FOOTNOTES:
[35] {33}[Compare—
"Come, blessed barrier between day and day."
"Sonnet to Sleep," Works of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 354.]
[36] [Compare—
"...the night's dismay
Saddened and stunned the coming day."
The Pains of Sleep, lines 33, 34, by S. T. Coleridge, Poetical Works, 1893, p. 170.]
[37] {34} [Compare Childe Harold, Canto III. stanza vi. lines 1-4, note, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 219.]
[38] [Compare—
"With us acts are exempt from time, and we
Can crowd eternity into an hour."
Cain, act i. sc. 1]
[i] {35}
——she was his sight,
For never did he turn his glance until
Her own had led by gazing on an object.—[MS.]
[39] [Compare—
"Thou art my life, my love, my heart,
The very eyes of me."
To Anthea, etc., by Robert Herrick.]
[40] [Compare—
"...the river of your love,
Must in the ocean of your affection
To me, be swallowed up."
Massinger's Unnatural Combat, act iii. sc. 4.]
[41] [Compare—
"The hot blood ebbed and flowed again."
Parisina, line 226, Poetical Works, 1900, iii. 515.]
[42] ["Annesley Lordship is owned by Miss Chaworth, a minor heiress of the Chaworth family."—Throsby's Thoroton's History of Nottinghamshire, 1797, ii. 270.]
[43] ["Moore, commenting on this (Life, p. 28), tells us that the image of the lover's steed was suggested by the Nottingham race-ground ... nine miles off, and ... lying in a hollow, and totally hidden from view.... Mary Chaworth, in fact, was looking for her lover's steed along the road as it winds up the common from Hucknall."-"A Byronian Ramble," Athenæum, No. 357, August 30, 1834.]
[44] {36}[Moore (Life, p. 28) regards "the antique oratory," as a poetical equivalent for Annesley Hall; but vide ante, the Introduction to The Dream, p. 31.]
[45] [Compare—
"Love by the object loved is soon discerned."
Story of Rimini, by Leigh Hunt, Canto III. ed. 1844, p. 22.
The line does not occur in the first edition, published early in 1816, or, presumably, in the MS. read by Byron in the preceding year. (See Letter to Murray, November 4, 1815.)]
[46] {37}[Byron once again revisited Annesley Hall in the autumn of 1808 (see his lines, "Well, thou art happy," and "To a Lady," etc., Poetical Works, 1898, i. 277, 282, note 1); but it is possible that he avoided the "massy gate" ("arched over and surmounted by a clock and cupola") of set purpose, and entered by another way. He would not lightly or gladly have taken a liberty with the actual prosaic facts in a matter which so nearly concerned his personal emotions (vide ante, the Introduction to The Dream, p. 31).]
[47] ["This is true keeping—an Eastern picture perfect in its foreground, and distance, and sky, and no part of which is so dwelt upon or laboured as to obscure the principal figure."—Sir Walter Scott, Quarterly Review, No. xxxi. "Byron's Dream" is the subject of a well-known picture by Sir Charles Eastlake.]
[48] {38}[Compare—
"Then Cythna turned to me and from her eyes
Which swam with unshed tears," etc.
Shelley's Revolt of Islam ("Laon and Cythna"),
Canto XII. stanza xxii. lines 2, 3, Poetical Works, 1829, p. 48.]
[49] [An old servant of the Chaworth family, Mary Marsden, told Washington Irving (Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey, 1835, p. 204) that Byron used to call Mary Chaworth "his bright morning star of Annesley." Compare the well-known lines—
"She was a form of Life and Light,
That, seen, became a part of sight;
And rose, where'er I turned mine eye,
The Morning-star of Memory!"
The Giaour, lines 1127-1130, Poetical Works, 1900, iii. 136, 137.]
[50] ["This touching picture agrees closely, in many of its circumstances, with Lord Byron's own prose account of the wedding in his Memoranda; in which he describes himself as waking, on the morning of his marriage, with the most melancholy reflections, on seeing his wedding-suit spread out before him. In the same mood, he wandered about the grounds alone, till he was summoned for the ceremony, and joined, for the first time on that day, his bride and her family. He knelt down—he repeated the words after the clergyman; but a mist was before his eyes—his thoughts were elsewhere: and he was but awakened by the congratulations of the bystanders to find that he was—married."—Life, p. 272.
