[55] {85} A tomb above the rocks on the promontory, by some supposed the sepulchre of Themistocles.

["There are," says Cumberland, in his Observer, "a few lines by Plato upon the tomb of Themistocles, which have a turn of elegant and pathetic simplicity in them, that deserves a better translation than I can give—

"'By the sea's margin, on the watery strand,

Thy monument, Themistocles, shall stand:

By this directed to thy native shore,

The merchant shall convey his freighted store;

And when our fleets are summoned to the fight

Athens shall conquer with thy tomb in sight.'"

Note to Edition 1832.

The traditional site of the tomb of Themistocles, "a rock-hewn grave on the very margin of the sea generally covered with water," adjoins the lighthouse, which stands on the westernmost promontory of the Piræus, some three quarters of a mile from the entrance to the harbour. Plutarch, in his Themistocles (cap. xxxii.), is at pains to describe the exact site of the "altar-like tomb," and quotes the passage from Plato (the comic poet, B.C. 428-389) which Cumberland paraphrases. Byron and Hobhouse "made the complete circuit of the peninsula of Munychia," January 18, 1810.—Travels in Albania, 1858, i. 317, 318.]

[cg] {86}

Fair clime! where ceaseless summer smiles

Benignant o'er those blessed isles,

Which seen from far Colonna's height,

Make glad the heart that hails the sight,

And lend to loneliness delight.

There shine the bright abodes ye seek,

Like dimples upon Occan's cheek,

So smiling round the waters lave

These Edens of the Eastern wave.

Or if, at times, the transient breeze

Break the smooth crystal of the seas,

Or brush one blossom from the trees,

How grateful is each gentle air

That wakes and wafts the fragrance there.—[MS.]

——the fragrance there.—[Second Edition.]

[56] The attachment of the nightingale to the rose is a well-known Persian fable. If I mistake not, the "Bulbul of a thousand tales" is one of his appellations.

[Thus Mesihi, as translated by Sir William Jones—

"Come, charming maid! and hear thy poet sing,

Thyself the rose and he the bird of spring:

Love bids him sing, and Love will be obey'd.

Be gay: too soon the flowers of spring will fade."

"The full style and title of the Persian nightingale (Pycnonotus hæmorrhous) is 'Bulbul-i-hazár-dástán,' usually shortened to 'Hazar' (bird of a thousand tales = the thousand), generally called 'Andalib.'" (See Arabian Nights, by Richard F. Burton, 1887; Supplemental Nights, iii. 506.) For the nightingale's attachment to the rose, compare Moore's Lalla Rookh—

"Oh! sooner shall the rose of May

Mistake her own sweet nightingale," etc.

(Ed. "Chandos Classics," p. 423)

and Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (stanza vi.)—

"And David's lips are lockt; but in divine

High piping Pehlevi, with 'Wine! Wine! Wine!

Red Wine!'—the Nightingale cries to the Rose

That sallow cheek of hers to incarnadine."

Rubáiyát, etc., 1899, p. 29, and note, p. 62.

Byron was indebted for his information to a note on a passage in Vathek, by S. Henley (Vathek, 1893, p. 217).]

[57] {87} The guitar is the constant amusement of the Greek sailor by night; with a steady fair wind, and during a calm, it is accompanied always by the voice, and often by dancing.

[ch] {88} Should wanton in a wilderness.—[MS.]

[ci] The first draft of this celebrated passage differs in many particulars from the Fair Copy, which, with the exception of the passages marked as vars. i. (p. 89) and i. (p. 90), is the same as the text. It ran as follows:—

He who hath bent him o'er the dead

Ere the first day of death is fled—

The first dark day of Nothingness

The last of doom and of distress—

Before Corruption's cankering fingers

Hath tinged the hue where Beauty lingers

And marked the soft and settled air

That dwells with all but Spirit there

The fixed yet tender lines that speak

Of Peace along the placid cheek

And—but for that sad shrouded eye

That fires not—pleads not—weeps not—now—

And but for that pale chilling brow

Whose touch tells of Mortality

And curdles to the Gazer's heart

As if to him it could impart

The doom he only looks upon—

Yes but for these and these alone,

A moment—yet—a little hour

We still might doubt the Tyrant's power.

The eleven lines following (88-98) were not emended in the Fair Copy, and are included in the text. The Fair Copy is the sole MS. authority for the four concluding lines of the paragraph.

[58] [Compare "Beyond Milan the country wore the aspect of a wider devastation; and though everything seemed more quiet, the repose was like that of death spread over features which retain the impression of the last convulsions."—Mysteries of Udolpho, by Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, 1794, ii. 29.]

[cj] {89}

And marked the almost dreaming air,

Which speaks the sweet repose that's there.—

[MS. of Fair Copy.]

