Chapter XXIII: Canto THE FOURTH: 375 (4)

[467] {396} [The bronze "Wolf of the Capitol" in the Palace of the Conservators is unquestionably ancient, belonging to the end of the sixth or beginning of the fifth century B.C., and probably of Graeco-Italian workmanship. The twins, as Winckelmann pointed out (see Hobhouse's _note_), are modern, and were added under the impression that this was the actual bronze described by Cicero, _Cat._, iii. 8, and Virgil, _AEn._, viii. 631. (See _Monuments de l'Art Antique_, par Olivier Rayet, Paris, 1884, Livraison II, Planche 7.)]

[468] [The Roman "things" whom the world feared, set the fashion of shedding their blood in the pursuit of glory. The nations, of modern Europe, "bastard" Romans, have followed their example.]

[469] {397} [Compare _The Age of Bronze_, v.--"The king of kings, and yet of slaves the slave."]

[470] [In _Comparison of the Present State of France with that of Rome_, etc., published in the _Morning Post_, September 21, 1802, Coleridge speaks of Buonaparte as the "new Caesar," but qualifies the expression in a note: "But if reserve, if darkness, if the employment of spies and informers, if an indifference to all religions, except as instruments of state policy, with a certain strange and dark superstition respecting fate, a blind confidence in his destinies,--if these be any part of the Chief Consul's character, they would force upon us, even against our will, the name and history of Tiberius."--_Essays on His Own Times_, ii. 481.]

[471] [According to Suetonius, i. 37, the famous words, _Veni Vidi, Vici_, were blazoned on litters in the triumphal procession which celebrated Caesar's victory over Pharnaces II., after the battle of Zela (B.C. 47).]

[472] {398} [By "flee" in the "Gallic van," Byron means "fly towards, not away from, the foe." He was, perhaps, thinking of the Biblical phrases, "flee like a bird" (_Ps_. xi. 1), and "flee upon horses" (_Isa_. xxx. 16); but he was not careful to "tame down" words to his own use and purpose.]

[nt] _Of pettier passions which raged angrily_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[nu] _At what? can he reply? his lusting is unnamed_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[nv] ----_How oft--how long, oh God!_--[MS. M. erased.]

[473] {399} ----"Omnes poene veteres; qui nihil cognosci, nihil percipi, nihil sciri posse dixerunt; augustos sensus, imbecillos animos, brevia curricula vitar, et (ut Democritus) in profundo veritatem esse demersam; opinionibus et institutis omnia teneri; nihil veritati relinqui: deinceps omnia tenebris circumfusa esse dixerunt."--_Academ._, lib. I. cap. 12. The eighteen hundred years which have elapsed since Cicero wrote this, have not removed any of the imperfections of humanity: and the complaints of the ancient philosophers may, without injustice or affectation, be transcribed in a poem written yesterday.

[474] [Compare Gray's _Elegy_, stanza xv.--

"Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear."]

[nw] _And thus they sleep in some dull certainty_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[475] [Compare _As You Like It_, act ii. sc. 7, lines 26-28--

"And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;
And thereby hangs a tale."]

[nx] {400} _For such existence is as much to die_.--[MS. M. erased.] or, _Bequeathing their trampled natures till they die_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[476] [In his speech _On the Continuance of the War with France_, which Pitt delivered in the House of Commons, February 17, 1800, he described Napoleon as "the child and champion of Jacobinism." At least the phrase occurs in the report which Coleridge prepared for the _Morning Post_ of February 18, 1800, and it appears in the later edition in the Collection of Pitt's speeches. "It does not occur in the speech as reported by the _Times_." It is curious that in the jottings which Coleridge, Parliamentary reporter _pro hac vice_, scrawled in pencil in his note-book, the phrase appears as "the nursling and champion of Jacobinism;" and it is possible that the alternative of the more rhetorical but less forcible "child" was the poet's handiwork. It became a current phrase, and Coleridge more than once reverts to it in the articles which he contributed to the _Morning Post_ in 1802. (See _Essays on His Own Times_, ii. 293, and iii. 1009-1019; and _Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, 1895, i. 327, note.)]

[ny] {401} _Deep in the lone Savannah_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[nz] _Too long hath Earth been drunk with blood and crime_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[oa]
_Her span of freedom hath but fatal been_
_To that of any coming age or clime_.--[MS. M.]

[477] {402} [By the "base pageant" Byron refers to the Congress of Vienna (September, 1815); the "Holy Alliance" (September 26), into which the Duke of Wellington would not enter; and the Second Treaty of Paris, November 20, 1815.]

[478] [Compare Shelley's _Hellas: Poems_, 1895, ii. 358--

"O Slavery! thou frost of the world's prime,
Killing its flowers, and leaving its thorns bare!"]

[479] [Shelley chose the first two lines of this stanza as the motto for his _Ode to Liberty_.]

[480] Alluding to the tomb of Cecilia Metella, called Capo di Bove. [Four words, and two initials, compose the whole of the transcription which, whatever was its ancient position, is now placed in front of this towering sepulchre: "CAECILIAE. Q. CRETICI. F. METELLAE. CRASSI."

"The Savelli family were in possession of the fortress in 1312, and the German army of Henry VII. marched from Rome, attacked, took, and burnt it, but were unable to make themselves, by force, masters of the citadel--that is, the tomb." The "fence of stone" refers to the quadrangular basement of concrete, on which the circular tower rests. The tower was originally coated with marble, which was stripped off for the purpose of making lime. The work of destruction is said to have been carried out during the interval between Poggio's (see his _De Fort. Var._, ap. Sall., _Nov. Thes. Ant. Rom._, 1735, i. 501, _sq._) first and second visits to Rome. (See Hobhouse's _Hist. Illust._, pp. 202, 203; _Handbook for Rome_, p. 360.)]

