek Church as [Greek: Pantelee/mon],
that is, the "all-pitiful;" and in Latin his name is spelled
_Pantaleymon_ and _Pantaleemon_. Hagiologists seem to have been puzzled,
but the compiler of the _Acta Sanctorum_, for July 27, St. Pantaleon's
Day in the Roman calendar (xxxiii. 397-426), gives the preference to
Pantaleon, and explains that he was hailed as Pantaleemon by a divine
voice at the hour of his martyrdom, which proclaimed "eum non amplius
esse vocandum Pantaleonem, sed Pantaleemonem."

The accompanying woodcut is the reproduction of the frontispiece of a
black-letter tract, composed by Augustinus de Crema, in honour of the
"translation" of one of the sainted martyr's arms to Crema, in Lombardy.
It was printed at Cremona, in 1493.]

[396] {340} Shakespeare is my authority for the word "Ottomite" for
Ottoman. "Which Heaven hath forbid the Ottomites" (see _Othello_, act
ii. sc. 3, line 161).--[MS. D.]

[397] ["On 29th September (1669) Candia, and the island of Candia,
passed away from Venice, after a defence which had lasted twenty-five
years, and was unmatched for bravery in the annals of the
Republic."--_Venice, an Historical Sketch_, by Horatio F. Brown, 1893,
p. 378.]

[398] ["The battle of Lepanto [October 7, 1571] lasted five hours....
The losses are estimated at 8000 Christians and 30,000 Turks.... The
chief glory of the victory rests with Sebastian Veniero and the
Venetians."--_Venice, etc._, 1893, p. 368.]

[399] {341} [The story is told in Plutarch's _Life of Nicias_, cap.
xxix. (_Plut. Vit_., Lipsiae, 1813, v. 154). "The dramas of Euripides
were so popular throughout all Sicily, that those Athenian prisoners who
knew ... portions of them, won the affections of their masters.... I
cannot refrain from mentioning this story, though I fear its
trustworthiness ... is much inferior to its pathos and
interest."--Grote's _History of Greece_, 1869, vii. 186.]

[lr] _And won her hopeless children from afar_.--[MS. M., D. erased.]

[ls]
      _And sends him ransomeless to bless his poet's strains_.--[MS. M.]
  or, _And sends him home to bless the poet for his strains_.--
                                                        [MS. D. erased.]

[lt] {342} _Thy love of Tassa's verse should cut the knot_.--[MS. M.]

[400] [By the Treaty of Paris, May 3, 1814, Lombardy and Venice, which
since the battle of Austerlitz had formed part of the French kingdom of
Naples, were once more handed over to Austria. Great Britain was
represented by "a bungler even in its disgusting trade" (_Don Juan_,
Dedication, stanza xiv.), Lord Castlereagh.]

[lu] ----_for come it will and shall_.--[MS. M., D. erased.]

[lv] _And Otway's--Radcliffe's--Schiller's--Shakspeare's art_.--[MS. M.,
D.]

[401] Venice Preserved; Mysteries of Udolpho; The Ghost-Seer, or
Armenian; The Merchant of Venice; Othello.

[For _Venice Preserved, vide ante_, stanza iv. line 7, note. To the
_Mysteries of Udolpho_ Byron was indebted for more than one suggestion,
_vide ante_, stanza i. line 4, note, and _Mysteries, etc._, London,
1794, 2. 39: "The air bore no sounds, but those of sweetness echoing
along each margin of the canal and from gondolas on its surface, while
groups of masks were seen dancing on the moonlit terraces, and seemed
almost to realize the romance of fairy-land." The scene of Schiller's
_Der Geisterseher_ (_Werke_, 1819, x. 97, _sq._) is laid at Venice.
"This [the Doge's palace] was the thing that most struck my imagination
in Venice--more than the Rialto, which I visited for the sake of
Shylock; and more, too, than Schiller's _Armenian_, a novel which took a
great hold of me when a boy. It is also called the _Ghost Seer_, and I
never walked down St. Mark's by moonlight without thinking of it, and
'at nine o'clock he died!' [For allusion to the same incident, see
Rogers's _Italy_ (_Poems_, 1852, ii. 73).] But I hate things _all
fiction_; and therefore the _Merchant_ and _Othello_ have no great
associations for me: but _Pierre_ has."--Letter to Murray, Venice, April
2, 1817. (For an earlier reference to the _Ghost-seer_, see _Oscar of
Alva: Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 131, note.)]

[lw] {344} _Though I have found her thus we will not part_.--[MS. M.]

[402] [Shelley, in his _Lines written among the Euganean Hills_, allows
to Venice one lingering glory "one remembrance more sublime"--

    "That a tempest-cleaving swan
    Of the songs of Albion,
    Driven from his ancestral streams
    By the might of evil dreams,
    Found a nest in thee; and Ocean
    Welcomed him with such emotion,
    That its joy grew his, and sprung
    From his lips like music flung
    O'er a mighty thunder-fit,
    Chastening terror."]

[lx]
    _The Past at least is mine--whate'er may come_.
    _But when the heart is full the lips must needs lie dumb_.--
                                                [MS. M. erased.]
    ----_or else mine now were cold and dumb_.--[MS. M.]

[403] {344} _Tannen_ is the plural of _tanne_, a species of fir peculiar
to the Alps, which only thrives in very rocky parts, where scarcely soil
sufficient for its nourishment can be found. On these spots it grows to
a greater height than any other mountain tree.

[Byron did not "know German" (Letter to Murray, June 7, 1820), and he
may, as Mr. Tozer suggests, have supposed that the word "tannen" denoted
not "fir trees" generally, but a particular kind of fir tree. He refers,
no doubt, to the Ebeltanne (_Abies pectinata_), which is not a native of
this country, but grows at a great height on the Swiss Alps and
throughout the mountainous region of Central Europe.]

[ly] _But there are minds which as the Tannen grow_.--[MS. erased.]

[lz] _Of shrubless granite_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[ma] {345} _In rocks and unsupporting places_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[404] [Cicero, _De Finibus_, II. xxix., controverts the maxim of
Epicurus, that a great sorrow is necessarily of short duration, a
prolonged sorrow necessarily light: "Quod autem magnum dolorem brevem
longinquum levem esse dicitis, id non intelligo quale sit, video enim et
magnos et eosdem bene longinquos dolores." But the sentiment is adopted
by Montaigne (1. xiv.), ed. 1580, p. 66: "Tu ne la sentiras guiere long
temps, si tu la sens trop; elle mettra fin a soy ou a toy; l'un et
l'autre revient a un." ("Si tu ne la portes; elle t'emportera," note.)
And again by Sir Thomas Brown, "Sense endureth no extremities, and
sorrows destroy us or themselves" (see Darmesteter, _Childe Harold_,
1882, p. 193). Byron is not refining upon these conceits, but is drawing
upon his own experience. Suffering which does not kill is subject to
change, and "continueth not in one stay;" but it remains within call,
and returns in an hour when we are not aware.]

[405] {346} [Compare Bishop Blougram's lament on the instability of
unfaith--

    "Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch,
    A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
    A chorus-ending from Euripides,--
    And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears.

           *       *       *       *       *

    To rap and knock and enter in our soul,
    Take hands and dance there."
                             Browning's _Poetical Works_, 1869, v. 268.]

[mb]
        _A tone of music--eventide in spring_.
    or, ----_twilight--eve in spring_.--[MS. M, erased.]

[406] {347}
[Compare Scott's _Lady of the Lake_, I. xxxiii. lines 21, 22--

    "They come, in dim procession led,
    The cold, the faithless, and the dead."]

[407] {348} ["Friuli's mountains" are the Julian Alps, which lie to the
north of Trieste and north-east of Venice, "the hoar and aery Alps
towards the north," which Julian and Count Maddalo (_vide post_, p. 349)
saw from the Lido. But the Alpine height along which "a sea of glory"
streamed--"the peak of the far Rhaetian hill" (stanza xxviii. line
4)--must lie to the westward of Venice, in the track of the setting
sun.]

[408] The above description may seem fantastical or exaggerated to those
who have never seen an Oriental or an Italian sky; yet it is but a
literal and hardly sufficient delineation of an August evening (the
eighteenth), as contemplated in one of many rides along the banks of the
Brenta, near La Mira.

[Compare Shelley's _Julian and Maddalo_
(_Poetical Works_, 1895, i. 343)--

    "How beautiful is sunset, when the glow
    Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee,
    Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!
           *       *       *       *       *
                                ... We stood
    Looking upon the evening, and the flood,
    Which lay between the city and the shore,
    Paved with the image of the sky ... the hoar
    And aery Alps towards the north appeared,
    Thro' mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark reared
    Between the East and West; and half the sky
    Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry,
    Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew
    Down the steep West into a wondrous hue,
    Brighter than burning gold."]

[409] {349} [The Brenta rises in Tyrol, and flowing past Padua falls
into the Lagoon at Fusina. Mira, or La Mira, where Byron "colonized" in
the summer of 1817, and again in 1819, is on the Brenta, some six or
seven miles inland from the Lagoon.]

[410] {350} [The Abbe de Sade, in his _Memoires pour la vie de
Petrarque_ (1767), affirmed, on the strength of documentary evidence,
that the Laura of the sonnets, born de Noves, was the wife of his
ancestor, Hugo de Sade, and the mother of a large family. "Gibbon," says
Hobhouse (note viii.), "called the abbe's memoirs a 'labour of love'
(see _Decline and Fall_, chap. lxx. note 1), and followed him with
confidence and delight;" but the poet James Beattie (in a letter to the
Duchess of Gordon, August 17, 1782) disregarded them as a "romance,"
and, more recently, "an ingenious Scotchman" [Alexander Fraser Tytler
(Lord Woodhouselee)], in an _Historical and Critical Essay on the Life
and Character of Petrarch_ (1810), had re-established "the ancient
prejudice" in favour of Laura's virginity. Hobhouse appears, but his
note is somewhat ambiguous, to adopt the view of "the ingenious
Scotchman." To pass to contemporary criticism, Dr. Garnett, in his
_History of Italian Literature_, 1898 (pp. 66-71), without attempting to
settle "the everlasting controversy," regards the abbe's documentary
evidence as for the most part worthless, and, relying on the internal
evidence of the sonnets and the dialogue, and on the facts of Petrarch's
life as established by his correspondence (a complete series of
Petrarch's letters was published by Giuseppe Fracassetti, in 1859),
inclines to the belief that it was the poet's status as a cleric, and
not a husband and family, which proved a bar to his union with Laura.
With regard, however, to "one piece of documentary evidence," namely,
Laura de Sade's will, Dr. Garnett admits that, if this were producible,
and, on being produced, proved genuine, the coincidence of the date of
the will, April 3, 1348, with a note in Petrarch's handwriting, dated
April 6, 1348, which records the death of Laura, would almost establish
the truth of the abbe's theory "in the teeth of all objections."]

[411] {351} ["He who would seek, as I have done, the last memorials of
the life and death of Petrarch in that sequestered Euganean village
[Arqua is about twelve miles south-west of Padua], will still find them
there. A modest house, apparently of great antiquity, passes for his
last habitation. A chair in which he is said to have died is shown
there. And if these details are uncertain, there is no doubt that the
sarcophagus of red marble, supported on pillars, in the churchyard of
Arqua, contains, or once contained, his mortal remains. Lord Byron and
Mr. Hobhouse visited the spot more than sixty years ago in a sceptical
frame of mind; for doubts had at that time been thrown on the very
existence of Laura; and the varied details of the poet's life, which are
preserved with so much fidelity in his correspondence, were almost
forgotten."--_Petrarch_, by H. Reeve, 1879, p. 14. In a letter to
Hoppner, September 12, 1817, Byron says that he was moved "to turn aside
in a second visit to Arqua." Two years later, October, 1819, he in vain
persuaded Moore "to spare a day or two to go with me to Arqua. I should
like," he said, "to visit that tomb with you--a pair of poetical
pilgrims--eh, Tom, what say you?" But "Tom" was for Rome and Lord John
Russell, and ever afterwards bewailed the lost opportunity "with wonder
and self-reproach" (_Life_, p. 423; _Life_, by Karl Elze, 1872, p.
235).]

[mc] {352} _His mansion and his monument_----.--[MS. M., D. erased.]

[md] ----_formed his sepulchral fane_.--[MS. M.]

[412]
[Compare Wordsworth's _Ode_, "Intimations of," etc., xi. lines 9-11--

    "The clouds that gather round the setting sun
    Do take a sober colouring from an eye
    That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality."]

[413] ["Euganeis istis in collibus ... domum parvam sed delectabilem et
honestam struxi ... hic quanquam aeger corpore, tranquillus animo frater
dego, sine tumultibus, sine erroribus, sine curis, legens semper et
scribens, Deum laudans."--Petrarca, _Epistolae Seniles_, xiv. 6 (_Opera_,
Basileae, 1581, p. 938).

See, too, the notes to _Arqua_ (Rogers's _Italy: Poems_, 1852, ii.
105-109), which record the pilgrimage of other poets, Boccaccio and
Alfieri, to the great laureate's tomb; and compare with Byron's stanzas
the whole of that exquisite cameo, delicate and yet durable as if graved
on chalcedony.]

[me] {353} _Society's the school where taught to live._--[MS. M.
erased.]

[mf] ----_the soul with God must strive_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[414] The struggle is to the full as likely to be with demons as with
our better thoughts. Satan chose the wilderness for the temptation of
our Saviour. And our unsullied John Locke preferred the presence of a
child to complete solitude.

["He always chose to have company with him, if it were only a child; for
he loved children, and took pleasure in talking with those that had been
well trained" (_Life of John Locke_, by H. R. Fox-Bourne, ii. 537). Lady
Masham's daughter Esther, and "his wife" Betty Clarke, aged eleven
years, were among his child-friends.]

[mg] {354} _Which dies not nor can ever pass away_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[mh] _The tomb a hell--and life one universal gloom_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[415] [Byron passed a single day at Ferrara in April, 1817; went over
the castle, cell, etc., and a few days after wrote _The Lament of
Tasso_, the manuscript of which is dated April 20, 1817. The Fourth
Canto of _Childe Harold_ was not begun till the end of June in the same
year.]

[416] [Of the ancient family of Este, Marquesses of Tuscany, Azzo V. was
the first who obtained power in Ferrara in the twelfth century. A remote
descendant, Nicolo III. (b. 1384, d. 1441), founded the University of
Parma. He married for his second wife Parisina Malatesta (the heroine of
Byron's _Parisina_, published February, 1816), who was beheaded for
adultery in 1425. His three sons, Lionel (d. 1450), the friend of Poggio
Bracciolini; Borso (d. 1471), who established printing in his states;
and Ercolo (d. 1505), the friend of Boiardo,--were all patrons of
letters and fosterers of the Renaissance. Their successor, Alphonso I.
(1486-1534), who married Lucrezia Borgia, 1502, honoured himself by
attaching Ariosto to his court, and it was his grandson, Alphonso II.
(d. 1597), who first befriended and afterwards, on the score of lunacy,
imprisoned Tasso in the Hospital of Sant' Anna (1579-86).]

[417] {355} [It is a fact that Tasso was an involuntary inmate of the
Hospital of Sant' Anna at Ferrara for seven years and four months--from
March, 1579, to July, 1586--but the causes, the character, and the place
of his imprisonment have been subjects of legend and misrepresentation.
It has long been known and acknowledged (see Hobhouse's _Historical
Illustrations_, 1818, pp. 5-31) that a real or feigned passion for Duke
Alphonso's sister, Leonora d'Este, was not the cause or occasion of his
detention, and that the famous cell or dungeon ("nine paces by six, and
about seven high") was not "the original place of the poet's
confinement." It was, as Shelley says (see his letter to Peacock,
November 7, 1818), "a very decent dungeon;" but it was not Tasso's. The
setting of the story was admitted to be legendary, but the story itself,
that a poet was shut up in a madhouse because a vindictive magnate
resented his love of independence and impatience of courtly servitude,
was questioned, only to be reasserted as historical. The publication of
Tasso's letters by Guasti, in 1853, a review of Tasso's character and
career in Symonds's _Renaissance in Italy_, and, more recently, Signor
Angelo Solerti's monumental work, _Vita di Torquato Tasso_ (1895), which
draws largely upon the letters of contemporaries, the accounts of the
ducal court, and other documentary evidence, have in a great measure
exonerated the duke at the expense of the unhappy poet himself. Briefly,
Tasso's intrigues with rival powers--the Medici at Florence, the papal
court, and the Holy Office at Bologna--aroused the alarm and suspicion
of the duke, whilst his general demeanour and his outbursts of violence
and temper compelled, rather than afforded, a pretext for his
confinement. Before his final and fatal return to Ferrara, he had been
duly warned that he must submit to be treated as a person of disordered
intellect, and that if he continued to throw out hints of designs upon
his life and of persecution in high places, he would be banished from
the ducal court and dominions. But return he would, and at an
inauspicious moment, when the duke was preoccupied with the ceremonies
and festivities of a third marriage. No one attended to him or took heed
of his arrival; and, to quote his own words, "in a fit of madness" he
broke out into execrations of the ducal court and family, and of the
people of Ferrara. For the offence he was shut up in the Hospital of
Sant' Anna, and for many months treated as an ordinary lunatic. Of the
particulars of his treatment during these first eight months of his
confinement, apart from Tasso's own letters, there is no evidence. The
accounts of the hospital are lost, and the _Libri di spesa_ (_R. Arch.
di Stato in Modena_; _Camer. Ducale: Casa_; _Amministrazione_, Solerti,
iii. _Docu_. 47) do not commence till November 20, 1579. Two years
later, the _Libri di spenderia_ (Solerti, in. _Docu_. 51), from January,
1582, onward, show that he was put on a more generous diet; and it is
known that a certain measure of liberty and other indulgences were
gradually accorded. There can, however, be little doubt that for many
months his food was neglected and medical attendance withheld. His
statement, that he was denied the rites of the Church, cannot be
gainsaid. He was regarded as a lunatic, and, as such, he would not be
permitted either to make his confession or to communicate. Worse than
all, there was the terrible solitude. "E sovra tutto," he writes (May,
1580), "m'affligge la solitudine, mia crudele e natural nimica." No
wonder the attacks of delirium, the "unwonted lights," the conference
with a familiar spirit, followed in due course. Byron and Shelley were
ignorant of the facts; and we know that their scorn and indignation were
exaggerated and misplaced. But the "pity of it" remains, that the grace
and glory of his age was sacrificed to ignorance and fear, if not to
animosity and revenge. (See _Tasso_, by E. J. Hasell; _History of the
Italian Renaissance_, by J. A. Symonds; _Quart. Rev._, October, 1895,
No. 364, art. x.; _Vita di Torquato Tasso_, 1895, i. 312-314, 410-412,
etc.)]

[mi] {357} _And thou for no one useful purpose born_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[418] [Solerti (_Vita_, i. 418) combats the theory advanced by Hobhouse
(see _note_ x.), that Lionardo Salviati, in order to curry favour with
Alphonso, was responsible for "the opposition which the Jerusalem
encountered from the Cruscan Academy." He assigns their unfavourable
criticism to literary sentiment or prejudice, and not to personal
animosity or intrigue. The _Gerusalemme Liberata_ was dedicated to the
glory of the house of Este; and, though the poet was in disgrace, the
duke was not to be propitiated by an attack upon the poem. Moreover,
Salviati did not publish his theses in his own name, but under a _nom de
guerre_, "L'Infarinato."]

[mj] {358} _And baffled Gaul whose rancour could allow_.--[MS. M.
erased.]

[mk] _Which grates upon the teeth_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[419] [Hobhouse, in his note x., quotes Boileau, but not in full. The
passage runs thus--

    "Tous les jours, a la cour, un sot de qualite
    Peut juger de travers avec impunite,
    A Malherbe, a Racan, prefere Theophile,
    Et le clinquant du Tasse a tout l'or de Virgile."

Perhaps he divined that the phrase, "un sot de qualite," might glance
back on a "noble author," who was about to admit that he could not
savour Horace, and who turned aside from Mantua and memories of Virgil
to visit Ferrara and the "cell" where Tasso was "encaged." (See
Darmesteter's _Notes to Childe Harold_, pp. 201, 217.)

If "the Youth with brow serene," as Hugo calls him, had lived to read
_Dedain. A Lord Byron, en_ 1811, he would have passed a somewhat
different criticism on French poetry in general--

    "En vain vos legions l'environnent sans nombre,
    Il n'a qu'a se lever pour couvrir de son ombre
         A la fois tous vos fronts;
    Il n'a qu'a dire un mot pour couvrir vos voix greles,
    Comme un char en passant couvre le bruit des ailes
         De mille moucherons!"
                              _Les Feuilles d'Automne_, par Victor Hugo,
                                           Bruxelles, 1833, pp. 59, 63.]

[ml] {359} _Could mount into a mind like thine_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[mm] ----_they would not form the Sun_.--[MS. M.]

[420] [In a letter to Murray (August 7, 1817) Byron throws out a hint
that Scott might not like being called "the Ariosto of the North," and
Murray seems to have caught at the suggestion. "With regard to 'the
Ariosto of the North,'" rejoins Byron (September 17, 1817), "surely
their themes, Chivalry, war, and love, were as like as can be; and as to
the compliment, if you knew what the Italians think of Ariosto, you
would not hesitate about that.... If you think Scott will dislike it,
say so, and I will expunge." Byron did not know that when Scott was at
college at Edinburgh he had "had the audacity to produce a composition
in which he weighed Homer against Ariosto, and pronounced him wanting in
the balance," or that he "made a practice of reading through ... the
_Orlando_ of Ariosto once every year" (see _Memoirs of the Life, etc._,
1871, pp. 12, 747); but the parallel had suggested itself. The key-note
of "the harpings of the north," the chivalrous strain of "shield, lance,
and brand, and plume and scarf," of "gentle courtesy," of "valour,
lion-mettled lord," which the "Introduction to _Marmion_" preludes, had
been already struck in the opening lines of the _Orlando Furioso_--

    "Le Donne, i Cavalier', l'arme, gli amori,
    Le cortesie, l'audaci imprese io canto."

Scott, we may be assured, was neither disconcerted nor uplifted by the
parallel. Many years before (July 6, 1812), Byron had been at pains to
inform him that so august a critic as the Prince Regent "preferred you
to every bard past and present," and "spoke alternately of Homer and
yourself." Of the "placing" and unplacing of poets there is no end.
Byron had already been sharply rebuked by the _Edinburgh Review_ for
describing _Christabel_ as a "wild and singularly original and beautiful
poem," and his appreciation of Scott provoked the expostulation of a
friendlier critic. "Walter Scott," wrote Francis Hodgson, in his
anonymous _Monitor of Childe Harold_ (1818), "(_credite posteri_, or
rather _praeposteri_), is designated in the Fourth Canto of _Childe
Harold_ as 'the Northern Ariosto,' and (droller still) Ariosto is
denominated 'the Southern Scott.' This comes of mistaking
horse-chestnuts for chestnut horses."]

[421] {361} The two stanzas xlii. and xliii. are, with the exception of
a line or two, a translation of the famous sonnet of Filicaja:--"Italia,
Italia, O tu, cui feo la sorte!"--_Poesie Toscane_ 1823, p. 149.

    ["Italia, Italia, o tu cui feo la sorte
      Dono infelice di bellezza, ond'hai
      Funesta dote d'infiniti guai
      Che in fronte scritti per gran doglia porte:
    Deh fossi tu men bella, o almen piu forte,
      Onde assai piu ti paventasse, o assai
      T'amasse men, chi del tuo bello ai rai
      Par che si strugga, e pur ti sfida a morte,
    Che or giu dall' Alpi non vedrei torrenti
      Scender d'armati, ne di sangue tinta
      Bever l'onda del Po gallici armenti;
    Ne te vedrei, del non tuo ferro cinta,
      Pugnar col braccio di straniere genti,
      Per servir sempre, o vincitrice, o vinta."]

[mn]
    _And on thy brow in characters of flame_
    _To write the words of sorrow and of shame_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[mo]
                     ----_unbetrayed_
    _To death by thy vain charms_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[422] {362} The celebrated letter of Servius Sulpicius to Cicero, on the
death of his daughter, describes as it then was, and now is, a path
which I often traced in Greece, both by sea and land, in different
journeys and voyages. "On my return from Asia, as I was sailing from
AEgina towards Megara, I began to contemplate the prospect of the
countries around me: AEgina was behind, Megara before me; Piraeus on the
right, Corinth on the left: all which towns, once famous and
flourishing, now lie overturned and buried in their ruins. Upon this
sight, I could not but think presently within myself, Alas! how do we
poor mortals fret and vex ourselves if any of our friends happen to die
or be killed, whose life is yet so short, when the carcasses of so many
noble cities lie here exposed before me in one view."--See Middleton's
_Cicero_, 1823, ii. 144.

[The letter is to be found in Cicero's _Epist. ad Familiares_, iv. 5.
Byron, on his return from Constantinople on July 14, 1810, left Hobhouse
at the Island of Zea, and made his own way to Athens. As the vessel
sailed up the Saronic Gulf, he would observe the "prospect" which
Sulpicius describes.]

[mp] {363} _These carcases of cities_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[423] ["By the events of the years 1813 and 1814, the house of Austria
gained possession of all that belonged to her in Italy, either before or
in consequence of the Peace of Campo Formio (October 17, 1797). A small
portion of Ferrara, to the north of the Po (which had formed part of the
Papal dominions), was ceded to her, as were the Valteline, Bormio,
Chiavenna, and the ancient republic of Ragusa. The emperor constituted
all these possessions into a separate and particular state, under the
title of the kingdom of Venetian Lombardy."--Koch's _History of Europe_,
p. 234.]

[424] {364} It is Poggio, who, looking from the Capitoline hill upon
ruined Rome, breaks forth into the exclamation, "Ut nunc omni decore
nudata, prostrata jaceat, instar Gigantei cadaveris corrupti atque
undique exesi."

[See _De Fortunae Varietate_, ap. _Nov. Thes. Ant. Rom._, ap. Sallengre,
i. 502.]

[425] [Compare Milton, _Sonnet_ xxii.--

                    " ... my noble task,
    Of which all Europe talks from side to side."]

[mq] {365}
      _Where Luxury might willingly be born_.
    _And buried Learning looks forth into fresher morn_,--
                                           [MS. M. erased.]

[426] [The wealth which permitted the Florentine nobility to indulge
their taste for modern, that is, refined luxury was derived from success
in trade. For example, Giovanni de' Medici (1360-1428), the father of
Cosmo and great-grand-father of Lorenzo de' Medici, was a banker and
Levantine merchant. As for the Renaissance, to say nothing of Petrarch
of Florentine parentage, two of the greatest Italian scholars and
humanists--Ficino, born A.D. 1430, and Poliziano, born 1454--were
Florentines; and Poggio was born A.D. 1380, at Terra Nuova on Florentine
soil.]

[mr] _There, too, the Goddess breathes in stone and fills_.--[MS. M.]

[427] [The statue of Venus de' Medici, which stands in the Tribune of
the Uffizzi Gallery at Florence, is said to be a late Greek (first or
second century B.C.) copy of an early reproduction, of the Cnidian
Aphrodite, the work, perhaps, of one of his sons, Kephisodotos or
Timarchos. (See _Histoire de la Sculpture Grecque_, par Maxime
Collignon, Paris, 1897, ii. 641.) In a Catalogue Raissonne of _La
Galerie de Florence_, 1804, in the editor's possession, which opens with
an eloquent tribute to the enlightenment of the Medici, _la fameuse
Venus_ is conspicuous by her absence. She had been deported to Paris by
Napoleon, but when Lord Byron spent a day in Florence in April, 1817,
and returned "drunk with Beauty" from the two galleries, the lovely
lady, thanks to the much-abused "Powers," was once more in her proper
shrine.]

[ms]
                       ----_and we draw_
    _As from a fountain of immortal hills_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[428] {366} [Byron's contempt for connoisseurs and dilettanti finds
expression in _English Bards, etc._, lines 1027-1032, and, again, in
_The Curse of Minerva_, lines 183, 184. The "stolen copy" of _The Curse_
was published in the _New Monthly Magazine_ (_Poetical Works_, 1898, i.
453) under the title of _The Malediction of Minerva; or, The Athenian
Marble-Market_, a title (see line 7) which must have been invented by
and not for Byron. He returns to the charge in _Don Juan_, Canto 11.
stanza cxviii. lines 5-9--

                          " ... a statuary,
      (A race of mere impostors, when all's done--
    I've seen much finer women ripe and real,
    Than all the nonsense of their stone ideal)."

Even while confessing the presence and power of "triumphal Art" in
sculpture, one of "the two most artificial of the Arts" (see his letter
to Murray, April 26, 1817), then first revealed to him at Florence, he
took care that his enthusiasm should not be misunderstood. He had made
bitter fun of the art-talk of collectors, and he was unrepentant, and,
moreover, he was "not careful" to incur a charge of indifference to the
fine arts in general. Among the "crowd" which found their place in his
complex personality, there was "the barbarian," and there was "the
philistine," and there was, too, the humourist who took a subtle
pleasure in proclaiming himself "a plain man," puzzled by subtleties,
and unable to catch the drift of spirits finer than his own.]

[429] {367}

    [Greek: O)phthalmou\s e(stia~n]
    "Atque oculos pascat uterque suos."
                             Ovid., _Amor_., lib. ii. [Eleg. 2, line 6].

[Compare, too, Lucretius, lib. i. lines 36-38--

    "Atque ita, suspiciens tereti cervice reposta,
    Pascit amore avidos, inhians in te, Dea, visus;
    Eque tuo pendet resupini spiritus ore;"

and _Measure for Measure_, act ii. sc. 2, line 179--

    "And feast upon her eyes."]

[mt] {368} _Glowing and all-diffused_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[430] [As the immortals, for love's sake, divest themselves of their
godhead, so do mortals, in the ecstasy of passion, recognize in the
object of their love the incarnate presence of deity. Love, like music,
can raise a "mortal to the skies" and "bring an angel down." In this
stanza there is, perhaps, an intentional obscurity in the confusion of
ideas, which are "thrown out" for the reader to shape for himself as he
will or can.]

[mu] ----_and our Fate_----[MS. M.]

[431] {369} ["The church of Santa Croce contains much illustrious
nothing. The tombs of Macchiavelli, Michael Angelo, Galileo Galilei, and
Alfieri make it the Westminster Abbey of Italy" (Letter to Murray, April
26, 1817). Michael Angelo, Alfieri, and Macchiavelli are buried in the
south aisle of the church; Galileo, who was first buried within the
convent, now rests with his favourite pupil, Vincenzo Viviani, in a
vault in the south aisle. Canova's monument to Alfieri was erected at
the expense of his so-called widow, Louise, born von Stolberg, and
(1772-78) consort of Prince Charles Edward.]

[432] [Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803) is one of numerous real and ideal
personages with whom, as he tells us (_Life_, p. 644), Byron was wont to
be compared. Moore perceives and dwells on the resemblance. A passage in
Alfieri's autobiography (_La Vie de V. A. ecrite par Lui-meme_, Paris,
1809, p. 17) may have suggested the parallel--

     "Voici une esquisse du caractere que je manifestais dans les
     premieres annees de ma raison naissante. Taciturne et tranquille
     pour l'ordinaire, mais quelquefois extremement petulant et
     babillard, presque toujours dans les extremes, obstine et rebelle a
     la force, fort soumis aux avis qu'on me donnait avec amitie,
     contenu plutot par la crainte d'etre gronde que par toute autre
     chose, d'une timidite excessive, et inflexible quand on voulait me
     prendre a rebours."

