The Works of Lord Byron Volume II Part 12

[48] {36} "I don't remember any crosses there."--[Pencilled note by J.C.

Hobhouse.]

[The crosses made no impression upon Hobhouse, who, no doubt, had realized that they were nothing but guideposts. For an explanation, see letter of Mr. Matthew Lewtas to the _Athenaeum_, July 19, 1873: "The track from the main road to the convent, rugged and devious, leading up to the mountain, is marked out by numerous crosses now, just as it was when Byron rode along it in 1809, and it would appear he fell into the mistake of considering that the crosses were erected to show where a.s.sa.s.sinations had been committed."]

[49] [Beckford, describing the view from the convent, notices the wild flowers which adorned "the ruined splendour." "Amidst the crevices of the mouldering walls ... I noticed some capillaries and polypodiums of infinite delicacy; and on a little flat s.p.a.ce before the convent a numerous tribe of pinks, gentians, and other Alpine plants, fanned and invigorated by the fresh mountain air."--_Italy, etc.,_ 1834, p. 229.

The "Prince's palace" (line 5) may be the royal palace at Cintra, "the Alhambra of the Moorish kings," or, possibly, the palace (_vide post_, stanza xxix. line 7) at Mafra, ten miles from Cintra.]

[bb] {37} _There too proud Vathek--England's wealthiest son_.--[MS. D.]

[50] [William Beckford, 1760 (?1759)-1844, published _Vathek_ in French in 1784, and in English in 1787. He spent two years (1794-96) in retirement at Quinta da Monserrate, three miles from Cintra. Byron thought highly of _Vathek_. "I do not know," he writes (_The Giaour_, l.

1328, note), "from what source the author ... may have drawn his materials ... but for correctness of costume ... and power of imagination, it surpa.s.ses all European imitations.... As an Eastern tale, even _Ra.s.selas_ must bow before it; his happy valley will not bear a comparison with the 'Hall of Eblis.'" In the MS. there is an additional stanza reflecting on Beckford, which Dallas induced him to omit. It was afterwards included by Moore among the _Occasional Pieces_, under the t.i.tle of _To Dives: a Fragment_ (_Poetical Works_, 1883, p.

548). (For Beckford, see _Letters_, 1898, i. 228, note 1; and with regard to the "Stanzas on Vathek," see letter to Dallas, September 26, 1811: _Letters_, 1898, ii. 47.)]

[bc]

_When Wealth and Taste their worst and best have done_, _Meek Peace pollution's lure voluptuous still must shun_.--[MS.]

[bd]

_But now thou blasted Beacon unto man_.--[MS.]

----_thou Beacon unto erring man_.--[MS. D.]

[be] {38} _Vain are the pleasaunces by art supplied_.--[MS. D.]

[bf] ----_yclad, and by_.--[MS. D.]

[bg] _Where blazoned glares a name spelt "Wellesley."_--[MS. D.]

[bh] ----_are on the roll_.--[MS. erased, D.]

[bi] The following stanzas, which appear in the MS., were excluded at the request of Dallas (see his letter of October 10, 1811, _Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron_, 1824, pp. 173-187), _Letters_, 1898, ii. 51:--

In golden characters right well designed First on the list appeareth one "Junot;"

Then certain other glorious names we find, (Which Rhyme compelleth me to place below:) Dull victors! baffled by a vanquished foe, Wheedled by conynge tongues of laurels due, Stand, worthy of each other in a row-- Sirs Arthur, Harry, and the dizzard Hew Dalrymple, seely wight, sore dupe of t'other tew.

Convention is the dwarfy demon styled That failed the knights in Marialva's dome: Of brains (if brains they had) he them beguiled, And turned a nation's shallow joy to gloom.

For well I wot, when first the news did come That Vimiera's field by Gaul was lost, For paragraph ne paper scarce had room, Such Paeans teemed for our triumphant host, In Courier, Chronicle, and eke in Morning Post.

