Title: The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 2
Author: Baron George Gordon Byron Byron
Editor: Ernest Hartley Coleridge
Release date: May 5, 2008 [eBook #25340]
Most recently updated: January 3, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Jonathan Ingram, David Cortesi, and the Online
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The source code for this HTML page contains only Latin-1 characters, but it directs the browser to display some special characters. The original work contained a few phrases or lines of Greek text. These are represented here as Greek letters, for example Λιακυρα. If the mouse is held still over such phrases, a transliteration in Beta-code pops up. Aside from Greek letters, the only unusual characters are ā (a with macron), ī (i with macron), and ē (e with macron).
An important feature of this edition is its copious notes, which are of three types. Notes indexed with both a number and a letter, for example [4.B.], are end-notes provided by Byron or, following Canto IV, by J. C. Hobhouse. These end-notes follow each Canto.
Both the verse and the end-notes have footnotes, which are indicated by small raised keys in brackets; these are links to the footnote's text. Footnotes indexed with arabic numbers (e.g. [17], [221]) are informational. Footnotes indexed with letters (e.g. [c], [bf]) document variant forms of the text from manuscripts and other sources.
In the original, footnotes were printed at the foot of the page on which they were referenced, and their indices started over on each page. In this etext, footnotes have been collected following each canto or block of end-notes, and have been numbered consecutively throughout. Text in footnotes and end-notes in square brackets is the work of Editor E. H. Coleridge. Text not in brackets is by Byron or Hobhouse. In certain notes on variant text, the editor showed deleted text struck through with lines, for example deleted words.
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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 [vi] 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 archæological 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 [vii] 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. Édition Classique, par James Darmesteter, Docteur-ès-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 Kölbing's exhaustive collation of the text of the two first cantos with the Dallas Transcript in [viii] the British Museum (Zur Textüberlieferung 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.
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 [x] 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., [xi] 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), [xii] 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 [xiii] 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 [xiv] 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, [xv] 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.
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.:—
[xvii] 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 Ld. 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.
"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.
£101:15:8.
Mem.: This receipt is for the above sum, 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 Ds.,—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.
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 agéd 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 lxxxvii. | "Then must I plunge again into the crowd,"— |
| Stanza lxxxviii. | "What is the worst of woes that wait on Age?"— |
| 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,"— |
| 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.) [xxii] |
| 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 (Móseri). |
| 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 (Valanidórakhon). (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 (Loutráki). (Stanzas lxx., lxxii., Song "Tambourgi, Tambourgi;" stanza written in passing the Ambracian Gulph. Letter 131.) |
| Nov. 15. | Leave Lutraki, arrive Katúna. |
| Nov. 16. | Leave Katúna, arrive Makalá (? Machalas). [xxiii] |
| 1809. | |
| Nov. 18. | Leave Makalá, arrive Guriá. |
| Nov. 19. | Leave Guriá, arrive Ætolikon. |
| Nov. 20. | Leave Ætolikon, 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 Larnáki (? Itea). |
| Dec. 15. | Leave Larnáki (? Itea), arrive Chrysó. |
| Dec. 16. | Visit Delphi, the Pythian Cave, and stream of Castaly. (Canto I. stanza i.) |
| Dec. 17. | Leave Chrysó, 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 Keratéa. |
| Jan. 23. | Visit temple of Athene at Sunium. (Stanza lxxxvi.) |
| Jan. 24. | Leave Keratéa, 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.) [xxiv] |
| 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 (Bunarbási). |
| 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'Épire et de la Thessalie, Berlin, 1897, and from Dr. Karl Peucker's Griechenland, Wien, 1897.]
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 |
| 1. Ianthe (Lady Charlotte Harley), from an Engraving by W. Finden, after a Drawing by R. Westall, R.A. | Frontispiece |
| 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 |
"L'univers est une espèce de livre, dont on n'a lu que la première page quand on n'a vu que son pays. J'en ai feuilleté un assez grand nombre, que j'ai trouvé également mauvaises. Cet examen ne m'a point été infructueux. Je haïssais ma patrie. Toutes les impertinences des peuples divers, parmi lesquels j'ai vécu, m'ont reconcilié avec elle. Quand je n'aurais tiré d'autre bénéfice de mes voyages que celui-là, je n'en regretterais ni les frais ni les fatigues."—Le Cosmopolite, ou, le Citoyen du Monde, par Fougeret de Monbron. Londres, 1753.
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, [4] 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 [5] 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.
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 [6] 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][7] 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 réproche." 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 [8] 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]
Jan. 25. 1810.—[MS.]
[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.]
[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.]
[e] My readers will observe that where the author speaks in his own person he assumes a very different tone from that of
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 Faërie 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 Mémoires sur l'Ancienne Chevalerie, par M. De la Curne de Sainte-Palaye, Paris, 1781: "Qu'on lise dans l'auteur du roman de Gérard de Roussillon, en Provençal, les détails très-circonstanciés dans lesquels il entre sur la réception faite par le Comte Gérard à l'ambassadeur du roi Charles; on y verra des particularités singulières qui donnent une etrange idée des moeurs et de la politesse de ces siècles aussi corrompus qu'ignorans" (ii. 69). See, too, ibid., ante, p. 65: "Si l'on juge des moeurs d'un siècle par les écrits qui nous en sont restés, nous serons en droit de juger que nos ancêtres observèrent mal les loix que leur prescrivirent la décence et l'honnêteté."]
[8] [See Recherches sur les Prérogatives des Dames chez les Gaulois sur les Cours d'Amours, par M. le Président Rolland [d'Erceville], de l'Académie 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.—
[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.]
[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'Amitié 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—
Essay on Criticism, line 240.
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.]
[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).]
[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 Faërie 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—
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.]
[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—
[w] Strange fate directed still to uses vile.—[MS. erased.]
[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 præteritum perpetratis, si quæ 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—
[y] {20} The original MS. inserts two stanzas which were rejected during the composition of the poem:—
[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:—
[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.
[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—
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).]
[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."]
[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)—
[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.—
[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).]
[ak] Here follows in the MS. the following erased stanza:—
[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.]
[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 bonâ fide, he leaves England heart-whole, but for the bitter memory of Mary Chaworth.]
[ao] {30} Here follows in the MS., erased:—
[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.]
[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.]
[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.]
[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.]
[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 Señora (now the Palazio) da Peña, 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, æt. 95) is on a stone in front of the cave—
[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 Athenæum, 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.]
[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.)]
[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:—
[A] [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'Abrantés [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.]
[B] ["'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 (Faërie 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."]
[C]"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.]
[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]
[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 José 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).]
[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).]
[57] [Compare Virgil, Æneid, i. 100—
[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 Caballerías of the sixteenth century.]
[bw] ——thy little date.—[MS. erased.]
[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.]
[63] [Compare Campbell's "Hohenlinden"—"Few, few shall part where many meet."]
[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.]
[66] Two lines of Collins' Ode, "How sleep the brave," etc., have been compressed into one—
[ca] But Reason's elf in these beholds——.—[D.]
[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.]
[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.]
[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.]
