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 CANTO THE FOURTH. 
 
 BY LORD BYRON. 
 
 Visto ho Toscana, Lombardia, Ttomagna, 
 
 Quel Monte che dieide, e quel die serra 
 Italia, e un mare e l'altro, che la bagna. 
 
 • Ariosto, Satira iii. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE- STREET. 
 1818. 
 
T. DA.VISON, LOMBARD-STREET, WH1TEFRIARS, LONDON. 
 
599 G EC 
 A?3 
 
 Venice, January % 1818. 
 
 TO 
 
 JOHN HOBHOUSE, ESQ. A.M. F.R.S. 
 
 SfC. Sfc. Sfc. 
 
 MY DEAR HOBHOUSE, 
 
 After an interval of eight years 
 between the composition of the first and 
 last cantos of Childe Harold, the conclusion 
 of the poem is about to be submitted to 
 the public. In parting with so old a friend 
 it is not extraordinary that I should recur 
 to one still older and better, — to one who 
 has beheld the birth and death of the 
 other, and to whom I am far more in- 
 debted for the social advantages of an 
 enlightened friendship, than — though not 
 
IV 
 
 ungrateful — I can, or could be, to Childe ; 
 Harold, for any public favour reflected 
 through the poem on the poet, — to one, 
 whom I have known long, and accom- 
 panied far, whom I have found wakeful 
 over my sickness and kind in my sorrow, 
 glad in my prosperity and firm in my ad- 
 versity, true in counsel and trusty in peril 
 —to a friend often tried and never found 
 wanting ; — to yourself. 
 
 In so doing, I recur from fiction to truth, 
 and in dedicating to you in its complete, 
 or at least concluded state, a poetical work 
 which is the longest, the most thoughtful 
 and comprehensive of my compositions, I 
 wish to do honour to myself by the record 
 of many years intimacy with a man of 
 learning, of talent, of steadiness, and of 
 
honour. It is not for minds like ours to 
 give or to receive flattery ; yet the praises 
 of sincerity have ever been permitted to 
 the voice of friendship ; and it is not for 
 you, nor even for others, but to relieve a 
 heart which has not elsewhere, or lately, 
 been so much accustomed to the encoun- 
 ter of good-will as to withstand the shock 
 firmly, that I thus attempt to commemorate 
 your good qualities, or rather the advan-* 
 tages which I have derived from their 
 exertion. Even the recurrence of the date 
 of this letter, the anniversary of the most 
 unfortunate day of my past existence* but 
 which cannot poison my future while I 
 retain the resource of your friendship, and 
 of my own faculties, will henceforth have 
 a more agreeable recollection for both, 
 inasmuch as it will remind us of this my 
 
VI 
 
 attempt to thank you for an indefatigable 
 regard, such as few men have experienced, 
 and no one could experience without 
 thinking better of his species and of him- 
 self. 
 
 It has been our fortune to traverse 
 together, at various periods, the countries 
 of chivalry, history, and fable — Spain, 
 Greece, Asia Minor, and Italy ; and what 
 Athens and Constantinople were to us a 
 few years ago, Venice and Rome have been 
 more recently. The poem also, or the 
 pilgrim, or both, have accompanied me 
 from first to last; and perhaps it may be 
 a pardonable vanity which induces me to 
 reflect with complacency on a composition 
 which in some degree connects me with 
 the spot where it was produced, and the 
 
Vll 
 
 objects it would fain describe; and how- 
 ever unworthy it may be deemed of those 
 magical and memorable abodes, however 
 short it may fall of our distant conceptions 
 and immediate impressions, yet as a mark 
 of respect for what is venerable, and "of 
 feeling for what is glorious, it has been to 
 me a source of pleasure in the production, 
 and I part with it with a kind of regret, 
 which I hardly suspected that events could 
 have left me for imaginary objects. 
 
 With regard to the conduct of the last 
 canto, there will be found less of the pil- 
 grim than in any of the preceding, and 
 that little slightly, if at all, separated from 
 the author speaking in his own person. 
 The fact is, that I had become weary of 
 drawing a line which every one seemed 
 
Vlll 
 
 determined not to perceive : like the 
 Chinese in Goldsmith's " Citizen of the 
 World/' whom nobody would believe to 
 be a Chinese, it was in vain that I asserted, 
 and imagined, that I had drawn, a distinc- 
 tion between the author and the pilgrim ; 
 and the very anxiety to preserve this dif- 
 ference, and disappointment at finding it 
 unavailing, so far crushed my efforts in 
 the composition, that I determined to 
 abandon it altogether — and have done so. 
 The opinions which have been, or may be, 
 formed on that subject, are now a matter of 
 indifference; the work is to depend on 
 itself, and not on the writer ; and the 
 author, who has no resources in his own 
 mind beyond the reputation, transient or 
 permanent, which is to arise from his li- 
 terary efforts, deserves the fate of authors. 
 
IX 
 
 In the course of the following Canto it 
 was my intention, either in the text or in 
 the notes, to have touched upon the pre- 
 sent state of Italian literature, and perhaps 
 of manners. But the text, within the 
 limits I proposed, I soon found hardly 
 sufficient for the labyrinth of external ob- 
 jects and the consequent reflections ; and 
 for the whole of the notes, excepting a few 
 of the shortest, I am indebted to yourself, 
 and these were necessarily limited to the 
 elucidation of the text. 
 
 It is also a delicate, and no very grate- 
 ful task, to dissert upon the literature and 
 manners of a nation so dissimilar ; and re- 
 quires an attention and impartiality which 
 would induce us,~though perhaps no in- 
 attentive observers, nor ignorant of the 
 
X 
 
 language or customs of the people amongst 
 whom we have recently abode, — to dis- 
 trust, or at least defer our judgment, and 
 more narrowly examine our information. 
 The state of literary, as well as political 
 party, appears to run, or to have run, so 
 high, that for a stranger to steer impar- 
 tially between them is next to impossible. 
 It may be enough then, at least for my 
 purpose, to quote from their own beautiful 
 language — " Mi pare che in un paese tutto 
 poetico, che vanta la lingua la piu nobile 
 ed insieme la piu dolce, tutte tutte le vie 
 diverse si possono tentare, e che sinche la 
 patria di Alfieri e di Monti non ha perduto 
 T antico valore, in tutte essa dovrebbe 
 essere la prima/' Italy has great names 
 still— Canova, Monti, Ugo Foscolo, Pin- 
 demonti, Visconti, Morelli, Cicognara, 
 
XI 
 
 Albrizzi, Mezzophanti, Mai, Mustoxidi, 
 Aglietti, and Vacca, will secure to the 
 present generation an honourable place in 
 most of the departments of Art, Science, 
 and Belles Lettres; and in some the very 
 highest — Europe — the World — has but 
 one Canova. 
 
 It has been somewhere said by Alfieri, 
 that " La pianta uomo nasce piu robusta 
 in Italia che in qualunque altra terra — 
 e che gli stessi atroci delitti che vi si com- 
 mettono ne sono una prova." Without 
 subscribing to the latter part of his pro- 
 position, a dangerous doctrine, the truth of 
 which may be disputed on better grounds, 
 namely, that the Italians are in no respect 
 fnore ferocious than their neighbours, that 
 man must be wilfully blind, or ignorantly 
 
Xll 
 
 heedless, who is not struck with the ex- 
 traordinary capacity of this people, or, if 
 such a word be admissible, their capabili- 
 ties, the facility of their acquisitions, the 
 rapidity of their conceptions, the fire of 
 their genius, their sense of beauty, and 
 amidst all the disadvantages of repeated 
 revolutions, the desolation of battles and 
 the despair of ages, their still unquenched 
 " longing after immortality," — the immor- 
 tality of independence. And when we our- 
 selves, in riding round the walls of Rome, 
 heard the simple lament of the labourers' 
 chorus, " Roma ! Roma! Roma! Roma non 
 e piu come era prima," it was difficult not 
 to contrast this melancholy dirge with the 
 bacchanal roar of the songs of exultation 
 still yelled from the London taverns, over 
 the carnage of Mont St. Jean, and the be- 
 
Xlll 
 
 trayal of Genoa, of Italy, of France, and 
 of the world, by men whose conduct you 
 yourself have exposed in a work worthy of 
 the better days of our history. For me, 
 
 " Non movero mai corda 
 
 " Ove la turba di sue ciance assorda." 
 
 What Italy has gained by the late trans- 
 fer of nations, it were useless for English- 
 men to enquire, till it becomes ascertained 
 that England has acquired something more 
 than a permanent army and a suspended 
 Habeas Corpus; it is enough for them 
 to look at home. For what they have 
 done abroad, and especially in the South, 
 " Verily they will have their reward," and 
 at no very distant period. 
 
 Wishing you, my dear Hobhouse, a safe 
 and agreeable return to that country whose 
 
XIV 
 
 real welfare can be dearer to none than to 
 yourself, I dedicate to you this poem in 
 its completed state ; and repeat once more 
 how truly I am ever 
 
 Your obliged 
 
 And affectionate friend, 
 
 BYRON. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE. 
 
 Canto IV 3 
 
 Notes . -99 
 
 POEMS* 
 
 Romance muy doloroso del sitio y toma de Al- 
 
 hama, el qual dezia en Aravigo assi. . . 240 
 
 Translation 241 
 
 Per Monaca. Sonetto di Vittorelli. . . 256 
 
 Translation 257 
 
FOURTH CANTO 
 
 CHILDE HAROLD 
 
Ctnllie i^atoto's pilgrimage. 
 
 CANTO IV. 
 
 I. 
 
 I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs ; (0 
 A palace and a prison on each hand : 
 I saw from out the wave her structures rise 
 As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand : 
 A thousand years their cloudy wings expand 
 Around me, and a dying Glory smiles 
 O'er the far times, when many a subject land 
 Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles, 
 Where Venice sate in state, thron'd on her hundred isles ! 
 
 h 2 
 
4 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV 
 
 II. 
 
 She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, ( 2 ) 
 Rising with her tiara of proud towers 
 At airy distance, with majestic motion, 
 A ruler of the waters and their powers : 
 And such she was ; — her daughters had their dowers 
 From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East 
 Pour'd in her lap all gems in sparkling showers. 
 In purple was she robed, and of her feast 
 Monarchs partook, and deemM their dignity increased. 
 
 HI. 
 
 In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more, ( 3 ) 
 And silent rows the songless gondolier ; - 
 Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, 
 And musk meets not always now the ear : 
 Those days are gone — but Beauty still is here. 
 States fall, arts fade — but Nature doth not die, 
 Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear, 
 The pleasant place of all festivity, 
 The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy I 
 
Canto IF. PILGRIMAGE. 
 
 IV. 
 
 But unto us she hath a spell beyond 
 Her name in story, and her long array 
 Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond 
 Above the dogeless city's vanish'd sway ; 
 Ours is a trophy which will not decay 
 With the Rialto ; Shylock and the Moor, 
 And Pierre, can not be swept or worn away — 
 The keystones of the arch ! though all were o'er, 
 For us repeopled were the solitary shore. 
 
 V. 
 
 The beings of the mind are not of clay ; 
 Essentially immortal, they create 
 And multiply in us a brighter ray 
 And more beloved existence : that which Fate 
 Prohibits to dull life, in this our state 
 Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied 
 First exiles, then replaces what we hate ; 
 Watering the heart whose early flowers have died, 
 And with a fresher growth replenishing the void. 
 
> CHILDE HAROLD'S CanlolV. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Sucli is the refuge of our youth and age, 
 The first from Hope, the last from Vacancy ; 
 And this worn feeling peoples many a page, 
 And, may be, that which grows beneath mine eye : 
 Yet there are things whose strong reality 
 Outshines our fairy-land ; in shape and hues 
 More beautiful than our fantastic sky, 
 And the strange constellations which the Muse 
 O'er her wild universe is skilful to diffuse : 
 
 VII. 
 
 I saw or dreamed of such, — but let them go — 
 They came like truth, and disappeared like dreams ; 
 And whatsoe'er they were— are now but so : 
 I could replace them if I would, still jteems 
 My mind with many a form which aptly seems 
 Such as I sought for, and at moments found ; 
 Let these too go — for waking Reason deems 
 Such over-weening phantasies unsound, 
 And other voices speak, and other sights surround. 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IVe taught me other tongues — and in strange eyes 
 Have made me not a stranger ; to the mind 
 Which is itself, no changes bring surprise ; 
 Nor is it harsh to make, nor hard to find 
 A country with — ay, or without mankind ; 
 Yet was I born where men are proud to be, 
 Not without cause ; and should I leave behind 
 The inviolate island of the sage and free, 
 And seek me out a home by a remoter sea, 
 
 IX. 
 
 Perhaps I loved it well : and should I lay 
 My ashes in a soil which is not mine, 
 My spirit shall resume it — if we may 
 Unbodied choose a sanctuary. I twine 
 My hopes of being remembered in my line 
 With my land's language : if too fond and far 
 These aspirations in their scope incline, — 
 If my fame should be, as my fortunes are, 
 Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar 
 
5 €HILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 X. 
 
 My name from out the temple where the dead 
 Are honoured by the nations — let it be — 
 And light the laurels on a loftier head ! 
 And be the Spartan's epitaph on me— 
 " Sparta hath many a worthier son than he." ( 4 ) 
 Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need ; 
 The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree 
 I planted, — they have torn me, — and I bleed : 
 I should have known what fruit would spring from such a 
 seed. 
 
 The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord ; 
 And, annual marriage now no more renewed, 
 The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored, 
 Neglected garment of her widowhood ! 
 St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood ( 5 ) 
 Stand, but in mockery of his withered power, 
 Over the proud Place where an Emperor sued, 
 And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour 
 When Venice was a queen with an unequalled dower. 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 
 
 XII. 
 
 The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns — ( f) ) 
 An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt ; 
 Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains 
 Clank over sceptred cities ; nations melt 
 From power's high pinnacle, when they have felt 
 The sunshine for a while, and downward go 
 Like lauwine loosen'd from the mountain's belt ; 
 Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo ! ( 7 ) 
 Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass, 
 Their gilded collars glittering in the sun ; 
 But is not Doria's menace come to pass ? (&) 
 Are they not bridled ? — Venice, lost and won, 
 Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done, 
 Sinks, like a sea-weed, into whence she rose ! 
 Better be whelm'd beneath the waves, and shun, 
 Even in destruction's depth, her foreign foes, 
 From whom submission wrings an infamous repose. 
 
10 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 In youth she was all glory, — a new Tyre, — 
 Her vety by-word sprung from victory, 
 The " Planter of the Lion," * which through fire 
 And blood she bore o'er subject earth and sea; 
 Though making many slaves, herself still free,. 
 And Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite ; 
 Witness Troy's rival, Candia ! Vouch it, ye 
 Immortal waves that saw Lepanto's fight ! 
 For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Statues of glass — all shiver'd — the long file 
 Of her dead Doges are declin'd to dust ; 
 But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pile 
 Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust ; 
 Their sceptre broken, and their sword in rust, 
 Have yielded to the stranger : empty halls, 
 Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must 
 Too oft remind her who and what enthrals, ( 9 ) 
 Have flung a desolate cloud o'er Venice' lovely walls. 
 
 * Plant the Lion — that is, the Lion of St. Mark, the standard 
 of the republic, which is the origin of the word Pantaloon — ■ 
 Pianta-leone, Pantaleon, Pantaloon. 
 
Canto iV. PILGRIMAGE. 11 
 
 XVI. 
 
 When Athens' 1 armies fell at Syracuse, 
 And fetter'd thousands bore the yoke of war, 
 Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse, * 
 Her voice their only ransom from afar : 
 See ! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car 
 Of the o'ermaster'd victor stops, the reins 
 Fall from his hands — his idle scimitar 
 Starts from its belt — he rends his captive's chains, 
 And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his strains. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Thus, Venice, if no stronger claim were thine, 
 Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot, 
 Thy choral memory of the Bard divine, 
 Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot 
 Which ties thee to thy tyrants ; and thy lot 
 Is shameful to the nations, — most of all, 
 Albion! to thee: the Ocean queen should not 
 Abandon Ocean's children ; in the fall 
 Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall. 
 
 * The story is told in Plutarch's life ofNicias. 
 
12 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 I lov'd her from my boyhood — she to me 
 Was as a fairy city of the heart, 
 Rising like water-columns from the sea, 
 Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart ; 
 And Otway, Ratcliff, Schiller, Shakspeare's art,* 
 Had stamp'd her image in me, and even so, 
 Although I found her thus, we did not part, 
 Perchance even dearer in her day of woe, 
 Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 I can repeople with the past— and of 
 The present there is still for eye and thought, 
 And meditation chasten'd down, enough ; 
 And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought ; 
 And of the happiest moments which were wrought 
 Within the web of my existence, some 
 From thee, fair Venice ! have their colours caught : 
 There are some feelings Time can not benumb, 
 Nor Torture shake, or mine would now be cold and dumb. 
 
