CLXXXVI.

Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been-- A sound which makes us linger;--yet--farewell![ql] Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene[qm] Which is his last--if in your memories dwell A thought which once was his--if on ye swell A single recollection--not in vain He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell; Farewell! with _him_ alone may rest the pain, If such there were--with _you_, the Moral of his Strain.[554]

FOOTNOTES:

[363] {319} _MS. D._, Byron's final fair copy, is in the possession of the Lady Dorchester.

[364] {321} [Compare Canto IV. stanza clxiv.--

"But where is he, the Pilgrim of my Song.... He is no more--these breathings are his last."]

[365] {322} [His marriage. Compare the epigram, "On my Wedding-Day," sent in a letter to Moore, January 2, 1820--

"Here's a happy new year!--but with reason I beg you'll permit me to say-- Wish me _many_ returns of the _season_, But as _few_ as you please of the _day_."]

[366] {323} [Some fancy me no Chinese, because I am formed more like a man than a monster; and others wonder to find one born five thousand miles from England, endued with common sense.... He must be some Englishman in disguise."--_The Citizen of the World; or a Series of Letters from a Chinese Philosopher at London, to his Friends in the East_, 1762, Letter xxxiii.]

[367] [_Vide ante_, Introduction to Canto IV., p. 315.]

[368] {324} [Antonio Canova, sculptor, 1757-1822; Vincenzo Monti, 1754-1828; Ugo Foscolo, 1776-1827 (see _Life_, p. 456, etc.); Ippolito Pindemonte, 1753-1828 (see Letter to Murray, June 4, 1817), poets; Ennius Quirinus Visconti, 1751-1818, the valuer of the Elgin marbles, archæologist; Giacomo Morelli, 1745-1819, bibliographer and scholar (the architect Cosimo Morelli, born 1732, died in 1812); Leopoldo Conte de Cicognara, 1767-1834, archæologist; the Contessa Albrizzi, 1769?-1836, authoress of _Ritratti di Uomini Illustri_ (see _Life_, pp. 331, 413, etc.); Giuseppe Mezzofanti, 1774-1849, linguist; Angelo Mai (cardinal), 1782-1854, philologist; Andreas Moustoxides, 1787-1860, a Greek archæologist, who wrote in Italian; Francesco Aglietti (see _Life_, p. 378, etc.), 1757-1836; Andrea Vacca Berlinghieri, 1772-1826 (see _Life_, p. 339).

For biographical essays on Monti, Foscolo, and Pindemonte, see "Essay on the Present Literature of Italy" (Hobhouse's _Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold_, 1818, pp. 347, _sq._). See, too, _Italian Literature_, by R. Garnett, C.B., LL.D., 1898, pp. 333-337, 337-341, 341-342.]

[369] {325} [Shelley (notes M. Darmesteter), in his preface to the _Prometheus Unbound_, "emploie le mot sans demander pardon." "The mass of capabilities remains at every period materially the same; the circumstances which awaken it to action perpetually change." "Capability" in the sense of "undeveloped faculty or property; a condition physical or otherwise, capable of being converted or turned to use" (_N. Eng. Dict._), appertains rather to material objects. To apply the term figuratively to the forces inherent in national character savoured of a literary indecorum. Hence the apology.]

[370] [Addison, _Cato_, act v. sc. 1, line 3--

"It must be so--_Plato_, thou reason'st well!-- Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality?"]

[371] [Shelley chose this refrain as the motto to his unfinished lines addressed to his infant son--

"My lost William, thou in whom Some bright spirit lived----"]

[372] [Scott commented severely on this opprobrious designation of "the great and glorious victory of Waterloo," in his critique on the Fourth Canto, _Q. R._, No. xxxvii., April, 1818.]

[373] {326} [_The substance of some letters written by an Englishman resident in Paris during the last Reign of the Emperor Napoleon_. 1816. 2 vols.]

[374] [In 1817.]

[375] {327}

[Venice and La Mira on the Brenta. Copied, August, 1817. Begun, June 26. Finished, July 29th. MS. M.]

[376] [Byron sent the first stanza to Murray, July 1, 1817, "the shaft of the column as a specimen." Gifford, Frere, and many more to whom Murray "ventured to show it," expressed their approval (_Memoir of John Murray_, i. 385).

"'The Bridge of Sighs,'" he explains (i.e. _Ponte de' Sospiri_), "is that which divides, or rather joins, the palace of the Doge to the prison of the state." Compare _The Two Foscari_, act iv. sc. 1--

"In Venice '_but_'s' a traitor. But me no '_buts_,' unless you would pass o'er The Bridge which few repass."

This, however, is an anachronism. The Bridge of Sighs was built by Antonio da Ponte, in 1597, more than a century after the death of Francesco Foscari. "It is," says Mr. Ruskin, "a work of no merit and of a late period, owing the interest it possesses chiefly to its pretty name, and to the ignorant sentimentalism of Byron" (_Stones of Venice_, 1853, ii. 304; in. 359).]

[377] [Compare _Mysteries of Udolpho_, by Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, 1794, ii. 35, 36--

"Its terraces crowned with airy yet majestic fabrics ... appeared as if they had been called up from the Ocean by the wand of an enchanter."]

[lb] {328} ----_throned on her Seventy Isles_.--[MS. M. altern. reading, D.]

[378] Sabellicus, describing the appearance of Venice, has made use of the above image, which would not be poetical were it not true.--"Quo fit ut qui supernè [ex specula aliqua eminentiore] urbem contempletur, turritam telluris imaginem medio Oceano figuratam se putet inspicere." [_De Venetæ Urbis situ Narratio_, lib. i. _Ital. Ill. Script._, 1600, p. 4. Marcus Antonius Coccius Sabellicus (1436-1506) wrote, _inter alia_, a _History of Venice_, published in folio in 1487, and _Rhapsodiæ Historiarum Enneades, a condito mundo, usque ad_ A.C. 1504. His description of Venice (_vide supra_) was published after his death in 1527. Hofmann does not give him a good character: "Obiit A.C. 1506, turpi morbo confectus, ætat. 70, relicto filio notho." But his [Greek: Au)toepita/phion] implies that he was satisfied with himself.

"Quem non res hominum, non omnis ceperat ætas, Scribentem capit hæc Coccion urna brevis."

Cybele (sometimes written Cybelle and Cyb[=e]le), the "mother of the Goddesses," was represented as wearing a mural crown--"coronamque turritam gestare dicitur" (Albricus Phil., _De Imag. Deor._, xii.). Venice with her tiara of proud towers is the earth-goddess Cybele, having "suffered a sea-change."]

[lc] {329} _From spoils of many nations and the East_.--[MS. M., D. erased.]

[379] ["Gems wrought into drinking-vessels, among which the least precious were framed of turquoise, jasper, or amethyst ... unnumbered jacinths, emeralds, sapphires, chrysolites, and topazes, and, lastly, those matchless carbuncles which, placed on the High Altar of St. Mark's, blazed with intrinsic light, and scattered darkness by their own beams;--these are but a sample of the treasures which accrued to Venice" (Villehardouin, lib. in. p. 129). (See _Sketches from Venetian History_, 1831, i. 161.)]

[380] [After the fall of Constantinople, in 1204, "the illustrious Dandolo ... was permitted to tinge his buskins in the purple hue distinctive of the Imperial Family, to claim exemption from all feudal service to the Emperor, and to annex to the title of Doge of Venice the proud style of Despot of Romania, and Lord of One-fourth and One-eighth of the Roman Empire" (_ibid._, 1831, i. 167).]

[ld] _Monarchs sate down_----.--[D. erased.]

[381] [The gondoliers (see Hobhouse's note ii.) used to sing alternate stanzas of the _Gerusalemme Liberata_, capping each other like the shepherds in the _Bucolics_. The rival reciters were sometimes attached to the same gondola; but often the response came from a passing gondolier, a stranger to the singer who challenged the contest. Rogers, in his _Italy_, laments the silence which greeted the swan-song of his own gondolier--

"He sung, As in the time when Venice was Herself, Of Tancred and Erminia. On our oars We rested; and the verse was verse divine! We could not err--Perhaps he was the last-- For none took up the strain, none answer'd him; And, when he ceased, he left upon my ear A something like the dying voice of Venice!" _The Gondola_ (_Poems_, 1852, ii. 79).

Compare, too, Goethe's "Letters from Italy," October 6, 1786: "This evening I bespoke the celebrated _song_ of the mariners, who chaunt Tasso and Ariosto to melodies of their own. This must actually be ordered, as it is not to be heard as a thing of course, but rather belongs to the half-forgotten traditions of former times. I entered a gondola by moonlight, with one _singer_ before and the other behind me. They _sing_ their _song_, taking up the verses alternately....

"Sitting on the shore of an island, on the bank of a canal, or on the side of a boat, a gondolier will sing away with a loud penetrating voice--the multitude admire force above everything--anxious only to be heard as far as possible. Over the silent mirror it travels far."--_Travels in Italy_, 1883, p. 73.]

[le] {330} _The pleasure-place of all festivity_.--[MS. M.]

[382] {331} [The Rialto, or Rivo alto, "the middle group of islands between the shore and the mainland," on the left of the Grand Canal, was the site of the original city, and till the sixteenth century its formal and legal designation. The Exchange, or Banco Giro, was held in the piazza, opposite the church of San Giacomo, which stands at the head of the canal to the north of the Ponto di Rialto. It was on the Rialto that Antonio rated Shylock about his "usances." "What news on the Rialto?" asks Solanio (_Merchant of Venice_, act i. sc. 3, line 102; act iii. sc. 1, line 1). Byron uses the word symbolically for Venetian commerce.]

[383] [Pierre is the hero of Otway's _Venice Preserved_. Shylock and the Moor stand where they did, but what of Pierre? If the name of Otway--"master of the tragic art"--and the title of his masterpiece--_Venice Preserved, or The Plot Discovered_ (first played 1682)--are not wholly forgotten, Pierre and Monimia and Belvidera have "decayed," and are memorable chiefly as favourite characters of great actors and actresses. Genest notes twenty revivals of the _Venice Preserved_, which was played as late as October 27, 1837, when Macready played "Pierre," and Phelps "Jaffier." "No play that I know," says Hartley Coleridge (Essays, 1851, ii. 56), "gains so much by acting as _Venice Preserved_.... Miss O'Neill, I well remember, made me weep with Belvidera; but she would have done the same had she spoken in an unknown tongue." Byron, who professed to be a "great admirer of Otway," in a letter to Hodgson, August 22, 1811 (_Letters_, 1898, i. 339, note 1), alludes to some lines from _Venice Preserved_ (act ii. sc. 3), which seem to have taken his fancy. Two lines spoken by Belvidera (act ii.), if less humorous, are more poetical--

"Oh, the day Too soon will break, and wake us to our sorrow; Come, come to bed, and bid thy cares Good night!"]

[384] {332} [Compare _The Dream_, i.--

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

The ideal personages of the poet's creations have the promise of immortality. The ideal forms which people his imagination transfigure and supplant the dull and grievous realities of his mortal being and circumstance; but there are "things" more radiant, more enchanting still, the "strong realities" of the heart and soul--hope, love, joy. But they pass! We wake, and lo! it was a dream.]

[lf] _Denies to the dull trick of life_----.--[MS. erased.]

[385]

["In youth I wrote because my mind was full, And now because I feel it growing dull." _Don Juan_, Canto XIV. stanza x.

In youth the poet takes refuge, in the ideal world, from the crowd and pressure of blissful possibilities; and in age, when hope is beyond hope, he peoples the solitude with beings of the mind.]

[lg] {333} _And this worn feeling_----.--[Editions 1816-1891.]

[lh] / _springs_ \ _And, may be, that which_ { } ----.--[MS. M.] \ _spreads_ /

[li] _Outshines our Fairies--things in shape and hue_.--[MS. M.]

[lj] {334} ----_and though I leave behind_.--[MS. M.]

[lk] _And make myself a home beside a softer sea_.--[MS. erased.]

[ll] ----_to pine_ _Albeit is not my nature, and I twine_.--[MS. M. erased]

[386] [In another mood he wrote to Murray (June 7, 1819), "I trust they won't think of 'pickling, and bringing me home to Clod or Blunderbuss Hall' [see _The Rivals_, act v. sc. 3]. I am sure my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of that country." In this half-humorous outburst he deprecates, or pretends to deprecate, the fate which actually awaited his remains--burial in the family vault at Hucknall Torkard. There is, of course, no reference to a public funeral and a grave in Westminster Abbey. In the next stanza (x. line 1) he assumes the possibility of his being excluded from the Temple of Fame; but there is, perhaps, a tacit reference to burial in the Abbey. If the thought, as is probable, occurred to him, he veils it in a metaphor.]

[387] {335} The answer of the mother of Brasidas, the Lacedæmonian general, to the strangers who praised the memory of her son.

[[Greek: Brasi/das ga\r ê~)n me\n a)nê\r a)gatho\s], polloi\ d' e)kei/nou krei/ssones e)n tê~| Spa/rtê|]. Plutarchi _Moralia, Apophthegmata Laconica_ (Tauchnitz, 1820), ii. 127.]

[lm] _The widowed Adriatic mourns her Doge_.--[MS. M erased.]

[388] [The Bucentaur, "the state barge in which, on Ascension Day, the Doge of Venice used to wed the Adriatic by dropping a ring into it," was broken up and rifled by the French in 1797 (note, by Rev. E. C. Owen, _Childe Harold_, 1897, p. 197).

Compare Goethe's "Letters from Italy," October 5, 1786: "To give a notion of the Bucentaur in one word, I should say that it is a state-galley. The older one, of which we still have drawings, justified this appellation still more than the present one, which, by its splendour, makes us forget the original....

"The vessel is all ornament; we ought to say, it is overladen with ornament; it is altogether one piece of gilt carving, for no other use.... This state-galley is a good index to show what the Venetians were, and what they considered themselves."--_Travels in Italy_, 1883, p. 68.

Compare, too, Wordsworth's sonnet "On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic"--

"She was a maiden City, bright and free; No guile seduced, no force could violate; And when she took unto herself a Mate, She must espouse the everlasting Sea." _Works_, 1888, p. 180.]

[389] {336} [For "Lion," see Hobhouse's note iii. The "Horses of St. Mark" (_vide post_, stanza xiii. line 1), which, according to history or legend, Augustus "conveyed" from Alexandria to Rome, Constantine from Rome to Constantinople, Dandolo, in 1204, from Constantinople to Venice, Napoleon, in 1797, from Venice to Paris, and which were restored to the Venetians by the Austrians in 1815, were at one time supposed to belong to the school of Lysippus. Haydon, who published, in 1817, a curious etching of "The Elgin Horse's Head," placed side by side with the "Head of one of the Horses ... now at Venice," subscribes the following critical note: "It is astonishing that the great principles of nature should have been so nearly lost in the time between Phidias and Lysippus. Compare these two heads. The Elgin head is all truth, the other all manner." Hobhouse pronounces the "Horses" to be "irrevocably Chian," but modern archæologists regard both "school" and exact period as uncertain.]

[ln] _Even on the pillar_----.--[MS. M., D. erased.]

[390] [According to Milman (_Hist. of Lat. Christianity_, v. 144), the humiliation of Barbarossa at the Church of St. Mark took place on Tuesday, July 24, 1177. _À propos_ of the return of the Pope and Emperor to the ducal palace, he quotes "a curious passage from a newly recovered poem, by Godfrey of Viterbo, an attendant on the Emperor. So great was the press in the market that the aged Pope was thrown down--

"Jam Papa perisset in arto, Cæsar ibi vetulum ni relevasset eum."

"This," he remarks, "is an odd contrast of real life with romance."]

[391] {337} ["Oh, for one hour of Dundee!" was the exclamation of a Highland chieftain at the battle of Sheriff-muir, November 13, 1715 (Scott's _Tales of a Grandfather_, III. Series, chap. x.; _Prose Works_, Paris, 1830, vii. 768). Wordsworth makes the words his own in the sonnet, "In the Pass of Killicranky (an Invasion being expected, October, 1803)" (_Works_, 1888, p. 201)--

"O for a single hour of that Dundee, Who on that day the word of onset gave!"

And Coleridge, in a letter to Wordsworth (February 8, 1804), thinking, perhaps, less of the chieftain than the sonnet, exclaims, "'Oh for one hour of Dundee!' How often shall I sigh, 'Oh for one hour of _The Recluse!_'"--an aspiration which Byron would have worded differently.]

[lo] ----_who quelled the imperial foe_.--[MS. M. erased.] ----_empire's all-conquering foe_.--[MS. M.]

[392] [Compare _Marino Faliero_, act iv. sc. 2, lines 157, 158--

"Doge Dandolo survived to ninety summers, To vanquish empires, and refuse their crown."

"The vessels that bore the bishops of Soissons and Troyes, the _Paradise_ and the _Pilgrim_, were the first which grappled with the Towers of Constantinople [April, 1204].... The bishops of Soissons and of Troyes would have placed the blind old Doge Dandolo on the imperial throne; his election was opposed by the Venetians.... But probably the wise patriotism of Dandolo himself, and his knowledge of the Venetian mind, would make him acquiesce in the loss of an honour so dangerous to his country.... Venice might have sunk to an outpost, as it were, of the Eastern Empire."--Milman's _Hist. of Lat. Christianity_, v. 350, 353, 354.]

[393] {338} [Hobhouse's version (see _Hist. Notes_, No. vi.) of the war of Chioggia is not borne out by modern research. For example, the long speech which Chinazzo attributes to the Genoese admiral, Pietro Doria, is probably mythical. The actual menace of the "bitting and bridling the horses of St. Mark" is assigned by other historians to Francesco Carrara. Doria was not killed by a stone bullet from the cannon named The Trevisara, but by the fall of the Campanile in Chioggia, which had been struck by the bullet. (_Venice, an Historical Sketch of the Republic_, by Horatio F. Brown, 1893, pp. 225-234.)]

[lp] ----_into whence she rose_.--[Editions 1818-1891.]

[394] [Compare the opening lines of Byron's _Ode on Venice_--

"Oh Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls Are level with the waters, there shall be A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls, A loud lament along the sweeping sea!"

Shelley, too, in his _Lines written among the Euganean Hills_, bewailed the approaching doom of the "sea-girt city." But threatened cities, like threatened men, live long, and since its annexation to Italy, in 1866, a revival of trade and the re-establishment of the arsenal have brought back a certain measure of prosperity.]

[lq] {339} _Even in Destruction's heart_----.--[MS. M.]

[395] That is, the Lion of St. Mark, the standard of the republic, which is the origin of the word Pantaloon--Piantaleone, Pantaleon, Pantaloon.

[The Venetians were nicknamed Pantaloni. Byron, who seems to have relied on the authority of a Venetian glossary, assumes that the "by-word" may be traced to the patriotism of merchant-princes "who were reputed to hoist flags with the Venetian lion waving to the breeze on every rock and barren headland of Levantine waters" (_Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi_, translated by J. Addington Symonds, 1890, Introd. part ii. p. 44), and that in consequence of this spread-eagleism the Venetians were held up to scorn by their neighbours as "planters of the lion"--a reproach which conveyed a tribute to their prowess. A more probable explanation is that the "by-word," with its cognates "Pantaleone," the typical masque of Italian comedy--progenitor of our "Pantaloon;" and "pantaloni," "pantaloons," the typical Venetian costume--derive their origin from the baptismal name "Pantaleone," frequently given to Venetian children, in honour of St. Pantaleon of Nicomedia, physician and martyr, whose cult was much in vogue in Northern Italy, and especially in Venice, where his relics, which "coruscated with miracles," were the object of peculiar veneration.

St. Pantaleon was known to the Greek Church as [Greek: Panteleê/môn], that is, the "all-pitiful;" and in Latin his name is spelled _Pantaleymon_ and _Pantaleemon_. Hagiologists seem to have been puzzled, but the compiler of the _Acta Sanctorum_, for July 27, St. Pantaleon's Day in the Roman calendar (xxxiii. 397-426), gives the preference to Pantaleon, and explains that he was hailed as Pantaleemon by a divine voice at the hour of his martyrdom, which proclaimed "eum non amplius esse vocandum Pantaleonem, sed Pantaleemonem."

The accompanying woodcut is the reproduction of the frontispiece of a black-letter tract, composed by Augustinus de Cremâ, in honour of the "translation" of one of the sainted martyr's arms to Crema, in Lombardy. It was printed at Cremona, in 1493.]

[396] {340} Shakespeare is my authority for the word "Ottomite" for Ottoman. "Which Heaven hath forbid the Ottomites" (see _Othello_, act ii. sc. 3, line 161).--[MS. D.]

[397] ["On 29th September (1669) Candia, and the island of Candia, passed away from Venice, after a defence which had lasted twenty-five years, and was unmatched for bravery in the annals of the Republic."--_Venice, an Historical Sketch_, by Horatio F. Brown, 1893, p. 378.]

[398] ["The battle of Lepanto [October 7, 1571] lasted five hours.... The losses are estimated at 8000 Christians and 30,000 Turks.... The chief glory of the victory rests with Sebastian Veniero and the Venetians."--_Venice, etc._, 1893, p. 368.]

[399] {341} [The story is told in Plutarch's _Life of Nicias_, cap. xxix. (_Plut. Vit_., Lipsiæ, 1813, v. 154). "The dramas of Euripides were so popular throughout all Sicily, that those Athenian prisoners who knew ... portions of them, won the affections of their masters.... I cannot refrain from mentioning this story, though I fear its trustworthiness ... is much inferior to its pathos and interest."--Grote's _History of Greece_, 1869, vii. 186.]

[lr] _And won her hopeless children from afar_.--[MS. M., D. erased.]

[ls] _And sends him ransomeless to bless his poet's strains_.--[MS. M.] or, _And sends him home to bless the poet for his strains_.-- [MS. D. erased.]

[lt] {342} _Thy love of Tassa's verse should cut the knot_.--[MS. M.]

[400] [By the Treaty of Paris, May 3, 1814, Lombardy and Venice, which since the battle of Austerlitz had formed part of the French kingdom of Naples, were once more handed over to Austria. Great Britain was represented by "a bungler even in its disgusting trade" (_Don Juan_, Dedication, stanza xiv.), Lord Castlereagh.]

[lu] ----_for come it will and shall_.--[MS. M., D. erased.]

[lv] _And Otway's--Radcliffe's--Schiller's--Shakspeare's art_.--[MS. M., D.]

[401] Venice Preserved; Mysteries of Udolpho; The Ghost-Seer, or Armenian; The Merchant of Venice; Othello.

[For _Venice Preserved, vide ante_, stanza iv. line 7, note. To the _Mysteries of Udolpho_ Byron was indebted for more than one suggestion, _vide ante_, stanza i. line 4, note, and _Mysteries, etc._, London, 1794, 2. 39: "The air bore no sounds, but those of sweetness echoing along each margin of the canal and from gondolas on its surface, while groups of masks were seen dancing on the moonlit terraces, and seemed almost to realize the romance of fairy-land." The scene of Schiller's _Der Geisterseher_ (_Werke_, 1819, x. 97, _sq._) is laid at Venice. "This [the Doge's palace] was the thing that most struck my imagination in Venice--more than the Rialto, which I visited for the sake of Shylock; and more, too, than Schiller's _Armenian_, a novel which took a great hold of me when a boy. It is also called the _Ghost Seer_, and I never walked down St. Mark's by moonlight without thinking of it, and 'at nine o'clock he died!' [For allusion to the same incident, see Rogers's _Italy_ (_Poems_, 1852, ii. 73).] But I hate things _all fiction_; and therefore the _Merchant_ and _Othello_ have no great associations for me: but _Pierre_ has."--Letter to Murray, Venice, April 2, 1817. (For an earlier reference to the _Ghost-seer_, see _Oscar of Alva: Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 131, note.)]

[lw] {344} _Though I have found her thus we will not part_.--[MS. M.]

[402] [Shelley, in his _Lines written among the Euganean Hills_, allows to Venice one lingering glory "one remembrance more sublime"--

"That a tempest-cleaving swan Of the songs of Albion, Driven from his ancestral streams By the might of evil dreams, Found a nest in thee; and Ocean Welcomed him with such emotion, That its joy grew his, and sprung From his lips like music flung O'er a mighty thunder-fit, Chastening terror."]

[lx] _The Past at least is mine--whate'er may come_. _But when the heart is full the lips must needs lie dumb_.-- [MS. M. erased.] ----_or else mine now were cold and dumb_.--[MS. M.]

[403] {344} _Tannen_ is the plural of _tanne_, a species of fir peculiar to the Alps, which only thrives in very rocky parts, where scarcely soil sufficient for its nourishment can be found. On these spots it grows to a greater height than any other mountain tree.

[Byron did not "know German" (Letter to Murray, June 7, 1820), and he may, as Mr. Tozer suggests, have supposed that the word "tannen" denoted not "fir trees" generally, but a particular kind of fir tree. He refers, no doubt, to the Ebeltanne (_Abies pectinata_), which is not a native of this country, but grows at a great height on the Swiss Alps and throughout the mountainous region of Central Europe.]

[ly] _But there are minds which as the Tannen grow_.--[MS. erased.]

[lz] _Of shrubless granite_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[ma] {345} _In rocks and unsupporting places_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[404] [Cicero, _De Finibus_, II. xxix., controverts the maxim of Epicurus, that a great sorrow is necessarily of short duration, a prolonged sorrow necessarily light: "Quod autem magnum dolorem brevem longinquum levem esse dicitis, id non intelligo quale sit, video enim et magnos et eosdem bene longinquos dolores." But the sentiment is adopted by Montaigne (1. xiv.), ed. 1580, p. 66: "Tu ne la sentiras guiere long temps, si tu la sens trop; elle mettra fin à soy ou à toy; l'un et l'autre revient a un." ("Si tu ne la portes; elle t'emportera," note.) And again by Sir Thomas Brown, "Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves" (see Darmesteter, _Childe Harold_, 1882, p. 193). Byron is not refining upon these conceits, but is drawing upon his own experience. Suffering which does not kill is subject to change, and "continueth not in one stay;" but it remains within call, and returns in an hour when we are not aware.]

[405] {346} [Compare Bishop Blougram's lament on the instability of unfaith--

"Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch, A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, A chorus-ending from Euripides,-- And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears.

* * * * *

To rap and knock and enter in our soul, Take hands and dance there." Browning's _Poetical Works_, 1869, v. 268.]

[mb] _A tone of music--eventide in spring_. or, ----_twilight--eve in spring_.--[MS. M, erased.]