[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 puñal, or cuchillo, which was sometimes stuck in the sash (Handbook for Spain, ii. 803).]
[77] [Compare Macbeth, act v. sc. 5, line 10—
[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—
But in Don Juan, Canto XII. stanzas lxxiv.-lxxvii., he makes the amende to the fair Briton—
[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 Phædriades, 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).]
[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).]
[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 Æneid, i. 415-417)—
[84] [Compare Milton's Paradise Lost, i.—
[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.]
[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.]
[db] And droughty man alights and roars for "Roman Purl."[*]—[MS. D.]
[*] 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 étincelante de blancheur entre l'azur de la mer et l'azur du ciel, on dirait une immense couronne de filigrane d'argent; le dôme de la cathédrale, peint en jaune, semble une tiare de vermeil posée au milieu. Les pots de fleurs, les volutes et les tourelles qui terminent les maisons, varient à l'infini la dentelure. Byron a merveilleusement caractérisé la physionomie de Cadix en une seule touche:
"Brillante Cadix, qui t'élèves vers le ciel du milieu du bleu foncé 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 coloured 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 manège."—[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 (Faërie 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 grâce.]
[dd] ——he lies along the sand.—[MS. erased.]
[94] [Compare Virgil, Æneid, viii. 264—
[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" (Faërie Queene, bk. i. c. ix. st. 41, line 8).]
[97] [The Dallas Transcript reads "itself," but the MS. and earlier editions "herself."]
[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.)]
[101] [Compare Prior's Solomon, bk. iii. lines 85, 86—
[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 Valençay, 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.]
[A] "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).]
[B] "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.]
[C][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 Fé, The Faith.... Although 14 feet high, and weighing 2800 lbs., it turns with the slightest breeze."—Ford's Handbook for Spain, i. 174.]
[D][Vide ante, p. 78, note 2.]
[E]By shrivelled Wellesley——.—[MS. erased.]
[F] "The Needy Knife-grinder," in the Anti-Jacobin, was a joint production of Messrs. Frere and Canning.
[H] Yet surely Vulpes merits some applause.—[MS. erased.]
[J] [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.)]
[107] [Compare the In Memoriam stanzas at the end of Beattie's Minstrel—"And am I left to unavailing woe?" II. 63, line 2.]
[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,
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.]
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.]
Stanza xx. line 4.
The convent of "Our Lady of Punishment," Nossa Señora de Pena, on the summit of the rock. Below, at some [86] 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 Señora de Pena. It was owing to the want of the tilde, or mark over the ñ, which alters the signification of the word: with it, Peña 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.]
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!
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, [87] 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.)]
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. João 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.)]
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 [88] of their slain equals that of our countrymen butchered by these kind creatures, now metamorphosed into 'Caçadores,' 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 θρασύδειλοι[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 £1 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 [89] 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.]
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.)]
Stanza xlviii. line 5.
"Vivā 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 [91] 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).]
Stanza l. lines 2 and 3.
The red cockade, with "Fernando Septimo" in the centre.
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.
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, [92] 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—
Stanza lviii. lines 1 and 2.
Aul. Gel.
[The quotation does not occur in Aulus Gellius, but is a fragment in iambic metre from the Papia papæ περὶ ἐγκωμίων 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.)]
Stanza lx. line 1.
These stanzas were written in Castri (Delphos), at the foot of Parnassus, now called Λιακυρα (Liakura), Dec. [16], 1809.
Stanza lxv. lines 1 and 2.
Seville was the Hispalis of the Romans.
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.]
Stanza lxxxii. line 9.
Lucr., iv. 1133.
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.]
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 Conquètes des Français, 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).]
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 [95] that being tolerable. To me the lines of Young are no fiction—
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.]
[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} [François 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.]
[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.]
[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 Athenæ) 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.)]
[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—
[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).]
[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.)]
[*]The Sadducees did not believe in the Resurrection.—[MS. D.]
[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."]
[*][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.]
[122] ["On the plaster wall of the Chapel of Pandrosos adjoining the Erechtheum, these words have been very deeply cut—
(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.)]
[A] Attila was horned, if we may trust contemporary legends, and the etchings of his visage in Lavater.—[M.S.]
[B] Lines 5-9 in the Dallas transcript are in Byron's handwriting.
[C] Which centuries forgot——.—[D. erased.]
[ea] {108} After stanza xiii. the MS. inserts the two following stanzas:—
[A] [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, Ægyptiaca, 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.)]
[B] 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.]
[C] 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 Ægis, Goddess——.—[MS. D. erased]
[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.]
[ee] Save on that part——.—[MS. erased.]
[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.]
[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 Poetæ, 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.)]
[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.]
[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:—
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.]
[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 Télémaque, qui était assis sur le bord du rocher, le précipite dans le mer et s'y jette avec lui.... Calypso inconsolable, rentra dans sa grotte, qu'elle remplit de ses hurlements."—Fénelon's Télémaque, 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."]
[es] Youth wasted, wretches born——.—[MS. erased.]
[135] [Compare Lucretius, iv. 1121-4—
[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.")]
[137] [Compare the description of the thunderstorm in the Alps (Canto III. stanzas xcii.-xcvi., pp. 273-275); and Manfred, act ii. sc. 2—
Beattie, who describes the experiences of his own boyhood in the person of Edwin in The Minstrel, had already made a like protestation—
Kirke White, too, who was almost Byron's contemporary, and whose verses he professed to admire—
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)—
Plutarch (Vitæ, Lipsiæ:, 1814, vi. 170) is responsible for the legend: Ὢφθη δέ ποτε καὶ δράκων κοιμωμένης τῆς Ὀλυμπιάδου παρεκτεταμένς τῷ σώματι, "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 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 Ætos, 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?"]
[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."]
[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.)]
[146] [Compare Byron's Stanzas written on passing the Ambracian Gulph.]
[147] [Nicopolis, "the city of victory," which Augustus, "the second Cæsar," 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).]
[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.]
[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. Téménos, 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 sillonné 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 chêne," sprung it may be from the offspring of the προσήγοροι δρύες (Æsch., Prom., 833), the "talking oaks," which declared the will of Zeus. For the "prophetic fount" (line 2), Servius, commenting on Virgil, Æneid, 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, Leovardiæ, 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—
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—
[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.]
[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).]
[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.]
[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.]
[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 Ætolia 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, Æneid, 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:—
[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—
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, "Albè," 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 quamīç 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 Chimæra——.—[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.]
[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 causû. 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.)—
The meaning is, "When shall another Lysander spring from Laconia ('Eurotas' banks') and revive the heroism of the ancient Spartans?"]
[ft] ——fair Liberty.—[MS. erased, D.]
[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. εἰς τὴν πόλιν)—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 fête-champêtre," 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.]
[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)—
[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—
[191] [Hobhouse dates the first visit to Cape Colonna, January 24, 1810.]
[192] {157} [Athené'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 Keratéa, and proceeded to Marathon on January 25, returning to Athens on the following day.]
[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 Sakæ, "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.]
[gc] Which heeds nor stern reproach——.—[D.]
"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.]
[*] "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,
BYRON."
[Dallas assented, and directed the printer to let the Roll stand.]