 * Venice Preserved ; Mysteries of Udolpho ; the Ghost-seer, 
 or Armenian ; the Merchant of Venice ; Othello. 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 1$ 
 
 XX. 
 
 But from their nature will the tannen grow 0°) 
 Loftiest on loftiest and least shelter'd rocks, 
 Rooted in barrenness, where nought below 
 Of soil supports them 'gainst the Alpine shocks 
 Of eddying storms ; yet springs the trunk, and mocks 
 The howling tempest, till its height and frame 
 Are worthy of the mountains from whose blocks 
 Of bleak, grey, granite, into life it came, 
 And grew a giant tree ; — the mind may grow the same. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Existence may be borne, and the deep root 
 Of life and sufferance make its firm abode 
 In bare and desolated bosoms : mute 
 The camel labours with the heaviest load, 
 And the wolf dies in silence, — not bestow'd 
 In vain should such example be ; if they, 
 Things of ignoble or of savage mood, 
 Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay 
 May temper it to bear,— it is but for a day. 
 
14 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 All suffering doth destroy, or is destroy'd, 
 Even by the sufferer ; and, in each event 
 Ends: — Some, with hope replenish'd and rebuoy'dy 
 Return to whence they came — with like intent, 
 And weave their web again ; some, bow'd and bent, 
 Wax gray and ghastly, withering ere their time, 
 And perish with the reed on which they leant ; 
 Some seek devotion, toil, war, good or crime, 
 According as their souls were form'd to sink or climb : 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 But ever and anon of griefs subdued 
 There comes a token like a scorpion's sting, 
 Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued ; 
 And slight withal may be the things which bring 
 Back on the heart the weight which it would fling 
 Aside for ever : it may be a sound — 
 A tone of music, — summer's eve — or spring, 
 A flower — the wind — the ocean — which shall wound, 
 Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound ; 
 
•Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. lo 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 And how and why we know not, nor can trace 
 Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind, 
 But feel the shock renew'd, nor can efface 
 The blight and blackening which it leaves behind, 
 Which out of things familiar, undesign'd, 
 When least we deem of such, calls up to view 
 The spectres whom no exorcism can bind, 
 The cold — the changed — perchance the dead — anew, 
 The mourn'd, the loved, the lost — too many ! — yet how few ! 
 
 JLXV. 
 
 But my soul wanders ; I demand it back 
 To meditate amongst decay, and stand 
 A ruin amidst ruins ; there to track 
 FalTn states and buried greatness, o'er a land 
 Which was the mightiest in its old command, 
 And is the loveliest, and must ever be 
 The master-mould of Nature's heavenly hand, 
 Wherein were cast the heroic and the free, 
 The beautiful, the brave— the lords of earth and sea, 
 
16 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 The commonwealth of kings, the men of Rome ! 
 And even since, and now, fair Italy ! 
 Thou art the garden of the world, the home 
 Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree ; 
 Even in thy desart, what is like to thee ? 
 Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste 
 More rich than other climes 1 fertility ; 
 Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced 
 With an immaculate charm which can not be defaced, 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 The Moon is up, and yet it is not night — 
 Sunset divides the sky with her — a sea 
 Of glory streams along the Alpine height 
 Of blue Friuli's mountains ; Heaven is free 
 From clouds, but of all colours seems to be 
 Melted to one vast Iris of the West, 
 Where the Day joins the past Eternity ; 
 While, on the other hand, meek Dian's crest 
 Floats through the azure air — an island of the blest ! 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 17 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 A single star is at her side, and reigns 
 With her o'er half the lovely heaven ; but still 0>) 
 Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remains 
 Roird o'er the peak of the far Rhaetian hill, 
 As Day and Night contending were, until 
 Nature reclaim'd her order: — gently flows 
 The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instil 
 The odorous purple of a new-born rose, 
 Which streams upon her stream, and glass'd within it glows, 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 FilTd with the face of heaven, which, from afar, 
 Comes down upon the waters ; all its hues, 
 From the rich sunset to the rising star, 
 Their magical variety diffuse : 
 And now they change ; a paler shadow strews 
 Its mantle o'er the mountains ; parting day 
 Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues 
 With a new colour as it gasps away, 
 The last still loveliest, till — 'tis gone — and all is gray. 
 
 c 
 
18 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 There is a tomb in Arqua ; — rear'd in air, 
 Pillared in their sarcophagus, repose 
 The bones of Laura's lover : here repair 
 Many familiar with his well-sung woes, 
 The pilgrims of his genius. He arose 
 To raise a language, and his land reclaim 
 From the dull yoke of her barbaric foes : 
 Watering the tree which bears his lady's name ('2) 
 With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died; ( l3 ) 
 The mountain-village where his latter days 
 Went down the vale of years ; and 'tis their pride — 
 An honest pride — and let it be their praise, 
 To offer to the passing stranger's gaze 
 His mansion and his sepulchre ; both plain 
 And venerably simple, such as raise 
 A feeling more accordant with his strain 
 Than if a pyramid form'd his monumental fane. 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 19 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 And the soft quiet hamlet where he dwelt 
 Is one of that complexion which seems made 
 For those who their mortality have felt, 
 And sought a refuge from their hopes decay'd 
 In the deep umbrage of a green hill's shade, 
 Which shows a distant prospect far away 
 Of busy cities, now in vain display'dj 
 For they can lure no further ; and the ray 
 Of a bright sun can make sufficient holiday, 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Developing the mountains, leaves^ and flowers, 
 And shining in the brawling broolc, where-by, 
 Clear as its current, glide the sauntering hours 
 With a calm languor, which, though to the eye 
 Idlesse it seem, hath its morality. 
 If from society we learn to live, 
 'Tis solitude should teach us how to die ; 
 It hath no flatterers ; vanity can give 
 No hollow aid ; alone — man with his God must strive : 
 
 c 2 
 
20 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IF 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Or, it may be, with demons, who impair 4 ) 
 The strength of better thoughts, and seek their prey 
 In melancholy bosoms, such as were 
 Of moody texture from their earliest day, 
 And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay, 
 Deeming themselves predestin'd to a doom 
 Which is not of the pangs that pass away ; 
 Making the sun like blood, the earth a tomb, 
 The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Eerrara ! in thy wide and grass-grown streets, 
 Whose symmetry was not for solitude, 
 There seems as "'twere a curse upon the seats 
 Of former sovereigns, and the antique brood 
 Of Este, which for many an age made good 
 Its strength within thy walls, and was of yore 
 Patron or tyrant, as the changing mood 
 Of petty power impellM, of those who wore 
 The wreath which Dante's brow alone had worn before. 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 21 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 And Tasso is their glory and their shame. 
 Hark to his strain ! and then survey his cell ! 
 And see how dearly earn'd Torquato's fame, 
 And where Alfonso bade his poet dwell : 
 The miserable despot could not quell 
 The insulted mind he sought to quench, and blend 
 With the surrounding maniacs, in the hell 
 Where he had plung'd it. Glory without end 
 Scatter'd the clouds away— and on that name attend 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 The tears and praises of all time ; while thine 
 Would rot in its oblivion — in the sink 
 Of worthless dust, which from thy boasted line 
 Is shaken into nothing ; but the link 
 Thou formest in his fortunes bids us think 
 Of thy poor malice, naming thee with scorn — 
 Alfonso ! how thy ducal pageants shrink 
 From thee ! if in another station born, 
 Scarce fit to be the slave of him thou mad'st to mourn : 
 
»* CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 Thou ! form'd to eat, and be despis'd, and die, 
 Even as the beasts that perish, save that thou 
 Hadst a more splendid trough and wider sty : 
 He ! with a glory round his furrow'd brow, 
 Which emanated then, and dazzles now 
 In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire ; 
 And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow ( 15 ) 
 No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre, 
 That whetstone of the teeth — monotony in wire ! 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 Peace to Torquato's injur'd shade ! 'twas his 
 In life and death to be the mark where Wrong 
 Aim'd with her poison'd arrows ; but to miss, 
 Oh, victor unsurpass'd in modern song ! 
 Each year brings forth its millions ; but how long 
 The tide of generations shall roll on, 
 And not the whole combin'd and countless throng 
 Compose a mind like thine ? though all in one 
 Condens'd their scatter'd rays, they would not form a sun. 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 23 
 
 XL. 
 
 Great as thou art, yet paralleled by those, 
 Thy countrymen, before thee born to shine, 
 The Bards of Hell and Chivalry : first rose 
 The Tuscan father's comedy divine ; 
 Then, not unequal to the Florentine, 
 The southern Scott, the minstrel who calTd forth 
 A new creation with his magic line, 
 And, like the Ariosto of the North, 
 Sang ladye-love and war, romance and knightly worth. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust 6 ) 
 The iron crown of laurel's mimic'd leaves ; 
 Nor was the ominous element unjust, 
 For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves 0~) 
 Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves, 
 And the false semblance but disgraced his brow ; 
 Yet still, if fondly Superstition grieves, 
 Know, that the lightning sanctifies below 8 ) 
 Whate'er it strikes; — yon head is doubly sacred now. 
 
24 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto W. 
 
 * 
 
 XLII. 
 
 Italia ! oh Italia ! thou who hast 9 ) 
 The fatal gift of beauty, which became 
 A funeral dower of present woes and past, 
 On thy sweet brow is sorrow plough'd by shame, 
 And annals graved in characters of flame. 
 Oh God I that thou wert in thy nakedness 
 Less lovely or more powerful, and could'st claim 
 Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press 
 To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress ; 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 Then mightfst thou more appal ; or, less desired, 
 Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored 
 For thy destructive charms ; then, still untired, 
 Would not be seen the armed torrents pour'd 
 Down the deep Alps ; nor would the hostile horde 
 Of many-nation'd spoilers from the Po 
 Quaff blood and water ; nor the stranger's sword 
 Be thy sad weapon of defence, and so, 
 Victor or vanquish'd, thou the slave of friend or foe. 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 25 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him, ( 2 °) 
 The Roman friend of Rome's least-mortal mind, 
 The friend of Tully : as my bark did skim 
 The bright blue waters with a fanning wind, 
 Came Megara before me, and behind 
 JSgina lay, Piraeus on the right, 
 And Corinth on the left ; I lay reclined 
 Along the prow, and saw all these unite 
 In ruin, even as he had seen the desolate sight ; 
 
 XLV. 
 
 For Time hath not rebuilt them, but uprear'd 
 Barbaric dwellings on their shattered site, 
 Which only make more mourn'd and more endear'd 
 The few last rays of their far-scattered light, 
 And the crush'd relics of their vanished might. 
 The Roman saw these tombs in his own age, 
 These sepulchres of cities, which excite 
 Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page 
 The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage. 
 
^6 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 That page is now before me, and on mine 
 His country's ruin added to the mass 
 Of perish'd states he mournM in their decline, 
 And I in desolation : all that was 
 Of then destruction is ; and now, alas ! 
 Rome — Rome imperial, bows her to the storm, 
 In the same dust and blackness, and we pass 
 The skeleton of her Titanic form, ( 21 ) 
 Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 Yet, Italy ! through every other land 
 Thy wrongs should ring, and shall, from side to side ; 
 Mother of Arts ! as once of arms ; thy hand 
 Was then our guardian, and is still our guide ; 
 Parent of our Religion ! whom the wide 
 Nations have knelt to for the keys of heaven ! 
 Europe, repentant of her parricide, 
 Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven, 
 Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven. 
 
Canto IK PILGRIMAGE. 27 
 
 XL VIII. 
 
 But Arno wins us to the fair white walls, 
 Where the Etrurian Athens claims and keeps 
 A softer feeling for her fairy halls. 
 Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps 
 Her corn, and wine, and oil, and Plenty leaps 
 To laughing life, with her redundant horn. 
 Along the banks where smiling Arno sweeps 
 Was modern Luxury of Commerce born, 
 And buried Learning rose, redeem'd to a new morn. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 There, too, the Goddess loves in stone, and fills (22) 
 The air around with beauty ; we inhale 
 The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils 
 Part of its immortality ; the veil 
 Of heaven is half undrawn ; within the pale 
 We stand, and in that form and face behold 
 What Mind can make, when Nature's self would fail ; 
 And to the fond idolaters of old 
 Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould : 
 
28 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 L. 
 
 We gaze and turn away, and know not where, 
 Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart 
 Reels with its fulness ; there — for ever there — 
 Chain'd to the chariot of triumphal Art, 
 We stand as captives, and would not depart. 
 Away ! — there need no words, nor terms precise, 
 The paltry jargon of the marble mart, 
 Where Pedantry gulls Folly — we have eyes : 
 Blood — pulse — and breast, confirm the Dardan Shepherd's 
 prize. 
 
 LI. 
 Appear'dst thou not to Paris in this guise ? 
 Or to more deeply blest Anchises ? or, 
 In all thy perfect goddess-ship, when lies 
 Before thee thy own vanquish'd Lord of War ? 
 And gazing in thy face as toward a star, 
 Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn, 
 Feeding on thy sweet cheek ! ( 23 ) while thy lips are 
 With lava kisses melting while they burn, 
 Showered on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn ! 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 29 
 
 LII. 
 
 Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love, 
 Their full divinity inadequate 
 That feeling to express, or to improve, 
 The gods become as mortals, and man's fate 
 Has moments like their brightest ; but the weight 
 Of earth recoils upon us ; — let it go ! 
 We can recal such visions, and create, 
 From what has been, or might be, things which grow 
 Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below. 
 
 LIU. 
 
 I leave to learned fingers, and wise hands, 
 The artist and his ape, to teach and tell 
 How well his connoisseurship understands 
 The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell : 
 Let these describe the undescribable : 
 I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream 
 Wherein that image shall for ever dwell ; 
 The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream 
 That ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam. 
 
30 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV, 
 
 LIV. 
 
 In Santa Croce^s holy precincts lie ( 24 ) 
 Ashes which make it holier, dust which is 
 Even in itself an immortality, 
 Though there were nothing save the past, and this f 
 The particle of those sublimities 
 Which have relaps'd to chaos : — here repose 
 Angelo's, Alfieri's bones, and his, ( 25 ) 
 The starry Galileo, with his woes ; 
 Here Machiavelli's earth, returnM to whence it rose. ( 26 ) 
 
 LV. 
 These are four minds, which, like the elements, 
 Might furnish forth creation : — Italy I 
 Time, which hath wrong'd thee with ten thousand rents 
 Of thine imperial garment, shall deny, 
 And hath denied, to every other sky, 
 Spirits which soar from ruin: — thy decay 
 Is still impregnate with divinity, 
 Which gilds it with revivifying ray ; 
 Such as the great of yore, Canova is to-day. 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 31 
 
 LVI. 
 
 But where repose the all Etruscan three — 
 Dante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less than they, 
 The Bard of Prose, creative spirit ! he 
 Of the Hundred Tales of love — where did they lay 
 Their bones, distinguish'd from our common clay 
 In death as life ? Are they resolv'd to dust, 
 And have their country's marbles nought to say ? 
 Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust ? 
 Did they not to her breast their filial earth entrust ? 
 
 LVII. 
 
 Ungrateful Florence ! Dante sleeps afar, ( 27 ) 
 Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore ; 0* 8 ) 
 Thy factions, in their worse than civil war, 
 Proscribed the bard whose name for evermore 
 Their children's children would in vain adore 
 With the remorse of ages ; and the crown ( 29 ) 
 Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore, 
 Upon a far and foreign soil had grown, 
 His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled— not thine own. 
 
32 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeathed C 30 ) 
 His dust, — and lies it not her Great among, 
 With many a sweet and solemn requiem breath'd 
 O'er him who form'd the Tuscan's siren tongue? 
 That music in itself, whose sounds are song, 
 The poetry of speech ? No ;— even his tomb 
 Uptorn, must bear the hyaena bigot's wrong, 
 No more amidst the meaner dead find room, 
 Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for whom I 
 
 LIX. 
 
 And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust ; 
 Yet for this want more noted, as of yore 
 The Caesar's pageant, shorn of Brutus 1 bust, 
 Did but of Rome's best Son remind her more %■ 
 Happier Ravenna ! on thy hoary shore, 
 Fortress of falling empire ! honoured sleeps 
 The immortal exile ; — Arqua, too, her store 
 Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps, 
 While Florence vainly begs her banish'd dead and weeps. 
 
