Chapter XIX: Introduction: To the Fourth Canto

The first draft of the Fourth Canto of _Childe Harold_, which embodies the original and normal conception of the poem, was the work of twenty-six days. On the 17th of June, 1817, Byron wrote to Murray: "You are out about the Third Canto: I have not done, nor designed, a line of continuation to that poem. I was too short a time at Rome for it, and have no thought of recommencing." But in spite of this assertion, "the numbers came," and on June 26 he made a beginning. Thirty stanzas "were roughened off" on the 1st of July, fifty-six were accomplished by the 9th, "ninety and eight" by the 13th, and on July 20 he announces "the completion of the fourth and ultimate canto of _Childe Harold_. It consists of 126 stanzas." One stanza (xl.) was appended to the fair copy. It suggested a parallel between Ariosto "the Southern Scott," and Scott "the Northern Ariosto," and excited some misgiving.

In commending his new poem to Murray (July 20, August 7), Byron notes three points in which it differed from its predecessors: it is "the longest of the four;" "it treats more of works of art than of nature;" "there are no metaphysics in it--at least, I think not." In other words, "The Fourth Canto is not a continuation of the Third. I have parted company with Shelley and Wordsworth. Subject-matter and treatment are alike new."

The poem as it stood was complete, and, as a poem, it lost as well as gained by the insertion of additional stanzas and groups of stanzas, "purple patch" on "purple patch," each by itself so attractive and so splendid. The pilgrim finds himself at Venice, on the "Bridge of Sighs." He beholds in a vision the departed glories of "a thousand years." The "long array of shadows," the "beings of the mind," come to him "like truth," and repeople the vacancy. But he is an exile, and turns homeward in thought to "the inviolate island of the sage and free." He is an exile and a sufferer. He can and will endure his fate, but "ever and anon" he feels the prick of woe, and with the sympathy of despair would stand "a ruin amidst ruins," a desolate soul in a land of desolation and decay. He renews his pilgrimage. He passes Arqua, where "they keep the dust of Laura's lover," lingers for a day at Ferrara, haunted by memories of "Torquato's injured shade," and, as he approaches "the fair white walls" of Florence, he re-echoes the "Italia! oh, Italia!" of Filicaja's impassioned strains. At Florence he gazes, "dazzled and drunk with beauty," at the "goddess in stone," the Medicean Venus, but forbears to "describe the indescribable," to break the silence of Art by naming its mysteries. Santa Croce and the other glories "in Arno's dome of Art's most princely shrine," he passes by unsung, if not unseen; but Thrasymene's "sheet of silver," the "living crystal" of Clitumnus' "gentlest waters," and Terni's "matchless cataract," on whose verge "an Iris sits," and "lone Soracte's ridge," not only call forth his spirit's homage, but receive the homage of his Muse.

And now the Pilgrim has reached his goal, "Rome the wonderful," the sepulchre of empire, the shrine of art.

Henceforth the works of man absorb his attention. Pompey's "dread statue;" the Wolf of the Capitol; the Tomb of Cecilia Metella; the Palatine; the "nameless column" of the Forum; Trajan's pillar; Egeria's Grotto; the ruined Colosseum, "arches on arches," an "enormous skeleton," the Colosseum of the poet's vision, a multitudinous ring of spectators, a bloody Circus, and a dying Gladiator; the Pantheon; S. Nicola in Carcere, the scene of the Romana Caritas; St. Peter's "vast and wondrous dome,"--are all celebrated in due succession. Last of all, he "turns to the Vatican," to view the Laocoon and the Apollo Belvidere, the counterfeit presentments of ideal suffering and ideal beauty. His "shrine is won;" but ere he bids us farewell he climbs the Alban Mount, and as the Mediterranean once more bursts upon his sight, he sums the moral of his argument. Man and all his works are as a drop of rain in the Ocean, "the image of eternity, the throne of the Invisible"!

Byron had no sooner completed "this fourth and ultimate canto," than he began to throw off additional stanzas. His letters to Murray during the autumn of 1817 announce these successive lengthenings; but it is impossible to trace the exact order of their composition. On the 7th of August the canto stood at 130 stanzas, on the 21st at 133; on the 4th of September at 144, on the 17th at 150; and by November 15 it had reached 167 stanzas. Of nineteen stanzas which were still to be added, six--on the death of the Princess Charlotte (died November 6, 1817)--were written at the beginning of December, and two stanzas (clxxvii., clxxviii.) were forwarded to Murray in the early spring of 1818.

