Chapter 13

Museum. (See _Modern Discoveries on the Site of Ancient Ephesus_, by J. T. Wood, 1890; _Hist. of Greek Sculpture_, by A. S. Murray, ii. 304.)]

[522] [Compare _Don Juan_, Canto IX. stanza xxvii. line 2--"I have heard them in the Ephesian ruins howl."]

[pl] {442} ----_round roofs swell_.--[MS. M., D.]

[pm] _Their glittering breastplate in the sun_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[523] [Compare Canto II. stanza lxxix. lines 2, 3--

"Oh Stamboul! once the Empress of their reign, Though turbans now pollute Sophia's shrine."]

[524] [The emphasis is on the word "fit." The measure of "fitness" is the entirety of the enshrinement or embodiment of the mortal aspiration to put on immortality. The vastness and the sacredness of St. Peter's make for and effect this embodiment. So, too, the living temple "so defined," great with the greatness of holiness, may become the enshrinement and the embodiment of the Spirit of God.]

[pn] {443} _His earthly palace_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[525] [This stanza may be paraphrased, but not construed. Apparently, the meaning is that as the eye becomes accustomed to the details and proportions of the building, the sense of its vastness increases. Your first impression was at fault, you had not begun to realize the almost inconceivable vastness of the structure. You had begun to climb the mountain, and the dazzling peak seemed to be close at your head, but as you ascend, it recedes. "Thou movest," but the building expands; "thou climbest," but the Alp increases in height. In both cases the eye has been deceived by gigantic elegance, by the proportion of parts to the whole.]

[po] And fair proportions which beguile the eyes.--[MS. M. erased.]

[pp] _Painting and marble of so many dyes_-- _And glorious high altar where for ever burn_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[pq] _Its Giant's limbs and by degrees_---- or, _The Giant eloquence and thus unroll_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[pr] ----_our narrow sense_ _Cannot keep pace with mind_----[MS. M. erased.]

[ps] {445} _What Earth nor Time--nor former Thought could frame_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[pt] _Before your eye--and ye return not as ye came_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[pu] _In that which Genius did, what great Conceptions can_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[526] [Pliny tells us (_Hist. Nat._, xxxvi. 5) that the Laocoon which stood in the palace of Titus was the work of three sculptors, natives of Rhodes; and it is now universally admitted that the statue which was found (January 14, 1516) in the vineyard of Felice de' Freddi, not far from the ruins of the palace, and is now in the Vatican, is the statue which Pliny describes. M. Collignon, in his _Histoire de la Sculpture Grecque_, gives reasons for assigning the date of the Laocoon to the first years of the first century B.C. It follows that the work is a century later than the frieze of the great altar of Pergamos, which contains the figure of a young giant caught in the toils of Athena's serpent--a theme which served as a model for later sculptors of the same school. In 1817 the Laocoon was in the heyday of its fame, and was regarded as the supreme achievement of ancient art. Since then it has been decried and dethroned. M. Collignon protests against this excessive depreciation, and makes himself the mouthpiece of a second and more temperate reaction: "On peut ... gôuter mediocrement le mélodrame, sans méconnaître pour cela les réelles qualités du groupe. La composition est d'une structure irréprochable, d'une harmonie de lignes qui défie toute critique. Le torse du Laocoon trahit une science du nu pen commune" (_Hist. de la Sculp. Grecque_, 1897, ii. 550, 551).]

[pv] {446} ----_the writhing boys_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[pw] _Shackles its living rings, and_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[527] [In his description of the Apollo Belvidere, Byron follows the traditional theory of Montorsoli, the pupil of Michael Angelo, who restored the left hand and right forearm of the statue. The god, after his struggle with the python, stands forth proud and disdainful, the left hand holding a bow, and the right hand falling as of one who had just shot an arrow. The discovery, in 1860, of a bronze statuette in the Stroganoff Collection at St. Petersburg, which holds something like an ægis and a mantle in the left hand, suggested to Stephani a second theory, that the Belvidere Apollo was a copy of a statue of Apollo Boëdromios, an _ex-voto_ offering on the rout of the Gauls when they attacked Delphi (B.C. 278). To this theory Furtwaengler at one time assented, but subsequently came to the conclusion that the Stroganoff bronze was a forgery. His present contention is that the left hand held a bow, as Montorsoli imagined, whilst the right grasped "a branch of laurel, of which the leaves are still visible on the trunk which the copyist added to the bronze original." The Apollo Belvidere is, he concludes, a copy of the Apollo Alexicacos of Leochares (fourth century B.C.), which stood in the Cerameicos at Athens. M. Maxime Collignon, who utters a word of warning as to the undue depreciation of the statue by modern critics, adopts Furtwaengler's later theory (_Masterpieces of Ancient Greek Sculpture_, by A. Furtwaengler, 1895, ii. 405, _sq._).]