[ob] {403} _So massily begirt--what lay?_----.--[MS. M.]

[oc] {404} _Love from her duties--still a conqueress in the war_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[481]
[Greek: On oi(theoi\ philou~sin a)pothne/skei ne/os]
[Greek: To\ ga\r thanei~n ou)ch ai)schro\n, a)ll' ai)schro~s thanei~n].
_Gnomici Poetae Graeci_, R. F. P. Brunck, 1784, p. 231.

[482] {405} ["It is more likely to have been the pride than the love of Crassus which raised so superb a memorial to a wife whose name is not mentioned in history, unless she be supposed to be that lady whose intimacy with Dolabella was so offensive to Tullia, the daughter of Cicero, or she who was divorced by Lentulus Spinther, or she, perhaps the same person, from whose ear the son of AEsopus transferred a precious jewel to enrich his daughter (_vide_ Hor., _Sat._, ii. 3. 239)" (_Hist. Illust._, p. 200). The wealth of Crassus was proverbial, as his _agnomen_, Dives, testifies (Plut., _Crassus_, ii., iii., Lipsiae, 1813, v. 156, _sq._).]

[od] {406}

_Till I had called forth even from the mind_.--[MS. M. erased.]
----_with heated mind_.--[MS. M.]

[oe] _I have no home_----.--[MS. M.]

[483] {407} [Compare Rogers's _Italy:_ "Rome" (_Poems_, 1852), ii. 169--

"Or climb the Palatine,
* * * * *
Long while the seat of Rome, hereafter found
Less than enough (so monstrous was the brood
Engendered there, so Titan-like) to lodge
One in his madness; and inscribe my name--
My name and date, on some broad aloe-leaf
That shoots and spreads within those very walls
Where Virgil read aloud his tale divine,
When his voice faltered and a mother wept
Tears of delight!"[Sec.]

And compare Shelley's _Poetical Works_, 1895, iii. 276--

"Rome has fallen; ye see it lying
Heaped in undistinguished ruin:
Nature is alone undying."]

[Sec.] [At the words _Tu Marcellus eris, etc_. (_vide_ Tib. Cl. Donatus, _Life of Virgil_ (Virg., _Opera_), Leeuwarden, 1627, vol. i.).]

[of]
----_wherein have creeped_
_The Reptiles which_.----
or, _Scorpion and blindworm_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[484] The Palatine is one mass of ruins, particularly on the side towards the Circus Maximus. The very soil is formed of crumbled brickwork. Nothing has been told--nothing can be told--to satisfy the belief of any but the Roman antiquary. [The Palatine was the site of the successive "Domus" of Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula, and of the _Domus Transitoria_ of Nero, which perished when Rome was burnt. Later emperors--Vespasian, Domitian, Septimius Severus--added to the splendour of the name-giving Palatine. "The troops of Genseric," says Hobhouse (_Hist. Illust._, p. 206), "occupied the Palatine, and despoiled it of all its riches... and when it again rises, it rises in ruins." Systematic excavations during the last fifty years have laid bare much that was hidden, and "learning and research" have in parts revealed the "obliterated plan;" but, in 1817, the "shapeless mass of ruins" defied the guesses of antiquarians. "Your walks in the Palatine ruins ... will be undisturbed, unless you startle a fox in breaking through the brambles in the corridors, or burst unawares through the hole of some shivered fragments into one of the half-buried chambers, which the peasants have blocked up to serve as stalls for their jackasses, or as huts for those who watch the gardens" (_Hist. Illust._, p. 212).]

[485] {408} The author of the _Life of Cicero_, speaking of the opinion entertained of Britain by that orator and his contemporary Romans, has the following eloquent passage:--"From their railleries of this kind, on the barbarity and misery of our island, one cannot help reflecting on the surprising fate and revolutions of kingdoms; how Rome, once the mistress of the world, the seat of arts, empire, and glory, now lies sunk in sloth, ignorance, and poverty; enslaved to the most cruel as well as to the most contemptible of tyrants, superstition and religious imposture; while this remote country, anciently the jest and contempt of the polite Romans, is become the happy seat of liberty, plenty, and letters; flourishing in all the arts and refinements of civil life; yet running, perhaps, the same course which Rome itself had run before it, from virtuous industry to wealth; from wealth to luxury; from luxury to an impatience of discipline and corruption of morals: till, by a total degeneracy and loss of virtue, being grown ripe for destruction, it fall a prey at last to some hardy oppressor, and, with the loss of liberty, losing everything that is valuable, sinks gradually again into its original barbarism." (See _Life of M. Tullius Cicero_, by Conyers Middleton, D.D., 1823, sect. vi. vol. i. pp. 399, 400.)

[og] {409} _Oh, ho, ho, ho--thou creature of a Man_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[oh]
_And show of Glory's gewgaws in the van_
_And the Sun's rays with flames more dazzling filled_.--[MS. M.]