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 Propylæa, 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 Propylæa 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.]
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 [166] 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—
[Shakespeare, Measure for Measure,
act ii. sc. 2, lines 117-122.]
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.
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.]
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.]
Stanza xii. line 2.
At this moment (January 3, 1810), besides what has been already deposited in London, an Hydriot vessel is in the Pyræus 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 [169] as far as Sunium (now Cape Colonna),[208] till he accompanied us in our second excursion. However, his works, as far as [170] 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 [171] 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 [172] 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.
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, Τέλος!—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.]
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, Historiæ, 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.]
Stanza xviii. line 2.
To prevent blocks or splinters from falling on deck during action.
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
It was surely as a poet, not as a grammarian, that Callimachus was at fault.]
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 [174] 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, [175] 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 Ætolia. 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 [176] 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, "Μ'αφεινει", "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, [177] 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.
Stanza xxxix. lines 1 and 2.
Ithaca.
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.]
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 ἀρχαιολογικώτεροι, 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.]
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—
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 Sabæans, and a thousand other peoples of Asia.]
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.
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.]
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.]
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.]
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 Ætolia 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.
Stanza xlix. line 6.
The Greek monks are so called.
[Caloyer is derived from the late Greek καλόγηρος, "good in old age," through the Italian caloieso. Hence the accent on the last syllable.—N. Eng. Dict.]
Stanza li. line 2.
The Chimariot mountains appear to have been volcanic.
[By "Chimæra'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."]
Stanza li. line 6.
Now called Kalamas.
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."]
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 Aöus, 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 Aöus and approach to Tepeleni, see Travels in Albania, i. 91.)]
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.
Stanza lxvi. line 8.
Alluding to the wreckers of Cornwall.
Stanza lxxi. line 2.
The Albanian Mussulmans do not abstain from wine, and, indeed, very few of the others.
Stanza lxxi. line 7.
Palikar, shortened when addressed to a single person, from Παλικαρι [παλληκάρι], a general name for a soldier amongst the Greeks and Albanese, who speak Romaic: it means, properly, "a lad."
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, Naciarura, popuso.
2. Naciarura na civin Ha pen derini ti hin.
3. Ha pe uderi escrotini Ti vin ti mar servetini.
4. Caliriote me surme Ea ha pe pse dua tive.
5. Buo, Bo, Bo, Bo, Bo, Gi egem spirta esimiro.
6. Caliriote vu le funde Ede vete tunde tunde.
7. Caliriote me surme Ti mi put e poi mi le.
8. Se ti puta citi mora Si mi ri ni veti udo gia.
9. Va le ni il che cadale Celo more, more celo.
10. Plu hari ti tirete Plu huron cia pra seti. |
1. Lo, Lo, I come, I come; be thou silent.
2. I come, I run; open the door that I may enter.
3. Open the door by halves, that I may take my turban.
5. Lo, Lo, I hear thee, my soul.
6. An Arnaout girl, in costly garb, walks with graceful pride.
7. Caliriot maid of the dark eyes, give me a kiss.
8. If I have kissed thee, what hast thou gained? My soul is consumed with fire.
9. Dance lightly, more gently, and gently still.
10. Make not so much dust to destroy your embroidered hose. |
[A] 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.
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1. Ndi sefda tinde ulavossa Vettimi upri vi lofsa.
2. Ah vaisisso mi privi lofse Si mi rini mi la vosse.
3. Uti tasa roba stua Sitti eve tulati dua.
4. Roba stinori ssidua Qu mi sini vetti dua.
5. Qurmini dua civileni Roba ti siarmi tildi eni.
6. Utara pisa vaisisso me simi rin ti hapti Eti mi bire a piste si gui dendroi tiltati.
7. Udi vura udorini udiri cicova cilti mora Udorini talti hollna u ede caimoni mora. |
1. I am wounded by thy love, and have loved but to scorch myself.
2. Thou hast consumed me! Ah, maid! thou hast struck me to the heart.
3. I have said I wish no dowry, but thine eyes and eyelashes.
4. The accursed dowry I want not, but thee only.
5. Give me thy charms, and let the portion feed the flames.
6. I have loved thee, maid, with a sincere soul, but thou hast left me like a withered tree.
7. If I have placed my hand on thy bosom, what have I gained? my hand is withdrawn, but 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 [185] by Socrates, whose arm having come in contact with one of his "ὑpokolpioi," 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.
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.
Song, stanza 8, line 1.
It was taken by storm from the French [October, 1798].
Stanza lxxiii. line 1.
Some thoughts on this subject will be found in the subjoined papers, pp. 187-208.
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."]
Stanza lxxvii. line 4.
When taken by the Latins, and retained for several years. See Gibbon. [From A.D. 1204 to 1261.]
Stanza lxxvii. line 6.
Mecca and Medina were taken some time ago by the Wahabees, a sect yearly increasing. [Vide supra, p. 151.]
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.]
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).]
Stanza lxxxix. line 7.
"Siste Viator—heroa calcas!" was the epitaph on the famous Count Merci;[221]—what then must be our feelings [187] 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.
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 [188] 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 Chæronea, the [189] plain of Platea, Orchomenus, Livadia, and its nominal cave of Trophonius) was the only remarkable thing we saw before we passed Mount Cithæron.
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 Ægean, 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.
Æneid, 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 [190] 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 [191] 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.
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 negroes, 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 [193] 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 [194] 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 [195] 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 [196] 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.
Athens, Franciscan Convent, March 17, 1811.
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 [197] 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' "Περὶ ὑδάτων," 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 [198] 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 "Μετὰ τὸν Θουκυδίδην καὶ Ξενοφώντα ἄριστος Ἑλλήνων" (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 [199] 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 Aristænetus.
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 "Δεύτε, παῖδες τῶν Ἑλλήνων," 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 Lesbos, 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 [202]in their dialect or expressions, as the whole Attic race are barbarous to a proverb:—
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 Cæsar, 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 γλῶτταν εἶχεν ἈΚΡΙΒΩΕ Ἀττικιϛούσαν.[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 Horæ Ionicæ, 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 [203] 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 [204] 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.
The difficulties of travelling in Turkey have been much exaggerated, or rather have considerably diminished, of late [205] 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 [207] 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 papists—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.
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 [208] 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," Δεῦτε, Παῖδες τῶν Ἑλλήνων; (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 Ο Καφενὲς (the Café), 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.)]
[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."]
[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 Grèce, 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.[A] 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 Ægean deep:" but, for an Englishman, Colonna has yet an additional interest, as the actual spot of Falconer's[B] shipwreck. Pallas and Plato are forgotten in the recollection of Falconer and Campbell:—
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
See Hodgson's Lady Jane Grey, etc.[D][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.
[A] [This must have taken place in 1811, after Hobhouse returned to England.—Travels in Albania, i. 373, note.]
[B] [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.]
[C] Yes, at the dead of night, etc.—Pleasures of Hope, lines 149, 150.
[D] [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 accusé par lord Byron dans ses notes mordantes sur Athènes") 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.]
[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} [François 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.]