Of these additions the most notable are four stanzas on Venice (including stanza xiii. on "The Horses of St. Mark"); "The sunset on the Brenta" (stanzas xxvii.-xxix.); The tombs in Santa Croce,--the apostrophe to "the all Etruscan three," Petrarch, Dante, Boccaccio (stanzas liv.-lx.); "Rome a chaos of ruins--antiquarian ignorance" (stanzas lxxx.-lxxxii.); "The nothingness of Man--the hope of the future--Freedom" (stanzas xciii.-xcviii.); "The Tarpeian Rock--the Forum--Rienzi" (stanzas cxii.-cxiv.); "Love, Life, and Reason" (stanzas cxx.-cxxvii.); "The Curse of Forgiveness" (stanzas cxxxv.-cxxxvii.); "The Mole of Hadrian" (stanza clii.); "The death of the Princess Charlotte" (stanzas clxvii.-clxxii.); "Nemi" (stanzas clxxiii., clxxiv.); "The Desert and one fair Spirit" (stanzas clxxvii., clxxviii.).

Some time during the month of December, 1817, Byron wrote out a fair copy of the entire canto, numbering 184 stanzas _(MS. D.)_; and on January 7, 1818, Hobhouse left Venice for England, with the "whole of the MSS.," viz. _Beppo_ (begun October, 1817), and the Fourth Canto of _Childe Harold_, together with a work of his own, a volume of essays on Italian literature, the antiquities of Rome, etc., which he had put together during his residence in Venice (July--December, 1817), and proposed to publish as an appendix to _Childe Harold_. In his preface to _Historical Illustrations_, etc., 1818, Hobhouse explains that on his return to England he considered that this "appendix to the Canto would be swelled to a disproportioned bulk," and that, under this impression, he determined to divide his material into two parts. The result was that "such only of the notes as were more immediately connected with the text" were printed as "Historical Notes to Canto the Fourth," and that his longer dissertations were published in a separate volume, under his own name, as _Historical Illustrations to the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold_. To these "Historical Notes" an interest attaches apart from any consideration of their own worth and importance; but to understand the relation between the poem and the notes, it is necessary to retrace the movements of the poet and his annotator.

Byron and Hobhouse left the Villa Diodati, October 5, 1816, crossed the Simplon, and made their way together, via Milan and Verona, to Venice. Early in December the friends parted company. Byron remained at Venice, and Hobhouse proceeded to Rome, and for the next four months devoted himself to the study of Italian literature, in connection with archaeology and art. Byron testifies (September 14, 1817) that his researches were "indefatigable," that he had "more real knowledge of Rome and its environs than any Englishman who has been there since Gibbon." Hobhouse left Rome for Naples, May 21; returned to Rome, June 9; arrived at Terni, July 2; and early in July joined Byron on the Brenta, at La Mira. The latter half of the year (July--December, 1817) was occupied in consulting "the best authorities" in the Ducal Library at Venice, with a view to perfecting his researches, and giving them to the world as an illustrative appendix to _Childe Harold_. It is certain that Byron had begun the fourth canto, and written some thirty or more stanzas, before Hobhouse rejoined him at his villa of La Mira on the banks of the Brenta, in July, 1817; and it would seem that, although he had begun by saying "that he was too short a time in Rome for it," he speedily overcame his misgivings, and accomplished, as he believed, the last "fytte" of his pilgrimage. The first draft was Byron's unaided composition, but the "additional stanzas" were largely due to Hobhouse's suggestions in the course of conversation, if not to his written "researches." Hobhouse himself made no secret of it. In his preface (p. 5) to _Historical Illustrations_ he affirms that both "illustrations" and notes were "for the most part written while the noble author was yet employed in the composition of the poem. They were put into the hands of Lord Byron much in the state in which they now appear;" and, writing to Murray, December 7, 1817, he says, "I must confess I feel an affection for it [Canto IV.] more than ordinary, as part of it was begot as it were under my own eyes; for although your poets are as shy as elephants and camels ... yet I have, not unfrequently, witnessed his lordship's coupleting, and some of the stanzas owe their birth to our morning walk or evening ride at La Mira." Forty years later, in his revised and enlarged "Illustrations" (_Italy: Remarks made in Several Visits from the year 1816 to 1854_, by the Right Hon. Lord Broughton, G.C.B., 1859, i. p. iv.), he reverts to this collaboration: "When I rejoined Lord Byron at La Mira ... I found him employed upon the Fourth Canto of _Childe Harold_, and, later in the autumn, he showed me the first sketch of the poem. It was much shorter than it afterwards became, and it did not remark on several objects which appeared to me peculiarly worthy of notice. I made a list of these objects, and in conversation with him gave him reasons for the selection. The result was the poem as it now appears, and he then engaged me to write the notes."

