FOOTNOTES:
[113] {99} [Stanzas i.-xv. form a kind of dramatic prologue to the Second Canto of the Pilgrimage. The general meaning is clear enough, but the unities are disregarded. The scene shifts more than once, and there is a moral within a moral. The poet begins by invoking Athena (Byron wrote 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.)]
[do] {100} Ancient of days! august Athenæ! where.—[MS. D.]
[dp] Gone—mingled with the waste——.—[MS. erased.]
[114] {101} ["Stole," apart from its restricted use as an ecclesiastical vestment, is used by Spenser and other poets as an equivalent for any long and loosely flowing robe, but is, perhaps inaccurately, applied to the short cloak (tribon), the "habit" of Socrates when he lived, and, after his death, the distinctive dress of the cynics.]
[dq] ——gray flits the Ghost of Power.—[MS. D. erased.]
[dr] ——whose altars cease to burn.—[D.]
[ds] ——whose Faith is built on reeds.—[MS. D. erased.]
[115] {102} [Compare Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, act iii, sc. 1, lines 5-7—
"Reason thus with life:
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep."]
[dt] Still wilt thou harp——.—[MS. D. erased.]
[du] Though 'twas a God, as graver records tell.—[MS. erased.]
[116] [The demigods Erechtheus and Theseus "appeared" at Marathon, and fought side by side with Miltiades (Grote's History of Greece, iv. 284).]
[117] {103} [Compare Shakespeare, Hamlet, act v. sc. 1, passim.]
[118] [Socrates affirmed that true self-knowledge was to know that we know nothing, and in his own case he denied any other knowledge; but "this confession of ignorance was certainly not meant to be a sceptical denial of all knowledge." "The idea of knowledge was to him a boundless field, in the face of which he could not but be ignorant" (Socrates and the Socratic Schools, by Dr. E. Zeller, London, 1868, p. 102).]
[119] [Stanzas viii. and ix. are not in the MS.
The expunged lines (see var. i.) carried the Lucretian tenets of the preceding stanza to their logical conclusion. The end is silence, not a reunion with superior souls. But Dallas objected; and it may well be that, in the presence of death, Byron could not "guard his unbelief," or refrain from a renewed questioning of the "Grand Perhaps." Stanza for stanza, the new version is an improvement on the original. (See Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron, 1824, p. 169. See, too, letters to Hodgson, September 3 and September 13, 1811: Letters, 1898, ii. 18, 34.)]
Frown not upon me, churlish Priest! that I
Look not for Life, where life may never be:
I am no sneerer at thy phantasy;
Thou pitiest me, alas! I envy thee,
Thou bold Discoverer in an unknown sea
Of happy Isles and happier Tenants there;
I ask thee not to prove a Sadducee;[*]
Still dream of Paradise, thou know'st not where,[**]
Which if it be thy sins will never let thee share.[***]
—[MS. D. erased.]
[*]The Sadducees did not believe in the Resurrection.—[MS. D.]
[**]
But look upon a scene that once was fair.—[Erased.]
Zion's holy hill which thou wouldst fancy fair.—[Erased.]
[***]
As those, which thou delight'st to rear in upper air.—[Erased.]
Yet lovs't too well to bid thine erring brother share.—[D. erased.]
[120] {104} [Byron forwarded this stanza in a letter to Dallas, dated October 14, 1811, and was careful to add, "I think it proper to state to you, that this stanza alludes to an event which has taken place since my arrival here, and not to the death of any male friend" (Letters. 1898, ii. 57). The reference is not to Edleston, as Dallas might have guessed, and as Wright (see Poetical Works, 1891, p. 17) believed. Again, in a letter to Dallas, dated October 31, 1811 (ibid., ii. 65), he sends "a few stanzas," presumably the lines "To Thyrza," which are dated October 31, 1811, and says that "they refer to the death of one to whose name you are a stranger, and, consequently, cannot be interested (sic) ... They relate to the same person whom I have mentioned in Canto 2nd, and at the conclusion of the poem." It follows from this second statement that we have Byron's authority for connecting stanza ix. with stanzas xcv., xcvi., and, inferentially, his authority for connecting stanzas ix., xcv., xcvi. with the group of "Thyrza" poems. And there our knowledge ends. We must leave the mystery where Byron willed that it should be left. "All that we know is, nothing can be known."]
