Chapter XXVIII: Introduction: To the Siege of Corinth (2)

So near they came, the nearest stretched
To grasp the spoil he almost reached
When old Minotti's hand
Touched with the torch the train--
'Tis fired![401]
Spire, vaults, the shrine, the spoil, the slain,
The turbaned victors, the Christian band,
All that of living or dead remain,
Hurled on high with the shivered fane,
In one wild roar expired![402] 1020
The shattered town--the walls thrown down--
The waves a moment backward bent--
The hills that shake, although unrent,[qr]
As if an Earthquake passed--
The thousand shapeless things all driven
In cloud and flame athwart the heaven,
By that tremendous blast--
Proclaimed the desperate conflict o'er
On that too long afflicted shore:[403]
Up to the sky like rockets go 1030
All that mingled there below:
Many a tall and goodly man,
Scorched and shrivelled to a span,
When he fell to earth again
Like a cinder strewed the plain:
Down the ashes shower like rain;
Some fell in the gulf, which received the sprinkles
With a thousand circling wrinkles;
Some fell on the shore, but, far away,
Scattered o'er the isthmus lay; 1040
Christian or Moslem, which be they?
Let their mothers see and say![qs]
When in cradled rest they lay,
And each nursing mother smiled
On the sweet sleep of her child,
Little deemed she such a day
Would rend those tender limbs away.[404]
Not the matrons that them bore
Could discern their offspring more;[405]
That one moment left no trace 1050
More of human form or face
Save a scattered scalp or bone:
And down came blazing rafters, strown
Around, and many a falling stone,[qt]
Deeply dinted in the clay,
All blackened there and reeking lay.
All the living things that heard
The deadly earth-shock disappeared:
The wild birds flew; the wild dogs fled,
And howling left the unburied dead;[qu][406] 1060
The camels from their keepers broke;
The distant steer forsook the yoke--
The nearer steed plunged o'er the plain,
And burst his girth, and tore his rein;
The bull-frog's note, from out the marsh,
Deep-mouthed arose, and doubly harsh;[407]
The wolves yelled on the caverned hill
Where Echo rolled in thunder still;[qv]
The jackal's troop, in gathered cry,[qw][408]
Bayed from afar complainingly, 1070
With a mixed and mournful sound,[qx]
Like crying babe, and beaten hound:[409]
With sudden wing, and ruffled breast,
The eagle left his rocky nest,
And mounted nearer to the sun,
The clouds beneath him seemed so dun;
Their smoke assailed his startled beak,
And made him higher soar and shriek--
Thus was Corinth lost and won![410]

FOOTNOTES:

[330] "With Gun, Drum, Trumpet, Blunderbuss, and Thunder."

[331] {447} Napoli di Romania is not now the most considerable place in the Morea, but Tripolitza, where the Pacha resides, and maintains his government. Napoli is near Argos. I visited all three in 1810-11; and, in the course of journeying through the country from my first arrival in 1809, I crossed the Isthmus eight times in my way from Attica to the Morea, over the mountains; or in the other direction, when passing from the Gulf of Athens to that of Lepanto. Both the routes are picturesque and beautiful, though very different: that by sea has more sameness; but the voyage, being always within sight of land, and often very near it, presents many attractive views of the islands Salamis, Ægina, Poros, etc., and the coast of the Continent.

["Independently of the suitableness of such an event to the power of Lord Byron's genius, the Fall of Corinth afforded local attractions, by the intimate knowledge which the poet had of the place and surrounding objects.... Thus furnished with that topographical information which could not be well obtained from books and maps, he was admirably qualified to depict the various operations and progress of the siege."--_Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Right Honourable Lord Byron_, London, 1822, p. 222.]

[332] {449} [The introductory lines, 1-45, are not included in the copy of the poem in Lady Byron's handwriting, nor were they published in the First Edition. On Christmas Day, 1815, Byron, enclosing this fragment to Murray, says, "I send some lines written some time ago, and intended as an opening to the _Siege of Corinth_. I had forgotten them, and am not sure that they had not better be left out now;--on that you and your Synod can determine." They are headed in the MS., "The Stranger's Tale," October 23rd. First published in _Letters and Journals_, 1830, i. 638, they were included among the _Occasional Poems_ in the edition of 1831, and first prefixed to the poem in the edition of 1832.]