The resemblance, as Byron admits, "related merely to our apparent
personal dispositions." Both were noble, both were poets, both were
"patrician republicans," and both were lovers of pleasure as well as
lovers and students of literature; but their works do not provoke
comparison. "The quality of 'a narrow elevation' which [Matthew] Arnold
finds in Alfieri," is not characteristic of the author of _Childe
Harold_ and _Don Juan_.

Of this stanza, however, Alfieri's fine sonnet to Florence may have been
the inspiration. I have Dr. Garnett's permission to cite the following
lines of his admirable translation (_Italian Literature_, 1898, p.
321):--

    "Was Angelo born here? and he who wove
      Love's charm with sorcery of Tuscan tongue,
      Indissolubly blent? and he whose song
    Laid bare the world below to world above?
    And he who from the lonely valley clove
      The azure height and trod the stars among?
      And he whose searching mind the monarch's wrong,
    Fount of the people's misery did prove?"]

[mv] {370} _Might furnish forth a Universe_----.--[MS. M.]

[mw]
        _And ruin of thy beauty, shall deny_
        _And hath denied, to every other sky_
        _Spirits that soar like thine; from thy decay_
      {_Still springs some son of the Divinity_}
      {_Still springs some work of the Divinity_}--[D.]
        _And gilds thy ruins with reviving ray_--
    _And what these were of yore--Canova is to-day_.--[MS. M.]

[433] [Compare "Lines on the Bust of Helen by Canova," which were sent
in a letter to Murray, November 25, 1816--

    "In this beloved marble view,
      Above the works and thoughts of man,
    What nature _could_, but _would not_, do,
      And Beauty and Canova can."

In _Beppo_ (stanza xlvi.), which was written in October, 1817, there is
a further allusion to the genius of Canova.]

[mx] {371} _Their great Contemporary_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[434] [Dante died at Ravenna, September 14, 1321, and was buried in the
Church of S. Francesco. His remains were afterwards transferred to a
mausoleum in the friars' cemetery, on the north side of the church,
which was raised to his memory by his friend and patron, Guido da
Polenta. The mausoleum was restored more than once, and rebuilt in its
present form in 1780, at the cost of Cardinal Luigi Valenti Gonzaga. On
the occasion of Dante's sexcentenary, in 1865, it was discovered that at
some unknown period the skeleton, with the exception of a few small
bones which remained in an urn which formed part of Gonzaga's structure,
had been placed for safety in a wooden box, and enclosed in a wall of
the old Braccioforte Chapel, which lies outside the church towards the
Piazza. "The bones found in the wooden box were placed in the mausoleum
with great pomp and exultation, the poet being now considered the symbol
of a united Italy. The wooden box itself has been removed to the public
library."--_Handbook far Northern Italy_, p. 539, note.

The house which Byron occupied during his first visit to Ravenna--June 8
to August 9, 1819--is close to the Cappella Braccioforte. In January,
1820, when he wrote the Fourth Canto of _Don Juan_ ("I pass each day
where Dante's bones are laid," stanza civ.), he was occupying a suite of
apartments in the Palazzo Guiccioli, No. 328 in the Via di Porta
Adriana. Compare Rogers's _Italy_, "Bologna," _Poems_, ii. 118--

    "Ravenna! where from Dante's sacred tomb
    He had so oft, as many a verse declares,
    Drawn inspiration."]

[435] [The story is told in Livy, lib. xxxviii. cap. 53. "Thenceforth no
more was heard of Africanus. He passed his days at Liternum [on the
shore of Campania], without thought or regret of Rome. Folk say that
when he came to die he gave orders that he should be buried on the spot,
and that there, and not at Rome, a monument should be raised over his
sepulchre. His country had been ungrateful--no Roman funeral for him."
It is said that his sepulchre bore the inscription: "Ingrata patria,
cineres meos non habebis." According to another tradition, he was buried
with his family at the Porta Capena, by the Caelian Hill.]

[436] [Compare Lucan, _Pharsalia_, i. I--"Bella per Emathios plusquam
civilia campos."]

[437] [Petrarch's _Africa_ brought him on the same day (August 23, 1340)
offers of the laurel wreath of poetry from the University of Paris and
from the Senate of Rome. He chose in favour of Rome, and was crowned on
the Capitol, Easter Day, April 8, 1341. "The poet appeared in a royal
mantle ... preceded by twelve noble Roman youths clad in scarlet, and
the heralds and trumpeters of the Roman Senate."--_Petrarch_, by Henry
Reeve, p. 92.]

[438] {372} [Tomasini, in the _Petrarca Redivivus_ (pp. 168-172, ed.
1650), assigns the outrage to a party of Venetians who "broke open
Petrarch's tomb, in 1630, and took away some of his bones, probably with
the object of selling them." Hobhouse, in _note_ ix., says, "that one of
the arms was stolen by a Florentine," but does not quote his authority.
(See the notes to H. F. Tozer's _Childe Harold_, p. 302.)]

[439] [Giovanni Boccaccio was born at Paris (or Certaldo) in 1313,
passed the greater part of his life at Florence, died and was buried at
Certaldo, whence his family are said to have sprung, in 1375. His
sepulchre, which stood in the centre of the Church of St. Michael and
St. James, known as the Canonica, was removed in 1783, on the plea that
a recent edict forbidding burial in churches applied to ancient
interments. "The stone that covered the tomb was broken, and thrown
aside as useless into the adjoining cloisters" (_Handbook for Central
Italy_, p. 171). "Ignorance," pleads Hobhouse, "may share the crime with
bigotry." But it is improbable that the "hyaena bigots," that is, the
ecclesiastical authorities, were ignorant that Boccaccio was a bitter
satirist of Churchmen, or that "he transferred the functions and
histories of Hebrew prophets and prophetesses, and of Christian saints
and apostles, nay, the highest mysteries and most awful objects of
Christian Faith, to the names and drapery of Greek and Roman
mythology."--(Unpublished MS. note of S. T. Coleridge, written in his
copy of Boccaccio's _Opere_, 4 vols. 1723.) They had their revenge on
Boccaccio, and Byron has had his revenge on them.]

[my]
    _Boccaccio to his parent earth, bequeathed_
      _The dust derived from thence--doth it not lie_
      _With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed_
      _O'er him who formed the tongue of Italy_
      _That music in itself whose harmony_
      _Asks for no tune to make it song; No--torn_
      _From earth--and scattered while the silent sky_
      _Hushed its indignant Winds--with quiet scorn_
    _The Hyaena bigots thus forbade a World to mourn_.--
                                               [D. erased.]

[440] {374} [Compare _Beppo_, stanza xliv.--

    "I love the language, that soft bastard Latin,
      Which melts like kisses from a female mouth,
    And sounds as if it should be writ on satin,
      With syllables which breathe of the sweet South."

Compare, too, the first sentence of a letter which Byron wrote "on a
blank leaf of the volume of 'Corinne,'" which Teresa [Guiccioli] left in
forgetfulness in a garden in Bologna: "Amor Mio,--How sweet is this word
in your Italian language!" (_Life of Lord Byron_, by Emilio Castelar, P.
145).]

[441] [By "Caesar's pageant" Byron means the pageant decreed by Tiberius
Caesar. Compare _Don Juan_, Canto XV. stanza xlix.--

    "And this omission, like that of the bust
      Of Brutus at the pageant of Tiberius."

At the public funeral of Junia, wife of Cassius and sister of Brutus,
A.D. 22, the busts of her husband and brother were not allowed to be
carried in the procession, because they had taken part in the
assassination of Julius Caesar. But none the less, "Praefulgebant Brutus
et Cassius eo ipso quod effigies eorum non videbantur" (Tacitus, _Ann._,
iii. 76). Their glory was conspicuous in men's minds, because their
images were withheld from men's eyes. As Tacitus says elsewhere (iv.
26), "Negatus honor gloriam intendit."]

[mz] {375} _Shelter of exiled Empire_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[442] [The inscription on Ricci's monument to Dante, in the Church of
Santa Croce--"A majoribus ter frustra decretum" --refers to the vain
attempts which Florence had made to recover the remains of her exiled
and once-neglected poet.]

[443] ["I also went to the Medici chapel--fine frippery in great slabs
of various expensive stones, to commemorate fifty rotten and forgotten
carcasses. It is unfinished, and will remain so" (Letter to Murray,
April 26, 1817). The bodies of the grand-dukes lie in the crypt of the
Cappella dei Principi, or Medicean Chapel, which forms part of the
Church of San Lorenzo. The walls of the chapel are encrusted with rich
marbles and "stones of price, to garniture the edifice." The monuments
to Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici, son and grandson of Lorenzo the
Magnificent, with Michael Angelo's allegorical figures of Night and
Morning, Aurora and Twilight, are in the adjoining Cappella dei
Depositi, or Sagrestia Nuova.]

[444] {376} [The Duomo, crowned with Brunelleschi's cupola, and rich in
sculpture and stained glass, is, as it were, a symbol of Florence, the
shrine of art. Browning, in his inspired vision of St. Peter's at Rome
in _Christmas Eve_, catches Byron's note to sound a loftier strain--

    "Is it really on the earth
    This miraculous dome of God?"

"It is somewhere mentioned that Michael Angelo, when he set out from
Florence to build the dome of St. Peter's, turned his horse round in the
road to contemplate that of the cathedral, as it rose in the grey of the
morning from among the pines and cypresses of the city, and that he
said, after a pause, 'Come te non voglio! Meglio di te non posso.' He
never, indeed, spoke of it but with admiration; and, if we may believe
tradition, his tomb, by his own desire, was to be so placed in the Santa
Croce as that from it might be seen, when the doors of the church stood
open, that noble work of Brunelleschi."--Rogers's _Italy: Poems_, ii.
315, note to p. 133, line 5--"Beautiful Florence."]

[445] {377} [Byron, contrary to traditional use (see Wordsworth's
sonnet, "Near the Lake of Thrasymene;" and Rogers's _Italy_, see note,
p. 378), sounds the final vowel in Thrasym[=e]ne. The Greek, Latin, and
Italian equivalents bear him out; but, most probably, he gave Thrasymene
and himself an extra syllable "vel metri vel euphoniae causa."]

[na] _Where Courage perished in unyielding files_.--[MS. M.]

[446] ["Tantusque fuit ardor armorum, adeo intentus pugnae animus, ut eum
motum terrae, qui multarum urbium Italiae magnas partes, prostravit,
avertitque cursu rapidos amnes, marce fluminibus invexit, montes lapsu
ingenti proruit, nemo pugnantium senserit" (Livy, xxii. 5). Polybius
says nothing about an earthquake; and Ihne (_Hist, of Rome_, ii.
207-210) is also silent; but Pliny (_Hist. Nat._, ii. 84) and Coelius
Antipater (ap. Cic., _De <DW37>._, i. 35), who wrote his _Annales_ about a
century after the battle of Lake Thrasymenus (B.C. 217), synchronize the
earthquake and the battle. Compare, too, Rogers's _Italy_, "The
Pilgrim:" _Poems_, 1852, ii. 152--

             "From the Thrasymene, that now
    Slept in the sun, a lake of molten gold,
    And from the shore that once, when armies met,
    Rocked to and fro unfelt, so terrible
    The rage, the slaughter, I had turned away."

Compare, too, Wordsworth's sonnet (No. xii.), "Near the Lake of
Thrasymene" (_Works_, 1888, p. 756)--

    "When here with Carthage Rome to conflict came,
    An earthquake, mingling with the battle's shock,
    Checked not its rage; unfelt the ground did rock,
    Sword dropped not, javelin kept its deadly aim,--
    Now all is sun-bright peace."]

[nb]
    _Fly to the clouds for refuge and withdraw_
    _From their unsteady nests_----.--[MS. M.]

[nc] {379} _Made fat the earth_----.--[MS. M. erased]

[447] No book of travels has omitted to expatiate on the temple of the
Clitumnus, between Foligno and Spoleto; and no site, or scenery, even in
Italy, is more worthy a description. For an account of the dilapidation
of this temple, the reader is referred to _Historical Illustrations of
the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold_, p. 35.

[448] [Compare Virgil, _Georg_., ii. 146--

    "Hinc albi, Clitumne, greges et maxuma taurus
      Victima, saepe tuo perfusi flumine sacro."

The waters of certain rivers were supposed to possess the quality of
making the cattle which drank from them white. (See Pliny, _Hist. Nat._,
ii. 103; and compare Silius Italicus, _Pun._, iv. 545, 546--

        " ...et patulis Clitumnus in arvis
    Candentes gelido perfundit flumine tauros.")

For a charming description of Clitumnus, see Pliny's letter "Romano
Suo," _Epist._, viii. 8: "At the foot of a little hill covered with old
and shady cypress trees, gushes out a spring, which bursts out into a
number of streamlets, all of different sizes. Having struggled, so to
speak, out of its confinement, it opens out into a broad basin, so clear
and transparent, that you may count the pebbles and little pieces of
money which are thrown into it.... The banks are clothed with an
abundance of ash and poplar, which are so distinctly reflected in the
clear water that they seem to be growing at the bottom of the river, and
can easily be counted.... Near it stands an ancient and venerable
temple, in which is a statue of the river-god Clitumnus."--_Pliny's
Letters_, by the Rev. A. Church and the Rev. W. J. Brodribb, 1872, p.
127.]

[449] {380} [The existing temple, now used as a chapel (St. Salvatore),
can hardly be Pliny's _templum priscum_. Hobhouse, in his _Historical
Illustrations_, pp. 37-41, defends the antiquity of the "facade, which
consists of a pediment supported by four columns and two Corinthian
piers, two of the columns with spiral fluting, the others covered with
fish-scaled carvings" (_Handbook for Central Italy_, p. 289); but in the
opinion of modern archaeologists the whole of the structure belongs to
the fourth or fifth century of the Christian era. It is, of course,
possible, indeed probable, that ancient materials were used when the
building was reconstructed. Pliny says the "numerous chapels" dedicated
to other deities were scattered round the shrine of Clitumnus.]

[nd] _Upon a green declivity_----.--[MS. M.]

[450] {381} ["On my way back [from Rome], close to the temple by its
banks, I got some famous trout out of the river Clitumnus, the prettiest
little stream in all poesy."--Letter to Murray, June 4, 1817.]

[ne] _There is a course where Lovers' evening tales_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[451] [By "disgust," a prosaic word which seems to mar a fine stanza,
Byron does not mean "distaste," aversion from the nauseous, but
"tastelessness," the inability to enjoy taste. Compare the French "Avoir
du degout pour la vie," "To be out of conceit with life." Byron was "a
lover of Nature," but it was seldom that he felt her "healing power," or
was able to lose himself in his surroundings. But now, for the moment,
he experiences that sudden uplifting of the spirit in the presence of
natural beauty which brings back "the splendour in the grass, the glory
in the flower!"]

[nf] {382} _Making it as an emerald_----.--[D.]

[ng] _Leaps on from rock to rock--with mighty bound_.--[MS. M.]

[452] {383} I saw the Cascata del Marmore of Terni twice, at different
periods--once from the summit of the precipice, and again from the
valley below. The lower view is far to be preferred, if the traveller
has time for one only; but in any point of view, either from above or
below, it is worth all the cascades and torrents of Switzerland put
together: the Staubach, Reichenbach, Pisse Vache, fall of Arpenaz, etc.,
are rills in comparative appearance. Of the fall of Schaffhausen I
cannot speak, not yet having seen it.

[The Falls of Reichenbach are at Rosenlaui, between Grindelwald and
Meiringen; the Salanfe or Pisse-Vache descends into the valley of the
Rhone near Martigny; the Nant d'Arpenaz falls into the Arve near
Magland, on the road between Cluses and Sallanches.]

[453] Of the time, place, and qualities of this kind of iris, the reader
will see a short account, in a note to _Manfred_.[Sec.1] The fall looks so
much like "the Hell of waters," that Addison thought the descent alluded
to by the gulf in which Alecto[Sec.2] plunged into the infernal regions. It
is singular enough, that two of the finest cascades in Europe should be
artificial--this of the Velino, and the one at Tivoli. The traveller is
strongly recommended to trace the Velino, at least as high as the little
lake called _Pie' di Lup_. The Reatine territory was the Italian Tempe
(Cicer., _Epist. ad Attic._, lib. iv. 15), and the ancient naturalists
["In lacu Velino nullo non die apparere arcus"] (Plin., _Hist. Nat._,
lib. ii. cap. lxii.), amongst other beautiful varieties, remarked the
daily rainbows of the lake Velinus. A scholar of great name has devoted
a treatise to this district alone. See Ald. Manut., _De Reatina Urb
Agroque_, ap. Sallengre, _Nov. Thes. Ant. Rom._, 1735, tom. i. p.773,
_sq._

[The "Falls of the Anio," which passed over a wall built by Sixtus V.,
and plunged into the Grotto of Neptune, were greatly diminished in
volume after an inundation which took place in 1826. The New Falls were
formed in 1834.]

[[Sec.1] _Manfred_, act ii. sc. 1, note. This Iris is formed by the rays of
the sun on the lower part of the Alpine torrents; it is exactly like a
rainbow come down to pay a visit, and so close that you may walk into
it: this effect lasts till noon.]

[[Sec.2] "This is the gulf through which Virgil's Alecto shoots herself
into hell; for the very place, the great reputation of it, the fall of
waters, the woods that encompass it, with the smoke and noise that arise
from it, are all pointed at in the description ...

    "'Est locus Italiae ...
    ... densis hunc frondibus atrum
    Urguet utrimque latus nemoris, medioque fragosus
    Dat sonitum saxis et torto vertice torrens.
    Hic specus horrendum et saevi spiracula Ditis
    Monstrantur, ruptoque ingens Acheronte vorago
    Pestiferas aperit fauces.'
                                                  _AEneid_, vii. 563-570.

It was indeed the most proper place in the world for a Fury to make her
exit ... and I believe every reader's imagination is pleased when he
sees the angry Goddess thus sinking, as it were, in a tempest, and
plunging herself into Hell, amidst such a scene of horror and
confusion."--_Remarks on several Parts of Italy_, by Joseph Addison,
Esq., 1761, pp. 100. 101.

[nh] {385}

        _Dares not ascend the summit_----
    or, _Clothes a more rocky summit_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[454] In the greater part of Switzerland, the avalanches are known by
the name of lauwine.

[Byron is again at fault with his German. "Lawine" (see Schiller,
_Wilhelm Tell_, act iii. sc. 3) signifies an avalanche, not avalanches.
In stanza xii. line 7 a similar mistake occurs. It may seem strange
that, for the sake of local colouring, or for metrical purposes, he
should substitute a foreign equivalent which required a note, for a fine
word already in vogue. But in 1817 "avalanche" itself had not long been
naturalized. Fifty years before, the Italian _valanca_ and _valanche_
had found their way into books of travel, but "avalanche" appears first
(see _N. Eng. Dict._, art. "Avalanche") in 1789, in Coxe's _Trav.
Switz._, xxxviii. ii. 3, and in poetry, perhaps, in Wordsworth's
_Descriptive Sketches_, which were written in 1791-2. Like "canon" and
"veldt" in our own day, it might be regarded as on probation. But the
fittest has survived, and Byron's unlovely and misbegotten "lauwine" has
died a natural death.]

[ni] _But I have seen the virgin Jungfrau rear_.--[D.]

[455] {386} These stanzas may probably remind the reader of Ensign
Northerton's remarks, "D--n <DW25>," etc.;[Sec.] but the reasons for our
dislike are not exactly the same. I wish to express, that we become
tired of the task before we can comprehend the beauty; that we learn by
rote before we can get by heart; that the freshness is worn away, and
the future pleasure and advantage deadened and destroyed, by the
didactic anticipation, at an age when we can neither feel nor understand
the power of compositions which it requires an acquaintance with life,
as well as Latin and Greek, to relish, or to reason upon. For the same
reason, we never can be aware of the fulness of some of the finest
passages of Shakspeare ("To be or not to be," for instance), from the
habit of having them hammered into us at eight years old, as an
exercise, not of mind, but of memory: so that when we are old enough to
enjoy them, the taste is gone, and the appetite palled. In some parts of
the continent, young persons are taught from more common authors, and do
not read the best classics till their maturity. I certainly do not speak
on this point from any pique or aversion towards the place of my
education. I was not a slow, though an idle boy; and I believe no one
could, or can be, more attached to Harrow than I have always been, and
with reason;--a part of the time passed there was the happiest of my
life; and my preceptor, the Rev. Dr. Joseph Drury, was the best and
worthiest friend I ever possessed, whose warnings I have remembered but
too well, though too late when I have erred,--and whose counsels I have
but followed when I have done well or wisely. If ever this imperfect
record of my feelings towards him should reach his eyes, let it remind
him of one who never thinks of him but with gratitude and veneration--of
one who would more gladly boast of having been his pupil, if, by more
closely following his injunctions, he could reflect any honour upon his
instructor.

[[Sec.] "'Don't pretend to more ignorance than you have, Mr. Northerton; I
suppose you have heard of the Greeks and Trojans, though, perhaps, you
have never read Pope's Homer.'--'D--n Homer with all my heart,' says
Northerton: 'I have the marks of him ... yet. There's Thomas of our
regiment always carries a <DW25> in his pocket.'"--_The History of Tom
Jones_, by H. Fielding, vii. 12.]

[456] [The construction is somewhat involved, but the meaning is
obvious. As a schoolboy, the Horatian Muse could not tempt him to take
the trouble to construe Horace; and, even now, Soracte brings back
unwelcome memories of "confinement's lingering hour," say, "3 quarters
of an hour past 3 o'clock in the afternoon, 3rd school" (see _Life_, p.
28). Moore says that the "interlined translations" on Byron's
school-books are "a proof of the narrow extent of his classical
attainments." He must soon have made up for lost time, and "conquered
for the poet's sake," as numerous poetical translations from the
classics, including the episode of Nisus and Euryalus, evidently a
labour of love, testify. Nor, too, does the trouble he took and the
pride he felt in _Hints from Horace_ correspond with this profession of
invincible distaste.]

[nj] {388} _My mind to analyse_----.--[MS. M.]

[nk] _Yet such the inveterate impression_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[nl] ----_but what it then abhorred must still abhor_.--[MS. M.]

[nm] {389} ----_in her tearless woe_.--[MS. M.]

[457] [The tomb of the Scipios, by the Porta Latina, was discovered by
the brothers Sassi, in May, 1780. It consists of "several chambers
excavated in the tufa." One of the larger chambers contained the famous
sarcophagus of L. Scipio Barbatus, the great-grandfather of Scipio
Africanus, which is now in the Vatican in the Atrio Quadrate. When the
sarcophagus was opened, in 1780, the skeleton was found to be entire.
The bones were collected and removed by Angelo Quirini to his villa at
Padua. The chambers contained numerous inscriptions, which were detached
and removed to the Vatican. Hobhouse (_Hist. Illust_., pp. 169-171) is
at pains to point out that the discovery of 1780 confirmed the
authenticity of an inscription to Lucius, son of Barbatus Scipio, which
had been brought to light in 1615, and rejected by the Roman antiquaries
as a forgery. He prints two of the inscriptions (_Handbook for Rome_,
pp. 278, 350, 351, ed. 1899).]

[458] [The sepulchres were rifled, says Hobhouse (_ibid_., p. 173),
"either to procure the necessary relics for churches dedicated to
Christian saints or martyrs, or" (a likelier hypothesis) "with the
expectation of finding the ornaments ... buried with the dead. The
sarcophagi were sometimes transported from their site and emptied for
the reception of purer ashes." He instances those of Innocent II. and
Clement XII., "which were certainly constructed for heathen tenants."]

[459] {390} [The reference is to the historical inundations of the
Tiber, of which a hundred and thirty-two have been recorded from the
foundation of the city down to December, 1870, when the river rose to
fifty-six feet--thirty feet above its normal level.]

[460] [The Goths besieged and sacked Rome under Alaric, A.D. 410, and
Totila, 546. Other barbarian invaders--Genseric, a Vandal, 455; Ricimer,
a Sueve, 472; Vitiges, a Dalmatian, 537; Arnulph, a Lombard, 756--may
come under the head of "Goth." "The Christian," "from motives of
fanaticism"--Theodosius, for instance, in 426; and Stilicho, who burned
the Sibylline books--despoiled, mutilated, and pulled down temples.
Subsequently, popes, too numerous to mention, laid violent hands on the
temples for purposes of repair, construction, and ornamentation of
Christian churches. More than once ancient structures were converted
into cannon-balls. There were, too, Christian invaders and sackers of
Rome: Robert Guiscard (Hofmann calls him Wiscardus), in 1004; Frederic
Barbarossa, in 1167; the Connetable de Bourbon, in 1527, may be
instanced. "Time and War" speak for themselves. For "Flood," _vide
supra_. As for "Fire," during the years 1082-84 the Emperor Henry IV.
burnt "a great part of the Leonine city;" and Guiscard "burnt the town
from the Flaminian gate to the Antonine column, and laid waste the
Esquiline to the Lateran; thence he set fire to the region from that
church to the Coliseum and the Capitol." Of earthquakes Byron says
nothing; but there were earthquakes, e.g. in 422 and 1349. Another foe,
a destroying angel who "wasteth at noonday," modern improvement, had not
yet opened a seventh seal. (See _Historical Illustrations_, pp.
91-168.)]

[nn] {391} _She saw her glories one by one expire_.--[MS. M.]

[461] [Compare Macaulay's _Lays of Ancient Rome_, "Prophecy of Capys,"
stanza xxx.--

    "Blest and thrice blest the Roman
      Who sees Rome's brightest day,
    Who sees that long victorious pomp
      Wind down the Sacred Way,
    And through the bellowing Forum,
      And round the Suppliant's Grove,
    Up to the everlasting gates
      Of Capitolian Jove."]

[no] _The double night of Ruin_----.--[MS. M.]

[462] [The construction is harsh and puzzling. Apparently the subject of
"hath wrapt" is the "double night of ages;" the subjects of "wrap," the
"night of ages" and the "night of Ignorance;" but, even so, the sentence
is ambiguous. Not less amazing is the confusion of metaphors. Rome is a
"desert," through which we steer, mounted, presumably, on a camel--the
"ship of the desert." Mistaken associations are, as it were,
stumbling-blocks; and no sooner have we verified an association,
discovered a ruined temple in the exact site which Livy's "pictured
page" has assigned to it--a discovery as welcome to the antiquarian as
water to the thirsty traveller--than our theory is upset, and we
perceive that we have been deluded by a mirage.]

[463] {392} Orosius gives 320 for the number of triumphs [i.e. from
Romulus to the double triumph of Vespasian and Titus (_Hist._, vii. 9)].
He is followed by Panvinius; and Panvinius by Mr. Gibbon and the modern
writers.

[np]
    _Alas, for Tully's voice, and Titus' sway_
    _And Virgil's verse; the first and last must be_
    _Her Resurrection_----.--[MS. M.]

[464] Certainly, were it not for these two traits in the life of Sylla,
alluded to in this stanza, we should regard him as a monster unredeemed
by any admirable quality. The _atonement_ of his voluntary resignation
of empire may perhaps be accepted by us, as it seems to have satisfied
the Romans, who if they had not respected must have destroyed him. There
could be no mean, no division of opinion; they must have all thought,
like Eucrates, that what had appeared ambition was a love of glory, and
that what had been mistaken for pride was a real grandeur of
soul.--("Seigneur, vous changez toutes mes idees, de la facon dont je
vous vois agir. Je croyois que vous aviez de l'ambition, mais aucun
amour pour la gloire; je voyois bien que votre ame etoit haute; mais je
ne soupconnois pas qu'elle fut grande."--_Dialogue de Sylla et
d'Eucrate_.) _Considerations ... de la Grandeur des Romains, etc._,
Paris, 1795, ii. 219. By Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu.

[Stanza lxxxiii. indicates the following events in the life of Sulla. In
B.C. 81 he assumed the name of Felix (or, according to Plutarch,
Epaphroditus, Plut, _Vitae_, 1812, iv. 287), (line 1). Five years before
this, B.C. 86, during the consulship of Marius and Cinna, his party had
been overthrown, and his regulations annulled; but he declined to return
to Italy until he had brought the war against Mithridates to a
successful conclusion, B.C. 83 (lines 3-6). In B.C. 81 he was appointed
dictator (line 7), and B.C. 79 he resigned his dictatorship and retired
into private life (line 9).]

[nq] {394}
                             ----_how supine_
    _Into such dust deserted Rome should fade,_
or, _In self-woven sackcloth Rome should thus be laid_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[nr]
    _The Earth beneath her shadow and displayed_
    _Her wings as with the horizon and was hailed,_
or, _The rushings of his wings and was Almighty hailed_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[ns]
    _Sylla supreme of Victors--save our own_
    _The ablest of Usurpers--Cromwell--he_
    _Who swept off Senates--while he hewed the Throne_
    _Down to a block--immortal Villain! See_
    _What crimes, etc_.--[MS. M.]

[465] On the 3rd of September Cromwell gained the victory of Dunbar
[1650]; a year afterwards he obtained "his crowning mercy" of Worcester
[1651]; and a few years after [1658], on the same day, which he had ever
esteemed the most fortunate for him, died.

[466] {395} [The statue of Pompey in the Sala dell' Udinanza of the
Palazzo Spada is no doubt a portrait, and belongs to the close of the
Republican period. It cannot, however, with any certainty be identified
with the statue in the Curia, at whose base "great Caesar fell." (See
_Antike Bildwerke in Rom._, F. Matz, F. von Duhn, i. 309.)]

[467] {396} [The bronze "Wolf of the Capitol" in the Palace of the
Conservators is unquestionably ancient, belonging to the end of the
sixth or beginning of the fifth century B.C., and probably of
Graeco-Italian workmanship. The twins, as Winckelmann pointed out (see
Hobhouse's _note_), are modern, and were added under the impression that
this was the actual bronze described by Cicero, _Cat._, iii. 8, and
Virgil, _AEn._, viii. 631. (See _Monuments de l'Art Antique_, par Olivier
Rayet, Paris, 1884, Livraison II, Planche 7.)]

[468] [The Roman "things" whom the world feared, set the fashion of
shedding their blood in the pursuit of glory. The nations, of modern
Europe, "bastard" Romans, have followed their example.]

[469] {397} [Compare _The Age of Bronze_, v.--"The king of kings, and
yet of slaves the slave."]

[470] [In _Comparison of the Present State of France with that of Rome_,
etc., published in the _Morning Post_, September 21, 1802, Coleridge
speaks of Buonaparte as the "new Caesar," but qualifies the expression in
a note: "But if reserve, if darkness, if the employment of spies and
informers, if an indifference to all religions, except as instruments of
state policy, with a certain strange and dark superstition respecting
fate, a blind confidence in his destinies,--if these be any part of the
Chief Consul's character, they would force upon us, even against our
will, the name and history of Tiberius."--_Essays on His Own Times_, ii.
481.]

[471] [According to Suetonius, i. 37, the famous words, _Veni Vidi,
Vici_, were blazoned on litters in the triumphal procession which
celebrated Caesar's victory over Pharnaces II., after the battle of Zela
(B.C. 47).]

