[1] {7} [In the first draft, the sonnet opens thus—

"Belovéd Goddess of the chainless mind!

Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,

Thy palace is within the Freeman's heart,

Whose soul the love of thee alone can bind;

And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd—

To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,

Thy joy is with them still, and unconfined,

Their country conquers with their martyrdom."

Ed. 1832.]

[2] [Compare—

"I appeal from her [sc. Florence] to Thee."

Proph. of Dante, Canto I. line 125.]

[a] {8} When the foregoing.... Some account of his life will be found in a note appended to the Sonnet on Chillon, with which I have been furnished, etc.—[Notes, The Prisoner of Chillon, etc., 1816, p. 59.]

[3] {13} Ludovico Sforza, and others.—The same is asserted of Marie Antoinette's, the wife of Louis the Sixteenth, though not in quite so short a period. Grief is said to have the same effect; to such, and not to fear, this change in hers was to be attributed.

[It has been said that the Queen's hair turned grey during the return from Varennes to Paris; but Carlyle (French Revolution, 1839, i. 182) notes that as early as May 4, 1789, on the occasion of the assembly of the States-General, "Her hair is already grey with many cares and crosses."

Compare "Thy father's beard is turned white with the news" (Shakespeare, I Henry IV., act ii. sc. 4, line 345); and—

"For deadly fear can time outgo,

And blanch at once the hair."

Marmion, Canto I. stanza xxviii. lines 19, 20.]

[b] But with the inward waste of grief.—[MS.]

[4] [The N. Engl. Dict., art. "Ban," gives this passage as the earliest instance of the use of the verb "to ban" in the sense of "to interdict, to prohibit." Exception was taken to this use of the word in the Crit. Rev., 1817, Series V. vol. iv. p. 571.]

[5] {14} [Compare the epitaph on the monument of Richard Lord Byron, in the chancel of Hucknall-Torkard Church, "Beneath in a vault is interred the body of Richard Lord Byron, who with the rest of his family, being seven brothers," etc. (Elze's Life of Lord Byron, p. 4, note 1).

Compare, too, Churchill's Prophecy of Famine, lines 391, 392—

"Five brothers there I lost, in manhood's pride,

Two in the field and three on gibbets died."

The Bonivard of history had but two brothers, Amblard and another.]

[c] Braving rancour—chains—and rage.—[MS.]

[6] ["This is really so: the loop-holes that are partly stopped up are now but long crevices or clefts, but Bonivard, from the spot where he was chained, could, perhaps, never get an idea of the loveliness and variety of radiating light which the sunbeam shed at different hours of the day.... In the morning this light is of luminous and transparent shining, which the curves of the vaults send back all along the hall. Victor Hugo (Le Rhin, ... Hachette, 1876, I. iii. pp. 123-131) describes this ... 'Le phénomène de la grotto d'azur s'accomplit dans le souterrain de Chillon, et le lac de Genève n'y réussit pas moins bien que la Méditerranée.' During the afternoon the hall assumes a much deeper and warmer colouring, and the blue transparency of the morning disappears; but at eventide, after the sun has set behind the Jura, the scene changes to the deep glow of fire ..."—Guide to the Castle of Chillon, by A. Naef, architect, 1896, pp, 35, 36.]

[7] {15}[Compare—

"One little marshy spark of flame."

Def. Trans., Part I. sc. I.

Kölbing notes six other allusions in Byron's works to the "will-o'-the-wisp," but omits the line in the "Incantation" (Manfred, act i. sc. I, line 195)—

"And the wisp on the morass,"

which the Italian translator would have rendered "bundle of straw" (see Letter to Hoppner, February 28, 1818, Letters, 1900, iv. 204, note 2, et post p. 92, note 1).]

[8] [This "...is not exactly so; the third column does not seem to have ever had a ring, but the traces of these rings are very visible in the two first columns from the entrance, although the rings have been removed; and on the three last we find the rings still riveted on the darkest side of the pillars where they face the rock, so that the unfortunate prisoners chained there were even bereft of light.... The fifth column is said to be the one to which Bonivard was chained during four years. Byron's name is carved on the southern side of the third column ... on the seventh tympanum, at about 1 metre 45 from the lower edge of the shaft." Much has been written for and against the authenticity of this inscription, which, according to M. Naef, the author of Guide, was carved by Byron himself, "with an antique ivory-mounted stiletto, which had been discovered in the duke's room."—Guide, etc., pp. 39-42. The inscription was in situ as early as August 22, 1820, as Mr. Richard Edgcumbe points out (Notes and Queries, Series V. xi. 487).]

