The Works of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 24

[126] [The fall of the Rossberg took place September 2, 1806. "A huge ma.s.s of conglomerate rock, 1000 feet broad and 100 feet thick, detached itself from the face of the mountain (Rossberg or Rufiberg, near Goldau, south of Lake Zug), and slipped down into the valley below, overwhelming the villages of Goldau, Busingen, and Rothen, and part of Lowertz. More than four hundred and fifty human beings perished, and whole herds of cattle were swept away. Five minutes sufficed to complete the work of destruction. The inhabitants were first roused by a loud and grating sound like thunder ... and beheld the valleys shrouded in a cloud of dust; when it had cleared away they found the face of nature changed."--_Handbook of Switzerland,_ Part 1. pp 58, 59.]

[127] {99}[The critics of the day either affected to ignore or severely censured (e.g. writers in the _Critical_, _European_, and _Gentleman's_ Magazines) the allusions to an incestuous pa.s.sion between Manfred and Astarte. Sh.e.l.ley, in a letter to Mrs. Gisborne, November 16, 1819, commenting on Calderon's _Los Cabellos de Absalon,_ discusses the question from an ethical as well as critical point of view: "The incest scene between Amon and Tamar is perfectly tremendous. Well may Calderon say, in the person of the former--

Si sangre sin fuego hiere Qua fara sangre con fuego.'

Incest is, like many other incorrect things, a very poetical circ.u.mstance. It may be the defiance of everything for the sake of another which clothes itself in the glory of the highest heroism, or it may be that cynical rage which, confounding the good and the bad in existing opinions, breaks through them for the purpose of rioting in selfishness and antipathy."--_Works of P. B. Sh.e.l.ley,_ 1880, iv. 142.]

[ax] {100} ----_and some insaner sin_.--[MS. erased.]

[128] [Compare _Childe Harold,_ Canto III. stanza v. lines 1, 2.]

[129] {102}This iris is formed by the rays of the sun over the lower part of the Alpine torrents; it is exactly like a rainbow come down to pay a visit, and so close that you may walk into it: this effect lasts till noon. ["Before ascending the mountain, went to the torrent (7 in the morning) again; the Sun upon it forming a _rainbow_ of the lower part of all colours, but princ.i.p.ally purple and gold; the bow moving as you move; I never saw anything like this; it is only in the Suns.h.i.+ne"

(_Letters_, 1899, iii, 359).]

[130] ["Arrived at the foot of the Mountain (the Yung frau, i.e. the Maiden); Glaciers; torrents; one of these torrents _nine hundred feet_ in height of visible descent ... heard an Avalanche fall, like thunder; saw Glacier--enormous. Storm came on, thunder, lightning, hail; all in perfection, and beautiful.... The torrent is in shape curving over the rock, like the _tail_ of a white horse streaming in the wind, such as it might be conceived would be that of the '_pale_ horse' on which _Death_ is mounted in the Apocalypse. It is neither mist nor water, but a something between both; it's immense height ... gives it a wave, a curve, a spreading here, a condensation there, wonderful and indescribable" (ibid., pp. 357, 358).]

[ay] {103}_Wherein seems gla.s.sed_----.--[MS. of extract, February 15, 1817.]

[131] {104}[Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza lxxii. lines 2, 3, note 2.]

[132] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza clx.x.xiv. line 3, note 2.]

[133] [Compare--

"The moving moon went up the sky."

_The Ancient Mariner_, Part IV. line 263.

Compare, too--

"The climbing moon."

Act iii. sc. 3, line 40.]

[134] {105}[Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanzas v.-xi.]

[135] The philosopher Jamblicus. The story of the raising of Eros and Anteros may be found in his life by Eunapius. It is well told. ["It is reported of him," says Eunapius, "that while he and his scholars were bathing in the hot baths of Gadara, in Syria, a dispute arising concerning the baths, he, smiling, ordered his disciples to ask the inhabitants by what names the two lesser springs, that were fairer than the rest, were called. To which the inhabitants replied, that 'the one was called Love, and the other Love's Contrary, but for what reason they knew not.' Upon which Iamblichus, who chanced to be sitting on the fountain's edge where the stream flowed out, put his hand on the water, and, having uttered a few words, called up from the depths of the fountain a fair-skinned lad, not over-tall, whose golden locks fell in sunny curls over his breast and back, so that he looked like one fresh from the bath; and then, going to the other spring, and doing as he had done before, called up another Amoretto like the first, save that his long-flowing locks now seemed black, now shot with sunny gleams.

Whereupon both the Amoretti nestled and clung round Iamblichus as if they had been his own children ... after this his disciples asked him no more questions."--Eunapii Sardiani _Vitae Philosophorum et Sophistarum_ (28, 29), _Philostratorum_, etc., _Opera_, Paris, 1829, p. 459, lines 20-50.]

[136] {107}[There may be some allusion here to "the squall off Meillerie" on the Lake of Geneva (see Letter to Murray, June 27, 1816, _Letters,_ 1899, iii. 333).]