[59] {90}

"Aye, but to die, and go we know not where;

To lie in cold obstruction?"

Measure for Measure, act iii. sc. I, lines 115, 116.

[Compare, too, Childe Harold, Canto II. stanza iv. line 5.]

[ck]

Whose touch thrills with mortality,

And curdles to the gazer's heart.—[MS. of Fair Copy.]

[60] I trust that few of my readers have ever had an opportunity of witnessing what is here attempted in description; but those who have will probably retain a painful remembrance of that singular beauty which pervades, with few exceptions, the features of the dead, a few hours, and but for a few hours, after "the spirit is not there." It is to be remarked in cases of violent death by gun-shot wounds, the expression is always that of languor, whatever the natural energy of the sufferer's character; but in death from a stab the countenance preserves its traits of feeling or ferocity, and the mind its bias, to the last. [According to Medwin (1824, 4to, p. 223), an absurd charge, based on the details of this note, was brought against Byron, that he had been guilty of murder, and spoke from experience.]

[61] [In Dallaway's Constantinople (p. 2) [Rev. James Dallaway (1763-1834) published Constantinople Ancient and Modern, etc., in 1797], a book which Lord Byron is not unlikely to have consulted, I find a passage quoted from Gillies' History of Greece(vol. i. p. 335), which contains, perhaps, the first seed of the thought thus expanded into full perfection by genius: "The present state of Greece, compared to the ancient, is the silent obscurity of the grave contrasted with the vivid lustre of active life."—Moore, Note to Edition 1832.]

[62] {91} [From hence to the conclusion of the paragraph, the MS. is written in a hurried and almost illegible hand, as if these splendid lines had been poured forth in one continuous burst of poetic feeling, which would hardly allow time for the pen to follow the imagination.—(Note to Edition 1837. The lines were added to the Second Edition.)]

[cl] Fountain of Wisdom! can it be.—[MS. erased.]

[63] [Compare—"Son of the Morning, rise! approach you here!" Childe Harold, Canto II. stanza iii. line 1.]

[cm]

Why is not this Thermopylæ;

These waters blue that round you lave

Degenerate offspring of the free—

How name ye them what shore is this?

The wave, the rock of Salamis?—[MS.]

[cn] {92}

And he who in the cause expires,

Will add a name and fate to them

Well worthy of his noble stem.—[MS.]

[co] Commenced by Sire—renewed by Son.—[MS.]

[cp]

Attest it many a former age

While kings in dark oblivion hid.—[MS.]

[cq] There let the Muse direct thine eye.—[MS.]

[cr] {93} The hearts amid thy mountains bred.—[MS.]

[64] Athens is the property of the Kislar Aga [kizlar-aghasî] (the slave of the Seraglio and guardian of the women), who appoints the Waywode. A pander and eunuch—these are not polite, yet true appellations—now governs the governor of Athens!

[Hobhouse maintains that this subordination of the waiwodes (or vaivodes = the Sclavic βοεβόδα (Turkish governors of Athens) to a higher Turkish official, was on the whole favourable to the liberties and well-being of the Athenians.—Travels in Albania, 1858, i. 246.]

[cs]

Now to the neighbouring shores they waft

Their ancient and proverbial craft.—[MS. erased.]

[ct] {94} he silent slants the doubtful creek.—[MS]

[65] [The reciter of the tale is a Turkish fisherman, who has been employed during the day in the gulf of Ægina, and in the evening, apprehensive of the Mainote pirates who infest the coast of Attica, lands with his boat on the harbour of Port Leone, the ancient Piræus. He becomes the eye-witness of nearly all the incidents in the story, and in one of them is a principal agent. It is to his feelings, and particularly to his religious prejudices, that we are indebted for some of the most forcible and splendid parts of the poem.—Note by George Agar Ellis, 1797-1833.]

[66] [In Dr. Clarke's Travels (Edward Daniel Clarke, 1769-1822, published Travels in Europe, Asia, Africa, 1810-24), this word, which means infidel, is always written according to its English pronunciation, Djour. Byron adopted the Italian spelling usual among the Franks of the Levant.—Note to Edition 1832.

The pronunciation of the word depends on its origin. If it is associated with the Arabic jawr, a "deviating" or "erring," the initial consonant would be soft, but if with the Persian gawr, or guebre, "a fire-worshipper," the word should be pronounced Gow-er—as Gower Street has come to be pronounced. It is to be remarked that to the present day the Nestorians of Urumiah are contemned as Gy-ours (the G hard), by their Mohammedan countrymen.—(From information kindly supplied by Mr. A. G. Ellis, of the Oriental Printed Books and MSS. Department, British Museum.)]