[486] [The "golden roofs" were those of Nero's _Domus Aurea_, which extended from the north-west corner of the Palatine to the Gardens of Maecenas, on the Esquiline, spreading over the sites of the Temple of Vesta and Rome on the platform of the Velia, the Colosseum, and the Thermae of Titus, as far as the Sette Sale. "In the fore court was the colossal statue of Nero. The pillars of the colonnade, which measured a thousand feet in length, stood three deep. All that was not lake, or wood, or vineyard, or pasture, was overlaid with plates of gold, picked out with gems and mother-of-pearl" (Suetonius, vi. 31; Tacitus, _Ann._, xv. 42). Substructions of the _Domus Aurea_ have been discovered on the site of the Baths of Titus and elsewhere, but not on the Palatine itself. Martial, _Epig._ 695 (_Lib. Spect._, ii.), celebrates Vespasian's restitution of the _Domus Aurea_ and its "policies" to the people of Rome.

"Hic ubi sidereus propius videt astra colossus
Et crescunt media pegmata celsa via,
Invidiosa feri radiabant atria regis
Unaque jam tola stabat in urbe domus."

"Here where the Sun-god greets the Morning Star,
And tow'ring scaffolds block the public way,
Fell Nero's loathed pavilion flashed afar,
Erect and splendid 'mid the town's decay."]

[487] {410} [By the "nameless" column Byron means the column of Phocas, in the Forum. But, as he may have known, it had ceased to be nameless when he visited Rome in 1817. During some excavations which were carried out under the auspices of the Duchess of Devonshire, in 1813, the soil which concealed the base was removed, and an inscription, which attributes the erection of the column to the Exarch Smaragdus, in honour of the Emperor Phocas, A.D. 608, was brought to light. The column was originally surmounted by a gilded statue, but it is probable that both column and statue were stolen from earlier structures and rededicated to Phocas. Hobhouse (_Hist. Illust._, pp. 240-242) records the discovery, and prints the inscription _in extenso._]

[oi] ----_all he doth deface_.--[MS. M.]

[488] The column of Trajan is surmounted by St. Peter; that of Aurelius by St. Paul. (See _Hist. Illust._, p. 214.)

[The column was excavated by Paul III. in the sixteenth century. In 1588 Sixtus V. replaced the bronze statue of Trajan holding a gilded globe, which had originally surmounted the column, by a statue of St. Peter, in gilt bronze. The legend was that Trajan's ashes were contained in the globe. They are said to have been deposited by Hadrian in a golden urn in a vault under the column. It is certain that when Sixtus V. opened the chamber he found it empty. A medal was cast in honour of the erection of the new statue, inscribed with the words of the Magnificat, "_Exaltavit humiles_."]

[489] {411} Trajan was _proverbially_ the best of the Roman princes; and it would be easier to find a sovereign uniting exactly the opposite characteristics, than one possessed of all the happy qualities ascribed to this emperor. "When he mounted the throne," says the historian Dion, "he was strong in body, he was vigorous in mind; age had impaired none of his faculties; he was altogether free from envy and from detraction; he honoured all the good, and he advanced them: and on this account they could not be the objects of his fear, or of his hate; he never listened to informers; he gave not way to his anger; he abstained equally from unfair exactions and unjust punishments; he had rather be loved as a man than honoured as a sovereign; he was affable with his people, respectful to the senate, and universally beloved by both; he inspired none with dread but the enemies of his country." (See Eutrop., _Hist. Rom. Brev._ lib. viii. cap. v.; Dion, _Hist. Rom._, lib. lxiii. caps, vi., vii.)

[M. Ulpius Trajanus (A.D. 52-117) celebrated a triumph over the Dacians in 103 and 106. It is supposed that the column which stands at the north end of the Forum Trajanum commemorated the Dacian victories. In 115-16 he conquered the Parthians, and added the province of Armenia Minor to the empire. It was not, however, an absolute or a final victory. The little desert stronghold of Atrae, or Hatra, in Mesopotamia, remained uncaptured; and, instead of incorporating the Parthians in the empire, he thought it wiser to leave them to be governed by a native prince under the suzerainty of Rome. His conquests were surrendered by Hadrian, and henceforth the tide of victory began to ebb. He died on his way back to Rome, at Selinus, in Cilicia, in August, 117.

Trajan's "moderation was known unto all men." Pliny, in his _Panegyricus_ (xxii.), describes his first entry into Rome. He might have assumed the state of a monarch or popular hero, but he walked afoot, conspicuous, pre-eminent, a head and shoulders above the crowd--a triumphal entry; but it was imperial arrogance, not civil liberty, over which he triumphed. "You were our king," he says, "and we your subjects; but we obeyed you as the embodiment of our laws." Martial (_Epig._, x. 72) hails him not as a tyrant, but an emperor--yea, more than an emperor--as the most righteous of lawgivers and senators, who had brought back plain Truth to the light of day; and Claudian (viii. 318) maintains that his glory will live, not because the Parthians had been annexed, but because he was "mitis patriae." The divine honours which he caused to be paid to his adopted father, Nerva, he refused for himself. "For just reasons," says Pliny, "did the Senate and people of Rome assign thee the name and title of Optimus." Another honour awaited him: "Il est seul Empereur," writes M. De La Berge, "dont les restes aient repose dans l'enceinte de la ville Eternelle." (See Pliny's _Panegyricus, passim;_ and _Essai sur le regne de Trajan_, Bibliotheque de L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Paris, 1877.)]

