Chapter XI: Canto THE SECOND: I.113 (2)

(_Travels in Albania_, 1858, i. 299). M. Darmesteter quotes the original: "mot sur les Barberini" ("Quod non fecere Barbari, Fecere Barberini"). It may be added that Scotchmen are named among the volunteers who joined the Hanoverian mercenaries in the Venetian invasion of Greece in 1686. (See _The Curse of Minerva: Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 463, note 1; Finlay's _Hist. of Greece_, v. 189.)]

[dz] {107}

What! shall it e'er be said by British tongue,
Albion was happy while Athenae mourned?
Though in thy name the slave her bosom wrung,
Albion! I would not see thee thus adorned
With gains thy generous spirit should have scorned,
From Man distinguished by some monstrous sign,
Like Attila the Hun was surely horned,[Sec.1]
Who wrought the ravage amid works divine:
Oh that Minerva's voice lent its keen aid to mine.--[MS. D. erased.]

What! shall it e'er be said by British tongue,
Albion was happy in Athenae's tears?
Though in thy name the slave her bosom wrung,
Let it not vibrate in pale Europe's ears,[Sec.2]
The Saviour Queen, the free Britannia, wears
The last poor blunder of a bleeding land:
That she, whose generous aid her name endears,
Tore down those remnants with a Harpy's hand,
Which Envious Eld forbore and Tyrants left to stand.--[MS. D.][Sec.3]

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

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

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

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

Come then, ye classic Thieves of each degree,
Dark Hamilton[Sec.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[Sec.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,[Sec.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.]

[Sec.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 Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, Hamilton accompanied him as private secretary. After the battle of Ramassieh (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.)]

[Sec.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 entitled, _Household Furniture and Internal Decoration_. It was severely handled in the _Edinburgh Review_ (No. xx.) for July, 1807.]

[Sec.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, Goddess_----.--[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 pass 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 shore_.--[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 _amusement_ 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 passes 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[Sec.] but that_----.--[MS.D.]

[Sec.] "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 Shelley, 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 shipwreck'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 hoar profound."

In felicity of expression, the copy, if it be a copy, surpasses 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 passion 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 entitled "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 entitled 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 assis 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 xxx.-xxxv., 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 assumed. 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. Writing at Athens, January 16, 1810, he tells us, "The spell is broke, the charm is flown."]

[134] {120} [More than one commentator gravely "sets against" this line--Byron's statement to Dallas (_Corr. of Lord Byron_, Paris, 1824, iii. 91), "I am not a Joseph or a Scipio; but I can safely affirm that never in my life I seduced any woman." Compare _Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi_, 1890, ii. 12, "Never have I employed the iniquitous art of seduction ... Languishing in soft and thrilling sentiments, I demanded from a woman a sympathy and inclination of like nature with my own. If she fell ... I should have remembered how she made for me the greatest of all sacrifices.... I should have worshipped her like a deity. I could have spent my life's blood in consoling her; and without swearing eternal constancy, I should have been most stable on my side in loving such a mistress."]

[er] {121} _Brisk Impudence_----.--[MS.]

[es] _Youth wasted, wretches born_----.--[MS. erased.]

[135] [Compare Lucretius, iv. 1121-4--

"Adde quod absumunt viris pereuntque labore,

* * * * *

Labitur interea res, et Babylonica fiunt:
Languent officia, atque aegrotat fama vacillans."]

[et] {122} _Climes strange withal as ever mortal head_.--[MS.]

[eu] _Suspected in its little pride of thought_.--[MS. erased.]

[136] ["Were counselled or advised." The passive "were ared" seems to lack authority. (See _N. Eng. Dict._, art. "Aread.")]

[ev]
_Her not unconscious though her weakly child_.
or, ----_her rudest child_.--[MS. erased.]

[137] [Compare the description of the thunderstorm in the Alps (Canto III. stanzas xcii.-xcvi., pp. 273-275); and _Manfred_, act ii. sc. 2--

"My joy was in the wilderness; to breathe
The difficult air of the iced mountain-top--
* * * * *
In them my early strength exulted; or
To follow through the night the moving moon,
The stars and their development; or catch
The dazzling lightnings till my eyes grew dim."