[dw] {105}
Whate'er beside} Howe'er may be Futurity's behest.[*]
Or seeing thee no more to sink in sullen rest.—[MS. D.]
[*][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.]
The last, the worst dull Robber, who was he?
Blush Scotland such a slave thy son could be—
England! I joy no child he was of thine:
Thy freeborn men revere what once was free,
Nor tear the Sculpture from its saddening shrine,
Nor bear the spoil away athwart the weeping Brine.—[MS. D. erased.]
This be the wittol Picts ignoble boast.—[MS. D.]
To rive what Goth and Turk, and Time hath spared:
Cold and accursed as his native coast.—[MS. D. erased]
[122] ["On the plaster wall of the Chapel of Pandrosos adjoining the Erechtheum, these words have been very deeply cut—
'Quod non fecerunt Goti,
Hoc fecerunt Scoti'"
(Travels in Albania, 1858, i. 299). M. Darmesteter quotes the original: "mot sur les Barberini" ("Quod non fecere Barbari, Fecere Barberini"). It may be added that Scotchmen are named among the volunteers who joined the Hanoverian mercenaries in the Venetian invasion of Greece in 1686. (See The Curse of Minerva: Poetical Works, 1898, i. 463, note 1; Finlay's Hist. of Greece, v. 189.)]
[dz] {107}
What! shall it e'er be said by British tongue,
Albion was happy while Athenæ mourned?
Though in thy name the slave her bosom wrung,
Albion! I would not see thee thus adorned
With gains thy generous spirit should have scorned,
From Man distinguished by some monstrous sign,
Like Attila the Hun was surely horned, [A]
Who wrought the ravage amid works divine:
Oh that Minerva's voice lent its keen aid to mine.—[MS. D. erased.]
What! shall it e'er be said by British tongue,
Albion was happy in Athenæ's tears?
Though in thy name the slave her bosom wrung,
Let it not vibrate in pale Europe's ears,[B]
The Saviour Queen, the free Britannia, wears
The last poor blunder of a bleeding land:
That she, whose generous aid her name endears,
Tore down those remnants with a Harpy's hand,
Which Envious Eld forbore and Tyrants left to stand.—[MS. D.][C]
[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:—
Come then, ye classic Thieves of each degree,
Dark Hamilton [A] and sullen Aberdeen,
Come pilfer all the Pilgrim loves to see,
All that yet consecrates the fading scene:
Ah! better were it ye had never been,
Nor ye, nor Elgin, nor that lesser wight.
The victim sad of vase-collecting spleen.
House-furnisher withal, one Thomas [B] hight,
Than ye should bear one stone from wronged Athenæ's site.
Or will the gentle Dilettanti crew
Now delegate the task to digging Gell,[C]
That mighty limner of a bird's eye view,
How like to Nature let his volumes tell:
Who can with him the folio's limit swell
With all the Author saw, or said he saw?
Who can topographize or delve so well?
No boaster he, nor impudent and raw,
His pencil, pen, and spade, alike without a flaw.—[D. erased.]
[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]
[ec] {110} ——which it had well behoved.—[MS. D.]
[123] [The Athenians believed, or feigned to believe, that the marbles themselves shrieked out in shame and agony at their removal from their ancient shrines.]
[124] [Byron is speaking of his departure from Spain, but he is thinking of his departure from Malta, and his half-hearted amour with Mrs. Spencer Smith.]
[ed] {111} ——that rosy urchin guides.—[MS.]
[ee] Save on that part——.—[MS. erased.]
[ef] {112}
From Discipline's stern law——.—[MS.]
——keen law——.—[MS. D.]
[125] An additional "misery to human life!"—lying to at sunset for a large convoy, till the sternmost pass ahead. Mem.: fine frigate, fair wind likely to change before morning, but enough at present for ten knots!—[MS. D.]
[eg] ——their melting girls believe.—[MS.]
[eh] {113}
Meantime some rude musician's restless hand
Ply's the brisk instrument that sailors love.—[MS. D. erased.]