[472] {398} [By "flee" in the "Gallic van," Byron means "fly towards,
not away from, the foe." He was, perhaps, thinking of the Biblical
phrases, "flee like a bird" (_Ps_. xi. 1), and "flee upon horses"
(_Isa_. xxx. 16); but he was not careful to "tame down" words to his own
use and purpose.]

[nt] _Of pettier passions which raged angrily_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[nu] _At what? can he reply? his lusting is unnamed_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[nv] ----_How oft--how long, oh God!_--[MS. M. erased.]

[473] {399} ----"Omnes poene veteres; qui nihil cognosci, nihil percipi,
nihil sciri posse dixerunt; augustos sensus, imbecillos animos, brevia
curricula vitar, et (ut Democritus) in profundo veritatem esse demersam;
opinionibus et institutis omnia teneri; nihil veritati relinqui:
deinceps omnia tenebris circumfusa esse dixerunt."--_Academ._, lib. I.
cap. 12. The eighteen hundred years which have elapsed since Cicero
wrote this, have not removed any of the imperfections of humanity: and
the complaints of the ancient philosophers may, without injustice or
affectation, be transcribed in a poem written yesterday.

[474] [Compare Gray's _Elegy_, stanza xv.--

    "Full many a gem of purest ray serene
      The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear."]

[nw] _And thus they sleep in some dull certainty_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[475] [Compare _As You Like It_, act ii. sc. 7, lines 26-28--

    "And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
    And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;
    And thereby hangs a tale."]

[nx] {400}
    _For such existence is as much to die_.--[MS. M. erased.]
or, _Bequeathing their trampled natures till they die_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[476] [In his speech _On the Continuance of the War with France_, which
Pitt delivered in the House of Commons, February 17, 1800, he described
Napoleon as "the child and champion of Jacobinism." At least the phrase
occurs in the report which Coleridge prepared for the _Morning Post_ of
February 18, 1800, and it appears in the later edition in the Collection
of Pitt's speeches. "It does not occur in the speech as reported by the
_Times_." It is curious that in the jottings which Coleridge,
Parliamentary reporter _pro hac vice_, scrawled in pencil in his
note-book, the phrase appears as "the nursling and champion of
Jacobinism;" and it is possible that the alternative of the more
rhetorical but less forcible "child" was the poet's handiwork. It became
a current phrase, and Coleridge more than once reverts to it in the
articles which he contributed to the _Morning Post_ in 1802. (See
_Essays on His Own Times_, ii. 293, and iii. 1009-1019; and _Letters of
Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, 1895, i. 327, note.)]

[ny] {401} _Deep in the lone Savannah_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[nz] _Too long hath Earth been drunk with blood and crime_.--[MS. M.
erased.]

[oa]
    _Her span of freedom hath but fatal been_
    _To that of any coming age or clime_.--[MS. M.]

[477] {402} [By the "base pageant" Byron refers to the Congress of
Vienna (September, 1815); the "Holy Alliance" (September 26), into which
the Duke of Wellington would not enter; and the Second Treaty of Paris,
November 20, 1815.]

[478] [Compare Shelley's _Hellas: Poems_, 1895, ii. 358--

    "O Slavery! thou frost of the world's prime,
    Killing its flowers, and leaving its thorns bare!"]

[479] [Shelley chose the first two lines of this stanza as the motto for
his _Ode to Liberty_.]

[480] Alluding to the tomb of Cecilia Metella, called Capo di Bove.
[Four words, and two initials, compose the whole of the transcription
which, whatever was its ancient position, is now placed in front of this
towering sepulchre: "CAECILIAE. Q. CRETICI. F. METELLAE. CRASSI."

"The Savelli family were in possession of the fortress in 1312, and the
German army of Henry VII. marched from Rome, attacked, took, and burnt
it, but were unable to make themselves, by force, masters of the
citadel--that is, the tomb." The "fence of stone" refers to the
quadrangular basement of concrete, on which the circular tower rests.
The tower was originally coated with marble, which was stripped off for
the purpose of making lime. The work of destruction is said to have been
carried out during the interval between Poggio's (see his _De Fort.
Var._, ap. Sall., _Nov. Thes. Ant. Rom._, 1735, i. 501, _sq._) first and
second visits to Rome. (See Hobhouse's _Hist. Illust._, pp. 202, 203;
_Handbook for Rome_, p. 360.)]

[ob] {403} _So massily begirt--what lay?_----.--[MS. M.]

[oc] {404} _Love from her duties--still a conqueress in the war_.--[MS.
M. erased.]

[481]
  [Greek: On oi(theoi\ philou~sin a)pothne/skei ne/os]
  [Greek: To\ ga\r thanei~n ou)ch ai)schro\n, a)ll' ai)schro~s thanei~n].
                   _Gnomici Poetae Graeci_, R. F. P. Brunck, 1784, p. 231.

[482] {405} ["It is more likely to have been the pride than the love of
Crassus which raised so superb a memorial to a wife whose name is not
mentioned in history, unless she be supposed to be that lady whose
intimacy with Dolabella was so offensive to Tullia, the daughter of
Cicero, or she who was divorced by Lentulus Spinther, or she, perhaps
the same person, from whose ear the son of AEsopus transferred a precious
jewel to enrich his daughter (_vide_ Hor., _Sat._, ii. 3. 239)" (_Hist.
Illust._, p. 200). The wealth of Crassus was proverbial, as his
_agnomen_, Dives, testifies (Plut., _Crassus_, ii., iii., Lipsiae, 1813,
v. 156, _sq._).]

[od] {406}

    _Till I had called forth even from the mind_.--[MS. M. erased.]
    ----_with heated mind_.--[MS. M.]

[oe] _I have no home_----.--[MS. M.]

[483] {407} [Compare Rogers's _Italy:_ "Rome" (_Poems_, 1852), ii. 169--

                    "Or climb the Palatine,
           *       *       *       *       *
    Long while the seat of Rome, hereafter found
    Less than enough (so monstrous was the brood
    Engendered there, so Titan-like) to lodge
    One in his madness; and inscribe my name--
    My name and date, on some broad aloe-leaf
    That shoots and spreads within those very walls
    Where Virgil read aloud his tale divine,
    When his voice faltered and a mother wept
    Tears of delight!"[Sec.]

And compare Shelley's _Poetical Works_, 1895, iii. 276--

    "Rome has fallen; ye see it lying
    Heaped in undistinguished ruin:
    Nature is alone undying."]

[Sec.] [At the words _Tu Marcellus eris, etc_. (_vide_ Tib. Cl. Donatus,
_Life of Virgil_ (Virg., _Opera_), Leeuwarden, 1627, vol. i.).]

[of]
                  ----_wherein have creeped_
        _The Reptiles which_.----
    or, _Scorpion and blindworm_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[484] The Palatine is one mass of ruins, particularly on the side
towards the Circus Maximus. The very soil is formed of crumbled
brickwork. Nothing has been told--nothing can be told--to satisfy the
belief of any but the Roman antiquary. [The Palatine was the site of the
successive "Domus" of Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula, and of the
_Domus Transitoria_ of Nero, which perished when Rome was burnt. Later
emperors--Vespasian, Domitian, Septimius Severus--added to the splendour
of the name-giving Palatine. "The troops of Genseric," says Hobhouse
(_Hist. Illust._, p. 206), "occupied the Palatine, and despoiled it of
all its riches... and when it again rises, it rises in ruins."
Systematic excavations during the last fifty years have laid bare much
that was hidden, and "learning and research" have in parts revealed the
"obliterated plan;" but, in 1817, the "shapeless mass of ruins" defied
the guesses of antiquarians. "Your walks in the Palatine ruins ... will
be undisturbed, unless you startle a fox in breaking through the
brambles in the corridors, or burst unawares through the hole of some
shivered fragments into one of the half-buried chambers, which the
peasants have blocked up to serve as stalls for their jackasses, or as
huts for those who watch the gardens" (_Hist. Illust._, p. 212).]

[485] {408} The author of the _Life of Cicero_, speaking of the opinion
entertained of Britain by that orator and his contemporary Romans, has
the following eloquent passage:--"From their railleries of this kind, on
the barbarity and misery of our island, one cannot help reflecting on
the surprising fate and revolutions of kingdoms; how Rome, once the
mistress of the world, the seat of arts, empire, and glory, now lies
sunk in sloth, ignorance, and poverty; enslaved to the most cruel as
well as to the most contemptible of tyrants, superstition and religious
imposture; while this remote country, anciently the jest and contempt of
the polite Romans, is become the happy seat of liberty, plenty, and
letters; flourishing in all the arts and refinements of civil life; yet
running, perhaps, the same course which Rome itself had run before it,
from virtuous industry to wealth; from wealth to luxury; from luxury to
an impatience of discipline and corruption of morals: till, by a total
degeneracy and loss of virtue, being grown ripe for destruction, it fall
a prey at last to some hardy oppressor, and, with the loss of liberty,
losing everything that is valuable, sinks gradually again into its
original barbarism." (See _Life of M. Tullius Cicero_, by Conyers
Middleton, D.D., 1823, sect. vi. vol. i. pp. 399, 400.)

[og] {409} _Oh, ho, ho, ho--thou creature of a Man_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[oh]
    _And show of Glory's gewgaws in the van_
    _And the Sun's rays with flames more dazzling filled_.--[MS. M.]

[486] [The "golden roofs" were those of Nero's _Domus Aurea_, which
extended from the north-west corner of the Palatine to the Gardens of
Maecenas, on the Esquiline, spreading over the sites of the Temple of
Vesta and Rome on the platform of the Velia, the Colosseum, and the
Thermae of Titus, as far as the Sette Sale. "In the fore court was the
colossal statue of Nero. The pillars of the colonnade, which measured a
thousand feet in length, stood three deep. All that was not lake, or
wood, or vineyard, or pasture, was overlaid with plates of gold, picked
out with gems and mother-of-pearl" (Suetonius, vi. 31; Tacitus, _Ann._,
xv. 42). Substructions of the _Domus Aurea_ have been discovered on the
site of the Baths of Titus and elsewhere, but not on the Palatine
itself. Martial, _Epig._ 695 (_Lib. Spect._, ii.), celebrates
Vespasian's restitution of the _Domus Aurea_ and its "policies" to the
people of Rome.

    "Hic ubi sidereus propius videt astra colossus
      Et crescunt media pegmata celsa via,
    Invidiosa feri radiabant atria regis
      Unaque jam tola stabat in urbe domus."

    "Here where the Sun-god greets the Morning Star,
      And tow'ring scaffolds block the public way,
    Fell Nero's loathed pavilion flashed afar,
      Erect and splendid 'mid the town's decay."]

[487] {410} [By the "nameless" column Byron means the column of Phocas,
in the Forum. But, as he may have known, it had ceased to be nameless
when he visited Rome in 1817. During some excavations which were carried
out under the auspices of the Duchess of Devonshire, in 1813, the soil
which concealed the base was removed, and an inscription, which
attributes the erection of the column to the Exarch Smaragdus, in honour
of the Emperor Phocas, A.D. 608, was brought to light. The column was
originally surmounted by a gilded statue, but it is probable that both
column and statue were stolen from earlier structures and rededicated to
Phocas. Hobhouse (_Hist. Illust._, pp. 240-242) records the discovery,
and prints the inscription _in extenso._]

[oi] ----_all he doth deface_.--[MS. M.]

[488] The column of Trajan is surmounted by St. Peter; that of Aurelius
by St. Paul. (See _Hist. Illust._, p. 214.)

[The column was excavated by Paul III. in the sixteenth century. In 1588
Sixtus V. replaced the bronze statue of Trajan holding a gilded globe,
which had originally surmounted the column, by a statue of St. Peter, in
gilt bronze. The legend was that Trajan's ashes were contained in the
globe. They are said to have been deposited by Hadrian in a golden urn
in a vault under the column. It is certain that when Sixtus V. opened
the chamber he found it empty. A medal was cast in honour of the
erection of the new statue, inscribed with the words of the Magnificat,
"_Exaltavit humiles_."]

[489] {411} Trajan was _proverbially_ the best of the Roman princes; and
it would be easier to find a sovereign uniting exactly the opposite
characteristics, than one possessed of all the happy qualities ascribed
to this emperor. "When he mounted the throne," says the historian Dion,
"he was strong in body, he was vigorous in mind; age had impaired none
of his faculties; he was altogether free from envy and from detraction;
he honoured all the good, and he advanced them: and on this account they
could not be the objects of his fear, or of his hate; he never listened
to informers; he gave not way to his anger; he abstained equally from
unfair exactions and unjust punishments; he had rather be loved as a man
than honoured as a sovereign; he was affable with his people, respectful
to the senate, and universally beloved by both; he inspired none with
dread but the enemies of his country." (See Eutrop., _Hist. Rom. Brev._
lib. viii. cap. v.; Dion, _Hist. Rom._, lib. lxiii. caps, vi., vii.)

[M. Ulpius Trajanus (A.D. 52-117) celebrated a triumph over the Dacians
in 103 and 106. It is supposed that the column which stands at the north
end of the Forum Trajanum commemorated the Dacian victories. In 115-16
he conquered the Parthians, and added the province of Armenia Minor to
the empire. It was not, however, an absolute or a final victory. The
little desert stronghold of Atrae, or Hatra, in Mesopotamia, remained
uncaptured; and, instead of incorporating the Parthians in the empire,
he thought it wiser to leave them to be governed by a native prince
under the suzerainty of Rome. His conquests were surrendered by Hadrian,
and henceforth the tide of victory began to ebb. He died on his way back
to Rome, at Selinus, in Cilicia, in August, 117.

Trajan's "moderation was known unto all men." Pliny, in his
_Panegyricus_ (xxii.), describes his first entry into Rome. He might
have assumed the state of a monarch or popular hero, but he walked
afoot, conspicuous, pre-eminent, a head and shoulders above the crowd--a
triumphal entry; but it was imperial arrogance, not civil liberty, over
which he triumphed. "You were our king," he says, "and we your subjects;
but we obeyed you as the embodiment of our laws." Martial (_Epig._, x.
72) hails him not as a tyrant, but an emperor--yea, more than an
emperor--as the most righteous of lawgivers and senators, who had
brought back plain Truth to the light of day; and Claudian (viii. 318)
maintains that his glory will live, not because the Parthians had been
annexed, but because he was "mitis patriae." The divine honours which he
caused to be paid to his adopted father, Nerva, he refused for himself.
"For just reasons," says Pliny, "did the Senate and people of Rome
assign thee the name and title of Optimus." Another honour awaited him:
"Il est seul Empereur," writes M. De La Berge, "dont les restes aient
repose dans l'enceinte de la ville Eternelle." (See Pliny's
_Panegyricus, passim;_ and _Essai sur le regne de Trajan_, Bibliotheque
de L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Paris, 1877.)]

[490] {412} [The archaeologists of Byron's day were unable to fix the
exact site of the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline.
"On which side," asks Hobhouse (_Hist. Illust._, p. 224), "stood the
citadel, on what the great temple of the Capitol; and did the temple
stand in the citadel?" Excavations which were carried on in 1876-7 by
Professors Jordan and Lanciani enabled them to identify with "tolerable
certainty" the site of the central temple and its adjacent wings, with
the site of the Palazzo Caffarelli and its dependencies which occupy the
south-east section of the Mons Capitolinus. There are still, however,
rival Tarpeian Rocks--one (in the Vicolo della Rupe Tarpea) on the
western edge of the hill facing the Tiber, and the other (near the Casa
Tarpea) on the south-east towards the Palatine. But if Dionysius, who
describes the "Traitor's Leap" as being in sight of the Forum, is to be
credited, the "actual precipice" from which traitors (and other
criminals, e.g. "bearers of false witness") were thrown must have been
somewhere on the southern and now less precipitous escarpment of the
mount.]

[oj] {413} _The State Leucadia_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[491] [M. Manlius, who saved the Capitol from the Gauls in B.C. 390, was
afterwards (B.C. 384) arraigned on a charge of high treason by the
patricians, condemned, and by order of the tribunes thrown down the
Tarpeian Rock. Livy (vi. 20) credits him with a "foeda cupiditas
regni"--a "depraved ambition for assuming the kingly power."]

[ok]
    _There first did Tully's burning accents glow?_
    _Yes--eloquently still--the echoes tell me so_.--[D.]

[492] [Compare Gray's _Odes_, "The Progress of Poesy," iii. 3, line
4--"Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn."]

[493] {414} [Nicolas Gabrino di' Rienzo, or Rienzi, commonly called Cola
di' Rienzi, was born in 1313. The son of a Roman innkeeper, he owed his
name and fame to his own talents and natural gifts. His mission, or,
perhaps, ambition, was to free Rome from the tyranny and oppression of
the great nobles, and to establish once more "the good estate," that is,
a republic. This for a brief period Rienzi accomplished. On May 20,
1347, he was proclaimed tribune and liberator of the Holy Roman Republic
"by the authority of the most merciful Lord Jesus Christ." Of great
parts, and inspired by lofty aims, he was a poor creature at heart--a
"bastard" Napoleon--and success seems to have turned his head. After
eight months of royal splendour, purchased by more than royal exactions,
the tide of popular feeling turned against him, and he was forced to
take refuge in the Castle of St. Angelo (December 15, 1347). Years of
wandering and captivity followed his first tribunate; but at length, in
1354, he was permitted to return to Rome, and, once again, after a rapid
and successful reduction of the neighbouring states, he became the chief
power in the state. But an act of violence, accompanied by treachery,
and, above all, the necessity of imposing heavier taxes than the city
could bear, roused popular discontent; and during a revolt (October 8,
1354), after a dastardly attempt to escape and conceal himself, he was
recognized by the crowd and stabbed to death.

Petrarch first made his acquaintance in 1340, when he was summoned to
Rome to be crowned as poet laureate. Afterwards, when Rienzi was
imprisoned at Avignon, Petrarch interceded on his behalf with the pope,
but, for a time, in vain. He believed in and shared his enthusiasms; and
it is probable that the famous Canzone, "Spirto gentil, che quelle
membra reggi," was addressed to the Last of the Tribunes.

Rienzi's story forms the subject of a tragedy by Gustave Drouineau,
which was played at the Odeon, January 28, 1826; of Bulwer Lytton's
novel _The Last of the Tribunes_, which was published in 1835; and of an
opera (1842) by Richard Wagner.

(See _Encyc. Met._, art. "Rome," by Professor Villari; La Rousse, _G.
Dict. Univ._, art. "Rienzi;" and a curious pamphlet by G. W. Meadley,
London, 1821, entitled _Two Pairs of Historical Portraits_, in which an
attempt is made to trace a minute resemblance between the characters and
careers of Rienzi and the First Napoleon.)]

[494] {415} [The word "nympholepsy" may be paraphrased as "ecstatic
vision." The Greeks feigned that one who had seen a nymph was henceforth
possessed by her image, and beside himself with longing for an
impossible ideal. Compare stanza cxxii. line 7--"The unreached Paradise
of our despair." Compare, too, _Kubla Khan_, lines 52, 53--

    "For he on honey-dew hath fed,
      And drunk the milk of Paradise."]

[ol] _The lovely madness of some fond despair_.--[MS. M.]

[495] {416} [Byron is describing the so-called Grotto of Egeria, which
is situated a little to the left of the Via Appia, about two miles to
the south-east of the Porta di Sebastiano: "Here, beside the Almo
rivulet [now the Maranna d. Caffarella], is a ruined nymphaeum ... which
was called the 'Grotto of Egeria,' till ... the discovery of the true
site of the Porta Capena fixed that of the grotto within the walls....
It is now known that this nymphaeum ... belonged to the suburban villa
called Triopio of Herodes Atticus." The actual site of Egeria's fountain
is in the grounds of the Villa Mattei, to the south-east of the Caelian,
and near the Porta Metronia. "It was buried, in 1867, by the military
engineers, while building their new hospital near S. Stefano Rotondo"
(Prof. Lanciani).

In lines 5-9 Byron is recalling Juvenal's description of the valley of
Egeria, under the mistaken impression that here, and not by "dripping
Capena," was the trysting-place of Numa and the goddess. Juvenal has
accompanied the seer Umbritius, who was leaving Rome for Capua, as far
as the Porta Capena; and while the one waggon, with its slender store of
goods, is being loaded, the friends take a stroll--

    "In vallem Egeriae; descendimus et speluncas
    Dissimiles veris. Quanto praestantius esset
    Numen aquae, viridi si margine clauderet undas
    Herba, nec ingenuum violarent marmora tophum?"
                                                   _Sat._ I. iii. 17-20.

The grove and shrine of the sacred fountain, which had been let to the
Jews (lines 13-16), are not to be confounded with the "artificial
caverns" near Herod's Nymphaeum, which Juvenal thought were in bad taste,
and Byron rejoiced to find reclaimed and reclothed by Nature.]

[496] {417} [Compare Shelley's _Prometheus Unbound_, act iv. (_Poetical
Works_, 1893, ii. 97)--

              "As a violet's gentle eye
              Gazes on the azure sky
    Until its hue grows like what it beholds."]

[497] {418} [Compare _Kubla Khan_, lines 12, 13--

    "But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
    Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!"]

[498] [Compare _Hamlet_, act ii. sc. 1, line 292--"This most excellent
canopy the Air."]

[om]
        _Feel the quick throbbing of a human heart_
        _And the sweet sorrows of its deathless dying_.--[MS. M. erased.]
    or, _And the sweet sorrow which exults in dying_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[on] {419}
    _Oh Love! thou art no habitant of Earth_
      _An unseen Seraph we believe in thee_
      _And can point out thy time and place of birth_.--[D. erased.]

[499] [M. Darmesteter traces the sentiment to a maxim (No. 76) of La
Rochefoucauld: "Il est du veritable amour comme de l'apparition des
esprits: tout le monde en parle, mais pen de gens en out vu."]

[500] {420} [Compare Dryden on Shaftesbury (_Absalom and Achitophel_,
pt. i. lines 156-158)--

    "A fiery soul which, working out its way,
    Fretted the pigmy-body to decay,
    And o'er-informed the tenement of clay."]

[501] [The Romans had more than one proverb to this effect; e.g.
"Amantes Amentes sunt" (_Adagia Veterum_, 1643, p. 52); "Amare et sapere
vix Deo conceditur" (Syri _Sententiae_. 1818, p. 5).]

[oo] {421} _For all are visions with a separate name_.--[D. erased.]

[502] [Circumstance is personified as halting Nemesis--"Pede poena
claudo." Hor., _Odes_, III. ii. 32.

Perhaps, too, there is the underlying thought of his own lameness, of
Mary Chaworth, and of all that might have been, if the "unspiritual God"
had willed otherwise.]

[503] {422} [Compare Milton's _Samson Agonistes_, lines 617-621--

    "My griefs not only pain me
    As a lingering disease,
    But, finding no redress, ferment and rage;
    Nor less than wounds immedicable
    Rankle."]

[504] "At all events," says the author of the _Academical Questions_
[Sir William Drummond], "I trust, whatever may be the fate of my own
speculations, that philosophy will regain that estimation which it ought
to possess. The free and philosophic spirit of our nation has been the
theme of admiration to the world. This was the proud distinction of
Englishmen, and the luminous source of all their glory. Shall we then
forget the manly and dignified sentiments of our ancestors, to prate in
the language of the mother or the nurse about our good old prejudices?
This is not the way to defend the cause of truth. It was not thus that
our fathers maintained it in the brilliant periods of our history.
Prejudice may be trusted to guard the outworks for a short space of
time, while reason slumbers in the citadel; but if the latter sink into
a lethargy, the former will quickly erect a standard for herself.
Philosophy, wisdom, and liberty support each other: he, who will not
reason, is a bigot; he, who cannot, is a fool; and he, who dares not, is
a slave."--Vol. i. pp. xiv., xv.

[For Sir William Drummond (1770-1828), see _Letters_, 1898, ii. 79, note
3. Byron advised Lady Blessington to read _Academical Questions_ (1805),
and instanced the last sentence of this passage "as one of the best in
our language" (_Conversations_, pp. 238, 239).]

[505] {423} [Compare _Macbeth_, act iii. sc. 4, lines 24, 25--

    "But now I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, bound in
    To saucy doubts and fears."]

[506] [Compare _The Deformed Transformed_, act i. sc. 2, lines 49, 50--

          "Those scarce mortal arches,
    Pile above pile of everlasting wall."

The first, second, and third stories of the Flavian amphitheatre or
Colosseum were built upon arches. Between the arches, eighty to each
story or tier, stood three-quarter columns. "Each tier is of a different
order of architecture, the lowest being a plain Roman Doric, or perhaps,
rather, Tuscan, the next Ionic, and the third Corinthian." The fourth
story, which was built by the Emperor Gordianus III., A.D. 244, to take
the place of the original wooden gallery (_manianum summum in ligneis_),
which was destroyed by lightning, A.D. 217, was a solid wall faced with
Corinthian pilasters, and pierced by forty square windows or openings.
It has been conjectured that the alternate spaces between the pilasters
were decorated with ornamental metal shields. The openings of the outer
arches of the second and third stories were probably decorated with
statues. The reverse of an _aureus_ of the reign of Titus represents the
Colosseum with these statues and a quadriga in the centre. About
one-third of the original structure remains _in situ_. The prime agent
of destruction was probably the earthquake ("Petrarch's earthquake") of
September, 1349, when the whole of the western side fell towards the
Caelian, and gave rise to a hill or rather to a chain of hills of loose
blocks of travertine and tufa, which supplied Rome with building
materials for subsequent centuries. As an instance of wholesale
spoliation or appropriation, Professor Lanciani refers to "a document
published by Muentz, in the _Revue Arch._, September, 1876," which
"certifies that one contractor alone, in the space of only nine months,
in 1452, could carry off 2522 cartloads" of travertine (Smith's _Dict.
of Gr. and Rom. Ant._, art. "Amphitheatrum;" _Ruins and Excavations of
Ancient Rome_, by R. Lanciani, 1897, p. 375).]

[507] {424} [For a description of the Colosseum by moonlight, see
Goethe's letter from Rome, February 2, 1787 (_Travels in Italy_, 1883,
p. 159): "Of the beauty of a walk through Rome by moonlight, it is
impossible to form a conception ... Peculiarly beautiful at such a time
is the Coliseum." See, too, _Corinne, ou L'Italie_, xv. 4, 1819, iii.
32--

"Ce n'est pas connaitre l'impression du Colisee que de ne l'avoir vu que
de jour ... la lune est l'astre des ruines. Quelque fois, a travers les
ouvertures de l'amphitheatre, qui semble s'elever jusqu'aux nues, une
partie de la voute du ciel parait comme un rideau d'un bleu sombre place
derriere l'edifice."

For a fine description of the Colosseum by starlight, see _Manfred_, act
iii. sc. 4, lines 8-13.]

[508] {425} [When Byron visited Rome, and for long afterwards, the ruins
of the Colosseum were clad with a multitude of shrubs and wild flowers.
Books were written on the "Flora of the Coliseum," which were said to
number 420 species. But, says Professor Lanciani, "These materials for a
_hortus siccus_, so dear to the visitors of our ruins, were destroyed by
Rosa in 1871, and the ruins scraped and shaven clean, it being feared by
him that the action of roots would accelerate the disintegration of the
great structure." If Byron had lived to witness these activities, he
might have devoted a stanza to the "tender mercies" of this zealous
archaeologist.]

[509] {426} [The whole of this appeal to Nemesis (stanzas
cxxx.-cxxxviii.) must be compared with the "Domestic Poems" of 1816, the
Third Canto of _Childe Harold_ (especially stanzas lxix.-lxxv., and
cxi.-cxviii.), and with the "Invocation" in the first act of _Manfred_.
It has been argued that Byron inserted these stanzas with the deliberate
purpose of diverting sympathy from his wife to himself. The appeal, no
doubt, is deliberate, and the plea is followed by an indictment, but the
sincerity of the appeal is attested by its inconsistency. Unlike
Orestes, who slew his mother to avenge his father, he will not so deal
with the "moral Clytemnestra of her lord," requiting murder by murder,
but is resolved to leave the balancing of the scale to the omnipotent
Time-spirit who rights every wrong and will redress his injuries. But in
making answer to his accusers he outruns Nemesis, and himself enacts the
part of a "moral" Orestes. It was true that his hopes were "sapped" and
"his name blighted," and it was natural, if not heroic, first to
persuade himself that his suffering exceeded his fault, that he was more
sinned against than sinning, and, so persuaded, to take care that he
should not suffer alone. The general purport of plea and indictment is
plain enough, but the exact interpretation of his phrases, the
appropriation of his dark sayings, belong rather to the biography of the
poet than to a commentary on his poems. (For Lady Byron's comment on the
"allusions" to herself in _Childe Harold, vide ante_, p. 288, note 1.)]

[op] {427} _Or for my fathers' faults_-----.-[MS. M.]

[oq] {428}
                                 'tis not that now
    And if my voice break forth--{-it is not that-}
    I shrink from what is suffered--let him speak
                         decline upon my
      Who                    {-humbler in-}
    {-What-} hath beheld {-me quiver on my-} brow
       seen my mind's convulsion leave it {-blenched or-} weak?
    Or {-my internal spirit changed or weak-}
       {-found my mind convulsed-}
                        a
    But in this page {-the-} record {-which-} I seek
                                  will
                                  {-from out of the deep-}
          {-stands and-}            {-of that remorse-}
    {-Shall stand and when that hour shall come and come-}
    {-Shall come--though I be ashes--and shall pile heap-}
    {-It will-}                      {-come and wreak-}
    {-In fire the measure-}
    {-The fiery prophecy-}
    {-The fullness of my-}
    {-The fullness of my prophecy or heap-}
    {-The mountain of my curse-}
    Not in the air shall these my words disperse
    {-'Tis written that an hour of deep remorse-}
    Though I be ashes {-a deep-} far hour shall wreak
    {-The fullness Thee-}           this
    The deep prophetic fullness of {-my-} verse
    And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse.--[MS. M.]

[or] {429}
    If to forgive be "heaping coals of Fire"
      As God hath spoken--on the heads of foes
      Mine should lie a Volcano-and rise higher
      Than o'er the Titans crushed Olympus rose
      Than Athos soars, or blazing AEtna glows:
      True--they who stung were petty things--but what
      Than serpent's sting produce more deadly throes.
      The Lion may be tortured by the Gnat--
    Who sucks the slumberer's blood--the Eagle? no, the Bat.[Sec.]--
                                              [MS. M.]

[Sec.] [The "Bat" was "a sobriquet by which Lady Caroline Lamb was well
known in London society." An Italian translation of her novel,
_Glenarvon_, was at this time in the press at Venice (see letter to
Murray, August 7, 1817), and it is probable that Byron, who declined to
interdict its publication, took his revenge in a petulant stanza, which,
on second thoughts, he decided to omit. (See note by Mr. Richard
Edgcumbe, _Notes and Queries_ eighth series, 1895, viii. 101.)]

[510] [Compare "Lines on hearing that Lady Byron was ill," lines 53-55.]

[511] {431} Whether the wonderful statue which suggested this image be a
laquearian gladiator, which, in spite of Winckelmann's criticism, has
been stoutly maintained; or whether it be a Greek herald, as that great
antiquary positively asserted;[Sec.] or whether it is to be thought a
Spartan or barbarian shieldbearer, according to the opinion of his
Italian editor; it must assuredly seem _a copy_ of that masterpiece of
Ctesilaus which represented "a wounded man dying, who perfectly
expressed what there remained of life in him." Montfaucon and Maffei
thought it the identical statue; but that statue was of bronze. The
Gladiator was once in the Villa Ludovisi, and was bought by Clement XII.
The right arm is an entire restoration of Michael Angelo.