As the "delicate spirit" of Shelley suffused the third canto of _Childe Harold_, so the fourth reveals the presence and co-operation of Hobhouse. To his brother-poet he owed a fresh conception, perhaps a fresh appreciation of nature; to his lifelong friend, a fresh enthusiasm for art, and a host of details, "dry bones ... which he awakened into the fulness of life."

The Fourth Canto was published on Tuesday, April 28, 1818. It was reviewed by [Sir] Walter Scott in the _Quarterly Review_, No. xxxvii., April, 1818, and by John Wilson in the _Edinburgh Review_, No. 59, June, 1818. Both numbers were published on the same day, September 26, 1818.

CHILDE HAROLD, CANTO IV. ORIGINAL DRAFT. [MS. M.]

[June 26--July 19. 1817.]

Stanza i. "I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs,"--

Stanza iii.-xi. "In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,"--"The spouseless Adriatic mourns her Lord,"--

Stanza xv. "Statues of glass--all shivered--the long file,"--

Stanza xviii.-xxvi. "I loved her from my boyhood--she to me,"--"The Commonwealth of Kings--the Men of Rome!"--

Stanza xxx.-xxxix. "There is a tomb in Arqua;--reared in air,"--"Peace to Torquato's injured shade! 'twas his,"--

Stanza xlii.-xlvi. "Italia! oh, Italia! thou who hast,"--"That page is now before me, and on mine,"--

Stanza xlviii.-l. "But Arno wins us to the fair white walls,"--"We gaze and turn away, and know not where,"--

Stanza liii. "I leave to learned fingers, and wise hands,"--

Stanza lxi.-lxxix. "There be more things to greet the heart and eyes,"--"The Niobe of nations! there she stands,"--

Stanza lxxxiii. "Oh, thou, whose chariot rolled on Fortune's wheel,"--

Stanza lxxxiv. "The dictatorial wreath--couldst thou divine,"--

Stanza lxxxvii.-xcii. "And thou, dread Statue! yet existent in,"--"And would be all or nothing--nor could wait,"--

Stanza xcix.-cviii. "There is a stern round tower of other days,"--"There is the moral of all human tales,"--

Stanza cx. "Tully was not so eloquent as thou,"--

Stanza cxi. "Buried in air, the deep blue sky of Rome,"--

Stanza cxv.-cxix. "Egeria! sweet creation of some heart,"--"And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying,"--

Stanza cxxviii.-cxxxiv. "Arches on arches! as it were that Rome,"--"And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now,"--

Stanza cxxxviii.-cli. "The seal is set.--Now welcome, thou dread Power!"--"The starry fable of the Milky Way,"--

Stanza cliii.-clxvi. "But lo! the Dome--the vast and wondrous Dome,"--"And send us prying into the abyss,"--

Stanza clxxv. "But I forget.--My Pilgrim's shrine is won,"--

Stanza clxxvi. "Upon the blue Symplegades: long years,"--

Stanza clxxix. "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll!"--

Stanza clxxx. "His steps are not upon thy paths,--thy fields,"--

Stanza clxxxiii.-clxxxvi. "Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form,"--"Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been,"--

ADDITIONAL STANZA.

Stanza xl. "Great as thou art, yet paralleled by those,"--

(127 stanzas.)

ADDITIONS BOUND UP WITH MS. M.

Stanza ii. "She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from Ocean,"--

Stanza xii.-xiv. "The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns," --(November 10, 1817.)--"In youth She was all glory,--a new Tyre,"--

Stanza xvi. "When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse,"--

Stanza xvii. "Thus, Venice! if no stronger claim were thine,"--

Stanza xxvii.-xxix. "The Moon is up, and yet it is not night,"--"Filled with the face of heaven, which, from afar,"--

Stanza xlvii. "Yet, Italy! through every other land,"--

Stanza li. "Appear'dst thou not to Paris in this guise?"--

Stanza lii. "Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love,"--

Stanza liv.-lx. "In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie,"--"What is her Pyramid of precious stones?"--

Stanza lxxx.-lxxxii. "The Goth, the Christian--Time--War--Flood, and Fire,"--"Alas! the lofty city! and alas!"--