[406] {347} [Compare Scott's _Lady of the Lake_, I. xxxiii. lines 21, 22--

"They come, in dim procession led, The cold, the faithless, and the dead."]

[407] {348} ["Friuli's mountains" are the Julian Alps, which lie to the north of Trieste and north-east of Venice, "the hoar and aëry Alps towards the north," which Julian and Count Maddalo (_vide post_, p. 349) saw from the Lido. But the Alpine height along which "a sea of glory" streamed--"the peak of the far Rhætian hill" (stanza xxviii. line 4)--must lie to the westward of Venice, in the track of the setting sun.]

[408] The above description may seem fantastical or exaggerated to those who have never seen an Oriental or an Italian sky; yet it is but a literal and hardly sufficient delineation of an August evening (the eighteenth), as contemplated in one of many rides along the banks of the Brenta, near La Mira.

[Compare Shelley's _Julian and Maddalo_ (_Poetical Works_, 1895, i. 343)--

"How beautiful is sunset, when the glow Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee, Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy! * * * * * ... We stood Looking upon the evening, and the flood, Which lay between the city and the shore, Paved with the image of the sky ... the hoar And aëry Alps towards the north appeared, Thro' mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark reared Between the East and West; and half the sky Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry, Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew Down the steep West into a wondrous hue, Brighter than burning gold."]

[409] {349} [The Brenta rises in Tyrol, and flowing past Padua falls into the Lagoon at Fusina. Mira, or La Mira, where Byron "colonized" in the summer of 1817, and again in 1819, is on the Brenta, some six or seven miles inland from the Lagoon.]

[410] {350} [The Abbé de Sade, in his _Mémoires pour la vie de Pétrarque_ (1767), affirmed, on the strength of documentary evidence, that the Laura of the sonnets, born de Noves, was the wife of his ancestor, Hugo de Sade, and the mother of a large family. "Gibbon," says Hobhouse (note viii.), "called the abbé's memoirs a 'labour of love' (see _Decline and Fall_, chap. lxx. note 1), and followed him with confidence and delight;" but the poet James Beattie (in a letter to the Duchess of Gordon, August 17, 1782) disregarded them as a "romance," and, more recently, "an ingenious Scotchman" [Alexander Fraser Tytler (Lord Woodhouselee)], in an _Historical and Critical Essay on the Life and Character of Petrarch_ (1810), had re-established "the ancient prejudice" in favour of Laura's virginity. Hobhouse appears, but his note is somewhat ambiguous, to adopt the view of "the ingenious Scotchman." To pass to contemporary criticism, Dr. Garnett, in his _History of Italian Literature_, 1898 (pp. 66-71), without attempting to settle "the everlasting controversy," regards the abbé's documentary evidence as for the most part worthless, and, relying on the internal evidence of the sonnets and the dialogue, and on the facts of Petrarch's life as established by his correspondence (a complete series of Petrarch's letters was published by Giuseppe Fracassetti, in 1859), inclines to the belief that it was the poet's status as a cleric, and not a husband and family, which proved a bar to his union with Laura. With regard, however, to "one piece of documentary evidence," namely, Laura de Sade's will, Dr. Garnett admits that, if this were producible, and, on being produced, proved genuine, the coincidence of the date of the will, April 3, 1348, with a note in Petrarch's handwriting, dated April 6, 1348, which records the death of Laura, would almost establish the truth of the abbé's theory "in the teeth of all objections."]

[411] {351} ["He who would seek, as I have done, the last memorials of the life and death of Petrarch in that sequestered Euganean village [Arquà is about twelve miles south-west of Padua], will still find them there. A modest house, apparently of great antiquity, passes for his last habitation. A chair in which he is said to have died is shown there. And if these details are uncertain, there is no doubt that the sarcophagus of red marble, supported on pillars, in the churchyard of Arquà, contains, or once contained, his mortal remains. Lord Byron and Mr. Hobhouse visited the spot more than sixty years ago in a sceptical frame of mind; for doubts had at that time been thrown on the very existence of Laura; and the varied details of the poet's life, which are preserved with so much fidelity in his correspondence, were almost forgotten."--_Petrarch_, by H. Reeve, 1879, p. 14. In a letter to Hoppner, September 12, 1817, Byron says that he was moved "to turn aside in a second visit to Arquà." Two years later, October, 1819, he in vain persuaded Moore "to spare a day or two to go with me to Arquà. I should like," he said, "to visit that tomb with you--a pair of poetical pilgrims--eh, Tom, what say you?" But "Tom" was for Rome and Lord John Russell, and ever afterwards bewailed the lost opportunity "with wonder and self-reproach" (_Life_, p. 423; _Life_, by Karl Elze, 1872, p. 235).]

[mc] {352} _His mansion and his monument_----.--[MS. M., D. erased.]

[md] ----_formed his sepulchral fane_.--[MS. M.]

[412] [Compare Wordsworth's _Ode_, "Intimations of," etc., xi. lines 9-11--

"The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober colouring from an eye That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality."]

[413] ["Euganeis istis in collibus ... domum parvam sed delectabilem et honestam struxi ... hic quanquam æger corpore, tranquillus animo frater dego, sine tumultibus, sine erroribus, sine curis, legens semper et scribens, Deum laudans."--Petrarca, _Epistolæ Seniles_, xiv. 6 (_Opera_, Basileæ, 1581, p. 938).

See, too, the notes to _Arquà_ (Rogers's _Italy: Poems_, 1852, ii. 105-109), which record the pilgrimage of other poets, Boccaccio and Alfieri, to the great laureate's tomb; and compare with Byron's stanzas the whole of that exquisite cameo, delicate and yet durable as if graved on chalcedony.]

[me] {353} _Society's the school where taught to live._--[MS. M. erased.]

[mf] ----_the soul with God must strive_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[414] The struggle is to the full as likely to be with demons as with our better thoughts. Satan chose the wilderness for the temptation of our Saviour. And our unsullied John Locke preferred the presence of a child to complete solitude.

["He always chose to have company with him, if it were only a child; for he loved children, and took pleasure in talking with those that had been well trained" (_Life of John Locke_, by H. R. Fox-Bourne, ii. 537). Lady Masham's daughter Esther, and "his wife" Betty Clarke, aged eleven years, were among his child-friends.]

[mg] {354} _Which dies not nor can ever pass away_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[mh] _The tomb a hell--and life one universal gloom_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[415] [Byron passed a single day at Ferrara in April, 1817; went over the castle, cell, etc., and a few days after wrote _The Lament of Tasso_, the manuscript of which is dated April 20, 1817. The Fourth Canto of _Childe Harold_ was not begun till the end of June in the same year.]

[416] [Of the ancient family of Este, Marquesses of Tuscany, Azzo V. was the first who obtained power in Ferrara in the twelfth century. A remote descendant, Nicolo III. (b. 1384, d. 1441), founded the University of Parma. He married for his second wife Parisina Malatesta (the heroine of Byron's _Parisina_, published February, 1816), who was beheaded for adultery in 1425. His three sons, Lionel (d. 1450), the friend of Poggio Bracciolini; Borso (d. 1471), who established printing in his states; and Ercolo (d. 1505), the friend of Boiardo,--were all patrons of letters and fosterers of the Renaissance. Their successor, Alphonso I. (1486-1534), who married Lucrezia Borgia, 1502, honoured himself by attaching Ariosto to his court, and it was his grandson, Alphonso II. (d. 1597), who first befriended and afterwards, on the score of lunacy, imprisoned Tasso in the Hospital of Sant' Anna (1579-86).]

[417] {355} [It is a fact that Tasso was an involuntary inmate of the Hospital of Sant' Anna at Ferrara for seven years and four months--from March, 1579, to July, 1586--but the causes, the character, and the place of his imprisonment have been subjects of legend and misrepresentation. It has long been known and acknowledged (see Hobhouse's _Historical Illustrations_, 1818, pp. 5-31) that a real or feigned passion for Duke Alphonso's sister, Leonora d'Este, was not the cause or occasion of his detention, and that the famous cell or dungeon ("nine paces by six, and about seven high") was not "the original place of the poet's confinement." It was, as Shelley says (see his letter to Peacock, November 7, 1818), "a very decent dungeon;" but it was not Tasso's. The setting of the story was admitted to be legendary, but the story itself, that a poet was shut up in a madhouse because a vindictive magnate resented his love of independence and impatience of courtly servitude, was questioned, only to be reasserted as historical. The publication of Tasso's letters by Guasti, in 1853, a review of Tasso's character and career in Symonds's _Renaissance in Italy_, and, more recently, Signor Angelo Solerti's monumental work, _Vita di Torquato Tasso_ (1895), which draws largely upon the letters of contemporaries, the accounts of the ducal court, and other documentary evidence, have in a great measure exonerated the duke at the expense of the unhappy poet himself. Briefly, Tasso's intrigues with rival powers--the Medici at Florence, the papal court, and the Holy Office at Bologna--aroused the alarm and suspicion of the duke, whilst his general demeanour and his outbursts of violence and temper compelled, rather than afforded, a pretext for his confinement. Before his final and fatal return to Ferrara, he had been duly warned that he must submit to be treated as a person of disordered intellect, and that if he continued to throw out hints of designs upon his life and of persecution in high places, he would be banished from the ducal court and dominions. But return he would, and at an inauspicious moment, when the duke was preoccupied with the ceremonies and festivities of a third marriage. No one attended to him or took heed of his arrival; and, to quote his own words, "in a fit of madness" he broke out into execrations of the ducal court and family, and of the people of Ferrara. For the offence he was shut up in the Hospital of Sant' Anna, and for many months treated as an ordinary lunatic. Of the

## particulars of his treatment during these first eight months of his

confinement, apart from Tasso's own letters, there is no evidence. The accounts of the hospital are lost, and the _Libri di spesa_ (_R. Arch. di Stato in Modena_; _Camer. Ducale: Casa_; _Amministrazione_, Solerti, iii. _Docu_. 47) do not commence till November 20, 1579. Two years later, the _Libri di spenderia_ (Solerti, in. _Docu_. 51), from January, 1582, onward, show that he was put on a more generous diet; and it is known that a certain measure of liberty and other indulgences were gradually accorded. There can, however, be little doubt that for many months his food was neglected and medical attendance withheld. His statement, that he was denied the rites of the Church, cannot be gainsaid. He was regarded as a lunatic, and, as such, he would not be permitted either to make his confession or to communicate. Worse than all, there was the terrible solitude. "E sovra tutto," he writes (May, 1580), "m'affligge la solitudine, mia crudele e natural nimica." No wonder the attacks of delirium, the "unwonted lights," the conference with a familiar spirit, followed in due course. Byron and Shelley were ignorant of the facts; and we know that their scorn and indignation were exaggerated and misplaced. But the "pity of it" remains, that the grace and glory of his age was sacrificed to ignorance and fear, if not to animosity and revenge. (See _Tasso_, by E. J. Hasell; _History of the Italian Renaissance_, by J. A. Symonds; _Quart. Rev._, October, 1895, No. 364, art. x.; _Vita di Torquato Tasso_, 1895, i. 312-314, 410-412, etc.)]

[mi] {357} _And thou for no one useful purpose born_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[418] [Solerti (_Vita_, i. 418) combats the theory advanced by Hobhouse (see _note_ x.), that Lionardo Salviati, in order to curry favour with Alphonso, was responsible for "the opposition which the Jerusalem encountered from the Cruscan Academy." He assigns their unfavourable criticism to literary sentiment or prejudice, and not to personal animosity or intrigue. The _Gerusalemme Liberata_ was dedicated to the glory of the house of Este; and, though the poet was in disgrace, the duke was not to be propitiated by an attack upon the poem. Moreover, Salviati did not publish his theses in his own name, but under a _nom de guerre_, "L'Infarinato."]

[mj] {358} _And baffled Gaul whose rancour could allow_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[mk] _Which grates upon the teeth_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[419] [Hobhouse, in his note x., quotes Boileau, but not in full. The passage runs thus--

"Tous les jours, à la cour, un sot de qualité Peut juger de travers avec impunité, A Malherbe, à Racan, préfère Théophile, Et le clinquant du Tasse à tout l'or de Virgile."

Perhaps he divined that the phrase, "un sot de qualité," might glance back on a "noble author," who was about to admit that he could not savour Horace, and who turned aside from Mantua and memories of Virgil to visit Ferrara and the "cell" where Tasso was "encaged." (See Darmesteter's _Notes to Childe Harold_, pp. 201, 217.)

If "the Youth with brow serene," as Hugo calls him, had lived to read _Dédain. A Lord Byron, en_ 1811, he would have passed a somewhat different criticism on French poetry in general--

"En vain vos légions l'environnent sans nombre, Il n'a qu'à se lever pour couvrir de son ombre A la fois tous vos fronts; Il n'a qu'à dire un mot pour couvrir vos voix grèles, Comme un char en passant couvre le bruit des ailes De mille moucherons!" _Les Feuilles d'Automne_, par Victor Hugo, Bruxelles, 1833, pp. 59, 63.]

[ml] {359} _Could mount into a mind like thine_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[mm] ----_they would not form the Sun_.--[MS. M.]

[420] [In a letter to Murray (August 7, 1817) Byron throws out a hint that Scott might not like being called "the Ariosto of the North," and Murray seems to have caught at the suggestion. "With regard to 'the Ariosto of the North,'" rejoins Byron (September 17, 1817), "surely their themes, Chivalry, war, and love, were as like as can be; and as to the compliment, if you knew what the Italians think of Ariosto, you would not hesitate about that.... If you think Scott will dislike it, say so, and I will expunge." Byron did not know that when Scott was at college at Edinburgh he had "had the audacity to produce a composition in which he weighed Homer against Ariosto, and pronounced him wanting in the balance," or that he "made a practice of reading through ... the _Orlando_ of Ariosto once every year" (see _Memoirs of the Life, etc._, 1871, pp. 12, 747); but the parallel had suggested itself. The key-note of "the harpings of the north," the chivalrous strain of "shield, lance, and brand, and plume and scarf," of "gentle courtesy," of "valour, lion-mettled lord," which the "Introduction to _Marmion_" preludes, had been already struck in the opening lines of the _Orlando Furioso_--

"Le Donne, i Cavaliér', l'arme, gli amori, Le cortesíe, l'audaci imprese io canto."

Scott, we may be assured, was neither disconcerted nor uplifted by the parallel. Many years before (July 6, 1812), Byron had been at pains to inform him that so august a critic as the Prince Regent "preferred you to every bard past and present," and "spoke alternately of Homer and yourself." Of the "placing" and unplacing of poets there is no end. Byron had already been sharply rebuked by the _Edinburgh Review_ for describing _Christabel_ as a "wild and singularly original and beautiful poem," and his appreciation of Scott provoked the expostulation of a friendlier critic. "Walter Scott," wrote Francis Hodgson, in his anonymous _Monitor of Childe Harold_ (1818), "(_credite posteri_, or rather _præposteri_), is designated in the Fourth Canto of _Childe Harold_ as 'the Northern Ariosto,' and (droller still) Ariosto is denominated 'the Southern Scott.' This comes of mistaking horse-chestnuts for chestnut horses."]

[421] {361} The two stanzas xlii. and xliii. are, with the exception of a line or two, a translation of the famous sonnet of Filicaja:--"Italia, Italia, O tu, cui feo la sorte!"--_Poesie Toscane_ 1823, p. 149.

["Italia, Italia, o tu cui feo la sorte Dono infelice di bellezza, ond'hai Funesta dote d'infiniti guai Che in fronte scritti per gran doglia porte: Deh fossi tu men bella, o almen più forte, Onde assai più ti paventasse, o assai T'amasse men, chi del tuo bello ai rai Par che si strugga, e pur ti sfida a morte, Chè or giù dall' Alpi non vedrei torrenti Scender d'armati, nè di sangue tinta Bever l'onda del Po gallici armenti; Nè te vedrei, del non tuo ferro cinta, Pugnar col braccio di straniere genti, Per servir sempre, o vincitrice, o vinta."]

[mn] _And on thy brow in characters of flame_ _To write the words of sorrow and of shame_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[mo] ----_unbetrayed_ _To death by thy vain charms_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[422] {362} The celebrated letter of Servius Sulpicius to Cicero, on the death of his daughter, describes as it then was, and now is, a path which I often traced in Greece, both by sea and land, in different journeys and voyages. "On my return from Asia, as I was sailing from Ægina towards Megara, I began to contemplate the prospect of the countries around me: Ægina was behind, Megara before me; Piræus on the right, Corinth on the left: all which towns, once famous and flourishing, now lie overturned and buried in their ruins. Upon this sight, I could not but think presently within myself, Alas! how do we poor mortals fret and vex ourselves if any of our friends happen to die or be killed, whose life is yet so short, when the carcasses of so many noble cities lie here exposed before me in one view."--See Middleton's _Cicero_, 1823, ii. 144.

[The letter is to be found in Cicero's _Epist. ad Familiares_, iv. 5. Byron, on his return from Constantinople on July 14, 1810, left Hobhouse at the Island of Zea, and made his own way to Athens. As the vessel sailed up the Saronic Gulf, he would observe the "prospect" which Sulpicius describes.]

[mp] {363} _These carcases of cities_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[423] ["By the events of the years 1813 and 1814, the house of Austria gained possession of all that belonged to her in Italy, either before or in consequence of the Peace of Campo Formio (October 17, 1797). A small portion of Ferrara, to the north of the Po (which had formed part of the Papal dominions), was ceded to her, as were the Valteline, Bormio, Chiavenna, and the ancient republic of Ragusa. The emperor constituted all these possessions into a separate and particular state, under the title of the kingdom of Venetian Lombardy."--Koch's _History of Europe_, p. 234.]

[424] {364} It is Poggio, who, looking from the Capitoline hill upon ruined Rome, breaks forth into the exclamation, "Ut nunc omni decore nudata, prostrata jaceat, instar Gigantei cadaveris corrupti atque undique exesi."

[See _De Fortunæ Varietate_, ap. _Nov. Thes. Ant. Rom._, ap. Sallengre, i. 502.]

[425] [Compare Milton, _Sonnet_ xxii.--

" ... my noble task, Of which all Europe talks from side to side."]

[mq] {365} _Where Luxury might willingly be born_. _And buried Learning looks forth into fresher morn_,-- [MS. M. erased.]

[426] [The wealth which permitted the Florentine nobility to indulge their taste for modern, that is, refined luxury was derived from success in trade. For example, Giovanni de' Medici (1360-1428), the father of Cosmo and great-grand-father of Lorenzo de' Medici, was a banker and Levantine merchant. As for the Renaissance, to say nothing of Petrarch of Florentine parentage, two of the greatest Italian scholars and humanists--Ficino, born A.D. 1430, and Poliziano, born 1454--were Florentines; and Poggio was born A.D. 1380, at Terra Nuova on Florentine soil.]

[mr] _There, too, the Goddess breathes in stone and fills_.--[MS. M.]

[427] [The statue of Venus de' Medici, which stands in the Tribune of the Uffizzi Gallery at Florence, is said to be a late Greek (first or second century B.C.) copy of an early reproduction, of the Cnidian Aphrodite, the work, perhaps, of one of his sons, Kephisodotos or Timarchos. (See _Histoire de la Sculpture Grecque_, par Maxime Collignon, Paris, 1897, ii. 641.) In a Catalogue Raissonné of _La Galerie de Florence_, 1804, in the editor's possession, which opens with an eloquent tribute to the enlightenment of the Medici, _la fameuse Vénus_ is conspicuous by her absence. She had been deported to Paris by Napoleon, but when Lord Byron spent a day in Florence in April, 1817, and returned "drunk with Beauty" from the two galleries, the lovely lady, thanks to the much-abused "Powers," was once more in her proper shrine.]

[ms] ----_and we draw_ _As from a fountain of immortal hills_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[428] {366} [Byron's contempt for connoisseurs and dilettanti finds expression in _English Bards, etc._, lines 1027-1032, and, again, in _The Curse of Minerva_, lines 183, 184. The "stolen copy" of _The Curse_ was published in the _New Monthly Magazine_ (_Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 453) under the title of _The Malediction of Minerva; or, The Athenian Marble-Market_, a title (see line 7) which must have been invented by and not for Byron. He returns to the charge in _Don Juan_, Canto 11. stanza cxviii. lines 5-9--

" ... a statuary, (A race of mere impostors, when all's done-- I've seen much finer women ripe and real, Than all the nonsense of their stone ideal)."

Even while confessing the presence and power of "triumphal Art" in sculpture, one of "the two most artificial of the Arts" (see his letter to Murray, April 26, 1817), then first revealed to him at Florence, he took care that his enthusiasm should not be misunderstood. He had made bitter fun of the art-talk of collectors, and he was unrepentant, and, moreover, he was "not careful" to incur a charge of indifference to the fine arts in general. Among the "crowd" which found their place in his complex personality, there was "the barbarian," and there was "the philistine," and there was, too, the humourist who took a subtle pleasure in proclaiming himself "a plain man," puzzled by subtleties, and unable to catch the drift of spirits finer than his own.]

[429] {367}

[Greek: O)phthalmou\s e(stia~n] "Atque oculos pascat uterque suos." Ovid., _Amor_., lib. ii. [Eleg. 2, line 6].

[Compare, too, Lucretius, lib. i. lines 36-38--

"Atque ita, suspiciens tereti cervice reposta, Pascit amore avidos, inhians in te, Dea, visus; Eque tuo pendet resupini spiritus ore;"

and _Measure for Measure_, act ii. sc. 2, line 179--

"And feast upon her eyes."]

[mt] {368} _Glowing and all-diffused_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[430] [As the immortals, for love's sake, divest themselves of their godhead, so do mortals, in the ecstasy of passion, recognize in the object of their love the incarnate presence of deity. Love, like music, can raise a "mortal to the skies" and "bring an angel down." In this stanza there is, perhaps, an intentional obscurity in the confusion of ideas, which are "thrown out" for the reader to shape for himself as he will or can.]

[mu] ----_and our Fate_----[MS. M.]

[431] {369} ["The church of Santa Croce contains much illustrious nothing. The tombs of Macchiavelli, Michael Angelo, Galileo Galilei, and Alfieri make it the Westminster Abbey of Italy" (Letter to Murray, April 26, 1817). Michael Angelo, Alfieri, and Macchiavelli are buried in the south aisle of the church; Galileo, who was first buried within the convent, now rests with his favourite pupil, Vincenzo Viviani, in a vault in the south aisle. Canova's monument to Alfieri was erected at the expense of his so-called widow, Louise, born von Stolberg, and (1772-78) consort of Prince Charles Edward.]

[432] [Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803) is one of numerous real and ideal personages with whom, as he tells us (_Life_, p. 644), Byron was wont to be compared. Moore perceives and dwells on the resemblance. A passage in Alfieri's autobiography (_La Vie de V. A. écrite par Lui-même_, Paris, 1809, p. 17) may have suggested the parallel--

"Voici une esquisse du caractère que je manifestais dans les premières anneés de ma raison naissante. Taciturne et tranquille pour l'ordinaire, mais quelquefois extrêmement pétulant et babillard, presque toujours dans les extrêmes, obstiné et rebelle à la force, fort soumis aux avis qu'on me donnait avec amitié, contenu plutôt par la crainte d'être grondé que par toute autre chose, d'une timidité excessive, et inflexible quand on voulait me prendre à rebours."

The resemblance, as Byron admits, "related merely to our apparent personal dispositions." Both were noble, both were poets, both were "patrician republicans," and both were lovers of pleasure as well as lovers and students of literature; but their works do not provoke comparison. "The quality of 'a narrow elevation' which [Matthew] Arnold finds in Alfieri," is not characteristic of the author of _Childe Harold_ and _Don Juan_.

Of this stanza, however, Alfieri's fine sonnet to Florence may have been the inspiration. I have Dr. Garnett's permission to cite the following lines of his admirable translation (_Italian Literature_, 1898, p. 321):--

"Was Angelo born here? and he who wove Love's charm with sorcery of Tuscan tongue, Indissolubly blent? and he whose song Laid bare the world below to world above? And he who from the lonely valley clove The azure height and trod the stars among? And he whose searching mind the monarch's wrong, Fount of the people's misery did prove?"]

[mv] {370} _Might furnish forth a Universe_----.--[MS. M.]

[mw] _And ruin of thy beauty, shall deny_ _And hath denied, to every other sky_ _Spirits that soar like thine; from thy decay_ {_Still springs some son of the Divinity_} {_Still springs some work of the Divinity_}--[D.] _And gilds thy ruins with reviving ray_-- _And what these were of yore--Canova is to-day_.--[MS. M.]

[433] [Compare "Lines on the Bust of Helen by Canova," which were sent in a letter to Murray, November 25, 1816--

"In this beloved marble view, Above the works and thoughts of man, What nature _could_, but _would not_, do, And Beauty and Canova can."

In _Beppo_ (stanza xlvi.), which was written in October, 1817, there is a further allusion to the genius of Canova.]

[mx] {371} _Their great Contemporary_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[434] [Dante died at Ravenna, September 14, 1321, and was buried in the Church of S. Francesco. His remains were afterwards transferred to a mausoleum in the friars' cemetery, on the north side of the church, which was raised to his memory by his friend and patron, Guido da Polenta. The mausoleum was restored more than once, and rebuilt in its present form in 1780, at the cost of Cardinal Luigi Valenti Gonzaga. On the occasion of Dante's sexcentenary, in 1865, it was discovered that at some unknown period the skeleton, with the exception of a few small bones which remained in an urn which formed part of Gonzaga's structure, had been placed for safety in a wooden box, and enclosed in a wall of the old Braccioforte Chapel, which lies outside the church towards the Piazza. "The bones found in the wooden box were placed in the mausoleum with great pomp and exultation, the poet being now considered the symbol of a united Italy. The wooden box itself has been removed to the public library."--_Handbook far Northern Italy_, p. 539, note.

The house which Byron occupied during his first visit to Ravenna--June 8 to August 9, 1819--is close to the Cappella Braccioforte. In January, 1820, when he wrote the Fourth Canto of _Don Juan_ ("I pass each day where Dante's bones are laid," stanza civ.), he was occupying a suite of apartments in the Palazzo Guiccioli, No. 328 in the Via di Porta Adriana. Compare Rogers's _Italy_, "Bologna," _Poems_, ii. 118--

"Ravenna! where from Dante's sacred tomb He had so oft, as many a verse declares, Drawn inspiration."]

