Chapter XVI: Canto THE THIRD: I (2)

[276] {215} ["If you turn over the earlier pages of the Huntingdon peerage story, you will see how common a name Ada was in the early Plantagenet days. I found it in my own pedigree in the reigns of John and Henry.... It is short, ancient, vocalic, and had been in my family; for which reasons I gave it to my daughter."--Letter to Murray, Ravenna, October 8, 1820.

The Honourable Augusta Ada Byron was born December 10, 1815; was married July 8, 1835, to William King Noel (1805-1893), eighth Baron King, created Earl of Lovelace, 1838; and died November 27, 1852. There were three children of the marriage--Viscount Ockham (d. 1862), the present Earl of Lovelace, and the Lady Anna Isabella Noel, who was married to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Esq., in 1869.

"The Countess of Lovelace," wrote a contributor to the _Examiner_, December 4, 1852, "was thoroughly original, and the poet's temperament was all that was hers in common with her father. Her genius, for genius she possessed, was not poetic, but metaphysical and mathematical, her mind having been in the constant practice of investigation, and with rigour and exactness." Of her devotion to science, and her original powers as a mathematician, her translation and explanatory notes of F. L. Menabrea's _Notices sur le machine Analytique de Mr. Babbage_, 1842, a defence of the famous "calculating machine," remain as evidence.

"Those who view mathematical science not merely as a vast body of abstract and immutable truths, ... but as possessing a yet deeper interest for the human race, when it is remembered that this science constitutes the language through which alone we can adequately express the great facts of the natural world ... those who thus think on mathematical truth as the instrument through which the weak mind of man can most effectually read his Creator's works, will regard with especial interest all that can tend to facilitate the translation of its principles into explicit practical forms." So, for the moment turning away from algebraic formulae and abstruse calculations, wrote Ada, Lady Lovelace, in her twenty-eighth year. See "Translator's Notes," signed A. A. L., to _A Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage, Esq._, London, 1843.

It would seem, however, that she "wore her learning lightly as a flower." "Her manners [_Examiner_], her tastes, her accomplishments, in many of which, music especially, she was proficient, were feminine in the nicest sense of the word." Unlike her father in features, or in the bent of her mind, she inherited his mental vigour and intensity of purpose. Like him, she died in her thirty-seventh year, and at her own request her coffin was placed by his in the vault at Hucknall Torkard. (See, too, _Athenaeum_, December 4, 1852, and _Gent. Mag._, January, 1853.)]

[gh] {216} _could grieve my gazing eye._--[C. erased.]

[277] Compare _Henry V._, act iii. sc. 1, line 1--"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more."

[278] {217} [Compare _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ (now attributed to Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Massinger), act ii. sc. 1, lines 73, _seq._--

"Oh, never
Shall we two exercise like twins of Honour
Our arms again, and feel our fiery horses
Like proud seas under us."

"Out of this somewhat forced simile," says the editor (John Wright) of Lord Byron's _Poetical Works_, issued in 1832, "by a judicious transposition of the comparison, and by the substitution of the more definite _waves_ for _seas_, Lord Byron's clear and noble thought has been produced." But the literary artifice, if such there be, is subordinate to the emotion of the writer. It is in movement, progress, flight, that the sufferer experiences a relief from the poignancy of his anguish.]

[gi] _And the rent canvass tattering_----.--[C.]

[279] ["The metaphor is derived from a torrent-bed, which, when dried up, serves for a sandy or shingly path."--Note by H. F. Tozer, _Childe Harold_, 1885, p. 257. Or, perhaps, the imagery has been suggested by the action of a flood, which ploughs a channel for itself through fruitful soil, and, when the waters are spent, leaves behind it "a sterile track," which does, indeed, permit the traveller to survey the desolation, but serves no other purpose of use or beauty.]

[gj] {218} _I would essay of all I sang to sing_.--[MS.]

[280] [Compare Manfred, act ii. sc. 1, lines 51, 52--

"Think'st thou existence doth depend on time?
It doth; but actions are our epoch."]

[gk] {219} _Still unimpaired though worn_----.--[MS. erased.]

[281] [It is the poet's fond belief that he can find the true reality in "the things that are not seen."

"Out of these create he can
Forms more real than living man--
Nurslings of Immortality."

"Life is but thought," and by the power of the imagination he thinks to "gain a being more intense," to add a cubit to his spiritual stature. Byron professes the same faith in _The Dream_ (stanza i. lines 19-22), which also belongs to the summer of 1816--

"The mind can make
Substance, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh."

At this stage of his poetic growth, in part converted by Shelley, in part by Wordsworth as preached by Shelley, Byron, so to speak, "got religion," went over for a while to the Church of the mystics. There was, too, a compulsion from within. Life had gone wrong with him, and, driven from memory and reflection, he looks for redemption in the new earth which Imagination and Nature held in store.]

[gl]
_A brighter being that we thus endow_
_With form our fancies_----.--[MS.]

[gm] {220} _A dizzy world_----.--[MS. erased.]

[282] [Compare _The Dream_, viii. 6, _seq_.--

"Pain was mixed
In all which was served up to him, until
* * * * *
He fed on poisons, and they had no power,
But were a kind of nutriment."]

[gn] _To bear unbent what Time cannot abate_.--[MS.]

[283] [Of himself as distinct from Harold he will say no more. On the tale or spell of his own tragedy is set the seal of silence; but of Harold, the idealized Byron, he once more takes up the parable. In stanzas viii.-xv. he puts the reader in possession of some natural changes, and unfolds the development of thought and feeling which had befallen the Pilgrim since last they had journeyed together. The youthful Harold had sounded the depth of joy and woe. Man delighted him not--no, nor woman neither. For a time, however, he had cured himself of this trick of sadness. He had drunk new life from the fountain of natural beauty and antique lore, and had returned to take his part in the world, inly armed against dangers and temptations. And in the world he had found beauty, and fame had found him. What wonder that he had done as others use, and then discovered that he could not fare as others fared? Henceforth there remained no comfort but in nature, no refuge but in exile!]

[go] {221}

_He of the breast that strove no more to feel,_
_Scarred with the wounds_----.--[MS.]

[gp] {222} _Secure in curbing coldness_----.--[MS.]

[gq] _Shines through the wonder-works--of God and Nature's hand_.--[MS.]

[gr]
_Who can behold the flower at noon, nor seek_
_To pluck it? who can stedfastly behold_.--[MS.]

[gs] _Nor feel how Wisdom ceases to be cold_.--[MS. erased.]