[cu] {95} Though scarcely marked——.—[MS.]

[cv]

With him my wonder as he flew.—[MS.]

With him my roused and wondering view.—[MS. erased.]

[cw] {96} For him who takes so fast a flight.—[MS. erased.]

[67] [Compare—

"A moment now he slacked his speed,

A moment breathed his panting steed."

Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto I. stanza xxvii. lines 1, 2.]

[cx] And looked along the olive wood.—[MS.]

[68] "Tophaike," musket. The Bairam is announced by the cannon at sunset: the illumination of the mosques, and the firing of all kinds of small arms, loaded with ball, proclaim it during the night. [The Bairâm, the Moslem Easter, a festival of three days, succeeded the Ramazân.]

For the illumination of the mosques during the fast of the Ramazân, see Childe Harold, Canto II. stanza lv. line 5, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 134, note 2.

[cy] {97} Of transient Anger's Darkening blush.—[MS.]

[69] [For "hasty," all the editions till the twelfth read "darkening blush." On the back of a copy of the eleventh, Lord Byron has written, "Why did not the printer attend to the solitary correction so repeatedly made? I have no copy of this, and desire to have none till my request is complied with." Notes to Editions 1832, 1837.]

[cz]

As doubting if to stay or fly—

Then turned it swiftly to his blade;

As loud his raven charger neighed—

That sound dispelled his waking dream,

As sleepers start at owlet's scream.—[MS.]

[70] Jerreed, or Djerrid [Jarid], a blunted Turkish javelin, which is darted from horseback with great force and precision. It is a favourite exercise of the Mussulmans; but I know not if it can be called a manly one, since the most expert in the art are the Black Eunuchs of Constantinople. I think, next to these, a Mamlouk at Smyrna was the most skilful that came within my observation. [Lines 250, 251, together with the note, were inserted in the Third Edition.]

[da] {98}

'Twas but an instant, though so long

When thus dilated in my song.

'Twas but an instant——.—[MS.]

[db]

Such moment holds a thousand years.

or, Such moment proves the grief of years.—[MS.]

[71] ["Lord Byron told Mr. Murray that he took this idea from one of the Arabian tales—that in which the Sultan puts his head into a butt of water, and, though it remains there for only two or three minutes, he imagines that he lives many years during that time. The story had been quoted by Addison in the Spectator" [No. 94, June 18, 1711].—Memoir of John Murray, 1891, i. 219, note.]

[72] [Lines 271-276 were added in the Third Edition. The MS. proceeds with a direction (dated July 31, 1813) to the printer—"And alter

'A life of woe—an age of crime—'

to

'A life of pain—an age of crime.'

Alter also the lines

'On him who loves or hates or fears

Such moment holds a thousand years,'

to

'O'er him who loves or hates or fears

Such moment pours the grief of years.'"]

[dc] {99} But neither fled nor fell alone.—[MS.]

[73] The blast of the desert, fatal to everything living, and often alluded to in Eastern poetry.

[James Bruce, 1730-1794 (nicknamed "Abyssinian Bruce"), gives a remarkable description of the simoom: "I saw from the south-east a haze come, in colour like the purple part of the rainbow, but not so compressed or thick. It did not occupy twenty yards in breadth, and was about twelve feet high from the ground. It was a kind of blush upon the air, and it moved very rapidly.... We all lay flat on the ground ... till it was blown over. The meteor, or purple haze, which I saw was, indeed, passed, but the light air which still blew was of a heat to threaten suffocation." He goes on to say that he did not recover the effect of the sandblast on his chest for nearly two years (Brace's Life and Travels, ed. 1830, p. 470).—Note to Edition 1832.]

[dd] There are two MS. versions of lines 290-298: (A) a rough copy, and (B) a fair copy—

(A) And wide the Spider's thin grey pall

Is curtained on the splendid wall—

The Bat hath built in his mother's bower,

And in the fortress of his power

The Owl hath fixed her beacon tower,

The wild dogs howl on the fountain's brim

With baffled thirst and famine grim,

For the stream is shrunk from its marble bed

Where Desolation's dust is spread.—[MS.]

B. ["August 5, 1813, in last of 3rd or first of 4th ed."]

The lonely Spider's thin grey pall

Is curtained o'er the splendid wall—

The Bat builds in his mother's bower;

And in the fortress of his power

The Owl hath fixed her beacon-tower,

The wild dog howls o'er the fountain's brink,

But vainly lolls his tongue to drink.—[MS.]