[333] [The metrical rendering of the date (miscalculated from the death instead of the birth of Christ) may be traced to the opening lines of an old ballad (Kölbing's _Siege of Corinth_, p. 53)--

"Upon the sixteen hunder year
Of God, and fifty-three,
From Christ was born, that bought us dear,
As writings testifie," etc.

See "The Life and Age of Man" (_Burns' Selected Poems_, ed. by J. L. Robertson, 1889, p. 191).]

[334] [Compare letter to Hodgson, July 16, 1809: "How merrily we lives that travellers be!"--_Letters_, 1898, i. 233.]

[335] {450} [For "capote," compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza lii. line 7, and Byron's note (24.B.), _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 132, 181. Compare, too, letter to Mrs. Byron, November 12, 1809 (_Letters_, 1899, i. 253): "Two days ago I was nearly lost in a Turkish ship of war.... I wrapped myself up in my Albanian capote (an immense cloak), and lay down on deck to wait the worst."]

[336] The last tidings recently heard of Dervish (one of the Arnauts who followed me) state him to be in revolt upon the mountains, at the head of some of the bands common in that country in times of trouble.

[nz] {451} _But those winged days_----.--[MS.]

[337] [Compare Kingsley's _Last Buccaneer_--

"If I might but be a sea-dove, I'd fly across the main--
To the pleasant isle of Aves, to look at it once again."]

[oa] _The kindly few who love my lay_.--[MS.]

[338] [The MS. is dated J^y (January) 31, 1815. Lady Byron's copy is dated November 2, 1815.]

[ob] _Many a year, and many an age_.--[MS. G. Copy.]

[oc] _A marvel from her Moslem bands_.--[MS. G.]

[339] {452} [Timoleon, who had saved the life of his brother Timophanes in battle, afterwards put him to death for aiming at the supreme power in Corinth. Warton says that Pope once intended to write an epic poem on the story, and that Akenside had the same design (_Works_ of Alexander Pope, Esq., 1806, ii. 83).]

[od] _Or could the dead be raised again_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[oe]
----_through yon clear skies_
_Than tower-capt Acropolis_.--[MS. G.]

[of] _Stretched on the edge----.--[MS. G. erased.]_

[340] [Turkish holders of military fiefs.]

[og]
_The turbaned crowd of dusky hue_
_Whose march Morea's fields may rue_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[341] {453} The life of the Turcomans is wandering and patriarchal: they dwell in tents.

[342] [Compare _The Giaour_, line 639 (_vide ante_, p. 116)--"The deathshot hissing from afar."]

[343] {454} [Professor Kolbing admits that he is unable to say how "Byron met with the name of Alp." I am indebted to my cousin, Miss Edith Coleridge, for the suggestion that the name is derived from Mohammed (Lhaz-ed-Dyn-Abou-Choudja), surnamed Alp-Arslan (Arsslan), or "Brave Lion," the second of the Seljuk dynasty, in the eleventh century. "He conquered Armenia and Georgia ... but was assassinated by Yussuf Cothuol, Governor of Berzem, and was buried at Merw, in Khorassan." His epitaph moralizes his fate: "O vous qui avez vu la grandeur d'Alparslan élevée jusq'au ciel, regardez! le voici maintenant en poussière."--Hammer-Purgstall, _Histoire de l'Empire Othoman_, i. 13-15.]

[oh] _But now an exile_----.--[MS. G.]

[344] {455} ["The _Lions' Mouths_, under the arcade at the summit of the Giants' Stairs, which gaped widely to receive anonymous charges, were no doubt far more often employed as vehicles of private malice than of zeal for the public welfare."--_Sketches from Venetian History_, 1832, ii. 380.]

[oi] _To waste its future_----.--[MS. G.]

[345] Ali Coumourgi [Damad Ali or Ali Cumurgi (i.e. son of the charcoal-burner)], the favourite of three sultans, and Grand Vizier to Achmet III., after recovering Peloponnesus from the Venetians in one campaign, was mortally wounded in the next, against the Germans, at the battle of Peterwaradin (in the plain of Carlowitz), in Hungary, endeavouring to rally his guards. He died of his wounds next day [August 16, 1716]. His last order was the decapitation of General Breuner, and some other German prisoners, and his last words, "Oh that I could thus serve all the Christian dogs!" a speech and act not unlike one of Caligula. He was a young man of great ambition and unbounded presumption: on being told that Prince Eugene, then opposed to him, "was a great general," he said, "I shall become a greater, and at his expense."