[490] {412} [The archaeologists of Byron's day were unable to fix the exact site of the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline. "On which side," asks Hobhouse (_Hist. Illust._, p. 224), "stood the citadel, on what the great temple of the Capitol; and did the temple stand in the citadel?" Excavations which were carried on in 1876-7 by Professors Jordan and Lanciani enabled them to identify with "tolerable certainty" the site of the central temple and its adjacent wings, with the site of the Palazzo Caffarelli and its dependencies which occupy the south-east section of the Mons Capitolinus. There are still, however, rival Tarpeian Rocks--one (in the Vicolo della Rupe Tarpea) on the western edge of the hill facing the Tiber, and the other (near the Casa Tarpea) on the south-east towards the Palatine. But if Dionysius, who describes the "Traitor's Leap" as being in sight of the Forum, is to be credited, the "actual precipice" from which traitors (and other criminals, e.g. "bearers of false witness") were thrown must have been somewhere on the southern and now less precipitous escarpment of the mount.]

[oj] {413} _The State Leucadia_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[491] [M. Manlius, who saved the Capitol from the Gauls in B.C. 390, was afterwards (B.C. 384) arraigned on a charge of high treason by the patricians, condemned, and by order of the tribunes thrown down the Tarpeian Rock. Livy (vi. 20) credits him with a "foeda cupiditas regni"--a "depraved ambition for assuming the kingly power."]

[ok]
_There first did Tully's burning accents glow?_
_Yes--eloquently still--the echoes tell me so_.--[D.]

[492] [Compare Gray's _Odes_, "The Progress of Poesy," iii. 3, line 4--"Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn."]

[493] {414} [Nicolas Gabrino di' Rienzo, or Rienzi, commonly called Cola di' Rienzi, was born in 1313. The son of a Roman innkeeper, he owed his name and fame to his own talents and natural gifts. His mission, or, perhaps, ambition, was to free Rome from the tyranny and oppression of the great nobles, and to establish once more "the good estate," that is, a republic. This for a brief period Rienzi accomplished. On May 20, 1347, he was proclaimed tribune and liberator of the Holy Roman Republic "by the authority of the most merciful Lord Jesus Christ." Of great parts, and inspired by lofty aims, he was a poor creature at heart--a "bastard" Napoleon--and success seems to have turned his head. After eight months of royal splendour, purchased by more than royal exactions, the tide of popular feeling turned against him, and he was forced to take refuge in the Castle of St. Angelo (December 15, 1347). Years of wandering and captivity followed his first tribunate; but at length, in 1354, he was permitted to return to Rome, and, once again, after a rapid and successful reduction of the neighbouring states, he became the chief power in the state. But an act of violence, accompanied by treachery, and, above all, the necessity of imposing heavier taxes than the city could bear, roused popular discontent; and during a revolt (October 8, 1354), after a dastardly attempt to escape and conceal himself, he was recognized by the crowd and stabbed to death.

Petrarch first made his acquaintance in 1340, when he was summoned to Rome to be crowned as poet laureate. Afterwards, when Rienzi was imprisoned at Avignon, Petrarch interceded on his behalf with the pope, but, for a time, in vain. He believed in and shared his enthusiasms; and it is probable that the famous Canzone, "Spirto gentil, che quelle membra reggi," was addressed to the Last of the Tribunes.

Rienzi's story forms the subject of a tragedy by Gustave Drouineau, which was played at the Odeon, January 28, 1826; of Bulwer Lytton's novel _The Last of the Tribunes_, which was published in 1835; and of an opera (1842) by Richard Wagner.

(See _Encyc. Met._, art. "Rome," by Professor Villari; La Rousse, _G. Dict. Univ._, art. "Rienzi;" and a curious pamphlet by G. W. Meadley, London, 1821, entitled _Two Pairs of Historical Portraits_, in which an attempt is made to trace a minute resemblance between the characters and careers of Rienzi and the First Napoleon.)]

[494] {415} [The word "nympholepsy" may be paraphrased as "ecstatic vision." The Greeks feigned that one who had seen a nymph was henceforth possessed by her image, and beside himself with longing for an impossible ideal. Compare stanza cxxii. line 7--"The unreached Paradise of our despair." Compare, too, _Kubla Khan_, lines 52, 53--

"For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise."]

[ol] _The lovely madness of some fond despair_.--[MS. M.]

[495] {416} [Byron is describing the so-called Grotto of Egeria, which is situated a little to the left of the Via Appia, about two miles to the south-east of the Porta di Sebastiano: "Here, beside the Almo rivulet [now the Maranna d. Caffarella], is a ruined nymphaeum ... which was called the 'Grotto of Egeria,' till ... the discovery of the true site of the Porta Capena fixed that of the grotto within the walls.... It is now known that this nymphaeum ... belonged to the suburban villa called Triopio of Herodes Atticus." The actual site of Egeria's fountain is in the grounds of the Villa Mattei, to the south-east of the Caelian, and near the Porta Metronia. "It was buried, in 1867, by the military engineers, while building their new hospital near S. Stefano Rotondo" (Prof. Lanciani).

In lines 5-9 Byron is recalling Juvenal's description of the valley of Egeria, under the mistaken impression that here, and not by "dripping Capena," was the trysting-place of Numa and the goddess. Juvenal has accompanied the seer Umbritius, who was leaving Rome for Capua, as far as the Porta Capena; and while the one waggon, with its slender store of goods, is being loaded, the friends take a stroll--

"In vallem Egeriae; descendimus et speluncas
Dissimiles veris. Quanto praestantius esset
Numen aquae, viridi si margine clauderet undas
Herba, nec ingenuum violarent marmora tophum?"
_Sat._ I. iii. 17-20.