Medwin, too, makes Byron say (Conversations, etc., 1824, p. 46) that he "trembled like a leaf, made the wrong responses, and after the ceremony called her (the bride) Miss Milbanke." All that can be said of Moore's recollection of the "memoranda," or Medwin's repetition of so-called conversations (reprinted almost verbatim in Life, Writings, Opinions, etc., 1825, ii. 227, seq., as "Recollections of the Lately Destroyed Manuscript," etc.), is that they tend to show that Byron meant The Dream to be taken literally as a record of actual events. He would not have forgotten by July, 1816, circumstances of great import which had taken place in December, 1815: and he's either lying of malice prepense or telling "an ower true tale."]
[j] {40}
——the glance
Of melancholy is a fearful gift;
For it becomes the telescope of truth,
And shows us all things naked as they are.—[MS.]
[51] [Compare—
"Who loves, raves—'tis youth's frenzy—but the cure
Is bitterer still, as charm by charm unwinds
Which robed our idols, and we see too sure
Nor Worth nor Beauty dwells from out the mind's
Ideal shape of such."
Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanza cxxiii. lines 1-5,
Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 420.]
[52] Mithridates of Pontus. [Mithridates, King of Pontus (B.C. 120-63), surnamed Eupator, succeeded to the throne when he was only eleven years of age. He is said to have safeguarded himself against the designs of his enemies by drugging himself with antidotes against poison, and so effectively that, when he was an old man, he could not poison himself, even when he was minded to do so—"ut ne volens quidem senex veneno mori potuerit."—Justinus, Hist., lib. xxxvii. cap. ii.
According to Medwin (Conversations, p. 148), Byron made use of the same illustration in speaking of Polidori's death (April, 1821), which was probably occasioned by "poison administered to himself" (see Letters, 1899, iii. 285).]
[53] {41}[Compare—
"Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends."
Childe Harold, Canto III. stanza xiii. line 1.
"...and to me
High mountains are a feeling."
Ibid., stanza lxxii. lines 2,3, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 223, 261.]
[54] [Compare—
"Ye Spirits of the unbounded Universe!"
Manfred, act i. sc. 1, line 29, vide post, p. 86.]
[55] [Compare Manfred, act ii. sc. 2, lines 79-91; and ibid., act iii. sc. 1, lines 34-39; and sc. 4, lines 112-117, vide post, pp. 105, 121, 135.]
[k] {42} In the original MS. A Dream.
[56] [Sir Walter Scott (Quarterly Review, October, 1816, vol. xvi. p. 204) did not take kindly to Darkness. He regarded the "framing of such phantasms" as "a dangerous employment for the exalted and teeming imagination of such a poet as Lord Byron. The waste of boundless space into which they lead the poet, the neglect of precision which such themes may render habitual, make them in respect to poetry what mysticism is to religion." Poetry of this kind, which recalled "the wild, unbridled, and fiery imagination of Coleridge," was a novel and untoward experiment on the part of an author whose "peculiar art" it was "to show the reader where his purpose tends." The resemblance to Coleridge is general rather than particular. It is improbable that Scott had ever read Limbo (first published in Sibylline Leaves, 1817), an attempt to depict the "mere horror of blank nought-at-all;" but it is possible that he had in his mind the following lines (384-390) from Religious Musings, in which "the final destruction is impersonated" (see Coleridge's note) in the "red-eyed Fiend:"—
"For who of woman born may paint the hour,
When seized in his mid course, the Sun shall wane,
Making the noon ghastly! Who of woman born
May image in the workings of his thought,
How the black-visaged, red-eyed Fiend outstretched
Beneath the unsteady feet of Nature groans
In feverous slumbers?"
Poetical Works, 1893, p. 60.