Stanza lxxxv. "Sylla was first of victors; but our own,"--

Stanza lxxxvi. "The third of the same Moon whose former course,"--

Stanza xciii.-xcvi. "What from this barren being do we reap?"--"Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be,"--

Stanza cix. "Admire--exult--despise--laugh--weep,--for here,"--

Stanza cxii.-cxiv. "Where is the rock of Triumph, the high place,"--"Then turn we to her latest Tribune's name,"--

Stanza cxxiii. "Who loves, raves--'tis youth's frenzy--but the cure,"--

Stanza cxxv.-cxxvii. "Few--none--find what they love or could have loved,"--"Yet let us ponder boldly--'tis a base,"--

Stanza cxxxv.-cxxxvii. "That curse shall be Forgiveness,--Have I not,"--"But I have lived, and have not lived in vain,"--

Stanza clii. "Turn to the Mole which Hadrian reared on high,"--

Stanza clxvii.-clxxii. "Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds,"--(On the death of the Princess Charlotte, November 6, 1817.)--"These might have been her destiny--but no,"--

Stanza clxxiii. "Lo, Nemi! navelled in the woody hills,"--

Stanza clxxiv. "And near, Albano's scarce divided waves,"--

Stanza clxxvii. "Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,"--(1818.)

Stanza clxxviii. "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,"--(1818.)

Stanza clxxxi. "The armaments which thunderstrike the walls,"--

Stanza clxxxii. "Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee,"--

(52 stanzas.)

ADDITIONS INCLUDED IN MS. D.,[363] BUT NOT AMONG MSS. M.

Stanza xli. "The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust,"--

Stanza xcvii. "But France got drunk with blood to vomit crime,"--

Stanza xcviii. "Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying,"--

Stanza cxx. "Alas! our young affections run to waste,"--

Stanza cxxi. "Oh, Love! no habitant of earth thou art,"--

Stanza cxxii. "Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,"--

Stanza cxxiv. "We wither from our youth, we gasp away,"--

(Seven stanzas.)

* * * * *

TO

JOHN HOBHOUSE, ESQ., A.M., F.R.S.,

&c., &c., &c.
Venice, _January_ 2, 1818.

* * * * *

My dear Hobhouse,

After an interval of eight years between the composition of the first and last cantos of _Childe Harold_, the conclusion of the poem is about to be submitted to the public. In parting with so old a friend,[364] it is not extraordinary that I should recur to one still older and better,--to one who has beheld the birth and death of the other, and to whom I am far more indebted for the social advantages of an enlightened friendship, than--though not ungrateful--I can, or could be, to _Childe Harold_, for any public favour reflected through the poem on the poet,--to one, whom I have known long, and accompanied far, whom I have found wakeful over my sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my prosperity and firm in my adversity, true in counsel and trusty in peril,--to a friend often tried and never found wanting;--to yourself.

In so doing, I recur from fiction to truth; and in dedicating to you in its complete, or at least concluded state, a poetical work which is the longest, the most thoughtful and comprehensive of my compositions, I wish to do honour to myself by the record of many years' intimacy with a man of learning, of talent, of steadiness, and of honour. It is not for minds like ours to give or to receive flattery; yet the praises of sincerity have ever been permitted to the voice of friendship; and it is not for you, nor even for others, but to relieve a heart which has not elsewhere, or lately, been so much accustomed to the encounter of good-will as to withstand the shock firmly, that I thus attempt to commemorate your good qualities, or rather the advantages which I have derived from their exertion. Even the recurrence of the date of this letter, the anniversary of the most unfortunate day of my past existence,[365] but which cannot poison my future while I retain the resource of your friendship, and of my own faculties, will henceforth have a more agreeable recollection for both, inasmuch as it will remind us of this my attempt to thank you for an indefatigable regard, such as few men have experienced, and no one could experience without thinking better of his species and of himself.

It has been our fortune to traverse together, at various periods, the countries of chivalry, history, and fable--Spain, Greece, Asia Minor, and Italy; and what Athens and Constantinople were to us a few years ago, Venice and Rome have been more recently. The poem also, or the pilgrim, or both, have accompanied me from first to last; and perhaps it may be a pardonable vanity which induces me to reflect with complacency on a composition which in some degree connects me with the spot where it was produced, and the objects it would fain describe; and however unworthy it may be deemed of those magical and memorable abodes, however short it may fall of our distant conceptions and immediate impressions, yet as a mark of respect for what is venerable, and of feeling for what is glorious, it has been to me a source of pleasure in the production, and I part with it with a kind of regret, which I hardly suspected that events could have left me for imaginary objects.