[74] {100} [Compare "The walls of Balclutha were desolated.... The stream of Clutha was removed from its place by the fall of the walls. The fox looked out from the windows" (Ossian's Balclutha). "The dreary night-owl screams in the solitary retreat of his mouldering ivy-covered tower" (Larnul, or the Song of Despair: Poems of Ossian, discovered by the Baron de Harold, 1787, p. 172). Compare, too, the well-known lines, "The spider holds the veil in the palace of Cæsar; the owl stands sentinel on the watch-tower of Afrasyab" (A Grammar of the Persian Language, by Sir W. Jones, 1809, p. 106).]

[de]

The silver dew of coldness sprinkling

In drops fantastically twinkling

As from the spring the silver dew

In whirls fantastically flew

And dashed luxurions coolness round

The air—and verdure on the ground.—[MS.]

[df] {101}

For thirsty Fox and Jackal gaunt

May vainly for its waters pant.—[MS.]

or, The famished fox the wild dog gaunt

May vainly for its waters pant.—[MS.]

[dg] Might strike an echo——.—[MS.]

[dh] {102}

And welcome Life though but in one

For many a gilded chamber's there

Unmeet for Solitude to share.—- [MS.]

[75] ["I have just recollected an alteration you may make in the proof.... Among the lines on Hassan's Serai, is this—'Unmeet for Solitude to share.' Now, to share implies more than one, and Solitude is a single gentlewoman: it must be thus—

'For many a gilded chamber's there,

Which Solitude might well forbear;'

and so on. Will you adopt this correction? and pray accept a cheese from me for your trouble."—Letter to John Murray, Stilton, October 3, 1813, Letters, 1898, ii. 274.]

[di] To share the Master's "bread and salt."—[MS.]

[76] [To partake of food—to break bread and taste salt with your host, ensures the safety of the guest: even though an enemy, his person from that moment becomes sacred.—(Note appended to Letter of October 3, 1813.)

"I leave this (vide supra, note 1) to your discretion; if anybody thinks the old line a good one or the cheese a bad one, don't accept either. But in that case the word share is repeated soon after in the line—

'To share the master's bread and salt;'

and must be altered to—

'To break the master's bread and salt.'

This is not so well, though—confound it!

If the old line ['Unmeet for Solitude to share'] stands, let the other run thus—

'Nor there will weary traveller halt,

To bless the sacred bread and salt.'"

(P.S. to Murray, October 3, 1813.)

The emendation of line 335 made that of line 343 unnecessary, but both emendations were accepted.

(Moore says (Life; p. 191, note) that the directions are written on a separate slip of paper from the letter to Murray of October 3, 1813).]

[dj] {103}

And cold Hospitality shrinks from the labour,

The slave fled his halter and the serf left his labour.—[MS.]

or, Ah! there Hospitality light is thy labour,

or, Ah! who for the traveller's solace will labour?—[MS.]

[77] I need hardly observe, that Charity and Hospitality are the first duties enjoined by Mahomet; and to say truth, very generally practised by his disciples. The first praise that can be bestowed on a chief is a panegyric on his bounty; the next, on his valour. ["Serve God ... and show kindness unto parents, and relations, and orphans, and the poor, and your neighbour who is of kin to you ... and the traveller, and the captives," etc.—Korân, cap. iv. Lines 350, 351 were inserted in the Fifth Edition.]

[78] The ataghan, a long dagger worn with pistols in the belt, in a metal scabbard, generally of silver; and, among the wealthier, gilt, or of gold.

[79] Green is the privileged colour of the prophet's numerous pretended descendants; with them, as here, faith (the family inheritance) is supposed to supersede the necessity of good works: they are the worst of a very indifferent brood.

[80] {104} "Salam aleikoum! aleikoum salam!" peace be with you; be with you peace—the salutation reserved for the faithful:—to a Christian, "Urlarula!" a good journey; or "saban hiresem, saban serula," good morn, good even; and sometimes, "may your end be happy!" are the usual salutes.

["After both sets of prayers, Farz and Sunnah, the Moslem looks over his right shoulder, and says, 'The Peace (of Allah) be upon you and the ruth of Allah,' and repeats the words over the left shoulder. The salutation is addressed to the Guardian Angels, or to the bystanders (Moslem), who, however, do not return it."—Arabian Nights, by Richard F. Burton, 1887: Supplemental Nights, i. 14, note.]

[dk]

Take ye and give ye that salam,

That says of Moslem faith I am.—[MS.]

[dl] Which one of yonder barks may wait.—[MS.]

[81] [In the MS. and the first five editions the broken line (373) consisted of two words only, "That one."]

[82] The blue-winged butterfly of Kashmeer, the most rare and beautiful of the species.