Beattie, who describes the experiences of his own boyhood in the person of Edwin in _The Minstrel_, had already made a like protestation--

"In sooth he was a strange and wayward youth.
Fond of each gentle and each dreadful scene.
In darkness and in storm he found delight;
Not less than when on ocean-wave serene
The Southern sun diffus'd his dazzling sheen;
Even sad vicissitude amus'd his soul."

Kirke White, too, who was almost Byron's contemporary, and whose verses he professed to admire--

"Would run a visionary boy
When the hoarse tempest shook the vaulted sky."

This love of Nature in her wilder aspects, which was perfectly genuine, and, indeed, meritorious, was felt to be out of the common, a note of the poetic temperament, worth recording, but unlikely to pass without questioning and remonstrance.]

[138] {123} [Alexander's mother, Olympias, was an Epiriote. She had a place in the original draft of Tennyson's _Palace of Art_ (_Life of Lord Tennyson_,. 119)--

"One was Olympias; the floating snake
Roll'd round her ankles, round her waist
Knotted," etc.

Plutarch (_Vitae_, Lipsiae:, 1814, vi. 170) is responsible for the legend: [Greek: O)\phthe de/ pote kai\ dra/kon koimome/nes te~s O)lympia/dou parektetame/ns to~| so/mati], "Now, one day, when Olympias lay abed, beside her body a dragon was espied stretched out at full length." (Compare, too, Dryden's _Alexander's Feast_, stanza ii.)]

[139] [Mr. Tozer (_Childe Harold_, p. 236) takes this line to mean "whom the young love to talk of, and the wise to follow as an example," and points to Alexander's foresight as a conqueror, and the "extension of commerce and civilization" which followed his victories. But, surely, the antithesis lies between Alexander the ideal of the young, and Alexander the deterrent example of the old. The phrase, "beacon of the wise," if Hector in _Troilus and Cressida_ (act ii. sc. 2, line 16) is an authority, is proverbial.

" ... The wound of peace is surety,
Surety secure; but modest doubt is call'd
The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches
To the bottom of the worst."

The beauty, the brilliance, the glory of Alexander kindle the enthusiasm of the young; but the murder of Clytus and the early death which he brought upon himself are held up by the wise as beacon-lights to save others from shipwreck.]

[140] [Byron and Hobhouse sailed for Malta in the brig-of-war _Spider_ on Tuesday, September 19, 1809 (Byron, in a letter to his mother, November 12, says September 21), and anchored off Patras on the night of Sunday, the 24th. On Tuesday, the 26th, they were under way at 12 noon, and on the evening of that day they saw the sun set over Mesalonghi. The next morning, September 27, they were in the channel between Ithaca and the mainland, with Ithaca, then in the hands of the French, to the left. "We were close to it," says Hobhouse, "and saw a few shrubs on a brown heathy land, two little towns in the hills scattered among trees." The travellers made "but little progress this day," and, apparently, having redoubled Cape St. Andreas, the southern extremity of Ithaca, they sailed (September 28) through the channel between Ithaca and Cephalonia, passed the hill of AEtos, on which stood the so-called "Castle of Ulysses," whence Penelope may have "overlooked the wave," and caught sight of "the Lover's refuge" in the distance. Towards the close of the same day they doubled Cape Ducato ("Leucadia's cape," the scene of Sappho's leap), and, sailing under "the ancient mount," the site of the Temple of Apollo, anchored off Prevesa at seven in the evening. Poetry and prose are not always in accord. If, as Byron says, it was "an autumn's eve" when they hailed "Leucadia's cape afar," if the evening star shone over the rock when they approached it, they must have sailed fast to reach Prevesa, some thirty miles to the north, by seven o'clock. But _de minimis_, the Muse is as disregardful as the Law. And, perhaps, after all, it was Hobhouse who misread his log-book. (_Travels in Albania_, i. 4, 5; Murray's _Handbook for Greece_, pp. 40, 46.)]

[141] {125} [The meaning of this passage is not quite so obvious as it seems. He has in his mind the words, "He saved others, Himself He cannot save," and, applying this to Sappho, asks, "Why did she who conferred immortality on herself by her verse prove herself mortal?" Without Fame, and without verse the cause and keeper of Fame, there is no heaven, no immortality, for the sons of men. But what security is there for the eternity of verse and Fame? "_Quis custodiet custodes_?"]