[528] {447} [The "delicate" beauty of the statue recalled the features of a lady whom he had once thought of making his wife. "The Apollo Belvidere," he wrote to Moore (May 12, 1817), "is the image of Lady Adelaide Forbes. I think I never saw such a likeness."]

[529] [It is probable that lines 1-4 of this stanza contain an allusion to a fact related by M. Pinel, in his work, _Sur l'Insanité_, which Milman turned to account in his _Belvidere Apollo_, a Newdigate Prize Poem of 1812--

"Beauteous as vision seen in dreamy sleep By holy maid on Delphi's haunted steep, 'Mid the dim twilight of the laurel grove, Too fair to worship, too divine to love. Yet on that form in wild delirious trance With more than rev'rence gazed the Maid of France, Day after day the love-sick dreamer stood With him alone, nor thought it solitude! To cherish grief, her last, her dearest care, Her one fond hope--to perish of despair." Milman's _Poetical Works_, Paris, 1829, p. 180.

Compare, too, Coleridge's _Kubla Khan_, lines 14-16--

"A savage place, as holy and enchanted, As e'er beneath a wailing moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover." _Poetical Works_, 1893, p. 94.]

[px] {448} _Before its eyes unveiled to image forth a God!_--[MS. M. erased.]

[530] [The fire which Prometheus stole from heaven was the living soul, "the source of all our woe." (Compare Horace, _Odes_, i. 3. 29-31--

"Post ignem ætheriâ domo Subductum, Macies et nova Febrium Terris incubuit cohors.")]

[py] {449} _The phantom fades away into the general mass_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[531] {450} [Compare _Hamlet_, act iii. sc. 1, line 76--"Who would these fardels bear?"]

[532] [Charlotte Augusta (b. January 7, 1796), only daughter of the Prince Regent, was married to Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, May 2, 1816, and died in childbirth, November 6, 1817.

Other poets produced their dirges; but it was left to Byron to deal finely, and as a poet should, with a present grief, which was felt to be a national calamity.

Southey's "Funeral Song for the Princess Charlotte of Wales" was only surpassed in feebleness by Coleridge's "Israel's Lament." Campbell composed a laboured elegy, which was "spoken by Mr ... at Drury Lane Theatre, on the First Opening of the House after the Death of the Princess Charlotte, 1817;" and Montgomery wrote a hymn on "The Royal Infant, Still-born, November 5, 1817."

Not a line of these lamentable effusions has survived; but the poor, pitiful story of common misfortune, with its tragic irony, uncommon circumstance, and far-reaching consequence, found its _vates sacer_ in the author of _Childe Harold_.]

[pz] {451} _Her prayers for thee and in thy coming power_ _Beheld her Iris--Thou too lonely Lord_ _And desolate Consort! fatal is thy dower_, _The Husband of a year--the Father of an_----[? _hour_].-- [D. erased.]

[533] {452} [Compare Canto III. stanza xxxiv. lines 6, 7--

"Like to the apples on the Dead Sea's shore, All ashes to the taste."]

[534] [Mr. Tozer traces the star simile to Homer (_Iliad_, viii. 559)--

Πάντα δέ τ' εἴδεται ἄστρα, γέγηθε δέ τε φρένα ποιμήν [Pa/nta de/ t' ei)/detai a)/stra, ge/gêthe de/ te phre/na poimê/n]]

[535] [Compare _Macbeth_, act iii. sc. 2, lines 22, 23--

"Duncan is in his grave; After life's fitful fever he sleeps well."]

[536] [Compare _Coriolanus_, act iii. sc. 3, lines 121, 122--

"You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate As reek o' the rotten fens."]

[537] {453} Mary died on the scaffold; Elizabeth, of a broken heart; Charles V., a hermit; Louis XIV., a bankrupt in means and glory; Cromwell, of anxiety; and, "the greatest is behind," Napoleon lives a prisoner. To these sovereigns a long but superfluous list might be added of names equally illustrious and unhappy.

