The Works of Lord Byron Volume II Part 26

[-1] Attila was horned, if we may trust contemporary legends, and the etchings of his visage in Lavater.--[M.S.]

[-2] Lines 5-9 in the Dallas transcript are in Byron's handwriting.

[-3] _Which centuries forgot_----.--[D. erased.]

[ea] {108} After stanza xiii. the MS. inserts the two following stanzas:--

Come then, ye cla.s.sic Thieves of each degree, Dark Hamilton[-1] and sullen Aberdeen, Come pilfer all the Pilgrim loves to see, All that yet consecrates the fading scene: Ah! better were it ye had never been, Nor ye, nor Elgin, nor that lesser wight.

The victim sad of vase-collecting spleen.

House-furnisher withal, one Thomas[-2] hight, Than ye should bear one stone from wronged Athenae's site.

Or will the gentle Dilettanti crew Now delegate the task to digging Gell,[-3]

That mighty limner of a bird's eye view, How like to Nature let his volumes tell: Who can with him the folio's limit swell With all the Author saw, or said he saw?

Who can topographize or delve so well?

No boaster he, nor impudent and raw, His pencil, pen, and spade, alike without a flaw.--[D. erased.]

[-1] [William Richard Hamilton (1777-1859) was the son of Anthony Hamilton, Archdeacon of Colchester, etc., and grandson of Richard Terrick, Bishop of London. In 1799, when Lord Elgin was appointed Amba.s.sador to the Sublime Porte, Hamilton accompanied him as private secretary. After the battle of Rama.s.sieh (Alexandria, March 20, 1801), and the subsequent evacuation of Egypt by the French (August 30, 1801), Hamilton, who had been sent on a diplomatic mission, was successful in recapturing the Rosetta Stone, which, in violation of a specified agreement, had been placed on board a French man-of-war. He was afterwards employed by Elgin as agent plenipotentiary in the purchase, removal, and deportation of marbles. He held office (1809-22) as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and as Minister at the Court of Naples (1822-25). From 1838 to 1858 he was a Trustee of the British Museum. He published, in 1809, _aegyptiaca, or Some Account of the Ancient and Modern State of Egypt_; and, in 1811, his _Memorandum on the Subject of the Earl of Elgin's Pursuits in Greece_. (For Hamilton, see _English Bards_, etc., line 509; _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 336, note 2.)]

[-2] Thomas Hope, Esqr., if I mistake not, the man who publishes quartos on furniture and costume.

[Thomas Hope (1770-1831) (see _Hints from Horace_, line 7: _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 390, note 1) published, in 1805, a folio volume ent.i.tled, _Household Furniture and Internal Decoration_. It was severely handled in the _Edinburgh Review_ (No. xx.) for July, 1807.]

[-3] It is rumoured Gell is coming out to dig in Olympia. I wish him more success than he had at Athens. According to Lusieri's account, he began digging most furiously without a firmann, but before the resurrection of a single sauce-pan, the Painter countermined and the Way-wode countermanded and sent him back to bookmaking.--[MS. D.]

[See _English Bards, etc._, lines 1033, 1034: _Poetical Works_, 1898, i.

379, _note_ 1.]

[eb] _Where was thine aegis, G.o.ddess_----.--[MS. D. erased]

[ec] {110} ----_which it had well behoved_.--[MS. D.]

[123] [The Athenians believed, or feigned to believe, that the marbles themselves shrieked out in shame and agony at their removal from their ancient shrines.]

[124] [Byron is speaking of his departure from Spain, but he is thinking of his departure from Malta, and his half-hearted amour with Mrs.

Spencer Smith.]

[ed] {111} ----_that rosy urchin guides_.--[MS.]

[ee] _Save on that part_----.--[MS. erased.]

[ef] {112} _From Discipline's stern law_----.--[MS.]

----_keen law_----.--[MS. D.]

[125] An additional "misery to human life!"--lying to at sunset for a large convoy, till the sternmost pa.s.s ahead. Mem.: fine frigate, fair wind likely to change before morning, but enough at present for ten knots!--[MS. D.]

[eg] ----_their melting girls believe_.--[MS.]

[eh] {113} _Meantime some rude musician's restless hand_ _Ply's the brisk instrument that sailors love_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[ei] _Through well-known straits behold the steepy sh.o.r.e_.--[MS.

erased.]

[126] [Compare Coleridge's reflections, in his diary for April 19, 1804, on entering the Straits of Gibraltar: "When I first sat down, with Europe on my left and Africa on my right, both distinctly visible, I felt a quickening of the movements in the blood, but still felt it as a pleasure of _amus.e.m.e.nt_ rather than of thought and elevation; and at the same time, and gradually winning on the other, the nameless silent forms of nature were working in me, like a tender thought in a man who is hailed merrily by some acquaintance in his work, and answers it in the same tone" (_Anima Poetae_, 1895, pp. 70, 71).]