[142] {126} [For Byron's "star" similes, see Canto III. stanza xxxviii. line 9.]

[ew] ----_and looked askance on Mars_.--[MS. erased.]

[143] [Compare the line in Tennyson's song, _Break, break, break,_ "And the stately ships go on."]

[ex]
_And roused him more from thought than he was wont_
_While Pleasure almost seemed to smooth his pallid front_.--[MS. D.]
_While Pleasure almost smiled along_----.--[MS. erased.]

[144] [By "Suli's rocks" Byron means the mountainous district in the south of the Epirus. The district of Suli formed itself into a small republic at the close of the last century, and offered a formidable resistance to Ali Pacha. "Pindus' inland peak," Monte Metsovo, which forms part of the ridge which divides Epirus from Thessaly, is not visible from the sea-coast.]

[145] {127} ["Shore unknown." (See Byron's note to stanza xxxviii. line 5.)]

[ey] {128} ----_lovely harmful thing_.--[MS. pencil.]

[146] [Compare Byron's _Stanzas written on passing the Ambracian Gulph_.]

[147] [Nicopolis, "the city of victory," which Augustus, "the second Caesar," built to commemorate Actium, is some five miles to the north of Prevesa. Byron and Hobhouse visited the ruins on the 30th of September, and again on the 12th of November (see Byron's letter to Mrs. Byron. November 12, 1809: _Letters_, 1898, i. 251).]

[ez]
_Imperial wretches, doubling human woes!_
_God!--was thy globe ere made_----.--[MS. erased.]

[148] {129} [The travellers left Prevesa on October 1, and arrived at Janina on October 5. They left Janina on October 11, and reached Zitza at nightfall (Byron at 3 a.m., October 12). They left Zitza on October 13, and arrived at Tepeleni on October 19.]

[149] [On the evening of October 11, as the party was approaching Zitza, Hobhouse and the Albanian, Vasilly, rode on, leaving "Lord Byron and the baggage behind." It was getting dark, and just as the luckier Hobhouse contrived to make his way to the village, the rain began to fall in torrents. Before long, "the thunder roared as it seemed without any intermission; for the echoes of one peal had not ceased to roll in the mountains before another crash burst over our heads." Byron, dragoman, and baggage were not three miles from Zitza when the storm began, and they lost their way. After many wanderings and adventures they were finally conducted by ten men with pine torches to the hut; but by that time it was three o'clock in the morning. Hence the "Stanzas composed during a Thunderstorm."--Hobhouse's _Travels in Albania_, i. 69-71.]

[150] {130} ["The prior of the monastery, a humble, meek-mannered man, entertained us in a warm chamber with grapes and a pleasant white wine ...We were so well pleased with everything about us that we agreed to lodge with him."--Hobhouse's _Travels in Albania_, i. 73.]

[fa] _Here winds, if winds there be, will fan his breast_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[fb] _Keep Heaven for better souls, my shade shall seek for none_.--[MS. erased.]

[fc] {132}
_But frequent is the lamb, the kid, the goat_--
_And watching pensive with his browsing flock_.--[MS. erased.]

[fd] _Counting the hours beneath yon skies unerring shock_.--[MS. erased.]

[151] [The site of Dodona, a spot "at the foot of Mount Tomaros" (Mount Olytsika) in the valley of Tcharacovista, was finally determined, in 1876, by excavations carried out, at his own expense, by M. Constantin Carapanos, a native of Arta. In his monograph, _Dodone et ses Ruines_ (Paris, 1878, 4to), M. Carapanos gives a detailed description of the theatre, the twofold Temenos (I. _L'Enceinte du Temple_, II. _Temenos_, pp. 13-28), including the Temple of Zeus and a sanctuary of Aphrodite, and of the numerous _ex voto_ offerings and inscriptions on lead which were brought to light during the excavations, and helped to identify the ruins. An accompanying folio volume of plates contains (Planches, i., ii.) a map of the valley of Tcharacovista, and a lithograph of Mount Tomaros, "d'un aspect majestueux et pittoresque ... un roc nu sillonne par le lit de nombreux torrents" (p. 8). Behind Dodona, on the summit of the many-named chain of hills which confronts Mount Tomaros, are "bouquets de chene," sprung it may be from the offspring of the [Greek: prose/goroi dry/es] (AEsch., _Prom._, 833), the "talking oaks," which declared the will of Zeus. For the "prophetic fount" (line 2), Servius, commenting on Virgil, _AEneid_, iii. 41-66, seems to be the authority: "Circa hoc templum quercus immanis fuisse dicitur ex cujus radicibus fons manebat, qui suo murmure instinctu Deorum diversis oracula reddebat" (_Virgilii Opera_, Leovardiae, 1717, i. 548).