[435] [The story is told in Livy, lib. xxxviii. cap. 53. "Thenceforth no more was heard of Africanus. He passed his days at Liternum [on the shore of Campania], without thought or regret of Rome. Folk say that when he came to die he gave orders that he should be buried on the spot, and that there, and not at Rome, a monument should be raised over his sepulchre. His country had been ungrateful--no Roman funeral for him." It is said that his sepulchre bore the inscription: "Ingrata patria, cineres meos non habebis." According to another tradition, he was buried with his family at the Porta Capena, by the Cælian Hill.]

[436] [Compare Lucan, _Pharsalia_, i. I--"Bella per Emathios plusquam civilia campos."]

[437] [Petrarch's _Africa_ brought him on the same day (August 23, 1340) offers of the laurel wreath of poetry from the University of Paris and from the Senate of Rome. He chose in favour of Rome, and was crowned on the Capitol, Easter Day, April 8, 1341. "The poet appeared in a royal mantle ... preceded by twelve noble Roman youths clad in scarlet, and the heralds and trumpeters of the Roman Senate."--_Petrarch_, by Henry Reeve, p. 92.]

[438] {372} [Tomasini, in the _Petrarca Redivivus_ (pp. 168-172, ed. 1650), assigns the outrage to a party of Venetians who "broke open Petrarch's tomb, in 1630, and took away some of his bones, probably with the object of selling them." Hobhouse, in _note_ ix., says, "that one of the arms was stolen by a Florentine," but does not quote his authority. (See the notes to H. F. Tozer's _Childe Harold_, p. 302.)]

[439] [Giovanni Boccaccio was born at Paris (or Certaldo) in 1313, passed the greater part of his life at Florence, died and was buried at Certaldo, whence his family are said to have sprung, in 1375. His sepulchre, which stood in the centre of the Church of St. Michael and St. James, known as the Canonica, was removed in 1783, on the plea that a recent edict forbidding burial in churches applied to ancient interments. "The stone that covered the tomb was broken, and thrown aside as useless into the adjoining cloisters" (_Handbook for Central Italy_, p. 171). "Ignorance," pleads Hobhouse, "may share the crime with bigotry." But it is improbable that the "hyæna bigots," that is, the ecclesiastical authorities, were ignorant that Boccaccio was a bitter satirist of Churchmen, or that "he transferred the functions and histories of Hebrew prophets and prophetesses, and of Christian saints and apostles, nay, the highest mysteries and most awful objects of Christian Faith, to the names and drapery of Greek and Roman mythology."--(Unpublished MS. note of S. T. Coleridge, written in his copy of Boccaccio's _Opere_, 4 vols. 1723.) They had their revenge on Boccaccio, and Byron has had his revenge on them.]

[my] _Boccaccio to his parent earth, bequeathed_ _The dust derived from thence--doth it not lie_ _With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed_ _O'er him who formed the tongue of Italy_ _That music in itself whose harmony_ _Asks for no tune to make it song; No--torn_ _From earth--and scattered while the silent sky_ _Hushed its indignant Winds--with quiet scorn_ _The Hyæna bigots thus forbade a World to mourn_.-- [D. erased.]

[440] {374} [Compare _Beppo_, stanza xliv.--

"I love the language, that soft bastard Latin, Which melts like kisses from a female mouth, And sounds as if it should be writ on satin, With syllables which breathe of the sweet South."

Compare, too, the first sentence of a letter which Byron wrote "on a blank leaf of the volume of 'Corinne,'" which Teresa [Guiccioli] left in forgetfulness in a garden in Bologna: "Amor Mio,--How sweet is this word in your Italian language!" (_Life of Lord Byron_, by Emilio Castelar, P. 145).]

[441] [By "Cæsar's pageant" Byron means the pageant decreed by Tiberius Cæsar. Compare _Don Juan_, Canto XV. stanza xlix.--

"And this omission, like that of the bust Of Brutus at the pageant of Tiberius."

At the public funeral of Junia, wife of Cassius and sister of Brutus, A.D. 22, the busts of her husband and brother were not allowed to be carried in the procession, because they had taken part in the assassination of Julius Cæsar. But none the less, "Præfulgebant Brutus et Cassius eo ipso quod effigies eorum non videbantur" (Tacitus, _Ann._, iii. 76). Their glory was conspicuous in men's minds, because their images were withheld from men's eyes. As Tacitus says elsewhere (iv. 26), "Negatus honor gloriam intendit."]

[mz] {375} _Shelter of exiled Empire_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[442] [The inscription on Ricci's monument to Dante, in the Church of Santa Croce--"A majoribus ter frustra decretum" --refers to the vain attempts which Florence had made to recover the remains of her exiled and once-neglected poet.]

[443] ["I also went to the Medici chapel--fine frippery in great slabs of various expensive stones, to commemorate fifty rotten and forgotten carcasses. It is unfinished, and will remain so" (Letter to Murray, April 26, 1817). The bodies of the grand-dukes lie in the crypt of the Cappella dei Principi, or Medicean Chapel, which forms part of the Church of San Lorenzo. The walls of the chapel are encrusted with rich marbles and "stones of price, to garniture the edifice." The monuments to Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici, son and grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent, with Michael Angelo's allegorical figures of Night and Morning, Aurora and Twilight, are in the adjoining Cappella dei Depositi, or Sagrestia Nuova.]

[444] {376} [The Duomo, crowned with Brunelleschi's cupola, and rich in sculpture and stained glass, is, as it were, a symbol of Florence, the shrine of art. Browning, in his inspired vision of St. Peter's at Rome in _Christmas Eve_, catches Byron's note to sound a loftier strain--

"Is it really on the earth This miraculous dome of God?"

"It is somewhere mentioned that Michael Angelo, when he set out from Florence to build the dome of St. Peter's, turned his horse round in the road to contemplate that of the cathedral, as it rose in the grey of the morning from among the pines and cypresses of the city, and that he said, after a pause, 'Come te non voglio! Meglio di te non posso.' He never, indeed, spoke of it but with admiration; and, if we may believe tradition, his tomb, by his own desire, was to be so placed in the Santa Croce as that from it might be seen, when the doors of the church stood open, that noble work of Brunelleschi."--Rogers's _Italy: Poems_, ii. 315, note to p. 133, line 5--"Beautiful Florence."]

[445] {377} [Byron, contrary to traditional use (see Wordsworth's sonnet, "Near the Lake of Thrasymene;" and Rogers's _Italy_, see note, p. 378), sounds the final vowel in Thrasym[=e]né. The Greek, Latin, and Italian equivalents bear him out; but, most probably, he gave Thrasymene and himself an extra syllable "vel metri vel euphoniæ causâ."]

[na] _Where Courage perished in unyielding files_.--[MS. M.]

[446] ["Tantusque fuit ardor armorum, adeo intentus pugnæ animus, ut eum motum terræ, qui multarum urbium Italiæ magnas partes, prostravit, avertitque cursu rapidos amnes, marce fluminibus invexit, montes lapsu ingenti proruit, nemo pugnantium senserit" (Livy, xxii. 5). Polybius says nothing about an earthquake; and Ihne (_Hist, of Rome_, ii. 207-210) is also silent; but Pliny (_Hist. Nat._, ii. 84) and Coelius Antipater (ap. Cic., _De Div._, i. 35), who wrote his _Annales_ about a century after the battle of Lake Thrasymenus (B.C. 217), synchronize the earthquake and the battle. Compare, too, Rogers's _Italy_, "The Pilgrim:" _Poems_, 1852, ii. 152--

"From the Thrasymene, that now Slept in the sun, a lake of molten gold, And from the shore that once, when armies met, Rocked to and fro unfelt, so terrible The rage, the slaughter, I had turned away."

Compare, too, Wordsworth's sonnet (No. xii.), "Near the Lake of Thrasymene" (_Works_, 1888, p. 756)--

"When here with Carthage Rome to conflict came, An earthquake, mingling with the battle's shock, Checked not its rage; unfelt the ground did rock, Sword dropped not, javelin kept its deadly aim,-- Now all is sun-bright peace."]

[nb] _Fly to the clouds for refuge and withdraw_ _From their unsteady nests_----.--[MS. M.]

[nc] {379} _Made fat the earth_----.--[MS. M. erased]

[447] No book of travels has omitted to expatiate on the temple of the Clitumnus, between Foligno and Spoleto; and no site, or scenery, even in Italy, is more worthy a description. For an account of the dilapidation of this temple, the reader is referred to _Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold_, p. 35.

[448] [Compare Virgil, _Georg_., ii. 146--

"Hinc albi, Clitumne, greges et maxuma taurus Victima, sæpe tuo perfusi flumine sacro."

The waters of certain rivers were supposed to possess the quality of making the cattle which drank from them white. (See Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, ii. 103; and compare Silius Italicus, _Pun._, iv. 545, 546--

" ...et patulis Clitumnus in arvis Candentes gelido perfundit flumine tauros.")

For a charming description of Clitumnus, see Pliny's letter "Romano Suo," _Epist._, viii. 8: "At the foot of a little hill covered with old and shady cypress trees, gushes out a spring, which bursts out into a number of streamlets, all of different sizes. Having struggled, so to speak, out of its confinement, it opens out into a broad basin, so clear and transparent, that you may count the pebbles and little pieces of money which are thrown into it.... The banks are clothed with an abundance of ash and poplar, which are so distinctly reflected in the clear water that they seem to be growing at the bottom of the river, and can easily be counted.... Near it stands an ancient and venerable temple, in which is a statue of the river-god Clitumnus."--_Pliny's Letters_, by the Rev. A. Church and the Rev. W. J. Brodribb, 1872, p. 127.]

[449] {380} [The existing temple, now used as a chapel (St. Salvatore), can hardly be Pliny's _templum priscum_. Hobhouse, in his _Historical Illustrations_, pp. 37-41, defends the antiquity of the "façade, which consists of a pediment supported by four columns and two Corinthian piers, two of the columns with spiral fluting, the others covered with fish-scaled carvings" (_Handbook for Central Italy_, p. 289); but in the opinion of modern archæologists the whole of the structure belongs to the fourth or fifth century of the Christian era. It is, of course, possible, indeed probable, that ancient materials were used when the building was reconstructed. Pliny says the "numerous chapels" dedicated to other deities were scattered round the shrine of Clitumnus.]

[nd] _Upon a green declivity_----.--[MS. M.]

[450] {381} ["On my way back [from Rome], close to the temple by its banks, I got some famous trout out of the river Clitumnus, the prettiest little stream in all poesy."--Letter to Murray, June 4, 1817.]

[ne] _There is a course where Lovers' evening tales_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[451] [By "disgust," a prosaic word which seems to mar a fine stanza, Byron does not mean "distaste," aversion from the nauseous, but "tastelessness," the inability to enjoy taste. Compare the French "Avoir du dégout pour la vie," "To be out of conceit with life." Byron was "a lover of Nature," but it was seldom that he felt her "healing power," or was able to lose himself in his surroundings. But now, for the moment, he experiences that sudden uplifting of the spirit in the presence of natural beauty which brings back "the splendour in the grass, the glory in the flower!"]

[nf] {382} _Making it as an emerald_----.--[D.]

[ng] _Leaps on from rock to rock--with mighty bound_.--[MS. M.]

[452] {383} I saw the Cascata del Marmore of Terni twice, at different periods--once from the summit of the precipice, and again from the valley below. The lower view is far to be preferred, if the traveller has time for one only; but in any point of view, either from above or below, it is worth all the cascades and torrents of Switzerland put together: the Staubach, Reichenbach, Pisse Vache, fall of Arpenaz, etc., are rills in comparative appearance. Of the fall of Schaffhausen I cannot speak, not yet having seen it.

[The Falls of Reichenbach are at Rosenlaui, between Grindelwald and Meiringen; the Salanfe or Pisse-Vache descends into the valley of the Rhone near Martigny; the Nant d'Arpenaz falls into the Arve near Magland, on the road between Cluses and Sallanches.]

[453] Of the time, place, and qualities of this kind of iris, the reader will see a short account, in a note to _Manfred_.[§1] The fall looks so much like "the Hell of waters," that Addison thought the descent alluded to by the gulf in which Alecto[§2] plunged into the infernal regions. It is singular enough, that two of the finest cascades in Europe should be artificial--this of the Velino, and the one at Tivoli. The traveller is strongly recommended to trace the Velino, at least as high as the little lake called _Pie' di Lup_. The Reatine territory was the Italian Tempe (Cicer., _Epist. ad Attic._, lib. iv. 15), and the ancient naturalists ["In lacu Velino nullo non die apparere arcus"] (Plin., _Hist. Nat._, lib. ii. cap. lxii.), amongst other beautiful varieties, remarked the daily rainbows of the lake Velinus. A scholar of great name has devoted a treatise to this district alone. See Ald. Manut., _De Reatina Urb Agroque_, ap. Sallengre, _Nov. Thes. Ant. Rom._, 1735, tom. i. p.773, _sq._

[The "Falls of the Anio," which passed over a wall built by Sixtus V., and plunged into the Grotto of Neptune, were greatly diminished in volume after an inundation which took place in 1826. The New Falls were formed in 1834.]

[[§1] _Manfred_, act ii. sc. 1, note. This Iris is formed by the rays of the sun on the lower part of the Alpine torrents; it is exactly like a rainbow come down to pay a visit, and so close that you may walk into it: this effect lasts till noon.]

[[§2] "This is the gulf through which Virgil's Alecto shoots herself into hell; for the very place, the great reputation of it, the fall of waters, the woods that encompass it, with the smoke and noise that arise from it, are all pointed at in the description ...

"'Est locus Italiæ ... ... densis hunc frondibus atrum Urguet utrimque latus nemoris, medioque fragosus Dat sonitum saxis et torto vertice torrens. Hic specus horrendum et sævi spiracula Ditis Monstrantur, ruptoque ingens Acheronte vorago Pestiferas aperit fauces.' _Æneid_, vii. 563-570.

It was indeed the most proper place in the world for a Fury to make her exit ... and I believe every reader's imagination is pleased when he sees the angry Goddess thus sinking, as it were, in a tempest, and plunging herself into Hell, amidst such a scene of horror and confusion."--_Remarks on several Parts of Italy_, by Joseph Addison, Esq., 1761, pp. 100. 101.

[nh] {385}

_Dares not ascend the summit_---- or, _Clothes a more rocky summit_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[454] In the greater part of Switzerland, the avalanches are known by the name of lauwine.

[Byron is again at fault with his German. "Lawine" (see Schiller, _Wilhelm Tell_, act iii. sc. 3) signifies an avalanche, not avalanches. In stanza xii. line 7 a similar mistake occurs. It may seem strange that, for the sake of local colouring, or for metrical purposes, he should substitute a foreign equivalent which required a note, for a fine word already in vogue. But in 1817 "avalanche" itself had not long been naturalized. Fifty years before, the Italian _valanca_ and _valanche_ had found their way into books of travel, but "avalanche" appears first (see _N. Eng. Dict._, art. "Avalanche") in 1789, in Coxe's _Trav. Switz._, xxxviii. ii. 3, and in poetry, perhaps, in Wordsworth's _Descriptive Sketches_, which were written in 1791-2. Like "cañon" and "veldt" in our own day, it might be regarded as on probation. But the fittest has survived, and Byron's unlovely and misbegotten "lauwine" has died a natural death.]

[ni] _But I have seen the virgin Jungfrau rear_.--[D.]

[455] {386} These stanzas may probably remind the reader of Ensign Northerton's remarks, "D--n Homo," etc.;[§] but the reasons for our dislike are not exactly the same. I wish to express, that we become tired of the task before we can comprehend the beauty; that we learn by rote before we can get by heart; that the freshness is worn away, and the future pleasure and advantage deadened and destroyed, by the didactic anticipation, at an age when we can neither feel nor understand the power of compositions which it requires an acquaintance with life, as well as Latin and Greek, to relish, or to reason upon. For the same reason, we never can be aware of the fulness of some of the finest passages of Shakspeare ("To be or not to be," for instance), from the habit of having them hammered into us at eight years old, as an exercise, not of mind, but of memory: so that when we are old enough to enjoy them, the taste is gone, and the appetite palled. In some parts of the continent, young persons are taught from more common authors, and do not read the best classics till their maturity. I certainly do not speak on this point from any pique or aversion towards the place of my education. I was not a slow, though an idle boy; and I believe no one could, or can be, more attached to Harrow than I have always been, and with reason;--a part of the time passed there was the happiest of my life; and my preceptor, the Rev. Dr. Joseph Drury, was the best and worthiest friend I ever possessed, whose warnings I have remembered but too well, though too late when I have erred,--and whose counsels I have but followed when I have done well or wisely. If ever this imperfect record of my feelings towards him should reach his eyes, let it remind him of one who never thinks of him but with gratitude and veneration--of one who would more gladly boast of having been his pupil, if, by more closely following his injunctions, he could reflect any honour upon his instructor.

[[§] "'Don't pretend to more ignorance than you have, Mr. Northerton; I suppose you have heard of the Greeks and Trojans, though, perhaps, you have never read Pope's Homer.'--'D--n Homer with all my heart,' says Northerton: 'I have the marks of him ... yet. There's Thomas of our regiment always carries a Homo in his pocket.'"--_The History of Tom Jones_, by H. Fielding, vii. 12.]

[456] [The construction is somewhat involved, but the meaning is obvious. As a schoolboy, the Horatian Muse could not tempt him to take the trouble to construe Horace; and, even now, Soracte brings back unwelcome memories of "confinement's lingering hour," say, "3 quarters of an hour past 3 o'clock in the afternoon, 3rd school" (see _Life_, p. 28). Moore says that the "interlined translations" on Byron's school-books are "a proof of the narrow extent of his classical attainments." He must soon have made up for lost time, and "conquered for the poet's sake," as numerous poetical translations from the classics, including the episode of Nisus and Euryalus, evidently a labour of love, testify. Nor, too, does the trouble he took and the pride he felt in _Hints from Horace_ correspond with this profession of invincible distaste.]

[nj] {388} _My mind to analyse_----.--[MS. M.]

[nk] _Yet such the inveterate impression_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[nl] ----_but what it then abhorred must still abhor_.--[MS. M.]

[nm] {389} ----_in her tearless woe_.--[MS. M.]

[457] [The tomb of the Scipios, by the Porta Latina, was discovered by the brothers Sassi, in May, 1780. It consists of "several chambers excavated in the tufa." One of the larger chambers contained the famous sarcophagus of L. Scipio Barbatus, the great-grandfather of Scipio Africanus, which is now in the Vatican in the Atrio Quadrate. When the sarcophagus was opened, in 1780, the skeleton was found to be entire. The bones were collected and removed by Angelo Quirini to his villa at Padua. The chambers contained numerous inscriptions, which were detached and removed to the Vatican. Hobhouse (_Hist. Illust_., pp. 169-171) is at pains to point out that the discovery of 1780 confirmed the authenticity of an inscription to Lucius, son of Barbatus Scipio, which had been brought to light in 1615, and rejected by the Roman antiquaries as a forgery. He prints two of the inscriptions (_Handbook for Rome_, pp. 278, 350, 351, ed. 1899).]

[458] [The sepulchres were rifled, says Hobhouse (_ibid_., p. 173), "either to procure the necessary relics for churches dedicated to Christian saints or martyrs, or" (a likelier hypothesis) "with the expectation of finding the ornaments ... buried with the dead. The sarcophagi were sometimes transported from their site and emptied for the reception of purer ashes." He instances those of Innocent II. and Clement XII., "which were certainly constructed for heathen tenants."]

[459] {390} [The reference is to the historical inundations of the Tiber, of which a hundred and thirty-two have been recorded from the foundation of the city down to December, 1870, when the river rose to fifty-six feet--thirty feet above its normal level.]

[460] [The Goths besieged and sacked Rome under Alaric, A.D. 410, and Totila, 546. Other barbarian invaders--Genseric, a Vandal, 455; Ricimer, a Sueve, 472; Vitiges, a Dalmatian, 537; Arnulph, a Lombard, 756--may come under the head of "Goth." "The Christian," "from motives of fanaticism"--Theodosius, for instance, in 426; and Stilicho, who burned the Sibylline books--despoiled, mutilated, and pulled down temples. Subsequently, popes, too numerous to mention, laid violent hands on the temples for purposes of repair, construction, and ornamentation of Christian churches. More than once ancient structures were converted into cannon-balls. There were, too, Christian invaders and sackers of Rome: Robert Guiscard (Hofmann calls him Wiscardus), in 1004; Frederic Barbarossa, in 1167; the Connétable de Bourbon, in 1527, may be instanced. "Time and War" speak for themselves. For "Flood," _vide supra_. As for "Fire," during the years 1082-84 the Emperor Henry IV. burnt "a great part of the Leonine city;" and Guiscard "burnt the town from the Flaminian gate to the Antonine column, and laid waste the Esquiline to the Lateran; thence he set fire to the region from that church to the Coliseum and the Capitol." Of earthquakes Byron says nothing; but there were earthquakes, e.g. in 422 and 1349. Another foe, a destroying angel who "wasteth at noonday," modern improvement, had not yet opened a seventh seal. (See _Historical Illustrations_, pp. 91-168.)]

[nn] {391} _She saw her glories one by one expire_.--[MS. M.]

[461] [Compare Macaulay's _Lays of Ancient Rome_, "Prophecy of Capys," stanza xxx.--

"Blest and thrice blest the Roman Who sees Rome's brightest day, Who sees that long victorious pomp Wind down the Sacred Way, And through the bellowing Forum, And round the Suppliant's Grove, Up to the everlasting gates Of Capitolian Jove."]

[no] _The double night of Ruin_----.--[MS. M.]

[462] [The construction is harsh and puzzling. Apparently the subject of "hath wrapt" is the "double night of ages;" the subjects of "wrap," the "night of ages" and the "night of Ignorance;" but, even so, the sentence is ambiguous. Not less amazing is the confusion of metaphors. Rome is a "desert," through which we steer, mounted, presumably, on a camel--the "ship of the desert." Mistaken associations are, as it were, stumbling-blocks; and no sooner have we verified an association, discovered a ruined temple in the exact site which Livy's "pictured page" has assigned to it--a discovery as welcome to the antiquarian as water to the thirsty traveller--than our theory is upset, and we perceive that we have been deluded by a mirage.]

[463] {392} Orosius gives 320 for the number of triumphs [i.e. from Romulus to the double triumph of Vespasian and Titus (_Hist._, vii. 9)]. He is followed by Panvinius; and Panvinius by Mr. Gibbon and the modern writers.

[np] _Alas, for Tully's voice, and Titus' sway_ _And Virgil's verse; the first and last must be_ _Her Resurrection_----.--[MS. M.]

[464] Certainly, were it not for these two traits in the life of Sylla, alluded to in this stanza, we should regard him as a monster unredeemed by any admirable quality. The _atonement_ of his voluntary resignation of empire may perhaps be accepted by us, as it seems to have satisfied the Romans, who if they had not respected must have destroyed him. There could be no mean, no division of opinion; they must have all thought, like Eucrates, that what had appeared ambition was a love of glory, and that what had been mistaken for pride was a real grandeur of soul.--("Seigneur, vous changez toutes mes idées, de la façon dont je vous vois agir. Je croyois que vous aviez de l'ambition, mais aucun amour pour la gloire; je voyois bien que votre âme étoit haute; mais je ne soupçonnois pas qu'elle fut grande."--_Dialogue de Sylla et d'Eucrate_.) _Considérations ... de la Grandeur des Romains, etc._, Paris, 1795, ii. 219. By Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu.

[Stanza lxxxiii. indicates the following events in the life of Sulla. In B.C. 81 he assumed the name of Felix (or, according to Plutarch, Epaphroditus, Plut, _Vitæ_, 1812, iv. 287), (line 1). Five years before this, B.C. 86, during the consulship of Marius and Cinna, his party had been overthrown, and his regulations annulled; but he declined to return to Italy until he had brought the war against Mithridates to a successful conclusion, B.C. 83 (lines 3-6). In B.C. 81 he was appointed dictator (line 7), and B.C. 79 he resigned his dictatorship and retired into private life (line 9).]

[nq] {394} ----_how supine_ _Into such dust deserted Rome should fade,_ or, _In self-woven sackcloth Rome should thus be laid_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[nr] _The Earth beneath her shadow and displayed_ _Her wings as with the horizon and was hailed,_ or, _The rushings of his wings and was Almighty hailed_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[ns] _Sylla supreme of Victors--save our own_ _The ablest of Usurpers--Cromwell--he_ _Who swept off Senates--while he hewed the Throne_ _Down to a block--immortal Villain! See_ _What crimes, etc_.--[MS. M.]

[465] On the 3rd of September Cromwell gained the victory of Dunbar [1650]; a year afterwards he obtained "his crowning mercy" of Worcester [1651]; and a few years after [1658], on the same day, which he had ever esteemed the most fortunate for him, died.

[466] {395} [The statue of Pompey in the Sala dell' Udinanza of the Palazzo Spada is no doubt a portrait, and belongs to the close of the Republican period. It cannot, however, with any certainty be identified with the statue in the Curia, at whose base "great Cæsar fell." (See _Antike Bildwerke in Rom._, F. Matz, F. von Duhn, i. 309.)]

[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 Græco-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, _Æn._, 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 Cæsar," 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 Cæsar'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: "CÆCILIÆ. Q. CRETICI. F. METELLÆ. 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)pothnê/skei ne/os] [Greek: To\ ga\r thanei~n ou)ch ai)schro\n, a)ll' ai)schrô~s thanei~n]. _Gnomici Poetæ Græci_, 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 Æsopus 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., Lipsiæ, 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!"[§]

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

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

[§] [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 Mæcenas, on the Esquiline, spreading over the sites of the Temple of Vesta and Rome on the platform of the Velia, the Colosseum, and the Thermæ 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 Atræ, 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 patriæ." 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 reposé dans l'enceinte de la ville Eternelle." (See Pliny's _Panegyricus, passim;_ and _Essai sur le règne de Trajan_, Bibliothèque de L'Ecole des Hautes Études, Paris, 1877.)]

[490] {412} [The archæologists 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 Odéon, 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 nymphæum ... 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 nymphæum ... 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 Cælian, 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 Egeriæ; descendimus et speluncas Dissimiles veris. Quanto præstantius esset Numen aquæ, 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 Nymphæum, 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 véritable 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 _Sententiæ_. 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 Cælian, 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 Müntz, 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 connaítre l'impression du Colisée que de ne l'avoir vu que de jour ... la lune est l'astre des ruines. Quelque fois, à travers les ouvertures de l'amphithéàtre, qui semble s'élever jusqu'aux nues, une

## partie de la voûte du ciel paraît comme un rideau d'un bleu sombre placé

derrière l'édifice."