[127] ["The moon is in the southern sky as the vessel pa.s.ses through the Straits; consequently, the coast of Spain is in light, that of Africa in shadow" (_Childe Harold_, edited by H. F. Tozer, 1885, p. 232).]

[128] [Campbell, in _Gertrude of Wyoming_, Canto I. stanza ii. line 6, speaks of "forests brown;" but, as Mr. Tozer points out, "'brown' is Byron's usual epithet for landscape seen in moonlight." (Compare Canto II. stanza lxx. line 3; _Parisina_, i. 10; and _Siege of Corinth_, ii.

1.)]

[ej] {114} _Bleeds the lone heart, once boundless in its zeal_.--[D.]

_And friendless now, yet dreams it had a friend_.--[MS.]

or, _Far from affection's chilled or changing zeal_.--[MS.]

_Divided far by fortune, wave or steel_ _Though friendless now we once have had a friend_.-- [MS. D. erased.]

[ek] _Ah! happy years! I would I were once more a boy_.--[MS.]

[el] _To gaze on Dian's wan reflected sphere_.--[MS. D]

[em] ----_her dreams of hope and pride_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[en] {115} _None are so wretched[-] but that_----.--[MS.D.]

[-] "Desolate."--[MS. pencil.]

[eo] _T.t.b._ [tres tres bien], _but why insert here_.--[MS. pencil.]

[129] [In this stanza M. Darmesteter detects "l'accent Wordsworthien"

prior to any "doses" as prescribed by Sh.e.l.ley, and quotes as a possible model the following lines from Beattie's _Minstrel_:--

"And oft the craggy cliff he lov'd to climb, When all in mist the world below was lost, What dreadful pleasure! there to stand sublime, Like s.h.i.+pwreck'd mariner on desert coast, And view th' enormous waste of vapour, tost In billows, lengthening to th' horizon round, Now scoop'd in gulfs, with mountains now emboss'd!

And hear the voice of mirth, and song rebound, Flocks, herds, and waterfalls, along the h.o.a.r profound."

In felicity of expression, the copy, if it be a copy, surpa.s.ses the original; but in the scope and originality of the image, it is vastly inferior. Nor are these lines, with the possible exception of line 3--"Where things that own not Man's dominion dwell," at all Wordsworthian. They fail in that imaginative precision which the Lake poets regarded as essential, and they lack the glamour and pa.s.sion without which their canons of art would have profited nothing. Six years later, when Byron came within sound of Wordsworth's voice, he struck a new chord--a response, not an echo. Here the motive is rhetorical, not immediately poetical.]

[ep] {116} ----_and foaming linns to lean_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[130] [There are none to bless us, for when we are in distress the great, the rich, the gay, shrink from us; and when we are popular and prosperous those who court us care nothing for us apart from our success. Neither do they bless us, or we them.]

[eq] _This is to live alone--This, This is solitude_.--[MS. D.]

[131] [The MS. of stanza xxvii. is on the fly-leaf of a bound volume of proof-sheets ent.i.tled "Additions to Childe Harold," It was first published in the seventh edition, 1814. It may be taken for granted that Byron had seen what he describes. There is, however, no record of any visit to Mount Athos, either in his letters from the East or in Hobhouse's journals.

The actual mount, "the giant height [6350 feet], rears itself in solitary magnificence, an insulated cone of white limestone." "When it is seen from a distance, the peninsula [of which the southern portion rises to a height of 2000 feet] is below the horizon, and the peak rises quite solitary from the sea." Of this effect Byron may have had actual experience; but Hobhouse, in describing the prospect from Cape Janissary, is careful to record that "Athos itself is said to be sometimes visible in the utmost distance (circ. 90 miles), but it was not discernible during our stay on the spot." (Murray's _Handbook for Greece_, p. 843; _Childe Harold_, edited by H. F. Tozer, p. 233; _Travels in Albania_, 1858, ii. 103. Compare, too, the fragment ent.i.tled the _Monk of Athos_, first published in the Hon. Roden Noel's _Life of Lord Byron_, 1890.)]

[132] {118} ["Le sage Mentor, poussant Telemaque, qui etait a.s.sis sur le bord du rocher, le precipite dans le mer et s'y jette avec lui....

Calypso inconsolable, rentra dans sa grotte, qu'elle remplit de ses hurlements."--Fenelon's _Telemaque_, vi., Paris, 1837. iii. 43.]

[133] [For Mrs. Spencer Smith, see _Letters_, 1898, i. 244, 245, note.

Moore (_Life_, pp. 94, 95) contrasts stanzas x.x.x.-x.x.xv., with their parade of secret indifference and plea of "a loveless heart," with the tenderness and warmth of his after-thoughts in Albania ("Lines composed during a Thunderstorm," etc.), and decides the coldness was real, the sentiment a.s.sumed. He forgets the flight of time. The lines were written in October, 1809, within a month of his departure from "Calypso's isles," and the _Childe Harold_ stanzas belong to the early spring of 1810. "Ou sont les neiges d'antan?" Moreover, he speaks by the card.