[There is no doubt that the statue of the "Dying Gladiator" represents a
dying Gaul. It is to be compared with the once-named "Arria and Paetus"
of the Villa Ludovisi, and with other sculptures in the museums of
Venice, Naples, and Rome, representing "Gauls and Amazons lying fatally
wounded, or still in the attitude of defending life to the last," which
belong to the Pergamene school of the second century B.C. M. Collignon
hazards a suggestion that the "Dying Gaul" is the trumpet-sounder of
Epigonos, in which, says Pliny (_Hist. Nat._, xxxiv. 88), the sculptor
surpassed all his previous works ("omnia fere praedicta imitatus
praecessit in tubicine"); while Dr. H. S. Urlichs (see _The Elder Pliny's
Chapters on the History of Art_, translated by K. Jex-Blake, with
Commentary and Historical Illustrations, by E. Sellers, 1896, p. 74,
note) falls back on Winckelmann's theory that the "statue ... may have
been simply the votive-portrait of the winner in the contest of heralds,
such as that of Archias of Hybla in Delphoi." (See, too, Helbig's _Guide
to the Collection of Public Antiquities in Rome_, Engl. transl., 1895.
i. 399; _History of Greek Sculpture_, by A. S. Murray, L.L.D., F.S.A.,
1890, ii. 381-383.)]

[Sec.] Either Polyphontes, herald of Laius, killed by Oedipus; or Kopreas,
herald of Eurystheus, killed by the Athenians when he endeavoured to
drag the Heraclidae from the altar of mercy, and in whose honour they
instituted annual games, continued to the time of Hadrian; or
Anthemocritus, the Athenian herald, killed by the Megarenses, who never
recovered the impiety. [See _Hist, of Ancient Art_, translated by G. H.
Lodge, 1881, ii. 207.]

[os] Leaning upon his hand, his mut[e] brow Yielding to death but
conquering agony.--[MS. M. erased.]

[ot] {432} _From the red gash fall bigly_----.--[MS. M.]

[ou] _Like the last of a thunder-shower_----.--[MS. M.]

[ov] _The earth swims round him_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[ow] {433} _Slaughtered to make a Roman holiday_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[ox] _Was death and life_----.--[MS. M.]

[oy] _My voice is much_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[oz] _Yet the colossal skeleton ye pass_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[pa] {434} _The ivy-forest, which its walls doth wear_.--[MS. M.
erased.]

[512] Suetonius [Lib. i. cap. xlv.] informs us that Julius Caesar was
particularly gratified by that decree of the senate which enabled him to
wear a wreath of laurel on all occasions. He was anxious not to show
that he was the conqueror of the world, but to hide that he was bald. A
stranger at Rome would hardly have guessed at the motive, nor should we
without the help of the historian.

[pb] _The Hero race who trod--the imperial dust ye tread_.--[MS. M.
erased.]

[513] This is quoted in the _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, as a
proof that the Coliseum was entire, when seen by the Anglo-Saxon
pilgrims at the end of the seventh, or the beginning of the eighth,
century. A notice on the Coliseum may be seen in the _Historical
Illustrations_, p. 263.

["'Quamdiu stabit Colyseus, stabit et Roma; quando cadet Colyseus, cadet
Roma; quando cadet Roma, cadet et mundus.' (Beda in 'Excerptis seu
Collectaneis,' apud Ducange, _Glossarium ad Scriptores Med., et Infimae
Latinitatis_, tom. ii. p. 407, edit. Basil.) This saying must be
ascribed to the Anglo-Saxon pilgrims who visited Rome before the year
735, the aera of Bede's death; for I do not believe that our venerable
monk ever passed the sea."--Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire_, 1855, viii. 281, note.]

[514] {435} "Though plundered of all its brass, except the ring which
was necessary to preserve the aperture above; though exposed to repeated
fires; though sometimes flooded by the river, and always open to the
rain, no monument of equal antiquity is so well preserved as this
rotundo. It passed with little alteration from the Pagan into the
present worship; and so convenient were its niches for the Christian
altar, that Michael Angelo, ever studious of ancient beauty, introduced
their design as a model in the Catholic church."--Forsyth's _Italy_,
1816, p. 137.

[The Pantheon consists of two parts, a porch or _pronaos_ supported by
sixteen Corinthian columns, and behind it, but "obviously disjointed
from it," a rotunda or round temple, 143 feet high, and 142 feet in
diameter. The inscription on the portico (M. AGRIPPA, L. F. Cos.
tertium. Fecit.) affirms that the temple was built by Agrippa (M.
Vipsanius), B.C. 27.

It has long been suspected that with regard to the existing building the
inscription was "historically and artistically misleading;" but it is
only since 1892 that it has been known for certain (from the stamp on
the bricks in various parts of the building) that the rotunda was built
by Hadrian. Difficulties with regard to the relations between the two
parts of the Pantheon remain unsolved, but on the following points
Professor Lanciani claims to speak with certainty:--

(1) "The present Pantheon, portico included, is not the work of Agrippa,
but of Hadrian, and dates from A.D. 120-124.

(2) "The columns, capital, and entablature of the portico, inscribed
with Agrippa's name, may be original, and may date from 27-25 B.C., but
they were first removed and then put together by Hadrian.

(3) "The original structure of Agrippa was rectangular instead of round,
and faced the south instead of the north."--_Ruins and Excavations,
etc._, by R. Lanciani, 1897, p. 483.]

[pc] {436} ----_the pride of proudest Rome_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[515] {437} The Pantheon has been made a receptacle for the busts of
modern great, or, at least, distinguished men. The flood of light which
once fell through the large orb above on the whole circle of divinities,
now shines on a numerous assemblage of mortals, some one or two of whom
have been almost deified by the veneration of their countrymen.

["The busts of Raphael, Hannibal Caracci, Pierrin del Vaga, Zuccari, and
others ... are ill assorted with the many modern contemporary heads of
ancient worthies which now glare in all the niches of the
Rotunda."--_Historical Illustrations_, p. 293.]

[516] This and the three next stanzas allude to the story of the Roman
daughter, which is recalled to the traveller by the site, or pretended
site, of that adventure, now shown at the Church of St. Nicholas _in
Carcere_. The difficulties attending the full belief of the tale are
stated in _Historical Illustrations_, p. 295.

[The traditional scene of the "Caritas Romana" is a cell forming part of
the substructions of the Church of S. Nicola in Carcere, near the Piazza
Montanara. Festus (_De Verb. Signif._, lib. xiv., A. J. Valpy, 1826, ii.
594), by way of illustrating Pietas, tells the story in a few words: "It
is said that AElius dedicated a temple to Pietas on the very spot where a
woman dwelt of yore. Her father was shut up in prison, and she kept him
alive by giving him the breast by stealth, and, as a reward for her
deed, obtained his forgiveness and freedom." In Pliny (Hist. Nat., vii.
36) and in Valerius Maximus (V. 4) it is not a father, but a mother,
whose life is saved by a daughter's piety.]

[pd] {438} _Two isolated phantoms_----.--[MS. M.]

[pe] _With her unkerchiefed neck_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[pf]
        _Or even the shrill impatient_ [_cries that brook_].
    or, _Or even the shrill small cry_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[pg] _No waiting silence or suspense_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[517] {439} [It was fabled of the Milky Way that when Mercury held up
the infant Hercules to Juno's breast, that he might drink in divinity,
the goddess pushed him away, and that drops of milk fell into the void,
and became a multitude of tiny stars. The story is told by Eratosthenes
of Cyrene (B.C. 276), in his _Catasterismi_ (Treatise on Star Legends),
No. 44: _Opusc. Mythol._, Amsterdam, 1688, p. 136.]

[ph]
    _To its original fountain but repierce_
    _Thy sire's heart_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[518] The castle of St. Angelo. (See _Historical Illustrations._)

[Hadrian's mole or mausoleum, now the Castle of St. Angelo, is situated
on the banks of the Tiber, on the site of the "Horti Neronis." "It is
composed of a square basement, each side of which measures 247 feet....
A grand circular mole, nearly 1000 feet in circumference, stands on the
square basement," and, originally, "supported in its turn a cone of
earth covered with evergreens, like the mausoleum of Augustus." A spiral
way led to a central chamber in the interior of the mole, which
contained, presumably, the porphyry sarcophagus in which Antoninus Pius
deposited the ashes of Hadrian, and the tomb of the Antonines. Honorius
(A.D. 428) was probably the first to convert the mausoleum into a
fortress. The bronze statue of the Destroying Angel, which is placed on
the summit, dates from 1740, and is the successor to five earlier
statues, of which the first was erected in 1453. The conception and
execution of the Moles Hadriana are entirely Roman, and, except in size
and solidity, it is in no sense a mimic pyramid.--_Ruins and
Excavations, etc._, by R. Lanciani, 1897, p. 554, _sq._]

[pi] {440}
    _The now spectator with a sanctioned mirth_
    _To view the vast design_----.--[MS. M.]

[519] This and the next six stanzas have a reference to the Church of
St. Peter's. (For a measurement of the comparative length of this
basilica and the other great churches of Europe, see the pavement of St.
Peter's, and the _Classical Tour through Italy_, ii. 125, _et seq._,
chap, iv.)

[pj] _Look to the dome_----.--[MS. M.]

[520] [Compare _The Prophecy of Dante_, iv. 49-53--

                         "While still stands
    The austere Pantheon, into heaven shall soar
      A dome, its image, while the base expands
    Into a fane surpassing all before,
      Such as all flesh shall flock to kneel in--"

Compare, too, Browning's _Christmas Eve_, sect, x.--

    "Is it really on the earth,
    This miraculous dome of God?
    Has the angel's measuring-rod
    Which numbered cubits, gem from gem,
    'Twixt the gates of the new Jerusalem,
    Meted it out,--and what he meted,
    Have the sons of men completed?
    --Binding ever as he bade,
    Columns in the colonnade,
    With arms wide open to embrace
    The entry of the human race?"]

[pk] {441} _Lo Christ's great dome_----.--[MS.M.]

[521] [The ruins which Byron and Hobhouse explored, March 25, 1810
(_Travels in Albania_, ii. 68-71), were not the ruins of the second
Temple of Artemis, the sixth wonder of the world (_vide_ Philo
Byzantius, _De Septem Orbis Miraculis_), but, probably, those of "the
great gymnasium near the port of the city." In 1810, and for long
afterwards, the remains of the temple were buried under twenty feet of
earth, and it was not till 1870 that the late Mr. J. T. Wood, the agent
of the Trustees of the British Museum, had so far completed his
excavations as to discover the foundations of the building on the exact
spot which had been pointed out by Guhl in 1843. Fragments of the famous
sculptured columns, thirty-six in number, says Pliny (_Hist. Nat._,
xxxvi. 95), were also brought to light, and are now in the British
Museum. (See _Modern Discoveries on the Site of Ancient Ephesus_, by J.
T. Wood, 1890; _Hist. of Greek Sculpture_, by A. S. Murray, ii. 304.)]

[522] [Compare _Don Juan_, Canto IX. stanza xxvii. line 2--"I have heard
them in the Ephesian ruins howl."]

[pl] {442} ----_round roofs swell_.--[MS. M., D.]

[pm] _Their glittering breastplate in the sun_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[523] [Compare Canto II. stanza lxxix. lines 2, 3--

    "Oh Stamboul! once the Empress of their reign,
    Though turbans now pollute Sophia's shrine."]

[524] [The emphasis is on the word "fit." The measure of "fitness" is
the entirety of the enshrinement or embodiment of the mortal aspiration
to put on immortality. The vastness and the sacredness of St. Peter's
make for and effect this embodiment. So, too, the living temple "so
defined," great with the greatness of holiness, may become the
enshrinement and the embodiment of the Spirit of God.]

[pn] {443} _His earthly palace_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[525] [This stanza may be paraphrased, but not construed. Apparently,
the meaning is that as the eye becomes accustomed to the details and
proportions of the building, the sense of its vastness increases. Your
first impression was at fault, you had not begun to realize the almost
inconceivable vastness of the structure. You had begun to climb the
mountain, and the dazzling peak seemed to be close at your head, but as
you ascend, it recedes. "Thou movest," but the building expands; "thou
climbest," but the Alp increases in height. In both cases the eye has
been deceived by gigantic elegance, by the proportion of parts to the
whole.]

[po] And fair proportions which beguile the eyes.--[MS. M. erased.]

[pp]
    _Painting and marble of so many dyes_--
    _And glorious high altar where for ever burn_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[pq]
        _Its Giant's limbs and by degrees_----
    or, _The Giant eloquence and thus unroll_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[pr]
                   ----_our narrow sense_
    _Cannot keep pace with mind_----[MS. M. erased.]

[ps] {445} _What Earth nor Time--nor former Thought could frame_.--[MS.
M. erased.]

[pt] _Before your eye--and ye return not as ye came_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[pu] _In that which Genius did, what great Conceptions can_.--[MS. M.
erased.]

[526] [Pliny tells us (_Hist. Nat._, xxxvi. 5) that the Laocoon which
stood in the palace of Titus was the work of three sculptors, natives of
Rhodes; and it is now universally admitted that the statue which was
found (January 14, 1516) in the vineyard of Felice de' Freddi, not far
from the ruins of the palace, and is now in the Vatican, is the statue
which Pliny describes. M. Collignon, in his _Histoire de la Sculpture
Grecque_, gives reasons for assigning the date of the Laocoon to the
first years of the first century B.C. It follows that the work is a
century later than the frieze of the great altar of Pergamos, which
contains the figure of a young giant caught in the toils of Athena's
serpent--a theme which served as a model for later sculptors of the same
school. In 1817 the Laocoon was in the heyday of its fame, and was
regarded as the supreme achievement of ancient art. Since then it has
been decried and dethroned. M. Collignon protests against this excessive
depreciation, and makes himself the mouthpiece of a second and more
temperate reaction: "On peut ... gouter mediocrement le melodrame, sans
meconnaitre pour cela les reelles qualites du groupe. La composition est
d'une structure irreprochable, d'une harmonie de lignes qui defie toute
critique. Le torse du Laocoon trahit une science du nu pen commune"
(_Hist. de la Sculp. Grecque_, 1897, ii. 550, 551).]

[pv] {446} ----_the writhing boys_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[pw] _Shackles its living rings, and_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[527] [In his description of the Apollo Belvidere, Byron follows the
traditional theory of Montorsoli, the pupil of Michael Angelo, who
restored the left hand and right forearm of the statue. The god, after
his struggle with the python, stands forth proud and disdainful, the
left hand holding a bow, and the right hand falling as of one who had
just shot an arrow. The discovery, in 1860, of a bronze statuette in the
Stroganoff Collection at St. Petersburg, which holds something like an
aegis and a mantle in the left hand, suggested to Stephani a second
theory, that the Belvidere Apollo was a copy of a statue of Apollo
Boedromios, an _ex-voto_ offering on the rout of the Gauls when they
attacked Delphi (B.C. 278). To this theory Furtwaengler at one time
assented, but subsequently came to the conclusion that the Stroganoff
bronze was a forgery. His present contention is that the left hand held
a bow, as Montorsoli imagined, whilst the right grasped "a branch of
laurel, of which the leaves are still visible on the trunk which the
copyist added to the bronze original." The Apollo Belvidere is, he
concludes, a copy of the Apollo Alexicacos of Leochares (fourth century
B.C.), which stood in the Cerameicos at Athens. M. Maxime Collignon, who
utters a word of warning as to the undue depreciation of the statue by
modern critics, adopts Furtwaengler's later theory (_Masterpieces of
Ancient Greek Sculpture_, by A. Furtwaengler, 1895, ii. 405, _sq._).]

[528] {447} [The "delicate" beauty of the statue recalled the features
of a lady whom he had once thought of making his wife. "The Apollo
Belvidere," he wrote to Moore (May 12, 1817), "is the image of Lady
Adelaide Forbes. I think I never saw such a likeness."]

[529] [It is probable that lines 1-4 of this stanza contain an allusion
to a fact related by M. Pinel, in his work, _Sur l'Insanite_, which
Milman turned to account in his _Belvidere Apollo_, a Newdigate Prize
Poem of 1812--

    "Beauteous as vision seen in dreamy sleep
    By holy maid on Delphi's haunted steep,
    'Mid the dim twilight of the laurel grove,
    Too fair to worship, too divine to love.
    Yet on that form in wild delirious trance
    With more than rev'rence gazed the Maid of France,
    Day after day the love-sick dreamer stood
    With him alone, nor thought it solitude!
    To cherish grief, her last, her dearest care,
    Her one fond hope--to perish of despair."
                         Milman's _Poetical Works_, Paris, 1829, p. 180.

Compare, too, Coleridge's _Kubla Khan_, lines 14-16--

    "A savage place, as holy and enchanted,
    As e'er beneath a wailing moon was haunted
    By woman wailing for her demon-lover."
                                         _Poetical Works_, 1893, p. 94.]

[px] {448} _Before its eyes unveiled to image forth a God!_--[MS. M.
erased.]

[530] [The fire which Prometheus stole from heaven was the living soul,
"the source of all our woe." (Compare Horace, _Odes_, i. 3. 29-31--

    "Post ignem aetheria domo
      Subductum, Macies et nova Febrium
    Terris incubuit cohors.")]

[py] {449} _The phantom fades away into the general mass_.--[MS. M.
erased.]

[531] {450} [Compare _Hamlet_, act iii. sc. 1, line 76--"Who would these
fardels bear?"]

[532] [Charlotte Augusta (b. January 7, 1796), only daughter of the
Prince Regent, was married to Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, May 2, 1816, and
died in childbirth, November 6, 1817.

Other poets produced their dirges; but it was left to Byron to deal
finely, and as a poet should, with a present grief, which was felt to be
a national calamity.

Southey's "Funeral Song for the Princess Charlotte of Wales" was only
surpassed in feebleness by Coleridge's "Israel's Lament." Campbell
composed a laboured elegy, which was "spoken by Mr ... at Drury Lane
Theatre, on the First Opening of the House after the Death of the
Princess Charlotte, 1817;" and Montgomery wrote a hymn on "The Royal
Infant, Still-born, November 5, 1817."

Not a line of these lamentable effusions has survived; but the poor,
pitiful story of common misfortune, with its tragic irony, uncommon
circumstance, and far-reaching consequence, found its _vates sacer_ in
the author of _Childe Harold_.]

[pz] {451}
      _Her prayers for thee and in thy coming power_
      _Beheld her Iris--Thou too lonely Lord_
      _And desolate Consort! fatal is thy dower_,
    _The Husband of a year--the Father of an_----[? _hour_].--
                         [D. erased.]

[533] {452} [Compare Canto III. stanza xxxiv. lines 6, 7--

    "Like to the apples on the Dead Sea's shore,
    All ashes to the taste."]

[534] [Mr. Tozer traces the star simile to Homer (_Iliad_, viii.
559)--[Greek: Pa/nta de/ t' ei)/detai a)/stra, ge/gethe de/ te phre/na
poime/n]]

[535] [Compare _Macbeth_, act iii. sc. 2, lines 22, 23--

                 "Duncan is in his grave;
    After life's fitful fever he sleeps well."]

[536] [Compare _Coriolanus_, act iii. sc. 3, lines 121, 122--

    "You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
    As reek o' the rotten fens."]

[537] {453} Mary died on the scaffold; Elizabeth, of a broken heart;
Charles V., a hermit; Louis XIV., a bankrupt in means and glory;
Cromwell, of anxiety; and, "the greatest is behind," Napoleon lives a
prisoner. To these sovereigns a long but superfluous list might be added
of names equally illustrious and unhappy.

[qa] _Which sinks_----.--[MS. M.]

[538] [The simile of the "earthquake" was repeated in a letter to
Murray, dated December 3, 1817: "The death of the Princess Charlotte has
been a shock even here, and must have been an earthquake at home.... The
death of this poor Girl is melancholy in every respect, dying at twenty
or so, in childbed--of a _boy_ too, a present princess and future queen,
and just as she began to be happy, and to enjoy herself, and the hopes
which she inspired."]

[539] {454} The village of Nemi was near the Arician retreat of Egeria,
and, from the shades which embosomed the temple of Diana, has preserved
to this day its distinctive appellation of _The Grove_. Nemi is but an
evening's ride from the comfortable inn of Albano.

[The basin of the Lago di Nemi is the crater of an extinct volcano.
Hence the comparison to a coiled snake. Its steel-blue waters are
unruffled by the wind which lashes the neighbouring ocean into fury.
Hence its likeness to "cherished hate," as contrasted with "generous and
active wrath."]

[qb] _And calm as speechless hate_----.--[MS. M.]

[540] [The spectator is supposed to be looking towards the Mediterranean
from the summit of Monte Cavo. Tusculum, where "Tully reposed," lies to
the north of the Alban Hills, on the right; but, as Byron points to a
spot "beneath thy right," he probably refers to the traditional site of
the Villa Ciceronis at Grotta Ferrata, and not to an alternative site at
the Villa Ruffinella, between Frascati and the ruins of Tusculum.
Horace's Sabine farm, on the bank of Digentia's "ice-cold rivulet," is
more than twenty miles to the north-east of the Alban Hills. The
mountains to the south and east of Tusculum intercept the view of the
valley of the Licenza (Digentia), where the "farm was tilled." Childe
Harold had bidden farewell to Horace, once for all, "upon Soracte's
ridge," but recalls him to keep company with Virgil and Cicero.]

[qc] {455}
      _Of girdling mountains circle on the sight_
    _The Sabine farm was tilled, the wearied Bard's delight_.--
                          [MS. M.]

[541] ["Calpe's rock" is Gibraltar (compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II.
stanza xxii. line i). "Last" may be the last time that Byron and Childe
Harold saw the Mediterranean together. Byron had last seen it--"the
Midland Ocean"--by "Calpe's rock," on his return journey to England in
1811. Or by "last" he may mean the last time that it burst upon his
view. He had not seen the Mediterranean on his way from Geneva to
Venice, in October-November, 1816, or from Venice to Rome, April--May,
1817; but now from the Alban Mount the "ocean" was full in view.]

[qd] {456} ----_much suffering and some tears_.--[MS. M.]

[542] ["After the stanza (near the conclusion of Canto 4th) which ends
with the line--

"'As if there was no man to trouble what is clear,'

insert the two following stanzas (clxxvii., clxxviii.). Then go on to
the stanza beginning, 'Roll on thou,' etc., etc. You will find the place
of insertion near the conclusion--just before the address to the Ocean.

"These _two stanzas_ will just make up the number of 500 stanzas to the
whole poem.

"Answer when you receive this. I sent back the packets yesterday, and
hope they will arrive in safety."--D.]

[543] [His desire is towards no light o' love, but for the support and
fellowship of his sister. Compare the opening lines of the _Epistle to
Augusta_--

      "My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
    Dearer and purer were, it should be thine;
    Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
    No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:
    Go where I will, to me thou art the same--
    A loved regret which I would not resign.
    There yet are two things in my destiny,--
    A world to roam through and a home with thee.

      "The first were nothing--had I still the last,
    It were the haven of my happiness."]

[544] {457} [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza lxxii. lines 8,
9; and _Epistle to Augusta_, stanza xi.]

[qe] {458} ----_unearthed, uncoffined, and unknown_.--[MS. M.]

[545] [Compare _Ps_. cvii. 26, "They mount up to the heaven, they go
down again to the depths."]

[qf] _And dashest him to earth again: there let him lay!_--[D.]

[546] ["Lay" is followed by a plainly marked period in both the MSS. (M.
and D.) of the Fourth Canto of _Childe Harold_. For instances of the
same error, compare "The Adieu," stanza 10, line 4, and ["Pignus
Amoris"], stanza 3, line 3 (_Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 232, note, and p.
241). It is to be remarked that Hobhouse, who pencilled a few
corrections on the margin of his own MS. copy, makes no comment on this
famous solecism. The fact is that Byron wrote as he spoke, with the
"careless and negligent ease of a man of quality," and either did not
know that "lay" was not an intransitive verb or regarded himself as
"super grammaticam."]

[547] {459}
[Compare Campbell's _Battle of the Baltic_ (stanza ii. lines 1, 2)--

    "Like leviathans afloat,
    Lay their bulwarks on the brine."]

[qg] _These oaken citadels which made and make_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[548] The Gale of wind which succeeded the battle of Trafalgar destroyed
the greater part (if not all) of the prizes--nineteen sail of the
line--taken on that memorable day. I should be ashamed to specify
particulars which should be known to all--did we not know that in France
the people were kept in ignorance of the event of this most glorious
victory in modern times, and that in England it is the present fashion
to talk of Waterloo as though it were entirely an English triumph--and a
thing to be named with Blenheim and Agincourt--Trafalgar and Aboukir.
Posterity will decide; but if it be remembered as a skilful or as a
wonderful action, it will be like the battle of Zama, where we think of
Hannibal more than of Scipio. For assuredly we dwell on this action, not
because it was gained by Blucher or Wellington, but because it was lost
by Buonaparte--a man who, with all his vices and his faults, never yet
found an adversary with a tithe of his talents (as far as the expression
can apply to a conqueror) or his good intentions, his clemency or his
fortitude.

Look at his successors throughout Europe, whose imitation of the worst
parts of his policy is only limited by their comparative impotence, and
their positive imbecility.--[MS. M.]

[549] {460} ["When Lord Byron wrote this stanza, he had, no doubt, the
following passage in Boswell's _Johnson_ floating in his mind.... 'The
grand object of all travelling is to see the shores of the
Mediterranean. On those shores were the four great empires of the
world--the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman' (_Life of
Johnson_, 1876, p. 505)."--Note to _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza
clxxxii. ed. 1891.]

[550] [See letter to Murray, September 24, 1818: "What does 'thy waters
_wasted_ them' mean (in the Canto)? _That is not me_. Consult the MS.
_always_." Nevertheless, the misreading appeared in several editions.
(For a correspondence on the subject, see _Notes and Queries_, first
series, vol. i. pp. 182, 278, 324, 508; vol. ix. p. 481; vol. x. pp.
314, 434.)]

[qh] _Thy waters wasted them while they were free_.--[Editions 1818,
1819, 1823, and Galignani, 1825.]

[qi] _Unchangeable save calm thy tempests ply_.--[MS. M., D.]

[qj] {461}
    _The image of Eternity and Space_
    _For who hath fixed thy limits_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[551] [Compare Tennyson's _In Memoriam_, lv. stanza 6--

               "Dragons of the prime,
      That tare each other in their slime,
    Were mellow music match'd with him."]

[552] ["While at Aberdeen, he used often to steal from home unperceived;
sometimes he would find his way to the seaside" (_Life_, p. 9). For an
account of his feats in swimming, see _Letters_, 1898, i. 263, note 1;
and letter to Murray, February 21, 1821. See, too, for a "more perilous,
but less celebrated passage" (from Old Lisbon to Belem Castle), _Travels
in Albania_, ii. 195.]

[553] ["It was a thought worthy of the great spirit of Byron, after
exhibiting to us his Pilgrim amidst all the most striking scenes of
earthly grandeur and earthly decay ... to conduct him and us at last to
the borders of 'the Great Deep.' ... The image of the wanderer may well
be associated, for a time, with the rock of Calpe, the shattered temples
of Athens, or the gigantic fragments of Rome; but when we wish to think
of this dark personification as of a thing which is, where can we so
well imagine him to have his daily haunt as by the roaring of the waves?
It was thus that Homer represented Achilles in his moments of
ungovernable and inconsolable grief for the loss of Patroclus. It was
thus he chose to depict the paternal despair of Chryseus--

    "[Greek: Be/ d' a)ke/on para\ thi~na polyphloi/sboio thala/sses]"

Note by Professor Wilson, ed. 1837.]

[qk] {462}
    _Is dying in the echo--it is time_
    _To break the spell of this protracted dream_
    _And what will be the fate of this my rhyme_
    _May not be of my augury_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[ql] _Fatal--and yet it shakes me not--farewell._--[MS. M.]

[qm] _Ye! who have traced my Pilgrim to the scene._--[MS. M.]

[554] {463} At end--

    Laus Deo!
         Byron.
              July 19th, 1817.
    La Mira, near Venice.

    Laus Deo!
         Byron.
    La Mira, near Venice,
         Sept. 3, 1817.

       *       *       *       *       *




                   NOTES TO CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.

                                CANTO IV.

                               1.

    I stood in Venice, on the "Bridge of Sighs;"
      A Palace and a prison on each hand.
                                                Stanza i. lines 1 and 2.

The communication between the ducal palace and the prisons of Venice is
by a gloomy bridge, or covered gallery, high above the water, and
divided by a stone wall into a passage and a cell. The state dungeons
called _pozzi_, or wells, were sunk in the thick walls of the palace:
and the prisoner, when taken out to die, was conducted across the
gallery to the other side, and being then led back into the other
compartment, or cell, upon the bridge, was there strangled. The low
portal through which the criminal was taken into this cell is now walled
up; but the passage is still open, and is still known by the name of the
"Bridge of Sighs." The _pozzi_ are under the flooring of the chamber at
the foot of the bridge. They were formerly twelve; but on the first
arrival of the French, the Venetians hastily blocked or broke up the
deeper of these dungeons. You may still, however descend by a trap-door,
and crawl down through holes, half choked by rubbish, to the depth of
two stories below the first range. If you are in want of consolation for
the extinction of patrician power, perhaps you may find it there;
scarcely a ray of light glimmers into the narrow gallery which leads to
the cells, and the places of confinement themselves are totally dark. A
small hole in the wall admitted the damp air of the passages, and
served for the introduction of the prisoner's food. A wooden pallet,
raised a foot from the ground, was the only furniture. The conductors
tell you that a light was not allowed. The cells are about five paces in
length, two and a half in width, and seven feet in height. They are
directly beneath one another, and respiration is somewhat difficult in
the lower holes. Only one prisoner was found when the republicans
descended into these hideous recesses, and he is said to have been
confined sixteen years. But the inmates of the dungeons beneath had left
traces of their repentance, or of their despair, which are still
visible, and may, perhaps, owe something to recent ingenuity. Some of
the detained appear to have offended against, and others to have
belonged to, the sacred body, not only from their signatures, but from
the churches and belfries which they have scratched upon the walls. The
reader may not object to see a specimen of the records prompted by so
terrific a solitude. As nearly as they could be copied by more than one
pencil, three of them are as follows:--

    1. NON TI FIDAR AD ALCUNO PENSA e TACI
       SE FUGIR VUOI DE SPIONI INSIDIE e LACCI
       IL PENTIRTI PENTIRTI NULLA GIOVA
       MA BEN DI VALOR TUO LA VERA PROVA

                       1607. ADI 2. GENARO. FUI RETENTO
                       P' LA BESTIEMMA P' AVER DATO
                           DA MANZAR A UN MORTO
                              IACOMO. GRITTI. SCRISSE.

    2. UN PARLAR POCHO et
       NEGARE PRONTO et
       UN PENSAR AL FINE PUO DARE LA VITA
       A NOI ALTRI MESCHINI

                                    1605.
                           EGO IOHN BAPTISTA AD
                           ECCLESIAM CORTELLARIUS.

    3. DE CHI MI FIDO GUARDAMI DIO
       DE CHI NON MI FIDO MI GUARDARO IO
               A    TA   H  A  NA
             V. LA S. C. K. R.