[d] {16}——pined in heart.—[Editions 1816-1837.]

[9] [Compare, for similarity of sound—

"Thou tree of covert and of rest

For this young Bird that is distrest."

Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, by W. Wordsworth, Works, 1889, p. 364.

Compare, too—

"She came into the cave, but it was merely

To see her bird reposing in his nest."

Don Juan, Canto II. stanza clxviii. lines 3, 4.]

[10] {17}[Compare—

"Those polar summers, all sun, and some ice."

Don Juan, Canto XII. stanza lxxii. line 8.]

[11] {18} [Ruskin (Modern Painters, Part IV. chap. i. sect. 9, "Touching the Grand Style," 1888, iii. 8, 9) criticizes these five lines 107-111, and points out that, alike in respect of accuracy and inaccuracy of detail, they fulfil the conditions of poetry in contradistinction to history. "Instead," he concludes, "of finding, as we expected, the poetry distinguished from the history by the omission of details, we find it consisting entirely in the addition of details; and instead of it being characterized by regard only of the invariable, we find its whole power to consist in the clear expression of what is singular and particular!"]

[12] The Château de Chillon is situated between Clarens and Villeneuve, which last is at one extremity of the Lake of Geneva. On its left are the entrances of the Rhone, and opposite are the heights of Meillerie and the range of Alps above Boveret and St. Gingo. Near it, on a hill behind, is a torrent: below it, washing its walls, the lake has been fathomed to the depth of 800 feet, French measure: within it are a range of dungeons, in which the early reformers, and subsequently prisoners of state, were confined. Across one of the vaults is a beam black with age, on which we were informed that the condemned were formerly executed. In the cells are seven pillars, or, rather, eight, one being half merged in the wall; in some of these are rings for the fetters and the fettered: in the pavement the steps of Bonnivard have left their traces. He was confined here several years. It is by this castle that Rousseau has fixed the catastrophe of his Héloïse, in the rescue of one of her children by Julie from the water; the shock of which, and the illness produced by the immersion, is the cause of her death. The château is large, and seen along the lake for a great distance. The walls are white.

["Le château de Chillon ... est situé dans le lac sur un rocher qui forme une presqu'isle, et autour du quel j'ai vu sonder à plus de cent cinquante brasses qui font près de huit cents pieds, sans trouver le fond. On a creusé dans ce rocher des caves et des cuisines au-dessous du niveau de l'eau, qu'on y introduit, quand on veut, par des robinets. C'est-là que fut détenu six ans prisonnier François Bonnivard ... homme d'un mérite rare, d'une droiture et d'une fermeté à toute épreuve, ami de la liberté, quoique Savoyard, et tolérant quoique prêtre," etc. (La Nouvelle Héloïse, par J. J. Rousseau, partie vi. Lettre 8, note (1); Oeuvres complètes, 1836, ii. 356, note 1).

With Byron's description of Chillon, compare that of Shelley, contained in a letter to Peacock, dated July 12, 1816 (Prose Works of P. B. Shelley, 1880, ii. 171, sq.). The belief or tradition that Bonivard's prison is "below the surface of the lake," for which Shelley as well as Rousseau is responsible, but which Byron only records in verse, may be traced to a statement attributed to Bonivard himself, who says (Mémoires, etc., 1843, iv. 268) that the commandant thrust him "en unes croctes desquelles le fond estoit plus bas que le lac sur lequel Chillon estoit citue." As a matter of fact, "the level [of les souterrains] is now three metres higher than the level of the water, and even if we take off the difference arising from the fact that the level of the lake was once much higher, and that the floor of the halls has been raised, still the halls must originally have been built about two metres above the surface of the lake."—Guide, etc., pp. 28, 29.]

[13] {19} [The "real Bonivard" might have indulged in and, perhaps, prided himself on this feeble and irritating paronomasy; but nothing can be less in keeping with the bearing and behaviour of the tragic and sententious Bonivard of the legend.]

[14] [Compare—

"...I'm a forester and breather

Of the steep mountain-tops."

Werner, act iv. sc. 1.]

[e] But why withhold the blow?—he died. [MS.]

[f] {20} To break or bite——.—[MS.]

[15] [Compare "With the aid of Suleiman's ataghan and my own sabre, we scooped a shallow grave upon the spot which Darvell had indicated" (A fragment of a Novel by Byron, Letters, 1899, iii. Appendix IX. p. 452).]

[16] [Compare—

"And to be wroth with one we love

Doth work like madness in the brain."

Christabel, by S. T. Coleridge, part ii. lines 412, 413.]