The grove and shrine of the sacred fountain, which had been let to the Jews (lines 13-16), are not to be confounded with the "artificial caverns" near Herod's Nymphaeum, which Juvenal thought were in bad taste, and Byron rejoiced to find reclaimed and reclothed by Nature.]

[496] {417} [Compare Shelley's _Prometheus Unbound_, act iv. (_Poetical Works_, 1893, ii. 97)--

"As a violet's gentle eye
Gazes on the azure sky
Until its hue grows like what it beholds."]

[497] {418} [Compare _Kubla Khan_, lines 12, 13--

"But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!"]

[498] [Compare _Hamlet_, act ii. sc. 1, line 292--"This most excellent canopy the Air."]

[om]
_Feel the quick throbbing of a human heart_
_And the sweet sorrows of its deathless dying_.--[MS. M. erased.]
or, _And the sweet sorrow which exults in dying_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[on] {419}
_Oh Love! thou art no habitant of Earth_
_An unseen Seraph we believe in thee_
_And can point out thy time and place of birth_.--[D. erased.]

[499] [M. Darmesteter traces the sentiment to a maxim (No. 76) of La Rochefoucauld: "Il est du veritable amour comme de l'apparition des esprits: tout le monde en parle, mais pen de gens en out vu."]

[500] {420} [Compare Dryden on Shaftesbury (_Absalom and Achitophel_, pt. i. lines 156-158)--

"A fiery soul which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy-body to decay,
And o'er-informed the tenement of clay."]

[501] [The Romans had more than one proverb to this effect; e.g. "Amantes Amentes sunt" (_Adagia Veterum_, 1643, p. 52); "Amare et sapere vix Deo conceditur" (Syri _Sententiae_. 1818, p. 5).]

[oo] {421} _For all are visions with a separate name_.--[D. erased.]

[502] [Circumstance is personified as halting Nemesis--"Pede poena claudo." Hor., _Odes_, III. ii. 32.

Perhaps, too, there is the underlying thought of his own lameness, of Mary Chaworth, and of all that might have been, if the "unspiritual God" had willed otherwise.]

[503] {422} [Compare Milton's _Samson Agonistes_, lines 617-621--

"My griefs not only pain me
As a lingering disease,
But, finding no redress, ferment and rage;
Nor less than wounds immedicable
Rankle."]

[504] "At all events," says the author of the _Academical Questions_ [Sir William Drummond], "I trust, whatever may be the fate of my own speculations, that philosophy will regain that estimation which it ought to possess. The free and philosophic spirit of our nation has been the theme of admiration to the world. This was the proud distinction of Englishmen, and the luminous source of all their glory. Shall we then forget the manly and dignified sentiments of our ancestors, to prate in the language of the mother or the nurse about our good old prejudices? This is not the way to defend the cause of truth. It was not thus that our fathers maintained it in the brilliant periods of our history. Prejudice may be trusted to guard the outworks for a short space of time, while reason slumbers in the citadel; but if the latter sink into a lethargy, the former will quickly erect a standard for herself. Philosophy, wisdom, and liberty support each other: he, who will not reason, is a bigot; he, who cannot, is a fool; and he, who dares not, is a slave."--Vol. i. pp. xiv., xv.

[For Sir William Drummond (1770-1828), see _Letters_, 1898, ii. 79, note 3. Byron advised Lady Blessington to read _Academical Questions_ (1805), and instanced the last sentence of this passage "as one of the best in our language" (_Conversations_, pp. 238, 239).]

[505] {423} [Compare _Macbeth_, act iii. sc. 4, lines 24, 25--

"But now I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, bound in
To saucy doubts and fears."]

[506] [Compare _The Deformed Transformed_, act i. sc. 2, lines 49, 50--

"Those scarce mortal arches,
Pile above pile of everlasting wall."

The first, second, and third stories of the Flavian amphitheatre or Colosseum were built upon arches. Between the arches, eighty to each story or tier, stood three-quarter columns. "Each tier is of a different order of architecture, the lowest being a plain Roman Doric, or perhaps, rather, Tuscan, the next Ionic, and the third Corinthian." The fourth story, which was built by the Emperor Gordianus III., A.D. 244, to take the place of the original wooden gallery (_manianum summum in ligneis_), which was destroyed by lightning, A.D. 217, was a solid wall faced with Corinthian pilasters, and pierced by forty square windows or openings. It has been conjectured that the alternate spaces between the pilasters were decorated with ornamental metal shields. The openings of the outer arches of the second and third stories were probably decorated with statues. The reverse of an _aureus_ of the reign of Titus represents the Colosseum with these statues and a quadriga in the centre. About one-third of the original structure remains _in situ_. The prime agent of destruction was probably the earthquake ("Petrarch's earthquake") of September, 1349, when the whole of the western side fell towards the Caelian, and gave rise to a hill or rather to a chain of hills of loose blocks of travertine and tufa, which supplied Rome with building materials for subsequent centuries. As an instance of wholesale spoliation or appropriation, Professor Lanciani refers to "a document published by Muentz, in the _Revue Arch._, September, 1876," which "certifies that one contractor alone, in the space of only nine months, in 1452, could carry off 2522 cartloads" of travertine (Smith's _Dict. of Gr. and Rom. Ant._, art. "Amphitheatrum;" _Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome_, by R. Lanciani, 1897, p. 375).]