Another and a less easily detected source of inspiration has been traced (see an article on Campbell's Last Man, in the London Magazine and Review, 1825, New Series, i. 588, seq.) to a forgotten but once popular novel entitled The Last Man, or Omegarus and Syderia, a Romance in Futurity (two vols. 1806). Kölbing (Prisoner of Chillon, etc., pp. 136-140) adduces numerous quotations in support of this contention. The following may serve as samples: "As soon as the earth had lost with the moon her guardian star, her decay became more rapid.... Some, in their madness, destroyed the instruments of husbandry, others in deep despair summoned death to their relief. Men began to look on each other with eyes of enmity" (i. 105). "The sun exhibited signs of decay, its surface turned pale, and its beams were frigid. The northern nations dreaded perishing by intense cold ... and fled to the torrid zone to court the sun's beneficial rays" (i. 120). "The reign of Time was over, ages of Eternity were going to begin; but at the same moment Hell shrieked with rage, and the sun and stars were extinguished. The gloomy night of chaos enveloped the world, plaintive sounds issued from mountains, rocks, and caverns,—Nature wept, and a doleful voice was heard exclaiming in the air, 'The human race is no more!'"(ii. 197).
It is difficult to believe that Byron had not read, and more or less consciously turned to account, the imagery of this novel; but it is needless to add that any charge of plagiarism falls to the ground. Thanks to a sensitive and appreciative ear and a retentive memory, Byron's verse is interfused with manifold strains, but, so far as Darkness is concerned, his debt to Coleridge or the author of Omegarus and Syderia is neither more nor less legitimate than the debt to Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Joel, which a writer in the Imperial Magazine (1828, x. 699), with solemn upbraidings, lays to his charge.
The duty of acknowledging such debts is, indeed, "a duty of imperfect obligation." The well-known lines in Tennyson's Locksley Hall—
"Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue!"
is surely an echo of an earlier prophecy from the pen of the author of Omegarus and Syderia: "In the center the heavens were seen darkened by legions of armed vessels, making war on each other!... The soldiers fell in frightful numbers.... Their blood stained the soft verdure of the trees, and their scattered bleeding limbs covered the fields and the roofs of the labourers' cottages" (i. 68). But such "conveyings" are honourable to the purloiner. See, too, the story of the battle between the Vulture-cavalry and the Sky-gnats, in Lucian's Veræ Historiæ, i. 16.]
[57] {44}
["If thou speak'st false,
Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,
Till famine cling thee."
Macbeth, act V. sc. 5, lines 38-40.
Fruit is said to be "clung" when the skin shrivels, and a corpse when the face becomes wasted and gaunt.]
[58] {45}[So, too, Vathek and Nouronihar, in the Hall of Eblis, waited "in direful suspense the moment which should render them to each other ... objects of terror."—Vathek, by W. Beckford, 1887, p. 185.]
[59] [Charles Churchill was born in February, 1731, and died at Boulogne, November 4, 1764. The body was brought to Dover and buried in the churchyard attached to the demolished church of St. Martin-le-Grand ("a small deserted cemetery in an obscure lane behind [i.e. above] the market"). See note by Charles De la Pryme, Notes and Queries, 1854, Series I. vol. x. p. 378. There is a tablet to his memory on the south wall of St. Mary's Church, and the present headstone in the graveyard (it was a "plain headstone" in 1816) bears the following inscription:—
"1764.
Here lie the remains of the celebrated
C. Churchill.
'Life to the last enjoy'd, here Churchill lies.'"
Churchill had been one of Byron's earlier models, and the following lines from The Candidate, which suggested the epitaph (lines 145-154), were, doubtless, familiar to him:—
"Let one poor sprig of Bay around my head
Bloom whilst I live, and point me out when dead;
Let it (may Heav'n indulgent grant that prayer)
Be planted on my grave, nor wither there;
And when, on travel bound, some rhyming guest
Roams through the churchyard, whilst his dinner's drest,
Let it hold up this comment to his eyes;
Life to the last enjoy'd, here Churchill lies;
Whilst (O, what joy that pleasing flatt'ry gives)
Reading my Works he cries—here Churchill lives."
Byron spent Sunday, April 25, 1816, at Dover. He was to sail that night for Ostend, and, to while away the time, "turned to Pilgrim" and thought out, perhaps began to write, the lines which were finished three months later at the Campagne Diodati.