[The same insects (butterflies of Cachemir) are celebrated in an unpublished poem of Mesihi.... Sir Anthony Shirley relates that it was customary in Persia "to hawk after butterflies with sparrows, made to that use."—Note by S. Henley to Vathek, ed. 1893, p. 222. Byron, in his Journal, December 1, 1813, speaks of Lady Charlemont as "that blue-winged Kashmirian butterfly of book-learning."]

[dm] If caught, to fate alike betrayed.-[MS.]

[dn] {106} The gathering flames around her close.-[MS. erased.]

[83] {107} Alluding to the dubious suicide of the scorpion, so placed for experiment by gentle philosophers. Some maintain that the position of the sting, when turned towards the head, is merely a convulsive movement; but others have actually brought in the verdict "Felo de se." The scorpions are surely interested in a speedy decision of the question; as, if once fairly established as insect Catos, they will probably be allowed to live as long as they think proper, without being martyred for the sake of an hypothesis.

[Byron assured Dallas that the simile of the scorpion was imagined in his sleep.—Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron, by R. C. Dallas, p. 264.

"Probably in some instances the poor scorpion has been burnt to death; and the well-known habit of these creatures to raise the tail over the back and recurve it so that the extremity touches the fore part of the cephalo-thorax, has led to the idea that it was stinging itself."—Encycl. Brit., art. "Arachnida," by Rev. O. P. Cambridge, ii. 281.]

[do] So writhes the mind by Conscience riven.—[MS.]

[84] The cannon at sunset close the Rhamazan. [Compare Childe Harold, Canto II. stanza Iv. line 5, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 134. note 2.]

[85] {108} Phingari, the moon. φεγγάρι is derived from φεγγάριον, dim. of φέγγος.

[86] The celebrated fabulous ruby of Sultan Giamschid, the embellisher of Istakhar; from its splendour, named Schebgerag [Schabchirāgh], "the torch of night;" also "the cup of the sun," etc. In the First Edition, "Giamschid" was written as a word of three syllables; so D'Herbelot has it; but I am told Richardson reduces it to a dissyllable, and writes "Jamshid." I have left in the text the orthography of the one with the pronunciation of the other.

[The MS. and First Edition read, "Bright as the gem of Giamschid." Byron's first intention was to change the line into "Bright as the ruby of Giamschid;" but to this Moore objected, "that as the comparison of his heroine's eye to a ruby might unluckily call up the idea of its being bloodshot, he had better change the line to 'Bright as the jewel,' etc."

For the original of Byron's note, see S. Henley's note, Vathek, 1893, p. 230. See, too, D'Herbelot's Bibliothèque Orientale, 1781, iii. 27.

Sir Richard Burton (Arabian Nights, S.N., iii. 440) gives the following résumé of the conflicting legends: "Jám-i-jámshid is a well-known commonplace in Moslem folk-lore; but commentators cannot agree whether 'Jám' be a mirror or a cup. In the latter sense it would represent the Cyathomantic cup of the Patriarch Joseph, and the symbolic bowl of Nestor. Jamshid may be translated either 'Jam the bright,' or 'the Cup of the Sun;' this ancient king is the Solomon of the grand old Guebres."

Fitzgerald, "in a very composite quatrain (stanza v.) which cannot be claimed as a translation at all" (see the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyaām, by Edward Heron Allen, 1898), embodies a late version of the myth—

"Iram is gone and all his Rose,

And Jamshyd's sev'n-ringed Cup where no one knows."]

[87] {109} Al-Sirat, the bridge of breadth narrower than the thread of a famished spider, and sharper than the edge of a sword, over which the Mussulmans must skate into Paradise, to which it is the only entrance; but this is not the worst, the river beneath being hell itself, into which, as may be expected, the unskilful and tender of foot contrive to tumble with a "facilis descensus Averni," not very pleasing in prospect to the next passenger. There is a shorter cut downwards for the Jews and Christians.

[Byron is again indebted to Vathek, and S. Henley on Vathek, p. 237, for his information. The authority for the legend of the Bridge of Paradise is not the Koran, but the Book of Mawakef, quoted by Edward Pococke, in his Commentary (Notæ Miscellaneæ) on the Porta Mosis of Moses Maimonides (Oxford, 1654, p. 288)—

"Stretched across the back of Hell, it is narrower than a javelin, sharper than the edge of a sword. But all must essay the passage, believers as well as infidels, and it baffles the understanding to imagine in what manner they keep their foothold."

The legend, or rather allegory, to which there would seem to be some allusion in the words of Scripture, "Strait is the gate," etc., is of Zoroastrian origin. Compare the Zend-Avesta, Yasna xix. 6 (Sacred Books of the East, edited by F. Max Muller, 1887, xxxi. 261), "With even threefold (safety and with speed) I will bring his soul over the Bridge of Kinvat," etc.]