Byron and Hobhouse, on one of their excursions from Janina, explored and admired the ruins of the "amphitheatre," but knew not that "here and nowhere else" was Dodona (_Travels in Albania_, i. 53-56).]

[152] {133} [The sentiment that man, "whose breath is in his nostrils," should consider the impermanence of all that is stable and durable before he cries out upon his own mortality, may have been drawn immediately from the famous letter of consolation sent by Sulpitius Severus to Cicero, which Byron quotes in a note to Canto IV. stanza xliv., or, in the first instance, from Tasso's _Gerusalemme Liberata_, xv. 20--

"Giace l'alta Cartago; appena i segni
Dell' alte sue ruini il lido serba.
Muojono le citta; muojono i regni:
Copre i fasti, e le pompe, arena ed erba;
E l'uom d'esser mortal par cue si sdegni!"

Compare, too, Addison's "Reflections in Westminster Abbey," _Spectator_, No. 26.]

[153] [The six days' journey from Zitza to Tepeleni is compressed into a single stanza. The vale (line 3) may be that of the Kalama, through which the travellers passed (October 13) soon after leaving Zitza, or, more probably, the plain of Deropoli ("well-cultivated, divided by rails and low hedges, and having a river flowing through it to the south"), which they crossed (October 15) on their way from Delvinaki, the frontier village of Illyria, to Libokhovo.]

[154] {134} ["Yclad," used as a preterite, not a participle (compare Coleridge's "I wis" [_Christabel_, part i. line 92]), is a Byronism--"archaisme incorrect," says M. Darmesteter.]

[155] ["During the fast of the Ramazan, ... the gallery of each minaret is decorated with a circlet of small lamps. When seen from a distance, each minaret presents a point of light, 'like meteors in the sky;' and in a large city, where they are numerous, they resemble a swarm of fireflies."--H.F. Tozer. (Compare _The Giaour_, i. 449-452--

"When Rhamazan's last sun was set,
And flashing from each minaret.
Millions of lamps proclaimed the feast
Of Bairam through the boundless East.")]

[156] {135} ["A kind of dervish or recluse ... regarded as a saint."--_Cent. Dict._, art. "Santon."]

[fe] ----_guests and vassals wait_.--[MS. erased.]

[ff] _While the deep Tocsin's sound_----.--[MS. D. erased.]

[157] {136} ["We were disturbed during the night by the perpetual carousal which seemed to be kept up in the gallery, and by the drum, and the voice of the 'muezzinn,' or chanter, calling the Turks to prayers from the minaret of the mosck attached to the palace. This chanter was a boy, and he sang out his hymn is a sort of loud melancholy recitative. He was a long time repeating the Eraun. The first exclamation was repeated four times, the remaining words twice; and the long and piercing note in which he concluded his confession of faith, by twice crying out the word 'hou!' ['At solemn sound of "Alla Hu!"' _Giaour_, i. 734] still rings in my ears."--Hobhouse's _Travels in Albania_, i. 95. D'Ohsonn gives the Eraun at full length: "Most high God! [four times repeated]. I acknowledge that there is no other God except God! I acknowledge that there is no other God except God! I acknowledge that Mohammed is the prophet of God! Come to prayer! Come to prayer! Come to the temple of salvation! Come to the temple of salvation! Great God! great God! There is no God except God!"--_Oriental Antiquities_ (Philadelphia, 1788), p. 341.]

[158] {137} ["The Ramazan, or Turkish Lent, which, as it occurs in each of the thirteen months in succession, fell this year in October ... Although during this month the strictest abstinence, even from tobacco and coffee, is observed in the daytime, yet with the setting of the sun the feasting commences."--_Travels in Albania_, i. 66. "The Ramadan or Rhamazan is the ninth month of the Mohammedan year. As the Mohammedans reckon by lunar time, it begins each year eleven days earlier than in the preceding year, so that in thirty-three years it occurs successively in all the seasons."--_Imp. Dictionary_.]