[284] [The Temple of Fame is on the summit of a mountain; "Clouds overcome it;" but to the uplifted eye the mists dispel, and behold the goddess pointing to her star--the star of glory!]

[gt] {223} _Yet with a steadier step than in his earlier time_.--[MS. erased.]

[285] [Compare _Manfred_, act ii. sc. 2, lines 50-58--

"From my youth upwards
My spirit walked not with the souls of men,
Nor looked upon the earth with human eyes;
* * * * *
My joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers
Made me a stranger; though I wore the form,
I had no sympathy with breathing flesh."

Compare, too, with stanzas xiii., xiv., _ibid_., lines 58-72.]

[gu] _Fool he not to know_.--[MS. erased.]

[gv]
_Where there were mountains there for him were friends_.
_Where there was Ocean--there he was at home_.--[MS.]

[gw] {224}
_Like the Chaldean he could gaze on stars_.--[MS.]
----_adored the stars_.--[MS. erased.]

[gx] _That keeps us from that Heaven on which we love to think_.--[MS.]

[gy]
_But in Man's dwelling--Harold was a thing_
_Restless and worn, and cold and wearisome_.--[MS.]

[286] {225} [In this stanza the mask is thrown aside, and "the real Lord Byron" appears _in propria persona_.]

[287] [The mound with the Belgian lion was erected by William I. of Holland, in 1823.]

[gz] {226} _None; but the moral truth tells simpler so_.--[MS.]

[288] [Stanzas xvii., xviii., were written after a visit to Waterloo. When Byron was in Brussels, a friend of his boyhood, Pryse Lockhart Gordon, called upon him and offered his services. He escorted him to the field of Waterloo, and received him at his house in the evening. Mrs. Gordon produced her album, and begged for an autograph. The next morning Byron copied into the album the two stanzas which he had written the day before. Lines 5-8 of the second stanza (xviii.) ran thus--

"Here his last flight the haughty Eagle flew,
Then tore with bloody beak the fatal plain,
Pierced with the shafts of banded nations through ..."

The autograph suggested an illustration to an artist, R. R. Reinagle (1775-1863), "a pencil-sketch of a spirited chained eagle, grasping the earth with his talons." Gordon showed the vignette to Byron, who wrote in reply, "Reinagle is a better poet and a better ornithologist than I am; eagles and all birds of prey attack with their talons and not with their beaks, and I have altered the line thus--

"'Then tore with bloody talon the rent plain.'"

(See _Personal Memoirs of Pryse Lockhart Gordon_, 1830, ii. 327, 328.)]

[ha] ----_and still must be_.--[MS.]

[hb] ----_the fatal Waterloo_.--[MS.]

[hc]
_Here his last flight the haughty eagle flew_.--[MS.]
_Then bit with bloody beak the rent plain_.--[MS. erased.]
_Then tore with bloody beak_----.--[MS.]

[hd] {227} _And Gaul must wear the links of her own broken chain_.--[MS.]

[289] [With this "obstinate questioning" of the final import and outcome of "that world-famous Waterloo," compare the _Ode from the French_, "We do not curse thee, Waterloo," written in 1815, and published by John Murray in _Poems_ (1816). Compare, too, _The Age of Waterloo_, v. 93, "Oh, bloody and most bootless Waterloo!" and _Don Juan_, Canto VIII. stanzas xlviii.-l., etc. Shelley, too, in his sonnet on the _Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte_ (1816), utters a like lament (Shelley's _Works_, 1895, ii. 385)--

"I know
Too late, since thou and France are in the dust,
That Virtue owns a more eternal foe
Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime,
And bloody Faith, the foulest birth of Time."

Even Wordsworth, after due celebration of this "victory sublime," in his sonnet _Emperors and Kings, etc._ (_Works_, 1889, p. 557), solemnly admonishes the "powers"--

"Be just, be grateful; nor, the oppressor's creed
Reviving heavier chastisement deserve
Than ever forced unpitied hearts to bleed."

But the Laureate had no misgivings, and in _The Poet's Pilgrimage_, iv. 60, celebrates the national apotheosis--

"Peace hath she won ... with her victorious hand
Hath won thro' rightful war auspicious peace;
Nor this alone, but that in every land
The withering rule of violence may cease.
Was ever War with such blest victory crowned!
Did ever Victory with such fruits abound!"]

[he] {228} _Or league to teach their kings_----.--[MS.]

[290] [The most vivid and the best authenticated account of the Duchess of Richmond's ball, which took place June 15, the eve of the Battle of Quatrebras, in the duke's house in the Rue de la Blanchisserie, is to be found in Lady de Ros's (Lady Georgiana Lennox) _Personal Recollections of the Great Duke of Wellington_, which appeared first in _Murray's Magazine_, January and February, 1889, and were republished as _A Sketch of the Life of Georgiana, Lady de Ros_, by her daughter, the Hon. Mrs. J. R. Swinton (John Murray, 1893). "My mother's now famous ball," writes Lady de Ros (_A Sketch, etc._, pp. 122, 123), "took place in a large room on the ground-floor on the left of the entrance, connected with the rest of the house by an ante-room. It had been used by the coachbuilder, from whom the house was hired, to put carriages in, but it was papered before we came there; and I recollect the paper--a trellis pattern with roses.... When the duke arrived, rather late, at the ball, I was dancing, but at once went up to him to ask about the rumours. 'Yes, they are true; we are off to-morrow.' This terrible news was circulated directly, and while some of the officers hurried away, others remained at the ball, and actually had not time to change their clothes, but fought in evening costume."]

[hf] {229}

_The lamps shone on lovely dames and gallant men_.--[MS.]
_The lamps shone on ladies_----.--[MS. erased.]

[hg] {230} _With a slow deep and dread-inspiring roar_.--[MS. erased.]

[hh]
_Arm! arm, and out! it is the opening cannon's roar_.--[MS.]
_Arm--arm--and out--it is--the cannon's opening roar_.--[C.]

[291] [Frederick William, Duke of Brunswick (1771-1815), brother to Caroline, Princess of Wales, and nephew of George III., fighting at Quatrebras in the front of the line, "fell almost in the beginning of the battle." His father, Charles William Ferdinand, born 1735, the author of the fatal manifesto against the army of the French Republic (July 15, 1792), was killed at Auerbach, October 14, 1806. In the plan of the Duke of Richmond's house, which Lady de Ros published in her _Recollections_, the actual spot is marked (the door of the ante-room leading to the ball-room) where Lady Georgiana Lennox took leave of the Duke of Brunswick. "It was a dreadful evening," she writes, "taking leave of friends and acquaintances, many never to be seen again. The Duke of Brunswick, as he took leave of me ... made me a civil speech as to the Brunswickers being sure to distinguish themselves after 'the honour' done them by my having accompanied the Duke of Wellington to their review! I remember being quite provoked with poor Lord Hay, a dashing, merry youth, full of military ardour, whom I knew very well, for his delight at the idea of going into action ... and the first news we had on the 16th was that he and the Duke of Brunswick were killed."--_A Sketch, etc._, pp. 132, 133.]

