[231]

["Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy,

And shuts up all the passages of joy:

In vain their gifts the bounteous seasons pour,

The fruit autumnal, and the vernal flow'r;

With listless eyes the dotard views the store,

He views, and wonders that they please no more."

Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes.]

[232] {184}

[" ... my May of Life

Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf."

Macbeth, act v. sc. 3, lines 22, 23.]

[DH] Itself to that fit apathy whose deed.—[MS.]

[DI] First in the icy depths of Lethe's spring.—[MS.]

[233] [See "Introduction to the Morgante Maggiore," Poetical Works, 1901, iv. 280.]

[DJ] Pulci being Father—.—[MS. Alternative reading.]

[234] {185} ["Cum canerem reges et prælia, Cynthius aurem Vellit, et admonuit." Virgil, Ecl. vi. lines 3, 4.]

[DK] {186}

—— from its mother's knee

When its last weaning draught is drained for ever,

The child divided—it were less to see,

Than these two from each other torn apart.—[MS.]

[235] [See Herodotus (Cleobis and Biton), i. 31. The sentiment is in a fragment of Menander.
Ὅν οἱ θεοὶ φιλοῦσιν ἀποθνήσκει νέος
or
Ὅν γὰρ φιλεῖ θεὸς  ἀποθνήσκει νέος.

Menandri at Philomenis reliquiæ, edidit Augustus Meineke, p. 48.

See Letters, 1898, ii. 22, note 1. Byron applied the saying to Allegra in a letter to Sir Walter Scott, dated May 4, 1822, Letters, 1901, vi. 57.]

[236] [Compare Childe Harold, Canto II. stanza xcvi. line 7. Compare, too, Young's Night Thoughts ("The Complaint," Night I. ed. 1825, p. 5)]

[237] {187}[Compare Swift's "little language" in his letter to Stella: Podefar, for instance, which is supposed to stand for "Poor dear foolish rogue," and Ppt., which meant "Poor pretty thing."—See The Journal of Stella, edited by G.A. Aitken, 1901, xxxv. note 1, and "Journal: March, 1710-11," 165, note 2.]

[DL]

For theirs were buoyant spirits, which would bound

'Gainst common failings, etc.—[MS.]

[238] {188}[The reference may be to Coleridge's Kubla Khan, which, to Medwin's wonderment, "delighted" Byron (Conversations, 1824, p. 264). De Quincy's Confessions of an English Opium Eater appeared in the London Magazine, October, November, 1821, after Cantos III., IV., V., of Don Juan were published. But, perhaps, he was contrasting the "simpler blisses" of Juan and Haidée with Shelley's mystical affinities and divagations.]

[DM] —— had set their hearts a bleeding.—[MS.]

[239] {190}

["The shadowy desert, unfrequented woods,

I better brook than flourishing peopled towns:

There can I sit alone, unseen of any,

And to the nightingale's complaining notes

Tune my distresses, and record, my woes."

Two Gentlemen of Verona, act v. sc. 4, lines 2-6.]

[DN] {191}Called social, where all Vice and Hatred are.—[MS.]

[DO] Moved with her dream——.—[MS.]

[DP]

Strange state of being!—for 't is still to be—

And who can know all false what then we see?—[MS.]

[240] {192}[Compare the description of the "spacious cave," in The Island, Canto IV. lines 121, sq., Poetical Works, 1901, v. 629, note 1.]

[DQ]—— methought.—[MS. Alternative reading.]

[241] {195}[The reader will observe a curious mark of propinquity which the poet notices, with respect to the hands of the father and daughter. Lord Byron, we suspect, is indebted for the first hint of this to Ali Pacha, who, by the bye, is the original of Lambro; for, when his lordship was introduced, with his friend Hobhouse, to that agreeable mannered tyrant, the Vizier said that he knew he was the Megalos Anthropos (i.e. the great Man), by the smallness of his ears and hands.—Galt. See Byron's letter to his mother, November 12, 1809, Letters, 1898, i. 251.]

[DR]

And if I did my duty as thou hast,

This hour were thine, and thy young minions last.—[MS.]

[DS] {196}Till further orders should his doom assign.—[MS.]

[DT] Loving and loved—.—[MS.]

[DU] {197}

But thou, sweet fury of the fiery rill,

Makest on the liver a still worse attack;

Besides, thy price is something dearer still.—[MS.]

[242] ["As squire Sullen says, '\My head aches consumedly,' 'Scrub, bring me a dram!' Drank some Imola wine, and some punch!"—Extracts from a Diary, February 25, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 209. For rack or "arrack" punch, see Thackeray's Vanity Fair, A Novel without a Hero, chap. vi. ed. 1892, p. 44.]