[88] {110} A vulgar error: the Koran allots at least a third of Paradise to well-behaved women; but by far the greater number of Mussulmans interpret the text their own way, and exclude their moieties from heaven. Being enemies to Platonics, they cannot discern "any fitness of things" in the souls of the other sex, conceiving them to be superseded by the Houris.

[Sale, in his Preliminary Discourse ("Chandos Classics," p. 80), in dealing with this question, notes "that there are several passages in the Koran which affirm that women, in the next life, will not only be punished for their evil actions, but will also receive the rewards of their good deeds, as well as the men, and that in this case God will make no distinction of sexes." A single quotation will suffice: "God has promised to believers, men and women, gardens beneath which rivers flow, to dwell therein for aye; and goodly places in the garden of Eden."—The Qur'ân, translated by E. H. Palmer, 1880, vi. 183.]

[89] An Oriental simile, which may, perhaps, though fairly stolen, be deemed "plus Arabe qu'en Arabie."

[Gulnár (the heroine of the Corsair is named Gulnare) is Persian for a pomegranate flower.]

[90] Hyacinthine, in Arabic "Sunbul;" as common a thought in the Eastern poets as it was among the Greeks.

[S. Henley (Vathek, 1893, p. 208) quotes two lines from the Solima (lines 5, 6) of Sir W. Jones—

"The fragrant hyacinths of Azza's hair

That wanton with the laughing summer-air;"

and refers Milton's "Hyacinthine locks" (Paradise Lost, iv. 301) to Lucian's Pro Imaginibus, cap. v.]

[91] {111} "Franguestan," Circassia. [Or Europe generally—the land of the Frank.]

[92] [Lines 504-518 were inserted in the second revise of the Third Edition, July 31, 1813.]

[93] {113} [Parnassus.]

[94] "In the name of God;" the commencement of all the chapters of the Koran but one [the ninth], and of prayer and thanksgiving. ["Bismillah" (in full, Bismillahi 'rrahmani 'rrahiem, i.e. "In the name of Allah the God of Mercy, the Merciful") is often used as a deprecatory formula. Sir R. Burton (Arabian Nights, i. 40) cites as an equivalent the "remembering Iddio e' Santí," of Boccaccio's Decameron, viii. 9.

The MS. reads, "Thank Alla! now the peril's past."]

[95] [A Turkish messenger, sergeant or lictor. The proper sixteen-seventeenth century pronunciation would have been chaush, but apparently the nearest approach to this was chaus, whence chouse and chiaush, and the vulgar form chiaus (N. Eng. Dict., art. "Chiaus"). The peculations of a certain "chiaus" in the year A.D. 1000 are said to have been the origin of the word "to chouse."]

[96] {114} A phenomenon not uncommon with an angry Mussulman. In 1809 the Capitan Pacha's whiskers at a diplomatic audience were no less lively with indignation than a tiger cat's, to the horror of all the dragomans; the portentous mustachios twisted, they stood erect of their own accord, and were expected every moment to change their colour, but at last condescended to subside, which, probably, saved more heads than they contained hairs.

[97] {115} "Amaun," quarter, pardon.

[Line 603 was inserted in a proof of the Second Edition, dated July 24, 1813: "Nor raised the coward cry, Amaun!"]

[98] The "evil eye," a common superstition in the Levant, and of which the imaginary effects are yet very singular on those who conceive themselves affected.

[99] [Compare "As with a thousand waves to the rocks, so Swaran's host came on."—Fingal, bk. i., Ossian's Works, 1807, i. 19.]

[dp] {116} That neither gives nor asks for life.—[MS.]

[100] {117} The flowered shawls generally worn by persons of rank.

[101] [Compare "Catilina vero longè a suis, inter hostium cadavera repertus est, paululum etiam spirans ferociamque animi, quam habuerat vivus, in vultu retinens."—Catilina, cap. 61, Opera, 1820, i. 124.]

[dq] {118}

His mother looked from the lattice high,

With throbbing heart and eager eye;

The browsing camel bells are tinkling,

And the last beam of twilight twinkling:

'Tis eve; his train should now be nigh.

She could not rest in her garden bower,

And gazed through the loop of her steepest tower.

"Why comes he not? his steeds are fleet,

And well are they train'd to the summer's heat."—[MS.]

Another copy began—

The browsing camel bells are tinkling,

And the first beam of evening twinkling;

His mother looked from her lattice high,

With throbbing breast and eager eye—

"'Tis twilight—sure his train is nigh."—[MS. Aug. 11, 1813.]

The browsing camel's bells are tinkling

The dews of eve the pasture sprinkling

And rising planets feebly twinkling:

His mother looked from the lattice high

With throbbing heart and eager eye.—[Fourth Edition.]