[For his letter to Prince Eugene, "Eh bien! la guerre va décider entre nous," etc., and for an account of his death, see Hammer-Purgstall, _Historie de l'Empire Othoman_, xiii. 300, 312.]

[oj] {456} _And death-like rolled_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[ok] _Like comets in convulsion riven_.--[MS. G. Copy erased.]

[ol]
_Impervious to the powerless sun_,
_Through sulphurous smoke whose blackness grew_.--
[MS. G. erased.]

[om] {457} _In midnight courtship to Italian maid_.--[MS. G.]

[346] {458} [The siege of Vienna was raised by John Sobieski, King of Poland (1629-1696), September 12, 1683. Buda was retaken from the Turks by Charles VII., Duke of Lorraine, Sobieski's ally and former rival for the kingdom of Poland, September 2, 1686. The conquest of the Morea was begun by the Venetians in 1685, and completed in 1699.]

[on] _By Buda's wall to Danube's side_.--[MS. G.]

[oo] _Pisani held_----.--[MS. G.]

[op] _Than she, the beauteous stranger, bore_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[347] {459} [For Byron's use of the phrase, "Forlorn Hope," as an equivalent of the Turkish Delhis, or Delis, see _Childe Harold_, Canto II. ("The Albanian War-Song"), _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 149, note 1.]

[oq] _By stepping o'er_----.--[MS. G.]

[348] ["Brown" is Byron's usual epithet for landscape seen by moonlight. Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza xxii. line 6, etc., _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 113, note 3.]

[or] _Bespangled with her isles_----.--[MS. G.]

[349] ["Stars" are likened to "isles" by Campbell, in _The Pleasures of Hope_, Part II.--

"The seraph eye shall count the starry train,
Like distant isles embosomed on the main."

And "isles" to "stars" by Byron, in _The Island_, Canto II. stanza xi. lines 14, 15--

"The studded archipelago,
O'er whose blue bosom rose the starry isles."

For other "star-similes," see _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza lxxxviii. line 9, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 270, note 2.]

[os]
_And take a dark unmeasured tone._--[MS. G.]
_And make a melancholy moan_,
_To mortal voice and ear unknown._--[MS. G. erased.]

[350] {461} [Compare Scott's _Marmion_, III. xvi. 4--

"And that strange Palmer's boding say,
That fell so ominous and drear."]

[ot]
----_by fancy framed_,
_Which rings a deep, internal knell_,
_A visionary passing-bell._--[MS. G. erased.]

[ou] _The thoughts tumultuously roll._--[MS. G.]

[ov] {462} _To triumph o'er_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[ow]
_They but provide, he fells the prey._--[MS. G.]
_As lions o'er the jackal sway_
_By springing dauntless on the prey;_
_They follow on, and yelling press_
_To gorge the fragments of success._--[MS. G. erased.]

[351] [Lines 329-331 are inserted in the copy. They are in Byron's handwriting. Compare _Don Juan_, Canto IX. stanza xxvii. line 1, _seq._--"_That's_ an appropriate simile, _that jackal_."]

[ox] {463}
_He vainly turned from side to side_,
_And each reposing posture tried_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[oy] _Beyond a rougher_----.--[MS. G.]

[oz] ----_to sigh for day_.--[MS. G.]

[pa] {464}
_Of Liakura--his unmelting snow_
_Bright and eternal_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[352] [Compare _The Giaour_, line 566 (_vide ante_, p. 113)--

"For where is he that hath beheld
The peak of Liakura unveiled?"

The reference is to the almost perpetual "cap" of mist on Parnassus (Mount Likeri or Liakura), which lies some thirty miles to the north-west of Corinth.]

[pb] {465} _Her spirit spoke in deathless song_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[pc] _And in this night_----.--[MS. G.]

[pd] _He felt how little and how dim_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[pe] _Who led the band_----.--[MS. G.]

[353] [Compare _The Giaour_, lines 103, _seq._ (_vide ante_, p. 91)--"Clime of the unforgotten brave!" etc.]