[ei] Through well-known straits behold the steepy shore.—[MS. erased.]
[126] [Compare Coleridge's reflections, in his diary for April 19, 1804, on entering the Straits of Gibraltar: "When I first sat down, with Europe on my left and Africa on my right, both distinctly visible, I felt a quickening of the movements in the blood, but still felt it as a pleasure of amusement rather than of thought and elevation; and at the same time, and gradually winning on the other, the nameless silent forms of nature were working in me, like a tender thought in a man who is hailed merrily by some acquaintance in his work, and answers it in the same tone" (Anima 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.)]
[ej] {114}
Bleeds the lone heart, once boundless in its zeal.—[D.]
And friendless now, yet dreams it had a friend.—[MS.]
or, Far from affection's chilled or changing zeal.—[MS.]
Divided far by fortune, wave or steel
Though friendless now we once have had a friend.—
[MS. D. erased.]
[ek] Ah! happy years! I would I were once more a boy.—[MS.]
[el] To gaze on Dian's wan reflected sphere.—[MS. D]
[em] ——her dreams of hope and pride.—[MS. D. erased.]
[en] {115} None are so wretched[*] but that——.—[MS.D.]
[*] "Desolate."—[MS. pencil.]
[eo] T.t.b. [tres tres bien], but why insert here.—[MS. pencil.]
[129] [In this stanza M. Darmesteter detects "l'accent Wordsworthien" prior to any "doses" as prescribed by Shelley, and quotes as a possible model the following lines from Beattie's Minstrel:—
"And oft the craggy cliff he lov'd to climb,
When all in mist the world below was lost,
What dreadful pleasure! there to stand sublime,
Like shipwreck'd mariner on desert coast,
And view th' enormous waste of vapour, tost
In billows, lengthening to th' horizon round,
Now scoop'd in gulfs, with mountains now emboss'd!
And hear the voice of mirth, and song rebound,
Flocks, herds, and waterfalls, along the hoar profound."
In felicity of expression, the copy, if it be a copy, surpasses the original; but in the scope and originality of the image, it is vastly inferior. Nor are these lines, with the possible exception of line 3—"Where things that own not Man's dominion dwell," at all Wordsworthian. They fail in that imaginative precision which the Lake poets regarded as essential, and they lack the glamour and passion without which their canons of art would have profited nothing. Six years later, when Byron came within sound of Wordsworth's voice, he struck a new chord—a response, not an echo. Here the motive is rhetorical, not immediately poetical.]
[ep] {116} ——and foaming linns to lean.—[MS. D. erased.]
[130] [There are none to bless us, for when we are in distress the great, the rich, the gay, shrink from us; and when we are popular and prosperous those who court us care nothing for us apart from our success. Neither do they bless us, or we them.]
[eq] This is to live alone—This, This is solitude.—[MS. D.]
[131] [The MS. of stanza xxvii. is on the fly-leaf of a bound volume of proof-sheets entitled "Additions to Childe Harold," It was first published in the seventh edition, 1814. It may be taken for granted that Byron had seen what he describes. There is, however, no record of any visit to Mount Athos, either in his letters from the East or in Hobhouse's journals.
The actual mount, "the giant height [6350 feet], rears itself in solitary magnificence, an insulated cone of white limestone." "When it is seen from a distance, the peninsula [of which the southern portion rises to a height of 2000 feet] is below the horizon, and the peak rises quite solitary from the sea." Of this effect Byron may have had actual experience; but Hobhouse, in describing the prospect from Cape Janissary, is careful to record that "Athos itself is said to be sometimes visible in the utmost distance (circ. 90 miles), but it was not discernible during our stay on the spot." (Murray's Handbook for Greece, p. 843; Childe Harold, edited by H. F. Tozer, p. 233; Travels in Albania, 1858, ii. 103. Compare, too, the fragment entitled the Monk of Athos, first published in the Hon. Roden Noel's Life of Lord Byron, 1890.)]
[132] {118} ["Le sage Mentor, poussant 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."]
[er] {121} Brisk Impudence——.—[MS.]
[es] Youth wasted, wretches born——.—[MS. erased.]