But when Convention sent his handy work Pens, tongues, feet, hands combined in wild uproar; Mayor, Aldermen, laid down the uplifted fork; The Bench of Bishops half forgot to snore; Stern Cobbett,[-]--who for one whole week forbore To question aught, once more with transport leapt, And bit his devilish quill agen, and swore With foes such treaty never should be kept, While roared the blatant Beast,[--] and roared, and raged, and--slept!!

Thus unto Heaven appealed the people: Heaven Which loves the lieges of our gracious King, Decreed that ere our Generals were forgiven, Enquiry should be held about the thing.

But Mercy cloaked the babes beneath her wing; And as they spared our foes so spared we them; (Where was the pity of our Sires for Byng?)[---]

Yet knaves, not idiots should the law condemn; Then live ye gallant Knights! and bless your Judges' phlegm!

[-] [Sir Hew Dalrymple's despatch on the so-called Convention of Cintra is dated September 3, and was published in the _London Gazette Extraordinary_, September 16, 1808. The question is not alluded to in the _Weekly Political Register_ of September 17, but on the 24th Cobbett opened fire with a long article (pp. 481-502) headed, "Conventions in Portugal," which was followed up by articles on the same subject in the four succeeding issues. Articles iii., iv., v., vi., of the "Definitive Convention" provided for the restoration of the French troops and their safe convoy to France, with their artillery, equipments, and cavalry.

"Did the men," asks Cobbett (September 24), "who made this promise beat the Duke d'Abrantes [Junot], or were they like curs, who, having felt the bite of the mastiff, lose all confidence in their number, and, though they bark victory, suffer him to retire in quiet, carrying off his bone to be disposed of at his leisure? No, not so; for they complaisantly carry the bone for him." The rest of the article is written in a similar strain.]

[--] "'Blatant beast.'[*] A figure for the mob. I think first used by Smollett, in his _Adventures of an Atom_.[**] Horace has the 'bellua multorum capitum.'[***] In England, fortunately enough, the ill.u.s.trious mobility has not even one."--[MS.]

[*] [Spenser (_Faerie Queene_, bk. vi. cantos iii. 24; xii. 27, sq.) personifies the _vox populi_, with its thousand tongues, as the "blatant beast."]

[**][In _The History and Adventures of an Atom_ (Smollett's Works, 1872, vi. 385), Foksi-Roku (Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland) pa.s.ses judgment on the populace. "The mult.i.tude, my lords, is a many-headed monster, it is a Cerberus that must have a sop; it is a wild beast, so ravenous that nothing but blood will appease its appet.i.te; it is a whale, that must have a barrel for its amus.e.m.e.nt; it is a demon, to which we must offer human sacrifice.... Bihn-Goh must be the victim--happy if the sacrifice of his single life can appease the commotions of his country."

Foksi-Roku's advice is taken, and Bihn-Goh (Byng) "is crucified for cowardice."]

[***][Horace, _Odes_, II. xiii. 34: "Bellua centiceps."]

[---] "By this query it is not meant that our foolish generals should have been shot, but that Byng [Admiral John Byng, born 1704, was executed March 14, 1757] might have been spared; though the one suffered and the others escaped, probably for Candide's reason 'pour encourager les autres.'"[*]--[MS.]

[*]["Dans ce pays-ci il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres."--_Candide_, xxii.]

[51] {39} [On August 21, 1808, Sir Harry Burrard (1755-1813) superseded in command Sir Arthur Wellesley, who had, on the same day, repulsed Junot at Vimiera. No sooner had he a.s.sumed his position as commander-in-chief, than he countermanded Wellesley's order to give pursuit and make good the victory. The next day (August 22) Sir Hew Dalrymple in turn superseded Burrard, and on the 23rd, General Kellerman approached the English with certain proposals from Junot, which a week later were formulated by the so-called Convention of Cintra, to which Kellerman and Wellesley affixed their names. When the news reached England that Napoleon's forces had been repulsed with loss, and yet the French had been granted a safe exit from Portugal, the generals were a.s.sailed with loud and indiscriminate censure. Burrard's interference with Wellesley's plans was no doubt ill-judged and ill-timed; but the opportunity of pursuit having been let slip, the acceptance of Junot's terms was at once politic and inevitable. A court of inquiry, which was held in London in January, 1809, upheld both the armistice of August 22 and the Convention; but neither Dalrymple nor Burrard ever obtained a second command, and it was not until Talavera (July 28, 1809) had effaced the memories of Cintra that Wellesley was reinstated in popular favour.]