[pf] {466} _Their memory hallowed every fountain_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[pg] Here follows, in the MS.--

_Immortal--boundless--undecayed--_
_Their souls the very soil pervade_.--
[_In the Copy the lines are erased_.]

[ph] _Where Freedom loveliest may be won_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[354] The reader need hardly be reminded that there are no perceptible tides in the Mediterranean.

[pi] _So that fiercest of waves_----.--[MS. G.]

[pj] {467} _A little space of light grey sand_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[355] [Compare _The Island_, Canto IV. sect. ii. lines 11, 12--

"A narrow segment of the yellow sand
On one side forms the outline of a strand."]

[pk]
_Or would not waste on a single head_
_The ball on numbers better sped_.--[MS. G. erased]

[pl] _I know not in faith_----.--[MS. G.]

[356] [Gifford has drawn his pen through lines 456-478. If, as the editor of _The Works of Lord Byron_, 1832 (x. 100), maintains, "Lord Byron gave Mr. Gifford _carte blanche_ to strike out or alter anything at his pleasure in this poem as it was passing through the press," it is somewhat remarkable that he does not appear to have paid any attention whatever to the august "reader's" suggestions and strictures. The sheets on which Gifford's corrections are scrawled are not proof-sheets, but pages torn out of the first edition; and it is probable that they were made after the poem was published, and with a view to the inclusion of an emended edition in the collected works. See letter to Murray, January 2, 1817.]

[357] {468} This spectacle I have seen, such as described, beneath the wall of the Seraglio at Constantinople, in the little cavities worn by the Bosphorus in the rock, a narrow terrace of which projects between the wall and the water. I think the fact is also mentioned in Hobhouse's _Travels_ [_in Albania_, 1855, ii. 215]. The bodies were probably those of some refractory Janizaries.

[358] This tuft, or long lock, is left from a superstition that Mahomet will draw them into Paradise by it.

[pm] {469} _Deep in the tide of their lost blood lying_.--[MS. G. Copy.]

[359] ["Than the mangled corpse in its own blood lying."--Gifford.]

[pn] _Than the rotting dead_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[360] [Strike out--

"Scorch'd with the death-thirst, and writhing in vain,
Than the perishing dead who are past all pain."

What is a "perishing dead"?--Gifford.]

[361] [Lines 487, 488 are inserted in the copy in Byron's handwriting.]

[po] _And when all_----.--[MS. G.]

[362] ["O'er the weltering _limbs_ of the tombless dead."--Gifford.]

[pp]
_All that liveth on man will prey_,
_All rejoicing in his decay,_
or,
_Nature rejoicing in his decay_.
_All that can kindle dismay and disgust_
_Follow his frame from the bier to the dust._--[MS. G. erased.]

[pq] {470}
----_it hath left no more_
_Of the mightiest things that have gone before_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[363] [Omit this couplet.--Gifford.]

[pr] After this follows in the MS. erased--

_Monuments that the coming age_
_Leaves to the spoil of the season's rage_--
_Till Ruin makes the relics scarce_,
_Then Learning acts her solemn farce_,
_And, roaming through the marble waste_,
_Prates of beauty, art, and taste_.

XIX.

_That Temple was more in the midst of the plain_--
or,
_What of that shrine did yet remain_
_Lay to his left more in midst of the plain_.--[MS. G.]

[364] [From this all is beautiful to--"He saw not--he knew not--but nothing is there."--Gifford. For "pillar's base," compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza x. line 2, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 105.]

[ps] {471} _Is it the wind that through the stone._ or,----_o'er the heavy stone_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[365] I must here acknowledge a close, though unintentional, resemblance in these twelve lines to a passage in an unpublished poem of Mr. Coleridge, called "Christabel." It was not till after these lines were written that I heard that wild and singularly original and beautiful poem recited; and the MS. of that production I never saw till very recently, by the kindness of Mr. Coleridge himself, who, I hope, is convinced that I have not been a wilful plagiarist. The original idea undoubtedly pertains to Mr. Coleridge, whose poem has been composed above fourteen years. Let me conclude by a hope that he will not longer delay the publication of a production, of which I can only add my mite of approbation to the applause of far more competent judges.