[135] [Compare Lucretius, iv. 1121-4—
"Adde quod absumunt viris pereuntque labore,
Labitur interea res, et Babylonica fiunt:
Languent officia, atque ægrotat fama vacillans."]
[et] {122} Climes strange withal as ever mortal head.—[MS.]
[eu] Suspected in its little pride of thought.—[MS. erased.]
[136] ["Were counselled or advised." The passive "were ared" seems to lack authority. (See N. Eng. Dict., art. "Aread.")]
Her not unconscious though her weakly child.
or, ——her rudest child.—[MS. erased.]
[137] [Compare the description of the thunderstorm in the Alps (Canto III. stanzas xcii.-xcvi., pp. 273-275); and Manfred, act ii. sc. 2—
"My joy was in the wilderness; to breathe
The difficult air of the iced mountain-top—
In them my early strength exulted; or
To follow through the night the moving moon,
The stars and their development; or catch
The dazzling lightnings till my eyes grew dim."
Beattie, who describes the experiences of his own boyhood in the person of Edwin in The Minstrel, had already made a like protestation—
"In sooth he was a strange and wayward youth.
Fond of each gentle and each dreadful scene.
In darkness and in storm he found delight;
Not less than when on ocean-wave serene
The Southern sun diffus'd his dazzling sheen;
Even sad vicissitude amus'd his soul."
Kirke White, too, who was almost Byron's contemporary, and whose verses he professed to admire—
"Would run a visionary boy
When the hoarse tempest shook the vaulted sky."
This love of Nature in her wilder aspects, which was perfectly genuine, and, indeed, meritorious, was felt to be out of the common, a note of the poetic temperament, worth recording, but unlikely to pass without questioning and remonstrance.]
[138] {123} [Alexander's mother, Olympias, was an Epiriote. She had a place in the original draft of Tennyson's Palace of Art (Life of Lord Tennyson,. 119)—
"One was Olympias; the floating snake
Roll'd round her ankles, round her waist
Knotted," etc.
Plutarch (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 wound of peace is surety,
Surety secure; but modest doubt is call'd
The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches
To the bottom of the worst."
The beauty, the brilliance, the glory of Alexander kindle the enthusiasm of the young; but the murder of Clytus and the early death which he brought upon himself are held up by the wise as beacon-lights to save others from shipwreck.]
[140] [Byron and Hobhouse sailed for Malta in the brig-of-war Spider on Tuesday, September 19, 1809 (Byron, in a letter to his mother, November 12, says September 21), and anchored off Patras on the night of Sunday, the 24th. On Tuesday, the 26th, they were under way at 12 noon, and on the evening of that day they saw the sun set over Mesalonghi. The next morning, September 27, they were in the channel between Ithaca and the mainland, with Ithaca, then in the hands of the French, to the left. "We were close to it," says Hobhouse, "and saw a few shrubs on a brown heathy land, two little towns in the hills scattered among trees." The travellers made "but little progress this day," and, apparently, having redoubled Cape St. Andreas, the southern extremity of Ithaca, they sailed (September 28) through the channel between Ithaca and Cephalonia, passed the hill of 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?"]
[142] {126} [For Byron's "star" similes, see Canto III. stanza xxxviii. line 9.]
[ew] ——and looked askance on Mars.—[MS. erased.]
[143] [Compare the line in Tennyson's song, Break, break, break, "And the stately ships go on."]
And roused him more from thought than he was wont
While Pleasure almost seemed to smooth his pallid front.—[MS. D.]
While Pleasure almost smiled along——.—[MS. erased.]
[144] [By "Suli's rocks" Byron means the mountainous district in the south of the Epirus. The district of Suli formed itself into a small republic at the close of the last century, and offered a formidable resistance to Ali Pacha. "Pindus' inland peak," Monte Metsovo, which forms part of the ridge which divides Epirus from Thessaly, is not visible from the sea-coast.]
[145] {127} ["Shore unknown." (See Byron's note to stanza xxxviii. line 5.)]
[ey] {128} ——lovely harmful thing.—[MS. pencil.]
[146] [Compare Byron's Stanzas written on passing the Ambracian Gulph.]