Canto TV. PILGRIMAGE. 
 
 LX. 
 
 What is her pyramid of precious stones? ( 3l ) 
 Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues 
 Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones 
 Of merchant-dukes ? the momentary dews 
 Which, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuse 
 Freshness in the green turf that wraps the dead, 
 Whose names are mausoleums of the Muse, 
 Are gently prest with far more reverent tread 
 Than ever paced the slab which paves the princely head. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 There be more things to greet the heart and eyes 
 In Arno's dome of Art's most princely shrine, 
 Where Sculpture with her rainbow sister vies ; 
 There be more marvels yet — but not for mine ; 
 For I have been accustomed to entwine 
 My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields, 
 Than Art in galleries : though a work divine 
 Calls for my spirit's homage, yet it yields 
 Less than it feels, because the weapon which it wields 
 
34 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 LXIL 
 
 Is of another temper, and I roam 
 By Thrasimene's lake, in the defiles 
 Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home ; 
 For there the Carthaginian's warlike wiles 
 Come back before me, as his skill beguiles 
 The host between the mountains and the shore, 
 Where Courage falls in her despairing files, 
 And torrents, swoln to rivers with their gore, 
 Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scatter'd o'er, 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 Like to a forest fell'd by mountain winds ; 
 And such the storm of battle on this day, 
 And such the phrenzy, whose convulsion blinds 
 To all save carnage, that, beneath the fray, 
 An earthquake reel'd unheededly away ! (32) 
 None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet, 
 And yawning forth a grave for those who lay 
 Upon their bucklers for a winding sheet ; 
 Such is the absorbing. hate when warring nations meet! 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 35 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 The Earth to them was as a rolling bark 
 Which bore them to Eternity ; they saw 
 The Ocean round, but had no time to mark 
 The motions of their vessel ; Nature's law, 
 In them suspended, reck'd not of the awe 
 Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds 
 Plunge in the clouds for refuge and withdraw 
 From their down-toppling nests ; and bellowing herds 
 Stumble o'er heaving plains, and man's dread hath no words. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 Far other scene is Thrasimene now ; 
 Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain 
 Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough ; 
 Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain 
 Lay where their roots are ; but a brook hath ta'en — » 
 A little rill of scanty stream and bed — 
 A name of blood from that day's sanguine rain ; 
 And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead 
 Made the earth wet, and turn'd the unwilling waters red. 
 
 d 2 
 
56 CH1LDE HAROLD'S Canto 17. 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 But thou, Clitumnus ! in thy sweetest wave ( 33 ) 
 
 Of the most living crystal that was e'er 
 
 The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave 
 
 Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear 
 
 t 
 Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer 
 
 Grazes ; the purest god of gentle waters ! 
 
 And most serene of aspect, and most clear ; 
 
 Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters — 
 
 A^ mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters ! 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 And on thy happy shore a temple still, 
 Of small and delicate proportion, keeps, 
 Upon a mild declivity of hill, 
 Its memory of thee ; beneath it sweeps 
 Thy current's calmness ; oft from out it leaps 
 The finny darter with the glittering scales, 
 Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps ; 
 While, chance, some scatter'd water-lily sails 
 Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tates: 
 
Cuuto.1V. 
 
 PILGRIMAGE. 
 
 lxviii. 
 
 Pass not unblest the Genius of the place?! 
 If through the air a zephyr more serene 
 Win to the brow, 'tis his ; and if ye trace 
 Along his margin a more eloquent green, 
 If on the heart the freshness of the scene 
 Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust 
 Of weary life a moment lave it clean 
 With Nature's baptism, — 'tis to him ye must 
 Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust. 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 The roar of waters ! — from the headlong height 
 Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice ; 
 The fall of waters ! rapid as the light 
 The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss ; 
 The hell of waters ! where they howl and hiss, 
 And boil in endless torture ; while the sweat 
 Of their great agony, wrung out from this 
 Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet 
 That gird the gulf around, in jpitiless horror sej. 
 
38 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again 
 Returns in an unceasing shower, which round, 
 With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain, 
 Is an eternal April to the ground, 
 Making it all one emerald : — how profound 
 The gulf! and how the giant element 
 From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound, 
 Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent 
 With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 To the broad column which rolls on, and shows 
 More like the fountain of an infant sea 
 Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes 
 Of a new world, than only thus to be 
 Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly, 
 With many windings, through the vale : — Look back I 
 Lo ! where it comes like an eternity, 
 As if to sweep down all things in its track, 
 Charming the eye with dread,— a matchless cataract, ( 3 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 39 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 Horribly beautiful ! but on the verge, 
 From side to side, beneath the glittering morn, 
 An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge, ( 35 ) 
 Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn 
 Its steady dyes, while all around is torn 
 By the distracted waters, bears serene 
 Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn: 
 Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene, 
 Love watching Madness with unalterable mien. 
 
 LXXIIL 
 
 Once more upon the woody Apennine, 
 The infant Alps, which — had I not before 
 Gazed on their mightier parents, where the pine 
 Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar 
 The thundering lauwine — might be worshipp'd more ; ( 36 ) 
 But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear 
 Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar 
 Glaciers of bleak Mont-Blanc both far and near, 
 And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear. 
 
4Q CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 Th 1 Acroceraunian mountains of old name ; 
 And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly 
 Like spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame, 
 For still they soared unutterably high : 
 IVe look'd on Ida with a Trojan's eye ; 
 Athos, Olympus, iEtna, Atlas, made 
 These hills seem things of lesser dignity, 
 All, save the lone Soracte's height, displayed 
 Not now in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 For our remembrance, and from out the plain 
 Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break, 
 And on ,the curl hangs pausing : not in vain 
 May he, who will, his recollections rake 
 And quote in classic raptures, and awake 
 The hills with Latian echoes ; I abhorr'd 
 Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake, 
 The drill'd dull lesson, forced down word by word C 37 ) 
 In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 41 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 Aught that recals the daily drug which turn'd 
 My sickening memory ; and, though Time hath taught 
 My mind to meditate what then it learn'd, 
 Yet such the hVd inveteracy wrought 
 By the impatience of my early thought, 
 That, with the freshness wearing out before 
 My mind could relish what it might have sought, 
 If free to choose, I cannot now restore 
 Its health ; but what it then detested, still abhor, 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so, 
 Not for thy faults, but mine ; it is a curse 
 To understand, not feel thy lyric flow, 
 To comprehend, but never love thy verse, 
 Although no deeper Moralist rehearse 
 Our little life, nor Bard prescribe his art, 
 Nor livelier Satirist the conscience pierce, 
 Awakening without wounding the toucrTd heart, 
 Yet fare thee well — upon Soracte's ridge we part. 
 
42 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV, 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 Oh Rome ! my country ! city of the soul ! 
 The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, 
 Lone mother of dead empires ! and controul 
 In their shut breasts their petty misery. 
 What are our woes and sufferance ? Come and see 
 The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way 
 O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye ! 
 Whose agonies are evils of a day — 
 A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay. 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 The Niobe of nations ! there she stands, 
 Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe ; 
 An empty urn within her withered hands, 
 Whose holy dust was scatter'd long ago ; 
 The Scipios 1 tomb contains no ashes now ; ( 38 ) 
 The very sepulchres he tenantless 
 Of their heroic dwellers : dost thou flow, 
 Old Tiber ! through a marble wilderness ? 
 Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress ! 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 43 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire, 
 Have dealt upon the seven-hilTd city's pride ; 
 She saw her glories star by star expire, 
 And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride, 
 Where the car climb'd the capitol ; far and wide 
 Temple and tower went down, nor left a site : — 
 Chaos of ruins ! who shall trace the void, 
 O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light, 
 And say, " here was, or is," where all is doubly night ? 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 The double night of ages, and of her, 
 Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt and wrap 
 All round us ; we but feel our way to err : 
 The ocean hath his chart, the stars their map, 
 And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap ; 
 But Rome is as the desart, where we steer 
 Stumbling o'er recollections ; now we clap 
 Our hands, and cry " Eureka ! " it is clear — 
 When but some false mirage of ruin rises near. 
 
44 CHILDE HAROLD'S Cuuto IV. 
 
 LXXXIL 
 
 Alas ! the lofty city ! and alas ! 
 The trebly hundred triumphs ! ( 39 ) and the day 
 When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass 
 The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away ! 
 Alas, for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay, 
 And Livy's pictur'd page ! — but these shall be 
 Her resurrection ; all beside — decay. 
 Alas, for Earth, for never shall we see 
 That. brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free! 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 ;Oh thou, whose chariot rolTd on Fortune's wheel, ( 40 ) 
 Triumphant Sylla ! Thou, who didst subdue 
 Thy country's foes ere thou would pause to feel 
 The wrath of thy own wrongs, or reap the due 
 Of hoarded vengeance till thine eagles flew 
 O'er prostrate Asia; — thou, who with thy frown 
 Annihilated senates — Roman, too, 
 With all thy vices, for thou didst lay down 
 With an atoning smile a more than earthly crown — 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 45 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 The dictatorial wreath, — couldst thou divine 
 To what would one day dwindle that which made 
 Thee more than mortal ? and that so supine 
 By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid ? 
 She who was named Eternal, and array'd 
 Her warriors but to conquer — she who veil'd 
 Earth with her haughty shadow, and display'd, 
 Until the o'er-canopied horizon fail'd, 
 Her rushing wings — Oh ! she who was Almighty haiPd ! 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 Sylla was first of victors; but our own 
 The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell ; he 
 Too swept off senates while he hewed the throne 
 Down to a block — immortal rebel ! See 
 What crimes it costs to be a moment free 
 And famous through all ages ! but beneath ? 
 His fate the moral lurks of destiny ; 
 His day of double victory and death 
 Beheld him win two realms, and, happier, yield his breath. 
 
46 CHII.DE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 The third of the same moon whose former course 
 Had all but crown'd him, on the selfsame day 
 Deposed him gently from his throne of force, 
 And laid him with the earth's preceding clay. ( 41 ) 
 And show'd not Fortune thus how fame and sway, 
 And all we deem delightful, and consume 
 Our souls to compass through each arduous way, 
 Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb ? 
 Were they but so in man's, how different were his doom 
 
 LXXXVII. 
 
 And thou, dread statue ! yet existent in ( 42 ) 
 The austerest form of naked majesty, 
 Thou who beheldest, 'mid the assassins 1 din, 
 At thy bath'd base the bloody Caesar lie, 
 Folding his robe in dying dignity, 
 An offering to thine altar from the queen 
 Of gods and men, great Nemesis ! did he die, 
 And thou, too, perish, Pompey ? have ye been 
 Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene ? 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 47 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome ! ( 43 ) 
 She-wolf! whose brazen-imaged dugs impart 
 The milk of conquest yet within the dome 
 Where, as a monument of antique art, 
 Thou standest : — Mother of the mighty heart, 
 Which the great founder suck'd from thy wild teat, 
 Scorcli'd by the Roman Jove's etherial dart, 
 And thy Hmbs black with lightning — dost thou yet 
 Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget ? 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 Thou dost ;— -but all thy foster-babes are dead— 
 The men of iron ; and the world hath rear'd 
 Cities from out their sepulchres : men bled 
 In imitation of the things they fear'd, 
 And fought and conquer'd, and the same course steered, 
 At apish distance ; but as yet none have, 
 Nor could, the same supremacy have near'd, 
 Save one vain man, who is not in the grave, 
 But, vanquish'd by himself, to his own slaves a slave — 
 
48 CHILDE HAROLD'S Cmit,, IV. 
 
 XG. 
 
 The fool of false dominion — and a kind 
 Of bastard Caesar, following him of old 
 With steps unequal ; for the Roman's mind 
 Was modell'd in a less terrestrial mould, ( 44 > 
 With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold, 
 And an immortal instinct which redeem 1 d 
 The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold, 
 Alcides with the distaff now he seem'd 
 At Cleopatra's feet, — and now himself he beam'cf, 
 
 XCI. 
 
 And came — and saw — and conquer'd ! But the man 
 Who would have tamed his eagles down to flee, 
 Like a train'd falcon, in the Gallic van, 
 Which he, in sooth, long led to victory, 
 With a deaf heart which never seem'd to be 
 A listener to itself, was strangely fram'd ; 
 With but one weakest weakness — vanity, 
 Coquettish in ambition — still he aim'd-r- 
 At what ? can he avouch — or answer what he claim'd ? 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 49 
 
 j 
 
 XCII. 
 
 And would be all or nothing — nor could wait , 
 For the sure grave to level him ; few years 
 Had fix'd him with the Caesars in his fate, 
 On whom we tread : For this the conqueror rears 
 The arch of triumph ! and for this the tears 
 And blood of earth flow on as they have flowed, 
 An universal deluge, which appears 
 Without an ark for wretched man's abode, 
 ■ And ebbs but to reflow ! — Renew thy rainbow, God ! 
 
 XCIIT. 
 
 What from this barren being do we reap ? 
 Our senses narrow, and our reason frail, ( 45 ) 
 Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep, 
 And all things weigh'd in custom's falsest scale ; 
 Opinion an omnipotence, — whose veil 
 Mantles the earth with darkness, until right 
 And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale 
 Lest their own judgments should become too bright, 
 And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much 
 light. e 
 
50 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 XCIV. 
 
 And thus they plod in sluggish misery, 
 Rotting from sire to son, and age to age, 
 Proud of their trampled nature, and so die, 
 Bequeathing their hereditary rage 
 To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage 
 War for their chains, and rather than be free, 
 Bleed gladiator-like, and still engage 
 Within the same arena where they see 
 Their fellows fall before, like leaves of the same tree. 
 
 xcv. 
 
 I speak not of men's creeds — they rest between 
 Man and his Maker — but of things allowed, 
 AverrM, and known, — and daily, hourly seen — 
 The yoke that is upon us doubly bowed, 
 And the intent of tyranny avowed, 
 The edict of Earth's rulers, who are grown 
 The apes of him who humbled once the proud, 
 And shook them from their slumbers on the throne ; 
 Too glorious, were this all his mighty arm had done. 
 
Canto IK PILGRIMAGE. 51 
 
 XCVL 
 
 Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be, 
 And Freedom find no champion and no child 
 Such as Columbia saw arise when she 
 Sprung forth a Pallas, armed and undefiled ? 
 Or must such minds be nourished in the wild, 
 Deep in the unpruned forest, 'midst the roar 
 Of cataracts, where nursing Nature smiled 
 On infant Washington ? Has Earth no more 
 Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no such shore ? 
 
 xcvn. 
 
 But France got drunk with blood to vomit crime, 
 And fatal have her Saturnalia been 
 To Freedom's cause, in every age and clime ; 
 Because the deadly days which we have seen, 
 And vile Ambition, that built up between 
 Man and his hopes an adamantine wall, 
 And the base pageant last upon the scene, 
 Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall 
 Which nips life's tree, and dooms man'sworst — his second fall, 
 
 k 2 
 
52 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 XCVIII. 
 
 Yet, Freedom ! yet thy banner, torn, but flying, 
 Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind ; 
 Thy trumpet voice, though broken now and dying, 
 The loudest still the tempest leaves behind ; 
 Thy tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind, 
 Chopp'd by the axe, looks rough and little "worth, 
 But the sap lasts,' — and still the seed we find 
 Sown deep, even in the bosom of the North ; 
 So shall a better spring less bitter fruit bring forth. 
 
 XCIX. 
 
 There is a stern round tower of other days, ( 46 ) 
 Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone, 
 Such as an army's baffled strength delays, 
 Standing with half its battlements alone, 
 And with two thousand years of ivy grown, 
 The garland of eternity, where wave 
 The green leaves over all by time o'erthrown ; — 
 What was this tower of strength ? within its cave 
 What treasure lay so lock'd, so hid ? — A woman's grave. 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 53 
 
 c. 
 
 But who was she, the. lady of the dead, 
 Tombed in a palace ? Was she chaste and fair ? 
 Worthy a king's — or more — a Roman's bed ? 
 What race of chiefs and heroes did she bear ? 
 What daughter of her beauties was the heir ? 
 How lived — how loved — how died she ? Was she not 
 So honoured — and conspicuously there, 
 Where meaner relics must not dare to rot, 
 Placed to commemorate a more than mortal lot ? 
 
 CI. 
 
 Was she as those who love their lords, or they 
 Who love the lords of others ? such have been, 
 Even in the olden time Rome's annals say. 
 Was she a matron of Cornelia's mien, 
 Or the light air of Egypt's graceful queen, 
 Profuse of joy— or 'gainst it did she war, 
 Inveterate in virtue ? Did she lean 
 To the soft side of the heart, or wisely bar 
 Love from amongst her griefs ? — for such the affections are. 
 