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 archæologist.]

[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 Ætna 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.[§]-- [MS. M.]

[§] [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;[§] 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 Pætus" 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 prædicta imitatus præcessit 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.)]

[§] Either Polyphontes, herald of Laïus, killed by Oedipus; or Kopreas, herald of Eurystheus, killed by the Athenians when he endeavoured to drag the Heraclidæ 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 Cæsar 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 Infimæ 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 æra 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 Ælius 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 ... gôuter mediocrement le mélodrame, sans méconnaître pour cela les réelles qualités du groupe. La composition est d'une structure irréprochable, d'une harmonie de lignes qui défie 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 ægis 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 Boëdromios, 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'Insanité_, 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 ætheriâ 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/gêthe de/ te phre/na poimê/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.]

[538] [The simile of the "earthquake" was repeated in a letter to Murray, dated December 3, 1817: "The death of the Princess Charlotte has been a shock even here, and must have been an earthquake at home.... The death of this poor Girl is melancholy in every respect, dying at twenty or so, in childbed--of a _boy_ too, a present princess and future queen, and just as she began to be happy, and to enjoy herself, and the hopes which she inspired."]

[539] {454} The village of Nemi was near the Arician retreat of Egeria, and, from the shades which embosomed the temple of Diana, has preserved to this day its distinctive appellation of _The Grove_. Nemi is but an evening's ride from the comfortable inn of Albano.

[The basin of the Lago di Nemi is the crater of an extinct volcano. Hence the comparison to a coiled snake. Its steel-blue waters are unruffled by the wind which lashes the neighbouring ocean into fury. Hence its likeness to "cherished hate," as contrasted with "generous and

## active wrath."]

[qb] _And calm as speechless hate_----.--[MS. M.]

[540] [The spectator is supposed to be looking towards the Mediterranean from the summit of Monte Cavo. Tusculum, where "Tully reposed," lies to the north of the Alban Hills, on the right; but, as Byron points to a spot "beneath thy right," he probably refers to the traditional site of the Villa Ciceronis at Grotta Ferrata, and not to an alternative site at the Villa Ruffinella, between Frascati and the ruins of Tusculum. Horace's Sabine farm, on the bank of Digentia's "ice-cold rivulet," is more than twenty miles to the north-east of the Alban Hills. The mountains to the south and east of Tusculum intercept the view of the valley of the Licenza (Digentia), where the "farm was tilled." Childe Harold had bidden farewell to Horace, once for all, "upon Soracte's ridge," but recalls him to keep company with Virgil and Cicero.]

[qc] {455} _Of girdling mountains circle on the sight_ _The Sabine farm was tilled, the wearied Bard's delight_.-- [MS. M.]

[541] ["Calpe's rock" is Gibraltar (compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza xxii. line i). "Last" may be the last time that Byron and Childe Harold saw the Mediterranean together. Byron had last seen it--"the Midland Ocean"--by "Calpe's rock," on his return journey to England in 1811. Or by "last" he may mean the last time that it burst upon his view. He had not seen the Mediterranean on his way from Geneva to Venice, in October-November, 1816, or from Venice to Rome, April--May, 1817; but now from the Alban Mount the "ocean" was full in view.]

[qd] {456} ----_much suffering and some tears_.--[MS. M.]

[542] ["After the stanza (near the conclusion of Canto 4th) which ends with the line--

"'As if there was no man to trouble what is clear,'

insert the two following stanzas (clxxvii., clxxviii.). Then go on to the stanza beginning, 'Roll on thou,' etc., etc. You will find the place of insertion near the conclusion--just before the address to the Ocean.

"These _two stanzas_ will just make up the number of 500 stanzas to the whole poem.

"Answer when you receive this. I sent back the packets yesterday, and hope they will arrive in safety."--D.]

[543] [His desire is towards no light o' love, but for the support and fellowship of his sister. Compare the opening lines of the _Epistle to Augusta_--

"My sister! my sweet sister! if a name Dearer and purer were, it should be thine; Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim No tears, but tenderness to answer mine: Go where I will, to me thou art the same-- A loved regret which I would not resign. There yet are two things in my destiny,-- A world to roam through and a home with thee.

"The first were nothing--had I still the last, It were the haven of my happiness."]

[544] {457} [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza lxxii. lines 8, 9; and _Epistle to Augusta_, stanza xi.]

[qe] {458} ----_unearthed, uncoffined, and unknown_.--[MS. M.]

[545] [Compare _Ps_. cvii. 26, "They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths."]

[qf] _And dashest him to earth again: there let him lay!_--[D.]

[546] ["Lay" is followed by a plainly marked period in both the MSS. (M. and D.) of the Fourth Canto of _Childe Harold_. For instances of the same error, compare "The Adieu," stanza 10, line 4, and ["Pignus Amoris"], stanza 3, line 3 (_Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 232, note, and p. 241). It is to be remarked that Hobhouse, who pencilled a few corrections on the margin of his own MS. copy, makes no comment on this famous solecism. The fact is that Byron wrote as he spoke, with the "careless and negligent ease of a man of quality," and either did not know that "lay" was not an intransitive verb or regarded himself as "super grammaticam."]

[547] {459} [Compare Campbell's _Battle of the Baltic_ (stanza ii. lines 1, 2)--

"Like leviathans afloat, Lay their bulwarks on the brine."]

[qg] _These oaken citadels which made and make_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[548] The Gale of wind which succeeded the battle of Trafalgar destroyed the greater part (if not all) of the prizes--nineteen sail of the line--taken on that memorable day. I should be ashamed to specify

## particulars which should be known to all--did we not know that in France

the people were kept in ignorance of the event of this most glorious victory in modern times, and that in England it is the present fashion to talk of Waterloo as though it were entirely an English triumph--and a thing to be named with Blenheim and Agincourt--Trafalgar and Aboukir. Posterity will decide; but if it be remembered as a skilful or as a wonderful action, it will be like the battle of Zama, where we think of Hannibal more than of Scipio. For assuredly we dwell on this action, not because it was gained by Blucher or Wellington, but because it was lost by Buonaparte--a man who, with all his vices and his faults, never yet found an adversary with a tithe of his talents (as far as the expression can apply to a conqueror) or his good intentions, his clemency or his fortitude.

Look at his successors throughout Europe, whose imitation of the worst parts of his policy is only limited by their comparative impotence, and their positive imbecility.--[MS. M.]

[549] {460} ["When Lord Byron wrote this stanza, he had, no doubt, the following passage in Boswell's _Johnson_ floating in his mind.... 'The grand object of all travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean. On those shores were the four great empires of the world--the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman' (_Life of Johnson_, 1876, p. 505)."--Note to _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza clxxxii. ed. 1891.]

[550] [See letter to Murray, September 24, 1818: "What does 'thy waters _wasted_ them' mean (in the Canto)? _That is not me_. Consult the MS. _always_." Nevertheless, the misreading appeared in several editions. (For a correspondence on the subject, see _Notes and Queries_, first series, vol. i. pp. 182, 278, 324, 508; vol. ix. p. 481; vol. x. pp. 314, 434.)]

[qh] _Thy waters wasted them while they were free_.--[Editions 1818, 1819, 1823, and Galignani, 1825.]

[qi] _Unchangeable save calm thy tempests ply_.--[MS. M., D.]

[qj] {461} _The image of Eternity and Space_ _For who hath fixed thy limits_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[551] [Compare Tennyson's _In Memoriam_, lv. stanza 6--

"Dragons of the prime, That tare each other in their slime, Were mellow music match'd with him."]

[552] ["While at Aberdeen, he used often to steal from home unperceived; sometimes he would find his way to the seaside" (_Life_, p. 9). For an account of his feats in swimming, see _Letters_, 1898, i. 263, note 1; and letter to Murray, February 21, 1821. See, too, for a "more perilous, but less celebrated passage" (from Old Lisbon to Belem Castle), _Travels in Albania_, ii. 195.]

[553] ["It was a thought worthy of the great spirit of Byron, after exhibiting to us his Pilgrim amidst all the most striking scenes of earthly grandeur and earthly decay ... to conduct him and us at last to the borders of 'the Great Deep.' ... The image of the wanderer may well be associated, for a time, with the rock of Calpe, the shattered temples of Athens, or the gigantic fragments of Rome; but when we wish to think of this dark personification as of a thing which is, where can we so well imagine him to have his daily haunt as by the roaring of the waves? It was thus that Homer represented Achilles in his moments of ungovernable and inconsolable grief for the loss of Patroclus. It was thus he chose to depict the paternal despair of Chryseus--

"[Greek: Bê/ d' a)ke/ôn para\ thi~na polyphloi/sboio thala/ssês]"

Note by Professor Wilson, ed. 1837.]

[qk] {462} _Is dying in the echo--it is time_ _To break the spell of this protracted dream_ _And what will be the fate of this my rhyme_ _May not be of my augury_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[ql] _Fatal--and yet it shakes me not--farewell._--[MS. M.]

[qm] _Ye! who have traced my Pilgrim to the scene._--[MS. M.]

[554] {463} At end--

Laus Deo! Byron. July 19th, 1817. La Mira, near Venice.

Laus Deo! Byron. La Mira, near Venice, Sept. 3, 1817.

* * * * *

NOTES TO CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.

## CANTO IV.

1.

I stood in Venice, on the "Bridge of Sighs;" A Palace and a prison on each hand. Stanza i. lines 1 and 2.

The communication between the ducal palace and the prisons of Venice is by a gloomy bridge, or covered gallery, high above the water, and divided by a stone wall into a passage and a cell. The state dungeons called _pozzi_, or wells, were sunk in the thick walls of the palace: and the prisoner, when taken out to die, was conducted across the gallery to the other side, and being then led back into the other compartment, or cell, upon the bridge, was there strangled. The low portal through which the criminal was taken into this cell is now walled up; but the passage is still open, and is still known by the name of the "Bridge of Sighs." The _pozzi_ are under the flooring of the chamber at the foot of the bridge. They were formerly twelve; but on the first arrival of the French, the Venetians hastily blocked or broke up the deeper of these dungeons. You may still, however descend by a trap-door, and crawl down through holes, half choked by rubbish, to the depth of two stories below the first range. If you are in want of consolation for the extinction of patrician power, perhaps you may find it there; scarcely a ray of light glimmers into the narrow gallery which leads to the cells, and the places of confinement themselves are totally dark. A small hole in the wall admitted the damp air of the passages, and served for the introduction of the prisoner's food. A wooden pallet, raised a foot from the ground, was the only furniture. The conductors tell you that a light was not allowed. The cells are about five paces in length, two and a half in width, and seven feet in height. They are directly beneath one another, and respiration is somewhat difficult in the lower holes. Only one prisoner was found when the republicans descended into these hideous recesses, and he is said to have been confined sixteen years. But the inmates of the dungeons beneath had left traces of their repentance, or of their despair, which are still visible, and may, perhaps, owe something to recent ingenuity. Some of the detained appear to have offended against, and others to have belonged to, the sacred body, not only from their signatures, but from the churches and belfries which they have scratched upon the walls. The reader may not object to see a specimen of the records prompted by so terrific a solitude. As nearly as they could be copied by more than one pencil, three of them are as follows:--

1. NON TI FIDAR AD ALCUNO PENSA e TACI SE FUGIR VUOI DE SPIONI INSIDIE e LACCI IL PENTIRTI PENTIRTI NULLA GIOVA MA BEN DI VALOR TUO LA VERA PROVA

1607. ADI 2. GENARO. FUI RETENTO P' LA BESTIEMMA P' AVER DATO DA MANZAR A UN MORTO IACOMO. GRITTI. SCRISSE.

2. UN PARLAR POCHO et NEGARE PRONTO et UN PENSAR AL FINE PUO DARE LA VITA A NOI ALTRI MESCHINI

1605. EGO IOHN BAPTISTA AD ECCLESIAM CORTELLARIUS.

3. DE CHI MI FIDO GUARDAMI DIO DE CHI NON MI FIDO MI GUARDARO IO A TA H A NA V. LA S. C. K. R.

The copyist has followed, not corrected, the solecisms; some of which are, however, not quite so decided since the letters were evidently scratched in the dark. It only need be observed, that _bestemmia_ and _mangiar_ may be read in the first inscription, which was probably written by a prisoner confined for some act of impiety committed at a funeral; that _Cortellarius_ is the name of a parish on terra firma, near the sea; and that the last initials evidently are put for _Viva la santa Chiesa Kattolica Romana_.

2.

In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more. Stanza iii. line 1.

["I cannot forbear mentioning a custom in Venice, which they tell me is

## particular to the common people of this country, of singing stanzas out

of Tasso. They are set to a pretty solemn tune, and when one begins in any part of the poet, it is odds but he will be answered by somebody else that overhears him; so that sometimes you have ten or a dozen in the neighbourhood of one another, taking verse after verse, and running on with the poem as far as their memories will carry them."--Addison, A.D. 1700.]

The well-known song of the gondoliers, of alternate stanzas from Tasso's _Jerusalem_, has died with the independence of Venice. Editions of the poem, with the original in one column, and the Venetian variations on the other, as sung by the boatmen, were once common, and are still to be found. The following extract will serve to show the difference between the Tuscan epic and the _Canta alia Barcariola:_--

ORIGINAL.

## Canto l'arme pietose, e 'l capitano

Che 'l gran Sepolcro liberò di Cristo Molto egli oprò col senno, e con la mano Molto soffri nel glorioso acquisto; E in van l' Inferno a lui s' oppose, e in vano S' armò d' Asia, e di Libia il popol misto, Che il Ciel gli diè favore, e sotto a i Santi Segni ridusse i suoi compagni erranti.

VENETIAN.

L' arme pietose de cantar gho vogia, E de Goffredo la immortal braura Che al fin l' ha libera co strassia, e dogia Del nostro buon Gesû la Sepoltura De mezo mondo unite, e de quel Bogia Missier Pluton non l' ha bu mai paura: Dio l' ha agiutá, e i compagni sparpagni Tutti 'l gh' i ha messi insieme i di del Dai.

Some of the elder gondoliers will, however, take up and continue a stanza of their once familiar bard.

On the 7th of last January, the author of _Childe Harold_, and another Englishman, the writer of this notice, rowed to the Lido with two singers, one of whom was a carpenter, and the other a gondolier. The former placed himself at the prow, the latter at the stern of the boat. A little after leaving the quay of the Piazzetta, they began to sing, and continued their exercise until we arrived at the island. They gave us, amongst other essays, the death of Clorinda, and the palace of Armida; and did not sing the Venetian but the Tuscan verses. The carpenter, however, who was the cleverer of the two, and was frequently obliged to prompt his companion, told us that he could _translate_ the original. He added, that he could sing almost three hundred stanzas, but had not spirits (_morbin_ was the word he used) to learn any more, or to sing what he already knew: a man must have idle time on his hands to acquire, or to repeat, and, said the poor fellow, "look at my clothes and at me; I am starving." This speech was more affecting than his performance, which habit alone can make attractive. The recitative was shrill, screaming, and monotonous; and the gondolier behind assisted his voice by holding his hand to one side of his mouth. The carpenter used a quiet action, which he evidently endeavoured to restrain; but was too much interested in his subject altogether to repress. From these men we learnt that singing is not confined to the gondoliers, and that, although the chant is seldom, if ever, voluntary, there are still several amongst the lower classes who are acquainted with a few stanzas.

It does not appear that it is usual for the performers to row and sing at the same time. Although the verses of the _Jerusalem_ are no longer casually heard, there is yet much music upon the Venetian canals; and upon holydays, those strangers who are not near or informed enough to distinguish the words, may fancy that many of the gondolas still resound with the strains of Tasso. The writer of some remarks which appeared in the _Curiosities of Literature_ must excuse his being twice quoted; for, with the exception of some phrases a little too ambitious and extravagant, he has furnished a very exact, as well as agreeable description:--

"In Venice the gondoliers know by heart long passages from Ariosto and Tasso, and often chant them with a peculiar melody. But this talent seems at present on the decline:--at least, after taking some pains, I could find no more than two persons who delivered to me in this way a passage from Tasso. I must add, that the late Mr. Berry once chanted to me a passage in Tasso in the manner, as he assured me, of the gondoliers.

"There are always two concerned, who alternately sing the strophes. We know the melody eventually by Rousseau, to whose songs it is printed; it has properly no melodious movement, and is a sort of medium between the canto fermo and the canto figurato; it approaches to the former by recitativical declamation, and to the latter by passages and course, by which one syllable is detained and embellished.

"I entered a gondola by moonlight; one singer placed himself forwards and the other aft, and thus proceeded to St. Georgio. One began the song: when he had ended his strophe, the other took up the lay, and so continued the song alternately. Throughout the whole of it, the same notes invariably returned; but, according to the subject-matter of the strophe, they laid a greater or a smaller stress, sometimes on one, and sometimes on another note, and indeed changed the enunciation of the whole strophe as the object of the poem altered.

"On the whole, however, the sounds were hoarse and screaming: they seemed, in the manner of all rude uncivilised men, to make the excellency of their singing in the force of their voice. One seemed desirous of conquering the other by the strength of his lungs; and so far from receiving delight from this scene (shut up as I was in the box of the gondola), I found myself in a very unpleasant situation.

"My companion, to whom I communicated this circumstance, being very desirous to keep up the credit of his countrymen, assured me that the singing was very delightful when heard at a distance. Accordingly we got out upon the shore, leaving one of the singers in the gondola, while the other went to the distance of some hundred paces. They now began to sing against one another, and I kept walking up and down between them both, so as always to leave him who was to begin his part. I frequently stood still and hearkened to the one and to the other.

"Here the scene was properly introduced. The strong declamatory, and, as it were, shrieking sound, met the ear from far, and called forth the attention; the quickly succeeding transitions, which necessarily required to be sung in a lower tone, seemed like plaintive strains succeeding the vociferations of emotion or of pain. The other, who listened attentively, immediately began where the former left off, answering him in milder or more vehement notes, according as the purport of the strophe required. The sleepy canals, the lofty buildings, the splendour of the moon, the deep shadows of the few gondolas that moved like spirits hither and thither, increased the striking peculiarity of the scene; and, amidst all these circumstances, it was easy to confess the character of this wonderful harmony.

"It suits perfectly well with an idle, solitary mariner, lying at length in his vessel at rest on one of these canals, waiting for his company, or for a fare, the tiresomeness of which situation is somewhat alleviated by the songs and poetical stories he has in memory. He often raises his voice as loud as he can, which extends itself to a vast distance over the tranquil mirror; and as all is still around, he is, as it were, in a solitude in the midst of a large and populous town. Here is no rattling of carriages, no noise of foot passengers; a silent gondola glides now and then by him, of which the splashings of the oars are scarcely to be heard.

"At a distance he hears another, perhaps utterly unknown to him. Melody and verse immediately attach the two strangers; he becomes the responsive echo to the former, and exerts himself to be heard as he had heard the other. By a tacit convention they alternate verse for verse; though the song should last the whole night through, they entertain themselves without fatigue: the hearers who are passing between the two take part in the amusement.

"This vocal performance sounds best at a great distance, and is then inexpressibly charming, as it only fulfills its design in the sentiment of remoteness. It is plaintive, but not dismal in its sound, and at times it is scarcely possible to refrain from tears. My companion, who otherwise was not a very delicately organised person, said quite unexpectedly: E singolare come quel canto intenerisce, e molto più quando lo cantano meglio.

"I was told that the women of Libo, the long row of islands that divides the Adriatic from the Lagoons,[555] particularly the women of the extreme districts of Malamocca and Palestrina, sing in like manner the works of Tasso to these and similar tunes.

"They have the custom, when their husbands are fishing out at sea, to sit along the shore in the evenings and vociferate these songs, and continue to do so with great violence, till each of them can distinguish the responses of her own husband at a distance."[556]

The love of music and of poetry distinguishes all classes of Venetians, even amongst the tuneful sons of Italy. The city itself can occasionally furnish respectable audiences for two and even three opera-houses at a time; and there are few events in private life that do not call forth a printed and circulated sonnet. Does a physician or a lawyer take his degree, or a clergyman preach his maiden sermon, has a surgeon performed an operation, would a harlequin announce his departure or his benefit, are you to be congratulated on a marriage, or a birth, or a lawsuit, the Muses are invoked to furnish the same number of syllables, and the individual triumphs blaze abroad in virgin white or party-coloured placards on half the corners of the capital. The last curtsy of a favourite "prima donna" brings down a shower of these poetical tributes from those upper regions, from which, in our theatres, nothing but cupids and snowstorms are accustomed to descend. There is a poetry in the very life of a Venetian, which, in its common course, is varied with those surprises and changes so recommendable in fiction, but so different from the sober monotony of northern existence; amusements are raised into duties, duties are softened into amusements, and every object being considered as equally making a part of the business of life, is announced and performed with the same earnest indifference and gay assiduity. The Venetian gazette constantly closes its columns with the following triple advertisement:--

_Charade._

Exposition of the most Holy Sacrament in the church of St.----

_Theatres_.

St. Moses, opera. St. Benedict, a comedy of characters. St. Luke, repose.

When it is recollected what the Catholics believe their consecrated wafer to be, we may perhaps think it worthy of a more respectable niche than between poetry and the playhouse.

3.

St. Mark yet sees his Lion where he stood Stand. Stanza xi. line 5.

The Lion has lost nothing by his journey to the Invalides, but the gospel which supported the paw that is now on a level with the other foot. The horses also are returned [A.D. 1815] to the ill-chosen spot whence they set out, and are, as before, half hidden under the porch window of St. Mark's Church. Their history, after a desperate struggle, has been satisfactorily explored. The decisions and doubts of Erizzo and Zanetti, and lastly, of the Count Leopold Cicognara, would have given them a Roman extraction, and a pedigree not more ancient than the reign of Nero. But M. de Schlegel stepped in to teach the Venetians the value of their own treasures; and a Greek vindicated, at last and for ever, the pretension of his countrymen to this noble production[557]. M. Mustoxidi has not been left without a reply; but, as yet, he has received no answer. It should seem that the horses are irrevocably Chian, and were transferred to Constantinople by Theodosius. Lapidary writing is a favourite play of the Italians, and has conferred reputation on more than one of their literary characters. One of the best specimens of Bodoni's typography is a respectable volume of inscriptions, all written by his friend Pacciaudi. Several were prepared for the recovered horses. It is to be hoped the best was not selected, when the following words were ranged in gold letters above the cathedral porch:--

QUATUOR. EQUORUM. SIGNA. A. VENETIS. BYZANTIO. CAPTA. AD. TEMP. D. MAR. A. R. S. MCCIV. POSITA. QUAE. HOSTILIS. CUPIDITAS. A. MDCCIIIC. ABSTULERAT. FRANC. I. IMP. PACIS. ORBI. DATAE. TROPHAEUM. A. MDCCCXV. VICTOR. REDUXIT.

Nothing shall be said of the Latin, but it may be permitted to observe, that the injustice of the Venetians in transporting the horses from Constantinople [A.D. 1204] was at least equal to that of the French in carrying them to Paris [A.D. 1797], and that it would have been more prudent to have avoided all allusions to either robbery. An apostolic prince should, perhaps, have objected to affixing over the principal entrance of a metropolitan church an inscription having a reference to any other triumphs than those of religion. Nothing less than the pacification of the world can excuse such a solecism.

4.

The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns-- An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt. Stanza xii. lines 1 and 2.

After many vain efforts on the part of the Italians entirely to throw off the yoke of Frederic Barbarossa, and as fruitless attempts of the Emperor to make himself absolute master throughout the whole of his Cisalpine dominions, the bloody struggles of four-and-twenty years were happily brought to a close in the city of Venice. The articles of a treaty had been previously agreed upon between Pope Alexander III. and Barbarossa; and the former having received a safe-conduct, had already arrived at Venice from Ferrara, in company with the ambassadors of the King of Sicily and the consuls of the Lombard League. There still remained, however, many points to adjust, and for several days the peace was believed to be impracticable. At this juncture, it was suddenly reported that the Emperor had arrived at Chioza, a town fifteen miles from the capital. The Venetians rose tumultuously, and insisted upon immediately conducting him to the city. The Lombards took the alarm, and departed towards Treviso. The Pope himself was apprehensive of some disaster if Frederic should suddenly advance upon him, but was reassured by the prudence and address of Sebastian Ziani, the Doge. Several embassies passed between Chioza and the capital, until, at last, the Emperor, relaxing somewhat of his pretensions, "laid aside his leonine ferocity, and put on the mildness of the lamb."[558]

On Saturday, the 23rd of July, in the year 1177, six Venetian galleys transferred Frederic, in great pomp, from Chioza to the island of Lido, a mile from Venice. Early the next morning, the Pope, accompanied by the Sicilian ambassadors, and by the envoys of Lombardy, whom he had recalled from the main land, together with a great concourse of people, repaired from the patriarchal palace to St. Mark's Church, and solemnly absolved the Emperor and his partisans from the excommunication pronounced against him. The Chancellor of the Empire, on the part of his master, renounced the anti-popes and their schismatic adherents. Immediately the Doge, with a great suite both of the clergy and laity, got on board the galleys, and waiting on Frederic, rowed him in mighty state from the Lido to the capital. The Emperor descended from the galley at the quay of the Piazzetta. The Doge, the patriarch, his bishops and clergy, and the people of Venice with their crosses and their standards, marched in solemn procession before him to the church of St. Mark. Alexander was seated before the vestibule of the basilica, attended by his bishops and cardinals, by the patriarch of Aquileja, by the archbishops and bishops of Lombardy, all of them in state, and clothed in their church robes. Frederic approached--"moved by the Holy Spirit, venerating the Almighty in the person of Alexander, laying aside his imperial dignity, and throwing off his mantle, he prostrated himself at full length at the feet of the Pope. Alexander, with tears in his eyes, raised him benignantly from the ground, kissed him, blessed him; and immediately the Germans of the train sang with a loud voice, 'We praise thee, O Lord.' The Emperor then taking the Pope by the right hand, led him to the church, and having received his benediction, returned to the ducal palace."[559] The ceremony of humiliation was repeated the next day. The Pope himself, at the request of Frederic, said mass at St. Mark's. The Emperor again laid aside his imperial mantle, and taking a wand in his hand, officiated as _verger_, driving the laity from the choir, and preceding the pontiff to the altar. Alexander, after reciting the gospel, preached to the people. The Emperor put himself close to the pulpit in the attitude of listening; and the pontiff, touched by this mark of his attention (for he knew that Frederic did not understand a word he said), commanded the patriarch of Aquileja to translate the Latin discourse into the German tongue. The creed was then chanted. Frederic made his oblation, and kissed the Pope's feet, and, mass being over, led him by the hand to his white horse. He held the stirrup, and would have led the horse's rein to the water side, had not the Pope accepted of the inclination for the performance, and affectionately dismissed him with his benediction. Such is the substance of the account left by the archbishop of Salerno, who was present at the ceremony, and whose story is confirmed by every subsequent narration. It would be not worth so minute a record, were it not the triumph of liberty as well as of superstition. The states of Lombardy owed to it the confirmation of their privileges; and Alexander had reason to thank the Almighty, who had enabled an infirm, unarmed old man to subdue a terrible and potent sovereign.[560]

5.

Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo! Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe. Stanza xii. lines 8 and 9.

The reader will recollect the exclamation of the Highlander, "_Oh, for one hour of Dundee_!" Henry Dandolo, when elected Doge, in 1192, was eighty-five years of age. When he commanded the Venetians at the taking of Constantinople, he was consequently ninety-seven years old. At this age he annexed the fourth and a half of the whole empire of Romania,[561] for so the Roman empire was then called, to the title and to the territories of the Venetian Doge. The three-eighths of this empire were preserved in the diplomas until the Dukedom of Giovanni Dolfino, who made use of the above designation in the year 1357.[562]

Dandolo led the attack on Constantinople in person. Two ships, the Paradise and the Pilgrim, were tied together, and a drawbridge or ladder let down from their higher yards to the walls. The Doge was one of the first to rush into the city. Then was completed, said the Venetians, the prophecy of the Erythræan sibyl:--"A gathering together of the powerful shall be made amidst the waves of the Adriatic, under a blind leader; they shall beset the goat--they shall profane Byzantium--they shall blacken her buildings--her spoils shall be dispersed; a new goat shall bleat until they have measured out and run over fifty-four feet nine inches and a half."[563] Dandolo died on the first day of June, 1205, having reigned thirteen years six months and five days, and was buried in the church of St. Sophia, at Constantinople. Strangely enough it must sound, that the name of the rebel apothecary who received the Doge's sword, and annihilated the ancient government, in 1796-7, was Dandolo.

6.

But is not Doria's menace come to pass? Are they not _bridled?_ Stanza xiii. lines 3 and 4.

After the loss of the battle of Pola, and the taking of Chioza on the 16th of August, 1379, by the united armament of the Genoese and Francesco da Carrara, Signor of Padua, the Venetians were reduced to the utmost despair. An embassy was sent to the conquerors with a blank sheet of paper, praying them to prescribe what terms they pleased, and leave to Venice only her independence. The Prince of Padua was inclined to listen to these proposals; but the Genoese, who, after the victory at Pola, had shouted, "To Venice! to Venice! and long live St. George!" determined to annihilate their rival; and Peter Doria, their commander-in-chief, returned this answer to the suppliants: "On God's faith, gentlemen of Venice, ye shall have no peace from the Signer of Padua, nor from our commune of Genoa, until we have first put a rein upon those unbridled horses of yours, that are upon the porch of your evangelist St. Mark. When we have bridled them we shall keep you quiet. And this is the pleasure of us and of our commune. As for these, my brothers of Genoa, that you have brought with you to give up to us, I will not have them: take them back; for in a few days hence, I shall come and let them out of prison myself, both these and all the others" [p. 727, E. _vide infra_]. In fact, the Genoese did advance as far as Malamocco, within five miles of the capital; but their own danger, and the pride of their enemies, gave courage to the Venetians, who made prodigious efforts, and many individual sacrifices, all of them carefully recorded by their historians. Vettor Pisani was put at the head of thirty-four galleys. The Genoese broke up from Malamocco, and retired to Chioza in October; but they again threatened Venice, which was reduced to extremities. At this time, the 1st of January, 1380, arrived Carlo Zeno, who had been cruising on the Genoese coast with fourteen galleys. The Venetians were now strong enough to besiege the Genoese. Doria was killed on the 22nd of January, by a stone bullet, one hundred and ninety-five pounds' weight, discharged from a bombard called the Trevisan. Chioza was then closely invested; five thousand auxiliaries, among whom were some English condottieri, commanded by one Captain Ceccho, joined the Venetians. The Genoese, in their turn, prayed for conditions, but none were granted, until, at last, they surrendered at discretion; and, on the 24th of June, 1380, the Doge Contarini made his triumphal entry into Chioza. Four thousand prisoners, nineteen galleys, many smaller vessels and barks, with all the ammunition and arms, and outfit of the expedition, fell into the hands of the conquerors, who, had it not been for the inexorable answer of Doria, would have gladly reduced their dominion to the city of Venice. An account of these transactions is found in a work called _The War of Chioza_,[564] written by Daniel Chinazzo, who was in Venice at the time.

7.

Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must Too oft remind her who and what enthrals. Stanza xv. lines 7 and 8.

The population of Venice, at the end of the seventeenth century, amounted to nearly two hundred thousand souls. At the last census, taken two years ago [1816], it was no more than about one hundred and three thousand; and it diminishes daily. The commerce and the official employments, which were to be the unexhausted source of Venetian grandeur, have both expired.[565] Most of the patrician mansions are deserted, and would gradually disappear, had not the Government, alarmed by the demolition of seventy-two during the last two years, expressly forbidden this sad resource of poverty. Many remnants of the Venetian nobility are now scattered, and confounded with the wealthier Jews upon the banks of the Brenta, whose Palladian palaces have sunk, or are sinking, in the general decay. Of the "gentiluomo Veneto," the name is still known, and that is all. He is but the shadow of his former self, but he is polite and kind. It surely may be pardoned to him if he is querulous. Whatever may have been the vices of the republic, and although the natural term of its existence may be thought by foreigners to have arrived in the due course of mortality, only one sentiment can be expected from the Venetians themselves. At no time were the subjects of the republic so unanimous in their resolution to rally round the standard of St. Mark, as when it was for the last time unfurled; and the cowardice and the treachery of the few patricians who recommended the fatal neutrality, were confined to the persons of the traitors themselves. The present race cannot be thought to regret the loss of their aristocratical forms, and too despotic government; they think only on their vanished independence. They pine away at the remembrance, and on this subject suspend for a moment their gay good humour. Venice may be said, in the words of the Scripture, "to die daily;" and so general and so apparent is the decline, as to become painful to a stranger, not reconciled to the sight of a whole nation expiring, as it were, before his eyes. So artificial a creation, having lost that principle which called it into life and supported its existence, must fall to pieces at once, and sink more rapidly than it rose. The abhorrence of slavery, which drove the Venetians to the sea, has, since their disaster, forced them to the land, where they may be at least overlooked amongst the crowd of dependents, and not present the humiliating spectacle of a whole nation loaded with recent chains. Their liveliness, their affability, and that happy indifference which constitution alone can give (for philosophy aspires to it in vain), have not sunk under circumstances; but many peculiarities of costume and manner have by degrees been lost; and the nobles, with a pride common to all Italians who have been masters, have not been persuaded to parade their insignificance. That splendour which was a proof and a portion of their power, they would not degrade into the trappings of their subjection. They retired from the space which they had occupied in the eyes of their fellow citizens; their continuance in which would have been a symptom of acquiescence, and an insult to those who suffered by the common misfortune. Those who remained in the degraded capital, might be said rather to haunt the scenes of their departed power, than to live in them. The reflection, "who and what enthrals," will hardly bear a comment from one who is, nationally, the friend and the ally of the conqueror. It may, however, be allowed to say thus much, that to those who wish to recover their independence, any masters must be an object of detestation; and it may be safely foretold that this unprofitable aversion will not have been corrected before Venice shall have sunk into the slime of her choked canals.

8.

Watering the tree which bears his Lady's name With his melodious tears, he gave himself to Fame. Stanza xxx. lines 8 and 9.

Thanks to the critical acumen of a Scotchman, we now know as little of Laura as ever.[566] The discoveries of the Abbé de Sade, his triumphs, his sneers, can no longer instruct or amuse. We must not, however, think that these memoirs[567] are as much a romance as Belisarius or the Incas, although we are told so by Dr. Beattie, a great name, but a little authority.[568] His "labour" has not been in vain, notwithstanding his "love" has, like most other passions, made him ridiculous.[569] The hypothesis which overpowered the struggling Italians, and carried along less interested critics in its current, is run out. We have another proof that we can never be sure that the paradox, the most singular, and therefore having the most agreeable and authentic air, will not give place to the re-established ancient prejudice.

It seems, then, first, that Laura was born, lived, died, and was buried, not in Avignon, but in the country. The fountains of the Sorga, the thickets of Cabrieres, may resume their pretensions, and the exploded _de la Bastie_ again be heard with complacency. The hypothesis of the Abbé had no stronger props than the parchment sonnet and medal found on the skeleton of the wife of Hugo de Sade, and the manuscript note to the _Virgil_ of Petrarch, now in the Ambrosian library. If these proofs were both incontestable, the poetry was written, the medal composed, cast, and deposited within the space of twelve hours: and these deliberate duties were performed round the carcass of one who died of the plague, and was hurried to the grave on the day of her death. These documents, therefore, are too decisive: they prove not the fact, but the forgery. Either the sonnet or the Virgilian note must be a falsification. The Abbé cites both as incontestably true; the consequent deduction is inevitable--they are both evidently false.[570]

Secondly, Laura was never married, and was a haughty virgin rather than that _tender and prudent_ wife who honoured Avignon, by making that town the theatre of an honest French passion, and played off for one and twenty years her _little machinery_ of alternate favours and refusals[571] upon the first poet of the age. It was, indeed, rather too unfair that a female should be made responsible for eleven children upon the faith of a misinterpreted abbreviation, and the decision of a librarian.[572] It is, however, satisfactory to think that the love of Petrarch was not platonic. The happiness which he prayed to possess but once and for a moment was surely not of the mind,[573] and something so very real as a marriage project, with one who has been idly called a shadowy nymph, may be, perhaps, detected in at least six places of his own sonnets. The love of Petrarch was neither platonic nor poetical; and if in one passage of his works he calls it "amore veementeissimo ma unico ed onesto," he confesses, in a letter to a friend, that it was guilty and perverse, that it absorbed him quite, and mastered his heart.

In this case, however, he was perhaps alarmed for the culpability of his wishes; for the Abbé de Sade himself, who certainly would not have been scrupulously delicate if he could have proved his descent from Petrarch as well as Laura, is forced into a stout defence of his virtuous grandmother. As far as relates to the poet, we have no security for the innocence, except perhaps in the constancy of his pursuit. He assures us in his epistle to posterity, that, when arrived at his fortieth year, he not only had in horror, but had lost all recollection and image of any "irregularity." But the birth of his natural daughter cannot be assigned earlier than his thirty-ninth year; and either the memory or the morality of the poet must have failed him, when he forgot or was guilty of this _slip_.[574] The weakest argument for the purity of this love has been drawn from the permanence of its effects, which survived the object of his passion. The reflection of M. de la Bastie, that virtue alone is capable of making impressions which death cannot efface, is one of those which everybody applauds, and everybody finds not to be true, the moment he examines his own breast or the records of human feeling.[575] Such apophthegms can do nothing for Petrarch or for the cause of morality, except with the very weak and the very young. He that has made even a little progress beyond ignorance and pupilage cannot be edified with anything but truth. What is called vindicating the honour of an individual or a nation, is the most futile, tedious, and uninstructive of all writing; although it will always meet with more applause than that sober criticism, which is attributed to the malicious desire of reducing a great man to the common standard of humanity. It is, after all, not unlikely that our historian was right in retaining his favourite hypothetic salvo, which secures the author, although it scarcely saves the honour of the still unknown mistress of Petrarch.[576]

9.

They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died. Stanza xxxi. line 1.

Petrarch retired to Arquà immediately on his return from the unsuccessful attempt to visit Urban V. at Rome, in the year 1370, and with the exception of his celebrated visit to Venice in company with Francesco Novello da Carrara, he appears to have passed the four last years of his life between that charming solitude and Padua. For four months previous to his death he was in a state of continual languor, and in the morning of July the 19th, in the year 1374, was found dead in his library chair with his head resting upon a book. The chair is still shown amongst the precious relics of Arquà, which, from the uninterrupted veneration that has been attached to everything relative to this great man from the moment of his death to the present hour, have, it may be hoped, a better chance of authenticity than the Shaksperian memorials of Stratford-upon-Avon.

Arquà (for the last syllable is accented in pronunciation, although the analogy of the English language has been observed in the verse) is twelve miles from Padua, and about three miles on the right of the high road to Rovigo, in the bosom of the Euganean hills. After a walk of twenty minutes across a flat well-wooded meadow, you come to a little blue lake, clear but fathomless, and to the foot of a succession of acclivities and hills, clothed with vineyards and orchards, rich with fir and pomegranate trees, and every sunny fruit shrub. From the banks of the lake the road winds into the hills, and the church of Arquà is soon seen between a cleft where two ridges slope towards each other, and nearly enclose the village. The houses are scattered at intervals on the steep sides of these summits; and that of the poet is on the edge of a little knoll overlooking two descents, and commanding a view, not only of the glowing gardens in the dales immediately beneath, but of the wide plains, above whose low woods of mulberry and willow, thickened into a dark mass by festoons of vines, tall, single cypresses, and the spires of towns, are seen in the distance, which stretches to the mouths of the Po and the shores of the Adriatic. The climate of these volcanic hills is warmer, and the vintage begins a week sooner than in the plains of Padua. Petrarch is laid, for he cannot be said to be buried, in a sarcophagus of red marble, raised on four pilasters on an elevated base, and preserved from an association with meaner tombs. It stands conspicuously alone, but will be soon overshadowed by four lately planted laurels. Petrarch's Fountain, for here everything is Petrarch's, springs and expands itself beneath an artificial arch, a little below the church, and abounds plentifully, in the driest season, with that soft water which was the ancient wealth of the Euganean hills. It would be more attractive, were it not, in some seasons, beset with hornets and wasps. No other coincidence could assimilate the tombs of Petrarch and Archilochus. The revolutions of centuries have spared these sequestered valleys, and the only violence which has been offered to the ashes of Petrarch was prompted, not by hate, but veneration. An attempt was made to rob the sarcophagus of its treasure, and one of the arms was stolen by a Florentine through a rent which is still visible. The injury is not forgotten, but has served to identify the poet with the country where he was born, but where he would not live. A peasant boy of Arquà being asked who Petrarch was, replied, "that the people of the parsonage knew all about him, but that he only knew that he was a Florentine."

Mr. Forsyth[577] was not quite correct in saying that Petrarch never returned to Tuscany after he had once quitted it when a boy. It appears he did pass through Florence on his way from Parma to Rome, and on his return in the year 1350, and remained there long enough to form some acquaintance with its most distinguished inhabitants. A Florentine gentleman, ashamed of the aversion of the poet for his native country, was eager to point out this trivial error in our accomplished traveller, whom he knew and respected for an extraordinary capacity, extensive erudition, and refined taste, joined to that engaging simplicity of manners which has been so frequently recognised as the surest, though it is certainly not an indispensable, trait of superior genius.

Every footstep of Laura's lover has been anxiously traced and recorded. The house in which he lodged is shown in Venice. The inhabitants of Arezzo, in order to decide the ancient controversy between their city and the neighbouring Ancisa, where Petrarch was carried when seven months old, and remained until his seventh year, have designated by a long inscription the spot where their great fellow citizen was born. A tablet has been raised to him at Parma, in the chapel of St. Agatha, at the cathedral, because he was arch-deacon of that society, and was only snatched from his intended sepulture in their church by a _foreign_ death. Another tablet, with a bust, has been erected to him at Pavia, on account of his having passed the autumn of 1368 in that city, with his son-in-law Brossano. The political condition which has for ages precluded the Italians from the criticism of the living, has concentrated their attention to the illustration of the dead.

10.

In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire, And Boileau, whose rash envy, etc. Stanza xxxviii. lines 6 and 7.

Perhaps the couplet in which Boileau depreciates Tasso may serve as well as any other specimen to justify the opinion given of the harmony of French verse--

"À Malherbe, à Racan, préfère Théophile, Et le clinquant du Tasse à tout l'or de Virgile." _Sat_. ix. v. 176.

The biographer Serassi,[578] out of tenderness to the reputation either of the Italian or the French poet, is eager to observe that the satirist recanted or explained away this censure, and subsequently allowed the author of the _Jerusalem_ to be "a genius sublime, vast, and happily born for the higher flights of poetry." To this we will add, that the recantation is far from satisfactory, when we examine the whole anecdote as reported by Olivet.[579] The sentence pronounced against him by Bouhours[580] is recorded only to the confusion of the critic, whose _palinodia_ the Italian makes no effort to discover, and would not, perhaps, accept. As to the opposition which the _Jerusalem_ encountered from the Cruscan academy, who degraded Tasso from all competition with Ariosto, below Bojardo and Pulci, the disgrace of such opposition must also in some measure be laid to the charge of Alfonso, and the court of Ferrara. For Leonard Salviati, the principal and nearly the sole origin of this attack, was, there can be no doubt,[581] influenced by a hope to acquire the favour of the House of Este: an object which he thought attainable by exalting the reputation of a native poet at the expense of a rival, then a _prisoner of state_. The hopes and efforts of Salviati must serve to show the contemporary opinion as to the nature of the poet's imprisonment; and will fill up the measure of our indignation at the tyrant jailer.[582] In fact, the antagonist of Tasso was not disappointed in the reception given to his criticism; he was called to the court of Ferrara, where, having endeavoured to heighten his claims to favour, by panegyrics on the family of his sovereign,[583] he was in turn abandoned, and expired in neglected poverty. The opposition of the Cruscans was brought to a close in six years after the commencement of the controversy; and if the Academy owed its first renown to having almost opened with such a paradox,[584] it is probable that, on the other hand, the care of his reputation alleviated rather than aggravated the imprisonment of the injured poet. The defence of his father and of himself, for both were involved in the censure of Salviati, found employment for many of his solitary hours, and the captive could have been but little embarrassed to reply to accusations, where, among other delinquencies, he was charged with invidiously omitting, in his comparison between France and Italy, to make any mention of the cupola of St. Maria del Fiore at Florence.[585] The late biographer of Ariosto seems as if willing to renew the controversy by doubting the interpretation of Tasso's self-estimation[586] related in Serassi's life of the poet. But Tiraboschi had before laid that rivalry at rest,[587] by showing that between Ariosto and Tasso it is not a question of comparison, but of preference.

11.

The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust The iron crown of laurel's mimicked leaves. Stanza xli. lines 1 and 2.

Before the remains of Ariosto were removed from the Benedictine church to the library of Ferrara, his bust, which surmounted the tomb, was struck by lightning, and a crown of iron laurels melted away. The event has been recorded by a writer of the last century.[588] The transfer of these sacred ashes, on the 6th of June, 1801, was one of the most brilliant spectacles of the short-lived Italian Republic; and to consecrate the memory of the ceremony, the once famous fallen _Intrepidi_ were revived and reformed into the Ariostean academy. The large public place through which the procession paraded was then for the first time called Ariosto Square. The author of the _Orlando_ is jealously claimed as the Homer, not of Italy but Ferrara.[589] The mother of Ariosto was of Reggio, and the house in which he was born is carefully distinguished by a tablet with these words: "Qui nacque Ludovico Ariosto il giorno 8. di Settembre dell' anno 1474." But the Ferrarese make light of the accident by which their poet was born abroad, and claim him exclusively for their own. They possess his bones, they show his arm-chair, and his inkstand, and his autographs.

"......Hic illius anna, Hic currus fuit......"

The house where he lived, the room where he died, are designated by his own replaced memorial,[590] and by a recent inscription. The Ferrarese are more jealous of their claims since the animosity of Denina, arising from a cause which their apologists mysteriously hint is not unknown to them, ventured to degrade their soil and climate to a Boeotian in capacity for all spiritual productions. A quarto volume has been called forth by the detraction, and this supplement to Barotti's Memoirs of the illustrious Ferarrese, has been considered a triumphant reply to the "Quadro Storico Statistico dell' Alta Italia."

12.

For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves. Stanza xli. lines 4 and 5.

The eagle, the sea calf, the laurel, and the white vine,[591] were amongst the most approved preservatives against lightning: Jupiter chose the first, Augustus Cæsar the second, and Tiberius never failed to wear a wreath of the third when the sky threatened a thunder-storm.[592] These superstitions may be received without a sneer in a country where the magical properties of the hazel twig have not lost all their credit; and perhaps the reader may not be much surprised that a commentator on Suetonius has taken upon himself gravely to disprove the imputed virtues of the crown of Tiberius, by mentioning that a few years before he wrote a laurel was actually struck by lightning at Rome.[593]

13.

Know, that the lightning sanctifies below. Stanza xli. line 8.

The Curtian lake and the Ruminal fig-tree in the Forum, having been touched by lightning, were held sacred, and the memory of the accident was preserved by a _pateal_, or altar resembling the mouth of a well, with a little chapel covering the cavity supposed to be made by the thunder-bolt. Bodies scathed and persons struck dead were thought to be incorruptible;[594] and a stroke not fatal conferred perpetual dignity upon the man so distinguished by heaven.[595]

Those killed by lightning were wrapped in a white garment, and buried where they fell. The superstition was not confined to the worshippers of Jupiter: the Lombards believed in the omens furnished by lightning; and a Christian priest confesses that, by a diabolical skill in interpreting thunder, a seer foretold to Agilulf, duke of Turin, an event which came to pass, and gave him a queen and a crown.[596] There was, however, something equivocal in this sign, which the ancient inhabitants of Rome did not always consider propitious; and as the fears are likely to last longer than the consolations of superstition, it is not strange that the Romans of the age of Leo X. should have been so much terrified at some misinterpreted storms as to require the exhortations of a scholar, who arrayed all the learning on thunder and lightning to prove the omen favourable; beginning with the flash which struck the walls of Velitræ;, and including that which played upon a gate at Florence, and foretold the pontificate of one of its citizens.[597]

14.

There, too, the Goddess loves in stone. Stanza xlix. line 1.

The view of the Venus of Medicis instantly suggests the lines in the _Seasons_; and the comparison of the object with the description proves, not only the correctness of the portrait, but the peculiar turn of thought, and, if the term may be used, the sexual imagination of the descriptive poet. The same conclusion may be deduced from another hint in the same episode of Musidora; for Thomson's notion of the privileges of favoured love must have been either very primitive, or rather deficient in delicacy, when he made his grateful nymph inform her discreet Damon that in some happier moment he might perhaps be the companion of her bath:--

"The time may come you need not fly."

The reader will recollect the anecdote told in the _Life of Dr. Johnson_. We will not leave the Florentine gallery without a word on the _Whetter_. It seems strange that the character of that disputed statue should not be entirely decided, at least in the mind of any one who has seen a sarcophagus in the vestibule of the Basilica of St. Paul without the walls, at Rome, where the whole group of the fable of Marsyas is seen in tolerable preservation; and the Scythian slave whetting the knife, is represented exactly in the same position as this celebrated masterpiece. The slave is not naked; but it is easier to get rid of this difficulty than to suppose the knife in the hand of the Florentine statue an instrument for shaving, which it must be, if, as Lanzi supposes, the man is no other than the barber of Julius Cæsar. Winckelmann, illustrating a bas-relief of the same subject, follows the opinion of Leonard Agostini, and his authority might have been thought conclusive, even if the resemblance did not strike the most careless observer.[598] Amongst the bronzes of the same princely collection, is still to be seen the inscribed tablet copied and commented upon by Mr. Gibbon.[599] Our historian found some difficulties, but did not desist from his illustration. He might be vexed to hear that his criticism has been thrown away on an inscription now generally recognised to be a forgery.

15.

In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie. Stanza liv. line 1.

This name will recall the memory, not only of those whose tombs have raised the Santa Croce into the centre of pilgrimage--the Mecca of Italy--but of her whose eloquence was poured over the illustrious ashes, and whose voice is now as mute as those she sung. Corinna is no more; and with her should expire the fear, the flattery, and the envy, which threw too dazzling or too dark a cloud round the march of genius, and forbad the steady gaze of disinterested criticism. We have her picture embellished or distorted, as friendship or detraction has held the pencil: the impartial portrait was hardly to be expected from a contemporary. The immediate voice of her survivors will, it is probable, be far from affording a just estimate of her singular capacity. The gallantry, the love of wonder, and the hope of associated fame, which blunted the edge of censure, must cease to exist.--The dead have no sex; they can surprise by no new miracles; they can confer no privilege: Corinna has ceased to be a woman--she is only an author; and it may be foreseen that many will repay themselves for former complaisance, by a severity to which the extravagance of previous praises may perhaps give the colour of truth. The latest posterity--for to the latest posterity they will assuredly descend--will have to pronounce upon her various productions; and the longer the vista through which they are seen, the more accurately minute will be the object, the more certain the justice, of the decision. She will enter into that existence in which the great writers of all ages and nations are, as it were, associated in a world of their own, and, from that superior sphere, shed their eternal influence for the control and consolation of mankind. But the individual will gradually disappear as the author is more distinctly seen; some one, therefore, of all those whom the charms of involuntary wit, and of easy hospitality, attracted within the friendly circles of Coppet, should rescue from oblivion those virtues which, although they are said to love the shade, are, in fact, more frequently chilled than excited by the domestic cares of private life. Some one should be found to portray the unaffected graces with which she adorned those dearer relationships, the performance of whose duties is rather discovered amongst the interior secrets, than seen in the outward management, of family intercourse; and which, indeed, it requires the delicacy of genuine affection to qualify for the eye of an indifferent spectator. Some one should be found, not to celebrate, but to describe, the amiable mistress of an open mansion, the centre of a society, ever varied, and always pleased, the creator of which, divested of the ambition and the arts of public rivalry, shone forth only to give fresh animation to those around her. The mother tenderly affectionate and tenderly beloved, the friend unboundedly generous, but still esteemed, the charitable patroness of all distress, cannot be forgotten by those whom she cherished, and protected, and fed. Her loss will be mourned the most where she was known the best; and, to the sorrows of very many friends, and more dependants, may be offered the disinterested regret of a stranger, who, amidst the sublimer scenes of the Leman lake, received his chief satisfaction from contemplating the engaging qualities of the incomparable Corinna.

16.

Here repose Angelo's--Alfieri's bones. Stanza liv. lines 6 and 7.