[147] [Nicopolis, "the city of victory," which Augustus, "the second 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).]
Imperial wretches, doubling human woes!
God!—was thy globe ere made——.—[MS. erased.]
[148] {129} [The travellers left Prevesa on October 1, and arrived at Janina on October 5. They left Janina on October 11, and reached Zitza at nightfall (Byron at 3 a.m., October 12). They left Zitza on October 13, and arrived at Tepeleni on October 19.]
[149] [On the evening of October 11, as the party was approaching Zitza, Hobhouse and the Albanian, Vasilly, rode on, leaving "Lord Byron and the baggage behind." It was getting dark, and just as the luckier Hobhouse contrived to make his way to the village, the rain began to fall in torrents. Before long, "the thunder roared as it seemed without any intermission; for the echoes of one peal had not ceased to roll in the mountains before another crash burst over our heads." Byron, dragoman, and baggage were not three miles from Zitza when the storm began, and they lost their way. After many wanderings and adventures they were finally conducted by ten men with pine torches to the hut; but by that time it was three o'clock in the morning. Hence the "Stanzas composed during a Thunderstorm."—Hobhouse's Travels in Albania, i. 69-71.]
[150] {130} ["The prior of the monastery, a humble, meek-mannered man, entertained us in a warm chamber with grapes and a pleasant white wine ...We were so well pleased with everything about us that we agreed to lodge with him."—Hobhouse's Travels in Albania, i. 73.]
[fa] Here winds, if winds there be, will fan his breast.—[MS. D. erased.]
[fb] Keep Heaven for better souls, my shade shall seek for none.—[MS. erased.]
[fc] {132}
But frequent is the lamb, the kid, the goat—
And watching pensive with his browsing flock.—[MS. erased.]
[fd] Counting the hours beneath yon skies unerring shock.—[MS. erased.]
[151] [The site of Dodona, a spot "at the foot of Mount Tomaros" (Mount Olytsika) in the valley of Tcharacovista, was finally determined, in 1876, by excavations carried out, at his own expense, by M. Constantin Carapanos, a native of Arta. In his monograph, Dodone et ses Ruines (Paris, 1878, 4to), M. Carapanos gives a detailed description of the theatre, the twofold Temenos (I. L'Enceinte du Temple, II. 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—
"Giace l'alta Cartago; appena i segni
Dell' alte sue ruini il lido serba.
Muojono le città; muojono i regni:
Copre i fasti, e le pompe, arena ed erba;
E l'uom d'esser mortal par cue si sdegni!"
Compare, too, Addison's "Reflections in Westminster Abbey," Spectator, No. 26.]
[153] [The six days' journey from Zitza to Tepeleni is compressed into a single stanza. The vale (line 3) may be that of the Kalama, through which the travellers passed (October 13) soon after leaving Zitza, or, more probably, the plain of Deropoli ("well-cultivated, divided by rails and low hedges, and having a river flowing through it to the south"), which they crossed (October 15) on their way from Delvinaki, the frontier village of Illyria, to Libokhovo.]
[154] {134} ["Yclad," used as a preterite, not a participle (compare Coleridge's "I wis" [Christabel, part i. line 92]), is a Byronism—"archaisme incorrect," says M. Darmesteter.]
[155] ["During the fast of the Ramazan, ... the gallery of each minaret is decorated with a circlet of small lamps. When seen from a distance, each minaret presents a point of light, 'like meteors in the sky;' and in a large city, where they are numerous, they resemble a swarm of fireflies."—H.F. Tozer. (Compare The Giaour, i. 449-452—
"When Rhamazan's last sun was set,
And flashing from each minaret.
Millions of lamps proclaimed the feast
Of Bairam through the boundless East.")]
[156] {135} ["A kind of dervish or recluse ... regarded as a saint."—Cent. Dict., art. "Santon."]
[fe] ——guests and vassals wait.—[MS. erased.]
[ff] While the deep Tocsin's sound——.—[MS. D. erased.]