With regard to the conduct of the last canto, there will be found less of the pilgrim than in any of the preceding, and that little slightly, if at all, separated from the author speaking in his own person. The fact is, that I had become weary of drawing a line which every one seemed determined not to perceive: like the Chinese in Goldsmith's _Citizen of the World_,[366] whom nobody would believe to be a Chinese, it was in vain that I asserted, and imagined that I had drawn, a distinction between the author and the pilgrim; and the very anxiety to preserve this difference, and disappointment at finding it unavailing, so far crushed my efforts in the composition, that I determined to abandon it altogether--and have done so. The opinions which have been, or may be, formed on that subject are _now_ a matter of indifference: the work is to depend on itself, and not on the writer; and the author, who has no resources in his own mind beyond the reputation, transient or permanent, which is to arise from his literary efforts, deserves the fate of authors.

In the course of the following canto it was my intention, either in the text or in the notes, to have touched upon the present state of Italian literature, and perhaps of manners. But the text, within the limits I proposed, I soon found hardly sufficient for the labyrinth of external objects, and the consequent reflections: and for the whole of the notes, excepting a few of the shortest, I am indebted to yourself,[367] and these were necessarily limited to the elucidation of the text.

It is also a delicate, and no very grateful task, to dissert upon the literature and manners of a nation so dissimilar; and requires an attention and impartiality which would induce us,--though perhaps no inattentive observers, nor ignorant of the language or customs of the people amongst whom we have recently abode--to distrust, or at least defer our judgment, and more narrowly examine our information. The state of literary, as well as political party, appears to run, or to _have_ run, so high, that for a stranger to steer impartially between them is next to impossible. It may be enough, then, at least for my purpose, to quote from their own beautiful language--"Mi pare che in un paese tutto poetico, che vanta la lingua la piu nobile ed insieme la piu dolce, tutte tutte le vie diverse si possono tentare, e che sinche la patria di Alfieri e di Monti non ha perduto l'antico valore, in tutte essa dovrebbe essere la prima." Italy has great names still--Canova,[368] Monti, Ugo Foscolo, Pindemonte, Visconti, Morelli, Cicognara, Albrizzi, Mezzofanti, Mai, Mustoxidi, Aglietti, and Vacca, will secure to the present generation an honourable place in most of the departments of Art, Science, and Belles Lettres; and in some the very highest--Europe--the World--has but one Canova.

It has been somewhere said by Alfieri, that "La pianta uomo nasce piu robusta in Italia che in qualunque altra terra--e che gli stessi atroci delitti che vi si commettono ne sono una prova." Without subscribing to the latter part of his proposition, a dangerous doctrine, the truth of which may be disputed on better grounds, namely, that the Italians are in no respect more ferocious than their neighbours, that man must be wilfully blind, or ignorantly heedless, who is not struck with the extraordinary capacity of this people, or, if such a word be admissible, their _capabilities_,[369] the facility of their acquisitions, the rapidity of their conceptions, the fire of their genius, their sense of beauty, and, amidst all the disadvantages of repeated revolutions, the desolation of battles, and the despair of ages, their still unquenched "longing after immortality,"[370]--the immortality of independence. And when we ourselves, in riding round the walls of Rome, heard the simple lament of the labourers' chorus, "Roma! Roma! Roma! Roma non e piu come era prima!"[371] it was difficult not to contrast this melancholy dirge with the bacchanal roar of the songs of exultation still yelled from the London taverns, over the carnage of Mont St. Jean,[372] and the betrayal of Genoa, of Italy, of France, and of the world, by men whose conduct you yourself have exposed in a work worthy of the better days of our history.[373] For me,--

"Non movero mai corda
Ove la turba di sue ciance assorda."

What Italy has gained by the late transfer of nations, it were useless for Englishmen to enquire, till it becomes ascertained that England has acquired something more than a permanent army and a suspended Habeas Corpus;[374] it is enough for them to look at home. For what they have done abroad, and especially in the South, "Verily they _will have_ their reward," and at no very distant period.

Wishing you, my dear Hobhouse, a safe and agreeable return to that country whose real welfare can be dearer to none than to yourself, I dedicate to you this poem in its completed state; and repeat once more how truly I am ever

Your obliged
And affectionate friend,
BYRON.