The copyist has followed, not corrected, the solecisms; some of which
are, however, not quite so decided since the letters were evidently
scratched in the dark. It only need be observed, that _bestemmia_ and
_mangiar_ may be read in the first inscription, which was probably
written by a prisoner confined for some act of impiety committed at a
funeral; that _Cortellarius_ is the name of a parish on terra firma,
near the sea; and that the last initials evidently are put for _Viva la
santa Chiesa Kattolica Romana_.

                               2.

    In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more.
                                                     Stanza iii. line 1.

["I cannot forbear mentioning a custom in Venice, which they tell me is
particular to the common people of this country, of singing stanzas out
of Tasso. They are set to a pretty solemn tune, and when one begins in
any part of the poet, it is odds but he will be answered by somebody
else that overhears him; so that sometimes you have ten or a dozen in
the neighbourhood of one another, taking verse after verse, and running
on with the poem as far as their memories will carry them."--Addison,
A.D. 1700.]

The well-known song of the gondoliers, of alternate stanzas from Tasso's
_Jerusalem_, has died with the independence of Venice. Editions of the
poem, with the original in one column, and the Venetian variations on
the other, as sung by the boatmen, were once common, and are still to be
found. The following extract will serve to show the difference between
the Tuscan epic and the _Canta alia Barcariola:_--

                                ORIGINAL.

    Canto l'arme pietose, e 'l capitano
      Che 'l gran Sepolcro libero di Cristo
    Molto egli opro col senno, e con la mano
      Molto soffri nel glorioso acquisto;
    E in van l' Inferno a lui s' oppose, e in vano
      S' armo d' Asia, e di Libia il popol misto,
    Che il Ciel gli die favore, e sotto a i Santi
    Segni ridusse i suoi compagni erranti.

                                VENETIAN.

    L' arme pietose de cantar gho vogia,
      E de Goffredo la immortal braura
    Che al fin l' ha libera co strassia, e dogia
      Del nostro buon Gesu la Sepoltura
    De mezo mondo unite, e de quel Bogia
      Missier Pluton non l' ha bu mai paura:
    Dio l' ha agiuta, e i compagni sparpagni
    Tutti 'l gh' i ha messi insieme i di del Dai.

Some of the elder gondoliers will, however, take up and continue a
stanza of their once familiar bard.

On the 7th of last January, the author of _Childe Harold_, and another
Englishman, the writer of this notice, rowed to the Lido with two
singers, one of whom was a carpenter, and the other a gondolier. The
former placed himself at the prow, the latter at the stern of the boat.
A little after leaving the quay of the Piazzetta, they began to sing,
and continued their exercise until we arrived at the island. They gave
us, amongst other essays, the death of Clorinda, and the palace of
Armida; and did not sing the Venetian but the Tuscan verses. The
carpenter, however, who was the cleverer of the two, and was frequently
obliged to prompt his companion, told us that he could _translate_ the
original. He added, that he could sing almost three hundred stanzas, but
had not spirits (_morbin_ was the word he used) to learn any more, or to
sing what he already knew: a man must have idle time on his hands to
acquire, or to repeat, and, said the poor fellow, "look at my clothes
and at me; I am starving." This speech was more affecting than his
performance, which habit alone can make attractive. The recitative was
shrill, screaming, and monotonous; and the gondolier behind assisted his
voice by holding his hand to one side of his mouth. The carpenter used a
quiet action, which he evidently endeavoured to restrain; but was too
much interested in his subject altogether to repress. From these men we
learnt that singing is not confined to the gondoliers, and that,
although the chant is seldom, if ever, voluntary, there are still
several amongst the lower classes who are acquainted with a few stanzas.

It does not appear that it is usual for the performers to row and sing
at the same time. Although the verses of the _Jerusalem_ are no longer
casually heard, there is yet much music upon the Venetian canals; and
upon holydays, those strangers who are not near or informed enough to
distinguish the words, may fancy that many of the gondolas still resound
with the strains of Tasso. The writer of some remarks which appeared in
the _Curiosities of Literature_ must excuse his being twice quoted; for,
with the exception of some phrases a little too ambitious and
extravagant, he has furnished a very exact, as well as agreeable
description:--

"In Venice the gondoliers know by heart long passages from Ariosto and
Tasso, and often chant them with a peculiar melody. But this talent
seems at present on the decline:--at least, after taking some pains, I
could find no more than two persons who delivered to me in this way a
passage from Tasso. I must add, that the late Mr. Berry once chanted to
me a passage in Tasso in the manner, as he assured me, of the
gondoliers.

"There are always two concerned, who alternately sing the strophes. We
know the melody eventually by Rousseau, to whose songs it is printed; it
has properly no melodious movement, and is a sort of medium between the
canto fermo and the canto figurato; it approaches to the former by
recitativical declamation, and to the latter by passages and course, by
which one syllable is detained and embellished.

"I entered a gondola by moonlight; one singer placed himself forwards
and the other aft, and thus proceeded to St. Georgio. One began the
song: when he had ended his strophe, the other took up the lay, and so
continued the song alternately. Throughout the whole of it, the same
notes invariably returned; but, according to the subject-matter of the
strophe, they laid a greater or a smaller stress, sometimes on one, and
sometimes on another note, and indeed changed the enunciation of the
whole strophe as the object of the poem altered.

"On the whole, however, the sounds were hoarse and screaming: they
seemed, in the manner of all rude uncivilised men, to make the
excellency of their singing in the force of their voice. One seemed
desirous of conquering the other by the strength of his lungs; and so
far from receiving delight from this scene (shut up as I was in the box
of the gondola), I found myself in a very unpleasant situation.

"My companion, to whom I communicated this circumstance, being very
desirous to keep up the credit of his countrymen, assured me that the
singing was very delightful when heard at a distance. Accordingly we got
out upon the shore, leaving one of the singers in the gondola, while the
other went to the distance of some hundred paces. They now began to sing
against one another, and I kept walking up and down between them both,
so as always to leave him who was to begin his part. I frequently stood
still and hearkened to the one and to the other.

"Here the scene was properly introduced. The strong declamatory, and, as
it were, shrieking sound, met the ear from far, and called forth the
attention; the quickly succeeding transitions, which necessarily
required to be sung in a lower tone, seemed like plaintive strains
succeeding the vociferations of emotion or of pain. The other, who
listened attentively, immediately began where the former left off,
answering him in milder or more vehement notes, according as the purport
of the strophe required. The sleepy canals, the lofty buildings, the
splendour of the moon, the deep shadows of the few gondolas that moved
like spirits hither and thither, increased the striking peculiarity of
the scene; and, amidst all these circumstances, it was easy to confess
the character of this wonderful harmony.

"It suits perfectly well with an idle, solitary mariner, lying at length
in his vessel at rest on one of these canals, waiting for his company,
or for a fare, the tiresomeness of which situation is somewhat
alleviated by the songs and poetical stories he has in memory. He often
raises his voice as loud as he can, which extends itself to a vast
distance over the tranquil mirror; and as all is still around, he is, as
it were, in a solitude in the midst of a large and populous town. Here
is no rattling of carriages, no noise of foot passengers; a silent
gondola glides now and then by him, of which the splashings of the oars
are scarcely to be heard.

"At a distance he hears another, perhaps utterly unknown to him. Melody
and verse immediately attach the two strangers; he becomes the
responsive echo to the former, and exerts himself to be heard as he had
heard the other. By a tacit convention they alternate verse for verse;
though the song should last the whole night through, they entertain
themselves without fatigue: the hearers who are passing between the two
take part in the amusement.

"This vocal performance sounds best at a great distance, and is then
inexpressibly charming, as it only fulfills its design in the sentiment
of remoteness. It is plaintive, but not dismal in its sound, and at
times it is scarcely possible to refrain from tears. My companion, who
otherwise was not a very delicately organised person, said quite
unexpectedly: E singolare come quel canto intenerisce, e molto piu
quando lo cantano meglio.

"I was told that the women of Libo, the long row of islands that divides
the Adriatic from the Lagoons,[555] particularly the women of the
extreme districts of Malamocca and Palestrina, sing in like manner the
works of Tasso to these and similar tunes.

"They have the custom, when their husbands are fishing out at sea, to
sit along the shore in the evenings and vociferate these songs, and
continue to do so with great violence, till each of them can distinguish
the responses of her own husband at a distance."[556]

The love of music and of poetry distinguishes all classes of Venetians,
even amongst the tuneful sons of Italy. The city itself can occasionally
furnish respectable audiences for two and even three opera-houses at a
time; and there are few events in private life that do not call forth a
printed and circulated sonnet. Does a physician or a lawyer take his
degree, or a clergyman preach his maiden sermon, has a surgeon performed
an operation, would a harlequin announce his departure or his benefit,
are you to be congratulated on a marriage, or a birth, or a lawsuit, the
Muses are invoked to furnish the same number of syllables, and the
individual triumphs blaze abroad in virgin white or party-
placards on half the corners of the capital. The last curtsy of a
favourite "prima donna" brings down a shower of these poetical tributes
from those upper regions, from which, in our theatres, nothing but
cupids and snowstorms are accustomed to descend. There is a poetry in
the very life of a Venetian, which, in its common course, is varied with
those surprises and changes so recommendable in fiction, but so
different from the sober monotony of northern existence; amusements are
raised into duties, duties are softened into amusements, and every
object being considered as equally making a part of the business of
life, is announced and performed with the same earnest indifference and
gay assiduity. The Venetian gazette constantly closes its columns with
the following triple advertisement:--

                              _Charade._

     Exposition of the most Holy Sacrament in the church of St.----

                              _Theatres_.

                     St. Moses, opera.
                     St. Benedict, a comedy of characters.
                     St. Luke, repose.

When it is recollected what the Catholics believe their consecrated
wafer to be, we may perhaps think it worthy of a more respectable niche
than between poetry and the playhouse.

                               3.

    St. Mark yet sees his Lion where he stood
    Stand.
                                                      Stanza xi. line 5.

The Lion has lost nothing by his journey to the Invalides, but the
gospel which supported the paw that is now on a level with the other
foot. The horses also are returned [A.D. 1815] to the ill-chosen spot
whence they set out, and are, as before, half hidden under the porch
window of St. Mark's Church. Their history, after a desperate struggle,
has been satisfactorily explored. The decisions and doubts of Erizzo and
Zanetti, and lastly, of the Count Leopold Cicognara, would have given
them a Roman extraction, and a pedigree not more ancient than the reign
of Nero. But M. de Schlegel stepped in to teach the Venetians the value
of their own treasures; and a Greek vindicated, at last and for ever,
the pretension of his countrymen to this noble production[557]. M.
Mustoxidi has not been left without a reply; but, as yet, he has
received no answer. It should seem that the horses are irrevocably
Chian, and were transferred to Constantinople by Theodosius. Lapidary
writing is a favourite play of the Italians, and has conferred
reputation on more than one of their literary characters. One of the
best specimens of Bodoni's typography is a respectable volume of
inscriptions, all written by his friend Pacciaudi. Several were prepared
for the recovered horses. It is to be hoped the best was not selected,
when the following words were ranged in gold letters above the cathedral
porch:--

    QUATUOR. EQUORUM. SIGNA. A. VENETIS. BYZANTIO.
    CAPTA. AD. TEMP. D. MAR. A. R. S. MCCIV. POSITA.
    QUAE. HOSTILIS. CUPIDITAS. A. MDCCIIIC. ABSTULERAT.
    FRANC. I. IMP. PACIS. ORBI. DATAE. TROPHAEUM. A.
    MDCCCXV. VICTOR. REDUXIT.

Nothing shall be said of the Latin, but it may be permitted to observe,
that the injustice of the Venetians in transporting the horses from
Constantinople [A.D. 1204] was at least equal to that of the French in
carrying them to Paris [A.D. 1797], and that it would have been more
prudent to have avoided all allusions to either robbery. An apostolic
prince should, perhaps, have objected to affixing over the principal
entrance of a metropolitan church an inscription having a reference to
any other triumphs than those of religion. Nothing less than the
pacification of the world can excuse such a solecism.

                               4.

    The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns--
      An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt.
                                              Stanza xii. lines 1 and 2.

After many vain efforts on the part of the Italians entirely to throw
off the yoke of Frederic Barbarossa, and as fruitless attempts of the
Emperor to make himself absolute master throughout the whole of his
Cisalpine dominions, the bloody struggles of four-and-twenty years were
happily brought to a close in the city of Venice. The articles of a
treaty had been previously agreed upon between Pope Alexander III. and
Barbarossa; and the former having received a safe-conduct, had already
arrived at Venice from Ferrara, in company with the ambassadors of the
King of Sicily and the consuls of the Lombard League. There still
remained, however, many points to adjust, and for several days the peace
was believed to be impracticable. At this juncture, it was suddenly
reported that the Emperor had arrived at Chioza, a town fifteen miles
from the capital. The Venetians rose tumultuously, and insisted upon
immediately conducting him to the city. The Lombards took the alarm, and
departed towards Treviso. The Pope himself was apprehensive of some
disaster if Frederic should suddenly advance upon him, but was reassured
by the prudence and address of Sebastian Ziani, the Doge. Several
embassies passed between Chioza and the capital, until, at last, the
Emperor, relaxing somewhat of his pretensions, "laid aside his leonine
ferocity, and put on the mildness of the lamb."[558]

On Saturday, the 23rd of July, in the year 1177, six Venetian galleys
transferred Frederic, in great pomp, from Chioza to the island of Lido,
a mile from Venice. Early the next morning, the Pope, accompanied by the
Sicilian ambassadors, and by the envoys of Lombardy, whom he had
recalled from the main land, together with a great concourse of people,
repaired from the patriarchal palace to St. Mark's Church, and solemnly
absolved the Emperor and his partisans from the excommunication
pronounced against him. The Chancellor of the Empire, on the part of his
master, renounced the anti-popes and their schismatic adherents.
Immediately the Doge, with a great suite both of the clergy and laity,
got on board the galleys, and waiting on Frederic, rowed him in mighty
state from the Lido to the capital. The Emperor descended from the
galley at the quay of the Piazzetta. The Doge, the patriarch, his
bishops and clergy, and the people of Venice with their crosses and
their standards, marched in solemn procession before him to the church
of St. Mark. Alexander was seated before the vestibule of the basilica,
attended by his bishops and cardinals, by the patriarch of Aquileja, by
the archbishops and bishops of Lombardy, all of them in state, and
clothed in their church robes. Frederic approached--"moved by the Holy
Spirit, venerating the Almighty in the person of Alexander, laying aside
his imperial dignity, and throwing off his mantle, he prostrated himself
at full length at the feet of the Pope. Alexander, with tears in his
eyes, raised him benignantly from the ground, kissed him, blessed him;
and immediately the Germans of the train sang with a loud voice, 'We
praise thee, O Lord.' The Emperor then taking the Pope by the right
hand, led him to the church, and having received his benediction,
returned to the ducal palace."[559] The ceremony of humiliation was
repeated the next day. The Pope himself, at the request of Frederic,
said mass at St. Mark's. The Emperor again laid aside his imperial
mantle, and taking a wand in his hand, officiated as _verger_, driving
the laity from the choir, and preceding the pontiff to the altar.
Alexander, after reciting the gospel, preached to the people. The
Emperor put himself close to the pulpit in the attitude of listening;
and the pontiff, touched by this mark of his attention (for he knew that
Frederic did not understand a word he said), commanded the patriarch of
Aquileja to translate the Latin discourse into the German tongue. The
creed was then chanted. Frederic made his oblation, and kissed the
Pope's feet, and, mass being over, led him by the hand to his white
horse. He held the stirrup, and would have led the horse's rein to the
water side, had not the Pope accepted of the inclination for the
performance, and affectionately dismissed him with his benediction. Such
is the substance of the account left by the archbishop of Salerno, who
was present at the ceremony, and whose story is confirmed by every
subsequent narration. It would be not worth so minute a record, were it
not the triumph of liberty as well as of superstition. The states of
Lombardy owed to it the confirmation of their privileges; and Alexander
had reason to thank the Almighty, who had enabled an infirm, unarmed
old man to subdue a terrible and potent sovereign.[560]

                               5.

      Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo!
    Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe.
                                              Stanza xii. lines 8 and 9.

The reader will recollect the exclamation of the Highlander, "_Oh, for
one hour of Dundee_!" Henry Dandolo, when elected Doge, in 1192, was
eighty-five years of age. When he commanded the Venetians at the taking
of Constantinople, he was consequently ninety-seven years old. At this
age he annexed the fourth and a half of the whole empire of
Romania,[561] for so the Roman empire was then called, to the title and
to the territories of the Venetian Doge. The three-eighths of this
empire were preserved in the diplomas until the Dukedom of Giovanni
Dolfino, who made use of the above designation in the year 1357.[562]

Dandolo led the attack on Constantinople in person. Two ships, the
Paradise and the Pilgrim, were tied together, and a drawbridge or ladder
let down from their higher yards to the walls. The Doge was one of the
first to rush into the city. Then was completed, said the Venetians, the
prophecy of the Erythraean sibyl:--"A gathering together of the powerful
shall be made amidst the waves of the Adriatic, under a blind leader;
they shall beset the goat--they shall profane Byzantium--they shall
blacken her buildings--her spoils shall be dispersed; a new goat shall
bleat until they have measured out and run over fifty-four feet nine
inches and a half."[563] Dandolo died on the first day of June, 1205,
having reigned thirteen years six months and five days, and was buried
in the church of St. Sophia, at Constantinople. Strangely enough it must
sound, that the name of the rebel apothecary who received the Doge's
sword, and annihilated the ancient government, in 1796-7, was Dandolo.

                               6.

    But is not Doria's menace come to pass?
    Are they not _bridled?_
                                             Stanza xiii. lines 3 and 4.

After the loss of the battle of Pola, and the taking of Chioza on the
16th of August, 1379, by the united armament of the Genoese and
Francesco da Carrara, Signor of Padua, the Venetians were reduced to the
utmost despair. An embassy was sent to the conquerors with a blank sheet
of paper, praying them to prescribe what terms they pleased, and leave
to Venice only her independence. The Prince of Padua was inclined to
listen to these proposals; but the Genoese, who, after the victory at
Pola, had shouted, "To Venice! to Venice! and long live St. George!"
determined to annihilate their rival; and Peter Doria, their
commander-in-chief, returned this answer to the suppliants: "On God's
faith, gentlemen of Venice, ye shall have no peace from the Signer of
Padua, nor from our commune of Genoa, until we have first put a rein
upon those unbridled horses of yours, that are upon the porch of your
evangelist St. Mark. When we have bridled them we shall keep you quiet.
And this is the pleasure of us and of our commune. As for these, my
brothers of Genoa, that you have brought with you to give up to us, I
will not have them: take them back; for in a few days hence, I shall
come and let them out of prison myself, both these and all the others"
[p. 727, E. _vide infra_]. In fact, the Genoese did advance as far as
Malamocco, within five miles of the capital; but their own danger, and
the pride of their enemies, gave courage to the Venetians, who made
prodigious efforts, and many individual sacrifices, all of them
carefully recorded by their historians. Vettor Pisani was put at the
head of thirty-four galleys. The Genoese broke up from Malamocco, and
retired to Chioza in October; but they again threatened Venice, which
was reduced to extremities. At this time, the 1st of January, 1380,
arrived Carlo Zeno, who had been cruising on the Genoese coast with
fourteen galleys. The Venetians were now strong enough to besiege the
Genoese. Doria was killed on the 22nd of January, by a stone bullet, one
hundred and ninety-five pounds' weight, discharged from a bombard called
the Trevisan. Chioza was then closely invested; five thousand
auxiliaries, among whom were some English condottieri, commanded by one
Captain Ceccho, joined the Venetians. The Genoese, in their turn, prayed
for conditions, but none were granted, until, at last, they surrendered
at discretion; and, on the 24th of June, 1380, the Doge Contarini made
his triumphal entry into Chioza. Four thousand prisoners, nineteen
galleys, many smaller vessels and barks, with all the ammunition and
arms, and outfit of the expedition, fell into the hands of the
conquerors, who, had it not been for the inexorable answer of Doria,
would have gladly reduced their dominion to the city of Venice. An
account of these transactions is found in a work called _The War of
Chioza_,[564] written by Daniel Chinazzo, who was in Venice at the time.

                               7.

    Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must
    Too oft remind her who and what enthrals.
                                               Stanza xv. lines 7 and 8.

The population of Venice, at the end of the seventeenth century,
amounted to nearly two hundred thousand souls. At the last census, taken
two years ago [1816], it was no more than about one hundred and three
thousand; and it diminishes daily. The commerce and the official
employments, which were to be the unexhausted source of Venetian
grandeur, have both expired.[565] Most of the patrician mansions are
deserted, and would gradually disappear, had not the Government, alarmed
by the demolition of seventy-two during the last two years, expressly
forbidden this sad resource of poverty. Many remnants of the Venetian
nobility are now scattered, and confounded with the wealthier Jews upon
the banks of the Brenta, whose Palladian palaces have sunk, or are
sinking, in the general decay. Of the "gentiluomo Veneto," the name is
still known, and that is all. He is but the shadow of his former self,
but he is polite and kind. It surely may be pardoned to him if he is
querulous. Whatever may have been the vices of the republic, and
although the natural term of its existence may be thought by foreigners
to have arrived in the due course of mortality, only one sentiment can
be expected from the Venetians themselves. At no time were the subjects
of the republic so unanimous in their resolution to rally round the
standard of St. Mark, as when it was for the last time unfurled; and the
cowardice and the treachery of the few patricians who recommended the
fatal neutrality, were confined to the persons of the traitors
themselves. The present race cannot be thought to regret the loss of
their aristocratical forms, and too despotic government; they think only
on their vanished independence. They pine away at the remembrance, and
on this subject suspend for a moment their gay good humour. Venice may
be said, in the words of the Scripture, "to die daily;" and so general
and so apparent is the decline, as to become painful to a stranger, not
reconciled to the sight of a whole nation expiring, as it were, before
his eyes. So artificial a creation, having lost that principle which
called it into life and supported its existence, must fall to pieces at
once, and sink more rapidly than it rose. The abhorrence of slavery,
which drove the Venetians to the sea, has, since their disaster, forced
them to the land, where they may be at least overlooked amongst the
crowd of dependents, and not present the humiliating spectacle of a
whole nation loaded with recent chains. Their liveliness, their
affability, and that happy indifference which constitution alone can
give (for philosophy aspires to it in vain), have not sunk under
circumstances; but many peculiarities of costume and manner have by
degrees been lost; and the nobles, with a pride common to all Italians
who have been masters, have not been persuaded to parade their
insignificance. That splendour which was a proof and a portion of their
power, they would not degrade into the trappings of their subjection.
They retired from the space which they had occupied in the eyes of their
fellow citizens; their continuance in which would have been a symptom of
acquiescence, and an insult to those who suffered by the common
misfortune. Those who remained in the degraded capital, might be said
rather to haunt the scenes of their departed power, than to live in
them. The reflection, "who and what enthrals," will hardly bear a
comment from one who is, nationally, the friend and the ally of the
conqueror. It may, however, be allowed to say thus much, that to those
who wish to recover their independence, any masters must be an object of
detestation; and it may be safely foretold that this unprofitable
aversion will not have been corrected before Venice shall have sunk into
the slime of her choked canals.

                               8.

      Watering the tree which bears his Lady's name
    With his melodious tears, he gave himself to Fame.
                                              Stanza xxx. lines 8 and 9.

Thanks to the critical acumen of a Scotchman, we now know as little of
Laura as ever.[566] The discoveries of the Abbe de Sade, his triumphs,
his sneers, can no longer instruct or amuse. We must not, however, think
that these memoirs[567] are as much a romance as Belisarius or the
Incas, although we are told so by Dr. Beattie, a great name, but a
little authority.[568] His "labour" has not been in vain,
notwithstanding his "love" has, like most other passions, made him
ridiculous.[569] The hypothesis which overpowered the struggling
Italians, and carried along less interested critics in its current, is
run out. We have another proof that we can never be sure that the
paradox, the most singular, and therefore having the most agreeable and
authentic air, will not give place to the re-established ancient
prejudice.

It seems, then, first, that Laura was born, lived, died, and was buried,
not in Avignon, but in the country. The fountains of the Sorga, the
thickets of Cabrieres, may resume their pretensions, and the exploded
_de la Bastie_ again be heard with complacency. The hypothesis of the
Abbe had no stronger props than the parchment sonnet and medal found on
the skeleton of the wife of Hugo de Sade, and the manuscript note to the
_Virgil_ of Petrarch, now in the Ambrosian library. If these proofs were
both incontestable, the poetry was written, the medal composed, cast,
and deposited within the space of twelve hours: and these deliberate
duties were performed round the carcass of one who died of the plague,
and was hurried to the grave on the day of her death. These documents,
therefore, are too decisive: they prove not the fact, but the forgery.
Either the sonnet or the Virgilian note must be a falsification. The
Abbe cites both as incontestably true; the consequent deduction is
inevitable--they are both evidently false.[570]

Secondly, Laura was never married, and was a haughty virgin rather than
that _tender and prudent_ wife who honoured Avignon, by making that town
the theatre of an honest French passion, and played off for one and
twenty years her _little machinery_ of alternate favours and
refusals[571] upon the first poet of the age. It was, indeed, rather too
unfair that a female should be made responsible for eleven children upon
the faith of a misinterpreted abbreviation, and the decision of a
librarian.[572] It is, however, satisfactory to think that the love of
Petrarch was not platonic. The happiness which he prayed to possess but
once and for a moment was surely not of the mind,[573] and something so
very real as a marriage project, with one who has been idly called a
shadowy nymph, may be, perhaps, detected in at least six places of his
own sonnets. The love of Petrarch was neither platonic nor poetical; and
if in one passage of his works he calls it "amore veementeissimo ma
unico ed onesto," he confesses, in a letter to a friend, that it was
guilty and perverse, that it absorbed him quite, and mastered his heart.

In this case, however, he was perhaps alarmed for the culpability of his
wishes; for the Abbe de Sade himself, who certainly would not have been
scrupulously delicate if he could have proved his descent from Petrarch
as well as Laura, is forced into a stout defence of his virtuous
grandmother. As far as relates to the poet, we have no security for the
innocence, except perhaps in the constancy of his pursuit. He assures us
in his epistle to posterity, that, when arrived at his fortieth year, he
not only had in horror, but had lost all recollection and image of any
"irregularity." But the birth of his natural daughter cannot be assigned
earlier than his thirty-ninth year; and either the memory or the
morality of the poet must have failed him, when he forgot or was guilty
of this _slip_.[574] The weakest argument for the purity of this love
has been drawn from the permanence of its effects, which survived the
object of his passion. The reflection of M. de la Bastie, that virtue
alone is capable of making impressions which death cannot efface, is
one of those which everybody applauds, and everybody finds not to be
true, the moment he examines his own breast or the records of human
feeling.[575] Such apophthegms can do nothing for Petrarch or for the
cause of morality, except with the very weak and the very young. He that
has made even a little progress beyond ignorance and pupilage cannot be
edified with anything but truth. What is called vindicating the honour
of an individual or a nation, is the most futile, tedious, and
uninstructive of all writing; although it will always meet with more
applause than that sober criticism, which is attributed to the malicious
desire of reducing a great man to the common standard of humanity. It
is, after all, not unlikely that our historian was right in retaining
his favourite hypothetic salvo, which secures the author, although it
scarcely saves the honour of the still unknown mistress of
Petrarch.[576]

                               9.

    They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died.
                                                    Stanza xxxi. line 1.

Petrarch retired to Arqua immediately on his return from the
unsuccessful attempt to visit Urban V. at Rome, in the year 1370, and
with the exception of his celebrated visit to Venice in company with
Francesco Novello da Carrara, he appears to have passed the four last
years of his life between that charming solitude and Padua. For four
months previous to his death he was in a state of continual languor, and
in the morning of July the 19th, in the year 1374, was found dead in his
library chair with his head resting upon a book. The chair is still
shown amongst the precious relics of Arqua, which, from the
uninterrupted veneration that has been attached to everything relative
to this great man from the moment of his death to the present hour,
have, it may be hoped, a better chance of authenticity than the
Shaksperian memorials of Stratford-upon-Avon.

Arqua (for the last syllable is accented in pronunciation, although the
analogy of the English language has been observed in the verse) is
twelve miles from Padua, and about three miles on the right of the high
road to Rovigo, in the bosom of the Euganean hills. After a walk of
twenty minutes across a flat well-wooded meadow, you come to a little
blue lake, clear but fathomless, and to the foot of a succession of
acclivities and hills, clothed with vineyards and orchards, rich with
fir and pomegranate trees, and every sunny fruit shrub. From the banks
of the lake the road winds into the hills, and the church of Arqua is
soon seen between a cleft where two ridges <DW72> towards each other, and
nearly enclose the village. The houses are scattered at intervals on the
steep sides of these summits; and that of the poet is on the edge of a
little knoll overlooking two descents, and commanding a view, not only
of the glowing gardens in the dales immediately beneath, but of the wide
plains, above whose low woods of mulberry and willow, thickened into a
dark mass by festoons of vines, tall, single cypresses, and the spires
of towns, are seen in the distance, which stretches to the mouths of the
Po and the shores of the Adriatic. The climate of these volcanic hills
is warmer, and the vintage begins a week sooner than in the plains of
Padua. Petrarch is laid, for he cannot be said to be buried, in a
sarcophagus of red marble, raised on four pilasters on an elevated base,
and preserved from an association with meaner tombs. It stands
conspicuously alone, but will be soon overshadowed by four lately
planted laurels. Petrarch's Fountain, for here everything is Petrarch's,
springs and expands itself beneath an artificial arch, a little below
the church, and abounds plentifully, in the driest season, with that
soft water which was the ancient wealth of the Euganean hills. It would
be more attractive, were it not, in some seasons, beset with hornets and
wasps. No other coincidence could assimilate the tombs of Petrarch and
Archilochus. The revolutions of centuries have spared these sequestered
valleys, and the only violence which has been offered to the ashes of
Petrarch was prompted, not by hate, but veneration. An attempt was made
to rob the sarcophagus of its treasure, and one of the arms was stolen
by a Florentine through a rent which is still visible. The injury is not
forgotten, but has served to identify the poet with the country where he
was born, but where he would not live. A peasant boy of Arqua being
asked who Petrarch was, replied, "that the people of the parsonage knew
all about him, but that he only knew that he was a Florentine."

Mr. Forsyth[577] was not quite correct in saying that Petrarch never
returned to Tuscany after he had once quitted it when a boy. It appears
he did pass through Florence on his way from Parma to Rome, and on his
return in the year 1350, and remained there long enough to form some
acquaintance with its most distinguished inhabitants. A Florentine
gentleman, ashamed of the aversion of the poet for his native country,
was eager to point out this trivial error in our accomplished traveller,
whom he knew and respected for an extraordinary capacity, extensive
erudition, and refined taste, joined to that engaging simplicity of
manners which has been so frequently recognised as the surest, though it
is certainly not an indispensable, trait of superior genius.