[hi] {231}
_His heart replying knew that sound too well_.--[MS.]
_And the hoped vengeance for a Sire so dear_
_As him who died on Jena--whom so well_
_His filial heart had mourned through many a year_
_Roused him to valiant fury nought could quell_.--[MS. erased.]

[hj] ----_tremors of distress_.--[MS.]

[hk]
----_which did press_
_Like death upon young hearts_----.--[MS.]

[hl] _Oh that on night so soft, such heavy morn should rise_.--[MS.]

[hm] {232}
_And wakening citizens with terror dumb_
_Or whispering with pale lips--"The foe--They come, they come."_--[MS.]
_Or whispering with pale lips--"The Desolation's come."_--[MS. erased.]

[hn]
_And Soignies waves above them_----.--[MS.]
_And Ardennes_----.--[C.]

[292] {233} [_Vide ante, English Bards, etc._, line 726, note: _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 354.]

[ho] _But chiefly_----.--[MS.]

[293] {234} [The Hon. Frederick Howard (1785-1815), third son of Frederick, fifth Earl of Carlisle, fell late in the evening of the 18th of June, in a final charge of the left square of the French Guard, in which Vivian brought up Howard's hussars against the French. Neither French infantry nor cavalry gave way, and as the Hanoverians fired but did not charge, a desperate combat ensued, in which Howard fell and many of the 10th were killed.--_Waterloo: The Downfall of the First Napoleon_, G. Hooper, 1861, p. 236.

Southey, who had visited the field of Waterloo, September, 1815, in his _Poet's Pilgrimage_ (iii. 49), dedicates a pedestrian stanza to his memory--

"Here from the heaps who strewed the fatal plain
Was Howard's corse by faithful hands conveyed;
And not to be confounded with the slain,
Here in a grave apart with reverence laid,
Till hence his honoured relics o'er the seas
Were borne to England, where they rest in peace."]

[294] [Autumn had been beforehand with spring in the work of renovation.

"Yet Nature everywhere resumed her course;
Low pansies to the sun their purple gave,
And the soft poppy blossomed on the grave."
_Poet's Pilgrimage_, iii. 36.

But the contrast between the continuous action of nature and the doom of the unreturning dead, which does not greatly concern Southey, fills Byron with a fierce desire to sum the price of victory. He flings in the face of the vain-glorious mourners the bitter reality of their abiding loss. It was this prophetic note, "the voice of one crying in the wilderness," which sounded in and through Byron's rhetoric to the men of his own generation.]

[hp] {235} _And dead within behold the Spring return_.--[MS. erased.]

[hq] {236} _It still is day though clouds keep out the Sun_.--[MS.]

[295] [So, too, Coleridge. "Have you never seen a stick broken in the middle, and yet cohering by the rind? The fibres, half of them actually broken and the rest sprained, and, though tough, unsustaining? Oh, many, many are the broken-hearted for those who know what the moral and practical heart of the man is."--_Anima Poetae_, 1895, p. 303.]

[296] [According to Lady Blessington (_Conversations_, p. 176), Byron maintained that the image of the broken mirror had in some mysterious way been suggested by the following quatrain which Curran had once repeated to him:--

"While memory, with more than Egypt's art
Embalming all the sorrows of the heart,
Sits at the altar which she raised to woe,
And finds the scene whence tears eternal flow."

But, as M. Darmesteter points out, the true source of inspiration was a passage in Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_--"the book," as Byron maintained, "in my opinion most useful to a man who wishes to acquire the reputation of being well-read with the least trouble" (_Life_, p. 48). Burton is discoursing on injury and long-suffering. "'Tis a Hydra's head contention; the more they strive, the more they may; and as Praxiteles did by his glass [see Cardan, _De Consolatione_, lib. iii.], when he saw a scurvy face in it, break it in pieces; but for the one he saw, he saw many more as bad in a moment; for one injury done, they provoke another _cum fanore_, and twenty enemies for one."--_Anatomy of Melancholy_, 1893, ii. 228. Compare, too, Carew's poem, _The Spark_, lines 23-26--

"And as a looking-glass, from the aspect,
Whilst it is whole doth but one face reflect,
But being crack'd or broken, there are shewn
Many half-faces, which at first were one.
Anderson's _British Poets_, 1793, iii. 703.]

[hr] {237} _But not his pleasure--such might be a task_.--[MS. erased.]

[297] [The "tale" or reckoning of the Psalmist, the span of threescore years and ten, is contrasted with the tale or reckoning of the age of those who fell at Waterloo. A "fleeting span" the Psalmist's; but, reckoning by Waterloo, "more than enough." Waterloo grudges even what the Psalmist allows.]

[hs] {238}

_Here where the sword united Europe drew_
_I had a kinsman warring on that day_.--[MS.]

[ht] _On little thoughts with equal firmness fixed._--[MS.]

[hu]
_For thou hast risen as fallen--even now thou seek'st_
_An hour_----.--[MS.]

[298] [Byron seems to have been unable to make up his mind about Napoleon. "It is impossible not to be dazzled and overwhelmed by his character and career," he wrote to Moore (March 17, 1815), when his Heros de Roman, as he called him, had broken open his "captive's cage" and was making victorious progress to the capital. In the _Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte_, which was written in April, 1814, after the first abdication at Fontainebleau, the dominant note is astonishment mingled with contempt. It is the lamentation over a fallen idol. In these stanzas (xxxvi.-xlv.) he bears witness to the man's essential greatness, and, with manifest reference to his own personality and career, attributes his final downfall to the peculiar constitution of his genius and temper. A year later (1817), in the Fourth Canto (stanzas lxxxix.-xcii.), he passes a severe sentence. Napoleon's greatness is swallowed up in weakness. He is a "kind of bastard Caesar," self-vanquished, the creature and victim of vanity. Finally, in The Age of Bronze, sections iii.-vi., there is a reversion to the same theme, the tragic irony of the rise and fall of the "king of kings, and yet of slaves the slave."