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 Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem: 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 Grèce 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 'friar' (a Capuchin of course) and one 'frier' (a bandy-legged Turkish cook)" (Letters, 1898, i. 307).]
[237] {193} [The Ionian Islands, with the exception of Corfù and Paxos, fell into the hands of the English in 1809, 1810. Paxos was captured in 1814, but Corfù, 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 Tænaron, 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 Phanár, 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.[A]
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?"[B]—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 pæans 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.
[A] [For Pouqueville's story of the "thériakis" or opium-eaters, see Voyage en Morée, 1805, ii. 126.]
[B] [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 Lacedæmonians at Platæa first fled from the Persians, and then, when the Persians were broken, turned upon them and won the battle, misapplies to them the term θρασύδειλοι (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 Bibliothèque Hellénique, in 17 vols., in 1805. He was of Chian parentage, but was born at Smyrna. Κοραη Αὐτοβιογραφια, Athens, 1891.]
[247] I have in my possession an excellent lexicon "τρίγλωσσον" which I received in exchange from S. G——, Esq., for a small gem: my antiquarian friends have never forgotten it or forgiven me.
[Λεξικὸν τρίγλωσσον τῆς Γαλλικῆς, Ἰταλικῆς, καὶ 'Ρωμαικῆς διαλέκτου, κ.τ.λ., 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 Collége de France, published, in 1810, a quarto volume entitled, Réclamations de J. B. Gail, ... et observations sur l'opinion en virtu de laquelle le juri—propose de décerner un prix à M. Coray, à l'exclusion de la chasse de Xénophon, du Thucydide, etc., grec-latin-français, etc.]
[249] {198} Dorotheus of Mitylene (fl. sixteenth century), Archbishop of Monembasia (Anglicè "Malmsey"), on the south-east coast of Laconia, was the author of a Universal History (Βιβλιον Ἱστορικόν, κ.τ.λ.), 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, Περὶ Φιλοσόφου, Φιλοσοφίας, Φυσιῶν, Μεταφυσικῶν, κ.τ.λ., at Vienna, in 1786.
[253] Athanasius Psalidas published, at Vienna, in 1791, a sceptical work entitled, True Felicity (Ἀληθὴς Εὐδαιμονία). "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 Tyrtæus," 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 ἡ πόλις κυδωνὶς, 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] [François 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,
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 Archæological 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.]
[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 général de l'empire Othoman, a work still regarded as the chief authority on the subject.]
[273] ["Effendi," derived from the Greek αὐθέντης, through the Romaic ἀφέντης, 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.]
"Afin que cette application vous forcât à penser à autre chose. Il n'y a en vérité de remède que celui-là et le temps."—Lettres du Roi de Prusse et de M. D'Alembert.[275] [Lettre cxlvi. Sept. 7, 1776.]
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 23d 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, [213] 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.—
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
Scott, in the "tenderest strain" of Virgilian melody—
[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 ye 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.]
[275] {209} [D'Alembert (Jean-le-Rond, philosopher, mathematician, and belletrist, 1717-1783) had recently lost his friend, Mlle. (Claire Françoise) L'Espinasse, who died May 23, 1776. Frederick prescribes quelque problème bien difficile à résoudre as a remedy for vain regrets (Oeuvres de Frédéric 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 formulæ 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, Athenæum, December 4, 1852, and Gent. Mag., January, 1853.)]
[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.—
"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.]
[280] [Compare Manfred, act ii. sc. 1, lines 51, 52—
[281] [It is the poet's fond belief that he can find the true reality in "the things that are not seen."
"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—
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.]
[282] [Compare The Dream, viii. 6, seq.—
[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!]
[gq] Shines through the wonder-works—of God and Nature's hand.—[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!]
[285] [Compare Manfred, act ii. sc. 2, lines 50-58—
Compare, too, with stanzas xiii., xiv., ibid., lines 58-72.]
[gu] Fool he not to know.—[MS. erased.]
[gx] That keeps us from that Heaven on which we love to think.—[MS.]
[286] {225} [In this stanza the mask is thrown aside, and "the real Lord Byron" appears in propriâ personâ.]
[287] [The mound with the Belgian lion was erected by William I. of Holland, in 1823.]
[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—
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—
(See Personal Memoirs of Pryse Lockhart Gordon, 1830, ii. 327, 328.)]
[ha] ——and still must be.—[MS.]
[hb] ——the fatal Waterloo.—[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)—
Even Wordsworth, after due celebration of this "victory sublime," in his sonnet Emperors and Kings, etc. (Works, 1889, p. 557), solemnly admonishes the "powers"—
But the Laureate had no misgivings, and in The Poet's Pilgrimage, iv. 60, celebrates the national apotheosis—
[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."]
[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.]
[hj] ——tremors of distress.—[MS.]
[hl] Oh that on night so soft, such heavy morn should rise.—[MS.]
[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—
[294] [Autumn had been beforehand with spring in the work of renovation.
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.]
[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 Poetæ, 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:—
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—
Anderson's British Poets, 1793, iii. 703.]
[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.]
[ht] On little thoughts with equal firmness fixed.—[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 Héros 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 Cæsar," 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.]
[hw] Who tossed thee to and fro till——.—[MS. erased.]
[hx] Which be it wisdom, weakness——.—[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.]
[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—
[ii] ——are shredless tatters now.—[MS.]
[ik] ——their hearts were far more brave.—[MS.]
[301] [The most usual device is a bleeding heart.]
[302] {246} [Compare Moore's lines, The Meeting of the Waters—
[303] [Compare Lucan's Pharsalia, ix. 969, "Etiam periere ruinæ;" and the lines from Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, xv. 20, quoted in illustration of Canto II. stanza liii.]
[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.]
[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.]
[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 Vendée, Freedom's charter was not easily overstepped.]
[308] {252} [Compare Gray's lines in The Fatal Sisters—
[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.]
[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.]
[311] [Compare the opening lines of Coleridge's Hymn before Sunrise in the Valley of Chamouni—
The "thunderbolt" (line 6) recurs in Manfred, act i. sc. 1—
[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 quæris—
"Deo Optimo Maximo.
Inclytissimi et fortissimi Burgundiæ ducis exercitus, Moratum obsidens, ab Helvetiis cæsus, 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" (τρίζουσαι).—Od., xxiv. 5. Once, too, when the observance of the dies Parentales was neglected, Roman ghosts took to wandering and shrieking.
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 Cannæ and at Waterloo were sacrificed to the ambition of rival powers fighting for the mastery.]
[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:"—
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—
[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.—
[318] [Shelley seems to have taken Byron at his word, and in the Adonais (xxx. 3, seq.) introduces him in the disguise of—
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 tîr (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—
But here the resemblance ends. With Wordsworth the mood passed, and he learned
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.]
[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—
[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
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.]
[323] [Compare Coleridge's Dejection. An Ode, iv. 4-9—
[jp] But this is not a time—I must return.—[MS.]
[jq] Here the reflecting Sophist——.—[MS.]
[js] Like him enamoured were to die the same.—[MS.]
[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'Inégalité parmi les Hommes) in 1750 and 1753; Émile, ou, de l'Education, and Du Contrat Social in 1762.]