Every footstep of Laura's lover has been anxiously traced and recorded.
The house in which he lodged is shown in Venice. The inhabitants of
Arezzo, in order to decide the ancient controversy between their city
and the neighbouring Ancisa, where Petrarch was carried when seven
months old, and remained until his seventh year, have designated by a
long inscription the spot where their great fellow citizen was born. A
tablet has been raised to him at Parma, in the chapel of St. Agatha, at
the cathedral, because he was arch-deacon of that society, and was only
snatched from his intended sepulture in their church by a _foreign_
death. Another tablet, with a bust, has been erected to him at Pavia, on
account of his having passed the autumn of 1368 in that city, with his
son-in-law Brossano. The political condition which has for ages
precluded the Italians from the criticism of the living, has
concentrated their attention to the illustration of the dead.

                              10.

    In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire,
    And Boileau, whose rash envy, etc.
                                          Stanza xxxviii. lines 6 and 7.

Perhaps the couplet in which Boileau depreciates Tasso may serve as well
as any other specimen to justify the opinion given of the harmony of
French verse--

    "A Malherbe, a Racan, prefere Theophile,
    Et le clinquant du Tasse a tout l'or de Virgile."
                                                      _Sat_. ix. v. 176.

The biographer Serassi,[578] out of tenderness to the reputation either
of the Italian or the French poet, is eager to observe that the satirist
recanted or explained away this censure, and subsequently allowed the
author of the _Jerusalem_ to be "a genius sublime, vast, and happily
born for the higher flights of poetry." To this we will add, that the
recantation is far from satisfactory, when we examine the whole anecdote
as reported by Olivet.[579] The sentence pronounced against him by
Bouhours[580] is recorded only to the confusion of the critic, whose
_palinodia_ the Italian makes no effort to discover, and would not,
perhaps, accept. As to the opposition which the _Jerusalem_ encountered
from the Cruscan academy, who degraded Tasso from all competition with
Ariosto, below Bojardo and Pulci, the disgrace of such opposition must
also in some measure be laid to the charge of Alfonso, and the court of
Ferrara. For Leonard Salviati, the principal and nearly the sole origin
of this attack, was, there can be no doubt,[581] influenced by a hope to
acquire the favour of the House of Este: an object which he thought
attainable by exalting the reputation of a native poet at the expense of
a rival, then a _prisoner of state_. The hopes and efforts of Salviati
must serve to show the contemporary opinion as to the nature of the
poet's imprisonment; and will fill up the measure of our indignation at
the tyrant jailer.[582] In fact, the antagonist of Tasso was not
disappointed in the reception given to his criticism; he was called to
the court of Ferrara, where, having endeavoured to heighten his claims
to favour, by panegyrics on the family of his sovereign,[583] he was in
turn abandoned, and expired in neglected poverty. The opposition of the
Cruscans was brought to a close in six years after the commencement of
the controversy; and if the Academy owed its first renown to having
almost opened with such a paradox,[584] it is probable that, on the
other hand, the care of his reputation alleviated rather than aggravated
the imprisonment of the injured poet. The defence of his father and of
himself, for both were involved in the censure of Salviati, found
employment for many of his solitary hours, and the captive could have
been but little embarrassed to reply to accusations, where, among other
delinquencies, he was charged with invidiously omitting, in his
comparison between France and Italy, to make any mention of the cupola
of St. Maria del Fiore at Florence.[585] The late biographer of Ariosto
seems as if willing to renew the controversy by doubting the
interpretation of Tasso's self-estimation[586] related in Serassi's life
of the poet. But Tiraboschi had before laid that rivalry at rest,[587]
by showing that between Ariosto and Tasso it is not a question of
comparison, but of preference.

                              11.

    The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust
      The iron crown of laurel's mimicked leaves.
                                              Stanza xli. lines 1 and 2.

Before the remains of Ariosto were removed from the Benedictine church
to the library of Ferrara, his bust, which surmounted the tomb, was
struck by lightning, and a crown of iron laurels melted away. The event
has been recorded by a writer of the last century.[588] The transfer of
these sacred ashes, on the 6th of June, 1801, was one of the most
brilliant spectacles of the short-lived Italian Republic; and to
consecrate the memory of the ceremony, the once famous fallen
_Intrepidi_ were revived and reformed into the Ariostean academy. The
large public place through which the procession paraded was then for the
first time called Ariosto Square. The author of the _Orlando_ is
jealously claimed as the Homer, not of Italy but Ferrara.[589] The
mother of Ariosto was of Reggio, and the house in which he was born is
carefully distinguished by a tablet with these words: "Qui nacque
Ludovico Ariosto il giorno 8. di Settembre dell' anno 1474." But the
Ferrarese make light of the accident by which their poet was born
abroad, and claim him exclusively for their own. They possess his bones,
they show his arm-chair, and his inkstand, and his autographs.

    "......Hic illius anna,
    Hic currus fuit......"

The house where he lived, the room where he died, are designated by his
own replaced memorial,[590] and by a recent inscription. The Ferrarese
are more jealous of their claims since the animosity of Denina, arising
from a cause which their apologists mysteriously hint is not unknown to
them, ventured to degrade their soil and climate to a Boeotian in
capacity for all spiritual productions. A quarto volume has been called
forth by the detraction, and this supplement to Barotti's Memoirs of the
illustrious Ferarrese, has been considered a triumphant reply to the
"Quadro Storico Statistico dell' Alta Italia."

                              12.

    For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves
    Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves.
                                              Stanza xli. lines 4 and 5.

The eagle, the sea calf, the laurel, and the white vine,[591] were
amongst the most approved preservatives against lightning: Jupiter chose
the first, Augustus Caesar the second, and Tiberius never failed to wear
a wreath of the third when the sky threatened a thunder-storm.[592]
These superstitions may be received without a sneer in a country where
the magical properties of the hazel twig have not lost all their credit;
and perhaps the reader may not be much surprised that a commentator on
Suetonius has taken upon himself gravely to disprove the imputed virtues
of the crown of Tiberius, by mentioning that a few years before he wrote
a laurel was actually struck by lightning at Rome.[593]

                              13.

    Know, that the lightning sanctifies below.
                                                     Stanza xli. line 8.

The Curtian lake and the Ruminal fig-tree in the Forum, having been
touched by lightning, were held sacred, and the memory of the accident
was preserved by a _pateal_, or altar resembling the mouth of a well,
with a little chapel covering the cavity supposed to be made by the
thunder-bolt. Bodies scathed and persons struck dead were thought to be
incorruptible;[594] and a stroke not fatal conferred perpetual dignity
upon the man so distinguished by heaven.[595]

Those killed by lightning were wrapped in a white garment, and buried
where they fell. The superstition was not confined to the worshippers of
Jupiter: the Lombards believed in the omens furnished by lightning; and
a Christian priest confesses that, by a diabolical skill in interpreting
thunder, a seer foretold to Agilulf, duke of Turin, an event which came
to pass, and gave him a queen and a crown.[596] There was, however,
something equivocal in this sign, which the ancient inhabitants of Rome
did not always consider propitious; and as the fears are likely to last
longer than the consolations of superstition, it is not strange that the
Romans of the age of Leo X. should have been so much terrified at some
misinterpreted storms as to require the exhortations of a scholar, who
arrayed all the learning on thunder and lightning to prove the omen
favourable; beginning with the flash which struck the walls of Velitrae;,
and including that which played upon a gate at Florence, and foretold
the pontificate of one of its citizens.[597]

                              14.

    There, too, the Goddess loves in stone.
                                                    Stanza xlix. line 1.

The view of the Venus of Medicis instantly suggests the lines in the
_Seasons_; and the comparison of the object with the description proves,
not only the correctness of the portrait, but the peculiar turn of
thought, and, if the term may be used, the sexual imagination of the
descriptive poet. The same conclusion may be deduced from another hint
in the same episode of Musidora; for Thomson's notion of the privileges
of favoured love must have been either very primitive, or rather
deficient in delicacy, when he made his grateful nymph inform her
discreet Damon that in some happier moment he might perhaps be the
companion of her bath:--

    "The time may come you need not fly."

The reader will recollect the anecdote told in the _Life of Dr.
Johnson_. We will not leave the Florentine gallery without a word on the
_Whetter_. It seems strange that the character of that disputed statue
should not be entirely decided, at least in the mind of any one who has
seen a sarcophagus in the vestibule of the Basilica of St. Paul without
the walls, at Rome, where the whole group of the fable of Marsyas is
seen in tolerable preservation; and the Scythian slave whetting the
knife, is represented exactly in the same position as this celebrated
masterpiece. The slave is not naked; but it is easier to get rid of this
difficulty than to suppose the knife in the hand of the Florentine
statue an instrument for shaving, which it must be, if, as Lanzi
supposes, the man is no other than the barber of Julius Caesar.
Winckelmann, illustrating a bas-relief of the same subject, follows the
opinion of Leonard Agostini, and his authority might have been thought
conclusive, even if the resemblance did not strike the most careless
observer.[598] Amongst the bronzes of the same princely collection, is
still to be seen the inscribed tablet copied and commented upon by Mr.
Gibbon.[599] Our historian found some difficulties, but did not desist
from his illustration. He might be vexed to hear that his criticism has
been thrown away on an inscription now generally recognised to be a
forgery.

                              15.

    In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie.
                                                     Stanza liv. line 1.

This name will recall the memory, not only of those whose tombs have
raised the Santa Croce into the centre of pilgrimage--the Mecca of
Italy--but of her whose eloquence was poured over the illustrious ashes,
and whose voice is now as mute as those she sung. Corinna is no more;
and with her should expire the fear, the flattery, and the envy, which
threw too dazzling or too dark a cloud round the march of genius, and
forbad the steady gaze of disinterested criticism. We have her picture
embellished or distorted, as friendship or detraction has held the
pencil: the impartial portrait was hardly to be expected from a
contemporary. The immediate voice of her survivors will, it is probable,
be far from affording a just estimate of her singular capacity. The
gallantry, the love of wonder, and the hope of associated fame, which
blunted the edge of censure, must cease to exist.--The dead have no sex;
they can surprise by no new miracles; they can confer no privilege:
Corinna has ceased to be a woman--she is only an author; and it may be
foreseen that many will repay themselves for former complaisance, by a
severity to which the extravagance of previous praises may perhaps give
the colour of truth. The latest posterity--for to the latest posterity
they will assuredly descend--will have to pronounce upon her various
productions; and the longer the vista through which they are seen, the
more accurately minute will be the object, the more certain the justice,
of the decision. She will enter into that existence in which the great
writers of all ages and nations are, as it were, associated in a world
of their own, and, from that superior sphere, shed their eternal
influence for the control and consolation of mankind. But the individual
will gradually disappear as the author is more distinctly seen; some
one, therefore, of all those whom the charms of involuntary wit, and of
easy hospitality, attracted within the friendly circles of Coppet,
should rescue from oblivion those virtues which, although they are said
to love the shade, are, in fact, more frequently chilled than excited by
the domestic cares of private life. Some one should be found to portray
the unaffected graces with which she adorned those dearer relationships,
the performance of whose duties is rather discovered amongst the
interior secrets, than seen in the outward management, of family
intercourse; and which, indeed, it requires the delicacy of genuine
affection to qualify for the eye of an indifferent spectator. Some one
should be found, not to celebrate, but to describe, the amiable mistress
of an open mansion, the centre of a society, ever varied, and always
pleased, the creator of which, divested of the ambition and the arts of
public rivalry, shone forth only to give fresh animation to those around
her. The mother tenderly affectionate and tenderly beloved, the friend
unboundedly generous, but still esteemed, the charitable patroness of
all distress, cannot be forgotten by those whom she cherished, and
protected, and fed. Her loss will be mourned the most where she was
known the best; and, to the sorrows of very many friends, and more
dependants, may be offered the disinterested regret of a stranger, who,
amidst the sublimer scenes of the Leman lake, received his chief
satisfaction from contemplating the engaging qualities of the
incomparable Corinna.

                              16.

                         Here repose
    Angelo's--Alfieri's bones.
                                              Stanza liv. lines 6 and 7.

Alfieri is the great name of this age. The Italians, without waiting for
the hundred years, consider him as "a poet good in law."--His memory is
the more dear to them because he is the bard of freedom; and because, as
such, his tragedies can receive no countenance from any of their
sovereigns. They are but very seldom, and but very few of them, allowed
to be acted. It was observed by Cicero, that nowhere were the true
opinions and feelings of the Romans so clearly shown as at the
theatre.[600] In the autumn of 1816, a celebrated improvisatore
exhibited his talents at the Opera-house of Milan. The reading of the
theses handed in for the subjects of his poetry was received by a very
numerous audience, for the most part in silence, or with laughter; but
when the assistant, unfolding one of the papers, exclaimed _The
apotheosis of Victor Alfieri_, the whole theatre burst into a shout, and
the applause was continued for some moments. The lot did not fall on
Alfieri; and the Signor Sgricci had to pour forth his extemporary
common-places on the bombardment of Algiers. The choice, indeed, is not
left to accident quite so much as might be thought from a first view of
the ceremony; and the police not only takes care to look at the papers
beforehand, but, in case of any prudential afterthought, steps in to
correct the blindness of chance. The proposal for deifying Alfieri was
received with immediate enthusiasm, the rather because it was
conjectured there would be no opportunity of carrying it into effect.

                              17.

    Here Machiavelli's earth returned to whence it rose.
                                                     Stanza liv. line 9.

The affectation of simplicity in sepulchral inscriptions, which so often
leaves us uncertain whether the structure before us is an actual
depository, or a cenotaph, or a simple memorial not of death but life,
has given to the tomb of Machiavelli no information as to the place or
time of the birth or death, the age or parentage, of the historian.

    TANTO NOMINI NVLLVM PAR ELOGIVM
          NICCOLAVS MACHIAVELLI.

There seems at least no reason why the name should not have been put
above the sentence which alludes to it.

It will readily be imagined that the prejudices which have passed the
name of Machiavelli into an epithet proverbial of iniquity exist no
longer at Florence. His memory was persecuted, as his life had been, for
an attachment to liberty incompatible with the new system of despotism,
which succeeded the fall of the free governments of Italy. He was put to
the torture for being a "libertine," that is, for wishing to restore the
republic of Florence; and such are the undying efforts of those who are
interested in the perversion, not only of the nature of actions, but the
meaning of words, that what was once _patriotism_, has by degrees come
to signify _debauch_. We have ourselves outlived the old meaning of
"liberality," which is now another word for treason in one country and
for infatuation in all. It seems to have been a strange mistake to
accuse the author of _The Prince_, as being a pander to tyranny; and to
think that the Inquisition would condemn his work for such a
delinquency. The fact is, that Machiavelli, as is usual with those
against whom no crime can be proved, was suspected of and charged with
atheism; and the first and last most violent opposers of _The Prince_
were both Jesuits, one of whom persuaded the Inquisition "benche fosse
tardo," to prohibit the treatise, and the other qualified the secretary
of the Florentine republic as no better than a fool. The father Possevin
was proved never to have read the book, and the father Lucchesini not to
have understood it. It is clear, however, that such critics must have
objected not to the slavery of the doctrines, but to the supposed
tendency of a lesson which shows how distinct are the interests of a
monarch from the happiness of mankind. The Jesuits are re-established in
Italy, and the last chapter of _The Prince_ may again call forth a
particular refutation from those who are employed once more in moulding
the minds of the rising generation, so as to receive the impressions of
despotism. The chapter [xxvi.] bears for title, "Esortazione a liberare
l'Italia da' Barbari," and concludes with a _libertine_ excitement to
the future redemption of Italy. "Non si deve adunque lasciar passare
questa occasione, acciocche la Italia vegga dopo tanto tempo apparire un
suo redentore. Ne posso esprimere con quale amore ei fusse ricevuto in
tutte quelle provincie, che hanno patito per queste illuvioni esterne,
con qual sete di vendetta, con che ostinata fede, con que pieta, con che
lacrime. Quali porte se gli serrerebbero? Quali popoli gli negherebbero
l'ubbidienza? Quale Italiano gli negherebbe l'ossequio? AD OGNUNO PUZZA
QUESTO BARBARO DOMINIO."[601]

                              18.

    Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar.
                                                    Stanza lvii. line 1.

Dante was born in Florence, in the year 1261. He fought in two battles,
was fourteen times ambassador, and once prior of the republic. When the
party of Charles of Anjou triumphed over the Bianchi, he was absent on
an embassy to Pope Boniface VIII., and was condemned to two years'
banishment, and to a fine of 8000 lire; on the non-payment of which he
was further punished by the sequestration of all his property. The
republic, however, was not content with this satisfaction, for in 1772
was discovered in the archives at Florence a sentence in which Dante is
the eleventh of a list of fifteen condemned in 1302 to be burnt alive;
_Talis perveniens igne comburatur sic quod moriatur_. The pretext for
this judgment was a proof of unfair barter, extortions, and illicit
gains. _Baracteriarum iniquarum extorsionum et illicitorum
lucrorum_,[602] and with such an accusation it is not strange that Dante
should have always protested his innocence, and the injustice of his
fellow-citizens. His appeal to Florence was accompanied by another to
the Emperor Henry; and the death of that Sovereign in 1313 was the
signal for a sentence of irrevocable banishment. He had before lingered
near Tuscany with hopes of recall; then travelled into the north of
Italy, where Verona had to boast of his longest residence; and he
finally settled at Ravenna, which was his ordinary but not constant
abode until his death. The refusal of the Venetians to grant him a
public audience, on the part of Guido Novello da Polenta, his protector,
is said to have been the principal cause of this event, which happened
in 1321. He was buried ("in sacra minorum aede") at Ravenna, in a
handsome tomb, which was erected by Guido, restored by Bernardo Bembo in
1483, praetor for that republic which had refused to hear him, again
restored by Cardinal Corsi, in 1692, and replaced by a more magnificent
sepulchre, constructed in 1780 at the expense of the Cardinal Luigi
Valenti Gonzaga. The offence or misfortune of Dante was an attachment to
a defeated party, and, as his least favourable biographers allege
against him, too great a freedom of speech and haughtiness of manner.
But the next age paid honours almost divine to the exile. The
Florentines, having in vain and frequently attempted to recover his
body, crowned his image in a church,[603] and his picture is still one
of the idols of their cathedral. They struck medals, they raised statues
to him. The cities of Italy, not being able to dispute about his own
birth, contended for that of his great poem, and the Florentines thought
it for their honour to prove that he had finished the seventh Canto
before they drove him from his native city. Fifty-one years after his
death, they endowed a professorial chair for the expounding of his
verses, and Boccaccio was appointed to this patriotic employment. The
example was imitated by Bologna and Pisa, and the commentators, if they
performed but little service to literature, augmented the veneration
which beheld a sacred or moral allegory in all the images of his mystic
muse. His birth and his infancy were discovered to have been
distinguished above those of ordinary men: the author of the
_Decameron_, his earliest biographer, relates that his mother was warned
in a dream of the importance of her pregnancy: and it was found, by
others, that at ten years of age he had manifested his precocious
passion for that wisdom or theology, which, under the name of Beatrice,
had been mistaken for a substantial mistress. When the _Divine Comedy_
had been recognised as a mere mortal production, and at the distance of
two centuries, when criticism and competition had sobered the judgment
of the Italians, Dante was seriously declared superior to Homer;[604]
and though the preference appeared to some casuists "an heretical
blasphemy worthy of the flames," the contest was vigorously maintained
for nearly fifty years. In later times it was made a question which of
the Lords of Verona could boast of having patronised him,[605] and the
jealous scepticism of one writer would not allow Ravenna the undoubted
possession of his bones. Even the critical Tiraboschi was inclined to
believe that the poet had foreseen and foretold one of the discoveries
of Galileo.--Like the great originals of other nations, his popularity
has not always maintained the same level. The last age seemed inclined
to undervalue him as a model and a study: and Bettinelli one day rebuked
his pupil Monti, for poring over the harsh and obsolete extravagances of
the _Commedia_. The present generation having recovered from the Gallic
idolatries of Cesarotti, has returned to the ancient worship, and the
_Danteggiare_ of the northern Italians is thought even indiscreet by the
more moderate Tuscans.

There is still much curious information relative to the life and
writings of this great poet, which has not as yet been collected even by
the Italians; but the celebrated Ugo Foscolo meditates to supply this
defect, and it is not to be regretted that this national work has been
reserved for one so devoted to his country and the cause of truth.

                              19.

    Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore:
    Thy factions, in their worse than civil war,
    Proscribed, etc.
                                         Stanza lvii. lines 2, 3, and 4.

The elder Scipio Africanus had a tomb if he was not buried at Liternum,
whither he had retired to voluntary banishment. This tomb was near the
sea-shore, and the story of an inscription upon it, _Ingrata Patria_,
having given a name to a modern tower, is, if not true, an agreeable
fiction. If he was not buried, he certainly lived there.[606]

        "In cosi angusta & solitaria uilla
    Era grand' huom che d' Aphrica s' appella,
    Perche prima col ferro al uiuo aprilla."[607]

Ingratitude is generally supposed the vice peculiar to republics; and
it seems to be forgotten that for one instance of popular inconstancy,
we have a hundred examples of the fall of courtly favourites. Besides, a
people have often repented--a monarch seldom or never. Leaving apart
many familiar proofs of this fact, a short story may show the difference
between even an aristocracy and the multitude.

Vettor Pisani, having been defeated in 1354 at Portolongo, and many
years afterwards in the more decisive action of Pola, by the Genoese,
was recalled by the Venetian government, and thrown into chains. The
Avvogadori proposed to behead him, but the supreme tribunal was content
with the sentence of imprisonment. Whilst Pisani was suffering this
unmerited disgrace, Chioza, in the vicinity of the capital,[608] was, by
the assistance of the _Signor of Padua_, delivered into the hands of
Pietro Doria. At the intelligence of that disaster, the great bell of
St. Mark's tower tolled to arms, and the people and the soldiery of the
galleys were summoned to the repulse of the approaching enemy; but they
protested they would not move a step, unless Pisani were liberated and
placed at their head. The great council was instantly assembled: the
prisoner was called before them, and the Doge, Andrea Contarini,
informed him of the demands of the people, and the necessities of the
state, whose only hope of safety was reposed in his efforts, and who
implored him to forget the indignities he had endured in her service. "I
have submitted," replied the magnanimous republican, "I have submitted
to your deliberations without complaint; I have supported patiently the
pains of imprisonment, for they were inflicted at your command: this is
no time to inquire whether I deserved them--the good of the republic may
have seemed to require it, and that which the republic resolves is
always resolved wisely. Behold me ready to lay down my life for the
preservation of my country." Pisani was appointed generalissimo, and, by
his exertions, in conjunction with those of Carlo Zeno, the Venetians
soon recovered the ascendancy over their maritime rivals.

The Italian communities were no less unjust to their citizens than the
Greek republics. Liberty, both with the one and the other, seems to have
been a national, not an individual object: and, notwithstanding the
boasted _equality before the laws_, which an ancient Greek writer[609]
considered the great distinctive mark between his countrymen and the
barbarians, the mutual rights of fellow citizens seem never to have been
the principal scope of the old democracies. The world may have not yet
seen an essay by the author of _The Italian Republics_, in which the
distinction between the liberty of former states, and the signification
attached to that word by the happier constitution of England, is
ingeniously developed. The Italians, however, when they had ceased to be
free, still looked back with a sigh upon those times of turbulence, when
every citizen might rise to a share of sovereign power, and have never
been taught fully to appreciate the repose of a monarchy. Sperone
Speroni, when Francis Maria II. Duke of Rovere proposed the question,
"which was preferable, the republic or the principality--the perfect and
not durable, or the less perfect and not so liable to change," replied,
"that our happiness is to be measured by its quality, not by its
duration; and that he preferred to live for one day like a man, than for
a hundred years like a brute, a stock, or a stone." This was thought,
and called a _magnificent_ answer down to the last days of Italian
servitude.[610]

                              20.

                              And the crown
    Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore,
    Upon a far and foreign soil had grown.
                                         Stanza lvii. lines 6, 7, and 8.

The Florentines did not take the opportunity of Petrarch's short visit
to their city in 1350 to revoke the decree which confiscated the
property of his father, who had been banished shortly after the exile of
Dante. His crown did not dazzle them; but when in the next year they
were in want of his assistance in the formation of their university,
they repented of their injustice, and Boccaccio was sent to Padua to
entreat the laureate to conclude his wanderings in the bosom of his
native country, where he might finish his _immortal Africa_, and enjoy,
with his recovered possessions, the esteem of all classes of his fellow
citizens. They gave him the option of the book and the science he might
condescend to expound: they called him the glory of his country, who was
dear, and who would be dearer to them; and they added, that if there was
anything unpleasing in their letter, he ought to return amongst them,
were it only to correct their style.[611] Petrarch seemed at first to
listen to the flattery and to the entreaties of his friend, but he did
not return to Florence, and preferred a pilgrimage to the tomb of Laura
and the shades of Vaucluse.

                              21.

    Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeathed
      His dust.
                                            Stanza lviii. lines 1 and 2.

Boccaccio was buried in the church of St. Michael and St. James, at
Certaldo, a small town in the Valdelsa, which was by some supposed the
place of his birth. There he passed the latter part of his life in a
course of laborious study, which shortened his existence; and there
might his ashes have been secure, if not of honour, at least of repose.
But the "hyena bigots" of Certaldo tore up the tombstone of Boccaccio
and ejected it from the holy precincts of St. Michael and St. James. The
occasion, and, it may be hoped, the excuse, of this ejectment was the
making of a new floor for the church; but the fact is, that the
tombstone was taken up and thrown aside at the bottom of the building.
Ignorance may share the sin with bigotry. It would be painful to relate
such an exception to the devotion of the Italians for their great names,
could it not be accompanied by a trait more honourably conformable to
the general character of the nation. The principal person of the
district, the last branch of the house of Medicis, afforded that
protection to the memory of the insulted dead which her best ancestors
had dispensed upon all contemporary merit. The Marchioness Lenzoni
rescued the tombstone of Boccaccio from the neglect in which it had some
time lain, and found for it an honourable elevation in her own mansion.
She has done more: the house in which the poet lived has been as little
respected as his tomb, and is falling to ruin over the head of one
indifferent to the name of its former tenant. It consists of two or
three little chambers, and a low tower, on which Cosmo II. affixed an
inscription. This house she has taken measures to purchase, and
proposes to devote to it that care and consideration which are attached
to the cradle and to the roof of genius.

This is not the place to undertake the defence of Boccaccio; but the man
who exhausted his little patrimony in the acquirement of learning, who
was amongst the first, if not the first, to allure the science and the
poetry of Greece to the bosom of Italy;--who not only invented a new
style, but founded, or certainly fixed, a new language; who, besides the
esteem of every polite court of Europe, was thought worthy of employment
by the predominant republic of his own country, and, what is more, of
the friendship of Petrarch, who lived the life of a philosopher and a
freeman, and who died in the pursuit of knowledge,--such a man might
have found more consideration than he has met with from the priest of
Certaldo, and from a late English traveller, who strikes off his
portrait as an odious, contemptible, licentious writer, whose impure
remains should be suffered to rot without a record.[612] That English
traveller, unfortunately for those who have to deplore the loss of a
very amiable person, is beyond all criticism; but the mortality which
did not protect Boccaccio from Mr. Eustace, must not defend Mr. Eustace
from the impartial judgment of his successors. Death may canonise his
virtues, not his errors; and it may be modestly pronounced that he
transgressed, not only as an author, but as a man, when he evoked the
shade of Boccaccio in company with that of Aretine, amidst the
sepulchres of Santa Croce, merely to dismiss it with indignity. As far
as respects

      "Il flagello de' Principi,
    Il divin Pietro Aretino,"

it is of little import what censure is passed upon a coxcomb who owes
his present existence to the above burlesque character given to him by
the poet, whose amber has preserved many other grubs and worms: but to
classify Boccaccio with such a person, and to excommunicate his very
ashes, must of itself make us doubt of the qualification of the
classical tourist for writing upon Italian, or, indeed, upon any other
literature; for ignorance on one point may incapacitate an author merely
for that particular topic, but subjection to a professional prejudice
must render him an unsafe director on all occasions. Any perversion and
injustice may be made what is vulgarly called a "case of conscience,"
and this poor excuse is all that can be offered for the priest of
Certaldo, or the author of the _Classical Tour_. It would have answered
the purpose to confine the censure to the novels of Boccaccio; and
gratitude to that source which supplied the muse of Dryden with her last
and most harmonious numbers might, perhaps, have restricted that censure
to the objectionable qualities of the hundred tales. At any rate the
repentance of Boccaccio might have arrested his exhumation, and it
should have been recollected and told, that in his old age he wrote a
letter entreating his friend to discourage the reading of the
_Decameron_, for the sake of modesty, and for the sake of the author,
who would not have an apologist always at hand to state in his excuse
that he wrote it when young, and at the command of his superiors.[613]
It is neither the licentiousness of the writer, nor the evil
propensities of the reader, which have given to the _Decameron_ alone,
of all the works of Boccaccio, a perpetual popularity. The establishment
of a new and delightful dialect conferred an immortality on the works in
which it was first fixed. The sonnets of Petrarch were, for the same
reason, fated to survive his self-admired _Africa_, "the favourite of
kings." The invariable traits of nature and feeling with which the
novels, as well as the verses, abound, have doubtless been the chief
source of the foreign celebrity of both authors; but Boccaccio, as a
man, is no more to be estimated by that work, than Petrarch is to be
regarded in no other light than as the lover of Laura. Even, however,
had the father of the Tuscan prose been known only as the author of the
_Decameron_, a considerate writer would have been cautious to pronounce
a sentence irreconcilable with the unerring voice of many ages and
nations. An irrevocable value has never been stamped upon any work
solely recommended by impurity.

The true source of the outcry against Boccaccio, which began at a very
early period, was the choice of his scandalous personages in the
cloisters as well as the courts; but the princes only laughed at the
gallant adventures so unjustly charged upon queen Theodelinda, whilst
the priesthood cried shame upon the debauches drawn from the convent and
the hermitage; and most probably for the opposite reason, namely, that
the picture was faithful to the life. Two of the novels are allowed to
be facts usefully turned into tales to deride the canonisation of rogues
and laymen. Ser Ciappelletto and Marcellinus are cited with applause
even by the decent Muratori.[614] The great Arnaud, as he is quoted in
Bayle, states, that a new edition of the novels was proposed, of which
the expurgation consisted in omitting the words "monk" and "nun," and
tacking the immoralities to other names. The literary history of Italy
particularises no such edition; but it was not long before the whole of
Europe had but one opinion of the _Decameron_; and the absolution of the
author seems to have been a point settled at least a hundred years ago:
"On se feroit siffler si l' on pretendoit convaincre Boccace de n'avoir
pas ete honnete homme, puis qu'il a fait le Decameron." So said one of
the best men, and perhaps the best critic that ever lived--the very
martyr to impartiality.[615] But as this information, that in the
beginning of the last century one would have been hooted at for
pretending that Boccaccio was not a good man, may seem to come from one
of those enemies who are to be suspected, even when they make us a
present of truth, a more acceptable contrast with the proscription of
the body, soul, and muse of Boccaccio may be found in a few words from
the virtuous, the patriotic contemporary, who thought one of the tales
of this impure writer worthy a Latin version from his own pen. "I have
remarked elsewhere," says Petrarch, writing to Boccaccio, "that the book
itself has been worried by certain dogs, but stoutly defended by your
staff and voice. Nor was I astonished, for I have had proof of the
vigour of your mind, and I know you have fallen on that unaccommodating
incapable race of mortals, who, whatever they either like not, or know
not, or cannot do, are sure to reprehend in others; and on those
occasions only put on a show of learning and eloquence, but otherwise
are entirely dumb."[616]

It is satisfactory to find that all the priesthood do not resemble those
of Certaldo, and that one of them who did not possess the bones of
Boccaccio would not lose the opportunity of raising a cenotaph to his
memory. Bevius, canon of Padua, at the beginning of the sixteenth
century, erected at Arqua, opposite to the tomb of the Laureate, a
tablet, in which he associated Boccaccio to the equal honours of Dante
and of Petrarch.