[bj] {41} ----_at the mention sweat_.--[MS. D.]

[bk] {42} _More restless than the falcon as he flies_.--[MS. erased.]

[52] [With reference to this pa.s.sage, while yet in MS., an early reader (?Dallas) inquires, "What does this mean?" And a second (?Hobhouse) rejoins, "What does the question mean? It is one of the finest stanzas I ever read."]

[53] [Byron and Hobhouse sailed from Falmouth, July 2, 1809; reached Lisbon on the 6th or 7th; and on the 17th started from Aldea Galbega ("the first stage from Lisbon, which is only accessible by water") on horseback for Seville. "The horses are excellent--we rode seventy miles a day" (see letters of August 6 to F. Hodgson, and August 11, 1809, to Mrs. Byron; _Letters_, 1898, i. 234, 236).]

[bl] ----_long foreign to his soul_.--[MS. erased.]

[bm] ----_the strumpet and the bowl_.--[MS. D]

[bn] {43} _And countries more remote his hopes engage_.--[MS. erased.]

[bo]

_Where dwelt of yore the Lusians' crazy queen_,--[MS.]

_Where dwelt of yore Lusania's_----.--[D.]

[54] [Her luckless Majesty went subsequently mad; and Dr. Willis, who so dexterously cudgelled kingly pericraniums, could make nothing of hers.

(For the Rev. Francis Willis, see _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 416.)

Maria I. (b. 1734), who married her uncle, Pedro III., reigned with him 1777-86, and, as sole monarch, from 1786 to 1816. The death of her husband, of her favourite confessor, Ignatio de San Caetano, who had been raised by Pombal from the humblest rank to the position of archbishop _in partibus_, and of her son, turned her brain, and she became melancholy mad. She was only queen in name after 1791, and in 1799 her son, Maria Jose Luis, was appointed regent. Beckford saw her in 1787, and was impressed by her dignified bearing. "Justice and clemency," he writes, "the motto so glaringly misapplied on the banner of the abhorred Inquisition, might be transferred, with the strictest truth, to this good princess" (_Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal_, 1834, p. 256). Ten years later, Southey, in his _Letters from Spain_, 1797, p. 541, ascribes the "gloom" of the court of Lisbon to "the dreadful malady of the queen." When the Portuguese royal family were about to embark for Brazil in November, 1807, the queen was once more seen in public after an interval of sixteen years. "She had to wait some while upon the quay for the chair in which she was to be carried to the boat, and her countenance, in which the insensibility of madness was only disturbed by wonder, formed a striking contrast to the grief which appeared in every other face" (Southey's _History of the Peninsular War_, i. 110).]

[bp] {44} _Childe Burun_----.--[MS.]

[bq]

_Less swoln with culture soon the vales extend_ _And long horizon-bounded realms appear_.--[MS. erased.]

[br] {45} _Say Muse what bounds_----.--[MS. D.]

[55] The Pyrenees.--[MS.]

[56] [If, as stanza xliii. of this canto (added in 1811) intimates, Byron pa.s.sed through "Albuera's plain" on his way from Lisbon to Seville, he must have crossed the frontier at a point between Elvas and Badajoz. In that case the "silver streamlet" may be identified as the Caia. Beckford remarks on "the rivulet which separates the two kingdoms"

(_Italy, etc_., 1834, p. 291).]

[bs] {46} _But eer the bounds of Spain have far been pa.s.sed_.--[MS. D.]