[17] [It is said that his parents handed him over to the care of his uncle, Jean-Aimé Bonivard, when he was still an infant, and it is denied that his father was "literally put to death."]

[18] {21} [Kölbing quotes parallel uses of the same expression in Werner, act iv. sc. 1; Churchill's The Times, line 341, etc.; but does not give the original—

"But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd,

Than that which, withering on the virgin-thorn," etc.

Midsummer Night's Dream, act i. sc. i, lines 76, 77.]

[19] [Compare—

"The first, last look of Death revealed."

The Giaour, line 89, note 2.

Byron was a connoisseur of the incidents and by-play of "sudden death," so much so that Goethe was under the impression that he had been guilty of a venial murder (see his review of Manfred in his paper Kunst and Alterthum, Letters, 1901, v. 506, 507). A year after these lines were written, when he was at Rome (Letter to Murray, May 30, 1817), he saw three robbers guillotined, and observed himself and them from a psychological standpoint.

"The ghastly bed of Sin" (lines 182, 183) may be a reminiscence of the death-bed of Lord Falkland (English Bards, etc., lines 680-686; Poetical Works, 1898, i. 351, note 2).]

[20] {22} [Compare—

"And yet I could not die."

Ancient Mariner, Part IV. line 262.]

[21] {23} [Compare—

"I wept not; so all stone I felt within."

Dante's Inferno, xxxiii. 47 (Cary's translation).]

[22] {24}[Compare "Song by Glycine"—

"A sunny shaft did I behold,

From sky to earth it slanted;

And poised therein a bird so bold—

Sweet bird, thou wert enchanted," etc.

Zapolya, by S. T. Coleridge, act ii. sc. 1.]

[23] [Compare—

"When Ruth was left half desolate,

Her Father took another Mate."

Ruth, by W. Wordsworth, Works, 1889, p. 121.]

[24] ["The souls of the blessed are supposed by some of the Mahommedans to animate green birds in the groves of Paradise."—Note to Southey's Thalaba, bk. xi. stanza 5, line 13.]

[25] {25}[Compare—

"I wandered lonely as a cloud."

Works of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 205.]

[26] [Compare—

"Yet some did think that he had little business here."

Ibid., p. 183.

Compare, too, The Dream, line 166, vide post, p. 39—

"What business had they there at such a time?"]

[27] {26}[Compare—

"He sighed, and turned his eyes, because he knew

'Twas but a larger jail he had in view."

Dryden, Palamon and Arcite, bk. i. lines 216, 217.

Compare, too—

"An exile——

Who has the whole world for a dungeon strong."

Prophecy of Dante, iv. 131, 132.]

[28] [Compare—

"The harvest of a quiet eye."

A Poet's Epitaph, line 51, Works of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 116.]

[g]

I saw them with their lake below,

And their three thousand years of snow.—[MS.]

[29] [This, according to Ruskin's canon, may be a poetical inaccuracy. The Rhone is blue below the lake at Geneva, but "les embouchures" at Villeneuve are muddy and discoloured.]

[30] [Villeneuve.]

[31] Between the entrances of the Rhone and Villeneuve, not far from Chillon, is a very small island [Ile de Paix]; the only one I could perceive in my voyage round and over the lake, within its circumference. It contains a few trees (I think not above three), and from its singleness and diminutive size has a peculiar effect upon the view.

[32] {27}[Compare—

"Of Silver How, and Grasmere's peaceful lake,

And one green island."

Works of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 220.]

[33] [Compare the Ancient Mariner on the water-snakes—

"O happy living things! no tongue

Their beauty might declare,"

Ancient Mariner, Part IV. lines 282, 283.

There is, too, in these lines (352-354), as in many others, an echo of Wordsworth. In the Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle it is told how the "two undying fish" of Bowscale Tarn, and the "eagle lord of land and sea" ministered to the shepherd-lord. It was no wonder that the critics of 1816 animadverted on Byron's "communion" with the Lakers. "He could not," writes a Critical Reviewer (Series V. vol. iv. pp. 567-581), "carry many volumes on his tour, but among the few, we will venture to predict, are found the two volumes of poems lately republished by Mr. Wordsworth.... Such is the effect of reading and enjoying the poetry of Mr. W., to whose system (ridiculed alike by those who could not, and who would not understand it) Lord Byron, it is evident, has become a tardy convert, and of whose merits in the poems on our table we have a silent but unequivocal acknowledgment."]

[34] {28}[Compare the well-known lines in Lovelace's "To Althea—From Prison"—

"Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an hermitage."]

[h] Here follows in the MS.—

Nor stew I of my subjects one—

What sovereign { hath so little yet so much hath } done?