54 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 CII. 
 
 Perchance she died in youth : it may be, bowed 
 With woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb 
 That weighed upon her gentle dust, a cloud 
 Might gather o'er her beauty, and a gloom 
 In her dark eye, prophetic of the doom 
 Heaven gives its favourites—early death ; yet shed ( 47 ) 
 A sunset charm around her, and illume 
 With hectic light, the Hesperus of the dead, 
 Of her consuming cheek the autumnal leaf-like red. 
 
 CHI. 
 
 Perchance she died in age — surviving all, 
 Charms, kindred, children — with the silver grey 
 On her long tresses, which might yet recal, 
 It may be, still a something of the day 
 When they were braided, and her proud array 
 And lovely form were envied, praised, and eyed 
 
 By Rome But whither would Conjecture stray ? 
 
 Thus much alone we know — Metella died, 
 The wealthiest Roman's wife; Behold his love or pride ! 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 55 
 
 CIV. 
 
 I know not why— but standing thus by thee 
 It seems as if I had thine inmate known, 
 Thou tomb ! and other days come back on me 
 With recollected music, though the tone 
 Is changed and solemn, like the cloudy groan 
 Of dying thunder on the distant wind ; 
 Yet could I seat me by this ivied stone 
 Till I had bodied forth the heated mind 
 Forms from the floating wreck which Ruin leaves behind; 
 
 CV. 
 
 And from the planks, far shattered o'er the rocks, 
 Built me a little bark of hope, once more 
 To battle with the ocean and the shocks 
 Of the loud breakers, and the ceaseless roar 
 Which rushes on the solitary shore 
 Where all lies foundered that was ever dear : 
 But could I gather from the wave-worn store 
 Enough for my rude boat, where should I steer ? 
 There woos no home, nor hope, nor life, save what is here. 
 
56 
 
 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 CVI. 
 
 Then let the winds howl on ! their harmony 
 Shall henceforth be my music, and the night 
 The sound shall temper with the owlet's cry, 
 As I now hear them, in the fading light 
 Dim o'er the bird of darkness' native site, 
 Answering each other on the Palatine, 
 With their large eyes, all glistening grey and bright, 
 And sailing pinions. — Upon such a shrine 
 What are our petty griefs? — let me not number mine, 
 
 CVII. 
 
 Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower grown 
 Matted and mass'd together, hillocks heap'd 
 On what were chambers, arch crush'd, column strown 
 In fragments, chok'd up vaults, and frescos steep'd 
 In subterranean damps, where the owl peep'd, 
 Deeming it midnight : — Temples, baths, or halls? 
 Pronounce who can ; for all that Learning reap'd 
 Prom her research hath been, that these are walls — 
 Behold the Imperial Mount ! 'tis thus the mighty falls. * 
 
 * The Palatine is one mass of ruins, particularly on the side 
 towards the Circus Maximus. The very soil is formed of 
 crumbled brick-work. Nothing has been told, nothing can be 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 57 
 
 CVIII. 
 
 There is the moral of all human tales ; C 48 ) 
 'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past, 
 First Freedom, and then Glory — when that fails, 
 Wealth, vice, corruption, — barbarism at last. 
 And History, with all her volumes vast, 
 Hath but one page, — 'tis 'better written here, 
 Where gorgeous Tyranny had thus amass'd 
 All treasures, all delights, that eye or ear, 
 
 Heart, soul could seek, tongue ask Away with words ! 
 
 draw near, 
 
 CIX. 
 Admire, exult — despise — laugh, weep, — for here 
 There is such matter for all feeling : — Man ! 
 Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear, 
 Ages and realms are crowded in this span, 
 This mountain, whose obliterated plan 
 The pyramid of empires pinnacled, 
 Of Glory's gewgaws shining in the van 
 Till the sun's rays with added flame were fill'd ! 
 
 Where are its golden roofs ? where those who dared to build ? 
 
 told, to satisfy the belief of any but a Roman antiquary. — See 
 — Historical Illustrations, page 206. 
 
58 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 ex. 
 
 Tully was not so eloquent as thou, 
 Thou nameless column with the buried base ! 
 What are the laurels of the Caesar's brow ? 
 Crown me with ivy from his dwelling-place. 
 Whose arch or pillar meets me in the face, 
 Titus or Trajan's ? No — 'tis that of Time : 
 Triumph, arch, pillar, all he doth displace 
 Scoffing ; and apostolic statues climb 
 To crush the imperial urn, whose ashes slept sublime, ( 4 9) 
 
 CXI. 
 
 Buried in air, the deep blue sky of Rome, 
 And looking to the stars : they had contain'd 
 A spirit which with these would find a home, 
 The last of those who o'er the whole earth reign'd, 
 The Roman globe, for after none sustain'd, 
 But yielded back his conquests : — he was more 
 Than a mere Alexander, and, unstain'd 
 With household blood and wine, serenely wore 
 His sovereign virtues— still we Trajan's name adore. ( 60 ) 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 59 
 
 CXIL 
 
 Where is the rock of Triumph, the high place 
 Where Rome embraced her heroes ? where the steep 
 Tarpeian ? fittest goal of Treason's race, 
 The promontory whence the Traitor's Leap 
 Cured all ambition. Did the conquerors heap 
 Their spoils here ? Yes ; and in yon field below, 
 A thousand years of silenced factions sleep— 
 The Forum, where the immortal accents glow, 
 And still the eloquent air breathes — burns with Cicero I 
 
 CXIII. 
 
 The field of freedom, faction, fame, and blood : 
 Here a proud people's passions were exhaled, 
 From the first hour of empire in the bud 
 To that when further worlds to conquer fail'd ; 
 But long before had Freedom's face been veil'd. 
 And Anarchy assumed her attributes ; 
 Till every lawless soldier who assail'd 
 Trod on the trembling senate's slavish mutes, 
 Or raised the venal voice of baser prostitutes. 
 
60 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 CXIV. 
 
 Then turn we to her latest tribune's name, 
 From her ten thousand tyrants turn to thee, 
 Redeemer of dark centuries of shame — 
 The friend of Petrarch — hope of Italy — 
 Rienzi ! last of Romans ! While the tree ( 5I ) 
 Of Freedom's withered trunk puts forth a leaf, 
 Even for thy tomb a garland let it be — 
 The forum's champion, and the people's chief — 
 Her new-born Numa thou — with reign, alas ! too brief. 
 
 cxv. 
 
 Egeria ! sweet creation of some heart ( 52 ) 
 Which found no mortal resting-place so fair 
 As thine ideal breast ; whate'er thou art 
 Or wert, — a young Aurora of the air, 
 The nympholepsy of some fond despair ; 
 Or, it might be, a beauty of the earth, 
 Who found a more than common votary there 
 Too much adoring ; whatsoe'er thy birth, 
 Thou wert a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth. 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 61 
 
 CXVI. 
 
 The mosses of thy fountain still are sprinkled 
 With thine Elysian water-drops ; the face 
 Of thy cave-guarded spring, with years unwrinkled, 
 Reflects the meek-eyed genius of the place, 
 Whose green, wild margin now no more erase 
 Art's works ; nor must the delicate waters sleep, 
 Prisoned in marble, bubbling from the base 
 Of the cleft statue, with a gentle leap 
 The rill runs o'er, and round, fern, flowers, and ivy, creep, 
 
 CXVII. 
 
 Fantastically tangled ; the green hills 
 Are clothed with early blossoms, through the grass 
 The quick-eyed lizard rustles, and the bills 
 Of summer-birds sing welcome as ye pass ; 
 Flowers fresh in hue, and many in their class, 
 Implore the pausing step, and with their dyes 
 Dance in the soft breeze in a fairy mass ; 
 The sweetness of the violet's deep blue eyes, 
 Kiss'd by the breath of heaven, seems coloured by its skies. 
 
b2 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 CXVIII. 
 Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover, 
 
 Egeria ! thy all heavenly bosom beating 
 For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover ; 
 The purple Midnight veil'd that mystic meeting 
 With her most starry canopy, and seating 
 Thyself by thine adorer, what befel? 
 This cave was surely shaped out for the greeting 
 Of an enamour'd Goddess, and the cell 
 Haunted by holy Love — the earliest oracle ! 
 
 CXIX. 
 
 And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying, 
 Blend a celestial with a human heart ; 
 And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing, 
 Share with immortal transports ? could thine art 
 Make them indeed immortal, and impart 
 The purity of heaven to earthly joys, 
 Expel the venom and not blunt the dart — 
 The dull satiety which all destroys— 
 And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys ? 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 03 
 
 cxx. 
 
 Alas ! our young affections run to waste, 
 Or water but the desart ; whence arise 
 But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste, 
 Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes, 
 Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies, 
 And trees whose gums are poison ; such the plants 
 Which spring beneath her steps as Passion flies 
 O'er the world's wilderness, and vainly pants 
 For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants. 
 
 CXXI. 
 
 Oh Love ! no habitant of earth thou art — ■ 
 An unseen seraph, we believe in thee, 
 A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart, 
 But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see 
 The naked eye, thy form, as it should be ; 
 The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heaven, 
 Even with its own desiring phantasy, 
 And to a thought such shape and image given, j 
 
 As haunts the unquench'd soul — parch 'd — wearied — wrung 
 — and riven. 
 
64 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 CXXII. 
 
 Of its own beauty is the mind diseased, 
 And fevers into false creation : — where. 
 Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized ? 
 In him alone. Can Nature shew so fair ? 
 Where are the charms and virtues which we dare 
 Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men, 
 ITie unreach'd Paradise of our despair, 
 Which o'er-informs the pencil and the pen, 
 And overpowers the page where it would bloom again ? 
 
 CXXIII. 
 
 Who loves, raves — 'tis youth's frenzy — but the cure 
 Is bitterer still ; as charm by charm unwinds 
 Which robed our idols, and we see too sure 
 Nor worth nor beauty dwells from out the mind's 
 Ideal shape of such ; yet still it binds 
 The fatal spell, and still it draws us on, 
 Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds ; 
 The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun, 
 Seems ever near the prize, — wealthiest when most undone. 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 65 
 
 CXXIV. 
 
 We wither from our youth, we gasp away — 
 Sick — sick ; unfound the boon — unslaked the thirst, 
 Though to the last, in verge of our decay, 
 Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first — 
 But all too late, — so are we doubly curst. 
 Love, fame, ambition, avarice — 'tis the same, 
 Each idle — and all ill — and none the worst — 
 For all are meteors with a different name, 
 ,And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame. 
 
 cxxv. 
 
 Few — none — find what they love or could have loved, 
 Though accident, blind contact, and the strong 
 Necessity of loving, have removed 
 Antipathies — but to recur, ere long, 
 Envenomed with irrevocable wrong ; 
 And Circumstance, that unspiritual god 
 And miscreator, makes and helps along 
 Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod, 
 Whose touch turns Hope to dust, — the dust we all have trod. 
 
66 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto LV 
 
 CXXVI. 
 
 Our life is a false nature — "'tis not in 
 The harmony of things, — this hard decree, 
 This uneradicable taint of sin, 
 This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree, 
 Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be 
 The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew — 
 Disease, death, bondage — all the woes we see — 
 And worse, the woes we see not — which throb through 
 The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new. 
 
 CXXVII. 
 Yet let us ponder boldly — 'tis a base ( 53 ) 
 Abandonment of reason to resign 
 Our right of thought— -our last and only place 
 Of refuge ; this, at least, shall still be mine : 
 Though from our birth the faculty divine 
 Is chain'd and tortured-— cabin'd, cribb'd, confined, 
 And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine 
 Too brightly on the unprepared mind, 
 The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch the blind. 
 
CmU IV. PtLGRIMAGE. 
 
 CXXVIII. 
 
 Arches on arches ! as it were that Rome, 
 Collecting the chief trophies of her line, 
 Would build up all her triumphs in one dome, 
 Her Coliseum stands ; the moonbeams shine 
 As 'twere its natural torches, for divine 
 Should be the light which streams here, to illume 
 This long-explored but still exhaustless mine 
 Of contemplation ; and the azure gloom 
 Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume 
 
 cxxix. *• 
 
 Hues which have words^ and speak \jo ye of heaven, 
 Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument, 
 And shadows forth its glory. There is given 
 Unto the things of earth, which time hath bent, * 
 A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant 
 His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power 
 And magic in the ruined battlement, 
 For which the palace of the present hour 
 Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower. 
 
 f2 
 
68 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 cxxx. 
 
 Oh Time ! the beautifier of the dead, 
 Adorner of the ruin, comforter 
 And only healer when the heart hath bled — 
 Time ! the corrector where our judgments err, 
 The test of truth, love, — sole philosopher, 
 For all beside are sophists, from thy thrift, 
 Which never loses though it doth defer — 
 Time, the avenger ! unto thee I lift 
 My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift : 
 
 CXXXI. 
 
 Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine 
 And temple more divinely desolate, 
 Among thy mightier offerings here are mine, 
 Ruins of years — though few, yet full of fate :■— 
 If thou hast ever seen me too elate, 
 Hear me not ; but if calmly I have borne 
 Good, and reserved my pride against the hate 
 Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn 
 This iron in my soul in vain — shall they not mourn ? 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 69 
 
 CXXXII. 
 
 And thou, who never yet of human wrong 
 Lost the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis ! C 54 ) 
 Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long — 
 Thou, who didst call the Furies from the abyss, 
 And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss 
 For that unnatural retribution — -just, 
 Had it but been from hands less near — in this 
 Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust ! 
 
 Dost thou not hear my heart? — Awake i thou shalt, and 
 must. 
 
 CXXXIIL 
 It is not that I may not have incurr'd 
 For my ancestral faults or mine the wound 
 I bleed withal, and, had it been conferr'd 
 With a just weapon, it had flowed unbound ; 
 But now my blood shall not sink in the ground ; 
 To thee I do devote it — thou shalt take 
 The vengeance, which shall yet be sought and found, 
 Which if / have not taken for the sake 
 
 But let that pass— I sleep, but thou shalt yet awake. 
 
70 CH1LDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 CXXXIV. 
 
 And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now 
 I shrink from what is suffered : let him speak 
 Who hath beheld decline upon my brow, 
 Or seen my mind's convulsion leave it weak ; 
 But in this page a record will I seek. 
 Not in the air shall these my words disperse, 
 Though I be ashes ; a far hour shall wreak 
 The deep prophetic fulness of this verse, 
 And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse ! 
 
 cxxxv. 
 
 That curse shall be Forgiveness.— Have I not — 
 Hear me, my mother Earth ! behold it, Heaven ! — 
 Have I not had to wrestle with my lot ? 
 Have I not suffered things to be forgiven ? 
 Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven, 
 Hopes sapp'd, name blighted, Life's life lied away ? 
 And only not to desperation driven, 
 Because not altogether of such clay 
 As rots into the souls of those whom I survey. 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 71 
 
 CXXXVI. 
 
 From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy 
 Have I not seen what human things could do ? 
 From the loud roar of foaming calumny 
 To the small whisper of the as paltry few, 
 And subtler venom' of the reptile crew, 
 The Janus glance of whose significant eye, 
 Learning to he with silence, would seem true, 
 And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh, 
 Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy. 
 
 CXXXVII. 
 
 But I have lived, and have not lived in vain : 
 My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire, 
 And my frame perish even in conquering pain, 
 But there is that within me which shall tire 
 Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire ; 
 Something unearthly, which they deem not of, 
 Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre, 
 Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move 
 In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of love. 
 
72 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 CXXXVIII. 
 
 The seal is set. — Now welcome, thou dread power 
 Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here 
 Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight hour 
 With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear ; 
 Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear 
 Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene 
 Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear 
 That we become a part of what has been, 
 And grow unto the spot, ^all-seeing but unseen. 
 
 CXXXIX. 
 
 And here the buzz of eager nations ran, 
 In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause, 
 As man was slaughtered by his fellow man. 
 And wherefore slaughtered ? wherefore, but because 
 Such were the bloody Circus' genial laws, 
 And the imperial pleasure. — Wherefore not ? 
 What matters where we fall to fill the maws 
 Of worms — on battle-plains or listed spot? 
 Both are but theatres where the chief actors rot. 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. <<* 
 
 CXL. 
 