As a schoolboy at Harrow, Byron fought for the preservation of Napoleon's bust, and he was ever ready, in defiance of national feeling and national prejudice, to celebrate him as "the glorious chief;" but when it came to the point, he did not "want him here," victorious over England, and he could not fail to see, with insight quickened by self-knowledge, that greatness and genius possess no charm against littleness and commonness, and that the "glory of the terrestrial" meets with its own reward. The moral is obvious, and as old as history; but herein lay the secret of Byron's potency, that he could remint and issue in fresh splendour the familiar coinage of the world's wit. Moreover, he lived in a great age, when great truths are born again, and appear in a new light.]

[299] [The stanza was written while Napoleon was still under the guardianship of Admiral Sir George Cockburn, and before Sir Hudson Lowe had landed at St. Helena; but complaints were made from the first that imperial honours which were paid to him by his own suite were not accorded by the British authorities.]

[hv] {239}
----_and thy dark name_
_Was ne'er more rife within men's mouths than now_.--[MS.]

[hw] _Who tossed thee to and fro till_----.--[MS. erased.]

[hx] _Which be it wisdom, weakness_----.--[MS.]

[hy]
_To watch thee shrinking calmly hadst thou smiled._--[MS.]
_With a sedate tho' not unfeeling eye._--[MS. erased.]

[hz] {241}
_Greater than in thy fortunes; for in them_
_Ambition lured thee on too far to show_
_That true habitual scorn_----.--[MS.]

[ia] {242} _Feeds on itself and all things_----.--[MS.]

[ib]
_Which stir too deeply_----[MS.]
_Which stir the blood too boiling in its springs_.--[MS. erased.]

[ic] {243} ----_they rave overcast_.--[MS.]

[id] ----_the hate of all below_.--[MS.]

[ie] ----_on his single head_.--[MS.]

[if] ----_the wise man's World will be_.--[MS.]

[ig] ----_for what teems like thee_.--[MS.]

[ih] {244} _From gray and ghastly walls--where Ruin kindly dwells_.--[MS.]

[300] [For the archaic use of "battles" for "battalions," compare _Macbeth_, act v. sc. 4, line 4; and Scott's _Lord of the Isles_, vi. 10--

"In battles four beneath their eye,
The forces of King Robert lie."]

[ii] ----_are shredless tatters now_.--[MS.]

[ij] {245}
_What want these outlaws that a king should have_
_But History's vain page_----.--[MS.]

[ik] ----_their hearts were far more brave_.--[MS.]

[301] [The most usual device is a bleeding heart.]

[il]
_Nor mar it frequent with an impious show_
_Of arms or angry conflict_----.--[MS.]

[302] {246} [Compare Moore's lines, _The Meeting of the Waters_--

"There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet
As that vale in whose bosom the wide waters meet."]

[im]
_Earth's dreams of Heaven--and such to seem to me_
_But one thing wants thy stream_----.--[MS.]

[303] [Compare Lucan's _Pharsalia_, ix. 969, "Etiam periere ruinae;" and the lines from Tasso's _Gerusalemme Liberata_, xv. 20, quoted in illustration of Canto II. stanza liii.]

[in]
_Glassed with its wonted light, the sunny ray;_
_But o'er the mind's marred thoughts--though but a dream_.--[MS.]

[io] {247} _Repose itself on kindness_----[MS.]

[304] [Two lyrics, entitled _Stanzas to Augusta_, and the _Epistle to Augusta_, which were included in _Domestic Pieces_, published in 1816, are dedicated to the same subject--the devotion and faithfulness of his sister.]

[ip] {248} _But there was one_----.--[MS.]

[iq] _Yet was it pure_----.--[MS.]

[305] [It has been supposed that there is a reference in this passage, and again in _Stanzas to Augusta_ (dated July 24, 1816), to "the only important calumny"--to quote Shelley's letter of September 29, 1816--"that was even ever advanced" against Byron. "The poems to Augusta," remarks Elze (_Life of Lord Byron_, p. 174), "prove, further, that she too was cognizant of the calumnious accusations; for under no other supposition is it possible to understand their allusions." But the mere fact that Mrs. Leigh remained on terms of intimacy and affection with her brother, when he was under the ban of society, would expose her to slander and injurious comment, "peril dreaded most in female eyes;" whereas to other calumnies, if such there were, there could be no other reference but silence, or an ecstasy of wrath and indignation.]

[ir]
_Thus to that heart did his its thoughts in absence pour_.--[MS.]
----_its absent feelings pour_.--[MS. erased.]

[306] {249} [Written on the Rhine bank, May 11, 1816.--MS. M.]

[is] {251} _A sigh for Marceau_----.--[MS.]

[307] [Marceau (_vide post_, note 2, p. 296) took part in crushing the Vendean insurrection. If, as General Hoche asserts in his memoirs, six hundred thousand fell in Vendee, Freedom's charter was not easily overstepped.]

[308] {252} [Compare Gray's lines in _The Fatal Sisters_--

"Iron-sleet of arrowy shower
Hurtles in the darken'd air."]

[it] _And could the sleepless vultures_----.--[MS.]

[iu] _Rustic not rude, sublime yet not austere_.--[MS.]

[309] [Lines 8 and 9 may be cited as a crying instance of Byron's faulty technique. The collocation of "awful" with "austere," followed by "autumn" in the next line, recalls the afflictive assonance of "high Hymettus," which occurs in the beautiful passage which he stole from _The Curse of Minerva_ and prefixed to the third canto of _The Corsair_. The sense of the passage is that, as in autumn, the golden mean between summer and winter, the year is at its full, so in the varied scenery of the Rhine there is a harmony of opposites, a consummation of beauty.]

[iv] {253}
_More mighty scenes may rise--more glaring shine_
_But none unite in one enchanted gaze_
_The fertile--fair--and soft--the glories of old days_.--[MS.]

[310] [The "negligently grand" may, perhaps, refer to the glories of old days, now in a state of neglect, not to the unstudied grandeur of the scene taken as a whole; but the phrase is loosely thrown out in order to convey a general impression, "an attaching maze," an engaging attractive combination of images, and must not be interrogated too closely.]

[iw] {254}
_Around in chrystal grandeur to where falls_
_The avalanche--the thunder-clouds of snow_.--[MS.]

[311] [Compare the opening lines of Coleridge's _Hymn before Sunrise in the Valley of Chamouni_--

"Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc!"

The "thunderbolt" (line 6) recurs in _Manfred_, act i. sc. 1--

"Around his waist are forests braced,
The Avalanche in his hand;
But ere its fall, that thundering ball
Must pause for my command."]