[507] {424} [For a description of the Colosseum by moonlight, see Goethe's letter from Rome, February 2, 1787 (_Travels in Italy_, 1883, p. 159): "Of the beauty of a walk through Rome by moonlight, it is impossible to form a conception ... Peculiarly beautiful at such a time is the Coliseum." See, too, _Corinne, ou L'Italie_, xv. 4, 1819, iii. 32--

"Ce n'est pas connaitre l'impression du Colisee que de ne l'avoir vu que de jour ... la lune est l'astre des ruines. Quelque fois, a travers les ouvertures de l'amphitheatre, qui semble s'elever jusqu'aux nues, une partie de la voute du ciel parait comme un rideau d'un bleu sombre place derriere l'edifice."

For a fine description of the Colosseum by starlight, see _Manfred_, act iii. sc. 4, lines 8-13.]

[508] {425} [When Byron visited Rome, and for long afterwards, the ruins of the Colosseum were clad with a multitude of shrubs and wild flowers. Books were written on the "Flora of the Coliseum," which were said to number 420 species. But, says Professor Lanciani, "These materials for a _hortus siccus_, so dear to the visitors of our ruins, were destroyed by Rosa in 1871, and the ruins scraped and shaven clean, it being feared by him that the action of roots would accelerate the disintegration of the great structure." If Byron had lived to witness these activities, he might have devoted a stanza to the "tender mercies" of this zealous archaeologist.]

[509] {426} [The whole of this appeal to Nemesis (stanzas cxxx.-cxxxviii.) must be compared with the "Domestic Poems" of 1816, the Third Canto of _Childe Harold_ (especially stanzas lxix.-lxxv., and cxi.-cxviii.), and with the "Invocation" in the first act of _Manfred_. It has been argued that Byron inserted these stanzas with the deliberate purpose of diverting sympathy from his wife to himself. The appeal, no doubt, is deliberate, and the plea is followed by an indictment, but the sincerity of the appeal is attested by its inconsistency. Unlike Orestes, who slew his mother to avenge his father, he will not so deal with the "moral Clytemnestra of her lord," requiting murder by murder, but is resolved to leave the balancing of the scale to the omnipotent Time-spirit who rights every wrong and will redress his injuries. But in making answer to his accusers he outruns Nemesis, and himself enacts the part of a "moral" Orestes. It was true that his hopes were "sapped" and "his name blighted," and it was natural, if not heroic, first to persuade himself that his suffering exceeded his fault, that he was more sinned against than sinning, and, so persuaded, to take care that he should not suffer alone. The general purport of plea and indictment is plain enough, but the exact interpretation of his phrases, the appropriation of his dark sayings, belong rather to the biography of the poet than to a commentary on his poems. (For Lady Byron's comment on the "allusions" to herself in _Childe Harold, vide ante_, p. 288, note 1.)]

[op] {427} _Or for my fathers' faults_-----.-[MS. M.]

[oq] {428}
'tis not that now
And if my voice break forth--{-it is not that-}
I shrink from what is suffered--let him speak
decline upon my
Who {-humbler in-}
{-What-} hath beheld {-me quiver on my-} brow
seen my mind's convulsion leave it {-blenched or-} weak?
Or {-my internal spirit changed or weak-}
{-found my mind convulsed-}
a
But in this page {-the-} record {-which-} I seek
will
{-from out of the deep-}
{-stands and-} {-of that remorse-}
{-Shall stand and when that hour shall come and come-}
{-Shall come--though I be ashes--and shall pile heap-}
{-It will-} {-come and wreak-}
{-In fire the measure-}
{-The fiery prophecy-}
{-The fullness of my-}
{-The fullness of my prophecy or heap-}
{-The mountain of my curse-}
Not in the air shall these my words disperse
{-'Tis written that an hour of deep remorse-}
Though I be ashes {-a deep-} far hour shall wreak
{-The fullness Thee-} this
The deep prophetic fullness of {-my-} verse
And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse.--[MS. M.]

[or] {429}
If to forgive be "heaping coals of Fire"
As God hath spoken--on the heads of foes
Mine should lie a Volcano-and rise higher
Than o'er the Titans crushed Olympus rose
Than Athos soars, or blazing AEtna glows:
True--they who stung were petty things--but what
Than serpent's sting produce more deadly throes.
The Lion may be tortured by the Gnat--
Who sucks the slumberer's blood--the Eagle? no, the Bat.[Sec.]--
[MS. M.]

[Sec.] [The "Bat" was "a sobriquet by which Lady Caroline Lamb was well known in London society." An Italian translation of her novel, _Glenarvon_, was at this time in the press at Venice (see letter to Murray, August 7, 1817), and it is probable that Byron, who declined to interdict its publication, took his revenge in a petulant stanza, which, on second thoughts, he decided to omit. (See note by Mr. Richard Edgcumbe, _Notes and Queries_ eighth series, 1895, viii. 101.)]

[510] [Compare "Lines on hearing that Lady Byron was ill," lines 53-55.]

[511] {431} Whether the wonderful statue which suggested this image be a laquearian gladiator, which, in spite of Winckelmann's criticism, has been stoutly maintained; or whether it be a Greek herald, as that great antiquary positively asserted;[Sec.] or whether it is to be thought a Spartan or barbarian shieldbearer, according to the opinion of his Italian editor; it must assuredly seem _a copy_ of that masterpiece of Ctesilaus which represented "a wounded man dying, who perfectly expressed what there remained of life in him." Montfaucon and Maffei thought it the identical statue; but that statue was of bronze. The Gladiator was once in the Villa Ludovisi, and was bought by Clement XII. The right arm is an entire restoration of Michael Angelo.