                              22.

    What is her Pyramid of precious stones?
                                                      Stanza lx. line 1.

Our veneration for the Medici begins with Cosmo and expires with his
grandson; that stream is pure only at the source; and it is in search of
some memorial of the virtuous republicans of the family that we visit
the church of St. Lorenzo at Florence. The tawdry, glaring, unfinished
chapel in that church, designed for the mausoleum of the Dukes of
Tuscany, set round with crowns and coffins, gives birth to no emotions
but those of contempt for the lavish vanity of a race of despots, whilst
the pavement slab, simply inscribed to the Father of his Country,
reconciles us to the name of Medici.[617] It was very natural for
Corinna[618] to suppose that the statue raised to the Duke of Urbino in
the _capella de' depositi_, was intended for his great namesake; but the
magnificent Lorenzo is only the sharer of a coffin half hidden in a
niche of the sacristy. The decay of Tuscany dates from the sovereignty
of the Medici. Of the sepulchral peace which succeeded to the
establishment of the reigning families in Italy, our own Sidney has
given us a glowing, but a faithful picture. "Notwithstanding all the
seditions of Florence, and other cities of Tuscany, the horrid factions
of Guelphs and Ghibelins, Neri and Bianchi, nobles and commons, they
continued populous, strong, and exceeding rich; but in the space of less
than a hundred and fifty years, the peaceable reign of the Medices is
thought to have destroyed nine parts in ten of the people of that
province. Amongst other things it is remarkable, that when Philip II. of
Spain gave Sienna to the Duke of Florence, his ambassador then at Rome
sent him word, that he had given away more than 650,000 subjects; and it
is not believed there are now 20,000 souls inhabiting that city and
territory. Pisa, Pistoia, Arezzo, Cortona, and other towns, that were
then good and populous, are in the like proportion diminished, and
Florence more than any. When that city had been long troubled with
seditions, tumults, and wars, for the most part unprosperous, they still
retained such strength, that when Charles VIII. of France, being
admitted as a friend with his whole army, which soon after conquered the
kingdom of Naples, thought to master them, the people, taking arms,
struck such a terror into him, that he was glad to depart upon such
conditions as they thought fit to impose. Machiavel reports, that in
that time Florence alone, with the Val d'Arno, a small territory
belonging to that city, could, in a few hours, by the sound of a bell,
bring together 135,000 well-armed men; whereas now that city, with all
the others in that province, are brought to such despicable weakness,
emptiness, poverty, and baseness, that they can neither resist the
oppressions of their own prince, nor defend him or themselves if they
were assaulted by a foreign enemy. The people are dispersed or
destroyed, and the best families sent to seek habitations in Venice,
Genoa, Rome, Naples, and Lucca. This is not the effect of war or
pestilence; they enjoy a perfect peace, and suffer no other plague than
the government they are under."[619] From the usurper Cosmo down to the
imbecile Gaston, we look in vain for any of those unmixed qualities
which should raise a patriot to the command of his fellow-citizens. The
Grand Dukes, and particularly the third Cosmo, had operated so entire a
change in the Tuscan character, that the candid Florentines, in excuse
for some imperfections in the philanthropic system of Leopold, are
obliged to confess that the sovereign was the only liberal man in his
dominions. Yet that excellent prince himself had no other notion of a
national assembly, than of a body to represent the wants and wishes, not
the will of the people.

                              23.

    An Earthquake reeled unheededly away!
                                                   Stanza lxiii. line 5.

"And such was their mutual animosity, so intent were they upon the
battle, that the earthquake, which overthrew in great part many of the
cities of Italy, which turned the course of rapid streams, poured back
the sea upon the rivers, and tore down the very mountains, was not felt
by one of the combatants."[620] Such is the description of Livy. It may
be doubted whether modern tactics would admit of such an abstraction.

The site of the battle of Thrasimene is not to be mistaken. The
traveller from the village under Cortona to Casa di Piano, the next
stage on the way to Rome, has for the first two or three miles, around
him, but more particularly to the right, that flat land which Hannibal
laid waste in order to induce the Consul Flaminius to move from Arezzo.
On his left, and in front of him, is a ridge of hills bending down
towards the lake of Thrasimene, called by Livy "montes Cortonenses," and
now named the Gualandra. These hills he approaches at Ossaja, a village
which the itineraries pretend to have been so denominated from the bones
found there: but there have been no bones found there, and the battle
was fought on the other side of the hill. From Ossaja the road begins to
rise a little, but does not pass into the roots of the mountains until
the sixty-seventh milestone from Florence. The ascent thence is not
steep but perpetual, and continues for twenty minutes. The lake is soon
seen below on the right, with Borghetto, a round tower, close upon the
water; and the undulating hills partially covered with wood, amongst
which the road winds, sink by degrees into the marshes near to this
tower. Lower than the road, down to the right amidst these woody
hillocks, Hannibal placed his horse,[621] in the jaws of, or rather
above the pass, which was between the lake and the present road, and
most probably close to Borghetto, just under the lowest of the
"tumuli."[622] On a summit to the left, above the road, is an old
circular ruin, which the peasants call "the tower of Hannibal the
Carthaginian." Arrived at the highest point of the road, the traveller
has a partial view of the fatal plain, which opens fully upon him as he
descends the Gualandra. He soon finds himself in a vale enclosed to the
left, and in front and behind him by the Gualandra hills, bending round
in a segment larger than a semicircle, and running down at each end to
the lake, which obliques to the right and forms the chord of this
mountain arc. The position cannot be guessed at from the plains of
Cortona, nor appears to be so completely enclosed unless to one who is
fairly within the hills. It then, indeed, appears "a place made as it
were on purpose for a snare," _locus insidiis natus_. "Borghetto is then
found to stand in a narrow marshy pass close to the hill, and to the
lake, whilst there is no other outlet at the opposite turn of the
mountains than through the little town of Passignano, which is pushed
into the water by the foot of a high rocky acclivity." There is a woody
eminence branching down from the mountains into the upper end of the
plain nearer to the side of Passignano, and on this stands a white
village called Torre. Polybius seems to allude to this eminence as the
one on which Hannibal encamped, and drew out his heavy-armed Africans
and Spaniards in a conspicuous position.[623] From this spot he
despatched his Balearic and light-armed troops round through the
Gualandra heights to the right, so as to arrive unseen and form an
ambush amongst the broken acclivities which the road now passes, and to
be ready to act upon the left flank and above the enemy, whilst the
horse shut up the pass behind. Flaminius came to the lake near Borghetto
at sunset; and, without sending any spies before him, marched through
the pass the next morning before the day had quite broken, so that he
perceived nothing of the horse and light troops above and about him, and
saw only the heavy-armed Carthaginians in front on the hill of Torre.
The consul began to draw out his army in the flat, and in the mean time
the horse in ambush occupied the pass behind him at Borghetto. Thus the
Romans were completely enclosed, having the lake on the right, the main
army on the hill of Torre in front, the Gualandra hills filled with the
light-armed on their left flank, and being prevented from receding by
the cavalry, who, the further they advanced, stopped up all the outlets
in the rear. A fog rising from the lake now spread itself over the army
of the consul, but the high lands were in the sunshine, and all the
different corps in ambush looked towards the hill of Torre for the order
of attack. Hannibal gave the signal, and moved down from his post on the
height. At the same moment all his troops on the eminences behind and in
the flank of Flaminius rushed forwards as it were with one accord into
the plain. The Romans, who were forming their array in the mist,
suddenly heard the shouts of the enemy amongst them on every side, and
before they could fall into their ranks, or draw their swords, or see by
whom they were attacked, felt at once that they were surrounded and
lost. There are two little rivulets which run from the Gualandra into
the lake. The traveller crosses the first of these at about a mile after
he comes into the plain, and this divides the Tuscan from the Papal
territories. The second, about a quarter of a mile further on, is called
"the bloody rivulet;" and the peasants point out an open spot to the
left between the "Sanguinetto" and the hills, which, they say, was the
principal scene of slaughter. The other part of the plain is covered
with thick-set olive-trees in corn grounds, and is nowhere quite level,
except near the edge of the lake. It is, indeed, most probable that the
battle was fought near this end of the valley, for the six thousand
Romans, who, at the beginning of the action, broke through the enemy,
escaped to the summit of an eminence which must have been in this
quarter, otherwise they would have had to traverse the whole plain, and
to pierce through the main army of Hannibal.

The Romans fought desperately for three hours; but the death of
Flaminius was the signal for a general dispersion. The Carthaginian
horse then burst in upon the fugitives, and the lake, the marsh about
Borghetto, but chiefly the plain of the Sanguinetto and the passes of
the Gualandra, were strewed with dead. Near some old walls on a bleak
ridge to the left above the rivulet, many human bones have been
repeatedly found, and this has confirmed the pretensions and the name of
the "stream of blood."

Every district of Italy has its hero. In the north some painter is the
usual genius of the place, and the foreign Julio Romano more than
divides Mantua with her native Virgil.[624] To the south we hear of
Roman names. Near Thrasimene tradition is still faithful to the fame of
an enemy, and Hannibal the Carthaginian is the only ancient name
remembered on the banks of the Perugian lake. Flaminius is unknown; but
the postilions on that road have been taught to show the very spot where
_Il Console Romano_ was slain. Of all who fought and fell in the battle
of Thrasimene, the historian himself has, besides the generals and
Maharbal, preserved indeed only a single name. You overtake the
Carthaginian again on the same road to Rome. The antiquary, that is, the
hostler of the posthouse at Spoleto, tells you that his town repulsed
the victorious enemy, and shows you the gate still called _Porta di
Annibale_. It is hardly worth while to remark that a French travel
writer, well known by the name of the President Dupaty, saw Thrasimene
in the lake of Bolsena, which lay conveniently on his way from Sienna to
Rome.

                              24.

    And thou, dread Statue! still existent in
      The austerest form of naked majesty.
                                          Stanza lxxxvii. lines 1 and 2.

The projected division of the Spada Pompey has already been recorded by
the historian of the _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. Mr. Gibbon
found it in the memorials of Flaminius Vacca; and it may be added to his
mention of it, that Pope Julius III. gave the contending owners five
hundred crowns for the statue, and presented it to Cardinal Capo di
Ferro, who had prevented the judgment of Solomon from being executed
upon the image. In a more civilised age this statue was exposed to an
actual operation: for the French, who acted the Brutus of Voltaire in
the Coliseum, resolved that their Caesar should fall at the base of that
Pompey, which was supposed to have been sprinkled with the blood of the
original dictator. The nine-foot hero was therefore removed to the arena
of the amphitheatre, and, to facilitate its transport, suffered the
temporary amputation of its right arm. The republican tragedians had to
plead that the arm was a restoration: but their accusers do not believe
that the integrity of the statue would have protected it. The love of
finding every coincidence, has discovered the true Caesarian ichor in a
stain near the right knee; but colder criticism has rejected not only
the blood, but the portrait, and assigned the globe of power rather to
the first of the emperors than to the last of the republican masters of
Rome. Winckelmann[625] is loth to allow an heroic statue of a Roman
citizen, but the Grimani Agrippa, a contemporary almost, is heroic; and
naked Roman figures were only very rare, not absolutely forbidden. The
face accords much better with the "hominem integrum et castum et
gravem,"[626] than with any of the busts of Augustus, and is too stern
for him who was beautiful, says Suetonius, at all periods of his life.
The pretended likeness to Alexander the Great cannot be discerned, but
the traits resemble the medal of Pompey.[627] The objectionable globe
may not have been an ill-applied flattery to him who found Asia Minor
the boundary, and left it the centre of the Roman empire. It seems that
Winckelmann has made a mistake in thinking that no proof of the identity
of this statue with that which received the bloody sacrifice can be
derived from the spot where it was discovered.[628] Flaminius Vacca says
_sotto una cantina_, and this cantina is known to have been in the
Vicolo de' Leutari, near the Cancellaria; a position corresponding
exactly to that of the Janus before the basilica of Pompey's theatre, to
which Augustus transferred the statue after the _curia_ was either burnt
or taken down.[629] Part of the "Pompeian shade,"[630] the portico,
existed in the beginning of the XVth century, and the _atrium_ was still
called _Satrum_. So says Blondus.[631] At all events, so imposing is the
stern majesty of the statue, and so memorable is the story, that the
play of the imagination leaves no room for the exercise of the judgment,
and the fiction, if a fiction it is, operates on the spectator with an
effect not less powerful than truth.

                              25.

    And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome!
                                                Stanza lxxxviii. line 1.

Ancient Rome, like modern Sienna, abounded most probably with images of
the foster-mother of her founder; but there were two she-wolves of whom
history makes particular mention. One of these, _of brass in ancient
work_, was seen by Dionysius[632] at the temple of Romulus, under the
Palatine, and is universally believed to be that mentioned by the Latin
historian, as having been made from the money collected by a fine on
usurers, and as standing under the Ruminal fig-tree.[633] The other was
that which Cicero[634] has celebrated both in prose and verse, and which
the historian Dion also records as having suffered the same accident as
is alluded to by the orator.[635] The question agitated by the
antiquaries is, whether the wolf now in the Conservator's Palace is that
of Livy and Dionysius, or that of Cicero, or whether it is neither one
nor the other. The earlier writers differ as much as the moderns: Lucius
Faunus[636] says, that it is the one alluded to by both, which is
impossible, and also by Virgil, which may be. Fulvius Ursinus[637] calls
it the wolf of Dionysius, and Marlianus[638] talks of it as the one
mentioned by Cicero. To him Rycquius _tremblingly_ assents.[639]
Nardini is inclined to suppose it may be one of the many wolves
preserved in ancient Rome; but of the two rather bends to the Ciceronian
statue.[640] Montfaucon[641] mentions it as a point without doubt. Of
the latter writers the decisive Winckelmann[642] proclaims it as having
been found at the church of Saint Theodore, where, or near where, was
the temple of Romulus, and consequently makes it the wolf of Dionysius.
His authority is Lucius Faunus, who, however, only says that it _was
placed_, not _found_, at the Ficus Ruminalis, by the Comitium, by which
he does not seem to allude to the church of Saint Theodore. Rycquius was
the first to make the mistake, and Winckelmann followed Rycquius.

Flaminius Vacca tells quite a different story, and says he had heard the
wolf with the twins was found[643] near the arch of Septimius Severus.
The commentator on Winckelmann is of the same opinion with that learned
person, and is incensed at Nardini for not having remarked that Cicero,
in speaking of the wolf struck with lightning in the Capitol, makes use
of the past tense. But, with the Abate's leave, Nardini does not
positively assert the statue to be that mentioned by Cicero, and if he
had, the assumption would not perhaps have been so exceedingly
indiscreet. The Abate himself is obliged to own that there are marks
very like the scathing of lightning in the hinder legs of the present
wolf; and, to get rid of this, adds, that the wolf seen by Dionysius
might have been also struck by lightning, or otherwise injured.

Let us examine the subject by a reference to the words of Cicero. The
orator in two places seems to particularise the Romulus and the Remus,
especially the first, which his audience remembered to _have been_ in
the Capitol, as being struck with lightning. In his verses he records
that the twins and wolf both fell, and that the latter left behind the
marks of her feet. Cicero does not say that the wolf was consumed: and
Dion only mentions that it fell down, without alluding, as the Abate has
made him, to the force of the blow, or the firmness with which it had
been fixed. The whole strength, therefore, of the Abate's argument hangs
upon the past tense; which, however, may be somewhat diminished by
remarking that the phrase only shows that the statue was not then
standing in its former position. Winckelmann has observed that the
present twins are modern; and it is equally clear that there are marks
of gilding on the wolf, which might therefore be supposed to make part
of the ancient group. It is known that the sacred images of the Capitol
were not destroyed when injured by time or accident, but were put into
certain underground depositories, called _favissae_.[644] It may be
thought possible that the wolf had been so deposited, and had been
replaced in some conspicuous situation when the Capitol was rebuilt by
Vespasian. Rycquius, without mentioning his authority, tells that it was
transferred from the Comitium to the Lateran, and thence brought to the
Capitol. If it was found near the arch of Severus, it may have been one
of the images which Orosius[645] says was thrown down in the Forum by
lightning when Alaric took the city. That it is of very high antiquity
the workmanship is a decisive proof; and that circumstance induced
Winckelmann to believe it the wolf of Dionysius. The Capitoline wolf,
however, may have been of the same early date as that at the temple of
Romulus. Lactantius[646] asserts that in his time the Romans worshipped
a wolf; and it is known that the Lupercalia held out to a very late
period[647] after every other observance of the ancient superstition
had totally expired. This may account for the preservation of the
ancient image longer than the other early symbols of Paganism.

It may be permitted, however, to remark, that the wolf was a Roman
symbol, but that the worship of that symbol is an inference drawn by the
zeal of Lactantius. The early Christian writers are not to be trusted in
the charges which they make against the Pagans. Eusebius accused the
Romans to their faces of worshipping Simon Magus, and raising a statue
to him in the island of the Tyber. The Romans had probably never heard
of such a person before, who came, however, to play a considerable,
though scandalous part in the church history, and has left several
tokens of his aerial combat with St. Peter at Rome; notwithstanding that
an inscription found in this very island of the Tyber showed the Simon
Magus of Eusebius to be a certain indigenal god called Semo Sangus or
Fidius.[648]

Even when the worship of the founder of Rome had been abandoned it was
thought expedient to humour the habits of the good matrons of the city,
by sending them with their sick infants to the church of Saint Theodore,
as they had before carried them to the temple of Romulus.[649] The
practice is continued to this day; and the site of the above church
seems to be thereby identified with that of the temple; so that if the
wolf had been really found there, as Winckelmann says, there would be no
doubt of the present statue being that seen by Dionysius.[650] But
Faunus, in saying that it was at the Ficus Ruminalis by the Comitium, is
only talking of its ancient position as recorded by Pliny; and, even if
he had been remarking where it was found, would not have alluded to the
church of Saint Theodore, but to a very different place, near which it
was then thought the Ficus Ruminalis had been, and also the Comitium;
that is, the three columns by the church of Santa Maria Liberatrice, at
the corner of the Palatine looking on the Forum.

It is, in fact, a mere conjecture where the image was actually dug up;
and perhaps, on the whole, the marks of the gilding, and of the
lightning, are a better argument in favour of its being the Ciceronian
wolf than any that can be adduced for the contrary opinion. At any rate,
it is reasonably selected in the text of the poem as one of the most
interesting relics of the ancient city,[651] and is certainly the
figure, if not the very animal to which Virgil alludes in his beautiful
verses:--

            "Geminos huic ubera circum
    Ludere pendentes pueros, et lambere matrem
    Impavidos; illam, tereti cervice reflexam,
    Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere lingua."[652]

                              26.

                 For the Roman's mind
    Was modelled in a less terrestrial mould.
                                               Stanza xc. lines 3 and 4.

It is possible to be a very great man and to be still very inferior to
Julius Caesar, the most complete character, so Lord Bacon thought, of all
antiquity. Nature seems incapable of such extraordinary combinations as
composed his versatile capacity, which was the wonder even of the Romans
themselves. The first general--the only triumphant politician--inferior
to none in eloquence--comparable to any in the attainments of wisdom, in
an age made up of the greatest commanders, statesmen, orators, and
philosophers that ever appeared in the world--an author who composed a
perfect specimen of military annals in his travelling carriage--at one
time in a controversy with Cato, at another writing a treatise on
punning, and collecting a set of good sayings--fighting and making love
at the same moment, and willing to abandon both his empire and his
mistress for a sight of the Fountains of the Nile. Such did Julius Caesar
appear to his contemporaries, and to those of the subsequent ages who
were the most inclined to deplore and execrate his fatal genius.

But we must not be so much dazzled with his surpassing glory, or with
his magnanimous, his amiable qualities, as to forget the decision of his
impartial countrymen:--

                        HE WAS JUSTLY SLAIN.[653]

                              27.

    Egeria! sweet creation of some heart
      Which found no mortal resting-place so fair
      As thine ideal breast.
                                          Stanza cxv. lines 1, 2, and 3.

The respectable authority of Flaminius Vacca would incline us to believe
in the claims of the Egerian grotto.[654] He assures us that he saw an
inscription in the pavement, stating that the fountain was that of
Egeria, dedicated to the nymphs. The inscription is not there at this
day, but Montfaucon quotes two lines[655] of Ovid [_Fast._, iii. 275,
276] from a stone in the Villa Giustiniani, which he seems to think had
been brought from the same grotto.

This grotto and valley were formerly frequented in summer, and
particularly the first Sunday in May, by the modern Romans, who attached
a salubrious quality to the fountain which trickles from an orifice at
the bottom of the vault, and, overflowing the little pools, creeps down
the matted grass into the brook below. The brook is the Ovidian Almo,
whose name and qualities are lost in the modern Aquataccio. The valley
itself is called Valle di Caffarelli, from the dukes of that name who
made over their fountain to the Pallavicini, with sixty _rubbia_ of
adjoining land.

There can be little doubt that this long dell is the Egerian valley of
Juvenal, and the pausing place of Umbritius, notwithstanding the
generality of his commentators have supposed the descent of the satirist
and his friend to have been into the Arician grove, where the nymph met
Hippolitus, and where she was more peculiarly worshipped.

The step from the Porta Capena to the Alban hill, fifteen miles distant,
would be too considerable, unless we were to believe in the wild
conjecture of Vossius, who makes that gate travel from its present
station, where he pretends it was during the reign of the Kings, as far
as the Arician grove, and then makes it recede to its old site with the
shrinking city.[656] The tufo, or pumice, which the poet prefers to
marble, is the substance composing the bank in which the grotto is sunk.

The modern topographers[657] find in the grotto the statue of the nymph,
and nine niches for the Muses; and a late traveller[658] has discovered
that the cave is restored to that simplicity which the poet regretted
had been exchanged for injudicious ornament. But the headless statue is
palpably rather a male than a nymph, and has none of the attributes
ascribed to it at present visible. The nine Muses could hardly have
stood in six niches; and Juvenal certainly does not allude to any
individual cave.[659] Nothing can be collected from the satirist but
that somewhere near the Porta Capena was a spot in which it was supposed
Numa held nightly consultations with his nymph, and where there was a
grove and a sacred fountain, and fanes once consecrated to the Muses;
and that from this spot there was a descent into the valley of Egeria,
where were several artificial caves. It is clear that the statues of the
Muses made no part of the decoration which the satirist thought
misplaced in these caves; for he expressly assigns other fanes
(_delubra_) to these divinities above the valley, and moreover tells us
that they had been ejected to make room for the Jews. In fact, the
little temple now called that of Bacchus, was formerly thought to belong
to the Muses, and Nardini[660] places them in a poplar grove, which was
in his time above the valley.

It is probable from the inscription and position, that the cave now
shown may be one of the "artificial caverns," of which, indeed, there is
another a little way higher up the valley, under a tuft of alder bushes;
but a _single_ grotto of Egeria is a mere modern invention, grafted upon
the application of the epithet Egerian to these nymphea in general, and
which might send us to look for the haunts of Numa upon the banks of the
Thames.

Our English Juvenal was not seduced into mistranslation by his
acquaintance with Pope: he carefully preserves the correct plural--

    "Thence slowly winding down the vale we view
    The Egerian _grots_: oh, how unlike the true!"

The valley abounds with springs,[661] and over these springs, which the
Muses might haunt from their neighbouring groves, Egeria presided: hence
she was said to supply them with water; and she was the nymph of the
grottos through which the fountains were taught to flow.

The whole of the monuments in the vicinity of the Egerian valley have
received names at will, which have been changed at will. Venuti[662]
owns he can see no traces of the temples of Jove, Saturn, Juno, Venus,
and Diana, which Nardini found, or hoped to find. The mutatorium of
Caracalla's circus, the temple of Honour and Virtue, the temple of
Bacchus, and, above all, the temple of the god Rediculus, are the
antiquaries' despair.

The circus of Caracalla depends on a medal of that emperor cited by
Fulvius Ursinus, of which the reverse shows a circus, supposed,
however, by some to represent the Circus Maximus. It gives a very good
idea of that place of exercise. The soil has been but little raised, if
we may judge from the small cellular structure at the end of the Spina,
which was probably the chapel of the god Consus. This cell is half
beneath the soil, as it must have been in the circus itself; for
Dionysius[663] could not be persuaded to believe that this divinity was
the Roman Neptune, because his altar was underground.

                              28.

                                  Great Nemesis!
    Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long.
                                           Stanza cxxxii. lines 2 and 3.

We read in Suetonius, that Augustus, from a warning received in a
dream,[664] counterfeited, once a year, the beggar, sitting before the
gate of his palace with his hand hollowed and stretched out for charity.
A statue formerly in the villa Borghese, and which should be now at
Paris, represents the Emperor in that posture of supplication. The
object of that self-degradation was the appeasement of Nemesis, the
perpetual attendant on good fortune, of whose power the Roman conquerors
were also reminded by certain symbols attached to their cars of triumph.
The symbols were the whip and the _crotalo_, which were discovered in
the Nemesis of the Vatican. The attitude of beggary made the above
statue pass for that of Belisarius: and until the criticism of
Winckelmann[665] had rectified the mistake, one fiction was called in to
support another. It was the same fear of the sudden termination of
prosperity, that made Amasis king of Egypt warn his friend Polycrates of
Samos, that the gods loved those whose lives were chequered with good
and evil fortunes. Nemesis was supposed to lie in wait particularly for
the prudent; that is, for those whose caution rendered them accessible
only to mere accidents; and her first altar was raised on the banks of
the Phrygian AEsepus by Adrastus, probably the prince of that name who
killed the son of Croesus by mistake. Hence the goddess was called
Adrastea.[666]

The Roman Nemesis was _sacred_ and _august_: there was a temple to her
in the Palatine under the name of Rhamnusia;[667] so great, indeed, was
the propensity of the ancients to trust to the revolution of events, and
to believe in the divinity of Fortune, that in the same Palatine there
was a temple to the Fortune of the day.[668] This is the last
superstition which retains its hold over the human heart; and, from
concentrating in one object the credulity so natural to man, has always
appeared strongest in those unembarrassed by other articles of belief.
The antiquaries have supposed this goddess to be synonymous with Fortune
and with Fate;[669] but it was in her vindictive quality that she was
worshipped under the name of Nemesis.

                              29.

                        He, their sire,
    Butchered to make a Roman holiday.
                                             Stanza cxli. lines 6 and 7.

Gladiators were of two kinds, compelled and voluntary; and were supplied
from several conditions;--from slaves sold for that purpose; from
culprits; from barbarian captives either taken in war, and, after being
led in triumph, set apart for the games, or those seized and condemned
as rebels; also from free citizens, some fighting for hire
(_auctorati_), others from a depraved ambition; at last even knights and
senators were exhibited,--a disgrace of which the first tyrant was
naturally the first inventor.[670] In the end, dwarfs, and even women,
fought; an enormity prohibited by Severus. Of these the most to be
pitied undoubtedly were the barbarian captives; and, to this species a
Christian writer[671] justly applies the epithet "innocent," to
distinguish them from the professional gladiators. Aurelian and Claudius
supplied great numbers of these unfortunate victims; the one after his
triumph, and the other on the pretext of a rebellion.[672] No war, says
Lipsius,[673] was ever so destructive to the human race as these sports.
In spite of the laws of Constantine and Constans, gladiatorial shows
survived the old established religion more than seventy years; but they
owed their final extinction to the courage of a Christian. In the year
404, on the kalends of January, they were exhibiting the shows in the
Flavian amphitheatre before the usual immense concourse of people.
Almachius, or Telemachus, an Eastern monk, who had travelled to Rome
intent on his holy purpose, rushed into the midst of the arena, and
endeavoured to separate the combatants. The Praetor Alypius, a person
incredibly attached to these games,[674] gave instant orders to the
gladiators to slay him; and Telemachus gained the crown of martyrdom,
and the title of saint, which surely has never either before or since
been awarded for a more noble exploit. Honorius immediately abolished
the shows, which were never afterwards revived. The story is told by
Theodoret[675] and Cassiodorus,[676] and seems worthy of credit
notwithstanding its place in the Roman martyrology.[677] Besides the
torrents of blood which flowed at the funerals, in the amphitheatres,
the circus, the forums, and other public places, gladiators were
introduced at feasts, and tore each other to pieces amidst the supper
tables, to the great delight and applause of the guests. Yet Lipsius
permits himself to suppose the loss of courage, and the evident
degeneracy of mankind, to be nearly connected with the abolition of
these bloody spectacles.

                              30.

    Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise
    Was Death or Life--the playthings of a crowd.
                                            Stanza cxlii. lines 5 and 6.

When one gladiator wounded another, he shouted, "He has it," "Hoc
habet," or "Habet." The wounded combatant dropped his weapon, and
advancing to the edge of the arena, supplicated the spectators. If he
had fought well, the people saved him; if otherwise, or as they happened
to be inclined, they turned down their thumbs, and he was slain. They
were occasionally so savage that they were impatient if a combat lasted
longer than ordinary without wounds or death. The emperor's presence
generally saved the vanquished; and it is recorded, as an instance of
Caracalla's ferocity, that he sent those who supplicated him for life,
in a spectacle, at Nicomedia, to ask the people; in other words, handed
them over to be slain. A similar ceremony is observed at the Spanish
bull-fights. The magistrate presides; and after the horseman and
piccadores have fought the bull, the matadore steps forward and bows to
him for permission to kill the animal. If the bull has done his duty by
killing two or three horses, or a man, which last is rare, the people
interfere with shouts, the ladies wave their handkerchiefs, and the
animal is saved. The wounds and death of the horses are accompanied with
the loudest acclamations, and many gestures of delight, especially from
the female portion of the audience, including those of the gentlest
blood. Every thing depends on habit. The author of _Childe Harold_, the
writer of this note, and one or two other Englishmen, who have certainly
in other days borne the sight of a pitched battle, were, during the
summer of 1809, in the governor's box at the great amphitheatre of Santa
Maria, opposite to Cadiz. The death of one or two horses completely
satisfied their curiosity. A gentleman present, observing them shudder
and look pale, noticed that unusual reception of so delightful a sport
to some young ladies, who stared and smiled, and continued their
applause as another horse fell bleeding to the ground. One bull killed
three horses, _off his own horns_. He was saved by acclamations, which
were redoubled when it was known he belonged to a priest.

An Englishman who can be much pleased with seeing two men beat
themselves to pieces, cannot bear to look at a horse galloping round an
arena with his bowels trailing on the ground, and turns from the
spectacle and the spectators with horror and disgust.

                              31.

                             And afar
    The Tiber winds, and the broad Ocean laves
    The Latian coast, etc., etc.
                                           Stanza clxxiv. lines 3 and 4.

The whole declivity of the Alban hill is of unrivalled beauty, and from
the convent on the highest point, which has succeeded to the temple of
the Latian Jupiter, the prospect embraces all the objects alluded to in
the cited stanza; the Mediterranean; the whole scene of the latter half
of the _AEneid_, and the coast from beyond the mouth of the Tiber to the
headland of Circaeum and the Cape of Terracina.