"The Grave of Churchill," writes Scott (Quarterly Review, October, 1816), "might have called from Lord Byron a deeper commemoration; for, though they generally differed in character and genius, there was a resemblance between their history and character.... both these poets held themselves above the opinion of the world, and both were followed by the fame and popularity which they seemed to despise. The writings of both exhibit an inborn, though sometimes ill-regulated, generosity of mind, and a spirit of proud independence, frequently pushed to extremes. Both carried their hatred of hypocrisy beyond the verge of prudence, and indulged their vein of satire to the borders of licentiousness."
Save for the affectation of a style which did not belong to him, and which in his heart he despised, Byron's commemoration of Churchill does not lack depth or seriousness. It was the parallel between their lives and temperaments which awoke reflection and sympathy, and prompted this "natural homily." Perhaps, too, the shadow of impending exile had suggested to his imagination that further parallel which Scott deprecated, and deprecated in vain, "death in the flower of his age, and in a foreign land."]
[60] {46}[On the sheet containing the original draft of these lines Lord Byron has written, "The following poem (as most that I have endeavoured to write) is founded on a fact; and this detail is an attempt at a serious imitation of the style of a great poet—its beauties and its defects: I say the style; for the thoughts I claim as my own. In this, if there be anything ridiculous, let it be attributed to me, at least as much as to Mr. Wordsworth: of whom there can exist few greater admirers than myself. I have blended what I would deem to be the beauties as well as defects of his style; and it ought to be remembered, that, in such things, whether there be praise or dispraise, there is always what is called a compliment, however unintentional." There is, as Scott points out, a much closer resemblance to Southey's "English Eclogues, in which moral truths are expressed, to use the poet's own language, 'in an almost colloquial plainness of language,' and an air of quaint and original expression assumed, to render the sentiment at once impressive and piquant."]
[61] {47}[Compare—
"The under-earth inhabitants—are they
But mingled millions decomposed to clay?"
A Fragment, lines 23, 24, vide post, p. 52.
It is difficult to "extricate" the meaning of lines 19-25, but, perhaps, they are intended to convey a hope of immortality. "As I was speaking, the sexton (the architect) tried to answer my question by taxing his memory with regard to the occupants of the several tombs. He might well be puzzled, for 'Earth is but a tombstone,' covering an amalgam of dead bodies, and, unless in another life soul were separated from soul, as on earth body is distinct from body, Newton himself, who disclosed 'the turnpike-road through the unpaved stars' (Don Juan, Canto X. stanza ii. line 4), would fail to assign its proper personality to any given lump of clay."]
[62] {48}[Compare—
"But here [i.e. in 'the realm of death'] all is
So shadowy and so full of twilight, that
It speaks of a day past."
Cain, act ii. sc. 2.
——then most pleased, I shook
My inmost pocket's most retired nook,
And out fell five and sixpence.—[MS.]
[64] [Byron was a lover and worshipper of Prometheus as a boy. His first English exercise at Harrow was a paraphrase of a chorus of the Prometheus Vinctus of Æschylus, line 528, sq. (see Poetical Works, 1898, i. 14). Referring to a criticism on Manfred (Edinburgh Review, vol xxviii. p. 431) he writes (October 12, 1817, Letters, 1900, iv. 174): "The Prometheus, if not exactly in my plan, has always been so much in my head, that I can easily conceive its influence over all or any thing that I have written." The conception of an immortal sufferer at once beneficent and defiant, appealed alike to his passions and his convictions, and awoke a peculiar enthusiasm. His poems abound with allusions to the hero and the legend. Compare the first draft of stanza xvi. of the Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte (Poetical Works, 1900, iii. 312, var. ii.); The Prophecy of Dante, iv. 10, seq.; the Irish Avatar, stanza xii. line 2, etc.]
[65] {49}[Compare—
Τοιαῦτ' ἐπηύρου τοῦ φιλανθρώπου τρόπου
P. V., line 28.
Compare, too—
Θνητὸυς δ' ἐν οἴ.κtῳ προθέμενος, τούτου τυχεῖν
Οὐκ ἠξιώθην αὐτὸς
Ibid., lines 241, 242.]