[qa] _Which sinks_----.--[MS. M.]

[538] [The simile of the "earthquake" was repeated in a letter to Murray, dated December 3, 1817: "The death of the Princess Charlotte has been a shock even here, and must have been an earthquake at home.... The death of this poor Girl is melancholy in every respect, dying at twenty or so, in childbed--of a _boy_ too, a present princess and future queen, and just as she began to be happy, and to enjoy herself, and the hopes which she inspired."]

[539] {454} The village of Nemi was near the Arician retreat of Egeria, and, from the shades which embosomed the temple of Diana, has preserved to this day its distinctive appellation of _The Grove_. Nemi is but an evening's ride from the comfortable inn of Albano.

[The basin of the Lago di Nemi is the crater of an extinct volcano. Hence the comparison to a coiled snake. Its steel-blue waters are unruffled by the wind which lashes the neighbouring ocean into fury. Hence its likeness to "cherished hate," as contrasted with "generous and active wrath."]

[qb] _And calm as speechless hate_----.--[MS. M.]

[540] [The spectator is supposed to be looking towards the Mediterranean from the summit of Monte Cavo. Tusculum, where "Tully reposed," lies to the north of the Alban Hills, on the right; but, as Byron points to a spot "beneath thy right," he probably refers to the traditional site of the Villa Ciceronis at Grotta Ferrata, and not to an alternative site at the Villa Ruffinella, between Frascati and the ruins of Tusculum. Horace's Sabine farm, on the bank of Digentia's "ice-cold rivulet," is more than twenty miles to the north-east of the Alban Hills. The mountains to the south and east of Tusculum intercept the view of the valley of the Licenza (Digentia), where the "farm was tilled." Childe Harold had bidden farewell to Horace, once for all, "upon Soracte's ridge," but recalls him to keep company with Virgil and Cicero.]

[qc] {455} _Of girdling mountains circle on the sight_ _The Sabine farm was tilled, the wearied Bard's delight_.-- [MS. M.]

[541] ["Calpe's rock" is Gibraltar (compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza xxii. line i). "Last" may be the last time that Byron and Childe Harold saw the Mediterranean together. Byron had last seen it--"the Midland Ocean"--by "Calpe's rock," on his return journey to England in 1811. Or by "last" he may mean the last time that it burst upon his view. He had not seen the Mediterranean on his way from Geneva to Venice, in October-November, 1816, or from Venice to Rome, April--May, 1817; but now from the Alban Mount the "ocean" was full in view.]

[qd] {456} ----_much suffering and some tears_.--[MS. M.]

[542] ["After the stanza (near the conclusion of Canto 4th) which ends with the line--

"'As if there was no man to trouble what is clear,'

insert the two following stanzas (clxxvii., clxxviii.). Then go on to the stanza beginning, 'Roll on thou,' etc., etc. You will find the place of insertion near the conclusion--just before the address to the Ocean.

"These _two stanzas_ will just make up the number of 500 stanzas to the whole poem.

"Answer when you receive this. I sent back the packets yesterday, and hope they will arrive in safety."--D.]

[543] [His desire is towards no light o' love, but for the support and fellowship of his sister. Compare the opening lines of the _Epistle to Augusta_--

"My sister! my sweet sister! if a name Dearer and purer were, it should be thine; Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim No tears, but tenderness to answer mine: Go where I will, to me thou art the same-- A loved regret which I would not resign. There yet are two things in my destiny,-- A world to roam through and a home with thee.

"The first were nothing--had I still the last, It were the haven of my happiness."]

[544] {457} [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza lxxii. lines 8, 9; and _Epistle to Augusta_, stanza xi.]

[qe] {458} ----_unearthed, uncoffined, and unknown_.--[MS. M.]

[545] [Compare _Ps_. cvii. 26, "They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths."]

[qf] _And dashest him to earth again: there let him lay!_--[D.]

[546] ["Lay" is followed by a plainly marked period in both the MSS. (M. and D.) of the Fourth Canto of _Childe Harold_. For instances of the same error, compare "The Adieu," stanza 10, line 4, and ["Pignus Amoris"], stanza 3, line 3 (_Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 232, note, and p. 241). It is to be remarked that Hobhouse, who pencilled a few corrections on the margin of his own MS. copy, makes no comment on this famous solecism. The fact is that Byron wrote as he spoke, with the "careless and negligent ease of a man of quality," and either did not know that "lay" was not an intransitive verb or regarded himself as "super grammaticam."]