[312] {255} [The inscription on the ossuary of the Burgundian troops which fell in the battle of Morat, June 14, 1476, suggested this variant of _Si monumentum quaeris_--

"Deo Optimo Maximo.

Inclytissimi et fortissimi Burgundiae ducis exercitus, Moratum
obsidens, ab Helvetiis caesus, hoc sui monumentum reliquit."]

[ix] _Unsepulchred they roam, and shriek_----[MS.]

[313] [The souls of the suitors when Hermes "roused and shepherded them followed gibbering" ([Greek: tri/zousai]).--_Od._, xxiv. 5. Once, too, when the observance of the _dies Parentales_ was neglected, Roman ghosts took to wandering and shrieking.

"Perque vias Urbis, Latiosque ululasse per agros
Deformes animas, vulgus inane ferunt."
Ovid, _Fasti_, ii. lines 553, 554.

The Homeric ghosts gibbered because they were ghosts; the Burgundian ghosts because they were confined to the Stygian coast, and could not cross the stream. For once the "classical allusions" are forced and inappropriate.]

[314] [Byron's point is that at Morat 15,000 men were slain in a righteous cause--the defence of a republic against an invading tyrant; whereas the lives of those that fell at Cannae and at Waterloo were sacrificed to the ambition of rival powers fighting for the mastery.]

[iy] {255}
----_their proud land_
_Groan'd not beneath_----.--[MS.]

[iz] {257} _And thus she died_----.--[MS.]

[ja] _And they lie simply_----.--[MS. erased.]

[jb] _The dear depths yield_----.--[MS.]

[315] ["Haunted and hunted by the British tourist and gossip-monger, Byron took refuge, on June 10, at the Villa Diodati; but still the pursuers strove to win some wretched consolation by waylaying him in his evening drives, or directing the telescope upon his balcony, which overlooked the lake, or upon the hillside, with its vineyards, where he lurked obscure" (Dowden's _Life of Shelley_, 1896, p. 309). It is possible, too, that now and again even Shelley's companionship was felt to be a strain upon nerves and temper. The escape from memory and remorse, which could not be always attained in the society of a chosen few, might, he hoped, be found in solitude, face to face with nature. But it was not to be. Even nature was powerless to "minister to a mind diseased." At the conclusion of his second tour (September 29, 1816), he is constrained to admit that "neither the music of the shepherd, the crashing of the avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the majesty, and the power, and the glory, around, above, and beneath me" (_Life_, p. 315). Perhaps Wordsworth had this confession in his mind when, in 1834, he composed the lines, "Not in the Lucid Intervals of Life," of which the following were, he notes, "written with Lord Byron's character as a past before me, and that of others, his contemporaries, who wrote under like influences:"--

"Nor do words,
Which practised talent readily affords,
Prove that his hand has touched responsive chords
Nor has his gentle beauty power to move
With genuine rapture and with fervent love
The soul of Genius, if he dare to take
Life's rule from passion craved for passion's sake;
Untaught that meekness is the cherished bent
Of all the truly great and all the innocent.
But who is innocent? By grace divine,
Not otherwise, O Nature! are we thine,
Through good and evil there, in just degree
Of rational and manly sympathy."
_The Works of W. Wordsworth_, 1889, p. 729.

Wordsworth seems to have resented Byron's tardy conversion to "natural piety," regarding it, no doubt, as a fruitless and graceless endeavour without the cross to wear the crown. But if Nature reserves her balms for "the innocent," her quality of inspiration is not "strained." Byron, too, was nature's priest--

"And by that vision splendid
Was on his way attended."]

[jc] {259} _In its own deepness_----[MS.]

[316] [The metaphor is derived from a hot spring which appears to boil over at the moment of its coming to the surface. As the particles of water, when they emerge into the light, break and bubble into a seething mass; so, too, does passion chase and beget passion in the "hot throng" of general interests and individual desires.]

[jd] _One of a worthless world--to strive where none are strong._--[MS.]

[317] [The thought which underlies the whole of this passage is that man is the creature and thrall of fate. In society, in the world, he is exposed to the incidence of passion, which he can neither resist nor yield to without torture. He is overcome by the world, and, as a last resource, he turns to nature and solitude. He lifts up his eyes to the hills, unexpectant of Divine aid, but in the hope that, by claiming kinship with Nature, and becoming "a portion of that around" him, he may forego humanity, with its burden of penitence, and elude the curse. There is a further reference to this despairing recourse to Nature in _The Dream_, viii. 10, _seq_.--

" ... he lived
Through that which had been death to many men,
And made him friends of mountains: with the stars
And the quick Spirit of the Universe
He held his dialogues! and they did teach
To him the magic of their mysteries."]

[je] {260} ----_through Eternity._--[MS.]

[318] [Shelley seems to have taken Byron at his word, and in the _Adonais_ (xxx. 3, _seq._) introduces him in the disguise of--

"The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame
Over his living head like Heaven is bent,
An early but enduring monument."

Notwithstanding the splendour of Shelley's verse, it is difficult to suppress a smile. For better or for worse, the sense of the ludicrous has asserted itself, and "brother" cannot take "brother" quite so seriously as in "the brave days of old." But to each age its own humour. Not only did Shelley and Byron worship at the shrine of Rousseau, but they took delight in reverently tracing the footsteps of St. Preux and Julie.]

[319] {261} [The name "Tigris" is derived from the Persian _tir_ (Sanscrit _Tigra_), "an arrow." If Byron ever consulted Hofmann's _Lexicon Universale_, he would have read, "_Tigris_, a velocitate dictus quasi _sagitta_;" but most probably he neither had nor sought an authority for his natural and beautiful simile.]

[jf] _To its young cries and kisses all awake._--[MS.]

[320] [Compare _Tintern Abbey_. In this line, both language and sentiment are undoubtedly Wordsworth's--

"The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours, and their forms, were then to me
An appetite, a _feeling_, and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm."

But here the resemblance ends. With Wordsworth the mood passed, and he learned

"To look on Nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Not harsh nor grating, but of amplest power
To chasten and subdue."

He would not question Nature in search of new and untainted pleasure, but rests in her as inclusive of humanity. The secret of Wordsworth is acquiescence; "the still, sad music of humanity" is the key-note of his ethic. Byron, on the other hand, is in revolt. He has the ardour of a pervert, the rancorous scorn of a deserter. The "hum of human cities" is a "torture." He is "a link reluctant in a fleshly chain." To him Nature and Humanity are antagonists, and he cleaves to the one, yea, he would take her by violence, to mark his alienation and severance from the other.]

[jg] _Of peopled cities_----[MS.]