Alfieri is the great name of this age. The Italians, without waiting for the hundred years, consider him as "a poet good in law."--His memory is the more dear to them because he is the bard of freedom; and because, as such, his tragedies can receive no countenance from any of their sovereigns. They are but very seldom, and but very few of them, allowed to be acted. It was observed by Cicero, that nowhere were the true opinions and feelings of the Romans so clearly shown as at the theatre.[600] In the autumn of 1816, a celebrated improvisatore exhibited his talents at the Opera-house of Milan. The reading of the theses handed in for the subjects of his poetry was received by a very numerous audience, for the most part in silence, or with laughter; but when the assistant, unfolding one of the papers, exclaimed _The apotheosis of Victor Alfieri_, the whole theatre burst into a shout, and the applause was continued for some moments. The lot did not fall on Alfieri; and the Signor Sgricci had to pour forth his extemporary common-places on the bombardment of Algiers. The choice, indeed, is not left to accident quite so much as might be thought from a first view of the ceremony; and the police not only takes care to look at the papers beforehand, but, in case of any prudential afterthought, steps in to correct the blindness of chance. The proposal for deifying Alfieri was received with immediate enthusiasm, the rather because it was conjectured there would be no opportunity of carrying it into effect.

17.

Here Machiavelli's earth returned to whence it rose. Stanza liv. line 9.

The affectation of simplicity in sepulchral inscriptions, which so often leaves us uncertain whether the structure before us is an actual depository, or a cenotaph, or a simple memorial not of death but life, has given to the tomb of Machiavelli no information as to the place or time of the birth or death, the age or parentage, of the historian.

TANTO NOMINI NVLLVM PAR ELOGIVM NICCOLAVS MACHIAVELLI.

There seems at least no reason why the name should not have been put above the sentence which alludes to it.

It will readily be imagined that the prejudices which have passed the name of Machiavelli into an epithet proverbial of iniquity exist no longer at Florence. His memory was persecuted, as his life had been, for an attachment to liberty incompatible with the new system of despotism, which succeeded the fall of the free governments of Italy. He was put to the torture for being a "libertine," that is, for wishing to restore the republic of Florence; and such are the undying efforts of those who are interested in the perversion, not only of the nature of actions, but the meaning of words, that what was once _patriotism_, has by degrees come to signify _debauch_. We have ourselves outlived the old meaning of "liberality," which is now another word for treason in one country and for infatuation in all. It seems to have been a strange mistake to accuse the author of _The Prince_, as being a pander to tyranny; and to think that the Inquisition would condemn his work for such a delinquency. The fact is, that Machiavelli, as is usual with those against whom no crime can be proved, was suspected of and charged with atheism; and the first and last most violent opposers of _The Prince_ were both Jesuits, one of whom persuaded the Inquisition "benchè fosse tardo," to prohibit the treatise, and the other qualified the secretary of the Florentine republic as no better than a fool. The father Possevin was proved never to have read the book, and the father Lucchesini not to have understood it. It is clear, however, that such critics must have objected not to the slavery of the doctrines, but to the supposed tendency of a lesson which shows how distinct are the interests of a monarch from the happiness of mankind. The Jesuits are re-established in Italy, and the last chapter of _The Prince_ may again call forth a

## particular refutation from those who are employed once more in moulding

the minds of the rising generation, so as to receive the impressions of despotism. The chapter [xxvi.] bears for title, "Esortazione a liberare l'Italia da' Barbari," and concludes with a _libertine_ excitement to the future redemption of Italy. "Non si deve adunque lasciar passare questa occasione, acciocchè la Italia vegga dopo tanto tempo apparire un suo redentore. Nè posso esprimere con quale amore ei fusse ricevuto in tutte quelle provincie, che hanno patito per queste illuvioni esterne, con qual sete di vendetta, con che ostinata fede, con que pietà, con che lacrime. Quali porte se gli serrerebbero? Quali popoli gli negherebbero l'ubbidienza? Quale Italiano gli negherebbe l'ossequio? AD OGNUNO PUZZA QUESTO BARBARO DOMINIO."[601]

18.

Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar. Stanza lvii. line 1.

Dante was born in Florence, in the year 1261. He fought in two battles, was fourteen times ambassador, and once prior of the republic. When the party of Charles of Anjou triumphed over the Bianchi, he was absent on an embassy to Pope Boniface VIII., and was condemned to two years' banishment, and to a fine of 8000 lire; on the non-payment of which he was further punished by the sequestration of all his property. The republic, however, was not content with this satisfaction, for in 1772 was discovered in the archives at Florence a sentence in which Dante is the eleventh of a list of fifteen condemned in 1302 to be burnt alive; _Talis perveniens igne comburatur sic quod moriatur_. The pretext for this judgment was a proof of unfair barter, extortions, and illicit gains. _Baracteriarum iniquarum extorsionum et illicitorum lucrorum_,[602] and with such an accusation it is not strange that Dante should have always protested his innocence, and the injustice of his fellow-citizens. His appeal to Florence was accompanied by another to the Emperor Henry; and the death of that Sovereign in 1313 was the signal for a sentence of irrevocable banishment. He had before lingered near Tuscany with hopes of recall; then travelled into the north of Italy, where Verona had to boast of his longest residence; and he finally settled at Ravenna, which was his ordinary but not constant abode until his death. The refusal of the Venetians to grant him a public audience, on the part of Guido Novello da Polenta, his protector, is said to have been the principal cause of this event, which happened in 1321. He was buried ("in sacra minorum æde") at Ravenna, in a handsome tomb, which was erected by Guido, restored by Bernardo Bembo in 1483, prætor for that republic which had refused to hear him, again restored by Cardinal Corsi, in 1692, and replaced by a more magnificent sepulchre, constructed in 1780 at the expense of the Cardinal Luigi Valenti Gonzaga. The offence or misfortune of Dante was an attachment to a defeated party, and, as his least favourable biographers allege against him, too great a freedom of speech and haughtiness of manner. But the next age paid honours almost divine to the exile. The Florentines, having in vain and frequently attempted to recover his body, crowned his image in a church,[603] and his picture is still one of the idols of their cathedral. They struck medals, they raised statues to him. The cities of Italy, not being able to dispute about his own birth, contended for that of his great poem, and the Florentines thought it for their honour to prove that he had finished the seventh Canto before they drove him from his native city. Fifty-one years after his death, they endowed a professorial chair for the expounding of his verses, and Boccaccio was appointed to this patriotic employment. The example was imitated by Bologna and Pisa, and the commentators, if they performed but little service to literature, augmented the veneration which beheld a sacred or moral allegory in all the images of his mystic muse. His birth and his infancy were discovered to have been distinguished above those of ordinary men: the author of the _Decameron_, his earliest biographer, relates that his mother was warned in a dream of the importance of her pregnancy: and it was found, by others, that at ten years of age he had manifested his precocious passion for that wisdom or theology, which, under the name of Beatrice, had been mistaken for a substantial mistress. When the _Divine Comedy_ had been recognised as a mere mortal production, and at the distance of two centuries, when criticism and competition had sobered the judgment of the Italians, Dante was seriously declared superior to Homer;[604] and though the preference appeared to some casuists "an heretical blasphemy worthy of the flames," the contest was vigorously maintained for nearly fifty years. In later times it was made a question which of the Lords of Verona could boast of having patronised him,[605] and the jealous scepticism of one writer would not allow Ravenna the undoubted possession of his bones. Even the critical Tiraboschi was inclined to believe that the poet had foreseen and foretold one of the discoveries of Galileo.--Like the great originals of other nations, his popularity has not always maintained the same level. The last age seemed inclined to undervalue him as a model and a study: and Bettinelli one day rebuked his pupil Monti, for poring over the harsh and obsolete extravagances of the _Commedia_. The present generation having recovered from the Gallic idolatries of Cesarotti, has returned to the ancient worship, and the _Danteggiare_ of the northern Italians is thought even indiscreet by the more moderate Tuscans.

There is still much curious information relative to the life and writings of this great poet, which has not as yet been collected even by the Italians; but the celebrated Ugo Foscolo meditates to supply this defect, and it is not to be regretted that this national work has been reserved for one so devoted to his country and the cause of truth.

19.

Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore: Thy factions, in their worse than civil war, Proscribed, etc. Stanza lvii. lines 2, 3, and 4.

The elder Scipio Africanus had a tomb if he was not buried at Liternum, whither he had retired to voluntary banishment. This tomb was near the sea-shore, and the story of an inscription upon it, _Ingrata Patria_, having given a name to a modern tower, is, if not true, an agreeable fiction. If he was not buried, he certainly lived there.[606]

"In così angusta & solitaria uilla Era grand' huom che d' Aphrica s' appella, Perche prima col ferro al uiuo aprilla."[607]

Ingratitude is generally supposed the vice peculiar to republics; and it seems to be forgotten that for one instance of popular inconstancy, we have a hundred examples of the fall of courtly favourites. Besides, a people have often repented--a monarch seldom or never. Leaving apart many familiar proofs of this fact, a short story may show the difference between even an aristocracy and the multitude.

Vettor Pisani, having been defeated in 1354 at Portolongo, and many years afterwards in the more decisive action of Pola, by the Genoese, was recalled by the Venetian government, and thrown into chains. The Avvogadori proposed to behead him, but the supreme tribunal was content with the sentence of imprisonment. Whilst Pisani was suffering this unmerited disgrace, Chioza, in the vicinity of the capital,[608] was, by the assistance of the _Signor of Padua_, delivered into the hands of Pietro Doria. At the intelligence of that disaster, the great bell of St. Mark's tower tolled to arms, and the people and the soldiery of the galleys were summoned to the repulse of the approaching enemy; but they protested they would not move a step, unless Pisani were liberated and placed at their head. The great council was instantly assembled: the prisoner was called before them, and the Doge, Andrea Contarini, informed him of the demands of the people, and the necessities of the state, whose only hope of safety was reposed in his efforts, and who implored him to forget the indignities he had endured in her service. "I have submitted," replied the magnanimous republican, "I have submitted to your deliberations without complaint; I have supported patiently the pains of imprisonment, for they were inflicted at your command: this is no time to inquire whether I deserved them--the good of the republic may have seemed to require it, and that which the republic resolves is always resolved wisely. Behold me ready to lay down my life for the preservation of my country." Pisani was appointed generalissimo, and, by his exertions, in conjunction with those of Carlo Zeno, the Venetians soon recovered the ascendancy over their maritime rivals.

The Italian communities were no less unjust to their citizens than the Greek republics. Liberty, both with the one and the other, seems to have been a national, not an individual object: and, notwithstanding the boasted _equality before the laws_, which an ancient Greek writer[609] considered the great distinctive mark between his countrymen and the barbarians, the mutual rights of fellow citizens seem never to have been the principal scope of the old democracies. The world may have not yet seen an essay by the author of _The Italian Republics_, in which the distinction between the liberty of former states, and the signification attached to that word by the happier constitution of England, is ingeniously developed. The Italians, however, when they had ceased to be free, still looked back with a sigh upon those times of turbulence, when every citizen might rise to a share of sovereign power, and have never been taught fully to appreciate the repose of a monarchy. Sperone Speroni, when Francis Maria II. Duke of Rovere proposed the question, "which was preferable, the republic or the principality--the perfect and not durable, or the less perfect and not so liable to change," replied, "that our happiness is to be measured by its quality, not by its duration; and that he preferred to live for one day like a man, than for a hundred years like a brute, a stock, or a stone." This was thought, and called a _magnificent_ answer down to the last days of Italian servitude.[610]

20.

And the crown Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore, Upon a far and foreign soil had grown. Stanza lvii. lines 6, 7, and 8.

The Florentines did not take the opportunity of Petrarch's short visit to their city in 1350 to revoke the decree which confiscated the property of his father, who had been banished shortly after the exile of Dante. His crown did not dazzle them; but when in the next year they were in want of his assistance in the formation of their university, they repented of their injustice, and Boccaccio was sent to Padua to entreat the laureate to conclude his wanderings in the bosom of his native country, where he might finish his _immortal Africa_, and enjoy, with his recovered possessions, the esteem of all classes of his fellow citizens. They gave him the option of the book and the science he might condescend to expound: they called him the glory of his country, who was dear, and who would be dearer to them; and they added, that if there was anything unpleasing in their letter, he ought to return amongst them, were it only to correct their style.[611] Petrarch seemed at first to listen to the flattery and to the entreaties of his friend, but he did not return to Florence, and preferred a pilgrimage to the tomb of Laura and the shades of Vaucluse.

21.

Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeathed His dust. Stanza lviii. lines 1 and 2.

Boccaccio was buried in the church of St. Michael and St. James, at Certaldo, a small town in the Valdelsa, which was by some supposed the place of his birth. There he passed the latter part of his life in a course of laborious study, which shortened his existence; and there might his ashes have been secure, if not of honour, at least of repose. But the "hyena bigots" of Certaldo tore up the tombstone of Boccaccio and ejected it from the holy precincts of St. Michael and St. James. The occasion, and, it may be hoped, the excuse, of this ejectment was the making of a new floor for the church; but the fact is, that the tombstone was taken up and thrown aside at the bottom of the building. Ignorance may share the sin with bigotry. It would be painful to relate such an exception to the devotion of the Italians for their great names, could it not be accompanied by a trait more honourably conformable to the general character of the nation. The principal person of the district, the last branch of the house of Medicis, afforded that protection to the memory of the insulted dead which her best ancestors had dispensed upon all contemporary merit. The Marchioness Lenzoni rescued the tombstone of Boccaccio from the neglect in which it had some time lain, and found for it an honourable elevation in her own mansion. She has done more: the house in which the poet lived has been as little respected as his tomb, and is falling to ruin over the head of one indifferent to the name of its former tenant. It consists of two or three little chambers, and a low tower, on which Cosmo II. affixed an inscription. This house she has taken measures to purchase, and proposes to devote to it that care and consideration which are attached to the cradle and to the roof of genius.

This is not the place to undertake the defence of Boccaccio; but the man who exhausted his little patrimony in the acquirement of learning, who was amongst the first, if not the first, to allure the science and the poetry of Greece to the bosom of Italy;--who not only invented a new style, but founded, or certainly fixed, a new language; who, besides the esteem of every polite court of Europe, was thought worthy of employment by the predominant republic of his own country, and, what is more, of the friendship of Petrarch, who lived the life of a philosopher and a freeman, and who died in the pursuit of knowledge,--such a man might have found more consideration than he has met with from the priest of Certaldo, and from a late English traveller, who strikes off his portrait as an odious, contemptible, licentious writer, whose impure remains should be suffered to rot without a record.[612] That English traveller, unfortunately for those who have to deplore the loss of a very amiable person, is beyond all criticism; but the mortality which did not protect Boccaccio from Mr. Eustace, must not defend Mr. Eustace from the impartial judgment of his successors. Death may canonise his virtues, not his errors; and it may be modestly pronounced that he transgressed, not only as an author, but as a man, when he evoked the shade of Boccaccio in company with that of Aretine, amidst the sepulchres of Santa Croce, merely to dismiss it with indignity. As far as respects

"Il flagello de' Principi, Il divin Pietro Aretino,"

it is of little import what censure is passed upon a coxcomb who owes his present existence to the above burlesque character given to him by the poet, whose amber has preserved many other grubs and worms: but to classify Boccaccio with such a person, and to excommunicate his very ashes, must of itself make us doubt of the qualification of the classical tourist for writing upon Italian, or, indeed, upon any other literature; for ignorance on one point may incapacitate an author merely for that particular topic, but subjection to a professional prejudice must render him an unsafe director on all occasions. Any perversion and injustice may be made what is vulgarly called a "case of conscience," and this poor excuse is all that can be offered for the priest of Certaldo, or the author of the _Classical Tour_. It would have answered the purpose to confine the censure to the novels of Boccaccio; and gratitude to that source which supplied the muse of Dryden with her last and most harmonious numbers might, perhaps, have restricted that censure to the objectionable qualities of the hundred tales. At any rate the repentance of Boccaccio might have arrested his exhumation, and it should have been recollected and told, that in his old age he wrote a letter entreating his friend to discourage the reading of the _Decameron_, for the sake of modesty, and for the sake of the author, who would not have an apologist always at hand to state in his excuse that he wrote it when young, and at the command of his superiors.[613] It is neither the licentiousness of the writer, nor the evil propensities of the reader, which have given to the _Decameron_ alone, of all the works of Boccaccio, a perpetual popularity. The establishment of a new and delightful dialect conferred an immortality on the works in which it was first fixed. The sonnets of Petrarch were, for the same reason, fated to survive his self-admired _Africa_, "the favourite of kings." The invariable traits of nature and feeling with which the novels, as well as the verses, abound, have doubtless been the chief source of the foreign celebrity of both authors; but Boccaccio, as a man, is no more to be estimated by that work, than Petrarch is to be regarded in no other light than as the lover of Laura. Even, however, had the father of the Tuscan prose been known only as the author of the _Decameron_, a considerate writer would have been cautious to pronounce a sentence irreconcilable with the unerring voice of many ages and nations. An irrevocable value has never been stamped upon any work solely recommended by impurity.

The true source of the outcry against Boccaccio, which began at a very early period, was the choice of his scandalous personages in the cloisters as well as the courts; but the princes only laughed at the gallant adventures so unjustly charged upon queen Theodelinda, whilst the priesthood cried shame upon the debauches drawn from the convent and the hermitage; and most probably for the opposite reason, namely, that the picture was faithful to the life. Two of the novels are allowed to be facts usefully turned into tales to deride the canonisation of rogues and laymen. Ser Ciappelletto and Marcellinus are cited with applause even by the decent Muratori.[614] The great Arnaud, as he is quoted in Bayle, states, that a new edition of the novels was proposed, of which the expurgation consisted in omitting the words "monk" and "nun," and tacking the immoralities to other names. The literary history of Italy

## particularises no such edition; but it was not long before the whole of

Europe had but one opinion of the _Decameron_; and the absolution of the author seems to have been a point settled at least a hundred years ago: "On se feroit siffler si l' on prétendoit convaincre Boccace de n'avoir pas été honnête homme, puis qu'il a fait le Décameron." So said one of the best men, and perhaps the best critic that ever lived--the very martyr to impartiality.[615] But as this information, that in the beginning of the last century one would have been hooted at for pretending that Boccaccio was not a good man, may seem to come from one of those enemies who are to be suspected, even when they make us a present of truth, a more acceptable contrast with the proscription of the body, soul, and muse of Boccaccio may be found in a few words from the virtuous, the patriotic contemporary, who thought one of the tales of this impure writer worthy a Latin version from his own pen. "I have remarked elsewhere," says Petrarch, writing to Boccaccio, "that the book itself has been worried by certain dogs, but stoutly defended by your staff and voice. Nor was I astonished, for I have had proof of the vigour of your mind, and I know you have fallen on that unaccommodating incapable race of mortals, who, whatever they either like not, or know not, or cannot do, are sure to reprehend in others; and on those occasions only put on a show of learning and eloquence, but otherwise are entirely dumb."[616]

It is satisfactory to find that all the priesthood do not resemble those of Certaldo, and that one of them who did not possess the bones of Boccaccio would not lose the opportunity of raising a cenotaph to his memory. Bevius, canon of Padua, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, erected at Arquà, opposite to the tomb of the Laureate, a tablet, in which he associated Boccaccio to the equal honours of Dante and of Petrarch.

22.

What is her Pyramid of precious stones? Stanza lx. line 1.

Our veneration for the Medici begins with Cosmo and expires with his grandson; that stream is pure only at the source; and it is in search of some memorial of the virtuous republicans of the family that we visit the church of St. Lorenzo at Florence. The tawdry, glaring, unfinished chapel in that church, designed for the mausoleum of the Dukes of Tuscany, set round with crowns and coffins, gives birth to no emotions but those of contempt for the lavish vanity of a race of despots, whilst the pavement slab, simply inscribed to the Father of his Country, reconciles us to the name of Medici.[617] It was very natural for Corinna[618] to suppose that the statue raised to the Duke of Urbino in the _capella de' depositi_, was intended for his great namesake; but the magnificent Lorenzo is only the sharer of a coffin half hidden in a niche of the sacristy. The decay of Tuscany dates from the sovereignty of the Medici. Of the sepulchral peace which succeeded to the establishment of the reigning families in Italy, our own Sidney has given us a glowing, but a faithful picture. "Notwithstanding all the seditions of Florence, and other cities of Tuscany, the horrid factions of Guelphs and Ghibelins, Neri and Bianchi, nobles and commons, they continued populous, strong, and exceeding rich; but in the space of less than a hundred and fifty years, the peaceable reign of the Medices is thought to have destroyed nine parts in ten of the people of that province. Amongst other things it is remarkable, that when Philip II. of Spain gave Sienna to the Duke of Florence, his ambassador then at Rome sent him word, that he had given away more than 650,000 subjects; and it is not believed there are now 20,000 souls inhabiting that city and territory. Pisa, Pistoia, Arezzo, Cortona, and other towns, that were then good and populous, are in the like proportion diminished, and Florence more than any. When that city had been long troubled with seditions, tumults, and wars, for the most part unprosperous, they still retained such strength, that when Charles VIII. of France, being admitted as a friend with his whole army, which soon after conquered the kingdom of Naples, thought to master them, the people, taking arms, struck such a terror into him, that he was glad to depart upon such conditions as they thought fit to impose. Machiavel reports, that in that time Florence alone, with the Val d'Arno, a small territory belonging to that city, could, in a few hours, by the sound of a bell, bring together 135,000 well-armed men; whereas now that city, with all the others in that province, are brought to such despicable weakness, emptiness, poverty, and baseness, that they can neither resist the oppressions of their own prince, nor defend him or themselves if they were assaulted by a foreign enemy. The people are dispersed or destroyed, and the best families sent to seek habitations in Venice, Genoa, Rome, Naples, and Lucca. This is not the effect of war or pestilence; they enjoy a perfect peace, and suffer no other plague than the government they are under."[619] From the usurper Cosmo down to the imbecile Gaston, we look in vain for any of those unmixed qualities which should raise a patriot to the command of his fellow-citizens. The Grand Dukes, and particularly the third Cosmo, had operated so entire a change in the Tuscan character, that the candid Florentines, in excuse for some imperfections in the philanthropic system of Leopold, are obliged to confess that the sovereign was the only liberal man in his dominions. Yet that excellent prince himself had no other notion of a national assembly, than of a body to represent the wants and wishes, not the will of the people.

23.

An Earthquake reeled unheededly away! Stanza lxiii. line 5.

"And such was their mutual animosity, so intent were they upon the battle, that the earthquake, which overthrew in great part many of the cities of Italy, which turned the course of rapid streams, poured back the sea upon the rivers, and tore down the very mountains, was not felt by one of the combatants."[620] Such is the description of Livy. It may be doubted whether modern tactics would admit of such an abstraction.

The site of the battle of Thrasimene is not to be mistaken. The traveller from the village under Cortona to Casa di Piano, the next stage on the way to Rome, has for the first two or three miles, around him, but more particularly to the right, that flat land which Hannibal laid waste in order to induce the Consul Flaminius to move from Arezzo. On his left, and in front of him, is a ridge of hills bending down towards the lake of Thrasimene, called by Livy "montes Cortonenses," and now named the Gualandra. These hills he approaches at Ossaja, a village which the itineraries pretend to have been so denominated from the bones found there: but there have been no bones found there, and the battle was fought on the other side of the hill. From Ossaja the road begins to rise a little, but does not pass into the roots of the mountains until the sixty-seventh milestone from Florence. The ascent thence is not steep but perpetual, and continues for twenty minutes. The lake is soon seen below on the right, with Borghetto, a round tower, close upon the water; and the undulating hills partially covered with wood, amongst which the road winds, sink by degrees into the marshes near to this tower. Lower than the road, down to the right amidst these woody hillocks, Hannibal placed his horse,[621] in the jaws of, or rather above the pass, which was between the lake and the present road, and most probably close to Borghetto, just under the lowest of the "tumuli."[622] On a summit to the left, above the road, is an old circular ruin, which the peasants call "the tower of Hannibal the Carthaginian." Arrived at the highest point of the road, the traveller has a partial view of the fatal plain, which opens fully upon him as he descends the Gualandra. He soon finds himself in a vale enclosed to the left, and in front and behind him by the Gualandra hills, bending round in a segment larger than a semicircle, and running down at each end to the lake, which obliques to the right and forms the chord of this mountain arc. The position cannot be guessed at from the plains of Cortona, nor appears to be so completely enclosed unless to one who is fairly within the hills. It then, indeed, appears "a place made as it were on purpose for a snare," _locus insidiis natus_. "Borghetto is then found to stand in a narrow marshy pass close to the hill, and to the lake, whilst there is no other outlet at the opposite turn of the mountains than through the little town of Passignano, which is pushed into the water by the foot of a high rocky acclivity." There is a woody eminence branching down from the mountains into the upper end of the plain nearer to the side of Passignano, and on this stands a white village called Torre. Polybius seems to allude to this eminence as the one on which Hannibal encamped, and drew out his heavy-armed Africans and Spaniards in a conspicuous position.[623] From this spot he despatched his Balearic and light-armed troops round through the Gualandra heights to the right, so as to arrive unseen and form an ambush amongst the broken acclivities which the road now passes, and to be ready to act upon the left flank and above the enemy, whilst the horse shut up the pass behind. Flaminius came to the lake near Borghetto at sunset; and, without sending any spies before him, marched through the pass the next morning before the day had quite broken, so that he perceived nothing of the horse and light troops above and about him, and saw only the heavy-armed Carthaginians in front on the hill of Torre. The consul began to draw out his army in the flat, and in the mean time the horse in ambush occupied the pass behind him at Borghetto. Thus the Romans were completely enclosed, having the lake on the right, the main army on the hill of Torre in front, the Gualandra hills filled with the light-armed on their left flank, and being prevented from receding by the cavalry, who, the further they advanced, stopped up all the outlets in the rear. A fog rising from the lake now spread itself over the army of the consul, but the high lands were in the sunshine, and all the different corps in ambush looked towards the hill of Torre for the order of attack. Hannibal gave the signal, and moved down from his post on the height. At the same moment all his troops on the eminences behind and in the flank of Flaminius rushed forwards as it were with one accord into the plain. The Romans, who were forming their array in the mist, suddenly heard the shouts of the enemy amongst them on every side, and before they could fall into their ranks, or draw their swords, or see by whom they were attacked, felt at once that they were surrounded and lost. There are two little rivulets which run from the Gualandra into the lake. The traveller crosses the first of these at about a mile after he comes into the plain, and this divides the Tuscan from the Papal territories. The second, about a quarter of a mile further on, is called "the bloody rivulet;" and the peasants point out an open spot to the left between the "Sanguinetto" and the hills, which, they say, was the principal scene of slaughter. The other part of the plain is covered with thick-set olive-trees in corn grounds, and is nowhere quite level, except near the edge of the lake. It is, indeed, most probable that the battle was fought near this end of the valley, for the six thousand Romans, who, at the beginning of the action, broke through the enemy, escaped to the summit of an eminence which must have been in this quarter, otherwise they would have had to traverse the whole plain, and to pierce through the main army of Hannibal.