[547] {459} [Compare Campbell's _Battle of the Baltic_ (stanza ii. lines 1, 2)--

"Like leviathans afloat, Lay their bulwarks on the brine."]

[qg] _These oaken citadels which made and make_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[548] The Gale of wind which succeeded the battle of Trafalgar destroyed the greater part (if not all) of the prizes--nineteen sail of the line--taken on that memorable day. I should be ashamed to specify particulars which should be known to all--did we not know that in France the people were kept in ignorance of the event of this most glorious victory in modern times, and that in England it is the present fashion to talk of Waterloo as though it were entirely an English triumph--and a thing to be named with Blenheim and Agincourt--Trafalgar and Aboukir. Posterity will decide; but if it be remembered as a skilful or as a wonderful action, it will be like the battle of Zama, where we think of Hannibal more than of Scipio. For assuredly we dwell on this action, not because it was gained by Blucher or Wellington, but because it was lost by Buonaparte--a man who, with all his vices and his faults, never yet found an adversary with a tithe of his talents (as far as the expression can apply to a conqueror) or his good intentions, his clemency or his fortitude.

Look at his successors throughout Europe, whose imitation of the worst parts of his policy is only limited by their comparative impotence, and their positive imbecility.--[MS. M.]

[549] {460} ["When Lord Byron wrote this stanza, he had, no doubt, the following passage in Boswell's _Johnson_ floating in his mind.... 'The grand object of all travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean. On those shores were the four great empires of the world--the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman' (_Life of Johnson_, 1876, p. 505)."--Note to _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza clxxxii. ed. 1891.]

[550] [See letter to Murray, September 24, 1818: "What does 'thy waters _wasted_ them' mean (in the Canto)? _That is not me_. Consult the MS. _always_." Nevertheless, the misreading appeared in several editions. (For a correspondence on the subject, see _Notes and Queries_, first series, vol. i. pp. 182, 278, 324, 508; vol. ix. p. 481; vol. x. pp. 314, 434.)]

[qh] _Thy waters wasted them while they were free_.--[Editions 1818, 1819, 1823, and Galignani, 1825.]

[qi] _Unchangeable save calm thy tempests ply_.--[MS. M., D.]

[qj] {461} _The image of Eternity and Space_ _For who hath fixed thy limits_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[551] [Compare Tennyson's _In Memoriam_, lv. stanza 6--

"Dragons of the prime, That tare each other in their slime, Were mellow music match'd with him."]

[552] ["While at Aberdeen, he used often to steal from home unperceived; sometimes he would find his way to the seaside" (_Life_, p. 9). For an account of his feats in swimming, see _Letters_, 1898, i. 263, note 1; and letter to Murray, February 21, 1821. See, too, for a "more perilous, but less celebrated passage" (from Old Lisbon to Belem Castle), _Travels in Albania_, ii. 195.]

[553] ["It was a thought worthy of the great spirit of Byron, after exhibiting to us his Pilgrim amidst all the most striking scenes of earthly grandeur and earthly decay ... to conduct him and us at last to the borders of 'the Great Deep.' ... The image of the wanderer may well be associated, for a time, with the rock of Calpe, the shattered temples of Athens, or the gigantic fragments of Rome; but when we wish to think of this dark personification as of a thing which is, where can we so well imagine him to have his daily haunt as by the roaring of the waves? It was thus that Homer represented Achilles in his moments of ungovernable and inconsolable grief for the loss of Patroclus. It was thus he chose to depict the paternal despair of Chryseus--

"Βή δ' ἀκέων παρὰ θῖνα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης [Bê/ d' a)ke/ôn para\ thi~na polyphloi/sboio thala/ssês]"

Note by Professor Wilson, ed. 1837.]

[qk] {462} _Is dying in the echo--it is time_ _To break the spell of this protracted dream_ _And what will be the fate of this my rhyme_ _May not be of my augury_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[ql] _Fatal--and yet it shakes me not--farewell._--[MS. M.]

[qm] _Ye! who have traced my Pilgrim to the scene._--[MS. M.]

[554] {463} At end--

Laus Deo! Byron. July 19th, 1817. La Mira, near Venice.

Laus Deo! Byron. La Mira, near Venice, Sept. 3, 1817.

* * * * *

NOTES TO CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.