[The lines in _Christabel_, Part the First, 43-52, 57, 58, are these--

"The night is chill; the forest bare;
Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?
There is not wind enough in the air
To move away the ringlet curl
From the lovely lady's cheek--
There is not wind enough to twirl
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky."

" ... What sees she there?
There she sees a damsel bright,
Drest in a silken robe of white."

Byron (_vide ante_, p. 443), in a letter to Coleridge, dated October 27, 1815, had already expressly guarded himself against a charge of plagiarism, by explaining that lines 521-532 of stanza xix. were written before he heard Walter Scott repeat _Christabel_ in the preceding June. Now, as Byron himself perceived, perhaps for the first time, when he had the MS. of _Christabel_ before him, the coincidence in language and style between the two passages is unquestionable; and, as he hoped and expected that Coleridge's fragment, when completed, would issue from the press, he was anxious to avoid even the semblance of pilfering, and went so far as to suggest that the passage should be cancelled. Neither in the private letter nor the published note does Byron attempt to deny or explain away the coincidence, but pleads that his lines were written before he had heard Coleridge's poem recited, and that he had not been guilty of a "wilful plagiarism." There is no difficulty in accepting his statement. Long before the summer of 1815 _Christabel_ "had a pretty general circulation in the literary world" (Medwin, _Conversations_, 1824, p. 261), and he may have heard without heeding this and other passages quoted by privileged readers; or, though never a line of _Christabel_ had sounded in his ears, he may (as Kölbing points out) have caught its lilt at second hand from the published works of Southey, or of Scott himself.

Compare _Thalaba the Destroyer_, v. 20 (1838, iv. 187)--

"What sound is borne on the wind?
Is it the storm that shakes
The thousand oaks of the forest?

* * * * *

Is it the river's roar
Dashed down some rocky descent?" etc.

Or compare _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, I. xii. 5. _seq._ (1812, p. 24)--

"And now she sits in secret bower
In old Lord David's western tower,
And listens to a heavy sound,
That moans the mossy turrets round.
Is it the roar of Teviot's tide,
That chafes against the scaur's red side?
Is it the wind that swings the oaks?
Is it the echo from the rocks?" etc.

Certain lines of Coleridge's did, no doubt, "find themselves" in the _Siege of Corinth_, having found their way to the younger poet's ear and fancy before the Lady of the vision was directly and formally introduced to his notice.]

[pt] {473}_There sate a lady young and bright_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[366] [Contemporary critics fell foul of these lines for various reasons. The _Critical Review_ (February, 1816, vol. iii. p. 151) remarks that "the following couplet [i.e. lines 531, 532] reminds us of the _persiflage_ of Lewis or the pathos of a vulgar ballad;" while the _Dublin Examiner_ (May, 1816, vol. i. p. 19) directs a double charge against the founders of the schism and their proselyte: "If the Cumberland _Lakers_ were not well known to be personages of the most pious and saintly temperament, we would really have serious apprehensions lest our noble Poet should come to any harm in consequence of the envy which the two following lines and a great many others through the poems, might excite by their successful rivalship of some of the finest effects of babyism that these Gentlemen can boast."]

[pu] _He would have made it_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[pv] _She who would_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[pw] {474} _The ocean spread before their view_.--[Copy.]

[367] ["And its _thrilling_ glance, etc."--Gifford.]

[368] [Warton (_Observations en the Fairy Queen_, 1807, ii. 131), commenting on Spenser's famous description of "Una and the Lion" (_Faëry Queene_, Book I. canto iii. stanzas 5, 6, 7), quotes the following passage from _Seven Champions of Christendom_: "Now, Sabra, I have by this sufficiently proved thy true virginitie: for it is the nature of a lion, be he never so furious, not to harme the unspotted virgin, but humbly to lay his bristled head upon a maiden's lap."

Byron, according to Leigh Hunt (_Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries_, 1828, i. 77), could not "see anything" in Spenser, and was not familiar with the _Fairy Queen_; but he may have had in mind Scott's allusion to Spenser's Una--

"Harpers have sung and poets told
That he, in fury uncontrolled,
The shaggy monarch of the wood,
Before a virgin, fair and good,
Hath pacified his savage mood."

_Marmion_, Canto II. stanza vii. line 3, _seq_.

(See Kölbing's note to _Siege of Corinth_, 1893, pp. 110-112.)]