 I see before me the Gladiator lie : ( 55 ) 
 He leans upon his hand — his manly brow 
 Consents to death, but conquers agony, 
 And his drooped head sinks gradually low — 
 And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow 
 From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, 
 Like the first of a thunder-shower ; and now 
 The arena swims around him — he is gone, 
 Ere ceased the inhuman shout which haiFd the wretch who 
 won. 
 
 CXLI. 
 He heard it, but he heeded not — his eyes 
 Were with his heart, and that was far away ; 
 He reck'd not of the life he lost nor prize, 
 But where his rude hut by the Danube lay 
 There were his young barbarians all at play, 
 There was their Dacian mother — he, their sire, 
 Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday — ( 56 ) 
 All this rush'd with his blood — Shall he expire 
 And unavenged ? — Arise ! ye Goths, and glut your ire ! 
 
74 CHILDE HAROLD'S Cant,, IV. 
 
 CXLII. 
 
 But here, where Murder breathed her bloody steam ; 
 And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways, 
 And roar'd or murmur'd like a mountain stream 
 Dashing or winding as its torrent strays ; 
 Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise 
 Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd, ( 5 ~) 
 My voice sounds much — and fall the stars' faint rays 
 On the arena void — seats crush'd — walls bow'd — 
 And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud. 
 
 CXLIII. 
 
 A ruin — yet what ruin ! from its mass 
 Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared ; 
 Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass 
 And marvel where the spoil could have appeared. 
 Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared ? 
 Alas ! developed, opens the decay, 
 When the colossal fabric's form is neared : 
 It will not bear the brightness of the day, 
 Which streams too much on all years, man, have reft away. 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. , 75 
 
 CXLIV. 
 
 But when the rising moon begins to climb 
 Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there ; 
 When the stars twinkle through the loops of time, 
 And the low night-breeze waves along the air 
 The garland-forest, which the grey walls wear, 
 Like laurels on the bald first Caesar's head ; ( 58 ) 
 When the light shines serene but doth not glare, 
 Then in this magic circle raise the dead : 
 Heroes have trod this spot — 'tis on their dust ye tread. 
 
 CXLV. 
 
 " While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand ; ( 5 9) 
 " When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall ; 
 " And when Rome falls— the World." From our own land 
 Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall 
 In Saxon times, which we are wont to call 
 Ancient ; and these three mortal things are still 
 On their foundations, and unaltered all ; 
 Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill, 
 The World, the same wide den-— of thieves, or what ye will. 
 
76 - CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 CXLVI. 
 
 Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime — 
 Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods, 
 From Jove to Jesus — spared and blest by time ; ( 60 ) 
 Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods 
 Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods 
 His way through thorns to ashes — glorious dome ! 
 Shalt thou not last ? Time's scythe and tyrants 1 rods 
 Shiver upon thee — sanctuary and home 
 Of art and piety — Pantheon ! — pride of Rome ! ' 
 
 CXLVII. 
 
 Relic of nobler days, and noblest arts ! 
 Despoiled yet perfect, with thy circle spreads 
 A holiness appealing to all hearts — 
 To art a model ; and to him who treads 
 Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds 
 Her light through thy sole aperture ; to those 
 Who worship, here are altars for their beads; 
 And they who feel for genius may repose 
 Their eyes on honoured forms, whose busts around them 
 close. ( 61 ) 
 
Ctmto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 77 
 
 CXLVIII. 
 
 There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light ( 02 ) 
 What do I gaze on ? Nothing : Look again ! 
 Two forms are slowly shadowed on my sight — 
 Two insulated phantoms of the brain : 
 It is not so ; I see them full and plain — 
 An old man, and a female young and fair, 
 Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein 
 The blood is nectar : — but what doth she there, 
 With her unman tied neck, and bosom white and bare ? 
 
 CXLIX. 
 
 Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life, 
 Where on the heart and from the heart we took 
 Our first and sweetest nurture, when the wife, 
 Blest into mother, in the innocent look, 
 Or even the piping cry of lips that brook 
 No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives 
 Man knows not, when from out its cradled nook 
 She sees her little bud put forth its leaves — 
 What may the fruit be yet ? — I know not — Cain was Eve T s. 
 
78 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 CL. 
 
 But here youth offers to old age the food, 
 The milk of his own gift :— it is her sire 
 To whom she renders back the debt of blood 
 Born with her birth. No ; he shall not expire 
 While in those warm and lovely veins the fire 
 Of health and holy feeling can provide 
 Great Nature's Nile, whose deep stream rises higher 
 Than Egypt's river : — from that gentle side 
 
 Drink, drink and live, old man ! Heaven's realm holds no 
 such tide. 
 
 CLI. 
 The starry fable of the milky way 
 Has not thy story's purity ; it is 
 A constellation of a sweeter ray, 
 And sacred Nature triumphs more in this 
 Reverse of her decree, than in the abyss 
 Where sparkle distant worlds :— Oh, holiest nurse ! 
 No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss 
 To thy sire's heart, replenishing its source 
 
 With life, as our freed souls rejoin the universe* 
 
Cnnto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 79 
 
 CLII. 
 
 Turn to the Mole which Hadrian rear'd on high, (63) 
 Imperial mimic of old Egypt's piles, 
 Colossal copyist of deformity, 
 Whose travelled phantasy from the far Nile's 
 Enormous model, doom'd the artist's toils 
 To build for giants, and for his vain earth 
 His shrunken ashes raise this dome : How smiles 
 The gazer's eye with philosophic mirth, 
 To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth ! 
 
 CLIII. 
 
 But lo ! the dome— the vast and wondrous dome, C 64 ) 
 To which Diana's marvel was a celL — 
 Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb ! 
 I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle — 
 Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell 
 The hyaena and the jackall in their shade ; 
 I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell 
 Their glittering mass i' the sun, and have survey'd 
 Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem pray'd ; 
 
80 CHII/DE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 CLIV. 
 
 But thou, of temples old, or altars new, 
 Standest alone — with nothing like to thee — 
 Worthiest of God, the holy and the true. 
 Since Zion's desolation, when that He 
 Forsook his former city, what could be, 
 Of earthly structures, in his honour piled, 
 Of a sublimer aspect ? Majesty, 
 Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all are aisled 
 In this eternal ark of worship undefined. 
 
 CLV. 
 
 Enter : its grandeur overwhelms thee not ; 
 And why ? it is not lessened ; but thy mind, 
 Expanded by the genius of the spot, 
 Has grown colossal, and can only find 
 A fit abode wherein appear enshrined 
 Thy hopes of immortality ; and thou 
 Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined, 
 See thy God face to face, as thou dost now 
 His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by his brow. 
 
Cantn IT. PILGRIMAGE. 81 
 
 CLVI. 
 
 Thou movest — but increasing with the advance, 
 Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise* 
 Deceived by its gigantic elegance ; 
 Vastness which grows — but grows to harmonize — 
 All musical in its immensities ; 
 Rich marbles — richer painting — shrines where flame 
 The lamps of gold — and haughty dome which vies 
 In air with Earth's chief structures, though their frame 
 Sits on the firm-set ground — and this the clouds must claim, 
 
 CLVII. 
 
 Thou seest not all ; but piecemeal thou must break, 
 To separate contemplation, the great whole ; 
 And as the ocean many bays will make, 
 That ask the eye — so here condense thy soul 
 To more immediate objects, and control 
 Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart 
 Its eloquent proportions, and unroll 
 In mighty graduations, part by part, 
 The glory which at once upon thee did not dart, 
 
82- CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto 11' 
 
 CLVIII. 
 
 Not by its fault — but thine : Our outward sense 
 Is but of gradual grasp— and as it is 
 That what we have of feeling most intense 
 Outstrips our faint expression ; even so this 
 Outshining and o'erwhelming edifice 
 Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great 
 Defies at first our Nature's littleness, 
 Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate 
 Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate. 
 
 CLIX. 
 
 Then pause, and be enlightened ; there is more 
 In such a survey than the sating gaze 
 Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore 
 The worship of the place, or the mere praise 
 Of art and its great masters, who could raise 
 What former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan ; 
 The fountain of sublimity displays 
 Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man 
 Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can. 
 
Canto IV. • PILGRIMAGE. 83 
 
 CLX. 
 
 Or, turning to the Vatican, go see 
 Laocoon's torture dignifying pain— 
 A father's love and mortal's agony 
 With an immortal's patience blending : — Vain 
 The struggle ; vain, against the coiling strain 
 And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, 
 The old man's clench ; the long envenomed chain 
 Rivets the living links, — the enormous asp 
 Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp. 
 
 CLXI. 
 
 Or view the Lord of the unerring bow, 
 The God of life, and poesy, and light — 
 The Sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow 
 All radiant from his triumph in the fight ; 
 The shaft hath just been shot — the arrow bright 
 With an immortal's vengeance ; in his eye 
 And nostril beautiful disdain, and might, 
 And majesty, flash their full lightnings by, 
 Developing in that one glance the Deity, 
 
 • c, 9, 
 
84 CHTLDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 CLXII. 
 
 But in his delicate form — a dream of Love, 
 Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast 
 Long'd for a deathless lover from above, 
 And madden'd in that vision- — are exprest 
 All that ideal beauty ever blessM 
 The mind with in its most unearthly mood, 
 When each conception was a heavenly guest — 
 A ray of immortality — r and stood, 
 Starlike, around, until they gathered to a god ! 
 
 CLXIII. 
 
 And if it be Prometheus stole from Heaven 
 The fire which we endure, it was repaid 
 By him to whom the energy was given 
 Which this poetic marble hath array'd 
 With an eternal glory — which, if made 
 By human hands, is not of human thought ; 
 And Time himself hath hallowed it, nor laid 
 One ringlet in the dust — nor hath it caught 
 A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which 'twas 
 wrought. 
 
CMUito IV. .PILGRIMAGE. 85 
 
 , CLXIV. 
 
 But where is he, the Pilgrim of my song, 
 The being who upheld it through the past ? 
 Methinks he cometh late and tarries long. 
 He is no more— these breathings are his last ; 
 His wanderings done, his visions ebbing fast, 
 And he himself as nothing : — if he was 
 Aught but a phantasy, and could be class'd 
 With forms which live and suffer — let that pass — 
 His shadow fades away into Destruction's mass, 
 
 CLXV. 
 
 Which gathers shadow, substance, life, and all 
 That we inherit in its mortal shroud, 
 And spreads the dim and universal pall 
 Through which all things grow phantoms ; and the cloud 
 Between us sinks and all which ever glowed, 
 Till Glory's self is twilight, and displays 
 A melancholy halo scarce allowed 
 To hover on the verge of darkness ; rays 
 Sadder than saddest night, for they distract the gaze, 
 
8(5 . CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 CLXVI. 
 
 And send us prying into the abyss, 
 To gather what we shall be when the frame 
 Shall be resolv'd to something less than this 
 Its wretched essence ; and to dream of fame, 
 And wipe the dust from off the idle name 
 We never more shall hear, — but never more, 
 Oh, happier thought ! can we be made the same : 
 It is enough in sooth that once we bore 
 These fardels of the heart — the heart whose sweat was gore. 
 
 CLXVII. 
 
 Hark ! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds, 
 A long low distant murmur of dread sound, 
 Such as arises when a nation bleeds 
 With some deep and immedicable wound ; 
 Through storm and darkness yawns the rending ground, 
 The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief 
 Seems royal still, though with her head discrown'd, 
 And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief 
 She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief. 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 87 
 
 CLXVIII. 
 
 Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou ? 
 Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead ? 
 Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low 
 Some less majestic, less beloved head ? 
 In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled, 
 The mother of a moment, o'er thy boy, 
 Death hush'd that pang for ever : with thee fled 
 The present happiness and promised joy 
 Which fill'd the imperial isles so full it seem'd to cloy. 
 
 CLXIX. 
 
 Peasants bring forth in safety. — Can it be, 
 Oh thou that wert so happy, so adored ! 
 Those who weep not for kings shall weep for thee, 
 And Freedom's heart, grown heavy, cease to hoard 
 Her many griefs for One ; for she had pour'd 
 Her orisons for thee, and o'er thy head 
 Beheld her Iris. — Thou, too, lonely lord, 
 And desolate consort — vainly wert thou wed ! 
 The husband of a year ! the father of the dead .' 
 
88 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 CLXX. 
 
 Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made ; 
 Thy bridal's fruit is ashes : in the dust 
 The fair-haired Daughter of the Isles is laid, 
 The love of millions ! How we did entrust 
 Futurity to her ! and, though it must 
 Darken above our bones, yet fondly deem'd 
 Our children should obey her child, and bless'd 
 Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seem'd 
 Like stars to shepherds - ' eyes : — 'twas but a meteor beam'd. 
 
 CLXXI. 
 
 Woe unto us, not her ; for she sleeps well : 
 The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue 
 Of hollow counsel, the false oracle, 
 Which from the birth of monarchy hath rung 
 Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstung 
 Nations have arm'd in madness, the strange fate C 65 ) 
 Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung 
 Against their blind omnipotence a weight 
 Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late,—- 
 
Canto TV. PILGRIMAGE. 89 
 
 CLXXII. 
 
 These might have been her destiny ; but no, 
 Our hearts deny it : and so young, so fair, 
 Good without effort, great without a foe ; 
 But now a bride and mother — and now there ! 
 How many ties did that stern moment tear ! 
 From thy Sire's to his humblest subject's breast 
 Is linked the electric chain of that despair, 
 Whose shock was as an earthquake's, and opprest 
 The land which loved thee so that none could love thee best. 
 
 CLXXIII. 
 
 ( 66 ) Lo, Nemi ! navelled in the woody hills 
 So far, that the uprooting wind which tears 
 The oak from his foundation, and which spills 
 The ocean o'er its boundary, and bears 
 Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares 
 The oval mirror of thy glassy lake ; 
 And, calm as cherish'd hate, its surface wears 
 A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake, 
 All coiled into itself and round, as sleeps the snake. 
 
90 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 CLXXIV. 
 
 And near Albano's scarce divided waves 
 Shine from a sister valley ; — and afar 
 The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves 
 The Latian coast where sprung the Epic war, 
 " Arms and the Man," whose re-ascending star 
 Rose o'er an empire ; — but beneath thy right 
 Tully reposed from Rome ; — and where yon bar 
 Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight 
 The Sabine farm was till'd, the weary bard's delight. ( 67 ) 
 
 CLXXV. 
 
 But I forget. — My pilgrim's shrine is won, 
 And he and I must part, — so let it be, — 
 His task and mine alike are nearly done ; 
 Yet once more let us look upon the sea ; 
 The midland ocean breaks on him and me, 
 And from the Alban Mount we now behold 
 Our friend of youth, that ocean, which when we 
 Beheld it last by Calpe's rock unfold 
 Those waves, we followed on till the dark Euxine roll'd 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 91 
 
 CLXXVI. 
 
 Upon the blue Symplegades : long years — 
 Long, though not very many, since have done 
 Their work on both ; some suffering and some tears 
 Have left us nearly where we had begun : 
 Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run, 
 We have had our reward — and it is here ; 
 That we can yet feel gladden'd by the sun, 
 And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear 
 As if there were no man to trouble what is clear. 
 
 CLXXVII. 
 
 Oh ! that the Desart were my dwelling place, 
 With one fair Spirit for my minister, 
 That I might all forget the human race, 
 And, hating no one, love but only her ! 
 Ye Elements ! — in whose ennobling stir 
 I feel myself exalted — Can ye not 
 Accord me such a being ? Do I err 
 In deeming such inhabit many a spot? 
 Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot. 
 
92 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 CLXXVIII. 
 
 There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 
 There is a rapture on the lonely shpre, 
 There is society, where none intrudes, 
 By the deep Sea, and music in its roar : 
 I love not Man the less, but Nature more, 
 From these our interviews, in which I steal 
 From all I may be, or have been before, 
 To mingle with the Universe, and feel 
 What I can ne'er express, yet can not all conceal. 
 
 CLXXIX. 
 
 Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean — roll ! 
 Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; 
 Man marks the earth with ruin— his control 
 Stops with the shore ; — upon the watery plain 
 The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain 
 A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, 
 When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, 
 He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, 
 Without a grave, unknelTd, uncofmVd, and unknown. 
 
Canto W. PILGRIMAGE. 93 
 
 CLXXX. 
 
 His steps are not upon thy paths, — thy fields 
 Are not a spoil for him, — thou dost arise 
 And shake him from thee ; the vile strength he wields 
 For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, 
 Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, 
 And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray 
 And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies 
 His petty hope in some near port or bay, 
 And dashest him again to earth : — there let him lay. 
 
 CLXXXI. 
 