[243] {198}["At Fas [Fez] the houses of the great and wealthy have, within-side, spacious courts, adorned with sumptuous galleries, fountains, basons of fine marble, and fish-ponds, shaded with orange, lemon, pomegranate, and fig trees, abounding with fruit, and ornamented with roses, hyacinths, jasmine, violets, and orange flowers, emitting a delectable fragrance."—Account of the Empire of Marocco and Suez, by James Grey Jackson, 1811, pp. 69, 70.]

[DV]

Beauty and Passion were the natural dower

Of Haidée's mother, but her climate's force

Lay at her heart, though sleeping at the source.

or, But in her large eye lay deep Passion's force,

Like to a lion sleeping by a source.

or, But in her large eye lay deep Passion's force,

As sleeps a lion by a river's source.—[MS.]

[244] [Compare Manfred, act iii. sc. 1, line 128, Poetical Works, 1901, iv. 125.]

[DW] {199}

The blood gushed from her lips, and ears, and eyes:

Those eyes, so beautiful—beheld no more.—[MS.]

[245] This is no very uncommon effect of the violence of conflicting and different passions. The Doge Francis Foscari, on his deposition in 1457, hearing the bells of St. Mark announce the election of his successor, "mourut subitement d'une hémorragie causée par une veine qui s'éclata dans sa poitrine" [see Sismondi, 1815, x. 46, and Daru, 1821, ii. 536; see, too, The Two Foscari, act v. sc. i, line 306, and Introduction to the Two Foscari, Poetical Works, 1901, v. 118, 193], at the age of eighty years, when "Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him?" (Macbeth, act v. sc. 1, lines 34-36.) Before I was sixteen years of age I was witness to a melancholy instance of the same effect of mixed passions upon a young person, who, however, did not die in consequence, at that time, but fell a victim some years afterwards to a seizure of the same kind, arising from causes intimately connected with agitation of mind.

[246] {200}[The view of the Venus of Medici instantly suggests the lines in the "Seasons" [the description of "Musidora bathing" in Summer]—

" ... With wild surprise,

As if to marble struck, devoid of sense,

A stupid moment motionless she stood:

So stands the statue that enchants the world."

Hobhouse.

A still closer parallel to this stanza, and to Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanzas xlix., cxl., cxli., clx., clxi., is to be found in Thomson's Liberty, pt. iv. lines 131-206, where the "Farnese Hercules," the "Dying Gladiator," the "Venus of Medici," and the "Laocoon" group, are commemorated as typical works of art.]

[DX] Distinct from life, as being still the same.—[MS.]

[DY] {202}—working slow.—[MS.]

[DZ] Have dawned a child of beauty, though of sin.—[MS.]

[247]

[" ... Duncan is in his grave:

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well."

Macbeth, act iii. sc. 2., lines 22, 23.]

[EA] {203}

No stone is there to read, nor tongue to say,

No dirge—save when arise the stormy seas.—[MS.]

[248] ["But now I am cabined, cribbed," etc. Macbeth, act iii. sc. 4, line 24.]

[249] {204}[Jacob Bryant (1715-1804) published his Dissertation concerning the War of Troy, etc., in 1796. See The Bride of Abydos, Canto II. lines 510, sq., Poetical Works, 1900, iii. 179, note 1. See, too, Extracts from a Diary, January 11, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 165, 166, "I have stood upon that plain [of Troy] daily, for more than a month, in 1810; and if anything diminished my pleasure, it was that the blackguard Bryant had impugned its veracity." Hobhouse, in his Travels in Albania, 1858, ii. 93, sq., discusses at length the identity of the barrows of the Troad with the tumuli of Achilles, Ajax, and Protesilaus, and refutes Bryant's arguments against the identity of Cape Janissary and the Sigean promontory.

[EB]

All heroes

{

who alive perhaps if still alive

}

.—[MS. Alternative reading]

—

{

and mountain-bounded and mountain-outlined

}

plain.—[MS. Alternative reading]

[ED] —— and land tortoise crawls.—[MS. Alternative reading.]

[EE] {205}—their learned researches bear.—[MS. Alternative reading.]

[251] This is a fact. A few years ago a man engaged a company for some foreign theatre, embarked them at an Italian port, and carrying them to Algiers, sold them all. One of the women, returned from her captivity, I heard sing, by a strange coincidence, in Rossini's opera of L'Italiana in Algieri, at Venice, in the beginning of 1817.