[327] ["What Rousseau's Discourse [Sur l'Origine ... de l'Inégalité, 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.]
[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.]
[ka] Him merry with light talking with his mate.—[MS. erased.]
[330] [Compare Anacreon (Εἰς τέττιγα), Carm. xliii. line 15—Τὸ δὲ γῆρας οὒ σε τείρει.]
[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—
And the allusion to Napoleon's "star," stanza xxxviii. line 9—
Compare, too, the opening lines of the Stanzas to Augusta (July 24, 1816)—
"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)—
[332] {271} [Compare Wordsworth's sonnet, "It is a Beauteous," etc.—
[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.]
[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, Οἱ δὲ νομίζουσι Διἰ μὲν, ἐπὶ τὰ ὑψηλότατα τῶν οὐρέων ἀναβαίνοντες θυσίας ἕρδειν τὸν κύκλον πάντα τοῦ ὐρανο Δία καλέοντες. Perhaps, however, "early Persian" was suggested by a passage in "that drowsy, frowsy poem, The Excursion"—
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—
[kg] ——a fiery sea.—[MS.]
[kh] As they had found an heir and feasted o'er his birth.—[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—
[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 Héloise, Partie I. Lettre xxiii., Oevres de J. J. Rousseau, 1836, ii. 36: "Tantôt d'immenses rochers pendoient en ruines au-dessus de ma tête. Tantôt de hautes et bruyantes cascades m'inondoient de leur epais brouillard: tantôt un torrent éternel ouvroit à mes côtés un abîme dont les yeux n'osoient sonder la profondeur. Quelquefois je me perdois dans l'obscurité d'un bois touffu. Quelquefois, en sortant d'un gouffre, une agréable prairie, réjouissoit tout-à-coup mes regards. Un mélange étonnant de la nature sauvage et de la nature cultivée, montroit partout la main des hommes, où l'on eût cru qu'ils n'avoient jamais pénétré: a côté d'une caverne on trouvoit des maisons; on voyoit des pampres secs où l'on n'eût cherché que des ronces, des vignes dans des terres éboullées, d'excellens fruits sur des rochers, et des champs dans des précipices." 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.]
[340] [Compare La Nouvelle Héloïse, Partie IV. Lettre xvii, Oeuvres, etc., ii. 262: "Un torrent, formé par la fonte des neiges, rouloit à vingt pas de nous line eau bourbeuse, et charrioit avec bruit du limon, du sable et des pierres.... Des forêts de noirs sapins nous ombrageoient tristement à droite. Un grand bois de chênes étoit à gauche au-delà du torrent."]
[kq] ——with sweeter voice than words.—[MS.]
[341] [Compare the Pervigilium Veneris—
Parnell's Vigil of Venus: British Poets, 1794, vii. 7.]
[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.]
[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 Fréron, as Frélon ("Wasp"), in L'Ecossaise, which was played at Paris in 1760.—Life of Voltaire, by F. Espinasse, 1892, pp. 94, 114, 144.]
[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.]
[350] [Compare Shakespeare, Coriolanus, act iii. sc. 1, lines 66, 67—
[351] [Compare Manfred, act ii. sc. 2, lines 54-57—
[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. Kölbing, Englische Studien, 1894, xix. 154-163.]
Stanza xviii. line 5.
"Pride of place" is a term of falconry, and means the highest pitch of flight. See Macbeth, etc.—
Macbeth, act ii. sc. 4, line 12.]
Stanza xx. line 9.
See the famous song on Harmodius and Aristogeiton. The best English translation is in Bland's Anthology, by Mr. Denman—
[Translations chiefly from the Greek Anthology, etc., 1806, pp. 24, 25. The Scholium, attributed to Callistratus (Poetæ Lyrici Græci, Bergk. Lipsiæ, 1866, p. 1290), begins thus—
"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.]
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.]
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.—
Compare, too, Scott's Field of Waterloo, stanza xxi. lines 14, 15—
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.]
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 [294] this may be mere imagination: I have viewed with attention those of Platea, Troy, Mantinea, Leuctra, Chæronea, 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.]
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 herbæ 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").]
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 [295] 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.
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—
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1821, i. 127.]
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.]
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.
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 François Sévérin Desgravins Marceau (1769-1796, general of the French Republic) bears the following epitaph and inscription:—
"Ici repose Marceau, né à Chartres, Eure-et-Loir, soldat à seize ans, général à vingtdeux ans. Il mourut en combattant pour sa patrie, le dernier jour de l'an iv. de la République française. Qui que tu sois, ami ou ennemi de ce jeune héros, 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, né à Versailles le 24 juin, 1768, sergent à seize ans, général en chef à vingt-cinq, mort à vingt-neuf, pacificateur de la Vendée."]
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 Lunéville in 1801. The Treaty of Leoben was signed April 18, 1797.]
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 [298] 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.]
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 Neuchâtel. 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, [299] remains to tell of former grandeur."—Historic Studies in Vaud, Berne, and Savoy, by General Meredith Read, 1897, i. 16.]
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 Cæcina. Her epitaph was discovered many years ago;—it is thus:—"Julia Alpinula: Hic jaceo. Infelicis patris, infelix proles. Deæ Aventiæ 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 Cæcina. 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).]
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 [300] Mont Blanc and Mont Argentière 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 Hôtel de l'Angleterre, at Sécheron, 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).]
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.]
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 à Eaubonne; je passois par les coteaux d'Andilly qui sont charmans. Je rêvois en marchant à celle que j'allois voir, à l'accueil caressant qu'elle me feroit, au baiser qui m'attendoit a mon arrivée. Ce seul baiser, ce baiser funeste avant même [301] de le recevoir, m'embrasoit le sang à tel point, que ma tête se troubloit, un éblouissement m'aveugloit, mes genoux tremblants ne pouroient me soutenir; j'étois forcé de m'arréter, de m'asseoir; toute ma machine étoit dans un désordre inconcevable; j'étois prêt à m'évanouir.... A l'instant que je la voyois, tout étoit réparé; je ne sentois plus auprès d'elle que l'importunité d'une vigueur inépuisable et toujours inutile."—Les Confessions, Partie II. livre ix.; Oeuvres Complètes 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 Haidée 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.]
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 Sigæum and on the tumuli, or by the springs with Mount Ida above, and the plain and rivers and [302] 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 negroes, 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 Complètes, 1837, i. 341)—
"Je ne trouve pas de plus digne hommage à la Divinité que cette admiration muette qu'excite la contemplation de ses oeuvres, et qui ne s'exprime point par des actes développés. 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 âme ne s'élève-t-elle pas cent fois le jour avec extase à l'Auteur des merveilles qui les frappent? ... Dans ma chambre je prie plus rarement et plus sèchement; mais à l'aspect d'un beau paysage je me sens ému sans pourvoir dire de quoi."
Compare, too, Coleridge's lines "To Nature"—
Poetical Works, 1893, p. 190.]
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.
Stanza xcix. line 5.