[These lines were erased, and lines 689-692 were substituted. They appeared first in the Fifth Edition.]

[102] ["The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and cried through the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming? why tarry the wheels of his chariot?"—Judges v. 28.]

[dr] {119} And now his courser's pace amends.—[MS. erased.]

[ds] I could not deem my son was slow.—[MS. erased.]

[dt]

The Tartar sped beneath the gate

And flung to earth his fainting weight.—[MS.]

[103] The calpac is the solid cap or centre part of the head-dress; the shawl is wound round it, and forms the turban.

[108] Eblis, the Oriental Prince of Darkness.

[110] {123} The freshness of the face [? "The paleness of the face," MS.] and the wetness of the lip with blood, are the never-failing signs of a Vampire. The stories told in Hungary and Greece of these foul feeders are singular, and some of them most incredibly attested.

[du] {124} As Time were wasted on his brow.—[MS.]

[dv] {125} Of foreign maiden lost at sea.—[MS.]

[dw] {127}

Behold—as turns he from the—wall

His cowl fly back, his dark hair fall.—[ms]

[A variant of the copy sent for insertion in the Seventh Edition differs alike from the MS. and the text—]

Behold as turns him from the wall—

His Cowl flies back—his tresses fall—

That pallid aspect wreathing round.

[dx] Lo! mark him as the harmony.—[MS.]

[dy] Thank heaven—he stands without the shrine.—[MS. erased.]

[dz] {128}

Must burn before it smite or shine.—[MS.]

Appears unfit to smite or shine.—[MS. erased]

[113] {129} [Compare—

"To surfeit on the same [our pleasures]

And yawn our joys. Or thank a misery

For change, though sad?"

Night Thoughts, iii., by Edward Young; Anderson's British Poets, x. 72. Compare, too, Childe Harold, Canto I. stanza vi, line 8—"With pleasure drugged, he almost longed for woe."]

[ea] Than feeling we must feel no more.—[MS.]

[116] {131} [Compare—

"I'd rather be a toad,

And live upon the vapours of a dungeon."

Othello, act iii. sc. 3, lines 274, 275.]

[eb] Though hope hath long withdrawn her beam.—[MS.] [This line was omitted in the Third and following Editions.]

[ec] {132}

Through ranks of steel and tracks of fire,

And all she threatens in her ire;

And these are but the words of one

Who thus would do—who thus hath done.—[MS. erased.]

[ed] {134} My hope a tomb, our foe a grave.—[MS.]

[118] {135} [Vide ante, p. 90, line 89, note 2, "In death from a stab the countenance preserves its traits of feeling or ferocity."]

[ee]

Her power to soothe—her skill to save—

And doubly darken o'er the grave,—[MS.]

[ef] {136}

Of Ladye-love—and dart—and chain—

And fire that raged in every vein.—[MS.]

[eg]

Even now alone, yet undismayed,—

I know no friend, and ask no aid.—[MS.]

[119] [Lines 1127-1130 were inserted in the Seventh Edition. They recall the first line of Plato's epitaph, Ἀστὴρ πριν μὲν ἔλαμπες ἐνι ζωοῖσιν ἑῷος, which Byron prefixed to his "Epitaph on a Beloved Friend" (Poetical Works, 1898, i. 18), and which, long afterwards, Shelley chose as the motto to his Adonais.]

[eh] {137}

Yes If } Love indeed { doth spring descend be born } from heaven:

A spark of that { immortal eternal celestial } fire

To human hearts in mercy given,

To lift from earth our low desire,

A feeling from the Godhead caught,

To wean from self { each our } sordid thought:

Devotion sends the soul above,

But Heaven itself descends to love,

Yet marvel not, if they who love

This present joy, this future hope

Which taught them with all ill to cope,

No more with anguish bravely cope.—[MS.]

[120] [The hundred and twenty-six lines which follow, down to "Tell me no more of Fancy's gleam," first appeared in the Fifth Edition. In returning the proof to Murray, Byron writes, August 26, 1813, "The last lines Hodgson likes—it is not often he does—and when he don't, he tells me with great energy, and I fret and alter. I have thrown them in to soften the ferocity of our Infidel, and, for a dying man, have given him a good deal to say for himself."—Letters, 1898, ii. 252.]

[ei] {138}

That quenched, I wandered far in night,

or, 'Tis quenched, and I am lost in night.—[MS.]

[ej] Must plunge into a dark abyss.—[MS.]

[ek] {139}

And let the light, inconstant fool

That sneers his coxcomb ridicule.—[MS.]

[el] Less than the soft and shallow maid.—[MS. erased.]

[em] The joy—the madness of my heart.—[MS.]