The Romans fought desperately for three hours; but the death of Flaminius was the signal for a general dispersion. The Carthaginian horse then burst in upon the fugitives, and the lake, the marsh about Borghetto, but chiefly the plain of the Sanguinetto and the passes of the Gualandra, were strewed with dead. Near some old walls on a bleak ridge to the left above the rivulet, many human bones have been repeatedly found, and this has confirmed the pretensions and the name of the "stream of blood."

Every district of Italy has its hero. In the north some painter is the usual genius of the place, and the foreign Julio Romano more than divides Mantua with her native Virgil.[624] To the south we hear of Roman names. Near Thrasimene tradition is still faithful to the fame of an enemy, and Hannibal the Carthaginian is the only ancient name remembered on the banks of the Perugian lake. Flaminius is unknown; but the postilions on that road have been taught to show the very spot where _Il Console Romano_ was slain. Of all who fought and fell in the battle of Thrasimene, the historian himself has, besides the generals and Maharbal, preserved indeed only a single name. You overtake the Carthaginian again on the same road to Rome. The antiquary, that is, the hostler of the posthouse at Spoleto, tells you that his town repulsed the victorious enemy, and shows you the gate still called _Porta di Annibale_. It is hardly worth while to remark that a French travel writer, well known by the name of the President Dupaty, saw Thrasimene in the lake of Bolsena, which lay conveniently on his way from Sienna to Rome.

24.

And thou, dread Statue! still existent in The austerest form of naked majesty. Stanza lxxxvii. lines 1 and 2.

The projected division of the Spada Pompey has already been recorded by the historian of the _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. Mr. Gibbon found it in the memorials of Flaminius Vacca; and it may be added to his mention of it, that Pope Julius III. gave the contending owners five hundred crowns for the statue, and presented it to Cardinal Capo di Ferro, who had prevented the judgment of Solomon from being executed upon the image. In a more civilised age this statue was exposed to an actual operation: for the French, who acted the Brutus of Voltaire in the Coliseum, resolved that their Cæsar should fall at the base of that Pompey, which was supposed to have been sprinkled with the blood of the original dictator. The nine-foot hero was therefore removed to the arena of the amphitheatre, and, to facilitate its transport, suffered the temporary amputation of its right arm. The republican tragedians had to plead that the arm was a restoration: but their accusers do not believe that the integrity of the statue would have protected it. The love of finding every coincidence, has discovered the true Cæsarian ichor in a stain near the right knee; but colder criticism has rejected not only the blood, but the portrait, and assigned the globe of power rather to the first of the emperors than to the last of the republican masters of Rome. Winckelmann[625] is loth to allow an heroic statue of a Roman citizen, but the Grimani Agrippa, a contemporary almost, is heroic; and naked Roman figures were only very rare, not absolutely forbidden. The face accords much better with the "hominem integrum et castum et gravem,"[626] than with any of the busts of Augustus, and is too stern for him who was beautiful, says Suetonius, at all periods of his life. The pretended likeness to Alexander the Great cannot be discerned, but the traits resemble the medal of Pompey.[627] The objectionable globe may not have been an ill-applied flattery to him who found Asia Minor the boundary, and left it the centre of the Roman empire. It seems that Winckelmann has made a mistake in thinking that no proof of the identity of this statue with that which received the bloody sacrifice can be derived from the spot where it was discovered.[628] Flaminius Vacca says _sotto una cantina_, and this cantina is known to have been in the Vicolo de' Leutari, near the Cancellaria; a position corresponding exactly to that of the Janus before the basilica of Pompey's theatre, to which Augustus transferred the statue after the _curia_ was either burnt or taken down.[629] Part of the "Pompeian shade,"[630] the portico, existed in the beginning of the XVth century, and the _atrium_ was still called _Satrum_. So says Blondus.[631] At all events, so imposing is the stern majesty of the statue, and so memorable is the story, that the play of the imagination leaves no room for the exercise of the judgment, and the fiction, if a fiction it is, operates on the spectator with an effect not less powerful than truth.

25.

And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome! Stanza lxxxviii. line 1.

Ancient Rome, like modern Sienna, abounded most probably with images of the foster-mother of her founder; but there were two she-wolves of whom history makes particular mention. One of these, _of brass in ancient work_, was seen by Dionysius[632] at the temple of Romulus, under the Palatine, and is universally believed to be that mentioned by the Latin historian, as having been made from the money collected by a fine on usurers, and as standing under the Ruminal fig-tree.[633] The other was that which Cicero[634] has celebrated both in prose and verse, and which the historian Dion also records as having suffered the same accident as is alluded to by the orator.[635] The question agitated by the antiquaries is, whether the wolf now in the Conservator's Palace is that of Livy and Dionysius, or that of Cicero, or whether it is neither one nor the other. The earlier writers differ as much as the moderns: Lucius Faunus[636] says, that it is the one alluded to by both, which is impossible, and also by Virgil, which may be. Fulvius Ursinus[637] calls it the wolf of Dionysius, and Marlianus[638] talks of it as the one mentioned by Cicero. To him Rycquius _tremblingly_ assents.[639] Nardini is inclined to suppose it may be one of the many wolves preserved in ancient Rome; but of the two rather bends to the Ciceronian statue.[640] Montfaucon[641] mentions it as a point without doubt. Of the latter writers the decisive Winckelmann[642] proclaims it as having been found at the church of Saint Theodore, where, or near where, was the temple of Romulus, and consequently makes it the wolf of Dionysius. His authority is Lucius Faunus, who, however, only says that it _was placed_, not _found_, at the Ficus Ruminalis, by the Comitium, by which he does not seem to allude to the church of Saint Theodore. Rycquius was the first to make the mistake, and Winckelmann followed Rycquius.

Flaminius Vacca tells quite a different story, and says he had heard the wolf with the twins was found[643] near the arch of Septimius Severus. The commentator on Winckelmann is of the same opinion with that learned person, and is incensed at Nardini for not having remarked that Cicero, in speaking of the wolf struck with lightning in the Capitol, makes use of the past tense. But, with the Abate's leave, Nardini does not positively assert the statue to be that mentioned by Cicero, and if he had, the assumption would not perhaps have been so exceedingly indiscreet. The Abate himself is obliged to own that there are marks very like the scathing of lightning in the hinder legs of the present wolf; and, to get rid of this, adds, that the wolf seen by Dionysius might have been also struck by lightning, or otherwise injured.

Let us examine the subject by a reference to the words of Cicero. The orator in two places seems to particularise the Romulus and the Remus, especially the first, which his audience remembered to _have been_ in the Capitol, as being struck with lightning. In his verses he records that the twins and wolf both fell, and that the latter left behind the marks of her feet. Cicero does not say that the wolf was consumed: and Dion only mentions that it fell down, without alluding, as the Abate has made him, to the force of the blow, or the firmness with which it had been fixed. The whole strength, therefore, of the Abate's argument hangs upon the past tense; which, however, may be somewhat diminished by remarking that the phrase only shows that the statue was not then standing in its former position. Winckelmann has observed that the present twins are modern; and it is equally clear that there are marks of gilding on the wolf, which might therefore be supposed to make part of the ancient group. It is known that the sacred images of the Capitol were not destroyed when injured by time or accident, but were put into certain underground depositories, called _favissæ_.[644] It may be thought possible that the wolf had been so deposited, and had been replaced in some conspicuous situation when the Capitol was rebuilt by Vespasian. Rycquius, without mentioning his authority, tells that it was transferred from the Comitium to the Lateran, and thence brought to the Capitol. If it was found near the arch of Severus, it may have been one of the images which Orosius[645] says was thrown down in the Forum by lightning when Alaric took the city. That it is of very high antiquity the workmanship is a decisive proof; and that circumstance induced Winckelmann to believe it the wolf of Dionysius. The Capitoline wolf, however, may have been of the same early date as that at the temple of Romulus. Lactantius[646] asserts that in his time the Romans worshipped a wolf; and it is known that the Lupercalia held out to a very late period[647] after every other observance of the ancient superstition had totally expired. This may account for the preservation of the ancient image longer than the other early symbols of Paganism.

It may be permitted, however, to remark, that the wolf was a Roman symbol, but that the worship of that symbol is an inference drawn by the zeal of Lactantius. The early Christian writers are not to be trusted in the charges which they make against the Pagans. Eusebius accused the Romans to their faces of worshipping Simon Magus, and raising a statue to him in the island of the Tyber. The Romans had probably never heard of such a person before, who came, however, to play a considerable, though scandalous part in the church history, and has left several tokens of his aërial combat with St. Peter at Rome; notwithstanding that an inscription found in this very island of the Tyber showed the Simon Magus of Eusebius to be a certain indigenal god called Semo Sangus or Fidius.[648]

Even when the worship of the founder of Rome had been abandoned it was thought expedient to humour the habits of the good matrons of the city, by sending them with their sick infants to the church of Saint Theodore, as they had before carried them to the temple of Romulus.[649] The practice is continued to this day; and the site of the above church seems to be thereby identified with that of the temple; so that if the wolf had been really found there, as Winckelmann says, there would be no doubt of the present statue being that seen by Dionysius.[650] But Faunus, in saying that it was at the Ficus Ruminalis by the Comitium, is only talking of its ancient position as recorded by Pliny; and, even if he had been remarking where it was found, would not have alluded to the church of Saint Theodore, but to a very different place, near which it was then thought the Ficus Ruminalis had been, and also the Comitium; that is, the three columns by the church of Santa Maria Liberatrice, at the corner of the Palatine looking on the Forum.

It is, in fact, a mere conjecture where the image was actually dug up; and perhaps, on the whole, the marks of the gilding, and of the lightning, are a better argument in favour of its being the Ciceronian wolf than any that can be adduced for the contrary opinion. At any rate, it is reasonably selected in the text of the poem as one of the most interesting relics of the ancient city,[651] and is certainly the figure, if not the very animal to which Virgil alludes in his beautiful verses:--

"Geminos huic ubera circum Ludere pendentes pueros, et lambere matrem Impavidos; illam, tereti cervice reflexam, Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere linguâ."[652]

26.

For the Roman's mind Was modelled in a less terrestrial mould. Stanza xc. lines 3 and 4.

It is possible to be a very great man and to be still very inferior to Julius Cæsar, the most complete character, so Lord Bacon thought, of all antiquity. Nature seems incapable of such extraordinary combinations as composed his versatile capacity, which was the wonder even of the Romans themselves. The first general--the only triumphant politician--inferior to none in eloquence--comparable to any in the attainments of wisdom, in an age made up of the greatest commanders, statesmen, orators, and philosophers that ever appeared in the world--an author who composed a perfect specimen of military annals in his travelling carriage--at one time in a controversy with Cato, at another writing a treatise on punning, and collecting a set of good sayings--fighting and making love at the same moment, and willing to abandon both his empire and his mistress for a sight of the Fountains of the Nile. Such did Julius Cæsar appear to his contemporaries, and to those of the subsequent ages who were the most inclined to deplore and execrate his fatal genius.

But we must not be so much dazzled with his surpassing glory, or with his magnanimous, his amiable qualities, as to forget the decision of his impartial countrymen:--

HE WAS JUSTLY SLAIN.[653]

27.

Egeria! sweet creation of some heart Which found no mortal resting-place so fair As thine ideal breast. Stanza cxv. lines 1, 2, and 3.

The respectable authority of Flaminius Vacca would incline us to believe in the claims of the Egerian grotto.[654] He assures us that he saw an inscription in the pavement, stating that the fountain was that of Egeria, dedicated to the nymphs. The inscription is not there at this day, but Montfaucon quotes two lines[655] of Ovid [_Fast._, iii. 275, 276] from a stone in the Villa Giustiniani, which he seems to think had been brought from the same grotto.

This grotto and valley were formerly frequented in summer, and

## particularly the first Sunday in May, by the modern Romans, who attached

a salubrious quality to the fountain which trickles from an orifice at the bottom of the vault, and, overflowing the little pools, creeps down the matted grass into the brook below. The brook is the Ovidian Almo, whose name and qualities are lost in the modern Aquataccio. The valley itself is called Valle di Caffarelli, from the dukes of that name who made over their fountain to the Pallavicini, with sixty _rubbia_ of adjoining land.

There can be little doubt that this long dell is the Egerian valley of Juvenal, and the pausing place of Umbritius, notwithstanding the generality of his commentators have supposed the descent of the satirist and his friend to have been into the Arician grove, where the nymph met Hippolitus, and where she was more peculiarly worshipped.

The step from the Porta Capena to the Alban hill, fifteen miles distant, would be too considerable, unless we were to believe in the wild conjecture of Vossius, who makes that gate travel from its present station, where he pretends it was during the reign of the Kings, as far as the Arician grove, and then makes it recede to its old site with the shrinking city.[656] The tufo, or pumice, which the poet prefers to marble, is the substance composing the bank in which the grotto is sunk.

The modern topographers[657] find in the grotto the statue of the nymph, and nine niches for the Muses; and a late traveller[658] has discovered that the cave is restored to that simplicity which the poet regretted had been exchanged for injudicious ornament. But the headless statue is palpably rather a male than a nymph, and has none of the attributes ascribed to it at present visible. The nine Muses could hardly have stood in six niches; and Juvenal certainly does not allude to any individual cave.[659] Nothing can be collected from the satirist but that somewhere near the Porta Capena was a spot in which it was supposed Numa held nightly consultations with his nymph, and where there was a grove and a sacred fountain, and fanes once consecrated to the Muses; and that from this spot there was a descent into the valley of Egeria, where were several artificial caves. It is clear that the statues of the Muses made no part of the decoration which the satirist thought misplaced in these caves; for he expressly assigns other fanes (_delubra_) to these divinities above the valley, and moreover tells us that they had been ejected to make room for the Jews. In fact, the little temple now called that of Bacchus, was formerly thought to belong to the Muses, and Nardini[660] places them in a poplar grove, which was in his time above the valley.

It is probable from the inscription and position, that the cave now shown may be one of the "artificial caverns," of which, indeed, there is another a little way higher up the valley, under a tuft of alder bushes; but a _single_ grotto of Egeria is a mere modern invention, grafted upon the application of the epithet Egerian to these nymphea in general, and which might send us to look for the haunts of Numa upon the banks of the Thames.

Our English Juvenal was not seduced into mistranslation by his acquaintance with Pope: he carefully preserves the correct plural--

"Thence slowly winding down the vale we view The Egerian _grots_: oh, how unlike the true!"

The valley abounds with springs,[661] and over these springs, which the Muses might haunt from their neighbouring groves, Egeria presided: hence she was said to supply them with water; and she was the nymph of the grottos through which the fountains were taught to flow.

The whole of the monuments in the vicinity of the Egerian valley have received names at will, which have been changed at will. Venuti[662] owns he can see no traces of the temples of Jove, Saturn, Juno, Venus, and Diana, which Nardini found, or hoped to find. The mutatorium of Caracalla's circus, the temple of Honour and Virtue, the temple of Bacchus, and, above all, the temple of the god Rediculus, are the antiquaries' despair.

The circus of Caracalla depends on a medal of that emperor cited by Fulvius Ursinus, of which the reverse shows a circus, supposed, however, by some to represent the Circus Maximus. It gives a very good idea of that place of exercise. The soil has been but little raised, if we may judge from the small cellular structure at the end of the Spina, which was probably the chapel of the god Consus. This cell is half beneath the soil, as it must have been in the circus itself; for Dionysius[663] could not be persuaded to believe that this divinity was the Roman Neptune, because his altar was underground.

28.

Great Nemesis! Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long. Stanza cxxxii. lines 2 and 3.

We read in Suetonius, that Augustus, from a warning received in a dream,[664] counterfeited, once a year, the beggar, sitting before the gate of his palace with his hand hollowed and stretched out for charity. A statue formerly in the villa Borghese, and which should be now at Paris, represents the Emperor in that posture of supplication. The object of that self-degradation was the appeasement of Nemesis, the perpetual attendant on good fortune, of whose power the Roman conquerors were also reminded by certain symbols attached to their cars of triumph. The symbols were the whip and the _crotalo_, which were discovered in the Nemesis of the Vatican. The attitude of beggary made the above statue pass for that of Belisarius: and until the criticism of Winckelmann[665] had rectified the mistake, one fiction was called in to support another. It was the same fear of the sudden termination of prosperity, that made Amasis king of Egypt warn his friend Polycrates of Samos, that the gods loved those whose lives were chequered with good and evil fortunes. Nemesis was supposed to lie in wait particularly for the prudent; that is, for those whose caution rendered them accessible only to mere accidents; and her first altar was raised on the banks of the Phrygian Æsepus by Adrastus, probably the prince of that name who killed the son of Croesus by mistake. Hence the goddess was called Adrastea.[666]

The Roman Nemesis was _sacred_ and _august_: there was a temple to her in the Palatine under the name of Rhamnusia;[667] so great, indeed, was the propensity of the ancients to trust to the revolution of events, and to believe in the divinity of Fortune, that in the same Palatine there was a temple to the Fortune of the day.[668] This is the last superstition which retains its hold over the human heart; and, from concentrating in one object the credulity so natural to man, has always appeared strongest in those unembarrassed by other articles of belief. The antiquaries have supposed this goddess to be synonymous with Fortune and with Fate;[669] but it was in her vindictive quality that she was worshipped under the name of Nemesis.

29.

He, their sire, Butchered to make a Roman holiday. Stanza cxli. lines 6 and 7.

Gladiators were of two kinds, compelled and voluntary; and were supplied from several conditions;--from slaves sold for that purpose; from culprits; from barbarian captives either taken in war, and, after being led in triumph, set apart for the games, or those seized and condemned as rebels; also from free citizens, some fighting for hire (_auctorati_), others from a depraved ambition; at last even knights and senators were exhibited,--a disgrace of which the first tyrant was naturally the first inventor.[670] In the end, dwarfs, and even women, fought; an enormity prohibited by Severus. Of these the most to be pitied undoubtedly were the barbarian captives; and, to this species a Christian writer[671] justly applies the epithet "innocent," to distinguish them from the professional gladiators. Aurelian and Claudius supplied great numbers of these unfortunate victims; the one after his triumph, and the other on the pretext of a rebellion.[672] No war, says Lipsius,[673] was ever so destructive to the human race as these sports. In spite of the laws of Constantine and Constans, gladiatorial shows survived the old established religion more than seventy years; but they owed their final extinction to the courage of a Christian. In the year 404, on the kalends of January, they were exhibiting the shows in the Flavian amphitheatre before the usual immense concourse of people. Almachius, or Telemachus, an Eastern monk, who had travelled to Rome intent on his holy purpose, rushed into the midst of the arena, and endeavoured to separate the combatants. The Prætor Alypius, a person incredibly attached to these games,[674] gave instant orders to the gladiators to slay him; and Telemachus gained the crown of martyrdom, and the title of saint, which surely has never either before or since been awarded for a more noble exploit. Honorius immediately abolished the shows, which were never afterwards revived. The story is told by Theodoret[675] and Cassiodorus,[676] and seems worthy of credit notwithstanding its place in the Roman martyrology.[677] Besides the torrents of blood which flowed at the funerals, in the amphitheatres, the circus, the forums, and other public places, gladiators were introduced at feasts, and tore each other to pieces amidst the supper tables, to the great delight and applause of the guests. Yet Lipsius permits himself to suppose the loss of courage, and the evident degeneracy of mankind, to be nearly connected with the abolition of these bloody spectacles.

30.

Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise Was Death or Life--the playthings of a crowd. Stanza cxlii. lines 5 and 6.

When one gladiator wounded another, he shouted, "He has it," "Hoc habet," or "Habet." The wounded combatant dropped his weapon, and advancing to the edge of the arena, supplicated the spectators. If he had fought well, the people saved him; if otherwise, or as they happened to be inclined, they turned down their thumbs, and he was slain. They were occasionally so savage that they were impatient if a combat lasted longer than ordinary without wounds or death. The emperor's presence generally saved the vanquished; and it is recorded, as an instance of Caracalla's ferocity, that he sent those who supplicated him for life, in a spectacle, at Nicomedia, to ask the people; in other words, handed them over to be slain. A similar ceremony is observed at the Spanish bull-fights. The magistrate presides; and after the horseman and piccadores have fought the bull, the matadore steps forward and bows to him for permission to kill the animal. If the bull has done his duty by killing two or three horses, or a man, which last is rare, the people interfere with shouts, the ladies wave their handkerchiefs, and the animal is saved. The wounds and death of the horses are accompanied with the loudest acclamations, and many gestures of delight, especially from the female portion of the audience, including those of the gentlest blood. Every thing depends on habit. The author of _Childe Harold_, the writer of this note, and one or two other Englishmen, who have certainly in other days borne the sight of a pitched battle, were, during the summer of 1809, in the governor's box at the great amphitheatre of Santa Maria, opposite to Cadiz. The death of one or two horses completely satisfied their curiosity. A gentleman present, observing them shudder and look pale, noticed that unusual reception of so delightful a sport to some young ladies, who stared and smiled, and continued their applause as another horse fell bleeding to the ground. One bull killed three horses, _off his own horns_. He was saved by acclamations, which were redoubled when it was known he belonged to a priest.

An Englishman who can be much pleased with seeing two men beat themselves to pieces, cannot bear to look at a horse galloping round an arena with his bowels trailing on the ground, and turns from the spectacle and the spectators with horror and disgust.

31.

And afar The Tiber winds, and the broad Ocean laves The Latian coast, etc., etc. Stanza clxxiv. lines 3 and 4.

The whole declivity of the Alban hill is of unrivalled beauty, and from the convent on the highest point, which has succeeded to the temple of the Latian Jupiter, the prospect embraces all the objects alluded to in the cited stanza; the Mediterranean; the whole scene of the latter half of the _Æneid_, and the coast from beyond the mouth of the Tiber to the headland of Circæum and the Cape of Terracina.

The site of Cicero's villa may be supposed either at the Grotta Ferrata, or at the Tusculum of Prince Lucien Buonaparte.

The former was thought some years ago the actual site, as may be seen from Myddleton's _Life of Cicero_. At present it has lost something of its credit, except for the Domenichinos. Nine monks of the Greek order live there, and the adjoining villa is a cardinal's summer-house. The other villa, called Rufinella, is on the summit of the hill above Frascati, and many rich remains of Tusculum have been found there, besides seventy-two statues of different merit and preservation, and seven busts.

From the same eminence are seen the Sabine hills, embosomed in which lies the long valley of Rustica. There are several circumstances which tend to establish the identity of this valley with the "_Ustica_" of Horace; and it seems possible that the mosaic pavement which the peasants uncover by throwing up the earth of a vineyard may belong to his villa. Rustica is pronounced short, not according to our stress upon--"_Usticæ cubantis_." It is more rational to think that we are wrong, than that the inhabitants of this secluded valley have changed their tone in this word. The addition of the consonant prefixed is nothing; yet it is necessary to be aware that Rustica may be a modern name which the peasants may have caught from the antiquaries.

The villa, or the mosaic, is in a vineyard on a knoll covered with chestnut trees. A stream runs down the valley; and although it is not true, as said in the guide books, that this stream is called Licenza, yet there is a village on a rock at the head of the valley, which is so denominated, and which may have taken its name from the Digentia. Licenza contains seven hundred inhabitants. On a peak a little way beyond is Civitella, containing three hundred. On the banks of the Anio, a little before you turn up into Valle Rustica, to the left, about an hour from the _villa_, is a town called Vicovaro, another favourable coincidence with the _Varia_ of the poet. At the end of the valley, towards the Anio, there is a bare hill, crowned with a little town called Bardela. At the foot of this hill the rivulet of Licenza flows, and is almost absorbed in a wide sandy bed before it reaches the Anio. Nothing can be more fortunate for the lines of the poet, whether in a metaphorical or direct sense:--

"Me quotiens reficit gelidus Digentia rivus, Quem Mandela bibit rugosus frigore pagus."

The stream is clear high up the valley, but before it reaches the hill of Bardela looks green and yellow like a sulphur rivulet.

Rocca Giovane, a ruined village in the hills, half an hour's walk from the vineyard where the pavement is shown, does seem to be the site of the fane of Vacuna, and an inscription found there tells that this temple of the Sabine Victory was repaired by Vespasian. With these helps, and a position corresponding exactly to every thing which the poet has told us of his retreat, we may feel tolerably secure of our site.

The hill which should be Lucretilis is called Campanile, and by following up the rivulet to the pretended Bandusia, you come to the roots of the higher mountain Gennaro. Singularly enough, the only spot of ploughed land in the whole valley is on the knoll where this Bandusia rises.

" ... tu frigus amabile Fessis vomere tauris Præbes, et pecori vago."

The peasants show another spring near the mosaic pavement, which they call "Oradina," and which flows down the hills into a tank, or mill-dam, and thence trickles over into the Digentia.

But we must not hope

"To trace the Muses upwards to their spring,"

by exploring the windings of the romantic valley in search of the Bandusian fountain. It seems strange that any one should have thought Bandusia a fountain of the Digentia--Horace has not let drop a word of it; and this immortal spring has in fact been discovered in possession of the holders of many good things in Italy, the monks. It was attached to the church of St. Gervais and Protais near Venusia, where it was most likely to be found.[678] We shall not be so lucky as a late traveller in finding the "occasional pine" still pendent on the poetic villa. There is not a pine in the whole valley, but there are two cypresses, which he evidently took, or mistook, for the tree in the ode.[679] The truth is, that the pine is now, as it was in the days of Virgil, a garden tree, and it was not at all likely to be found in the craggy acclivities of the valley of Rustica. Horace probably had one of them in the orchard close above his farm, immediately overshadowing his villa, not on the rocky heights at some distance from his abode. The tourist may have easily supposed himself to have seen this pine figured in the above cypresses; for the orange and lemon trees which throw such a bloom over his description of the royal gardens at Naples, unless they have been since displaced, were assuredly only acacias and other common garden shrubs.[680]

32.

