FOOTNOTES:
[332] {283}[Matteo Maria Bojardo (1434-1494) published his Orlando Innamorato in 1486; Lodovico Ariosto (1474-1533) published the Orlando Furioso in 1516. A first edition of Cantos I.-XXV. of Luigi Pulci's (1431-1487) Il Morgante Maggiore was printed surreptitiously by Luca Veneziano in 1481. Francesco Berni, who recast the Orlando Innamorato, was born circ. 1490, and died in 1536.]
[333] [John Hermann Merivale (1779-1844), the father of Charles Merivale, the historian (Dean of Ely, 1869), and of Herman, Under-Secretary for India, published his Orlando in Roncesvalles in 1814.]
[334] {284}[Parson Adams and Barnabas are characters in Joseph Andrews; Thwackum and Supple, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling.]
[335] {285}[Byron insisted, in the first place with Murray (February 7, 1820, Letters, 1900, iv. 402), and afterwards, no doubt, with the Hunts, that his translation of the Morgante Maggiore should be "put by the original, stanza for stanza, and verse for verse." In the present issue a few stanzas are inserted for purposes of comparison, but it has not been thought necessary to reprint the whole of the Canto.
"IL MORGANTE MAGGIORE.
ARGOMENTO.
"Vivendo Carlo Magno Imperadore
Co' Paladini in festa e in allegria,
Orlando contra Gano traditore
S'adira, e parte verso Pagania:
Giunge a un deserto, e del bestial furore
Di tre giganti salva una badia,
Che due n'uccide, e con Morgante elegge,
Di buon sozio e d'amico usar la legge."
CANTO PRIMO.
I.
"In principio era il Verbo appresso a Dio;
Ed era Iddio il Verbo, e 'l Verbo lui:
Quest' era nel principio, al parer mio;
E nulla si può far sanza costui:
Però, giusto Signor benigno e pio,
Mandami solo un de gli angeli tui,
Che m'accompagni, e rechimi a memoria
Una famosa antica e degna storia.
II.
"E tu, Vergine, figlia, e madre, e sposa,
Di quel Signor, che ti dette le chiave
Del cielo e dell' abisso, e d' ogni cosa,
Quel di che Gabriel tuo ti disse Ave!
Perchè tu se' de' tuo' servi pietosa,
Con dolce rime, e stil grato e soave,
Ajuta i versi miei benignamente,
E'nsino al fine allumina la mente.
III.
"Era nel tempo, quando Filomena
Colla sorella si lamenta e plora,
Che si ricorda di sua antica pena,
E pe' boschetti le ninfe innamora,
E Febo il carro temperato mena,
Che 'l suo Fetonte l'ammaestra ancora;
Ed appariva appunto all' orizzonte,
Tal che Titon si graffiava la fronte:
IV.
"Quand'io varai la mia barchetta, prima
Per ubbidir chi sempre ubbidir debbe
La mente, e faticarsi in prosa e in rima,
E del mio Carlo Imperador m'increbbe;
Che so quanti la penna ha posto in cima,
Che tutti la sua gloria prevarrebbe:
E stata quella istoria, a quel ch'i' veggio,
Di Carlo male intesa, e scritta peggio."]
[336] {287}[Philomela and Procne were daughters of Pandion, King of Attica. Tereus, son of Ares, wedded Procne, and, after the birth of her son Itys, concealed his wife in the country, with a view to dishonouring Philomela, on the plea of her sister's death. Procne discovered the plot, killed her babe, and served up his flesh in a dish for her husband's dinner. The sisters fled, and when Tereus pursued them with an axe they besought the gods to change them into birds. Thereupon Procne became a swallow, and Philomela a nightingale. So Hyginus, Fabulæ, xlv.; but there are other versions of Philomela's woes.]
[337] [In the first edition of the Morgante Maggiore (Firenze, 1482 [B.M.G. 10834]), which is said (vide the colophon) to have been issued "under the correction of the author, line 2 of this stanza runs thus: "comegliebbe u armano el suo turpino;" and, apparently, it was not till 1518 (Milano, by Zarotti) that Pipino was substituted for Turpino. Leonardo Bruni, surnamed Aretino (1369-1444), in his Istoria Fiorentina (1861, pp. 43, 47), commemorates the imperial magnificence of Carlo Magno, and speaks of his benefactions to the Church, but does not—in that work, at any rate—mention his biographers. It is possible that if Pulci or Bruni had read Eginhard, they thought that his chronicle was derogatory to Charlemagne. (See Gibbon's Decline and Fall, 1825, iii. 376, note 1, and Hallam's Europe during the Middle Ages, 1868, p. 16, note 3; et vide post, p. 309.)]
[338] {288}[For an account of the Benedictine Monastery of San Liberatore alla Majella, which lies to the south of Manoppello (eight miles southwest of Chieto, in the Abruzzi), see Monumenti Storici ed. Artistici degli Abruzzi, by V. Bindi, Naples, 1889, Part I. (Testo), pp. 655, sq. The abbey is in a ruinous condition, but on the walls of "un ampio porticato," there is still to be seen a fresco of Charlemagne, holding in his hands the deed of gift of the Abbey lands.]
[339] [That is, the valley of Jehoshaphat, the "valley where Jehovah judges" (see Joel iii. 2-12); and, hence, a favourite burial-ground of Jews and Moslems.]
[340] [The text as it stands is meaningless. Probably Byron wrote "dost arise." The reference is no doubt to the supposed restoration of Florence by Charlemagne.]
[341] {289}["The Morgante is in truth the epic of treason, and the character of Gano, as an accomplished but not utterly abandoned Judas, is admirably sustained throughout."—Renaissance in Italy, 1881, iv. 444.]
["Così per Carlo Magno e per Orlando,
Due ne segui lo mio attento sguardo,
Com' occhio segue suo falcon volando."
Del Paradiso, Canto XVIII. lines 43-45.]
[343] {296}["Macon" is another form of "Mahomet." Compare—
"O Macon! break in twain the steeléd lance."
Fairfax's Tasso, Gerusalemme Liberata, book ix. stanza xxx. line i.]
[344] [Pulci seems to have been the originator of the humorous understatement. Compare—
"And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more."
Bret Harte's Poems, The Society upon the Stanislaus, line 26.]
[345] {303} "Gli dette in su la testa un gran punzone." It is strange that Pulci should have literally anticipated the technical terms of my old friend and master, Jackson, and the art which he has carried to its highest pitch. "A punch on the head" or "a punch in the head"—"un punzone in su la testa,"—is the exact and frequent phrase of our best pugilists, who little dream that they are talking the purest Tuscan.
[346] {304}["Half a dozen invectives against tyranny confiscate Cd. Hd. in a month; and eight and twenty cantos of quizzing Monks, Knights, and Church Government, are let loose for centuries."—Letter to Murray, May 8, 1820, Letters, 1901, v. 21.]
[347] {308}[Byron could not make up his mind with regard to the translation of the Italian sbergo, which he had, correctly, rendered "cuirass." He was under the impression that the word "meant helmet also" (see his letters to Murray, March 1, 5, 1820, Letters, 1900, iv. 413-417). Sbergo or usbergo, as Moore points out (Life, p. 438, note 2), "is obviously the same as hauberk, habergeon, etc., all from the German halsberg, or covering for the neck." An old dictionary which Byron might have consulted, Vocabolario Italiano-Latino, Venice, 1794, gives thorax, lorica, as the Latin equivalent of "Usbergo = armadura del busto, corazza." (See, too, for an authority quoted in the Dizzionario Universale (1797-1805) of Alberti di Villanuova, Letters, 1900, iv. 417, note 2.)]
