The Works of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 94

[560] [Southey's _Life of Wesley, and Rise and Progress of Methodism_, in two volumes octavo, was published in 1820. In a "Memento" written in a blank leaf of the first volume, Coleridge expressed his desire that his copy should be given to Southey as a bequest. "One or other volume,"

he writes, "was more often in my hands than any other in my ragged book-regiment ... How many an hour of self-oblivion do I owe to this Life of Wesley!"--Third ed. 1846, i. xv.]

[561] [In his reply to the Preface to Southey's _Vision of Judgement_, Byron attacked the Laureate as "this arrogant scribbler of all works."]

[hs] _Is not unlike it, and is_----.--[MS.]

[562] {523}King Alfonso, speaking of the Ptolomean system, said, that "had he been consulted at the creation of the world, he would have spared the Maker some absurdities. [Alphonso X., King of Castile (1221-1284), surnamed the Wise and the Astronomer, "gave no small encouragement to the Jewish rabbis." Under his patronage Judah de Toledo translated the works of Avicenna, and improved them by a new division of the stars. Moreover, "he sent for about 50 learned men from Gascony, Paris, and other places, to translate the tables of Ptolemy, and to compile a more correct set of them (i.e. the famous _Tabulae Alphonsinae_) ... The king himself presided over the a.s.sembly."--_Mod. Univ. Hist._, xiii. 304, 305, note(U).

Alfonso has left behind him the reputation of a Castilian Hamlet--"infinite in faculty," but "unpregnant of his cause." "He was more fit," says Mariana (_Hist._, lib. xiii. c. 20), "for letters than for the government of his subjects; he studied the heavens and watched the stars, but forgot the earth and lost his kingdom." Nevertheless his works do follow him. "He is to be remembered for his poetry (_'Cantigas'_, chants in honour of the Virgin, and _'Tesoro'_ a treatise on the philosopher's stone), for his astronomical tables, which all the progress of science have not deprived of their value, and for his great work on legislation, which is at this moment an authority in both hemispheres."--_Hist. of Spanish Literature_, by G. Ticknor, 1888, i. 7.

Byron got the quip about Alfonso and "the absurdities of creation" from Bayle (_Dict_., 1735, art. "Castile"), who devotes a long note (H) to a somewhat mischievous apology for the king's apparent profanity. Bayle's immediate authority is Le Bovier de Fontenelle, in his _Entretiens sur la Pluralite des Mondes_, 1686, p. 38, "L'embaras de tous ces cercles estoit si grand, que dans un temps ou l'on ne connoissoit encore rien de meilleur, un roy d'Aragon (_sic_) grand mathematicien mais apparemment peu devot, disoit que si Dieu l'eust appelle a son conseil quand il fit le Monde, il luy eust donne de bons avis."]

[563] {524}[See Aubrey's account (_Miscellanies upon Various Subjects_, by John Aubrey, F.R.S., 1857, p. 81) of the apparition which disappeared "with a curious perfume, and _most melodious tw.a.n.g_;" or see Scott's _Antiquary, The Novels, etc_., 1851, i. 375.]

[564]

["When I beheld them meet, the desire of my soul o'ercame me, ----I, too, pressed forward to enter-- But the weight of the body withheld me.--I stooped to the fountain.

And my feet methought sunk, and I fell precipitate. Starting, Then I awoke, and beheld the mountains in twilight before me, Dark and distinct; and instead of the rapturous sound of hosannahs, Heard the bell from the tower, Toll! Toll! through the silence of evening."

_Vision of Judgement_, xii.]

[565] {525}A drowned body lies at the bottom till rotten; it then floats, as most people know. [Byron may, possibly, have heard of the "Floating Island" on Derwent.w.a.ter.]

[ht] _In his own little nook_----.--[MS.]

[566]

["Verily, you brache!

The devil turned precisian."

Ma.s.singer's _A New Way to Pay Old Debts_, act i. sc. 1]

[hu] ----_the light is now withdrawn_.--[MS.]

[567] ["Mem. This poem was begun on May 7, 1821, but left off the same day--resumed about the 20th of September of the same year, and concluded as dated."]

POEMS 1816-1823.

POEMS 1816-1823

A VERY MOURNFUL BALLAD[568] ON THE SIEGE AND CONQUEST OF ALHAMA.[569]

_Which, in the Arabic language, is to the following purport_[570]

1.

The Moorish King rides up and down.

Through Granada's royal town: From Elvira's gates to those Of Bivarambla on he goes.

Woe is me, Alhama![hv][571]

2.

Letters to the Monarch tell How Alhama's city fell: In the fire the scroll he threw, And the messenger he slew.

Woe is me, Alhama!

3.

He quits his mule, and mounts his horse, And through the street directs his course; Through the street of Zacatin To the Alhambra spurring in.

Woe is me, Alhama!

4.

When the Alhambra walls he gained, On the moment he ordained That the trumpet straight should sound With the silver clarion round.

Woe is me, Alhama!

5.

And when the hollow drums of war Beat the loud alarm afar, That the Moors of town and plain Might answer to the martial strain.

Woe is me, Alhama!

6.

Then the Moors, by this aware, That b.l.o.o.d.y Mars recalled them there, One by one, and two by two, To a mighty squadron grew.

Woe is me, Alhama!

7.

Out then spake an aged Moor In these words the king before, "Wherefore call on us, oh King?

What may mean this gathering?"

Woe is me, Alhama!

8.

"Friends! ye have, alas! to know Of a most disastrous blow-- That the Christians, stern and bold, Have obtained Alhama's hold."

Woe is me, Alhama!