[159] [The feast was spread within the courtyard, "in the part farthest from the dwelling," and when the revelry began the "immense large gallery" or corridor, which ran along the front of the palace and was open on one side to the court, was deserted. "Opening into the gallery were the doors of several apartments," and as the servants passed in and out, the travellers standing in the courtyard could hear the sound of voices.--_Travels in Albania_, i. 93.]

[fg] {138}
----_even for health to move_.--[MS.]
_She saves for one_----.--[MS. erased.]

[fh]
_For boyish minions of unhallowed love_
_The shameless torch of wild desire is lit_,
_Caressed, preferred even to woman's self above_,
_Whose forms for Nature's gentler errors fit_
_All frailties mote excuse save that which they commit_.
--[MS. D. erased.]

[160] [For an account of Ali Pasha (1741-1822), see _Letters_, 1898, i. 246, note.]

[161] [In a letter to his mother, November 12, 1809, Byron writes, "He [Ali] said he was certain I was a man of birth, because I had small ears, curling hair, and little white hands. ... He told me to consider him as a father whilst I was in Turkey, and said he looked on me as his son. Indeed, he treated me like a child, sending me almonds and sugared sherbet, fruit and sweetmeats, twenty times a day." Many years after, in the first letter _On Bowles' Strictures_, February 7, 1821, he introduces a reminiscence of Ali: "I never judge from manners, for I once had my pocket picked by the civillest gentleman I ever met with; and one of the mildest persons I ever saw was Ali Pasha" (_Life_, p. 689).]

[fi] {139} _Delights to mingle with the lips of youth_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[162] [Anacreon sometimes bewails, but more often defies old age. (_Vide_ Carmina liv., xi., xxxiv.)

The paraphrase "Teian Muse" recurs in the song, "The Isles of Greece," _Don Juan_, Canto III.]

[fj] _But 'tis those ne'er forgotten acts of ruth_.--[MS. D.]

[163] [In the first edition the reading (see _var_. ii.) is, "But crimes, those ne'er forgotten crimes of ruth." The mistake was pointed out in the _Quarterly Review_ (March, 1812, No. 13, vol. vii. p. 193).

But in Spenser "ruth" means sorrow as well as pity, and three weeks after _Childe Harold_ was published, Ali committed a terrible crime, the outcome of an early grief. On March 27, 1812, in revenge for wrongs done to his mother and sister nearly thirty years before, he caused 670 Gardhikiots to be massacred in the khan of Valiare, and followed up the act of treachery by sacking, plundering, and burning the town of Gardiki, and, "in direct violation of the Mohammedan law," carrying off and reducing to slavery the women and children.--Finlay's _Hist. of Greece_ (edited by Rev. H. F. Tozer, 1877), vi. 67, 68.]

[fk] {140} _Those who in blood begin in blood conclude their span_.--[MS. erased.]

[164] [This was prophetic. "On the 5th of February, 1822, a meeting took place between Ali and Mohammed Pasha.... When Mohammed rose to depart, the two viziers, being of equal rank, moved together towards the door.... As they parted Ali bowed low to his visitor, and Mohammed, seizing the moment when the watchful eye of the old man was turned away, drew his hanjar, and plunged it in Ali's heart. He walked on calmly to the gallery, and said to the attendants, 'Ali of Tepalen is dead.' ... The head of Ali was exposed at the gate of the serai."--Finlay's _Hist. of Greece_, 1877, vi. 94, 95.]

[fl]
_Childe Harold with that chief held colloquy_
_Yet what they spake it boots not to repeat;_
_Converse may little charm strange ear or eye;_
_Albeit he rested on that spacious seat,_
_Of Moslem luxury the choice retreat_.--[MS. D. erased.]
_Four days he rested on that worthy seat_.-[MS. erased.]