[We have reason to believe that the following, which we take from the MS. journal of a highly respectable traveller, is a more correct account: "In 1812 a Signor Guariglia induced several young persons of both sexes—none of them exceeding fifteen years of age—to accompany him on an operatic excursion; part to form the opera, and part the ballet. He contrived to get them on board a vessel, which took them to Janina, where he sold them for the basest purposes. Some died from the effect of the climate, and some from suffering. Among the few who returned were a Signor Molinari, and a female dancer named Bonfiglia, who afterwards became the wife of Crespi, the tenor singer. The wretch who so basely sold them was, when Lord Byron resided at Venice, employed as capo de' vestarj, or head tailor, at the Fenice."—Maria Graham (Lady Callcot). Ed. 1832.]

[252] {206}[A comic singer in the opera buffa. The Italians, however, distinguish the buffo cantante, which requires good singing, from the buffo comico, in which there is more acting.—Ed. 1832.]

[253] {207}[The figuranti are those dancers of a ballet who do not dance singly, but many together, and serve to fill up the background during the exhibition of individual performers. They correspond to the chorus in the opera.—Maria Graham.]

[EF] To help the ladies in their dress and lacing.—[MS.]

[254] It is strange that it should be the Pope and the Sultan, who are the chief encouragers of this branch of trade—women being prohibited as singers at St. Peter's, and not deemed trustworthy as guardians of the harem.

["Scarcely a soul of them can read. Pacchierotti was one of the best informed of the castrati ... Marchesi is so grossly ignorant that he wrote the word opera, opperra, but Nature has been so bountiful to the animal, that his ignorance and insolence were forgotten the moment he sang."—Venice, etc., by a Lady of Rank, 1824, ii. 86.]

[255] {208}[The N. Engl. Dict. cites Bunyan, Walpole, Fielding, Miss Austen, and Dickens as authorities for the plural "was." See art. "be." Here, as elsewhere, Byron wrote as he spoke.]

[EG] He never shows his feelings, but his teeth.—[MS. Alternative reading.]

[256] ["Our firman arrived from Constantinople on the 30th of April (1810)."—Travels in Albania, 1858, ii. 186.]

[EH] {209}

That each pulled, different ways—and waxing rough,

Had cuffed each other, only for the cuff.—[MS.]

[257] {210}

["O, who can hold a fire in his hand,

By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?"

Richard II., act i. sc. 3, lines 294, 295.]

[EI] Having had some experience in my youth.—[MS. erased.]

[258] ["Don Juan will be known, by and by, for what it is intended—a Satire on abuses in the present states of society, and not an eulogy of vice. It may be now and then voluptuous:—I can't help that. Ariosto is worse. Smollett (see Lord Strutwell in vol. 2nd of R[oderick] R[andom][1793, pp. 119-127]) ten times worse; and Fielding no better."—Letter to Murray, December 25, 1822, Letters, 1901, vi. 155, 156.]

[259] {211} [Vide ante, p. 204, note 1. "It seems hardly to admit of doubt, that the plain of Anatolia, watered by the Mender, and backed by a mountainous ridge, of which Kazdaghy is the summit, offers the precise territory alluded to by Homer. The long controversy, excited by Mr. Bryant's publication, and since so vehemently agitated, would probably never have existed, had it not been for the erroneous maps of the country which, even to this hour, disgrace our geographical knowledge of that part of Asia."—Travels, etc., by E.D. Clarke, 1812, Part II. sect, i. p. 78.]

[260] {212}The pillar which records the battle of Ravenna is about two miles from the city, on the opposite side of the river to the road towards Forli. Gaston de Foix [(1489-1512) Duc de Nemours, nephew of Louis XII.], who gained the battle, was killed in it: there fell on both sides twenty thousand men. The present state of the pillar and its site is described in the text.

[Beyond the Porta Sisi, about two miles from Ravenna, on the banks of the Ronco, is a square pillar (La Colonna de Francesi), erected in 1557 by Pietro Cesi, president of Romagna, as a memorial of the battle gained by the combined army of Louis XII. and the Duke of Ferrara over the troops of Julius II. and the King of Spain, April 11 1512.—Handbook of Northern Italy, p. 548.]

[261] [Compare Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanza lvii. line i, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 371, note i. See, too, Preface to the Prophecy of Dante, ibid., iv. 243.]

[EJ] Protects his tomb, but greater care is paid.—[MS.]

[EK] {213}

With human ordure is it now defiled,

As if the peasant's scorn this mode invented

To show his loathing of the thing he soiled.—[MS.]

[EL] Those sufferings once reserved for Hell alone.—[MS.]

[EM]

Its fumes are frankincense; and were there nought

Even of this vapour, still the chilling yoke

Of silence would not long be borne by Thought.—[MS.]