Rousseau's Héloïse, Lettre 17, Part IV., note. "Ces montagnes sont si hautes, qu'une demi-heure après le soleil couché, leurs sommets sont éclairés de ses rayons, dont le rouge forme sur ces cimes blanches une belle couleur de rose, qu'on aperçoit de fort loin."[356] This applies more particularly
to the heights over Meillerie.—"J'allai à Vévay loger à 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 établir enfin les héros de mon roman. Je dirois volontiers à ceux qui ont du goût et qui sont sensibles: Allez à Vévay—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 Héloïse, 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, Bôveret, 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 [305] 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 château[362] [Château des Crêtes]. The [306] 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."
Stanza cv. line 2.
Voltaire and Gibbon.
[François 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 [307] afterwards, in the spring of 1757, at No. 6, Rue du Grand Chêne.—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 Hôtel 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 Gibbonière."—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.]
Stanza cxiii. line 9.
Macbeth, [act iii. sc. 1, line 64].
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'adversité de nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons toujours quelque chose qui ne nous déplaît pas."—Appendice aux Maximes de La Rochefoucauld, Panthéon Littéraire, Paris, 1836, p. 460.]
[356] {303} [Julie, ou La Nouvelle Héloïse: Oeuvres Complètes de J. J. Rousseau, Paris, 1837, ii. 262.]
[357] [The Clef, is now a café 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 Crêtes, the hillocks and bosquets described by Rousseau. Near by is a dove-cote filled with cooing doves.... In the last century this site (Les Crêtes) 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 Héloïse, "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 Héloïse 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.]
Ariosto, Satira iv. lines 58-60.
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 [312] 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 Arquà, 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 [313] 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, [314] 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 archæology 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 [315] 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.
Original Draft. [MS. M.]
[June 26—July 19. 1817.]
(127 stanzas.)
(52 stanzas.)
(Seven stanzas.)
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 [322] 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 [324] 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 più nobile ed insieme la più 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 più robusta in Italia che in qualunque altra terra—e che gli stessi atroci delitti che vi si commettono ne [325] 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 è più 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, [326] by men whose conduct you yourself have exposed in a work worthy of the better days of our history.[373] For me,—
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
[364] {321} [Compare Canto IV. stanza clxiv.—
[365] {322} [His marriage. Compare the epigram, "On my Wedding-Day," sent in a letter to Moore, January 2, 1820—
[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.]
[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, archæologist; Giacomo Morelli, 1745-1819, bibliographer and scholar (the architect Cosimo Morelli, born 1732, died in 1812); Leopoldo Conte de Cicognara, 1767-1834, archæologist; 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 archæologist, 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—
[371] [Shelley chose this refrain as the motto to his unfinished lines addressed to his infant son—
[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.]
[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—
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."]
[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 supernè [ex specula aliqua eminentiore] urbem contempletur, turritam telluris imaginem medio Oceano figuratam se putet inspicere." [De Venetæ 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 Rhapsodiæ 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, ætat. 70, relicto filio notho." But his Αὐτοεπιτάφιον implies that he was satisfied with himself.
Lexicon Universale, art. "Marcus," etc.
Cybele (sometimes written Cybelle and Cybēle), 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."]
[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—
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.]
[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—
[384] {332} [Compare The Dream, i.—
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.]
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.]
[li] Outshines our Fairies—things in shape and hue.—[MS. M.]
[lk] And make myself a home beside a softer sea.—[MS. 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 Lacedæmonian general, to the strangers who praised the memory of her son.
[Βρασίδας γὰρ ἦν μὲν ἀνὴρ ἀγαθὸς, ῇῃπολλοὶ δ' ἐκείνου κρείσσονες ἐν τῇ Σπάρτῃ. 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"—
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 archæologists 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. À 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—
"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)—
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.]
[392] [Compare Marino Faliero, act iv. sc. 2, lines 157, 158—
"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—
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.]
[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 Παντελεήμων, 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 Cremâ, 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., Lipsiæ, 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.]
[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.)]
[402] [Shelley, in his Lines written among the Euganean Hills, allows to Venice one lingering glory "one remembrance more sublime"—
[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.]
[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 à soy ou à 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—
Browning's Poetical Works, 1869, v. 268.]
[406] {347} [Compare Scott's Lady of the Lake, I. xxxiii. lines 21, 22—
[407] {348} ["Friuli's mountains" are the Julian Alps, which lie to the north of Trieste and north-east of Venice, "the hoar and aëry 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 Rhætian 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)—
[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 Abbé de Sade, in his Mémoires pour la vie de Pétrarque (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 abbé'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 abbé'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 abbé'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 [Arquà 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 Arquà, 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 Arquà." Two years later, October, 1819, he in vain persuaded Moore "to spare a day or two to go with me to Arquà. 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).]
[md] ——formed his sepulchral fane.—[MS. M.]
[412] [Compare Wordsworth's Ode, "Intimations of," etc., xi. lines 9-11—
[413] ["Euganeis istis in collibus ... domum parvam sed delectabilem et honestam struxi ... hic quanquam æger corpore, tranquillus animo frater dego, sine tumultibus, sine erroribus, sine curis, legens semper et scribens, Deum laudans."—Petrarca, Epistolæ Seniles, xiv. 6 (Opera, Basileæ, 1581, p. 938).
See, too, the notes to Arquà (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.]
[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.]
[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.)]
[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."]
[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—
Perhaps he divined that the phrase, "un sot de qualité," 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 Dédain. A Lord Byron, en 1811, he would have passed a somewhat different criticism on French poetry in general—
Les Feuilles d'Automne, par Victor Hugo, Bruxelles, 1833, pp. 59, 63.]
[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—
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 præposteri), 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.
[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 Ægina towards Megara, I began to contemplate the prospect of the countries around me: Ægina was behind, Megara before me; Piræus 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.]
[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 Fortunæ Varietate, ap. Nov. Thes. Ant. Rom., ap. Sallengre, i. 502.]
[425] [Compare Milton, Sonnet xxii.—
[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 Raissonné 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 Vénus 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.]
[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—
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.]
Ovid., Amor., lib. ii. [Eleg. 2, line 6].
[Compare, too, Lucretius, lib. i. lines 36-38—
and Measure for Measure, act ii. sc. 2, line 179—
[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. écrite par Lui-même, Paris, 1809, p. 17) may have suggested the parallel—
"Voici une esquisse du caractère que je manifestais dans les premières anneés de ma raison naissante. Taciturne et tranquille pour l'ordinaire, mais quelquefois extrêmement pétulant et babillard, presque toujours dans les extrêmes, obstiné et rebelle à la force, fort soumis aux avis qu'on me donnait avec amitié, contenu plutôt par la crainte d'être grondé que par toute autre chose, d'une timidité excessive, et inflexible quand on voulait me prendre à 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):—
[433] [Compare "Lines on the Bust of Helen by Canova," which were sent in a letter to Murray, November 25, 1816—
In Beppo (stanza xlvi.), which was written in October, 1817, there is a further allusion to the genius of Canova.]
[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—
[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 Cælian 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 "hyæna 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.]
[440] {374} [Compare Beppo, stanza xliv.—
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 "Cæsar's pageant" Byron means the pageant decreed by Tiberius Cæsar. Compare Don Juan, Canto XV. stanza xlix.—
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 Cæsar. But none the less, "Præfulgebant 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."]