[66] [Compare—
Διὸς γὰρ δυσπαραίτητοι φρένες.
Ibid., line 34.
Compare, too—
...γιγνώσκονθ' ὅτι
Τὸ τῆς ἀνάγκης ἐστ' ἀδήριτον σθένος
Ibid., line 105.]
[67] {50}[Compare—
"The maker—call him
Which name thou wilt; he makes but to destroy."
Cain, act i. sc. 1.
Compare, too—
"And the Omnipotent, who makes and crushes."
Heaven and Earth, Part I. sc. 3.]
[68] [Compare—
Ὄτῳ θανεῖν μέν ἐστιν οὐ πεπρωμένον
P. V., line 754.]
[69][Compare—
...πάντα προὐξεπίσταμαι
Σκεθρῶς τά μέλλοντα
Ibid., lines 101, 102.]
[70] [Compare—
Θνητοῖς δ' ἀήγων αὐτὸς εὑρόμην πόνους.
Ibid., line 269.]
[71] {51}[Compare—
"But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we,
Half dust, half deity."
Manfred, act i. sc. 2, lines 39, 40, vide post, p. 95.]
[m]——and equal to all woes.—[Editions 1832, etc.]
[72] [The edition of 1832 and subsequent issues read "and equal." It is clear that the earlier reading, "an equal," is correct. The spirit opposed by the spirit is an equal, etc. The spirit can also oppose to "its own funereal destiny" a firm will, etc.]
[73] [A Fragment, which remained unpublished till 1830, was written at the same time as Churchill's Grave (July, 1816), and is closely allied to it in purport and in sentiment. It is a questioning of Death! O Death, what is thy sting? There is an analogy between exile end death. As Churchill lay in his forgotten grave at Dover, one of "many millions decomposed to clay," so he the absent is dead to the absent, and the absent are dead to him. And what are the dead? the aggregate of nothingness? or are they a multitude of atoms having neither part nor lot one with the other? There is no solution but in the grave. Death alone can unriddle death. The poet's questioning spirit would plunge into the abyss to bring back the answer.]
[74] {52}[Compare—
"'Tis said thou holdest converse with the things
Which are forbidden to the search of man;
That with the dwellers of the dark abodes,
The many evil and unheavenly spirits
Which walk the valley of the Shade of Death,
Thou communest."
Manfred, act iii. sc. 1, lines 34, seq., vide post, p. 121.]
[75] {53} Geneva, Ferney, Copet, Lausanne. [For Rousseau, see Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 277, note 1, 300, 301, note 18; for Voltaire and Gibbon, vide ibid., pp. 306, 307, note 22; and for De Staël, see Letters, 1898, ii. 223, note 1. Byron, writing to Moore, January 2, 1821, declares, on the authority of Monk Lewis, "who was too great a bore ever to lie," that Madame de Staël alleged this sonnet, "in which she was named with Voltaire, Rousseau, etc.," as a reason for changing her opinion about him—"she could not help it through decency" (Letters, 1901, v. 213). It is difficult to believe that Madame de Staël was ashamed of her companions, or was sincere in disclaiming the compliment, though, as might have been expected, the sonnet excited some disapprobation in England. A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine (February, 1818, vol. 88, p. 122) relieved his feelings by a "Retort Addressed to the Thames"—
"Restor'd to my dear native Thames' bank,
My soul disgusted spurns a Byron's lay,—
Leman may idly boast her Staël, Rousseau,
Gibbon, Voltaire, whom Truth and Justice shun—
Whilst meekly shines midst Fulham's bowers the sun
O'er Sherlock's and o'er Porteus' honour'd graves,
Where Thames Britannia's choicest meads exulting laves."]
[76] [Compare—
"Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face."
Childe Harold, Canto III. stanza lxviii. line 1,
Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 257.]
[n] {54} Stanzas To——.—[Editions 1816-1830.]
"Though the Day."—[MS. in Mrs. Leigh's handwriting.]
[77] [The "Stanzas to Augusta" were written in July, at the Campagne Diodati, near Geneva. "Be careful," he says, "in printing the stanzas beginning, 'Though the day of my Destiny's,' etc., which I think well of as a composition."—Letter to Murray, October 5, 1816, Letters, 1899, iii. 371.]