[EN]

I have drunk deep of passions as they pass,

And dearly bought the bitter power to give.—[MS.]

[262] [See, for instance, Wilson's review of Don Juan, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, August, 1819, vol. v. p. 512, sq.: "To confess ... to his Maker, and to weep over in secret agonies the wildest and most fantastic transgressions of heart and mind, is the part of a conscious sinner, in whom sin has not become the sole principle of life and action.... But to lay bare to the eye of man—and of woman—all the hidden convulsions of a wicked spirit," etc.]

[EO] {214}

What! must I go with Wordy to the cooks?

Read—were it but your Grandmother's to vex—

And let me not the only minstrel be

Cut off from tasting your Castalian tea.—[MS.]

[263] [Compare—

"I leave them to their daily 'tea is ready,'

Snug coterie, and literary lady."

Beppo, stanza lxxvi. lines 7, 8, Poetical Works, 1901, iv. 184, note.]

[264] [The caged starling, by its repeated cry, "I can't get out! I can't get out!" cured Yorick of his sentimental yearnings for imprisonment in the Bastille. See Sterne's Sentimental Journey, ed. 1804, pp. 100-106.]

[265] [In his Essay, Supplement to the Preface (Poems by William Wordsworth, ed. 1820, iii. 315-348), Wordsworth maintains that the appreciation of great poetry is a plant of slow growth, that immediate recognition is a mark of inferiority, or is to be accounted for by the presence of adventitious qualities: "So strange, indeed, are the obliquities of admiration, that they whose opinions are much influenced by authority will often be tempted to think that there are no fixed principles in human nature for this art to rest upon.... Away, then, with the senseless iteration of the word popular! ... The voice that issues from this spirit [of human knowledge] is that Vox Populi which the Deity inspires. Foolish must he be who can mistake for this a local acclamation, or a transitory outcry—transitory though it be for years, local though from a Nation. Still more lamentable is his error who can believe that there is anything of divine infallibility in this clamour of that small though loud portion of the community ever governed by factitious influence, which under the name of the Public, passes itself upon the unthinking for the People." Naturally enough Byron regarded this pronouncement as a taunt if not as a challenge. Wordsworth's noble appeal from a provincial to an imperial authority, from the present to the future, is not strengthened by the obvious reference to the popularity of contemporaries.]

[266] {215}[Southey's Madoc in Wales, Poetical Works, Part I. Canto V. Ed. 1838, v. 39.]

[EP]

Not having looked at many of that hue,

Nor garters—save those of the "honi soit"—which lie

Round the Patrician legs which walk about,

The ornaments of levee and of rout.—[M.S.]

[267] [Probably Lady Charlemont. See "Journal," November 22, 1813.]

[268] {216}[The cyanometer, an instrument for ascertaining the intensity of the blue colour of the sky, was invented by Horace Bénédict de Saussure (1740-1799); see his Essai sur l'Hygrométrie. F.H. Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) "made great use of his instrument on his voyages, and ascertained by the colour the degree of blueness, the accumulation and the nature of the non-transparent exhalations of the air."—Alexander von Humboldt, by Professor Klencke, translated by Juliette Bauer, 1852, pp. 45, 46.]

[EQ]

I'll back a London "Bas" against Peru.

or, I'll bet some pair of stocking beat Peru.

or, And so, old Sotheby, we'll measure you.—[MS.]

[269] ["The slave-market is a quadrangle, surrounded by a covered gallery, and ranges of small and separate apartments." Here the poor wretches sit in a melancholy posture. "Before they cheapen 'em, they turn 'em about from this side to that, survey 'em from top to bottom.... Such of 'em, both men and women, to whom Dame Nature has been niggardly of her charms, are set apart for the vilest services: but such girls as have youth and beauty pass their time well enough.... The retailers of this human ware are the Jews, who take good care of their slaves' education, that they may sell the better: their choicest they keep at home, and there you must go, if you would have better than ordinary; for 'tis here, as 'tis in markets for horses, the handsomest don't always appear, but are kept within doors."—A Voyage into the Levant, by M. Tournefort, 1741, ii. 198, 199. See, too, for the description of the sale of two Circassians and one Georgian, Voyage de Vienne à Belgrade, ... par N.E. Kleeman, 1780, pp. 141, 142. The "lowest offer for the prize Circassian was 4000 piastres."]

[ER]

The females stood, till chosen each as victim

To the soft oath of "Ana seing Siktum!"[*]—[MS.]

[* If the Turkish words are correctly given, "the oath" may be an imprecation on "your mother's" chastity.]

[ES] For fear the Canto should become too long.—[MS.]