[165] {141} [The travellers left Janina on November 3, and reached Prevesa November 7. At midday November 9 they set sail for Patras in a galliot of Ali's, "a vessel of about fifty tons burden, with three short masts and a large lateen sail." Instead of doubling Cape Ducato, they were driven out to sea northward, and, finally, at one o'clock in the morning, anchored off the Port of Phanari on the Suliote coast. Towards the evening of the next day (November 10) they landed in "the marshy bay" (stanza lxviii. line 2) and rode to Volondorako, where they slept. "Here they were well received by the Albanian primate of the place and by the Vizier's soldiers quartered there." Instead of re-embarking in the galliot, they returned to Prevesa by land (November 11). As the country to the north of the Gulf of Arta was up in arms, and bodies of robbers were abroad, they procured an escort of thirty-seven Albanians, hired another galliot, and on Monday, the 13th, sailed across the entrance of the gulf as far as the fortress of Vonitsa, where they anchored for the night. By four o'clock in the afternoon of November 14 they reached Utraikey or Lutraki, "situated in a deep bay surrounded with rocks at the south-east corner of the Gulf of Arta." The courtyard of a barrack on the shore is the scene of the song and dance (stanzas lxx.-lxxii.). Here, in the original MS., the pilgrimage abruptly ends, and in the remaining stanzas the Childe moralizes on the fallen fortunes and vanished heroism of Greece.--_Travels in Albania_, i. 157-165.]

[166] {143} [The route from Utraikey to Gouria (November 15-18) lay through "thick woods of oak," with occasional peeps of the open cultivated district of AEtolia on the further side of the Aspropotamo, "white Achelous' tide." The Albanian guard was not dismissed until the travellers reached Mesolonghi (November 21).]

[167] [With this description Mr. Tozer compares Virgil, _AEneid_, i. 159-165, and Tasso's imitation in _Gerus. Lib._, canto xv. stanzas 42, 43. The following lines from Hoole's translation (_Jerusalem Delivered_, bk. xv. lines 310, 311, 317, 318) may be cited:--

"Amidst these isles a lone recess is found,
Where circling shores the subject flood resound ...
Within the waves repose in peace serene;
Black forests nod above, a silvan scene!"]

[168] {144} ["In the evening the gates were secured, and preparations were made for feeding our Albanians. A goat was killed and roasted whole, and four fires were kindled in the yard, round which the soldiers seated themselves in parties. After eating and drinking, the greater part of them assembled round the largest of the fires, and, whilst ourselves and the elders of the party were seated on the ground, danced round the blaze to their own songs, in the manner before described, but with astonishing energy. All their songs were relations of some robbing exploits. One of them ... began thus: 'When we set out from Parga there were sixty of us!' then came the burden of the verse--

'Robbers all at Parga!
Robbers all at Parga!'
[Greek: Kle/phteis pote\ Pa/rga!]
[Greek: Kle/phteis pote\ Pa/rga!]

And as they roared out this stave, they whirled round the fire, dropped, and rebounded from their knees, and again whirled round as the chorus was again repeated."--_Travels in Albania_, i. 166, 167.]

[169] {145} [This was not Byron's first experience of an Albanian war-song. At Salakhora, on the Gulf of Arta (nine miles north-east of Prevesa), which he reached on October 1, the Albanian guard at the custom-house entertained the travellers by "singing some songs." "The music is extremely monotonous and nasal; and the shrill scream of their voices was increased by each putting his hand behind his ear and cheek, to give more force to the sound."--_Travels in Albania_, i. 28.

Long afterwards, in 1816, one evening, on the Lake of Geneva, Byron entertained Shelley, Mary, and Claire with "an Albanian song." They seem to have felt that such melodies "unheard are sweeter." Hence, perhaps, his _petit nom_, "Albe," that is, the "Albaneser."--_Life of Shelley_, by Edward Dowden, 1896, p. 309.]

[170] {146} [Tambourgi, "drummer," a Turkish word, formed by affixing the termination _-gi_, which signifies "one who discharges any occupation," to the French _tambour_ (H. F. Tozer, _Childe Harold_, p. 246).]

[fm] ----_thy tocsin afar_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[171] [The _camese_ is the _fustanella_ or white kilt of the Toska, a branch of the Albanian, or Shkipetar, race. Spenser has the forms "camis," "camus." The Arabic _quam[=i]c_ occurs in the Koran, but is thought to be an adaptation of the Latin _camisia, camisa_.--Finlay's _Hist, of Greece_, vi. 39; _N. Eng. Dict._, art. "Camis." (For "capote," _vide post_, p. 181.)]

[fn] _Shall the sons of Chimaera_----.--[MS. D.]