[There is no doubt that the statue of the "Dying Gladiator" represents a dying Gaul. It is to be compared with the once-named "Arria and Paetus" of the Villa Ludovisi, and with other sculptures in the museums of Venice, Naples, and Rome, representing "Gauls and Amazons lying fatally wounded, or still in the attitude of defending life to the last," which belong to the Pergamene school of the second century B.C. M. Collignon hazards a suggestion that the "Dying Gaul" is the trumpet-sounder of Epigonos, in which, says Pliny (_Hist. Nat._, xxxiv. 88), the sculptor surpassed all his previous works ("omnia fere praedicta imitatus praecessit in tubicine"); while Dr. H. S. Urlichs (see _The Elder Pliny's Chapters on the History of Art_, translated by K. Jex-Blake, with Commentary and Historical Illustrations, by E. Sellers, 1896, p. 74, note) falls back on Winckelmann's theory that the "statue ... may have been simply the votive-portrait of the winner in the contest of heralds, such as that of Archias of Hybla in Delphoi." (See, too, Helbig's _Guide to the Collection of Public Antiquities in Rome_, Engl. transl., 1895. i. 399; _History of Greek Sculpture_, by A. S. Murray, L.L.D., F.S.A., 1890, ii. 381-383.)]

[Sec.] Either Polyphontes, herald of Laius, killed by Oedipus; or Kopreas, herald of Eurystheus, killed by the Athenians when he endeavoured to drag the Heraclidae from the altar of mercy, and in whose honour they instituted annual games, continued to the time of Hadrian; or Anthemocritus, the Athenian herald, killed by the Megarenses, who never recovered the impiety. [See _Hist, of Ancient Art_, translated by G. H. Lodge, 1881, ii. 207.]

[os] Leaning upon his hand, his mut[e] brow Yielding to death but conquering agony.--[MS. M. erased.]

[ot] {432} _From the red gash fall bigly_----.--[MS. M.]

[ou] _Like the last of a thunder-shower_----.--[MS. M.]

[ov] _The earth swims round him_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[ow] {433} _Slaughtered to make a Roman holiday_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[ox] _Was death and life_----.--[MS. M.]

[oy] _My voice is much_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[oz] _Yet the colossal skeleton ye pass_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[pa] {434} _The ivy-forest, which its walls doth wear_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[512] Suetonius [Lib. i. cap. xlv.] informs us that Julius Caesar was particularly gratified by that decree of the senate which enabled him to wear a wreath of laurel on all occasions. He was anxious not to show that he was the conqueror of the world, but to hide that he was bald. A stranger at Rome would hardly have guessed at the motive, nor should we without the help of the historian.

[pb] _The Hero race who trod--the imperial dust ye tread_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[513] This is quoted in the _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, as a proof that the Coliseum was entire, when seen by the Anglo-Saxon pilgrims at the end of the seventh, or the beginning of the eighth, century. A notice on the Coliseum may be seen in the _Historical Illustrations_, p. 263.

["'Quamdiu stabit Colyseus, stabit et Roma; quando cadet Colyseus, cadet Roma; quando cadet Roma, cadet et mundus.' (Beda in 'Excerptis seu Collectaneis,' apud Ducange, _Glossarium ad Scriptores Med., et Infimae Latinitatis_, tom. ii. p. 407, edit. Basil.) This saying must be ascribed to the Anglo-Saxon pilgrims who visited Rome before the year 735, the aera of Bede's death; for I do not believe that our venerable monk ever passed the sea."--Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, 1855, viii. 281, note.]

[514] {435} "Though plundered of all its brass, except the ring which was necessary to preserve the aperture above; though exposed to repeated fires; though sometimes flooded by the river, and always open to the rain, no monument of equal antiquity is so well preserved as this rotundo. It passed with little alteration from the Pagan into the present worship; and so convenient were its niches for the Christian altar, that Michael Angelo, ever studious of ancient beauty, introduced their design as a model in the Catholic church."--Forsyth's _Italy_, 1816, p. 137.

[The Pantheon consists of two parts, a porch or _pronaos_ supported by sixteen Corinthian columns, and behind it, but "obviously disjointed from it," a rotunda or round temple, 143 feet high, and 142 feet in diameter. The inscription on the portico (M. AGRIPPA, L. F. Cos. tertium. Fecit.) affirms that the temple was built by Agrippa (M. Vipsanius), B.C. 27.

It has long been suspected that with regard to the existing building the inscription was "historically and artistically misleading;" but it is only since 1892 that it has been known for certain (from the stamp on the bricks in various parts of the building) that the rotunda was built by Hadrian. Difficulties with regard to the relations between the two parts of the Pantheon remain unsolved, but on the following points Professor Lanciani claims to speak with certainty:--

(1) "The present Pantheon, portico included, is not the work of Agrippa, but of Hadrian, and dates from A.D. 120-124.

(2) "The columns, capital, and entablature of the portico, inscribed with Agrippa's name, may be original, and may date from 27-25 B.C., but they were first removed and then put together by Hadrian.

(3) "The original structure of Agrippa was rectangular instead of round, and faced the south instead of the north."--_Ruins and Excavations, etc._, by R. Lanciani, 1897, p. 483.]

[pc] {436} ----_the pride of proudest Rome_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[515] {437} The Pantheon has been made a receptacle for the busts of modern great, or, at least, distinguished men. The flood of light which once fell through the large orb above on the whole circle of divinities, now shines on a numerous assemblage of mortals, some one or two of whom have been almost deified by the veneration of their countrymen.