[px] {476}
_She laid her fingers on his hand_,
_Its coldness thrilled through every bone_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[py] _As he looked on her face_----.--[MS. G.]

[pz] ----_on her bosom's swell_.--[MS. G. erased. Copy.]

[369] [Compare Shakespeare, _Macbeth_, act v. sc. 1, line 30--

"You see, her eyes are open,
Aye, but their sense is shut."

Compare, too, _Christabel_, Conclusion to Part the First (lines 292, 293)--

"With open eyes (ah, woe is me!)
Asleep, and dreaming fearfully."]

[qa] {477}
_Like a picture, that magic had charmed from its frame_,
_Lifeless but life-like, and ever the same_.
or, _Like a picture come forth from its canvas and frame_.--
[MS. G. erased.]

[qb]
_And seen_----.--[MS. G.]
----_its fleecy mail_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[370] [In the summer of 1803, Byron, then turned fifteen, though offered a bed at Annesley, used at first to return every night to Newstead; alleging that he was afraid of the family pictures of the Chaworths, which he fancied "had taken a grudge to him on account of the duel, and would come down from their frames to haunt him." Moore thinks this passage may have been suggested by the recollection (_Life_, p. 27). Compare _Lara_, Canto I. stanza xi. line 1, _seq_. (_vide ante_, p. 331, note 1).]

[371] [Compare Southey's _Roderick_, Canto XXI. (ed. 1838, ix. 195)--

" ... and till the grave
Open, the gate of mercy is not closed."]

[372] {478} I have been told that the idea expressed in this and the five following lines has been admired by those whose approbation is valuable. I am glad of it; but it is not original--at least not mine; it may be found much better expressed in pages 182-3-4 of the English version of "Vathek" (I forget the precise page of the French), a work to which I have before referred; and never recur to, or read, without a renewal of gratification.--[The following is the passage: "'Deluded prince!' said the Genius, addressing the Caliph ... 'This moment is the last, of grace, allowed thee: ... give back Nouronihar to her father, who still retains a few sparks of life: destroy thy tower, with all its abominations: drive Carathis from thy councils: be just to thy subjects: respect the ministers of the Prophet: compensate for thy impieties by an exemplary life; and, instead of squandering thy days in voluptuous indulgence, lament thy crimes on the sepulchres of thy ancestors. Thou beholdest the clouds that obscure the sun: at the instant he recovers his splendour, if thy heart be not changed, the time of mercy assigned thee will be past for ever.'"

"Vathek, depressed with fear, was on the point of prostrating himself at the feet of the shepherd ... but, his pride prevailing ... he said, 'Whoever thou art, withhold thy useless admonitions.... If what I have done be so criminal ... there remains not for me a moment of grace. I have traversed a sea of blood to acquire a power which will make thy equals tremble; deem not that I shall retire when in view of the port; or that I will relinquish her who is dearer to me than either my life or thy mercy. Let the sun appear! let him illumine my career! it matters not where it may end!' On uttering these words ... Vathek ... commanded that his horses should be forced back to the road.

"There was no difficulty in obeying these orders; for the attraction had ceased; the sun shone forth in all his glory, and the shepherd vanished with a lamentable scream" (ed. 1786, pp. 183-185).]

[qc] {479} _By rooted and unhallowed pride_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[373] [Leave out this couplet.--Gifford.]

[374] {480} [Compare--"While the still morn went out with sandals grey." _Lycidas_, line 187.]

[375] [Strike out--"And the Noon will look on a sultry day."--Gifford.]

[376] The horsetails, fixed upon a lance, a pacha's standard.

["When the vizir appears in public, three _thoughs_, or horse-tails, fastened to a long staff, with a large gold ball at top, is borne before him."--_Moeurs des Ottomans_, par A. L. Castellan (Translated, 1821), iv. 7.

Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II., "Albanian War-Song," stanza 10, line 2; and _Bride of Abydos_, line 714 (_vide ante_, p. 189).]

[377] [Compare--"Send out moe horses, skirr the country round." _Macbeth_, act v. sc. 3, line 35.]

[378] [Omit--

"While your fellows on foot, in a fiery mass,
Bloodstain the breach through which they pass."

--Gifford.]

[379] ["And crush the wall they have _shaken_ before."--Gifford.]