[jh] {262}
----_but to be_
_A link reluctant in a living chain_
_Classing with creatures_----[MS.]

[ji] _And with the air_----[MS.]

[jj] _To sink and suffer_----[MS.]

[jk] ----_which partly round us cling._--[MS.]

[321] [Compare Horace, _Odes_, iii. 2. 23, 24--

"Et udam
Spernit humum fugiente penna."]

[jl] {263} ----_in this degrading form._--[MS.]

[jm] ----_the Spirit in each spot._--[MS.]

[322][The "bodiless thought" is the object, not the subject, of his celestial vision. "Even now," as through a glass darkly, and with eyes

"Whose half-beholdings through unsteady tears
Gave shape, hue, distance to the inward dream,"

his soul "had sight" of the spirit, the informing idea, the essence of each passing scene; but, hereafter, his bodiless spirit would, as it were, encounter the place-spirits face to face. It is to be noted that warmth of feeling, not clearness or fulness of perception, attends this spiritual recognition.]

[jn] [_Is not_] _the universe a breathing part?_--[MS.]

[jo] {264} _And gaze upon the ground with sordid thoughts and slow._--[MS.]

[323] [Compare Coleridge's _Dejection. An Ode_, iv. 4-9--

"And would we aught behold, of higher worth,
Than that inanimate cold world allowed
To the poor, loveless, ever-anxious crowd;
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
Enveloping the earth."]

[jp] _But this is not a time--I must return._--[MS.]

[jq] _Here the reflecting Sophist_----.--[MS.]

[jr] {265}
_O'er sinful deeds and thoughts the heavenly hue_
_With words like sunbeams dazzling as they passed_
_The eye that o'er them shed deep tears which flowed too fast_.--[MS.]
_O'er deeds and thoughts of error the bright hue_.--[MS. erased.]

[js] _Like him enamoured were to die the same_.--[MS.]

[jt] {266} ----_self-consuming heat_.--[MS. erased.]

[324] [As, for instance, with Madame de Warens, in 1738; with Madame d'Epinay; with Diderot and Grimm, in 1757; with Voltaire; with David Hume, in 1766 (see "Rousseau in England," _Q. R._, No. 376, October, 1898); with every one to whom he was attached or with whom he had dealings, except his illiterate mistress, Theresa le Vasseur. (See _Rousseau_, by John Morley, 2 vols., 1888, _passim_.)]

[ju] _For its own cruel workings the most kind_.--[MS. erased.]

[jv] _Since cause might be yet leave no trace behind_.--[MS.]

[325] ["He was possessed, as holier natures than his have been, by an enthusiastic vision, an intoxicated confidence, a mixture of sacred rage and prodigious love, an insensate but absolutely disinterested revolt against the stone and iron of a reality which he was bent on melting in a heavenly blaze of splendid aspiration and irresistibly persuasive expression."--_Rousseau_, by John Morley, 1886, i. 137.]

[326] {267} [Rousseau published his _Discourses_ on the influence of the sciences, on manners, and on inequality (_Sur l'Origine ... de l'Inegalite parmi les Hommes_) in 1750 and 1753; _Emile, ou, de l'Education_, and _Du Contrat Social_ in 1762.]

[327] ["What Rousseau's Discourse [_Sur l'Origine ... de l'Inegalite_, etc.] meant ... is not that all men are born equal. He never says this.... His position is that the artificial differences, springing from the conditions of the social union, do not coincide with the differences in capacity springing from original constitution; that the tendency of the social union as now organized is to deepen the artificial inequalities, and make the gulf between those endowed with privileges and wealth, and those not so endowed, ever wider and wider.... It was ... [the influence of Rousseau ... and those whom he inspired] which, though it certainly did not produce, yet did as certainly give a deep and remarkable bias, first to the American Revolution, and a dozen years afterwards to the French Revolution."--_Rousseau_, 1888, i. 181, 182.]

[jw]
----_thoughts which grew_
_Born with the birth of Time_----.--[MS.]

[jx]
----_even let me view_
_But good alas_----.--[MS.]

[jy] {268} ----_in both we shall lie slower_.--[MS. erased.]

[328] [The substitution of "one" for "both" (see _var._ i.) affords conclusive proof that the meaning is that the next revolution would do its work more thoroughly and not leave things as it found them.]

[329] {269} [After sunset the Jura range, which lies to the west of the Lake, would appear "darkened" in contrast to the afterglow in the western sky.]

[jz] {270} _He is an endless reveller_----.--[MS. erased.]

[ka] _Him merry with light talking with his mate_.--[MS. erased.]

[330] [Compare Anacreon ([Greek: Ei)s te/ttiga]), _Carm._ xliii. line 15--

[Greek: To\ de\ ge~ras ou)\ se tei/rei.].]

[kb] _Deep into Nature's breast the existence which they lose_.--[MS.]

[331] [For the association of "Fortune" and "Fame" with a star, compare stanza xi. lines 5, 6--

"Who can contemplate Fame through clouds unfold
The _star_ which rises o'er her steep," etc.?

And the allusion to Napoleon's "star," stanza xxxviii. line 9--

"Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest _Star_."

Compare, too, the opening lines of the _Stanzas to Augusta_ (July 24, 1816)--

"Though the day of my destiny's over,
And the _star_ of my fate has declined."

"Power" is symbolized as a star in _Numb._ xxiv. 17, "There shall come a _star_ out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel;" and in the divine proclamation, "I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning _star_" (_Rev._ xxii. 16).

The inclusion of "life" among star similes may have been suggested by the astrological terms, "house of life" and "lord of the ascendant." Wordsworth, in his Ode (_Intimations of Immortality, etc._) speaks of the soul as "our life's _star_." Mr. Tozer, who supplies most of these "comparisons," adds a line from Shelley's _Adonais_, 55. 8 (Pisa, 1821)--

"The soul of Adonais, like a _star_."]

[332] {271} [Compare Wordsworth's sonnet, "It is a Beauteous," etc.--

"It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration."]

[333] [Here, too, the note is Wordsworthian, though Byron represents as inherent in Nature, that "sense of something far more deeply interfused," which Wordsworth (in his _Lines_ on Tintern Abbey) assigns to his own consciousness.]

[kc] {272} _It is a voiceless feeling chiefly felt_.--[MS.]

[kd] _Of a most inward music_----.--[MS.]

[334] [As the cestus of Venus endowed the wearer with magical attraction, so the immanence of the Infinite and the Eternal in "all that formal is and fugitive," binds it with beauty and produces a supernatural charm which even Death cannot resist.]