[en]

To me alike all time and place—

Scarce could I gaze on Nature's face

For every hue——.—[MS.]

or, All, all was changed on Nature's face

To me alike all time and place.—[MS. erased.]

[eo] {140}

——but this grief

In truth is not for thy relief.

My state thy thought can never guess.—[MS.]

[121] The monk's sermon is omitted. It seems to have had so little effect upon the patient, that it could have no hopes from the reader. It may be sufficient to say that it was of a customary length (as may be perceived from the interruptions and uneasiness of the patient), and was delivered in the usual tone of all orthodox preachers.

[ep] Where thou, it seems, canst offer grace.—[MS. erased.]

[eq] Where rise my native city's towers.—[MS.]

[er] I had, and though but one—a friend!—[MS.]

[es] {141}

I have no heart to love him now

And 'tis but to declare my end.—[ms]

[et]

But now Remembrance murmurs o'er

Of all our early youth had been—

In pain, I now had turned aside

To bless his memory ere I died,

But Heaven would mark the vain essay,

If Guilt should for the guiltless fray—

I do not ask him not to blame—

Too gentle he to wound my name—

I do not ask him not to mourn,

For such request might sound like scorn—

And what like Friendship's manly tear

So well can grace a brother's bier?

But bear this ring he gave of old,

And tell him—what thou didst behold—

The withered frame—the ruined mind,

The wreck that Passion leaves behind—

The shrivelled and discoloured leaf

Seared by the Autumn blast of Grief.—[MS., First Copy.]

[eu] {142} Nay—kneel not, father, rise—despair.—[MS.]

[122] {143} "Symar," a shroud. [Cymar, or simar, is a long loose robe worn by women. It is, perhaps, the same word as the Spanish camarra (Arabic camârra), a sheep-skin cloak. It is equivalent to "shroud" only in the primary sense of a "covering."]

[ev] Which now I view with trembling spark.—[MS.]

[ew] {144} Then lay me with the nameless dead.—[MS.]

[123] The circumstance to which the above story relates was not very uncommon in Turkey. A few years ago the wife of Muchtar Pacha complained to his father of his son's supposed infidelity; he asked with whom, and she had the barbarity to give in a list of the twelve handsomest women in Yanina. They were seized, fastened up in sacks, and drowned in the lake the same night! One of the guards who was present informed me that not one of the victims uttered a cry, or showed a symptom of terror at so sudden a "wrench from all we know, from all we love." The fate of Phrosine, the fairest of this sacrifice, is the subject of many a Romaic and Arnaout ditty. The story in the text is one told of a young Venetian many years ago, and now nearly forgotten. I heard it by accident recited by one of the coffee-house story-tellers who abound in the Levant, and sing or recite their narratives. The additions and interpolations by the translator will be easily distinguished from the rest, by the want of Eastern imagery; and I regret that my memory has retained so few fragments of the original. For the contents of some of the notes I am indebted partly to D'Herbelot, and partly to that most Eastern, and, as Mr. Weber justly entitles it, "sublime tale," the "Caliph Vathek." I do not know from what source the author of that singular volume may have drawn his materials; some of his incidents are to be found in the Bibliothèque Orientale; but for correctness of costume, beauty of description, and power of imagination, it far surpasses all European imitations, and bears such marks of originality that those who have visited the East will find some difficulty in believing it to be more than a translation. As an Eastern tale, even Rasselas must bow before it; his "Happy Valley" will not bear a comparison with the "Hall of Eblis." [See Childe Harold, Canto II. stanza xxii. line 6, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 37, note 1.

"Mansour Effendi tells the story (vide supra, line 6) thus: Frosini was niece of the Archbishop of Joannina. Mouctar Pasha ordered her to come to his harem, and her father advised her to go; she did so. Mouctar, among other presents, gave her a ring of great value, which she wished to sell, and gave it for that purpose to a merchant, who offered it to the wife of Mouctar. That lady recognized the jewel as her own, and, discovering the intrigue, complained to Ali Pasha, who, the next night, seized her himself in his own house, and ordered her to be drowned. Mansour Effendi says he had the story from the brother and son of Frosini. This son was a child of six years old, and was in bed in his mother's chamber when Ali came to carry away his mother to death. He had a confused recollection of the horrid scene."—Travels in Albania, 1858, i. Ill, note 6.

The concluding note, like the poem, was built up sentence by sentence. Lines 1-12, "forgotten," are in the MS. Line 12, "I heard," to line 17, "original," were added in the Second Edition. The next sentence, "For the contents" to "Vathek," was inserted in the Third; and the concluding paragraph, "I do not know" to the end, in the Fourth Editions.]

[ex] {146}

Nor whether most he mourned none knew.

For her he loved—or him he slew.—[MS.]