Though the days of my Glory are over,
And the Sun of my fame has declined.—[Dillon MS.]
[p]——had painted.—[MS.]
[78] [Compare—
"Dear Nature is the kindest mother still!...
To me by day or night she ever smiled."
Childe Harold, Canto II. stanza xxxvii. lines 1, 7, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 122.]
[q] I will not——.—[MS. erased.]
[r] {55} As the breasts I reposed in with me.—[MS.]
Though the rock of my young hope is shivered,
And its fragments lie sunk in the wave.—[MS. erased.]
There is many a pang to pursue me,
And many a peril to stem;
They may torture, but shall not subdue me;
They may crush, but they shall not contemn.—[MS. erased.]
And I think not of thee but of them.—[MS. erased.]
[u] Though tempted——.—[MS.]
[79] [Compare Childe Harold, Canto III. stanzas liii., lv., Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 247, 248, note 1.]
Though watchful, 'twas but to reclaim me,
Nor, silent, to sanction a lie.—[MS.]
[80] {56}[Compare—
"Had I but sooner learnt the crowd to shun,
I had been better than I now can be."
Epistle to Augusta, stanza xii. lines 5, 6, vide post, p. 61.
Compare, too—
"But soon he knew himself the most unfit
Of men to herd with Man."
Childe Harold, Canto III. stanza xii. lines 1, 2,
Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 223.]
And more than I then could foresee.
I have met but the fate that hath crost me.—[MS.]
[x] In the wreck of the past—[MS.]
In the Desert there still are sweet waters,
In the wild waste a sheltering tree.—[MS.]
[81] [Byron often made use of this illustration. Compare—
"My Peri! ever welcome here!
Sweet, as the desert fountain's wave."
The Bride of Abydos, Canto I. lines 151, 152, Poetical Works, 1900, iii. 163.]
[82] [For Hobhouse's parody of these stanzas, see Letters, 1900, iv. 73,74.]
[83] {57}[These stanzas—"than which," says the Quarterly Review for January, 1831, "there is nothing, perhaps, more mournfully and desolately beautiful in the whole range of Lord Byron's poetry," were also written at Diodati, and sent home to be published, if Mrs. Leigh should consent. She decided against publication, and the "Epistle" was not printed till 1830. Her first impulse was to withhold her consent to the publication of the "Stanzas to Augusta," as well as the "Epistle," and to say, "Whatever is addressed to me do not publish," but on second thoughts she decided that "the least objectionable line will be to let them be published."—See her letters to Murray, November 1, 8, 1816, Letters, 1899, iii. 366, note 1.]
Go where thou wilt thou art to me the same—
A loud regret which I would not resign.—[MS.]
[84] [Compare—
"Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair Spirit for my minister!"
Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanza clxxvii. lines 1, 2, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 456.]
[aa] But other cares——.—[MS.]
[ab] A strange doom hath been ours, but that is past.—[MS.]
[85] ["Admiral Byron was remarkable for never making a voyage without a tempest. He was known to the sailors by the facetious name of 'Foul-weather Jack' [or 'Hardy Byron'].
"'But, though it were tempest-toss'd,
Still his bark could not be lost.'
He returned safely from the wreck of the Wager (in Anson's voyage), and many years after circumnavigated the world, as commander of a similar expedition" (Moore). Admiral the Hon. John Byron (1723-1786), next brother to William, fifth Lord Byron, published his Narrative of his shipwreck in the Wager in 1768, and his Voyage round the World in the Dolphin, in 1767 (Letters, 1898, i. 3).]
[ac] {58}
I am not yet o'erwhelmed that I shall ever lean
A thought upon such Hope as daily mocks.—[MS. erased.]
[86] [For Byron's belief in predestination, compare Childe Harold, Canto I. stanza lxxxiii. line 9, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 74, note 1.]
[ad] {59} For to all such may change of soul refer.—[MS.]
Have hardened me to this—but I can see
Things which I still can love—but none like thee.—[MS. erased.]
{Before I had to study far more useless books.—[MS. erased,]
Ere my young mind was fettered down to books.