[137] [Compare the concluding sentence of the Journal in Switzerland (_ibid.,_ p. 364).]

[az] _And live--and live for ever_.--[Specimen sheet.]

[ba] {108}_As from a bath_--.--[MS, erased.]

[138] The story of Pausanias, king of Sparta, (who commanded the Greeks at the battle of Platea, and afterwards perished for an attempt to betray the Lacedaemonians), and Cleonice, is told in Plutarch's life of Cimon; and in the Laconics of Pausanias the sophist in his description of Greece.

[The following is the pa.s.sage from Plutarch: "It is related that when Pausanias was at Byzantium, he cast his eyes upon a young virgin named Cleonice, of a n.o.ble family there, and insisted on having her for a mistress. The parents, intimidated by his power, were under the hard necessity of giving up their daughter. The young woman begged that the light might be taken out of his apartment, that she might go to his bed in secresy and silence. When she entered he was asleep, and she unfortunately stumbled upon the candlestick, and threw it down. The noise waked him suddenly, and he, in his confusion, thinking it was an enemy coming to a.s.sa.s.sinate him, unsheathed a dagger that lay by him, and plunged it into the virgin's heart. After this he could never rest.

Her image appeared to him every night, and with a menacing tone repeated this heroic verse--

'Go to the fate which pride and l.u.s.t prepare!'

The allies, highly incensed at this infamous action, joined Cimon to besiege him in Byzantium. But he found means to escape thence; and, as he was still haunted by the spectre, he is said to have applied to a temple at Heraclea, where the _manes_ of the dead were consulted. There he invoked the spirit of Cleonice, and entreated her pardon. She appeared, and told him 'he would soon be delivered from all his troubles, after his return to Sparta:' in which, it seems, his death was enigmatically foretold." "Thus," adds the translator in a note, "we find that it was a custom in the pagan as well as in the Hebrew theology to conjure up the spirits of the dead, and that the witch of Endor was not the only witch in the world."--Langhorne's _Plutarch_, 1838, p. 339.

The same story is told in the _Periegesis Graecae_, lib. iii. cap. xvii., but Pausanias adds, "This was the deed from the guilt of which Pausanias could never fly, though he employed all-various purifications, received the deprecations of Jupiter Phyxius, and went to Phigalea to the Arcadian evocators of souls."--_Descr. of Greece_ (translated by T.

Taylor), 1794, i. 304, 305.]

[139] {109}[Compare--

"But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear Her never-trodden snow."

_Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza lxxiii. lines 6, 7.

Byron did not know, or ignored, the fact that the Jungfrau was first ascended in 1811, by the brothers Meyer, of Aarau.]

[140] {110}[Compare--

"And who commanded (and the silence came) Here let the billows stiffen and have rest?

Motionless torrents! silent cataracts."

_Hymn before Sunrise, etc.,_ by S.T. Coleridge, lines 47, 48, 53.

"Arrived at the Grindenwald; dined, mounted again, and rode to the higher Glacier--twilight, but distinct--very fine Glacier, like _a frozen hurricane_" (Letters, 1899, iii. 360).]

[141] [The idea of the Witches' Festival may have been derived from the Walpurgisnacht on the Brocken.]

[142] [Compare--

"Freedom ne'er shall want an heir; * * * * *

When once more her hosts a.s.semble, Tyrants shall believe and tremble-- Smile they at this idle threat?

Crimson tears will follow yet."

_Ode from the French,_ v. 8, 11-14. _Poetical Works,_ 1900, iii. 435.

Compare, too, _Napoleon's Farewell_, stanza 3, ibid., p. 428. The "Voice" prophesies that St. Helena will prove a second Elba, and that Napoleon will "live to fight another day."]

[143] {111}[Byron may have had in his mind Thomas Lord Cochrane (1775-1860), "who had done brilliant service in his successive commands--the _Speedy_, _Pallas_, _Imperieuse_, and the flotilla of fire-s.h.i.+ps at Basque Roads in 1809." In his Diary, March 10, 1814, he speaks of him as "the stock-jobbing hoaxer" (_Letters_, 1898, ii. 396, note 1).]

[144] {112}[Arimanes, the Aherman of _Vathek_, the Arimanius of Greek and Latin writers, is the Ahriman (or Angra Mainyu, "who is all death,"

the spirit of evil, the counter-creator) of the _Zend-Avesta_, "Fargard," i. 5 (translated by James Darmesteter, 1895, p. 4). Byron may have got the form Arimanius (_vide_ Steph., _Thesaurus_) from D'Herbelot, and changed it to Arimanes.]

[145] [The "formidable Eblis" sat on a globe of fire--"in his hand ...

he swayed the iron sceptre that causes ... all the powers of the abyss to tremble."--_Vathek_, by William Beckford, 1887, p. 178.]

[bb] {112}_The comets herald through the burning skies_.--[Alternative reading in MS.]