[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—
"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 Thrasymēné. The Greek, Latin, and Italian equivalents bear him out; but, most probably, he gave Thrasymene and himself an extra syllable "vel metri vel euphoniæ causâ."]
[na] Where Courage perished in unyielding files.—[MS. M.]
[446] ["Tantusque fuit ardor armorum, adeo intentus pugnæ animus, ut eum motum terræ, qui multarum urbium Italiæ 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 Div., 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—
Compare, too, Wordsworth's sonnet (No. xii.), "Near the Lake of Thrasymene" (Works, 1888, p. 756)—
[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—
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—
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 "façade, 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 archæologists 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 dégout 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!"]
[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.[A] The fall looks so much like "the Hell of waters," that Addison thought the descent alluded to by the gulf in which Alecto[B] 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.]
[[A] 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.]
[[B] "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 ...
Æneid, 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.
[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 "cañon" 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 Homo," etc.;[A] 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.
[[A] "'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 Homo 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.]
[nk] Yet such the inveterate impression——.—[MS. M. erased.]
[nl] ——but what it then abhorred must still abhor.—[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 Connétable 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.)]
[461] [Compare Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome, "Prophecy of Capys," stanza xxx.—
[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.
[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 idées, de la façon dont je vous vois agir. Je croyois que vous aviez de l'ambition, mais aucun amour pour la gloire; je voyois bien que votre âme étoit haute; mais je ne soupçonnois pas qu'elle fut grande."—Dialogue de Sylla et d'Eucrate.) Considérations ... 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, Vitæ, 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).]
[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 Cæsar 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 Græco-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, Æn., 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.]
[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 Cæsar," 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 Cæsar'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.—
[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—
[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.)]
[nz] Too long hath Earth been drunk with blood and crime.—[MS. M. erased.]
[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—
[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: "Cæciliæ. Q. Cretici. F. Metellæ. 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.)]
Gnomici Poetæ Græci, 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 Æsopus 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., Lipsiæ, 1813, v. 156, sq.).]
[oe] I have no home——.—[MS. M.]
[483] {407} [Compare Rogers's Italy: "Rome" (Poems, 1852), ii. 169—
And compare Shelley's Poetical Works, 1895, iii. 276—
[*] [At the words Tu Marcellus eris, etc. (vide Tib. Cl. Donatus, Life of Virgil (Virg., Opera), Leeuwarden, 1627, vol. i.).]
[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.)
[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 Mæcenas, on the Esquiline, spreading over the sites of the Temple of Vesta and Rome on the platform of the Velia, the Colosseum, and the Thermæ 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.
[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 Atræ, 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 patriæ." 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 reposé dans l'enceinte de la ville Eternelle." (See Pliny's Panegyricus, passim; and Essai sur le règne de Trajan, Bibliothèque de L'Ecole des Hautes Études, Paris, 1877.)]
[490] {412} [The archæologists 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.]
[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."]
[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 Odéon, 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—
[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 nymphæum ... 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 nymphæum ... 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 Cælian, 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—
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 Nymphæum, 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)—
[497] {418} [Compare Kubla Khan, lines 12, 13—
[498] [Compare Hamlet, act ii. sc. 1, line 292—"This most excellent canopy the Air."]
[499] [M. Darmesteter traces the sentiment to a maxim (No. 76) of La Rochefoucauld: "Il est du véritable 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)—
[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 Sententiæ. 1818, p. 5).]
[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—
[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—
[506] [Compare The Deformed Transformed, act i. sc. 2, lines 49, 50—
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 Cælian, 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 Müntz, 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 connaítre l'impression du Colisée que de ne l'avoir vu que de jour ... la lune est l'astre des ruines. Quelque fois, à travers les ouvertures de l'amphithéàtre, qui semble s'élever jusqu'aux nues, une partie de la voûte du ciel paraît comme un rideau d'un bleu sombre placé derrière l'édifice."
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 archæologist.]
[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.)]
[A] [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;[A] 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 Pætus" 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 prædicta imitatus præcessit 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.)]
[A] Either Polyphontes, herald of Laïus, killed by Oedipus; or Kopreas, herald of Eurystheus, killed by the Athenians when he endeavoured to drag the Heraclidæ 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.]
[ou] Like the last of a thunder-shower——.—[MS. M.]
[ov] The earth swims round him——.—[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.]
[512] Suetonius [Lib. i. cap. xlv.] informs us that Julius Cæsar 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 Infimæ 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 æra 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.]
[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 Ælius 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.]
[pe] With her unkerchiefed neck——.—[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.]
[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.]
[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—
Compare, too, Browning's Christmas Eve, sect, x.—
[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."]
[pm] Their glittering breastplate in the sun——.—[MS. M. erased.]
[523] [Compare Canto II. stanza lxxix. lines 2, 3—
[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.]
[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.]
[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 ... gôuter mediocrement le mélodrame, sans méconnaître pour cela les réelles qualités du groupe. La composition est d'une structure irréprochable, d'une harmonie de lignes qui défie toute critique. Le torse du Laocoon trahit une science du nu pen commune" (Hist. de la Sculp. Grecque, 1897, ii. 550, 551).]
[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 ægis 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 Boëdromios, 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'Insanité, which Milman turned to account in his Belvidere Apollo, a Newdigate Prize Poem of 1812—
Milman's Poetical Works, Paris, 1829, p. 180.
Compare, too, Coleridge's Kubla Khan, lines 14-16—
Poetical Works, 1893, p. 94.]
[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—
[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.]
[533] {452} [Compare Canto III. stanza xxxiv. lines 6, 7—
[534] [Mr. Tozer traces the star simile to Homer (Iliad, viii. 559)— Πάντα δέ τ' εἴδεται ἄστρα, γέγηθε δέ τε φρένα ποιμήν
[535] [Compare Macbeth, act iii. sc. 2, lines 22, 23—
[536] [Compare Coriolanus, act iii. sc. 3, lines 121, 122—
[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.]
[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.]
[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—
[544] {457} [Compare Childe Harold, Canto III. stanza lxxii. lines 8, 9; and Epistle to Augusta, stanza xi.]
[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)—
[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.]
[551] [Compare Tennyson's In Memoriam, lv. stanza 6—
[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—" Βή δ' ἀκέων παρὰ θῖνα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης." Note by Professor Wilson, ed. 1837.]
[ql] Fatal—and yet it shakes me not—farewell.—[MS. M.]
[qm] Ye! who have traced my Pilgrim to the scene.—[MS. M.]
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 [466] 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:—
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; [467] 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.
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:—
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 [469] 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 [470] 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 più 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-coloured 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.
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 [472] 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.
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 [475] thank the Almighty, who had enabled an infirm, unarmed old man to subdue a terrible and potent sovereign.[560]
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 [476] the walls. The Doge was one of the first to rush into the city. Then was completed, said the Venetians, the prophecy of the Erythræan 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.
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 [477] 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.
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, [478] 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; [479] 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.