[ag] Some living things——-.—[MS.]
[87] [Compare—
"Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, when we are least alone."
Childe Harold, Canto III. stanza xc. lines 1, 2,
Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 272]
[88] {60}[For a description of the lake at Newstead, see Don Juan, Canto XIII. stanza lvii.]
[ah] And think of such things with a childish eye.—[MS.]
[89] {61}[Compare—
"He who first met the Highland's swelling blue,
Will love each peak, that shows a kindred hue,
Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face,
And clasp the mountain in his mind's embrace."
The Island, Canto II. stanza xii. lines 9-12.
His "friends are mountains." He comes back to them as to a "holier land," where he may find not happiness, but peace.
Moore was inclined to attribute Byron's "love of mountain prospects" in his childhood to the "after-result of his imaginative recollections of that period," but (as Wilson, commenting on Moore, suggests) it is easier to believe that the "high instincts" of the "poetic child" did not wait for association to consecrate the vision (Life, p. 8).]
The earliest were the only paths for me.
The earliest were the paths and meant for me.—[MS. erased.]
Yet could I but expunge from out the book
Of my existence all that was entwined.—[MS. erased.]
My life has been too long—if in a day
I have survived——.—[MS. erased.]
[90] {62}[Byron often insists on this compression of life into a yet briefer span than even mortality allows. Compare—
"He, who grown aged in this world of woe,
In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life," etc.
Childe Harold, Canto III. stanza v. lines 1, 2,
Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 218, note 1.
Compare, too—
"My life is not dated by years—
There are moments which act as a plough," etc.
Lines to the Countess of Blessington, stanza 4.]
[al] And for the remnants——.—[MS.]
[am] Whate'er betide——.—[MS.]
[an] We have been and we shall be——.—[MS. erased.]
[91] {63}["These verses," says John Wright (ed. 1832, x. 207), "of which the opening lines (1-6) are given in Moore's Notices, etc. (1830, ii. 36), were written immediately after the failure of the negotiation ... [i.e. the intervention] of Madame de Staël, who had persuaded Byron 'to write a letter to a friend in England, declaring himself still willing to be reconciled to Lady Byron' (Life, p. 321), but were not intended for the public eye." The verses were written in September, and it is evident that since the composition of The Dream in July, another "change had come over" his spirit, and that the mild and courteous depreciation of his wife as "a gentle bride," etc., had given place to passionate reproach and bitter reviling. The failure of Madame de Staël's negotiations must have been to some extent anticipated, and it is more reasonable to suppose that it was a rumour or report of the "one serious calumny" of Shelley's letter of September 29, 1816, which provoked him to fury, and drove him into the open maledictions of The Incantation (published together with the Prisoner of Chillon, but afterwards incorporated with Manfred, act i. sc. 1, vide post, p. 91), and the suppressed "lines," written, so he told Lady Blessington (Conversations, etc., 1834, p. 79) "on reading in a newspaper" that Lady Byron had been ill.]
[92] [Compare—
" ... that unnatural retribution—just,
Had it but been from hands less near."
Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanza cxxxii. lines 6, 7,
Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 427.]
[93] {64}[Compare—
"Though thy slumber may be deep,
Yet thy Spirit shall not sleep.
Nor to slumber nor to die,
Shall be in thy destiny."
[94] [Compare "I suppose now I shall never be able to shake off my sables in public imagination, more particularly since my moral ... [Clytemnestra?] clove down my fame" (Letter to Moore, March 10, 1817, Letters, 1900, iv. 72). The same expression, "my moral Clytemnestra," is applied to his wife in a letter to Lord Blessington, dated April 6, 1823. It may be noted that it was in April, 1823, that Byron presented a copy of the "Lines," etc., to Lady Blessington (Conversations, etc., 1834, p. 79).]
[95] {65}[Compare—
"By thy delight in others' pain."
Manfred, act i. sc. i, line 248, vide post, p. 93.]
[96] [Compare—
" ... but that high Soul secured the heart,
And panted for the truth it could not hear."
A Sketch, lines 18, 19, Poetical Works, 1900, iii. 541.]
[97] [Compare Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanza cxxxvi. lines 6-9, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 430.]