["The busts of Raphael, Hannibal Caracci, Pierrin del Vaga, Zuccari, and others ... are ill assorted with the many modern contemporary heads of ancient worthies which now glare in all the niches of the Rotunda."--_Historical Illustrations_, p. 293.]

[516] This and the three next stanzas allude to the story of the Roman daughter, which is recalled to the traveller by the site, or pretended site, of that adventure, now shown at the Church of St. Nicholas _in Carcere_. The difficulties attending the full belief of the tale are stated in _Historical Illustrations_, p. 295.

[The traditional scene of the "Caritas Romana" is a cell forming part of the substructions of the Church of S. Nicola in Carcere, near the Piazza Montanara. Festus (_De Verb. Signif._, lib. xiv., A. J. Valpy, 1826, ii. 594), by way of illustrating Pietas, tells the story in a few words: "It is said that AElius dedicated a temple to Pietas on the very spot where a woman dwelt of yore. Her father was shut up in prison, and she kept him alive by giving him the breast by stealth, and, as a reward for her deed, obtained his forgiveness and freedom." In Pliny (Hist. Nat., vii. 36) and in Valerius Maximus (V. 4) it is not a father, but a mother, whose life is saved by a daughter's piety.]

[pd] {438} _Two isolated phantoms_----.--[MS. M.]

[pe] _With her unkerchiefed neck_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[pf]
_Or even the shrill impatient_ [_cries that brook_].
or, _Or even the shrill small cry_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[pg] _No waiting silence or suspense_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[517] {439} [It was fabled of the Milky Way that when Mercury held up the infant Hercules to Juno's breast, that he might drink in divinity, the goddess pushed him away, and that drops of milk fell into the void, and became a multitude of tiny stars. The story is told by Eratosthenes of Cyrene (B.C. 276), in his _Catasterismi_ (Treatise on Star Legends), No. 44: _Opusc. Mythol._, Amsterdam, 1688, p. 136.]

[ph]
_To its original fountain but repierce_
_Thy sire's heart_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[518] The castle of St. Angelo. (See _Historical Illustrations._)

[Hadrian's mole or mausoleum, now the Castle of St. Angelo, is situated on the banks of the Tiber, on the site of the "Horti Neronis." "It is composed of a square basement, each side of which measures 247 feet.... A grand circular mole, nearly 1000 feet in circumference, stands on the square basement," and, originally, "supported in its turn a cone of earth covered with evergreens, like the mausoleum of Augustus." A spiral way led to a central chamber in the interior of the mole, which contained, presumably, the porphyry sarcophagus in which Antoninus Pius deposited the ashes of Hadrian, and the tomb of the Antonines. Honorius (A.D. 428) was probably the first to convert the mausoleum into a fortress. The bronze statue of the Destroying Angel, which is placed on the summit, dates from 1740, and is the successor to five earlier statues, of which the first was erected in 1453. The conception and execution of the Moles Hadriana are entirely Roman, and, except in size and solidity, it is in no sense a mimic pyramid.--_Ruins and Excavations, etc._, by R. Lanciani, 1897, p. 554, _sq._]

[pi] {440}
_The now spectator with a sanctioned mirth_
_To view the vast design_----.--[MS. M.]

[519] This and the next six stanzas have a reference to the Church of St. Peter's. (For a measurement of the comparative length of this basilica and the other great churches of Europe, see the pavement of St. Peter's, and the _Classical Tour through Italy_, ii. 125, _et seq._, chap, iv.)

[pj] _Look to the dome_----.--[MS. M.]

[520] [Compare _The Prophecy of Dante_, iv. 49-53--

"While still stands
The austere Pantheon, into heaven shall soar
A dome, its image, while the base expands
Into a fane surpassing all before,
Such as all flesh shall flock to kneel in--"

Compare, too, Browning's _Christmas Eve_, sect, x.--

"Is it really on the earth,
This miraculous dome of God?
Has the angel's measuring-rod
Which numbered cubits, gem from gem,
'Twixt the gates of the new Jerusalem,
Meted it out,--and what he meted,
Have the sons of men completed?
--Binding ever as he bade,
Columns in the colonnade,
With arms wide open to embrace
The entry of the human race?"]

[pk] {441} _Lo Christ's great dome_----.--[MS.M.]

[521] [The ruins which Byron and Hobhouse explored, March 25, 1810 (_Travels in Albania_, ii. 68-71), were not the ruins of the second Temple of Artemis, the sixth wonder of the world (_vide_ Philo Byzantius, _De Septem Orbis Miraculis_), but, probably, those of "the great gymnasium near the port of the city." In 1810, and for long afterwards, the remains of the temple were buried under twenty feet of earth, and it was not till 1870 that the late Mr. J. T. Wood, the agent of the Trustees of the British Museum, had so far completed his excavations as to discover the foundations of the building on the exact spot which had been pointed out by Guhl in 1843. Fragments of the famous sculptured columns, thirty-six in number, says Pliny (_Hist. Nat._, xxxvi. 95), were also brought to light, and are now in the British Museum. (See _Modern Discoveries on the Site of Ancient Ephesus_, by J. T. Wood, 1890; _Hist. of Greek Sculpture_, by A. S. Murray, ii. 304.)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[534] [Mr. Tozer traces the star simile to Homer (_Iliad_, viii. 559)--[Greek: Pa/nta de/ t' ei)/detai a)/stra, ge/gethe de/ te phre/na poime/n]]

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

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

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

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

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

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