 The armaments which thunderstrike the walls 
 Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, 
 And monarchs tremble in their capitals, 
 The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make 
 Their clay creator the vain title take 
 Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war ; 
 These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, 
 They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar 
 Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar, 
 
94 CHILDE HAROLD'S Canto IV. 
 
 CLXXXII. 
 
 Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee — 
 Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they ? 
 Thy waters wasted them while they were free, 
 And many a tyrant since ; their shores obey 
 The stranger 3 slave, or savage ; their decay 
 Has dried up realms to desarts : — not so thou, 
 Unchangeable save to thy wild waves 1 play — 
 Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow — 
 Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.^ 
 
 CLXXXIII. 
 
 Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form 
 Glasses itself in tempests ; in all time, 
 Calm or convuls'd — in breeze, or gale, or storm, 
 Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime 
 Dark-heaving ; — boundless, endless, and sublime— 
 The. image of Eternity — the throne 
 Of the Invisible ; even from out thy slime 
 The monsters of the deep are made ; each zone 
 Obeys thee ; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. 
 
Canto IV. PILGRIMAGE. 9# 
 
 CLXXXIV. 
 
 And I have loved thee, Ocean ! and my joy 
 Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be 
 Borne, like thy bubbles, onward : from a boy 
 I wantoned with thy breakers — they to me 
 Were a delight ; and if the freshening sea 
 Made them a terror — 'twas a pleasing fear, 
 For I was as it were a child of thee, 
 And trusted to thy billows far and near, 
 And laid my hand upon thy mane — as I do here. 
 
 CLXXXV. 
 
 My task is done — my song hath ceased — my theme 
 Has died into an echo ; it is fit 
 The spell should break of this protracted dream. 
 The torch shall be extinguish'd which hath lit 
 My midnight lamp — and what is writ, is writ, — 
 Would it were worthier ! but I am not now 
 That which I have been — and my visions flit 
 Less palpably before me — and the glow 
 Which in my spirit dwelt, is fluttering, faint, and low. 
 
96 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE. Canto IV- 
 
 CLXXXVI. 
 
 Farewell ! a word that must be, and hath been — 
 A sound which makes us linger ;~ — yet — farewell ! 
 Ye ! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene 
 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 ! 
 
NOTES. 
 
NOTES 
 
 TO 
 
 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE, CANTO IV. 
 
 Stanza I. 1 
 
 / stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs ; 
 A palace and a prison on each hand. 
 
 The communication between the Ducal palace and 
 the prisons of Venice is by a gloomy bridge, or co- 
 vered 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 cri- 
 minal was taken into this cell is now walled up ; but 
 the passage is still open, and is still known by the 
 
 h 2 
 
10 NOTES. 
 
 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 pas- 
 sages, and served for the introduction of the pri- 
 soner'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 re- 
 cesses, 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 some^ 
 
NOTES. 101 
 
 thing 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 : 
 
 I. 
 
 NON TI FIDAR AD ALCUNO PENSA e TACI 
 SE FUGIR VUOI D£ SPIONI INSIDIE e LACCI 
 IL PENTIRTi PENTIRTI NULLA GIOVA 
 MA BEN DI VALOR TUO LA VERA PROVA 
 
 1607. ADI 2. GENARO. FUI RE- 
 TENTO P' LA BESTIEMMA p' AVER DATO 
 DA MANZAR A UN MORTO 
 
 1ACOMO . GRITTI. SCRISSE. 
 
 UN PARLAR POCHO et 
 
 N EG A RE PRONTO et 
 
 UN PENSAR AL FINE PUO DARE LA VITA 
 
 A NOI ALTRI MESCHINI 
 
 1605 
 EGO IOIIN BAPTIST A AD 
 KCCLESIAM CORTBLLARI US. 
 
102 NOTES. 
 
 3. 
 
 BE CHI MI FIDO GUARDAM1 DIO 
 DK CHI NON MI FIDO MI GUARDARO IO 
 V. LA S TA . C H . K A . R NA . 
 
 The copyist has followed, not corrected the sole- 
 cisms ; some of which are however not quite so de- 
 cided, 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. 
 
 Stanza II. 
 
 She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean 
 Rising, with her tiara of proud tozvers. 
 
 An old writer, describing the appearance of Ve- 
 nice, has made use of the above image, which would 
 not be poetical were it not true. 
 
 " Quo jit ut qui swpcrne urbem contempletur, tur- 
 
NOTES. 103 
 
 ritam telluris imaginem medio Oceano Jiguratam se 
 putet inspicere 1 ." 
 
 Stanza III. 
 
 In Venice Tassd's echoes are no more. 
 
 The well known song of the gondoliers, of alter- 
 nate stanzas, from Tasso's Jerusalem, has died with 
 the independence of Venice. Editions of the poem, 
 with the original on 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 shew the difference 
 between the Tuscan epic and the " Canta alia Bar- 
 cariola." 
 
 Original. 
 
 Canto F arrtie pietose, e '1 capitano 
 
 Che '1 gran Sepolcro libero di Cristo. 
 Molto egli opro col senno, e con la mano 
 
 Molto soffri nel glorioso acquisto ; 
 E in van F Inferno a lui s' oppose, e in vano 
 
 S' armo d' Asia, e di Libia il popol misto, 
 Che il Ciel gli die favore, e sotto a i Santi 
 Segni riduss ei suoi compagni erranti. 
 
 1 Marci Antonii Sabelli de Venetse Urbis situ narratio, edit. 
 Taurin. 1527, lib. i. fol. 202. 
 
104 NOTES. 
 
 Venetian. 
 
 L' arme pietose de cantar gho vogia, 
 
 E de Goffredo la immortal braura 
 Che al fin I' ha libera co strassia, e dogia 
 
 Del nostro buon Gesii la Sepoltura 
 De mezo mondo unito, e de quel Bogia 
 
 Missier Pluton no 1" ha bu mai paura : 
 Dio F ha agiuta, e i compagni sparpagnai 
 Tutti '1 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 conti- 
 nued 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 car- 
 penter, 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 
 
NOTES. 105 
 
 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 Ins performance, 
 which habit alone can make attractive. The recita- 
 tive 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, volun- 
 tary, 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 per- 
 formers 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 holidays, 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 re- 
 marks which appeared in the Curiosities of Litera- 
 ture must excuse his being twice quoted; for, with 
 
106 NOTES. 
 
 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 alter- 
 nately 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 invaria- 
 bly returned, but, according to the subject matter 
 
NOTES. 107 
 
 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 uncivilized 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 gon- 
 dola), 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 this sing- 
 ing 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 walk- 
 ing 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; 
 
108 NOTES. 
 
 the quickly succeeding transitions, which necessarily 
 required to be sung in a lower tone, seemed like 
 plaintive strains succeeding the vociferations of emo- 
 tion or of pain. The other, who listened attentively, 
 immediately began where the former left off, answer- 
 ing 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 cha- 
 racter of this wonderful harmony. 
 
 " It suits perfectly well with an idle solitary ma- 
 riner, 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 al- 
 leviated 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 po- 
 pulous town. Here is no rattling of carriages, no 
 noise of foot passengers : a silent gondola glides now 
 and then by him, of which the splashing of the oars 
 are scarcely to be heard. 
 
 " At a distance he hears another, perhaps utterly 
 
NOTES. 109 
 
 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 them- 
 selves without fatigue ; the hearers, who are pass- 
 ing 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 fulfils 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 
 organized person, said quite unexpectedly: e sin- 
 golare come quel canto intenerisce, e molto piu 
 quando lo cantano meglio. 
 
 " I was told that the women of Libo, the long 
 row of islands that divides the Adriatic from the 
 Lagouns, 1 particularly the women of the extreme dis- 
 tricts of Malamocca and Palestrina, sing in like man- 
 ner 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 
 
 i The writer meant Lido, which is not a long row of islands, 
 but a long island : littus, the shore. 
 
110 NOTES. 
 
 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." 1 
 
 * The love of music and of poetry distinguishes 
 all classes of Venetians, even amongst the tuneful 
 sons of Italy. The city itself can occasional^ 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 de- 
 gree, 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 curtsey 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 snow 
 storms are accustomed to descend. There is a poetry 
 in the very life of a Venetian, which, in its common 
 
 » [Curiosities of Literature, vol. ii. p. 156. edit. 180/; and Ap- 
 pendix xxix. to Black's Life of Tasso.] 
 
NOTES. Ill 
 
 course, is varied with those surprises and changes 
 so recominendable in fiction, but so different from 
 the sober monotony of northern existence; amuse- 
 ments 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 in- 
 difference 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. 
 
112 NOTES. 
 
 Stanza X. 
 Sparta hath many a worthier son than he. 
 
 The answer of the mother of Brasidas to the 
 strangers who praised the memory of her son. 
 
 Stanza XI. 
 
 St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood 
 Stand, — — 
 
 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 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 produc- 
 
NOTES. 118 
 
 don. 1 Mr. 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 Theodo- 
 sius. 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 spe- 
 cimens of Bodoni's typography is a respectable vo- 
 lume of inscriptions, all written by his friend Pac- 
 ciaudi. 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. 
 
 QTJATUOR . EQUORUM . SIGNA . A . VENETIS . BYZANTIO . 
 CAPTA . AD - TEMP . D . MAR . A . R . S . MCCIV . POSITA . 
 QVM . HOSTILIS . CUPID ITAS . A . MDCCIIIC . ABSTULERAT . 
 FRANC . I . IMP . PACIS . ORBI . DATjE . TROPHJSUM . 
 A . MDCCCXV . VICTOR . REDUXIT. 
 
 Nothing shall be said of the Latin, but it may 
 be permitted to observe, that the injustice of the Ve- 
 netians in transporting the horses from Constan- 
 tinople was at least equal to that of the French in 
 carrying them to Paris, and that it would have been 
 
 1 Sui quattro cavalli della Basilica di S. Marco in Venezia. 
 Lettera di Andrea Mustoxidi Corcirese. Padua per Bettoni e 
 compag. . . . 1816'. 
 
114 NOTES. 
 
 more prudent to have avoided all allusions to eithes 
 robbery. An apostolic prince should, perhaps, have 
 objected to affixing over the principal entrance of 
 a metropolitan church, an inscription having a re^ 
 ference to any other triumphs than those of religion. 
 Nothing less than the pacification of the world can 
 excuse such a solecism. 
 
 Stanza XII. 
 
 The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns, , 
 An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt. 
 
 After many vain efforts on the part of the Italians 
 entirely to throw off the yoke of Frederic Barba- 
 rossa, 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, 
 
NOTES. 115 
 
 a town fifteen miles from the capital. The Vene- 
 tians rose tumultuously, and insisted upon imme- 
 diately 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." 1 
 
 On Saturday the 23d 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 
 Saint Mark's church, and solemnly absolved the Em- 
 peror and his partisans from the excommunication 
 pronounced against him. The Chancellor of the Em- 
 
 1 " Quibus auditis, iraperator, operante eo, qui corda princi- 
 pum sicut vult et quando vult humiliter inclinat, leonina fe- 
 ritate deposita, ovinam mansuetudinem induit." Romualdi Sa- 
 lernitani. Chronicon. aptid. Script. Rer. Ital. Tom. VII. p. 22g. 
 
 12 
 
116 NOTES. 
 
 pire, 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 Fre- 
 deric, 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 pa- 
 triarch, 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 Saint 
 Mark's. 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 Al- 
 mighty 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 Em- 
 peror then taking the Pope by the right hand, led him 
 to trie church, and having received his benediction, re- 
 turned to the ducal palace." 1 The ceremony of humilia- 
 
 * Ibid, page 231. 
 
NOTES. 117 
 
 tion was repeated tne next day. The Pope himself, 
 at the request of Frederic, said mass at Saint Mark's. 
 The Emperor again laid aside his imperial mantle, and, 
 taking a wand in his hand, officiated as verger, driv- 
 ing 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 
 riot 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, 
 
118 NOTES. 
 
 unarmed old man to subdue a terrible and potent 
 sovereign. x 
 
 Stanza XII. 
 
 Oh ^ for one hour of blind old Dandolol 
 
 TK octogenarian chief ] Byzantium's conquering Joe. 
 
 The reader will recollect the exclamation of the 
 highlander, Oh for one hour of Dundee ! Henry Dan- 
 dolo, 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 Roma- 
 nia,* for so the Roman empire was then called, to 
 
 1 See the above cited Romuald of Salerno. Iu a second ser- 
 mon which Alexander preached, on the first day of August, 
 before the Emperor, he compared Frederic to the prodigal son, 
 arid himself to the forgiving father. 
 
 2 Mr. Gibbon has omitted the important ce, and has written 
 Romani instead of Romanise. Decline and Fall, cap. Ixi. 
 note Q. But the title acquired by Dandolo runs thus in the 
 Chronicle of his namesake, the Doge Andrew Dandolo. Du- 
 cali titulo addidit. " Quarlce partis et dimidice totius imperii 
 Ttomaniae." And. Dand. Chronicon. cap. iii. pars, xxxvii. ap. 
 Script. Rer. Ital. torn. xii. page 331. And the Romanics is ob- 
 served in the subsequent acts of the Doges. Indeed the conti- 
 
NOTES. 119 
 
 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. * 
 
 Dandolo led the attack on Constantinople in per- 
 son : 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 com 
 pleted, said the Venetians, the prophecy of the Ery- 
 thraean sybil. " A gathering together of the power- 
 ful 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." z 
 
 nental possessions of the Greek empire in Europe were then 
 generally known by the name of Romania, and that appella- 
 tion is still seen in the maps of Turkey as applied to Thrace. 
 
 1 See the continuation of Dandolo's Chronicle, ibid, page 4Q8, 
 Mr. Gibbon appears not to include Dolfino, following Sanudo, 
 who says, " il t/ual titolo si usojin al Doge Giovanni Dolfino." 
 See Vite de' Duchi di Venezia. ap. Script. Rer. Ital. torn. xxii. 
 530,641. 
 
 2 '' Fiet poientium in aquis Adriaticis congregatio, ccbco 
 
120 NOTES. 
 
 Dandolo died on the first day of June 1205, 
 having reigned thirteen years, six months, and five 
 days, and was huried 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 go- 
 vernment in ll96-7, was Dandolo. 
 
 Stanza XIII. 
 
 But is not Dona's menace come to pass? 
 Are they not bridled f 
 
 After the loss of the battle of Pola, and the taking 
 of Chioza on the 1 6th of August, 1 379, by the united 
 armament of the Genoese and Francesco da Car- 
 rara, 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. 
 
 prceduce, Hircum amligeni, Byzantium propJianalwnl, ctdificia 
 denigrahunt; spolia dispergentur, Hircus novus lalalit usque, 
 dum liv pedes et ix pollices, et semis prcemensurati discurrauC 
 [Chronicon, ibid, pars xxxiv.] 
 
NOTES. 121 
 
 George," determined to annihilate their rival, and 
 Peter Doria, their commander in chief, returned this 
 answer to the suppliants : " On God's faith, gentle- 
 men of Venice, ye shall have no peace from the 
 Signor 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. Wild as we may find them, 
 we will soon make them stand still. 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." * In fact, the Genoese did advance as far 
 as Malamacco, within five miles of the capital ; but 
 their own danger and the pride of their enemies gave 
 
 l *' Alia Je di Dio, Signori Veneziani, nan havarete mat 
 pace dal Signore di Padoua, ne dal nostra commune di Geneva, 
 se primieramente non mettemo le Iriglie a quelli vosiri cavatti 
 sfrenati, eke sono su la Reza del Vostro Evangelista S. Marco. 
 Imlrenati che gli havremo, vi faremo stare in huona pace. E 
 guesta e la intenzione nostra, e del nostra commune. Questi miei 
 fratelli Genovesi che havete menati con vai per donarci, non It 
 voglio ; rimanetegli in dietro perche io intendo da qui a pochi 
 giorni venirgli a riscuoter dalle vostre prigioni, e loro e gli 
 altri." 
 
122 NOTES. 
 
 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 Ge- 
 noese broke up from Malamocco, and retired to 
 Chioza in October ; but they again threatened Ve- 
 nice, 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 22d of January by a stone bullet 195 pounds 
 weight, discharged from a bombard called the Trevi- 
 san. Chioza was then closely invested : 5000 auxi- 
 liaries, amongst whom were some English Condot- 
 tieri, 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, nine- 
 teen galleys, many smaller vessels and barks, with 
 all the ammunition and arms, and outfit of the ex- 
 pedition, fell into the hands of the conquerors, who, 
 had it not been for the inexorable answer of Do- 
 ria, would have gladly reduced their dominion to the 
 city of Venice. An account of these transactions 
 
NOTES. 123 
 
 is found in a work called the War of Chioza, 
 written by Daniel Chinazzo, who was in Venice at 
 the time. 1 
 
 Stanza XV. 
 