[157] {136} ["We were disturbed during the night by the perpetual carousal which seemed to be kept up in the gallery, and by the drum, and the voice of the 'muezzinn,' or chanter, calling the Turks to prayers from the minaret of the mosck attached to the palace. This chanter was a boy, and he sang out his hymn is a sort of loud melancholy recitative. He was a long time repeating the Eraun. The first exclamation was repeated four times, the remaining words twice; and the long and piercing note in which he concluded his confession of faith, by twice crying out the word 'hou!' ['At solemn sound of "Alla Hu!"' Giaour, i. 734] still rings in my ears."—Hobhouse's Travels in Albania, i. 95. D'Ohsonn gives the Eraun at full length: "Most high God! [four times repeated]. I acknowledge that there is no other God except God! I acknowledge that there is no other God except God! I acknowledge that Mohammed is the prophet of God! Come to prayer! Come to prayer! Come to the temple of salvation! Come to the temple of salvation! Great God! great God! There is no God except God!"—Oriental Antiquities (Philadelphia, 1788), p. 341.]
[158] {137} ["The Ramazan, or Turkish Lent, which, as it occurs in each of the thirteen months in succession, fell this year in October ... Although during this month the strictest abstinence, even from tobacco and coffee, is observed in the daytime, yet with the setting of the sun the feasting commences."—Travels in Albania, i. 66. "The Ramadan or Rhamazan is the ninth month of the Mohammedan year. As the Mohammedans reckon by lunar time, it begins each year eleven days earlier than in the preceding year, so that in thirty-three years it occurs successively in all the seasons."—Imp. Dictionary.]
[159] [The feast was spread within the courtyard, "in the part farthest from the dwelling," and when the revelry began the "immense large gallery" or corridor, which ran along the front of the palace and was open on one side to the court, was deserted. "Opening into the gallery were the doors of several apartments," and as the servants passed in and out, the travellers standing in the courtyard could hear the sound of voices.—Travels in Albania, i. 93.]
[fg] {138}
——even for health to move.—[MS.]
She saves for one——.—[MS. erased.]
For boyish minions of unhallowed love
The shameless torch of wild desire is lit,
Caressed, preferred even to woman's self above,
Whose forms for Nature's gentler errors fit
All frailties mote excuse save that which they commit.—[MS. D. erased.]
[160] [For an account of Ali Pasha (1741-1822), see Letters, 1898, i. 246, note.]
[161] [In a letter to his mother, November 12, 1809, Byron writes, "He [Ali] said he was certain I was a man of birth, because I had small ears, curling hair, and little white hands. ... He told me to consider him as a father whilst I was in Turkey, and said he looked on me as his son. Indeed, he treated me like a child, sending me almonds and sugared sherbet, fruit and sweetmeats, twenty times a day." Many years after, in the first letter On Bowles' Strictures, February 7, 1821, he introduces a reminiscence of Ali: "I never judge from manners, for I once had my pocket picked by the civillest gentleman I ever met with; and one of the mildest persons I ever saw was Ali Pasha" (Life, p. 689).]
[fi] {139} Delights to mingle with the lips of youth.—[MS. D. erased.]
[162] [Anacreon sometimes bewails, but more often defies old age. (Vide Carmina liv., xi., xxxiv.)
The paraphrase "Teian Muse" recurs in the song, "The Isles of Greece," Don Juan, Canto III.]
[fj] But 'tis those ne'er forgotten acts of ruth.—[MS. D.]
[163] [In the first edition the reading (see var. ii.) is, "But crimes, those ne'er forgotten crimes of ruth." The mistake was pointed out in the Quarterly Review (March, 1812, No. 13, vol. vii. p. 193).
But in Spenser "ruth" means sorrow as well as pity, and three weeks after Childe Harold was published, Ali committed a terrible crime, the outcome of an early grief. On March 27, 1812, in revenge for wrongs done to his mother and sister nearly thirty years before, he caused 670 Gardhikiots to be massacred in the khan of Valiare, and followed up the act of treachery by sacking, plundering, and burning the town of Gardiki, and, "in direct violation of the Mohammedan law," carrying off and reducing to slavery the women and children.—Finlay's Hist. of Greece (edited by Rev. H. F. Tozer, 1877), vi. 67, 68.]
