The Works of Lord Byron Volume II Part 13

[bt]

_For ever famed--in many a native song_.--[MS. erased.]

----_a noted song_.--[MS. D.]

[57] [Compare Virgil, _aeneid_, i. 100--

"Ubi tot Simois correpta sub undis Scuta virum galeasque et fortia corpora volvit."]

[58] [The standard, a cross made of Asturian oak (_La Cruz de la Victoria_), which was said to have fallen from heaven before Pelayo gained the victory over the Moors at Cangas, in A.D. 718, is preserved at Oviedo. Compare Southey's _Roderick_, XXV.: _Poetical Works_, 1838, ix. 241, and note, pp. 370, 371.]

[bu] --_which Pelagius bore_.--[MS. D.]

[59] {47} [The Moors were finally expelled from Granada in 1492, in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.]

[bv] ----_waxed the Crescent pale_.--[MS. erased.]

[60] [The reference is to the Romanceros and Caballerias of the sixteenth century.]

[bw] ----_thy little date_.--[MS. erased.]

[bx]

----_from rock to rock_ _Blue columns soaring loft in sulphury wreath_ _Fragments on fragments in contention knock_.--[MS. erased, D.]

[61] "The Siroc is the violent hot wind that for weeks together blows down the Mediterranean from the Archipelago. Its effects are well known to all who have pa.s.sed the Straits of Gibraltar."--[MS. D.]

[62] {49} [The battle of Talavera began July 27, 1809, and lasted two days. As Byron must have reached Seville by the 21st or 22nd of the month, he was not, as might be inferred, a spectator of any part of the engagement. Writing to his mother, August 11, he says, "You have heard of the battle near Madrid, and in England they would call it a victory--a pretty victory! Two hundred officers and five thousand men killed, all English, and the French in as great force as ever. I should have joined the army, but we have no time to lose before we get up the Mediterranean."--_Letters_, i. 241.]

[by]

_Their rival scarfs that s.h.i.+ne so gloriously_.--[MS. erased.]

_Their rural scarfs_----.--[MS. D.]

[63] [Compare Campbell's "Hohenlinden"--"Few, few shall part where many meet."]

[64] {50} [Compare _Macbeth_, act i. sc. 2, line 51--"Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky."]

[65] [In a letter to Colonel Malcolm, December 3, 1809, the Duke admits that the spoils of conquest were of a moral rather than of a material kind. "The battle of Talavera was certainly the hardest fought of modern days.... It is lamentable that, owing to the miserable inefficiency of the Spaniards, ... the glory of the action is the only benefit which we have derived from it.... I have in hand a most difficult task.... In such circ.u.mstances one may fail, but it would be dishonourable to shrink from the task."--_Wellington Dispatches_, 1844, iii. 621.]

[bz]

_There shall they rot--while rhymers tell the fools_ _How honour decks the turf that wraps their clay!_ _Liars avaunt!_----.--[MS.]

[66] Two lines of Collins' _Ode_, "How sleep the brave," etc., have been compressed into one--

"There Honour comes a pilgrim grey, To bless the turf that wraps their clay."

[ca] _But Reason's elf in these beholds_----.--[D.]

[cb] {51} ----_a fancied throne_ _As if they compa.s.sed half that hails their sway_.--[MS. erased.]

[cc] ----_glorious sound of grief_.--[D.]

[67] [The battle of Albuera (May 16, 1811), at which the English, under Lord Beresford, repulsed Soult, was somewhat of a Pyrrhic victory.

"Another such a battle," wrote the Duke, "would ruin us. I am working hard to put all right again." The French are said to have lost between 8000 and 9000 men, the English 4158, the Spaniards 1365.]

[cd] _A scene for mingling foes to boast and bleed_.--[D.]

[ce] _Yet peace be with the perished_---.--[D. erased.]

[cf] _And tears and triumph make their memory long_.--[D. erased.]

[cg] ----there sink with other woes_.--[D. erased.]

[68] [Albuera was celebrated by Scott, in his _Vision of Don Roderick_.

_The Battle of Albuera_, a Poem (anon.), was published in October, 1811.]

[ch] {52} _Who sink in darkness_----.--[MS. erased.]

[ci] ----_swift Rapines path pursued_.--[MS. D.]

[cj] _To Harold turn we as_----.--[MS. erased.]

[69] [In this "particular" Childe Harold did not resemble his _alter ego_. Hobhouse and "part of the servants" (Joe Murray, Fletcher, a German, and the "page" Robert Rushton, const.i.tuted his "whole suite"), accompanied Byron in his ride across Spain from Lisbon to Gibraltar.

(See _Letters_, 1898, i. 224, 236.)]

[ck] _Where proud Sevilha_----.--[MS. D.]

[70] {53} [Byron, _en route_ for Gibraltar, pa.s.sed three days at Seville at the end of July or the beginning of August, 1809. By the end of January, 1810, the French had appeared in force before Seville. Unlike Zaragoza and Gerona, the pleasure-loving city, "after some negotiations, surrendered, with all its stores, foundries, and a.r.s.enal complete, and on the 1st of February the king [Joseph] entered in triumph" (Napier's _History of the War in the Peninsula_, ii. 295).]

[71] [A kind of fiddle with only two strings, played on by a bow, said to have been brought by the Moors into Spain.]

[cl] _Not here the Trumpet, but the rebeck sounds_.--[MS. erased.]

[cm] _And dark-eyed Lewdness_----.--[MS. erased.]

[72] [See _The Waltz: Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 492, note 1.]

[cn] {54} _Not in the toils of Glory would ye sweat._--[MS. erased, D.]

[73] [The scene is laid on the heights of the Sierra Morena. The travellers are looking across the "long level plain" of the Guadalquivir to the mountains of Ronda and Granada, with their "hill-forts ...perched everywhere like eagles' nests" (Ford's _Handbook for Spain_, i. 252).

The French, under Dupont, entered the Morena, June 2, 1808. They stormed the bridge at Alcolea, June 7, and occupied Cordoba, but were defeated at Bailen, July 19, and forced to capitulate. Hence the traces of war.

The "Dragon's nest" (line 7) is the ancient city of Jaen, which guards the skirts of the Sierras "like a watchful Cerberus." It was taken by the French, but recaptured by the Spanish, early in July, 1808 (_History of the War in the Peninsula_, i. 71-80).]

[74] {55} [The Sierra Morena gets its name from the cla.s.sical _Montes Mariani_, not, as Byron seems to imply, from its dark and dusky aspect.]

[co] {56} ----_the never-changing watch_.--[MS. D.]

[cp] _The South must own_----.--[MS. D.]

[cq] _When soars Gaul's eagle_----.--[MS. D.]

[75] [As time went on, Byron's sentiments with regard to Napoleon underwent a change, and he hesitates between sympathetic admiration and reluctant disapproval. At the moment his enthusiasm was roused by Spain's heroic resistance to the new Alaric, "the scourger of the world," and he expresses himself like Southey "or another" (_vide post_, Canto III., pp. 238, 239).]