 Thin streets and foreign aspects, such as must 
 Too oft remind her who and what enthrals. 
 
 The population of Venice at the end of the seven- 
 teenth century amounted to nearly two hundred 
 thousand souls. At the last census, taken two years 
 ago, it was no more than about one hundred and 
 three thousand, and it diminishes daily. The com- 
 merce and the official employments, which were to 
 be the unexhausted source of Venetian grandeur, have 
 both expired. 2 Most of the patrician mansions are de- 
 serted, and would gradually disappear, had not the go- 
 vernment, 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 
 
 ' ' " Chronaca della guerra di Chioza," &c. Script. Rer. 
 Italic, torn. xv. pp. 699 to 804. 
 
 2 " Nonnullorum h nobilitate immensse sunt opes, adeout vix 
 sesstimari possint : id quod tribus e rebus oritur, parsimonia, 
 cammercio, atque iis emolumentis, quae c Repub. percipiunt, 
 quae hanc ob causam diuturna fore creditur." — See de Principa- 
 tibus Italia?, Tractatus. edit. 1631. 
 
124 NOTES. 
 
 palladian palaces have sunk, or are sinking, in the ge- 
 neral decay. Of the " gentil uomo 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. What- 
 ever may have been the vices of the republic, and al- 
 though 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 ex- 
 pected 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 patri- 
 cians 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 inde- 
 pendence. 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 
 
NOTES. 125 
 
 into life and supported its existence, must fall to 
 pieces at once, and sink more rapidly than it rose. 
 The abhorence 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 dependants, and not present the hu- 
 miliating spectacle of a whole nation loaded with re- 
 cent 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 pa- 
 rade 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 re- 
 flection, " 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 al- 
 
126 NOTES. 
 
 lowed 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 cor- 
 rected before Venice shall have sunk into the slime of 
 her choked canals. 
 
 Stanza XX. 
 
 But from their nature will the tannen grow 
 Loftiest on loftiest and least sheltered rocks. 
 
 Tannen is the plural of tanne, a species of fir pecu- 
 liar to the Alps, which only thrives in very rocky 
 parts, where scarcely soil sufficient for its nourish- 
 ment can be found. On these spots it grows to a 
 greater height than any other mountain tree. 
 
 \ 
 Stanza XXVIIL 
 
 A single star is at her side, and reigns 
 With her o'er half the lovely heaven. 
 
 The above description may seem fantastical or ex- 
 aggerated 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, 
 
NOTES. 127 
 
 Stanza XXX. 
 
 Watering the tree which bears his lady's name 
 With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame. 
 
 Thanks to the critical acumen of a Scotchman, we 
 now know as little of Laura as ever. x The disco- 
 veries of the Abbe de Sade, his triumphs, his sneers, 
 can no longer instruct or amuse. 2 We must not, 
 however, think that these memoirs are as much a ro- 
 mance as Belisarius or the Incas, although we are 
 told so by Dr. Beattie, a great name but a little autho- 
 rity. 3 His " labour" has not been in vain, notwith- 
 standing his " love" has, like most other passions, 
 made him ridiculous. 4 The hypothesis which over- 
 powered the struggling Italians, and carried along 
 
 1 See An historical and critical Essay on the Life and Cha- 
 racter of Petrarch ; and a Dissertation on an Historical Hypo- 
 thesis of the Abbe* de Sade : the first appeared about the year 
 1784 ; the other is inserted in the fourth volume of the Transac- 
 tions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and both have been 
 incorporated into a work, published, under the first title, by 
 Ballantyne in 1810. 
 
 2 M&noires pour la Vie de P£trarque. 
 
 3 Life of Beattie, by Sir S. Forbes, t. ii. p. 106. 
 
 4 Mr. Gibbon called his Memoirs " a labour of love," 
 (see Decline and Fall, cap. lxx. note 1.), 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 so readily as some other authors. 
 
128 NOTES. 
 
 less interested critics in its current, is run out. We 
 have another proof that we can be never 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 hypo*- 
 thesis of the Abb6 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 deli- 
 berate duties were performed round the carcase of one 
 who died of the plague, and was hurried to the grave 
 on the day of her death. These documents, there- 
 fore, are too decisive : they prove not the fact, but 
 the forgery. Either the sonnet or the Virgilian note 
 must be a falsification. The Abbe cites both as in- 
 contestably true; the consequent deduction is in- 
 evitable—they are both evidently false. r 
 
 1 The sonnet had before awakened the suspicions of Mr. Ho- 
 race Walpole< See hi3 letter to Wharton in 17&3. 
 
NOTES. 129 
 
 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 ' upon the first poet of 
 the age. It was, indeed, rather too unfair that a fe- 
 male should be made responsible for eleven children 
 upon the faith of a misinterpreted abbreviation, and 
 the decision of a librarian. * It is, however, satisfac- 
 
 > " Par ce petit manege, cette alternative de faveurs et de ri- 
 gueurs biert me'nage'e, une femme tendre et sage amuse, pendant 
 vingt et un ans, le plus grand poete de son siecle, sans faire la 
 moindre breche a son honneur." Me'm. pour la Vie de Pe"trarque, 
 Preface aux Francois. The Italian editor of the London edi- 
 tion of Petrarch, who has translated Lord Woodhouselee, ren- 
 ders the " femme tendre et sage" " raffinala civetta." Riflessioni 
 intorno a madonna Laura, p. 234, vol. iii. ed. 1811. 
 
 2 In a dialogue with St. Augustin, Petrarch has described 
 Laura as having a body exhausted with repeated plubs. The old 
 editors read and printed perturbationibus ; but Mr. Capperonier, 
 librarian to the French King in 1762, who saw theMS. in the Paris 
 library, made an attestation that " on lit et qu'on doit lire, par- 
 tubus exhaustwn." DeSade joined the names of Messrs. Boudot 
 and Bejot with Mr. Capperonier, and in the whole discussion on 
 this ptubs, showed himself a downright literary rogue. See Ri- 
 flessioni, &c. p. 267. Thomas Aquinas is called in to settle 
 whether Petrarch's mistress was a chaste maid or a continent 
 wife. 
 
 K 
 
130 NOTES. 
 
 tory to think that the love of Petrarch was not pla- 
 tonic. The happiness which he prayed to possess 
 but once and for a moment was surely not of the 
 mind, and something so very real as a marriage pro- 
 ject, with one who has been idly called a shadowy 
 nymph, may be, perhaps, detected in at least six 
 places of his own sonnets. 2 The love of Petrarch 
 was neither platonic nor poetical; and if in one 
 passage of his works he calls it " amore veemen- 
 teissimo 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. 3 
 
 In this case, however, he was perhaps alarmed for 
 the culpability of his wishes ; for the Abbe de Sade 
 himself, who certainly would not have been scru- 
 pulously delicate if he could have proved his descent 
 from Petrarch as well as Laura, is forced into a stout 
 defence of his virtuous grand-mother. As far as re- 
 lates to the poet, we have no security for the inno- 
 
 1 " Pigmalion, quanto lodar ti tlei 
 Dell' imagine tua, se mille volte 
 N' avesti quel ch' i' sol una vorrei." 
 
 Souetto 58. quando giunse a Simon I' alto concetto 
 Le Rime fife. par. i. pag. I89. edit. Ven. 1756. 
 
 2 See Riflessioni, &c. p. 2Q1. 
 
 3 " Quella rea e perversa passione che solo tutto mi occupava 
 e mi regnava nel cuore." 
 
NOTES. 131 
 
 eence, except perhaps in the constancy of his pur- 
 suit. 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. 2 The weakest argument for the 
 purity of this love has been drawn from the per- 
 manence of effects, which survived the object of 
 his passion. The reflection of Mr. de la Bastie, that 
 virtue alone is capable of making impressions which 
 death cannot efface, is one of those which every body 
 applauds, and every body finds not to be true, the 
 moment he examines his own breast or the records 
 of human feeling. 3 Such apothegms can do nothing 
 for Petrarch or for the cause of moralit}', except with 
 the very weak and the very young. He that has 
 
 1 Azion disonesta are his words. 
 
 2 " A questa confessione cosi sincera diede forse occasione 
 una nuova caduta ch' ei fece.'' Tiraboschi, Storia, &c. torn. v. 
 lib. iv. par. ii. pag. 402. 
 
 J **. 11 riy a que la vertu seule qui soit capable dejaire des im- 
 pressions que la mart n' efface pas." M. de Bimard, Baron de la 
 Bastie, in the Memoires de l'Acad^mie des Inscriptions et Belles 
 Lettres for 1740 and 1751. See also Riflessioni, &c. p. 2Q. r >. 
 
132 NOTES. 
 
 made even a little progress beyond ignorance and 
 pupilage, cannot be edified with any thing but truth. 
 What is called vindicating the honour of an individual 
 6r a nation, is the most futile, tedious and uninstruc- 
 tive of all writing; although it will always meet with 
 more applause than that sober criticism, which is at- 
 tributed 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 favorite hypothetic salvo, which secures 
 the author, although it scarcely saves the honour of 
 the still unknown mistress of Petrarch. 
 
 Stanza XXXI. 
 
 They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died. 
 
 Petrarch retired to Arqua immediately on his re- 
 turn 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 Fran- 
 
 \ " And if the virtue or prudence of Laura was inexorable, ht 
 enjoyed, and might boast of enjoying the nymph of poetry." 
 Decline and Fall, cap. lxx. p. 327. vol. xii. oct. Perhaps the if 
 is here meant for although. 
 
NOTES. 133 
 
 cesco Novello da Carrara, he appears to have passed the 
 four last years of his life between that charming soli- 
 tude 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 rest- 
 ing upon a book. The chair is still shown amongst 
 the precious relics of Arqua, which, from the uninter- 
 rupted veneration that has been attached to every 
 thing 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 Shakesperian 
 memorials of Stratford upon Avon. 
 
 Arqua (for the last syllable is accented in pro- 
 nunciation, although the analogy of the English lan- 
 guage 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 Eu- 
 ganean 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 suc- 
 cession of acclivities and hills, clothed with vine- 
 yards 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 Arqua is soon seen between a cleft where 
 two ridges slope towards each other, and nearly in- 
 
134 NOTES. 
 
 close 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 conspi- 
 cuously alone, but will be soon overshadowed by four 
 lately planted laurels. Petrarch's fountain, for here 
 every thing 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 cen- 
 turies have spared these sequestered vallies, and the 
 
NOTES. 135 
 
 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 Floren- 
 tine 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 Arqua 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 1 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, exten- 
 sive erudition, and refined taste, joined to that en- 
 gaging simplicity of manners which has been so fre- 
 quently recognized as the surest, though it is cer- 
 tainly not an indispensable, trait of superior genius. 
 
 1 Remarks, &c. on Italy, p. 95, note, 2nd edit. 
 
136 NOTES. 
 
 Every footstep of Laura's lover has been anxiously 
 traced and recorded. The house in which he lodged 
 is shewn 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 in- 
 scription 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, 1 be- 
 
 « D. O. M. 
 
 Francisco Petrarch ae 
 
 Parmensi Archidiacono. 
 
 Parentibus prseclaris genere perantiquo 
 
 Ethices Christiana? scriptori eximio 
 
 Romanae lingua? restitutori 
 
 Etnisca? principi 
 
 Africae ob carmen hac in urbe peractum regibus accito 
 
 S. P. Q. R. laurea donate 
 
 Tanti Viri 
 
 Juvenilium juvenis senilinm senex 
 
 Stuclk>sissimus 
 
 Comes Nicolaus Canonicus Cicognarus 
 
 Marmorea proxima ara excitata. 
 
 Ibique eondito 
 
 Divae Jantiarias cruento corpore 
 
 H. M. P., 
 
 Suffectum 
 
 Sed infra meritiim Francisci sepulchro 
 
NOTES. 137 
 
 cause he was archdeacon of that society, and was 
 only snatched from his intended sepulture in their 
 church by ajoreign 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 con- 
 dition which has for ages precluded the Italians from 
 the criticism of the living, has concentrated their at- 
 tention to the illustration of the dead. 
 
 Stanza XXXIV. 
 
 Or it may be with damons. 
 
 The struggle is to the full as likely to be with 
 daemons 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. 
 
 Stanza XXXVIII. 
 
 In face of all his Joes, the Cruscan quire; 
 And Boileau, whose rash envy, fyc. 
 
 Perhaps the couplet in which Boileau depreciates 
 Tasso, may serve as well as any other specimen to 
 
 Summa bac in rede efferri mandantis 
 
 Si Parmae occumberet 
 
 Extera morte heu nobis erepti. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 justify the opinion given of the harmony of French 
 verse. 
 
 A Malerbe a Racan pre'fe'rer Thepphile 
 
 Et le clinquant du Tasse a tout l'or de Virgile. 
 
 Sat. ix. vers. 176. 
 
 The biographer Serassi, out of tenderness to the re- 
 putation either of the Italian or the French poet, is 
 eager to observe that the satirist recanted or ex- 
 plained 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. 2 The sentence pro- 
 nounced against him by Bohours, 3 is recorded only 
 
 1 La vita del Tasso, lib. iii. p. 284. torn. ii. edit. Bergamo 
 1790. 
 
 ' 2 Histoire de l'Academie Fran$oise depuis 1652, jusqu'a 1700, 
 par l'abbe d'Olivet, p. 181, edit. Amsterdam 1730. " Mais, en- 
 suite, venant a. l'usage qu'il a fait de ses talens, j'aurois montre" 
 que le bons sens n'est pas toujours ce qui domine chez lui," p. 
 182. Boileau said he had not changed his opinion. " Pen ai 
 si peu change, dit il," &c. p. 181. 
 
 3 La maniere 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'ltalie a portes, le Tasse 
 est pent etre celui qui pense le plus noblement." But Bohours 
 seems to speak in Eudoxus, who closes with the absurd com- 
 
NOTES. 139 
 
 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 Je- 
 rusalem 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, 1 
 influenced by a hope to acquire the favour of the 
 House of Este: an object which he thought attain- 
 able 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 cotemporary opinion as to the nature of the poet's 
 imprisonment; and will fill up the measure of our 
 indignation at the tyrant jailer. 2 In fact, the anta- 
 gonist of Tasso was not disappointed in the reception 
 given to his criticism ; he was called to the court of 
 
 parison : " Faites valoir le Tasse tant qu'il vous plaira, je 
 in 'en tiens pour moi a Virgile," &c. ibid. p. 102. 
 
 1 La Vita, &c. lib. iii. p. 90, torn. ii. The English reader may 
 see an account of the opposition of the Crusca to Tasso, in Dr, 
 Black, Life, &c. cap. xvii. vol. ii. 
 
 For further and, it is hoped, decisive proof, that Tasso was 
 neither more nor less than a prisoner of state, the reader is re- 
 ferred to " Historical Illustrations of the IVth Canto 
 of Childe Harold^' pag. 5, and following. 
 
140 NOTES. 
 
 Ferrara, where, having endeavoured to heighten his 
 claims to favour, by panegyrics on the family of his 
 sovereign; 1 he was in his turn abandoned, and ex- 
 pired 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 ac&- 
 demy owed its first renown to having almost opened 
 with such a paradox; 2 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 cap- 
 tive could have been but little embarrassed to reply 
 to accusations, where, amongst other delinquencies he 
 was charged with invidiously omitting, in his compa- 
 rison between France and Italy, to make any mention 
 of the cupola of St. Maria del Fiore at Florence. 3 
 The late biographer of Ariosto seems as if willing to 
 renew the controversy by doubting the interpretation 
 
 1 Orazioni funebri . . delle lodi di Don Luigi Cardinal d'Este 
 .... delle lodi di Donno Alfonso d'Este. See La Vita, lib. iii. 
 page 1 17- 
 
 ' It was founded in 1582> and the Cruscan answer to Pelle- 
 grino's Caraffa or epica poesia was published in 1584. 
 
 s " Cotanto pote sempre in lui il veleno della sua pessima vo- 
 lonta contro alia nazion Fiorentina." La Vita, lib. iii. p. 96', 
 98, torn. ii. 
 
NOTES. 141 
 
 of Tasso's self-estimation ' related in Serassi's life of 
 the poet. But Tiraboschi had before laid that rivalry 
 at rest, 2 by showing, that between Ariosto and Tasso 
 it is not a question of comparison, but of preference. 
 
 j, Stanza XLI. 
 
 The lightning rent from Ariostds bust 
 The iron crown oflaureTs mimic 'd leaves. 
 