[380] [Compare _The Giaour_, line 734 (_vide ante_, p. 120)--"At solemn sound of 'Alla Hu!'" And _Don Juan_, Canto VIII. stanza viii.]

[381] ["He who first _downs_ with the red cross may crave," etc. What vulgarism is this!--"He who _lowers_,--or _plucks down_," etc.--Gifford.]

[382] [The historian, George Finlay, who met and frequently conversed with Byron at Mesalonghi, with a view to illustrating "Lord Byron's _Siege of Corinth_," subjoins in a note the full text of "the summons sent by the grand vizier, and the answer." (See Finlay's _Greece under Othoman and Venetian Domination_, 1856, p. 266, note 1; and, for the original authority, see Brue's _Journal de la Campagne_, ... _en_ 1715, Paris, 1871, p. 18.)]

[383] {482}
["Thus against the wall they _bent_,
Thus the first were backward _sent_."

--Gifford.]

[qd] _With such volley yields like glass_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[qe] _Like the mowers ridge_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[384] ["Such was the fall of the foremost train."--Gifford.]

[385] {483} [Compare _The Deformed Transformed_, Part I. sc. 2 ("Song of the Soldiers")--

"Our shout shall grow gladder,
And death only be mute."]

[qf] _I have heard_----.--[MS. G.]

[386] [Compare _Macbeth_, act ii. sc. 2, line 55--

"If he do bleed,
I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal."]

[387] {484} ["There stood a man," etc.--Gifford.]

[388] ["_Lurked_"--a bad word--say "_was hid_."--Gifford.]

[389] ["Outnumbered his hairs," etc.--Gifford.]

[390] ["Sons that were unborn, when _he_ dipped."--Gifford.]

[391] {485} [Bravo!--this is better than King Priam's fifty sons.--Gifford.]

[392] In the naval battle at the mouth of the Dardanelles, between the Venetians and Turks.

[393] [There can be no such thing; but the whole of this is poor, and spun out.--Gifford. The solecism, if such it be, was repeated in _Marino Faliero_, act iii. sc. I, line 38.]

[394] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza xxix. lines 5-8 (_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 125)--

"Dark Sappho! could not Verse immortal save?...
If life eternal may await the lyre."]

[395] ["Hark to the Alia Hu!" etc.--Gifford.]

[396] {486} [Gifford has erased lines 839-847.]

[qg] _Though the life of thy giving would last for ever_.--[MS. G. Copy.]

[qh] _Where's Francesca?--my promised bride!_--[MS. G. Copy.]

[qi] {488} Here follows in _MS. G._--

_Twice and once he roll'd a space_,
_Then lead-like lay upon his face_.

[qj] _Sigh, nor sign, nor parting word_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[397] [The Spanish "renegado" and the Anglicized "renegade" were favourite terms of reprobation with politicians and others at the beginning of the century. When Southey's _Wat Tyler_ was reprinted in 1817, William Smith, the Member for Norwich, denounced the Laureate as a "renegado," an attack which Coleridge did his best to parry by contributing articles to the _Courier_ on "Apostasy and Renegadoism" (Letter to Murray, March 26, 1817, _Memoir of John Murray_, 1891, i. 306). Byron himself, in _Don Juan_ ("Dedication," stanza i. line 5), hails Southey as "My Epic Renegade!" Compare, too, stanza xiv. of "_Lines addressed to a Noble Lord_ (His Lordship will know why), By one of the small Fry of the Lakes" (i.e. Miss Barker, the "Bhow Begum" of Southey's _Doctor_)--

"And our Ponds shall better please thee,
Than those now dishonoured seas,
With their shores and Cyclades
Stocked with Pachas, Seraskiers,
Slaves and turbaned Buccaneers;
Sensual Mussulmans atrocious,
Renegadoes more ferocious," etc.]

[qk] {489} _These in rage, in triumph those_.--[MS. G. Copy erased.]

[ql] _Then again in fury mixing_.--[MS. G.]

[398] ["Dealing _death_ with every blow."--Gifford.]

[399] {490} [Compare _Don Juan_, Canto XIII. stanza lxi. lines 1, _seq._--

"But in a higher niche, alone, but crowned,
The Virgin-Mother of the God-born Child,
With her Son in her blessed arms, looked round ...
But even the faintest relics of a shrine
Of any worship wake some thoughts divine."]