[fk] {140} Those who in blood begin in blood conclude their span.—[MS. erased.]
[164] [This was prophetic. "On the 5th of February, 1822, a meeting took place between Ali and Mohammed Pasha.... When Mohammed rose to depart, the two viziers, being of equal rank, moved together towards the door.... As they parted Ali bowed low to his visitor, and Mohammed, seizing the moment when the watchful eye of the old man was turned away, drew his hanjar, and plunged it in Ali's heart. He walked on calmly to the gallery, and said to the attendants, 'Ali of Tepalen is dead.' ... The head of Ali was exposed at the gate of the serai."—Finlay's Hist. of Greece, 1877, vi. 94, 95.]
Childe Harold with that chief held colloquy
Yet what they spake it boots not to repeat;
Converse may little charm strange ear or eye;
Albeit he rested on that spacious seat,
Of Moslem luxury the choice retreat.—[MS. D. erased.]
Four days he rested on that worthy seat.-[MS. erased.]
[165] {141} [The travellers left Janina on November 3, and reached Prevesa November 7. At midday November 9 they set sail for Patras in a galliot of Ali's, "a vessel of about fifty tons burden, with three short masts and a large lateen sail." Instead of doubling Cape Ducato, they were driven out to sea northward, and, finally, at one o'clock in the morning, anchored off the Port of Phanari on the Suliote coast. Towards the evening of the next day (November 10) they landed in "the marshy bay" (stanza lxviii. line 2) and rode to Volondorako, where they slept. "Here they were well received by the Albanian primate of the place and by the Vizier's soldiers quartered there." Instead of re-embarking in the galliot, they returned to Prevesa by land (November 11). As the country to the north of the Gulf of Arta was up in arms, and bodies of robbers were abroad, they procured an escort of thirty-seven Albanians, hired another galliot, and on Monday, the 13th, sailed across the entrance of the gulf as far as the fortress of Vonitsa, where they anchored for the night. By four o'clock in the afternoon of November 14 they reached Utraikey or Lutraki, "situated in a deep bay surrounded with rocks at the south-east corner of the Gulf of Arta." The courtyard of a barrack on the shore is the scene of the song and dance (stanzas lxx.-lxxii.). Here, in the original MS., the pilgrimage abruptly ends, and in the remaining stanzas the Childe moralizes on the fallen fortunes and vanished heroism of Greece.—Travels in Albania, i. 157-165.]
[166] {143} [The route from Utraikey to Gouria (November 15-18) lay through "thick woods of oak," with occasional peeps of the open cultivated district of 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:—
"Amidst these isles a lone recess is found,
Where circling shores the subject flood resound ...
Within the waves repose in peace serene;
Black forests nod above, a silvan scene!"]
[168] {144} ["In the evening the gates were secured, and preparations were made for feeding our Albanians. A goat was killed and roasted whole, and four fires were kindled in the yard, round which the soldiers seated themselves in parties. After eating and drinking, the greater part of them assembled round the largest of the fires, and, whilst ourselves and the elders of the party were seated on the ground, danced round the blaze to their own songs, in the manner before described, but with astonishing energy. All their songs were relations of some robbing exploits. One of them ... began thus: 'When we set out from Parga there were sixty of us!' then came the burden of the verse—
'Robbers all at Parga!
Robbers all at Parga!'
Κλέφτεις ποτὲ Πάργα!
Κλέφτεις ποτὲ Πάργα!
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.]
[fo] {147} Shall win the young minions——.—[MS. D.]
[fp] ——the maid and the youth.—[MS.]
[fq] Their caresses shall lull us, their voices shall soothe.—[MS. D. erased.]
[173] {148} [So, too, at Salakhora (October 1): "One of the songs was on the taking of Prevesa, an exploit of which the Albanians are vastly proud; and there was scarcely one of them in which the name of Ali Pasha was not roared out and dwelt upon with peculiar energy."—Travels in Albania, i. 29.
Prevesa, which, with other Venetian possessions, had fallen to the French in 1797, was taken in the Sultan's name by Ali, in October, 1798. The troops in the garrison (300 French, 460 Greeks) encountered and were overwhelmed by 5000 Albanians, on the plain of Nicopolis. The victors entered and sacked the town.]