Upon the blue Symplegades. Stanza clxxvi. line 1.

[Lord Byron embarked from "Calpe's rock" (Gibraltar) August 19, 1809, and after travelling through Greece, he reached Constantinople in the _Salsette_ frigate May 14, 1810. The two island rocks--the Cyanean Symplegades--stand one on the European, the other on the Asiatic side of the Strait, where the Bosphorus joins the Euxine or Black Sea. Both these rocks were visited by Lord Byron in June, 1810.--Note, Ed. 1879.]

END OF VOL. II.

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

FOOTNOTES:

[555] {470} The writer meant _Lido_, which is not a long row of islands, but a long island: _littus_, the shore.

[556] _Curiosities of Literature_, ii. 156, edit. 1807, edit. 1881, i. 390; and Appendix xxix. to Black's _Life of Tasso_, 1810, ii. 455.

[557] {472} _Su i Quattro Cavalli della Basilica di S. Marco in Venezia_. Lettera di Andrea Mustoxidi Corcirese. Padova, 1816.

[558] {473} "Quibus auditis, imperator, operante eo, qui corda Principum sicut vult, & quando vult, humiliter inclinat, leonina feritate deposita, ovinam mansuetudinem induit."--_Romualdi Salernitani Chronican, apud Script. Rer. Ital._, 1725, vii. 230.

[559] {474} _Rer. Ital._, vii. 231.

[560] {475} See the above-cited Romuald of Salerno. In a second sermon which Alexander preached, on the first day of August, before the Emperor, he compared Frederic to the prodigal son, and himself to the forgiving father.

[561] Mr. Gibbon has omitted the important _æ_, and has written Romani instead of Romaniæ.--_Decline and Fall_, chap. lxi. note 9 (1882, ii. 777, note i). But the title acquired by Dandolo runs thus in the chronicle of his namesake, the Doge Andrew Dandolo: "Ducali titulo addidit, 'Quartæ partis, & dimidiæ totius Imperii Romaniæ; Dominator.'" And. Dand. _Chronicon_, cap. iii. pars xxxvii. ap. _Script. Rer. Ital._, 1728, xii. 331. And the Romaniæ is observed in the subsequent acts of the Doges. Indeed, the continental possessions of the Greek Empire in Europe were then generally known by the name of Romania, and that appellation is still seen in the maps of Turkey as applied to Thrace.

[562] See the continuation of Dandolo's _Chronicle_, ibid., p. 498. Mr. Gibbon appears not to include Dolfino, following Sanudo, who says, "Il qual titolo si uso fin al Doge Giovanni Dolfino." See _Vite de' Duchi di Venezia_ [_Vitæ Ducum Venetorum Italiæ scriptæ_, Auctore Martino Sanuto], ap. _Script. Rer. Ital._, xxii. 530, 641.

[563] {476} "Fiet potentium in aquis Adriaticis congregatio, cæco præduce, Hircum ambigent, Byzantium prophanabunt, ædificia denigrabunt, spolia dispergentur; Hircus novus balabit, usque dum liv. pedes, & ix. pollices, & semis, præmensurati discurrant."--_Chronicon, ibid_., xii. 329.

[564] {477} _Cronaca della Guerra di Chioza, etc._, scritta da Daniello Chinazzo. _Script. Rer. Ital._, xv. 699-804.

[565] {478} "Nonnullorum e nobilitate immensæ sunt opes, adeo ut vix æstimari possint; id quod tribus e rebus oritur, parsimonia, commercio, atque iis emolumentis, quæ e Repub. percipiunt, quæ hanc ob caussam diuturna fore creditur."--See _De Principatibus Italia Tractatus Varii_, 1628, pp. 18, 19.

[566] {479} See _An Historical and Critical Essay on the Life and Character of Petrarch_; and _A Dissertation on an Historical Hypothesis of the Abbé de Sade_. 1810. [An Italian version, entitled _Riflessioni intorno a Madonna Laura_, was published in 1811.]

[567] _Mémoires pour la Vie de François Pétrarque_, Amsterdam, 1764, 3 vols. 4to.

[568] Letter to the Duchess of Gordon, August 17, 1782. _Life of Beattie_, by Sir W. Forbes, ii. 102-106.

[569] Mr. Gibbon called his _Memoirs_ "a labour of love" (see _Decline and Fall_, chap. lxx. note 2), and followed him with confidence and delight. The compiler of a very voluminous work must take much criticism upon trust; Mr. Gibbon has done so, though not as readily as some other authors.

[570] {480} The sonnet had before awakened the suspicions of Mr. Horace Walpole. See his letter to Dr. Joseph Warton, March 16, 1765.

[571] "Par ce petit manège, cette alternative de faveurs et de rigueurs bien ménagée, une femme tendre & sage amuse pendant vingt et un ans le plus grand Poète de son siècle, sans faire la moindre brêche à son honneur." _Mémoires pour la Vie de Pétrarque_, Préface aux Français, i. p. cxiii.

[572] In a dialogue with St. Augustin, Petrarch has described Laura as having a body exhausted with repeated _ptubs_. The old editors read and printed _perturbationibus_; but M. Capperonier, librarian to the French king in 1762, who saw the MS. in the Paris library, made an attestation that "on lit et qu'on doit lire, partubus exhaustum." De Sade joined the names of Messrs. Boudot and Béjot with M. Capperonier, and, in the whole discussion on this _ptubs_, showed himself a downright literary rogue. (See _Riflessioni_, p. lxxiv. _sq._; _Le Rime del Petrarca_, Firenze, 1832, ii. _s.f._) Thomas Aquinas is called in to settle whether Petrarch's mistress was a _chaste_ maid or a _continent_ wife.

[573] {481}

"Pigmalion, quanto lodar ti dei Dell' immagine tua, se mille volte N' avesti quel, ch' i' sol una vorrei!"

Sonetto 50, _Quando giunse a Simon l'alto concetto_. _Le Rime_, etc., i. 118, edit. Florence, 1832.

[574] "A questa confessione così sincera diede forse occasione una nuova caduta, ch' ei fece."--Tiraboschi, _Storia_, lib. iii., _della Letteratura Italiana_, Rome, 1783, v. 460.

[575] {482} "Il n'y a que la vertu seule qui soit capable de faire des impressions que la mort n'efface pas."--M. de Bimard, Baron de la Bastie, in the _Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions de Belles Lettres_ for 1740 (_Mémoires de Littérature_ [1738-1740], 1751, xvii. 424). (See also _Riflessioni, etc._, p. xcvi.; _Le Rime_, etc., 1832, ii. _s.f._)

[576] "And if the virtue or prudence of Laura was inexorable, he enjoyed, and might boast of enjoying, the nymph of poetry."--_Decline and Fall_, 1818, chap. lxx. p. 321, vol. xii. 8vo. Perhaps the _if_ is here meant for _although_.

[577] {484} _Remarks on Antiquities, etc., in Italy_, by Joseph Forsyth, p. 107, note.

[578] {485} _La Vita di Tasso_, lib. iii. p. 284 (tom. ii. edit. Bergamo, 1790).

[579] _Histoire de l'Académie Française depuis_ 1652 _jusqu'a_ 1700, par M. l' Abbé [Thoulier] d'Olivet, Amsterdam, 1730. "Mais, ensuite, venant à l'usage qu'il a fait de ses talens, j'aurois montré que le bon sens n'est pas toujours ce qui domine chez lui," p. 182. Boileau said he had not changed his opinion. "J'en ai si peu changé, dit-il," etc., p. 181.

[580] _La Manière de bien Penser dans les Ouvrages de l'esprit_, sec. Dial., p. 89, edit. 1692. Philanthes is for Tasso, and says in the outset, "De tous les beaux esprits que l'Italie a portez, le Tasse est peut-estre celuy qui pense le plus noblement." But Bohours seems to speak in Eudoxus, who closes with the absurd comparison: "Faites valoir le Tasse tant qu'il vous plaira, je m'en tiens pour moy à Virgile," etc. (_ibid_., p. 102).

[581] _La Vita, etc_., lib. iii. p. 90, tom. ii. The English reader may see an account of the opposition of the Crusca to Tasso, in Black's _Life_, 1810, _etc_., chap. xvii. vol. ii.

[582] For further, and it is hoped, decisive proof, that Tasso was neither more nor less than a _prisoner of state_, the reader is referred to _Historical Illustrations of the IVth Canto of Childe Harold_, p. 5, and following.

[583] {486} Orazioni funebri ... delle lodi di Don Luigi Cardinal d'Este ... delle lodi di Donno Alfonso d'Este. See _La Vita_, lib. in. p. 117.

[584] It was founded in 1582, and the Cruscan answer to Pellegrino's _Caraffa_, or _Epica poesia_, was published in 1584.

[585] "Cotanto, potè sempre in lui il veleno della sua pessima volontà contro alia Nazion Fiorentina." _La Vita_, lib. iii. pp. 96, 98, tom. ii.

[586] _La Vita di M. L. Ariosto_, scritta dall' Abate Girolamo Baruffaldi Giuniore, etc. Ferrara, 1807, lib. in. p. 262. (See _Historical Illustrations, etc._, p. 26.)

[587] _Storia della Lett._, Roma, 1785, tom. vii. pt. in. p. 130.

[588] {486} _Op_. di Bianconi, vol. iii. p. 176, ed. Milano, 1802: Lettera al Signor Guido Savini Arcifisiocritico, sull' indole di un fulmine caduto in Dresda, Panno 1759.

[589] "Appassionato ammiratore ed invitto apologista dell' _Omero Ferrarese_." The title was first given by Tasso, and is quoted to the confusion of the _Tassisti_, lib. iii. pp. 262, 265. _La Vita di M. L. Ariosto, etc_.

[590]

"Parva sed apta mihi, sed nulli obnoxia, sed non Sordida, parta meo sed tamen ære domus."

[591] {488} Plin., _Hist. Nat_., lib. ii. cap. 55.

[592] _Columella_, De Re Rustica, x. 532, lib. x.; Sueton., in _Vit. August_., cap. xc., et in _Vit. Tiberii_, cap. lxix.

[593] Note 2, p. 409, edit. Lugd. Bat. 1667.

[594] _Vid_. J. C. Boulenger, _De Terræ Motu et Fulminib_., lib. v. cap. xi., _apud_ J. G. Græv., _Thes. Antiq. Rom_., 1696, v. 532.

[595] [Greek: Ou)dei\s keraunôthei\s a)/timo/s e)sti o(/then kai\ ô(s theo\s tima~tai]. Artemidori _Oneirocritica_, Paris, 1603, ii. 8, p. 91.

[596] {489} Pauli Warnefridi Diaconi _De Gestis Langobard_., lib. iii. cap. xxxi., _apud_ La Bigne, _Max. Bibl. Patr_., 1677, xiii. 177.

[597] I. P. Valeriani _De fulminum significationibus declamatio_, _apud_ J. G. Græv., _Thes. Antiq. Rom_., 1696, v. 604. The declamation is addressed to Julian of Medicis.

[598] {490} See _Menum. Ant. Ined_., 1767, ii. par. i. cap. xvii. sect. iii p. 50; and _Storia delle Arti, etc_., lib. xi. cap. i. tom ii. p. 314, note B.

[599] _Nomina gentesque Antiquæ Italiæ_ (Gibbon, _Miscell. Works_, 1814). p. 204, edit. oct.

[600] {492} The free expression of their honest sentiments survived their liberties. Titius, the friend of Antony, presented them with games in the theatre of Pompey. They did not suffer the brilliancy of the spectacle to efface from their memory that the man who furnished them with the entertainment had murdered the son of Pompey: they drove him from the theatre with curses. The moral sense of a populace, spontaneously expressed, is never wrong. Even the soldiers of the triumvirs joined in the execration of the citizens, by shouting round the chariots of Lepidus and Plancus, who had proscribed their brothers, _De Germanis, non de Gallis, duo triumphant consules_; a saying worth a record, were it nothing but a good pun. [C. Vell. Paterculi, _Hist_., lib. ii. cap. lxxix. p. 78, edit. Elzevir, 1639. _Ibid_., lib. ii. cap. lxvii.]

[601] {494} _Il Principe di Niccolò Machiavelli_, Paris, 1825, pp. 184, 185.

[602] _Storia della Lett. Ital._, edit. Venice, 1795, tom. v. lib. iii. par. 2, p. 448, note. Tiraboschi is incorrect; the dates of the three decrees against Dante are A.D. 1302, 1314, and 1316.

[603] {495} So relates Ficino, but some think his coronation only an allegory. See _Storia, etc., ut sup._, p. 453.

[604] By Varchi, in his _Ercolano_. The controversy continued from 1570 to 1616. See _Storia, etc._, edit. Rome, 1785, tom, vii. lib. iii. par. iii. p. 187.

[605] {496} Gio Jacopo Dionisi _Canonico di Verona_. Serie di Aneddoti, n. 2. See _Storia, etc._, edit. Venice, 1795, tom. v. lib. i. par. i. p. 24, note.

[606] "Vitam Literni egit sine desiderio urbis." See T. Liv., _Hist._, lib. xxxviii. cap. liii. Livy reports that some said he was buried at Liternum, others at Rome. _Ibid._, cap. lv.

[607] _Trionfo della Castità_, _Opera_ Petrarchæ, Basil, 1554, i. _s.f._

[608] {497} See Note 6, p. 476.

[609] The Greek boasted that he was [Greek: i)so/nomos]. See the last chapter of the first book of Dionysius of Halicarnassus.

[610] {498} "E intorno _alla magnifica risposta_," etc. Serassi, _Vita del Tasso_, lib. iii. p. 149, tom. ii. edit. 2. Bergamo.

[611] {499} "Accingiti innoltre, se ci è lecito ancor l'esortarti, a compire l'immortal tua Africa ... Se ti avviene d'incontrare nel nostro stile cosa che ti dispiaccia, ciò debb' essere un altro motive ad esaudire i desiderj della tua patria." _Storia della Lett. Ital._, edit. Venice, 1795, tom. v. par. i. lib. i. p. 75.

[612] {500} _Classical Tour_, chap. ix. vol. iii. p. 355, edit. 3rd. "Of Boccaccio, the modern Petronius, we say nothing; the abuse of genius is more odious and more contemptible than its absence, and it imports little where the impure remains of a licentious author are consigned to their kindred dust. For the same reason the traveller may pass unnoticed the tomb of the malignant _Aretino_." This dubious phrase is hardly enough to save the tourist from the suspicion of another blunder respecting the burial-place of Aretine, whose tomb was in the church of St. Luke at Venice, and gave rise to the famous controversy of which some notice is taken in Bayle. Now the words of Mr. Eustace would lead us to think the tomb was at Florence, or at least was to be somewhere recognised. Whether the inscription so much disputed was ever written on the tomb cannot now be decided, for all memorial of this author has disappeared from the church of St. Luke.

[613] {501} "Non enim ubique est, qui in excusationem meam consurgens dicat: juvenis scripsit, & majoris coactus imperio." The letter was addressed to Maghinard of Cavalcanti, marshal of the kingdom of Sicily. See Tiraboschi, _Storia, etc._, edit. Venice, 1795, tom. v. par. ii. lib. iii. p. 525, note.

[614] {502} _Dissertazioni sopra le Antichità Italiane_, Diss. lviii. p. 253, tom. iii. edit. Milan, 1751.

[615] _Eclaircissement, etc., etc._, p. 648, edit. Amsterdam, 1740, in the Supplement to Bayle's _Dictionary_.

[616] {503} _Opera_, i. 540, edit. Basil, 1581.

[617] Cosmus Medices, Decreto Publico, Pater Patriæ.

[618] Corinne, 1819, liv. xviii. chap. iii. vol. iii. p. 218.

[619] {504} _Discourses concerning Government_, by A. Sidney, chap. ii. sect. xxvi. p. 208, edit. 1751. Sidney is, together with Locke and Hoadley, one of Mr. Hume's "despicable" writers.

[620] {505} Tit. Liv., lib. xxii. cap. v.

[621] _Ibid._, cap. iv.

[622] _Ibid._

[623] {506} _Hist._, lib. iii. cap. 83. The account in Polybius is not so easily reconcilable with present appearances as that in Livy; he talks of hills to the right and left of the pass and valley; but when Flaminius entered he had the lake at the right of both.

[624] {507} About the middle of the twelfth century the coins of Mantua bore on one side the image and figure of Virgil. _Zecca d'Italia_, iii. pl. xvii. i. 6. _Voyage dans le Milanais, etc._, par A. L. Millin, ii. 294. Paris, 1817.

[625] {509} _Storia delle Arti, etc._, lib. xi. cap. i. pp. 321, 322, tom. ii.

[626] Cicer., _Epist. ad Atticum_, xi. 6.

[627] Published by Causeus, in his _Museum Romanum_.

[628] _Storia delle Arti, etc._, lib. xi. cap. i.

[629] Sueton., in _Vit. August._, cap. xxxi., and in _Vit. C. J. Cæsar_, cap. lxxxviii. Appian says it was burnt down. See a note of Pitiscus to Suetonius, p. 224.

[630] "Tu modo Pompeia lentus spatiare sub umbra" (Ovid, _Art. Am._, i. 67).

[631] Flavii Blondi _De Româ Instauratâ_, Venice, 1511, lib. iii. p. 25.

[632] {510} _Antiq. Rom._, lib. i., [Greek: Cha/lkea poiê/mata palai~as e)rgasi/as].

[633] Liv., _Hist._, lib. x. cap. xxiii.

[634] "Tum statua Nattæ, tum simulacra Deorum, Romulusque et Remus cum altrice belua vi fulminis icti conciderunt."--Cic., _De Divinat._, ii. 20. "Tactus est etiam ille qui hanc urbem condidit Romulus: quem inauratum in Capitolio parvum atque lactentem uberibus lupinis inhiantem fuisse meministis."--_In Catilin._, iii. 8.

"Hic silvestris erat Romani nominis altrix Martia, quæ parvos Mavortis semine natos Uberibus gravidis vitali rore rigabat: Quæ tum cum pueris flammato fulminis ictu Concidit, atque avulsa pedum vestigia liquit." _De Suo Consulatu_, lib. ii. lines 42-46.

[635] Dion., _Hist._, lib. xxxvii. p. 37, edit. Rob. Steph., 1548.

[636] Luc. Fauni _De Antiq. Urb. Rom._, lib. ii. cap. vii., _ap._ Sallengre, 1745, i. 217,

[637] Ap. Nardini _Roma Vetus_, lib. v. cap. iv., _ap._ J. G. Græv., _Thes. Antiq. Rom._, iv. 1146.

[638] Marliani _Urb. Rom. Topograph._, Venice, 1588, p. 23.

[639] {511} Just. Rycquii _De Capit. Roman. Comm._, cap. xxiv. p. 250, edit. Lugd. Bat. 1696.

[640] Nardini, _Roma Vetus_, lib. v. cap. iv.

[641] Montfaucon, _Diarium Italic._, Paris, 1702, i. 174.

[642] _Storia delle Arti, etc._, Milan, 1779, lib. iii. cap. iii. s. ii. note * (i. 144). Winckelmann has made a strange blunder in the note, by saying the Ciceronian wolf was _not_ in the Capitol, and that Dion was wrong in saying so.

[643] Flam. Vacca, _Memorie_, num. iii. _ap_. _Roma Antica di Famiano_, Nardini, Roma, 1771, iv. _s.f._ p. iii.

[644] {512} Luc. Fauni _De Antiq. Urb. Rom._, lib. ii. cap. vi., _ap._ Sallengre, tom. i. p. 216.

[645] See note to stanza lxxx. in _Historical Illustrations_.

[646] "Romuli nutrix Lupa honoribus est affecta divinis. Et ferrem, si animal ipsum fuisset, cujus figuram gerit." Lactant., _De Falsâ Religione_, lib. i. cap. xx., Biponti, 1786, i. 66; that is to say, he would rather adore a wolf than a prostitute. His commentator has observed that the opinion of Livy concerning Laurentia being figured in this wolf was not universal. Strabo thought so. Rycquius is wrong in saying that Lactantius mentions the wolf was in the Capitol.

[647] To A.D. 496. "Quis credere possit," says Baronius [_Ann. Eccles._, Lucæ, 1741, viii. 602, in an. 496], "viguisse adhuc Romæ ad Gelasii tempora, quæ fuere ante exordium Urbis allata in Italiam Lupercalia?" Gelasius wrote a letter, which occupies four folio pages, to Andromachus the senator, and others, to show that the rites should be given up.

[648] {513} _Eccles. Hist._ (Lipsiæ, 1827, p. 130), lib. ii. cap. xiii. p. 40. Justin Martyr had told the story before; but Baronius himself was obliged to detect this fable. See Nardini, _Roma Vet._, lib. vii. cap. xii.

[649] _Accurata e succincta Descrizione, etc., di Roma moderna_, dell' Ab. Ridolfino Venuti, Rome, 1766, ii. 397.

[650] Nardini, lib. v. cap. 3, ap. J. G. Græv., iv. 1143, convicts Pomponius Lætus _Crassi erroris_, in putting the Ruminal fig-tree at the church of Saint Theodore; but, as Livy says the wolf was at the Ficus Ruminalis, and Dionysius at the temple of Romulus, he is obliged to own that the two were close together, as well as the Luperal cave, shaded, as it were, by the fig-tree.

[651] {514} Donatus, lib. xi. cap. xviii., gives a medal representing on one side the wolf in the same position as that in the Capitol; and on the reverse the wolf with the head not reverted. It is of the time of Antoninus Pius.

[652] _Æn_., viii. 631-634. (See Dr. Middleton, in his letter from Rome, who inclines to the Ciceronian wolf, but without examining the subject.)

[653] {515} "Jure cæsus existimetur," says Suetonius, i. 76, after a fair estimation of his character, and making use of a phrase which was a formula in Livy's time. "Mælium jure cæsum pronuntiavit, etiam si regni crimine insons fuerit:" [lib. iv. cap. xv.] and which was continued in the legal judgments pronounced in justifiable homicides, such as killing house-breakers.

[654] _Rom. Ant._, F. Nardini, 1771, iv. _Memorie_, note 3, p. xii. He does not give the inscription.

[655] "In villa Justiniana exstat ingens lapis quadras solidus, in quo sculpta hæc duo Ovidii carmina sunt:--

"'Ægeria est quæ præbet aquas dea grata Camoenis, Illa Numæ conjunx consiliumque fuit.'

Qui lapis videtur eodem Egeriæ fonte, aut ejus vicinia, istuc comportatus."--_Diarium Italic._, Paris, 1702, p. 153.

[656] {516} _De Magnit. Vet. Rom_., ap. Græv., _Ant. Rom_., iv. 1507 [1. Vossius, _De Ant. Urb. Rom. Mag_., cap. iv.]

[657] Eschinard, _Descrizione di Roma e dell' Agro Romano_, Roma, 1750. They believe in the grotto and nymph. "Simulacro di questo Fonte, essendovi scolpite le acque a pie di esso" (p. 297).

[658] _Classical Tour_, vol. ii. chap. vi. p. 217.

[659] Lib. 1. _Sat_. iii. lines 11-20.

[660] {517} Lib. iii. cap. iii.

[661] "Quamvis undique e solo aquæ; scaturiant." Nardini, lib. iii. cap. iii. _Thes. Ant. Rom_., ap. J. G. Græv., 1697, iv. 978.

[662] Eschinard, etc. _Sic cit_., pp. 297, 298.

[663] {517} _Antiq. Rom_., Oxf., 1704, lib. ii. cap. xxxi. vol. i. p. 97.

[664] Sueton., in _Vit. Augusti_, cap. xci. Casaubon, in the note, refers to Plutarch's Lives of Camillus and Æmilius Paulus, and also to his apophthegms, for the character of this deity. The hollowed hand was reckoned the last degree of degradation; and when the dead body of the præfect Rufinus was borne about in triumph by the people, the indignity was increased by putting his hand in that position.

[665] _Storia delle Arti, etc_., Rome, 1783, lib. xii. cap. iii. tom. ii. p. 422. Visconti calls the statue, however, a Cybele. It is given in the _Museo Pio-Clement_., tom. i. par. xl. The Abate Fea (_Spiegazione dei Rami. Storia, etc_., iii. 513) calls it a Crisippo.

[666] {519} _Dict. de Bayle_, art. "Adrastea."

[667] It is enumerated by the regionary Victor.

[668] "Fortunæ; hujusce diei." Cicero mentions her, _De Legib._, lib. ii.

[669]

DEÆ. NEMESI SIVE. FORTV NÆ PISTORIVS RVGIANVS V.C. LEGAT. LEG. XIII. G. GORD.

(See _Questiones Romanæ, etc._, ap. Græv., _Antiq. Roman._, v. 942. See also Muratori, _Nov. Thesaur. Inscrip. Vet._, Milan, 1739, i. 88, 89, where there are three Latin and one Greek inscription to Nemesis, and others to Fate.)

[670] {520} Julius Cæsar, who rose by the fall of the aristocracy, brought Furius Leptinus and A. Calenus upon the arena.

[671] "Ad captiuos pertinere Tertulliani querelam puto: _Certe quidem & innocentes gladiatores inludum veniunt, & voluptatis publicæ hostiæ fiant_." Justus, Lipsius, 1588, _Saturn. Sermon._, lib. ii. cap. iii. p. 84.

[672] Vopiscus, in _Vit. Aurel._, and in _Vit. Claud._, _ibid._

[673] Just. Lips., _ibid._, lib. i. cap. xii. p. 45.

[674] Augustinus (_Confess._, lib. vi. cap. viii.): "Alypium suum gladiatorii spectaculi inhiatu incredibiliter abreptum," scribit. ib., lib. i. cap. xii.

[675] {521} _Hist. Eccles._, ap. _Ant. Hist. Eccl._, Basle, 1535, lib. v. cap. xxvi.

[676] Cassiod., _Tripartita_, ap. _Ant. Hist. Eccl._, Basle, 1535, lib. x. cap. ii. p. 543.

[677] Baronius, _De Ann. et in Notis ad Martyrol. Rom. I. Jan._ (See Marangoni, _Delle memorie sacre, e profane dell' Anfiteatro Flavio_, p. 25, edit. 1746.)

[678] {524} See _Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto_, p. 43.

[679] See _Classical Tour, etc._, chap. vii. p. 250, vol. ii.

[680] {525} "Under our windows and bordering on the beach is the royal garden, laid out in parterres, and walks shaded by rows of orange trees."--_Classical Tour, etc._, chap. xi. vol. ii., 365.