[qm]
/ _chequered_ \
----_beneath the_ { } _stone_.--[MS. G. erased.]
\ _inlaid_ /

[qn] _But now half-blotted_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[qo] _But War must make the most of means_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[400] {492} ["Oh, but it made a glorious show!!!" Gifford erases the line, and adds these marks of exclamation.]

[qp] ----_the sacrament wine_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[qq] _Which the Christians partook at the break of the day_.--[MS. G. Copy.]

[401] {493} [Compare _Sardanapalus_, act v. sc. 1 (s.f.)--

"_Myr._ Art thou ready?
_Sard._ As the torch in thy grasp.
(_Myrrha fires the pile._)
_Myr._ 'Tis fired! I come."]

[402] [A critic in the _Eclectic Review_ (vol. v. N.S., 1816, p. 273), commenting on the "obvious carelessness" of these lines, remarks, "We know not how 'all that of dead remained' could _expire_ in that wild roar." To apply the word "expire" to inanimate objects is, no doubt, an archaism, but Byron might have quoted Dryden as an authority, "The ponderous ball expires."]

[qr] _The hills as by an earthquake bent_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[403] {494} [Strike out from "Up to the sky," etc., to "All blackened there and reeking lay." Despicable stuff.--Gifford.]

[qs] _Who can see or who shall say?_--[MS. G. erased.]

[404] [Lines 1043-1047 are not in the Copy or MS. G., but were included in the text of the First Edition.]

[405] [Compare _Don Juan_, Canto II. stanza cii. line 1, _seq._--

"Famine, despair, cold, thirst, and heat, had done
Their work on them by turns, and thinned them to
Such things a mother had not known her son
Amidst the skeletons of that gaunt crew."

Compare, too, _The Island_, Canto I. section ix. lines 13, 14.]

[qt] {495} _And crashed each mass of stone_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[qu]
_And left their food the unburied dead_.--[Copy.]
_And left their food the untasted dead_.--[MS. G.]
_And howling left_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[406] [Omit the next six lines.--Gifford.]

[407] ["I have heard hyænas and jackalls in the ruins of Asia; and bull-frogs in the marshes; besides wolves and angry Mussulmans."--_Journal_, November 23, 1813, _Letters_, 1898, ii. 340.]

[qv] _Where Echo rolled in horror still_.--[MS. G.]

[qw] _The frightened jackal's shrill sharp cry_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[408] I believe I have taken a poetical licence to transplant the jackal from Asia. In Greece I never saw nor heard these animals; but among the ruins of Ephesus I have heard them by hundreds. They haunt ruins, and follow armies. [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza cliii. line 6; and _Don Juan_, Canto IX. stanza xxvii. line 2.]

[qx] _Mixed and mournful as the sound_.--[MS. G.]

[409] [Leave out this couplet.--Gifford.]

[410] [With lines 1058-1079, compare Southey's _Roderick_ (Canto XVIII., ed. 1838, ix. 169)--

"Far and wide the thundering shout,
Rolling among reduplicating rocks,
Pealed o'er the hills, and up the mountain vales.
The wild ass starting in the forest glade
Ran to the covert; the affrighted wolf
Skulked through the thicket to a closer brake;
The sluggish bear, awakened in his den,
Roused up and answered with a sullen growl,
Low-breathed and long; and at the uproar scared,
The brooding eagle from her nest took wing."

A sentence in a letter to Moore, dated January 10, 1815 (_Letters_, 1899, iii. 168), "_I_ have tried the rascals (i.e. the public) with my Harrys and Larrys, Pilgrims and Pirates. Nobody but S....y has done any thing worth a slice of bookseller's pudding, and _he_ has not luck enough to be found out in doing a good thing," implies that Byron had read and admired Southey's _Roderick_--an inference which is curiously confirmed by a memorandum in Murray's handwriting: "When Southey's poem, _Don Roderick_ (_sic_), was published, Lord Byron sent in the middle of the night to ask John Murray if he had heard any opinion of it, for he thought it one of the finest poems he had ever read." The resemblance between the two passages, which is pointed out by Professor Kölbing, is too close to be wholly unconscious, but Byron's expansion of Southey's lines hardly amounts to a plagiarism.]

PARISINA.