[174] [Ali's eldest son, Mukhtar, the Pasha of Berat, had been sent against the Russians, who, in 1809, invaded the trans-Danubian provinces of the Ottoman Empire.]
[175] Yellow is the epithet given to the Russians.
[176] Infidel.
[177] The insignia of a Pacha.
[178] {149} [The literal meaning of Delhi or Deli, is, says M. Darmesteter, "fou" ["properly madmen" (D'Herbelot)], a title bestowed on Turkish warriors honoris 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.)—
"Earth! render back from out thy heart
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three
To make a new Thermopylæ!"
The meaning is, "When shall another Lysander spring from Laconia ('Eurotas' banks') and revive the heroism of the ancient Spartans?"]
[fs] {150} A fawning feeble race, untaught, enslaved, unmanned.—[MS. erased.]
[ft] ——fair Liberty.—[MS. erased, D.]
[181] {151} [Compare The Age of Bronze, vi. lines 39-46.]
[182] [The Wahabees, who took their name from the Arab sheik Mohammed ben Abd-el-Wahab, arose in the province of Nedj, in Central Arabia, about 1760. Half-socialists, half-puritans, they insisted on fulfilling to the letter the precepts of the Koran. In 1803-4 they attacked and ravaged Mecca and Medinah, and in 1808 they invaded Syria and took Damascus. During Byron's residence in the East they were at the height of their power, and seemed to threaten the very existence of the Turkish empire.]
[183] {152} [Byron spent two months in Constantinople (Stamboul, i.e. 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.]
["There's nothing like young Love, No! No!
There's nothing like young love at last."]
[186] {154} [It has been assumed that "searment" is an incorrect form of "cerement," the cloth dipped "in melting wax, in which dead bodies were enfolded when embalmed" (Hamlet, act i. sc. 4), but the sense of the passage seems rather to point to "cerecloth," "searcloth," a plaster to cover up a wound. The "robe of revel" does but half conceal the sore and aching heart.]
[187] [For the accentuation of the word, compare Chaucer, "The Sompnour's Tale" (Canterbury Tales, line 7631)—
"And dronkennesse is eke a foul recórd
Of any man, and namely of a lord."]
[fu] When Athens' children are with arts endued.—[MS. D.]
[188] [Compare Ecclus. xliv. 8, 9: "There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported. And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been."]
[189] {156} [The "solitary column" may be that on the shore of the harbour of Colonna, in the island of Kythnos (Thermia), or one of the detached columns of the Olympeion.]
[190] [Tritonia, or Tritogenia, one of Athena's names of uncertain origin. Hofmann's Lexicon Universale, Tooke's Pantheon, and Smith's Classical Dictionary are much in the same tale. Lucan (Pharsalia, lib. ix. lines 350-354) derives the epithet from Lake Triton, or Tritonis, on the Mediterranean coast of Libya—
"Hanc et Pallas amat: patrio quæ vertice nata
Terrarum primum Libyen (nam proxima coelo est,
Ut probat ipse calor) tetigit, stagnique quietâ
Vultus vidit aquâ, posuitque in margine plantas,
Et se dilectâ Tritonida dixit ab undâ."]
[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.]
[fw] {158} Preserve alike its form——.—[MS. L.]
[fx] When uttered to the listener's eye——.—[MS. L.]
[fy] The host, the plain, the fight——.—[MS. L.]
[fz] The shattered Mede who flies with broken bow.—[MS. L.]
[196] ["The plain of Marathon is enclosed on three sides by the rocky arms of Parnes and Pentelicus, while the fourth is bounded by the sea." After the first rush, when the victorious wings, where the files were deep, had drawn together and extricated the shallower and weaker centre, which had been repulsed by the Persians and the 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.]
[199] {160} [The original MS. closes with this stanza.]
[gc] Which heeds nor stern reproach——.—[D.]
[gd] {161}Would I had ne'er returned——.—[D.]
"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.]
Though Time not yet hath ting'd my locks with snow,[*]
Yet hath he reft whate'er my soul enjoy'd.—[D.]
[*] "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.]