[172] [The Suliotes, after a protracted and often successful resistance, were finally reduced by Ali, in December, 1803. They are adjured to forget their natural desire for vengeance, and to unite with the Albanians against their common foe, the Russians.]

[fo] {147} _Shall win the young minions_----.--[MS. D.]

[fp] ----_the maid and the youth_.--[MS.]

[fq] _Their caresses shall lull us, their voices shall soothe_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[173] {148} [So, too, at Salakhora (October 1): "One of the songs was on the taking of Prevesa, an exploit of which the Albanians are vastly proud; and there was scarcely one of them in which the name of Ali Pasha was not roared out and dwelt upon with peculiar energy."--_Travels in Albania_, i. 29.

Prevesa, which, with other Venetian possessions, had fallen to the French in 1797, was taken in the Sultan's name by Ali, in October, 1798. The troops in the garrison (300 French, 460 Greeks) encountered and were overwhelmed by 5000 Albanians, on the plain of Nicopolis. The victors entered and sacked the town.]

[174] [Ali's eldest son, Mukhtar, the Pasha of Berat, had been sent against the Russians, who, in 1809, invaded the trans-Danubian provinces of the Ottoman Empire.]

[175] Yellow is the epithet given to the Russians.

[176] Infidel.

[177] The insignia of a Pacha.

[178] {149} [The literal meaning of Delhi or Deli, is, says M. Darmesteter, "fou" ["properly madmen" (D'Herbelot)], a title bestowed on Turkish warriors _honoris causu_. Byron suggests "forlorn hope" as an equivalent; but there is a wide difference between the blood-drunkenness of the Turk and the "foolishness" of British chivalry.]

[179] Sword-bearer.

[fr] _Tambourgi! thy tocsin_----.--[MS. D. erased]

[180] [Compare "The Isles of Greece," stanza 7 (_Don Juan_, Canto III.)--

"Earth! render back from out thy heart
A remnant of our Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three
To make a new Thermopylae!"

The meaning is, "When shall another Lysander spring from Laconia ('Eurotas' banks') and revive the heroism of the ancient Spartans?"]

[fs] {150} _A fawning feeble race, untaught, enslaved, unmanned_.--[MS. erased.]

[ft] ----_fair Liberty_.--[MS. erased, D.]

[181] {151} [Compare _The Age of Bronze_, vi. lines 39-46.]

[182] [The Wahabees, who took their name from the Arab sheik Mohammed ben Abd-el-Wahab, arose in the province of Nedj, in Central Arabia, about 1760. Half-socialists, half-puritans, they insisted on fulfilling to the letter the precepts of the Koran. In 1803-4 they attacked and ravaged Mecca and Medinah, and in 1808 they invaded Syria and took Damascus. During Byron's residence in the East they were at the height of their power, and seemed to threaten the very existence of the Turkish empire.]

[183] {152} [Byron spent two months in Constantinople (Stamboul, i.e. [Greek: ei)s te po/lin] )--from May 14 to July 14, 1810. The "Lenten days," which were ushered in by a carnival, were those of the second "great" Lent of the Greek Church, that of St. Peter and St. Paul, which begins on the first Monday after Trinity, and ends on the 29th of June.]

[184] {153} [These _al-fresco_ festivities must, it is presumed, have taken place on the two days out of the seven when you "might not 'damn the climate' and complain of the spleen." Hobhouse records excursions to the Valley of Sweet Waters; to Belgrade, where "the French minister gave a sort of _fete-champetre_," when "the carousal lasted four days," and when "night after night is kept awake by the pipes, tabors, and fiddles of these moonlight dances;" and to the grove of Fanar-Baktchesi.--_Travels in Albania_, ii. 242-258.]

[185]
["There's nothing like young Love, No! No!
There's nothing like young love at last."]

[186] {154} [It has been assumed that "searment" is an incorrect form of "cerement," the cloth dipped "in melting wax, in which dead bodies were enfolded when embalmed" (_Hamlet_, act i. sc. 4), but the sense of the passage seems rather to point to "cerecloth," "searcloth," a plaster to cover up a wound. The "robe of revel" does but half conceal the sore and aching heart.]

[187] [For the accentuation of the word, compare Chaucer, "The Sompnour's Tale" (_Canterbury Tales_, line 7631)--

"And dronkennesse is eke a foul record
Of any man, and namely of a lord."]