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 Abbé 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 [480] 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 Abbé 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 Abbé 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 [481] 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 Abbé 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 [482] 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]
Stanza xxxi. line 1.
Petrarch retired to Arquà 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 Arquà, 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 [483] hoped, a better chance of authenticity than the Shaksperian memorials of Stratford-upon-Avon.
Arquà (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 Arquà is soon seen between a cleft where two ridges slope 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 Arquà 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.
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—
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, [486] 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.
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 [487] 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.
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."
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 Cæsar 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]
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, [489] 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 Velitræ;, and including that which played upon a gate at Florence, and foretold the pontificate of one of its citizens.[597]
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 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 [490] 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 Cæsar. 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.
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 [491] 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.
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 [492] 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.
Stanza liv. line 9.
The affectation of simplicity in sepulchral inscriptions, which so often leaves us uncertain whether the structure [493] 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.
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 "benchè 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, acciocchè la Italia vegga dopo tanto tempo apparire un suo [494] redentore. Nè 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 pietà, 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]
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, [495] which happened in 1321. He was buried ("in sacra minorum æde") at Ravenna, in a handsome tomb, which was erected by Guido, restored by Bernardo Bembo in 1483, prætor 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 [496] 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.
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]
[497]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 [498] 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]
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 [499] 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.
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, [500] 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
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 [502] 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 prétendoit convaincre Boccace de n'avoir pas été honnête homme, puis qu'il a fait le Décameron." 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 [503] 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 Arquà, opposite to the tomb of the Laureate, a tablet, in which he associated Boccaccio to the equal honours of Dante and of Petrarch.
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 [504] 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.
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. [506] 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 [507] 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 [508] 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.
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 Cæsar 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 Cæsarian 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 [509] 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.
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 [511] 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 [512] 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 favissæ.[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 [513] 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 aërial 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 [514] 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:—
Stanza xc. lines 3 and 4.
It is possible to be a very great man and to be still very inferior to Julius Cæsar, 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 [515] 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 Cæsar 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]
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 [517] 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—
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 [518] 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.
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 [519] 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 Æsepus 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.
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 Prætor Alypius, a person incredibly attached to these games,[674] gave instant [521] 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.
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 [522] 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.
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 Æneid, and the coast from beyond the mouth of the Tiber to the headland of Circæum 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, [523] 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—"Usticæ 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:—
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 [524] 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.
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
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, [525] unless they have been since displaced, were assuredly only acacias and other common garden shrubs.[680]
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.]
[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.
[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 æ, and has written Romani instead of Romaniæ.—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, 'Quartæ partis, & dimidiæ totius Imperii Romaniæ; Dominator.'" And. Dand. Chronicon, cap. iii. pars xxxvii. ap. Script. Rer. Ital., 1728, xii. 331. And the Romaniæ 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 [Vitæ Ducum Venetorum Italiæ scriptæ, Auctore Martino Sanuto], ap. Script. Rer. Ital., xxii. 530, 641.
[563] {476} "Fiet potentium in aquis Adriaticis congregatio, cæco præduce, Hircum ambigent, Byzantium prophanabunt, ædificia denigrabunt, spolia dispergentur; Hircus novus balabit, usque dum liv. pedes, & ix. pollices, & semis, præmensurati 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 immensæ sunt opes, adeo ut vix æstimari possint; id quod tribus e rebus oritur, parsimonia, commercio, atque iis emolumentis, quæ e Repub. percipiunt, quæ 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 Abbé de Sade. 1810. [An Italian version, entitled Riflessioni intorno a Madonna Laura, was published in 1811.]
[567] Mémoires pour la Vie de François Pétrarque, 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 manège, cette alternative de faveurs et de rigueurs bien ménagée, une femme tendre & sage amuse pendant vingt et un ans le plus grand Poète de son siècle, sans faire la moindre brêche à son honneur." Mémoires pour la Vie de Pétrarque, Préface aux Français, 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 Béjot 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.
Sonetto 50, Quando giunse a Simon l'alto concetto.
Le Rime, etc., i. 118, edit. Florence, 1832.
[574] "A questa confessione così 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 Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions de Belles Lettres for 1740 (Mémoires de Littérature [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.
[579] Histoire de l'Académie Française depuis 1652 jusqu'a 1700, par M. l' Abbé [Thoulier] d'Olivet, Amsterdam, 1730. "Mais, ensuite, venant à l'usage qu'il a fait de ses talens, j'aurois montré 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 changé, dit-il," etc., p. 181.
[580] La Manière 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 à 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, potè sempre in lui il veleno della sua pessima volontà 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] {487} 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.
[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 Terræ Motu et Fulminib., lib. v. cap. xi., apud J. G. Græv., Thes. Antiq. Rom., 1696, v. 532.
[595] Οὐδεὶς κεραυνωθεὶς ἄτιμός ἐστι, ὅθεν καὶ ὡς θεὸς τιμᾶται. 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. Græv., 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 Antiquæ Italiæ (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.]
[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 Castità, Opera Petrarchæ, Basil, 1554, i. s.f.
[608] {497} See Note 6, p. 476.
[609] The Greek boasted that he was ἰσόνομος. 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 è lecito ancor l'esortarti, a compire l'immortal tua Africa ... Se ti avviene d'incontrare nel nostro stile cosa che ti dispiaccia, ciò 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 Antichità 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.
[617] Cosmus Medices, Decreto Publico, Pater Patriæ.
[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.
[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.
[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. Cæsar, 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 Româ Instauratâ, Venice, 1511, lib. iii. p. 25.
[633] Liv., Hist., lib. x. cap. xxiii.
[634] "Tum statua Nattæ, 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.
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. Græv., Thes. Antiq. Rom., iv. 1146.
[638] Marliani Urb. Rom. Topograph., Venice, 1588, p. 23.
[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.
[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 Falsâ 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., Lucæ, 1741, viii. 602, in an. 496], "viguisse adhuc Romæ ad Gelasii tempora, quæ 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. (Lipsiæ, 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. Græv., iv. 1143, convicts Pomponius Lætus 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] Æn., 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 cæsus 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. "Mælium jure cæsum 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 hæc duo Ovidii carmina sunt:—
Qui lapis videtur eodem Egeriæ fonte, aut ejus vicinia, istuc comportatus."—Diarium Italic., Paris, 1702, p. 153.
[656] {516} De Magnit. Vet. Rom., ap. Græv., 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.
[661] "Quamvis undique e solo aquæ; scaturiant." Nardini, lib. iii. cap. iii. Thes. Ant. Rom., ap. J. G. Græv., 1697, iv. 978.
[662] Eschinard, etc. Sic cit., pp. 297, 298.
[664] Sueton., in Vit. Augusti, cap. xci. Casaubon, in the note, refers to Plutarch's Lives of Camillus and Æmilius 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 præfect 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.
[667] It is enumerated by the regionary Victor.
[668] "Fortunæ; hujusce diei." Cicero mentions her, De Legib., lib. ii.
(See Questiones Romanæ, etc., ap. Græv., 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 Cæsar, 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 publicæ hostiæ 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.
[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.)
[679] See Classical Tour, etc., chap. vii. p. 250, vol. ii.