[335] [Compare Herodotus, i. 131, [Greek: Oi(de\ nomi/zousi Dii) me, e)pi\ ta\ y(pselo/tata to~n ou)re/on a)nabai/nontes, thysi/as e(/rdein, to ky/klon pa/nta tou~ y)rano Di/a kale/ontes]. Perhaps, however, "early Persian" was suggested by a passage in "that drowsy, frowsy poem, _The Excursion_"--

"The Persian--zealous to reject
Altar and image and the inclusive walls
And roofs and temples built by human hands--
To loftiest heights ascending, from their tops
With myrtle-wreathed tiara on his brow,
Presented sacrifice to moon and stars."

_The Excursion_, iv. (_The Works of Wordsworth_, 1889, p. 461).]

[336] {273} [Compare the well-known song which forms the prelude of the _Hebrew Melodies_--

"She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes."]

[ke]
----_Oh glorious Night_
_That art not sent_----.--[MS.]

[kf] {274} _A portion of the Storm--a part of thee_.--[MS.]

[kg] ----_a fiery sea_.--[MS.]

[kh] _As they had found an heir and feasted o'er his birth_.--[MS. erased.]

[ki]
_Hills which look like brethren with twin heights_
_Of a like aspect_----.--[MS. erased.]

[337] [There can be no doubt that Byron borrowed this metaphor from the famous passage in Coleridge's _Christabel_ (ii. 408-426), which he afterwards prefixed as a motto to _Fare Thee Well_.

The latter half of the quotation runs thus--

"But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from paining--
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;
A dreary sea now flows between,
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once had been."]

[kj] {275} _Of separation drear_----.--[MS. erased.]

[338] [There are numerous instances of the use of "knoll" as an alternative form of the verb "to knell;" but Byron seems, in this passage, to be the authority for "knoll" as a substantive.]

[339] [For Rousseau's description of Vevey, see _Julie; ou, La Nouvelle Heloise_, Partie I. Lettre xxiii., _Oevres de J. J. Rousseau_, 1836, ii. 36: "Tantot d'immenses rochers pendoient en ruines au-dessus de ma tete. Tantot de hautes et bruyantes cascades m'inondoient de leur epais brouillard: tantot un torrent eternel ouvroit a mes cotes un abime dont les yeux n'osoient sonder la profondeur. Quelquefois je me perdois dans l'obscurite d'un bois touffu. Quelquefois, en sortant d'un gouffre, une agreable prairie, rejouissoit tout-a-coup mes regards. Un melange etonnant de la nature sauvage et de la nature cultivee, montroit partout la main des hommes, ou l'on eut cru qu'ils n'avoient jamais penetre: a cote d'une caverne on trouvoit des maisons; on voyoit des pampres secs ou l'on n'eut cherche que des ronces, des vignes dans des terres eboullees, d'excellens fruits sur des rochers, et des champs dans des precipices." See, too, Lettre xxxviii. p. 56; Partie IV. Lettre xi. p. 238 (the description of Julie's Elysium); and Partie IV. Lettre xvii. p. 260 (the excursion to Meillerie).

Byron infuses into Rousseau's accurate and charming compositions of scenic effects, if not the "glory," yet "the freshness of a dream." He belonged to the new age, with its new message from nature to man, and, in spite of theories and prejudices, listened and was convinced. He extols Rousseau's recognition of nature, lifting it to the height of his own argument; but, consciously or unconsciously, he desires to find, and finds, in nature a spring of imagination undreamt of by the Apostle of Sentiment. There is a whole world of difference between Rousseau's persuasive and delicate patronage of Nature, and Byron's passionate, though somewhat belated, surrender to her inevitable claim. With Rousseau, Nature is a means to an end, a conduct of refined and heightened fancy; whereas, to Byron, "her reward was with her," a draught of healing and refreshment.]

[kk] {277} _The trees have grown from Love_----.--[MS. erased.]

[kl] {278} _By rays which twine there_----.--[MS.]

[km]
_Clarens--sweet Clarens--thou art Love's abode_--
_Undying Love's--who here hath made a throne_.--[MS.]

[kn]
_And girded it with Spirit which is shown_
_From the steep summit to the rushing Rhone_.--[MS. erased.]

[ko]
----_whose searching power_
_Surpasses the strong storm in its most desolate hour_.--[MS.]

[340] [Compare _La Nouvelle Heloise_, Partie IV. Lettre xvii, _Oeuvres, etc._, ii. 262: "Un torrent, forme par la fonte des neiges, rouloit a vingt pas de nous line eau bourbeuse, et charrioit avec bruit du limon, du sable et des pierres.... Des forets de noirs sapins nous ombrageoient tristement a droite. Un grand bois de chenes etoit a gauche au-dela du torrent."]

[kp] {279} _But branches young as Heaven_----[MS. erased,]

[kq] ----_with sweeter voice than words_.--[MS.]

[341] [Compare the _Pervigilium Veneris_--

"Cras amet qui nunquam amavit,
Quique amavit eras amet."
("Let those love now, who never loved before;
Let those who always loved, now love the more.")

Parnell's _Vigil of Venus: British Poets_, 1794, vii. 7.]

[kr] {279} ----_driven him to repose._--[MS.]

[342] [Compare _Confessions of J. J. Rousseau_, lib. iv., _passim._]

[343] {281} [In his appreciation of Voltaire, Byron, no doubt, had in mind certain strictures of the lake school--"a school, as it is called, I presume, from their education being still incomplete." Coleridge, in _The Friend_ (1850, i. 168), contrasting Voltaire with Erasmus, affirms that "the knowledge of the one was solid through its whole extent, and that of the other extensive at a chief rate in its superficiality," and characterizes "the wit of the Frenchman" as being "without imagery, without character, and without that pathos which gives the magic charm to genuine humour;" and Wordsworth, in the second book of _The Excursion_ (_Works of Wordsworth_, 1889, p. 434), "unalarmed" by any consideration of wit or humour, writes down Voltaire's _Optimist_ (_Candide, ou L'Optimisme_), which was accidentally discovered by the "Wanderer" in the "Solitary's" pent-house, "swoln with scorching damp," as "the dull product of a scoffer's pen." Byron reverts to these contumelies in a note to the Fifth Canto of _Don Juan_ (see _Life_, Appendix, p. 809), and lashes "the school" _secundum artem._]

[ks]
_Coping with all and leaving all behind_
_Within himself existed all mankind_--
_And laughing at their faults betrayed his own_
_His own was ridicule which as the Wind_.--[MS.]