[fu] _When Athens' children are with arts endued_.--[MS. D.]

[188] [Compare _Ecclus._ xliv. 8, 9: "There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported. And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been."]

[189] {156} [The "solitary column" may be that on the shore of the harbour of Colonna, in the island of Kythnos (Thermia), or one of the detached columns of the Olympeion.]

[190] [Tritonia, or Tritogenia, one of Athena's names of uncertain origin. Hofmann's _Lexicon Universale_, Tooke's _Pantheon_, and Smith's _Classical Dictionary_ are much in the same tale. Lucan (_Pharsalia_, lib. ix. lines 350-354) derives the epithet from Lake Triton, or Tritonis, on the Mediterranean coast of Libya--

"Hanc et Pallas amat: patrio quae vertice nata
Terrarum primum Libyen (nam proxima coelo est,
Ut probat ipse calor) tetigit, stagnique quieta
Vultus vidit aqua, posuitque in margine plantas,
Et se dilecta Tritonida dixit ab unda."]

[191] [Hobhouse dates the first visit to Cape Colonna, January 24, 1810.]

[192] {157} [Athene's dower of the olive induced the gods to appoint her as the protector and name-giver of Athens. Poseidon, who had proffered a horse, was a rejected candidate. (See note by Rev. E. C. Owen, _Childe Harold_, 1897, p. 175.)]

[193] ["The wild thyme is in great abundance; but there are only two stands of bee-hives on the mountains, and very little of the real honey of Hymettus is to be now procured at Athens.... A small pot of it was shown to me as a rarity" (_Travels in Albania_, i. 341). There is now, a little way out of Athens, a "honey-farm, where the honey from Hymettus is prepared for sale" (_Handbook for Greece_, p. 500).]

[fv] ----_Pentele's marbles glare_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[194] [Stanzas lxxxviii.-xc. are not in the MS., but were first included in the seventh edition, 1814.]

[195] [Byron and Hobhouse, after visiting Colonna, slept at Keratea, and proceeded to Marathon on January 25, returning to Athens on the following day.]

[fw] {158} _Preserve alike its form_----.--[MS. L.]

[fx] _When uttered to the listener's eye_----.--[MS. L.]

[fy] _The host, the plain, the fight_----.--[MS. L.]

[fz] _The shattered Mede who flies with broken bow_.--[MS. L.]

[196] ["The plain of Marathon is enclosed on three sides by the rocky arms of Parnes and Pentelicus, while the fourth is bounded by the sea." After the first rush, when the victorious wings, where the files were deep, had drawn together and extricated the shallower and weaker centre, which had been repulsed by the Persians and the Sakae, "the pursuit became general, and the Persians were chased to their ships, ranged in line along the shore. Some of them became involved in the impassable marsh, and there perished." (See _Childe Harold_, edited by H. F. Tozer, 1885, p. 253; Grote's _History of Greece_, iv. 276. See, too, _Travels in Albania_, i. 378-384.)]

[ga] _To tell what Asia troubled but to hear_.--[MS. L.]

[197] [See note to Canto II. stanzas i.-xv., pp. 99, 100.]

[gb] _Long to the remnants_--.----[D.]

[198] [The "Ionian blast" is the western wind that brings the voyager across the Ionian Sea.]

[199] {160} [The original MS. closes with this stanza.]

[gc] _Which heeds nor stern reproach_----.--[D.]

[gd] {161}_Would I had ne'er returned_----.--[D.]

[200] "To Mr. Dallas. The 'he' refers to 'Wanderer' and anything is better than _I I I I_ always _I_. Yours, BYRON." [4th Revise B.M.]

[ge] _But Time the Comforter shall come at last_.--[MS. erased.]

[201] [Compare Young's _Night Thoughts_ ("The Complaint," Night i.). _Vide ante_, p. 95.]

[gf]

_Though Time not yet hath ting'd my locks with snow,_[Sec.]
_Yet hath he reft whate'er my soul enjoy'd_.--[D.]

[Sec.] "To Mr. Dallas.

If Mr. D. wishes me to adopt the former line so be it. I prefer the other I confess, it has less egotism--the first sounds affected.

Yours,

B."

[Dallas assented, and directed the printer to let the Roll stand.]

* * * * *

NOTES TO CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.