The site of Cicero's villa may be supposed either at the Grotta Ferrata,
or at the Tusculum of Prince Lucien Buonaparte.

The former was thought some years ago the actual site, as may be seen
from Myddleton's _Life of Cicero_. At present it has lost something of
its credit, except for the Domenichinos. Nine monks of the Greek order
live there, and the adjoining villa is a cardinal's summer-house. The
other villa, called Rufinella, is on the summit of the hill above
Frascati, and many rich remains of Tusculum have been found there,
besides seventy-two statues of different merit and preservation, and
seven busts.

From the same eminence are seen the Sabine hills, embosomed in which
lies the long valley of Rustica. There are several circumstances which
tend to establish the identity of this valley with the "_Ustica_" of
Horace; and it seems possible that the mosaic pavement which the
peasants uncover by throwing up the earth of a vineyard may belong to
his villa. Rustica is pronounced short, not according to our stress
upon--"_Usticae cubantis_." It is more rational to think that we are
wrong, than that the inhabitants of this secluded valley have changed
their tone in this word. The addition of the consonant prefixed is
nothing; yet it is necessary to be aware that Rustica may be a modern
name which the peasants may have caught from the antiquaries.

The villa, or the mosaic, is in a vineyard on a knoll covered with
chestnut trees. A stream runs down the valley; and although it is not
true, as said in the guide books, that this stream is called Licenza,
yet there is a village on a rock at the head of the valley, which is so
denominated, and which may have taken its name from the Digentia.
Licenza contains seven hundred inhabitants. On a peak a little way
beyond is Civitella, containing three hundred. On the banks of the Anio,
a little before you turn up into Valle Rustica, to the left, about an
hour from the _villa_, is a town called Vicovaro, another favourable
coincidence with the _Varia_ of the poet. At the end of the valley,
towards the Anio, there is a bare hill, crowned with a little town
called Bardela. At the foot of this hill the rivulet of Licenza flows,
and is almost absorbed in a wide sandy bed before it reaches the Anio.
Nothing can be more fortunate for the lines of the poet, whether in a
metaphorical or direct sense:--

    "Me quotiens reficit gelidus Digentia rivus,
    Quem Mandela bibit rugosus frigore pagus."

The stream is clear high up the valley, but before it reaches the hill
of Bardela looks green and yellow like a sulphur rivulet.

Rocca Giovane, a ruined village in the hills, half an hour's walk from
the vineyard where the pavement is shown, does seem to be the site of
the fane of Vacuna, and an inscription found there tells that this
temple of the Sabine Victory was repaired by Vespasian. With these
helps, and a position corresponding exactly to every thing which the
poet has told us of his retreat, we may feel tolerably secure of our
site.

The hill which should be Lucretilis is called Campanile, and by
following up the rivulet to the pretended Bandusia, you come to the
roots of the higher mountain Gennaro. Singularly enough, the only spot
of ploughed land in the whole valley is on the knoll where this Bandusia
rises.

    " ... tu frigus amabile
    Fessis vomere tauris
    Praebes, et pecori vago."

The peasants show another spring near the mosaic pavement, which they
call "Oradina," and which flows down the hills into a tank, or mill-dam,
and thence trickles over into the Digentia.

But we must not hope

    "To trace the Muses upwards to their spring,"

by exploring the windings of the romantic valley in search of the
Bandusian fountain. It seems strange that any one should have thought
Bandusia a fountain of the Digentia--Horace has not let drop a word of
it; and this immortal spring has in fact been discovered in possession
of the holders of many good things in Italy, the monks. It was attached
to the church of St. Gervais and Protais near Venusia, where it was most
likely to be found.[678] We shall not be so lucky as a late traveller in
finding the "occasional pine" still pendent on the poetic villa. There
is not a pine in the whole valley, but there are two cypresses, which he
evidently took, or mistook, for the tree in the ode.[679] The truth is,
that the pine is now, as it was in the days of Virgil, a garden tree,
and it was not at all likely to be found in the craggy acclivities of
the valley of Rustica. Horace probably had one of them in the orchard
close above his farm, immediately overshadowing his villa, not on the
rocky heights at some distance from his abode. The tourist may have
easily supposed himself to have seen this pine figured in the above
cypresses; for the orange and lemon trees which throw such a bloom over
his description of the royal gardens at Naples, unless they have been
since displaced, were assuredly only acacias and other common garden
shrubs.[680]

                              32.

    Upon the blue Symplegades.
                                                  Stanza clxxvi. line 1.

[Lord Byron embarked from "Calpe's rock" (Gibraltar) August 19, 1809,
and after travelling through Greece, he reached Constantinople in the
_Salsette_ frigate May 14, 1810. The two island rocks--the Cyanean
Symplegades--stand one on the European, the other on the Asiatic side of
the Strait, where the Bosphorus joins the Euxine or Black Sea. Both
these rocks were visited by Lord Byron in June, 1810.--Note, Ed. 1879.]


                           END OF VOL. II.

         LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
                  STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.



FOOTNOTES:

[555] {470} The writer meant _Lido_, which is not a long row of islands,
but a long island: _littus_, the shore.

[556] _Curiosities of Literature_, ii. 156, edit. 1807, edit. 1881, i.
390; and Appendix xxix. to Black's _Life of Tasso_, 1810, ii. 455.

[557] {472} _Su i Quattro Cavalli della Basilica di S. Marco in
Venezia_. Lettera di Andrea Mustoxidi Corcirese. Padova, 1816.

[558] {473} "Quibus auditis, imperator, operante eo, qui corda Principum
sicut vult, & quando vult, humiliter inclinat, leonina feritate
deposita, ovinam mansuetudinem induit."--_Romualdi Salernitani
Chronican, apud Script. Rer. Ital._, 1725, vii. 230.

[559] {474} _Rer. Ital._, vii. 231.

[560] {475} See the above-cited Romuald of Salerno. In a second sermon
which Alexander preached, on the first day of August, before the
Emperor, he compared Frederic to the prodigal son, and himself to the
forgiving father.

[561] Mr. Gibbon has omitted the important _ae_, and has written Romani
instead of Romaniae.--_Decline and Fall_, chap. lxi. note 9 (1882, ii.
777, note i). But the title acquired by Dandolo runs thus in the
chronicle of his namesake, the Doge Andrew Dandolo: "Ducali titulo
addidit, 'Quartae partis, & dimidiae totius Imperii Romaniae; Dominator.'"
And. Dand. _Chronicon_, cap. iii. pars xxxvii. ap. _Script. Rer. Ital._,
1728, xii. 331. And the Romaniae is observed in the subsequent acts of
the Doges. Indeed, the continental possessions of the Greek Empire in
Europe were then generally known by the name of Romania, and that
appellation is still seen in the maps of Turkey as applied to Thrace.

[562] See the continuation of Dandolo's _Chronicle_, ibid., p. 498. Mr.
Gibbon appears not to include Dolfino, following Sanudo, who says, "Il
qual titolo si uso fin al Doge Giovanni Dolfino." See _Vite de' Duchi di
Venezia_ [_Vitae Ducum Venetorum Italiae scriptae_, Auctore Martino
Sanuto], ap. _Script. Rer. Ital._, xxii. 530, 641.

[563] {476} "Fiet potentium in aquis Adriaticis congregatio, caeco
praeduce, Hircum ambigent, Byzantium prophanabunt, aedificia denigrabunt,
spolia dispergentur; Hircus novus balabit, usque dum liv. pedes, & ix.
pollices, & semis, praemensurati discurrant."--_Chronicon, ibid_., xii.
329.

[564] {477} _Cronaca della Guerra di Chioza, etc._, scritta da Daniello
Chinazzo. _Script. Rer. Ital._, xv. 699-804.

[565] {478} "Nonnullorum e nobilitate immensae sunt opes, adeo ut vix
aestimari possint; id quod tribus e rebus oritur, parsimonia, commercio,
atque iis emolumentis, quae e Repub. percipiunt, quae hanc ob caussam
diuturna fore creditur."--See _De Principatibus Italia Tractatus Varii_,
1628, pp. 18, 19.

[566] {479} See _An Historical and Critical Essay on the Life and
Character of Petrarch_; and _A Dissertation on an Historical Hypothesis
of the Abbe de Sade_. 1810. [An Italian version, entitled _Riflessioni
intorno a Madonna Laura_, was published in 1811.]

[567] _Memoires pour la Vie de Francois Petrarque_, Amsterdam, 1764, 3
vols. 4to.

[568] Letter to the Duchess of Gordon, August 17, 1782. _Life of
Beattie_, by Sir W. Forbes, ii. 102-106.

[569] Mr. Gibbon called his _Memoirs_ "a labour of love" (see _Decline
and Fall_, chap. lxx. note 2), and followed him with confidence and
delight. The compiler of a very voluminous work must take much criticism
upon trust; Mr. Gibbon has done so, though not as readily as some other
authors.

[570] {480} The sonnet had before awakened the suspicions of Mr. Horace
Walpole. See his letter to Dr. Joseph Warton, March 16, 1765.

[571] "Par ce petit manege, cette alternative de faveurs et de rigueurs
bien menagee, une femme tendre & sage amuse pendant vingt et un ans le
plus grand Poete de son siecle, sans faire la moindre breche a son
honneur." _Memoires pour la Vie de Petrarque_, Preface aux Francais, i.
p. cxiii.

[572] In a dialogue with St. Augustin, Petrarch has described Laura as
having a body exhausted with repeated _ptubs_. The old editors read and
printed _perturbationibus_; but M. Capperonier, librarian to the French
king in 1762, who saw the MS. in the Paris library, made an attestation
that "on lit et qu'on doit lire, partubus exhaustum." De Sade joined the
names of Messrs. Boudot and Bejot with M. Capperonier, and, in the whole
discussion on this _ptubs_, showed himself a downright literary rogue.
(See _Riflessioni_, p. lxxiv. _sq._; _Le Rime del Petrarca_, Firenze,
1832, ii. _s.f._) Thomas Aquinas is called in to settle whether
Petrarch's mistress was a _chaste_ maid or a _continent_ wife.

[573] {481}

    "Pigmalion, quanto lodar ti dei
       Dell' immagine tua, se mille volte
    N' avesti quel, ch' i' sol una vorrei!"

                   Sonetto 50, _Quando giunse a Simon l'alto concetto_.
                         _Le Rime_, etc., i. 118, edit. Florence, 1832.

[574] "A questa confessione cosi sincera diede forse occasione una nuova
caduta, ch' ei fece."--Tiraboschi, _Storia_, lib. iii., _della
Letteratura Italiana_, Rome, 1783, v. 460.

[575] {482} "Il n'y a que la vertu seule qui soit capable de faire des
impressions que la mort n'efface pas."--M. de Bimard, Baron de la
Bastie, in the _Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions de Belles
Lettres_ for 1740 (_Memoires de Litterature_ [1738-1740], 1751, xvii.
424). (See also _Riflessioni, etc._, p. xcvi.; _Le Rime_, etc., 1832,
ii. _s.f._)

[576] "And if the virtue or prudence of Laura was inexorable, he
enjoyed, and might boast of enjoying, the nymph of poetry."--_Decline
and Fall_, 1818, chap. lxx. p. 321, vol. xii. 8vo. Perhaps the _if_ is
here meant for _although_.

[577] {484} _Remarks on Antiquities, etc., in Italy_, by Joseph Forsyth,
p. 107, note.

[578] {485} _La Vita di Tasso_, lib. iii. p. 284 (tom. ii. edit.
Bergamo, 1790).

[579] _Histoire de l'Academie Francaise depuis_ 1652 _jusqu'a_ 1700, par
M. l' Abbe [Thoulier] d'Olivet, Amsterdam, 1730. "Mais, ensuite, venant
a l'usage qu'il a fait de ses talens, j'aurois montre que le bon sens
n'est pas toujours ce qui domine chez lui," p. 182. Boileau said he had
not changed his opinion. "J'en ai si peu change, dit-il," etc., p. 181.

[580] _La Maniere de bien Penser dans les Ouvrages de l'esprit_, sec.
Dial., p. 89, edit. 1692. Philanthes is for Tasso, and says in the
outset, "De tous les beaux esprits que l'Italie a portez, le Tasse est
peut-estre celuy qui pense le plus noblement." But Bohours seems to
speak in Eudoxus, who closes with the absurd comparison: "Faites valoir
le Tasse tant qu'il vous plaira, je m'en tiens pour moy a Virgile," etc.
(_ibid_., p. 102).

[581] _La Vita, etc_., lib. iii. p. 90, tom. ii. The English reader may
see an account of the opposition of the Crusca to Tasso, in Black's
_Life_, 1810, _etc_., chap. xvii. vol. ii.

[582] For further, and it is hoped, decisive proof, that Tasso was
neither more nor less than a _prisoner of state_, the reader is referred
to _Historical Illustrations of the IVth Canto of Childe Harold_, p. 5,
and following.

[583] {486} Orazioni funebri ... delle lodi di Don Luigi Cardinal d'Este
... delle lodi di Donno Alfonso d'Este. See _La Vita_, lib. in. p. 117.

[584] It was founded in 1582, and the Cruscan answer to Pellegrino's
_Caraffa_, or _Epica poesia_, was published in 1584.

[585] "Cotanto, pote sempre in lui il veleno della sua pessima volonta
contro alia Nazion Fiorentina." _La Vita_, lib. iii. pp. 96, 98, tom.
ii.

[586] _La Vita di M. L. Ariosto_, scritta dall' Abate Girolamo
Baruffaldi Giuniore, etc. Ferrara, 1807, lib. in. p. 262. (See
_Historical Illustrations, etc._, p. 26.)

[587] _Storia della Lett._, Roma, 1785, tom. vii. pt. in. p. 130.

[588] {486} _Op_. di Bianconi, vol. iii. p. 176, ed. Milano, 1802:
Lettera al Signor Guido Savini Arcifisiocritico, sull' indole di un
fulmine caduto in Dresda, Panno 1759.

[589] "Appassionato ammiratore ed invitto apologista dell' _Omero
Ferrarese_." The title was first given by Tasso, and is quoted to the
confusion of the _Tassisti_, lib. iii. pp. 262, 265. _La Vita di M. L.
Ariosto, etc_.

[590]

    "Parva sed apta mihi, sed nulli obnoxia, sed non
    Sordida, parta meo sed tamen aere domus."

[591] {488} Plin., _Hist. Nat_., lib. ii. cap. 55.

[592] _Columella_, De Re Rustica, x. 532, lib. x.; Sueton., in _Vit.
August_., cap. xc., et in _Vit. Tiberii_, cap. lxix.

[593] Note 2, p. 409, edit. Lugd. Bat. 1667.

[594] _Vid_. J. C. Boulenger, _De Terrae Motu et Fulminib_., lib. v. cap.
xi., _apud_ J. G. Graev., _Thes. Antiq. Rom_., 1696, v. 532.

[595] [Greek: Ou)dei\s keraunothei\s a)/timo/s e)sti o(/then kai\ o(s
theo\s tima~tai]. Artemidori _Oneirocritica_, Paris, 1603, ii. 8, p. 91.

[596] {489} Pauli Warnefridi Diaconi _De Gestis Langobard_., lib. iii.
cap. xxxi., _apud_ La Bigne, _Max. Bibl. Patr_., 1677, xiii. 177.

[597] I. P. Valeriani _De fulminum significationibus declamatio_, _apud_
J. G. Graev., _Thes. Antiq. Rom_., 1696, v. 604. The declamation is
addressed to Julian of Medicis.

[598] {490} See _Menum. Ant. Ined_., 1767, ii. par. i. cap. xvii. sect.
iii p. 50; and _Storia delle Arti, etc_., lib. xi. cap. i. tom ii. p.
314, note B.

[599] _Nomina gentesque Antiquae Italiae_ (Gibbon, _Miscell. Works_,
1814). p. 204, edit. oct.

[600] {492} The free expression of their honest sentiments survived
their liberties. Titius, the friend of Antony, presented them with games
in the theatre of Pompey. They did not suffer the brilliancy of the
spectacle to efface from their memory that the man who furnished them
with the entertainment had murdered the son of Pompey: they drove him
from the theatre with curses. The moral sense of a populace,
spontaneously expressed, is never wrong. Even the soldiers of the
triumvirs joined in the execration of the citizens, by shouting round
the chariots of Lepidus and Plancus, who had proscribed their brothers,
_De Germanis, non de Gallis, duo triumphant consules_; a saying worth a
record, were it nothing but a good pun. [C. Vell. Paterculi, _Hist_.,
lib. ii. cap. lxxix. p. 78, edit. Elzevir, 1639. _Ibid_., lib. ii. cap.
lxvii.]

[601] {494} _Il Principe di Niccolo Machiavelli_, Paris, 1825, pp. 184,
185.

[602] _Storia della Lett. Ital._, edit. Venice, 1795, tom. v. lib. iii.
par. 2, p. 448, note. Tiraboschi is incorrect; the dates of the three
decrees against Dante are A.D. 1302, 1314, and 1316.

[603] {495} So relates Ficino, but some think his coronation only an
allegory. See _Storia, etc., ut sup._, p. 453.

[604] By Varchi, in his _Ercolano_. The controversy continued from 1570
to 1616. See _Storia, etc._, edit. Rome, 1785, tom, vii. lib. iii. par.
iii. p. 187.

[605] {496} Gio Jacopo Dionisi _Canonico di Verona_. Serie di Aneddoti,
n. 2. See _Storia, etc._, edit. Venice, 1795, tom. v. lib. i. par. i. p.
24, note.

[606] "Vitam Literni egit sine desiderio urbis." See T. Liv., _Hist._,
lib. xxxviii. cap. liii. Livy reports that some said he was buried at
Liternum, others at Rome. _Ibid._, cap. lv.

[607] _Trionfo della Castita_, _Opera_ Petrarchae, Basil, 1554, i. _s.f._

[608] {497} See Note 6, p. 476.

[609] The Greek boasted that he was [Greek: i)so/nomos]. See the last
chapter of the first book of Dionysius of Halicarnassus.

[610] {498} "E intorno _alla magnifica risposta_," etc. Serassi, _Vita
del Tasso_, lib. iii. p. 149, tom. ii. edit. 2. Bergamo.

[611] {499} "Accingiti innoltre, se ci e lecito ancor l'esortarti, a
compire l'immortal tua Africa ... Se ti avviene d'incontrare nel nostro
stile cosa che ti dispiaccia, cio debb' essere un altro motive ad
esaudire i desiderj della tua patria." _Storia della Lett. Ital._, edit.
Venice, 1795, tom. v. par. i. lib. i. p. 75.

[612] {500} _Classical Tour_, chap. ix. vol. iii. p. 355, edit. 3rd. "Of
Boccaccio, the modern Petronius, we say nothing; the abuse of genius is
more odious and more contemptible than its absence, and it imports
little where the impure remains of a licentious author are consigned to
their kindred dust. For the same reason the traveller may pass unnoticed
the tomb of the malignant _Aretino_." This dubious phrase is hardly
enough to save the tourist from the suspicion of another blunder
respecting the burial-place of Aretine, whose tomb was in the church of
St. Luke at Venice, and gave rise to the famous controversy of which
some notice is taken in Bayle. Now the words of Mr. Eustace would lead
us to think the tomb was at Florence, or at least was to be somewhere
recognised. Whether the inscription so much disputed was ever written on
the tomb cannot now be decided, for all memorial of this author has
disappeared from the church of St. Luke.

[613] {501} "Non enim ubique est, qui in excusationem meam consurgens
dicat: juvenis scripsit, & majoris coactus imperio." The letter was
addressed to Maghinard of Cavalcanti, marshal of the kingdom of Sicily.
See Tiraboschi, _Storia, etc._, edit. Venice, 1795, tom. v. par. ii.
lib. iii. p. 525, note.

[614] {502} _Dissertazioni sopra le Antichita Italiane_, Diss. lviii. p.
253, tom. iii. edit. Milan, 1751.

[615] _Eclaircissement, etc., etc._, p. 648, edit. Amsterdam, 1740, in
the Supplement to Bayle's _Dictionary_.

[616] {503} _Opera_, i. 540, edit. Basil, 1581.

[617] Cosmus Medices, Decreto Publico, Pater Patriae.

[618] Corinne, 1819, liv. xviii. chap. iii. vol. iii. p. 218.

[619] {504} _Discourses concerning Government_, by A. Sidney, chap. ii.
sect. xxvi. p. 208, edit. 1751. Sidney is, together with Locke and
Hoadley, one of Mr. Hume's "despicable" writers.

[620] {505} Tit. Liv., lib. xxii. cap. v.

[621] _Ibid._, cap. iv.

[622] _Ibid._

[623] {506} _Hist._, lib. iii. cap. 83. The account in Polybius is not
so easily reconcilable with present appearances as that in Livy; he
talks of hills to the right and left of the pass and valley; but when
Flaminius entered he had the lake at the right of both.

[624] {507} About the middle of the twelfth century the coins of Mantua
bore on one side the image and figure of Virgil. _Zecca d'Italia_, iii.
pl. xvii. i. 6. _Voyage dans le Milanais, etc._, par A. L. Millin, ii.
294. Paris, 1817.

[625] {509} _Storia delle Arti, etc._, lib. xi. cap. i. pp. 321, 322,
tom. ii.

[626] Cicer., _Epist. ad Atticum_, xi. 6.

[627] Published by Causeus, in his _Museum Romanum_.

[628] _Storia delle Arti, etc._, lib. xi. cap. i.

[629] Sueton., in _Vit. August._, cap. xxxi., and in _Vit. C. J. Caesar_,
cap. lxxxviii. Appian says it was burnt down. See a note of Pitiscus to
Suetonius, p. 224.

[630] "Tu modo Pompeia lentus spatiare sub umbra" (Ovid, _Art. Am._, i.
67).

[631] Flavii Blondi _De Roma Instaurata_, Venice, 1511, lib. iii. p. 25.

[632] {510} _Antiq. Rom._, lib. i., [Greek: Cha/lkea poie/mata palai~as
e)rgasi/as].

[633] Liv., _Hist._, lib. x. cap. xxiii.

[634] "Tum statua Nattae, tum simulacra Deorum, Romulusque et Remus cum
altrice belua vi fulminis icti conciderunt."--Cic., _De Divinat._, ii.
20. "Tactus est etiam ille qui hanc urbem condidit Romulus: quem
inauratum in Capitolio parvum atque lactentem uberibus lupinis inhiantem
fuisse meministis."--_In Catilin._, iii. 8.

    "Hic silvestris erat Romani nominis altrix
    Martia, quae parvos Mavortis semine natos
    Uberibus gravidis vitali rore rigabat:
    Quae tum cum pueris flammato fulminis ictu
    Concidit, atque avulsa pedum vestigia liquit."
                               _De Suo Consulatu_, lib. ii. lines 42-46.

[635] Dion., _Hist._, lib. xxxvii. p. 37, edit. Rob. Steph., 1548.

[636] Luc. Fauni _De Antiq. Urb. Rom._, lib. ii. cap. vii., _ap._
Sallengre, 1745, i. 217,

[637] Ap. Nardini _Roma Vetus_, lib. v. cap. iv., _ap._ J. G. Graev.,
_Thes. Antiq. Rom._, iv. 1146.

[638] Marliani _Urb. Rom. Topograph._, Venice, 1588, p. 23.

[639] {511} Just. Rycquii _De Capit. Roman. Comm._, cap. xxiv. p. 250,
edit. Lugd. Bat. 1696.

[640] Nardini, _Roma Vetus_, lib. v. cap. iv.

[641] Montfaucon, _Diarium Italic._, Paris, 1702, i. 174.

[642] _Storia delle Arti, etc._, Milan, 1779, lib. iii. cap. iii. s. ii.
note * (i. 144). Winckelmann has made a strange blunder in the note, by
saying the Ciceronian wolf was _not_ in the Capitol, and that Dion was
wrong in saying so.

[643] Flam. Vacca, _Memorie_, num. iii. _ap_. _Roma Antica di Famiano_,
Nardini, Roma, 1771, iv. _s.f._ p. iii.

[644] {512} Luc. Fauni _De Antiq. Urb. Rom._, lib. ii. cap. vi., _ap._
Sallengre, tom. i. p. 216.

[645] See note to stanza lxxx. in _Historical Illustrations_.

[646] "Romuli nutrix Lupa honoribus est affecta divinis. Et ferrem, si
animal ipsum fuisset, cujus figuram gerit." Lactant., _De Falsa
Religione_, lib. i. cap. xx., Biponti, 1786, i. 66; that is to say, he
would rather adore a wolf than a prostitute. His commentator has
observed that the opinion of Livy concerning Laurentia being figured in
this wolf was not universal. Strabo thought so. Rycquius is wrong in
saying that Lactantius mentions the wolf was in the Capitol.

[647] To A.D. 496. "Quis credere possit," says Baronius [_Ann. Eccles._,
Lucae, 1741, viii. 602, in an. 496], "viguisse adhuc Romae ad Gelasii
tempora, quae fuere ante exordium Urbis allata in Italiam Lupercalia?"
Gelasius wrote a letter, which occupies four folio pages, to Andromachus
the senator, and others, to show that the rites should be given up.

[648] {513} _Eccles. Hist._ (Lipsiae, 1827, p. 130), lib. ii. cap. xiii.
p. 40. Justin Martyr had told the story before; but Baronius himself was
obliged to detect this fable. See Nardini, _Roma Vet._, lib. vii. cap.
xii.

[649] _Accurata e succincta Descrizione, etc., di Roma moderna_, dell'
Ab. Ridolfino Venuti, Rome, 1766, ii. 397.

[650] Nardini, lib. v. cap. 3, ap. J. G. Graev., iv. 1143, convicts
Pomponius Laetus _Crassi erroris_, in putting the Ruminal fig-tree at the
church of Saint Theodore; but, as Livy says the wolf was at the Ficus
Ruminalis, and Dionysius at the temple of Romulus, he is obliged to own
that the two were close together, as well as the Luperal cave, shaded,
as it were, by the fig-tree.

[651] {514} Donatus, lib. xi. cap. xviii., gives a medal representing on
one side the wolf in the same position as that in the Capitol; and on
the reverse the wolf with the head not reverted. It is of the time of
Antoninus Pius.

[652] _AEn_., viii. 631-634. (See Dr. Middleton, in his letter from Rome,
who inclines to the Ciceronian wolf, but without examining the subject.)

[653] {515} "Jure caesus existimetur," says Suetonius, i. 76, after a
fair estimation of his character, and making use of a phrase which was a
formula in Livy's time. "Maelium jure caesum pronuntiavit, etiam si regni
crimine insons fuerit:" [lib. iv. cap. xv.] and which was continued in
the legal judgments pronounced in justifiable homicides, such as killing
house-breakers.

[654] _Rom. Ant._, F. Nardini, 1771, iv. _Memorie_, note 3, p. xii. He
does not give the inscription.

[655] "In villa Justiniana exstat ingens lapis quadras solidus, in quo
sculpta haec duo Ovidii carmina sunt:--

    "'AEgeria est quae praebet aquas dea grata Camoenis,
        Illa Numae conjunx consiliumque fuit.'

Qui lapis videtur eodem Egeriae fonte, aut ejus vicinia, istuc
comportatus."--_Diarium Italic._, Paris, 1702, p. 153.

[656] {516} _De Magnit. Vet. Rom_., ap. Graev., _Ant. Rom_., iv. 1507 [1.
Vossius, _De Ant. Urb. Rom. Mag_., cap. iv.]

[657] Eschinard, _Descrizione di Roma e dell' Agro Romano_, Roma, 1750.
They believe in the grotto and nymph. "Simulacro di questo Fonte,
essendovi scolpite le acque a pie di esso" (p. 297).

[658] _Classical Tour_, vol. ii. chap. vi. p. 217.

[659] Lib. 1. _Sat_. iii. lines 11-20.

[660] {517} Lib. iii. cap. iii.

[661] "Quamvis undique e solo aquae; scaturiant." Nardini, lib. iii. cap.
iii. _Thes. Ant. Rom_., ap. J. G. Graev., 1697, iv. 978.

[662] Eschinard, etc. _Sic cit_., pp. 297, 298.

[663] {517} _Antiq. Rom_., Oxf., 1704, lib. ii. cap. xxxi. vol. i. p.
97.

[664] Sueton., in _Vit. Augusti_, cap. xci. Casaubon, in the note,
refers to Plutarch's Lives of Camillus and AEmilius Paulus, and also to
his apophthegms, for the character of this deity. The hollowed hand was
reckoned the last degree of degradation; and when the dead body of the
praefect Rufinus was borne about in triumph by the people, the indignity
was increased by putting his hand in that position.

[665] _Storia delle Arti, etc_., Rome, 1783, lib. xii. cap. iii. tom.
ii. p. 422. Visconti calls the statue, however, a Cybele. It is given in
the _Museo Pio-Clement_., tom. i. par. xl. The Abate Fea (_Spiegazione
dei Rami. Storia, etc_., iii. 513) calls it a Crisippo.

[666] {519} _Dict. de Bayle_, art. "Adrastea."

[667] It is enumerated by the regionary Victor.

[668] "Fortunae; hujusce diei." Cicero mentions her, _De Legib._, lib.
ii.

[669]

    DEAE. NEMESI
    SIVE. FORTV
        NAE
      PISTORIVS
      RVGIANVS
    V.C. LEGAT.
    LEG. XIII. G.
        GORD.

(See _Questiones Romanae, etc._, ap. Graev., _Antiq. Roman._, v. 942. See
also Muratori, _Nov. Thesaur. Inscrip. Vet._, Milan, 1739, i. 88, 89,
where there are three Latin and one Greek inscription to Nemesis, and
others to Fate.)

[670] {520} Julius Caesar, who rose by the fall of the aristocracy,
brought Furius Leptinus and A. Calenus upon the arena.

[671] "Ad captiuos pertinere Tertulliani querelam puto: _Certe quidem &
innocentes gladiatores inludum veniunt, & voluptatis publicae hostiae
fiant_." Justus, Lipsius, 1588, _Saturn. Sermon._, lib. ii. cap. iii. p.
84.

[672] Vopiscus, in _Vit. Aurel._, and in _Vit. Claud._, _ibid._

[673] Just. Lips., _ibid._, lib. i. cap. xii. p. 45.

[674] Augustinus (_Confess._, lib. vi. cap. viii.): "Alypium suum
gladiatorii spectaculi inhiatu incredibiliter abreptum," scribit. ib.,
lib. i. cap. xii.

[675] {521} _Hist. Eccles._, ap. _Ant. Hist. Eccl._, Basle, 1535, lib.
v. cap. xxvi.

[676] Cassiod., _Tripartita_, ap. _Ant. Hist. Eccl._, Basle, 1535, lib.
x. cap. ii. p. 543.

[677] Baronius, _De Ann. et in Notis ad Martyrol. Rom. I. Jan._ (See
Marangoni, _Delle memorie sacre, e profane dell' Anfiteatro Flavio_, p.
25, edit. 1746.)

[678] {524} See _Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto_, p. 43.

[679] See _Classical Tour, etc._, chap. vii. p. 250, vol. ii.

[680] {525} "Under our windows and bordering on the beach is the royal
garden, laid out in parterres, and walks shaded by rows of orange
trees."--_Classical Tour, etc._, chap. xi. vol. ii., 365.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2, by
George Gordon Byron

*** 