[344] {282} [In his youth Voltaire was imprisoned for a year (1717-18) in the Bastille, by the regent Duke of Orleans, on account of certain unacknowledged lampoons (_Regnante Puero, etc._); but throughout his long life, so far from "shaking thrones," he showed himself eager to accept the patronage and friendship of the greatest monarchs of the age--of Louis XV., of George II. and his queen, Caroline of Anspach, of Frederick II., and of Catharine of Russia. Even the Pope Benedict XIV. accepted the dedication of _Mahomet_ (1745), and bestowed an apostolical benediction on "his dear son." On the other hand, his abhorrence of war, his protection of the oppressed, and, above all, the questioning spirit of his historical and philosophical writings (e.g. _Les Lettres sur les Anglais_, 1733; _Annales de l'Empire depuis Charlemagne_, 1753, etc.) were felt to be subversive of civil as well as ecclesiastical tyranny, and, no doubt, helped to precipitate the Revolution.

The first half of the line may be illustrated by his quarrel with Maupertuis, the President of the Berlin Academy, which resulted in the production of the famous _Diatribe of Doctor Akakia, Physician to the Pope_ (1752), by a malicious attack on Maupertuis's successor, Le Franc de Pompignan, and by his caricature of the critic Elie Catharine Freron, as _Frelon_ ("Wasp"), in _L'Ecossaise_, which was played at Paris in 1760.--_Life of Voltaire_, by F. Espinasse, 1892, pp. 94, 114, 144.]

[kt]
----_concentering thought_
_And gathering wisdom_----.--[MS.]

[ku] {283} _Which stung his swarming foes with rage and fear_.--[MS.]

[345] [The first three volumes of Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, contrary to the author's expectation, did not escape criticism and remonstrance. The Rev. David Chetsum (in 1772 and (enlarged) 1778) published _An Examination of, etc._, and Henry Edward Davis, in 1778, _Remarks on_ the memorable Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters. Gibbon replied by a _Vindication_, issued in 1779. Another adversary was Archdeacon George Travis, who, in his _Letter_, defended the authenticity of the text on "Three Heavenly Witnesses" (1 _John_ v. 7), which Gibbon was at pains to deny (ch. xxxvii. note 120). Among other critics and assailants were Joseph Milner, Joseph Priestley, and Richard Watson afterwards Bishop of Llandaff. (For Porson's estimate of Gibbon, see preface to _Letters to Mr. Archdeacon Travis, etc._, 1790.)]

[kv] _In sleep upon one pillow_----.--[MS.]

[346] [There is no reason to suppose that this is to be taken ironically. He is not certain whether the "secrets of all hearts shall be revealed," or whether all secrets shall be kept in the silence of universal slumber; but he looks to the possibility of a judgment to come. He is speaking for mankind generally, and is not concerned with his own beliefs or disbeliefs.]

[347] {284} [The poet would follow in the wake of the clouds. He must pierce them, and bend his steps to the region of their growth, the mountain-top, where earth begets and air brings forth the vapours. Another interpretation is that the Alps must be pierced in order to attain the great and ever-ascending regions of the mountain-tops ("greater and greater as we proceed"). In the next stanza he pictures himself looking down from the summit of the Alps on Italy, the goal of his pilgrimage.]

[348] [The Roman Empire engulfed and comprehended the great empires of the past--the Persian, the Carthaginian, the Greek. It fell, and kingdoms such as the Gothic (A.D. 493-554), the Lombardic (A.D. 568-774) rose out of its ashes, and in their turn decayed and passed away.]

[349] {285} [The task imposed upon his soul, which dominates every other instinct, is the concealment of any and every emotion--"love, or hate, or aught," not the concealment of the particular emotion "love or hate," which may or may not be the "master-spirit" of his thought. He is anxious to conceal his feelings, not to keep the world in the dark as to the supreme feeling which holds the rest subject.]

[kw] _They are but as a self-deceiving wile_.-[MS. erased.]

[kx] _The shadows of the things that pass along_.--[MS.]

[ky] {286}
_Fame is the dream of boyhood--I am not_
_So young as to regard the frown or smile_
_Of crowds as making an immortal lot_.--[MS. (lines 6, 7 erased).]

[350] [Compare Shakespeare, _Coriolanus_, act iii. sc. 1, lines 66, 67--

"For the mutable, rank-scented many, let them
Regard me as I do not flatter."]

[351] [Compare _Manfred_, act ii. sc. 2, lines 54-57--

"My spirit walked not with the souls of men,
Nor looked upon the earth with human eyes;
The thirst of their ambition was not mine,
The aim of their existence was not mine."]

[kz] {287} _O'er misery unmixedly some grieve_.--[MS.]

[352] [Byron was at first in some doubt whether he should or should not publish the "concluding stanzas of _Childe Harold_ (those to my _daughter_);" but in a letter to Murray, October 9, 1816, he reminds him of his later determination to publish them with "the rest of the Canto."]

[353] {288} ["His allusions to me in _Childe Harold_ are cruel and cold, but with such a semblance as to make _me_ appear so, and to attract sympathy to himself. It is said in this poem that hatred of him will be taught as a lesson to his child. I might appeal to all who have ever heard me speak of him, and still more to my own heart, to witness that there has been no moment when I have remembered injury otherwise than affectionately and sorrowfully. It is not my duty to give way to hopeless and wholly unrequited affection, but so long as I live my chief struggle will probably be not to remember him too kindly."--(_Letter of Lady Byron to Lady Anne Lindsay_, extracted from Lord Lindsay's letter to the _Times_, September 7, 1869.)

According to Mrs. Leigh (see her letter to Hodgson, Nov., 1816, _Memoirs of Rev. F. Hodgson_, 1878, ii. 41), Murray paid Lady Byron "the compliment" of showing her the transcription of the Third Canto, a day or two after it came into his possession. Most probably she did not know or recognize Claire's handwriting, but she could not fail to remember that but one short year ago she had herself been engaged in transcribing _The Siege of Corinth_ and _Parisina_ for the press. Between the making of those two "fair copies," a tragedy had intervened.]

[354] {289} [The Countess Guiccioli is responsible for the statement that Byron looked forward to a time when his daughter "would know her father by his works." "Then," said he, "shall I triumph, and the tears which my daughter will then shed, together with the knowledge that she will have the feelings with which the various allusions to herself and me have been written, will console me in my darkest hours. Ada's mother may have enjoyed the smiles of her youth and childhood, but the tears of her maturer age will be for me."--_My Recollections of Lord Byron_, by the Countess Guiccioli, 1869, p. 172.]