 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. 3 The transfer of these sacred ashes on the 
 6th of June 1801 was one of the most brilliant spec- 
 tacles of the short-lived Italian Republic, and to con- 
 secrate the memory of the ceremony, the once fa- 
 
 1 La Vita di M. L. Ariosto, scritta dalP Abate Girolamo Ba- 
 ruftaldi Giuniore &c, Ferrara 1807, lib. iii. pag. 202. See His- 
 torical Illustrations, &c. p. 26. 
 
 * Storia della Lett. &c. lib. iii. torn. vii. par. iii. pag. 1220. 
 sect. 4. 
 
 * " Mi raccontarono que' monaci, ch* essendo caduto un ful- 
 mine nella loro chiesa schianto esso dalle tempie la corona dilauro 
 a quell' immortale poeta." Op. di Bianconi, vol. iii. p. 176. 
 ed. Milano. 1802 j lettera al Signor Guido Savini Arcifisiocritico, 
 lull' indole di un iulmiue caduto in Dresdal'anno 1759. 
 
143 NOTES. 
 
 mous fallen Intrepidi were revived and re-formed into 
 the Ariostean academy. Thelargepublic placethrough 
 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 Fer- 
 rara. * The mother of Ariosto was of Reggio, and 
 the house in which he was born is carefully distin- 
 guished by a tablet with these words : " Qui nacque. 
 Ludovico Ariosto il giorno 8 di Settemhre delV 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. 
 
 '* Hie illius arma 
 
 Hie currus fuit . . " 
 
 The house where he lived, the room where he died, 
 are designated by his own replaced memorial, 2 and 
 by a recent inscription. The Ferrarese are more 
 jealous of their claims since the animosity of Denina, 
 
 > '* 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, &c. 
 
 2 " Parva sed apta mihi, sed nulli obnoxia, sed non 
 Sordida, parta meo sed tamen sere domus." 
 
NOTES. 143 
 
 arising from a cause which their apologists myste- 
 riously hint is not unknown to them, ventured to de- 
 grade their soil and climate to a Boeotian incapacity 
 for all spiritual productions. A quarto volume has 
 been called forth by the detraction, and this supple- 
 ment to Barotti's Memoirs of the illustrious Ferrarese 
 has been considered a triumphant reply to the " Qua- 
 dro Storico Statistico dell' Alta Italia/' 
 
 Stanza XLI. 
 
 For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves 
 Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves. 
 
 The eagle, the sea calf, the laurel l , and the white 
 vine, 2 were amongst the most approved preservatives 
 against lightning : Jupiter chose the first, Augustus 
 Caesar the second, 3 and Tiberius never failed to wear 
 a wreath of the third when the sky threatened a 
 thunder storm. 4 These superstitions may be received 
 without a sneer in a country where the magical pro- 
 perties of the hazel twig have not lost all their credit ; 
 and perhaps the reader may not be much surprised 
 
 1 Aquila, vitulus marinus, et laurus, fulmine non feriuntur. 
 Plin. Nat. Jlist. lib. ii. cap. Iv. 
 
 2 Columella, lib. x. 
 
 5 Sueton. in Vit. August, cap. xc. 
 4 Id. in Vit. Tiberii, cap. Ixix. 
 
144 NOTES. 
 
 to find 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. l 
 
 Stanza XLI. 
 Know that the lightning sanctifies below. 
 
 The Curtian lake and the Kuminal fig-tree in the 
 Forum, having been touched by lightning, were held 
 sacred, and the memory of the accident was preserved 
 by a puteal, or altar, resembling the mouth of a well, 
 with a little chapel covering the cavity supposed to 
 De made by the thunderbolt. Bodies scathed and 
 persons struck dead were thought to be incor- 
 ruptible^ and a stroke not fatal conferred perpetual 
 dignity upon the man so distinguished by heaven. 3 
 
 Those killed by lightning were wrapped in a white 
 garment, and buried where they fell. The supersti- 
 tion was not confined to the worshippers of Jupiter: 
 the Lombards believed in the omens furnished by 
 
 1 Note 2. pag. 409- edit. Lugd. Bat. 1667. 
 
 2 Vicl. J. C. Bullenger, de Terra? motu et Fulminib. lib. v. 
 cap. xi. - ■ 
 
 'Oi/Jslj xipai/vw^tl; aTijuo; le-Tt, oStn x«* wj flioj riy.arai. Plut. Sym- 
 
 pos. rid. J. C. Bulleng. ut sup. 
 
NOTES. . 145 
 
 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. l 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 Velitrae, and including 
 that which played upon a gate at Florence, and fore- 
 told the pontificate of one of its citizens. * 
 
 Stanza XLII. 
 Italia, oh Italia, fyc. 
 The two stanzas, XLII. and XLIII. are, with the 
 
 * Pauli Diaconi, de gestis Langobard. lib. iii. cap. xiv* fo. 15. 
 edit. Taurin. 1527. ' 
 
 * I. P. Valeriani, de fulminum significationibus declaraatio, 
 ap. Graev. Antiq. Rom. torn. v. pag. 5^3. The declamation is 
 addressed to Julian of Media's. 
 
146 NOTES. 
 
 exception of a line or two, a translation of the famous 
 sonnet of Filicaja: 
 
 " Italia, Italia, O tu cui feo la sorte." 
 
 Stanza XL IV. 
 
 Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him, 
 The Romanjriend of Rome's least mortal mind. 
 
 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 
 iEgina towards Megara, I began to contemplate the 
 prospect of the countries around me : iEgina was be- 
 hind, Megara before me ; Piraeus on the right, Co- 
 rinth 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 pre- 
 sently 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 3 r et so short, when the 
 carcases of so many noble cities lie here exposed be- 
 fore me in one view." x 
 
 1 Dr. Middleton — History of the Life of M. Tullius Cicero, 
 sect. vii. pag. 371. vol. ii. 
 
NOTES. 147 
 
 Stanza XLVI. 
 
 And we pass 
 The skeleton of her Titanic form. 
 
 It is Poggio who, looking from the Capitoline hill 
 upon ruined Rome, breaks forth into the exclamation, 
 " Ut nunc omhi decore nudata, prostrata jacet, instar 
 gigantei cadaveris corrupti atque undique exesi." ' 
 
 Stanza XLIX. 
 
 There too the goddess loves in stone. 
 
 The view of the Venus of Medicis instantly sug- 
 gests 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 con r 
 elusion 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 
 
 1 De fortunae varietate urbis Romae et de minis ejusdem de- 
 scriptio, ap. Sallen^re, Thesaur. torn. i. pag. 501. 
 
 L 2 
 
1.48 NOTES. 
 
 Damon that in some happier moment he might per- 
 haps 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 vesti- 
 bule of the Basilica of St. Paul without the walls, at 
 Kome, where the whole group of the fable ofMar- 
 syas is seen in tolerable preservation ; and the Scy- 
 thian 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 Caesar. Winkel- 
 mann, illustrating a bas relief of the same subject, 
 follows the opinion of Leonard Agostini, and his au- 
 thority might have been thought conclusive, even if 
 the resemblance did not strike the most careless ob- 
 server. 1 
 
 1 See Monim. Ant. ined. par. i. cap. xvh. n.xlii. pag. 50 j and 
 Sloria delle arti, &c. lib. xi. cap. i. torn. ii. pag. 314. not. b. 
 
NOTES. - 149 
 
 Amongst the bronzes of the same princely collec- 
 tion, is still to be seen the inscribed tablet copied and 
 commented upon by Mr. Gibbon. 1 Our historian 
 found some difficulties, but did not desist from his 
 illustration: he might be vexed to hear that his criti- 
 cism has been thrown away on an inscription now 
 generally recognized to be a forgery. 
 
 Stanza LI. 
 
 His eyes to thee upturn, 
 Feeding" on thy sweet cheek. 
 
 'OfQxXfjLobs eirfiav 
 " Atque oculos pascat uterque suos." 
 
 Ovid. Amor. lib. ii. 
 
 Stanza LIV. 
 In Santa Croce^s holy precincts lie. 
 
 This name will recal 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 
 
 1 Nomina gentesque Antiquae Italise, p. 204. edit. oct. 
 
150 NOTES. 
 
 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 dis- 
 torted, as friendship or detraction has held the pencil : 
 the impartial portrait was hardly to be expected from 
 a cotemporary. The immediate voice of her sur- 
 vivors 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 : Co- 
 rinna has ceased to be a woman — she is only an au- 
 thor.: and it may be foreseen that many will repay 
 themselves for former complaisance, by' a severity to 
 which the extravagance of previous praises may per- 
 haps 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 eternaHnfluence for the control and con- 
 
NOTES. 151 
 
 solation 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 invo- 
 luntary wit, and of easy hospitality, attracted within 
 the friendly circles of Coppet, should rescue from ob- 
 livion 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 pourtray the unaffected 
 graces with which she adorned those dearer relation- 
 ships, the performance of whose duties is rather dis- 
 covered amongst the interior secrets, than seen in the 
 outward management, of family intercourse; and 
 which, indeed, it requires the delicacy of genuine af- 
 fection to qualify for the eye of an indifferent spec- 
 tator. Some one should be found, not to celebrate, 
 but to describe, the amiable mistress of an open man- 
 sion, the centre of a society, ever varied, and always 
 pleased, the creator of which, divested of the ambi- 
 tion 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 for- 
 gotten 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 
 
152 NOTES. 
 
 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 quali- 
 ties of the incomparable Corinna. 
 
 • 
 
 Stanza LI V. 
 
 Here repose 
 Angelas, AlfierVs bones. 
 
 Alfieri is the great name of this age. The Ita- 
 lians, without waiting for the hundred years, con- 
 sider 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. J In the 
 
 1 The free expression of their honest sentiments survived their 
 liberties. Titius, the friend of Antony, presented them with 
 games in the theatre of Pom pey. They did not suffer the bril- 
 liancy of the .-pectacle 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. 
 
NOTES. 153 
 
 autumn of 1816, a celebrated improvisatore exhibited 
 his talents at the Opera-house of Milan. The read- 
 ing of the theses handed in for the subjects of his 
 poetry was received b)' 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 Aljieri? 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 extem- 
 porary common-places on the bombardment of Al- 
 giers. 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 after- thought, steps in to correct the 
 blindness of chance. The proposal for deifying Al- 
 fieri was received with immediate enthusiasm, the 
 rather because it was conjectured there would be no 
 opportunity of carrying it into effect. 
 
 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 Le- 
 pidus and Plancus, who had proscribed their brothers, De Ger- 
 manis non de Gallis duo triumphant Consules, a saying worth a 
 record, were it nothing but a good pun. [C. Veil. Paterculi 
 Hist. lib. ii. cap. lxxix. pag. 78. edit. Elzevir, 1639. Ibid. lib. 
 ii. cap. Ixxvii.] 
 
154 NOTES. 
 
 Stanza LIV. 
 
 Here Machiavelli s earth returned to whence it rose. 
 
 The affectation of simplicity in sepulchral inscrip- 
 tions, which so often leaves us uncertain whether 
 the structure before us is an actual depositor}', or a 
 cenotaph, or a simple memorial not of death but life, 
 has/given to the tomb of Machiavelli no information 
 as to t,he place or time of the birth or death, the age 
 or parentage, of the historian. 
 
 TANTO NOMINI NVIXVM PAR EXOG1VM 
 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 und} ? ing efforts of those who are interested in 
 the perversion not only of the nature of actions, but 
 
NOTES. 155 
 
 the meaning of words, that what was once patriotism, 
 has by degrees come to signify debauch. We have our- 
 selves 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 pandar, to tyranny ; and to think that the inqui- 
 sition would condemn his work for such a delin- 
 quency. 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 Inqui- 
 sition " benches fosse tardo," to prohibit the treatise, 
 and the other qualified the secretary of the Floren- 
 tine 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 ob- 
 jected not to the slavery of the doctrines, but to the 
 supposed tendency of a lesson which shows how dis- 
 tinct are the interests of a monarch from the happiness 
 of mankind. The Jesuits are re-established in [taly, 
 and the last chapter of the Prince may again call 
 forth a particular refutation, from those who are em- 
 ployed once more in moulding the minds of the 
 rising generation, so as to receive the impressions of 
 despotism. The chapter bears for title, " Esortazione 
 
156 NOTES. 
 
 a liberare la Italia dai Barbari," and concludes with 
 a libertine excitement to the future redemption of 
 Italy. cc Non si deve adunque lasciar passare questa 
 occasioned accioccM la Italia vegga dopo tanto tempo 
 appartre un suo redentore. Ne posso esprimere con 
 qual amove ei fusse ricevuto in tutte quelle provincie, 
 che hanno patito per queste illuvioni esterne, con qual 
 sete di vendetta, con che ostinatafede, con che lacrime. 
 Quali porte se li serrerebeno f Quali popoli li negher- 
 ebbeno la obbedienza ? Quale Italiano li negherebbe 
 Vossequio? ad ognuno puzza questo barbaiio 
 
 DOMINIO." 1 
 
 Stanza LVII. 
 
 Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar. 
 
 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 
 
 1 II Principe di Niccol6 Wachiavelli, &c. con la prefazione e le 
 note istoriche e politiche di M r . Amelot de la Houssaye e 
 1'esame e confutazione dell' opera .... Cosmopoli, 1769. 
 
NOTES. 357 
 
 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 
 mc qitod moriatur. The pretext for this judgment 
 was a proof of unfair barter, extortions, and illicit 
 gains. Baracteriarum iniquarum, extorsionum, et iU 
 licitorum lucrorum, 1 and with such an accusation 
 it is not strange that Dante should have always pro- 
 tested 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 recal ; 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 hap- 
 pened in 1321. He was buried (" in sacra minorum 
 sede/') at Ravenna, in a handsome tomb, which was 
 erected by Guido, restored by Bernardo Bembo in 
 
 1 Storia della Lett. Ital. torn. v. lib", iii. par. t. p. 448. Tira- 
 boschi'j date is incorrect. 
 
 " ^ 
 
158 NOTES. 
 
 1483, pretor for that republic which had refused to hear 
 him, again restored by Cardinal Corsi in 1692, and 
 replaced by a more magnificent sepulchre, con- 
 structed 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 al ledge 
 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, a and his pic- . 
 ture 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 Floren- 
 tines 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 pa- 
 triotic employment. The example was imitated 03' 
 Bologna and Pisa, and the commentators, if they 
 performed but little service to, literature, augmented 
 the veneration which beheld a sacred or moral allegory 
 
 1 So relates Fici no, but some think his coronation only an 
 ailegory. See Storia, &c. ut sup. p. 453. 
 
NOTES. 159 
 
 in all the images of his mystic muse. His birth and 
 his infancy were discovered to have been distin- 
 guished 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 sub- 
 stantial mistress. When the Divine Comedy had 
 been recognized as a mere mortal production, and at 
 the distance of two centuries, when criticism and 
 competition had sobered the judgment of Italians, 
 Dante was seriously declared superior to Homer, 1 
 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, and the jealous scepticism of one 
 writer would not allow Ravenna the undoubted pos- 
 session of his bones. Even the critical Tiraboschi 
 
 1 By Varchi in his Ercolano. The controversy continued 
 from 1570 to 161C. See Storia, &c. torn. vii. lib. iii. par, iii. 
 p. 1280. 
 
 3 Gio. Jacopo Dionisi canonico di Verona. Serie di Aneddoti, 
 n. 2. See Storia, &c. torn. v. lib. i. par. i. p. 24. ..." 
 
160 NOTES. 
 
 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 ex- 
 travagances of the Com media.' The present genera- 
 tion 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. 
 
 Stanza LVII. 
 
 Like Scipio buried by the upbraiding sfiore, 
 Thy factions in their worse than civil war 
 Proscribed, tyc. '- 
 
 The elder Scipio Africanus had a tomb if he was 
 not buried at Liternum, whither he had retired to vo- 
 luntary banishment. This tomb was near the sea- 
 
NOTES. 161 
 
 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. 1 
 
 In cosi angusta e solitaria villa 
 
 Era '1 grand' uomo che d'Africa s'appella 
 
 Perche prima col ferro al vivo aprilla 2 . 
 
 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 hun- 
 dred examples of the fall of courtly favourites. Be- 
 sides, a people have often repented — a monarch sel- 
 dom 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 su- 
 preme tribunal was content with the sentence of im- 
 prisonment. Whilst Pisani was suffering this unme- 
 rited disgrace, Chioza, in the vicinity of the capital 3 , 
 
 1 Vitam Literni egit sine desiderio urbis. See T. Liv. Hist, 
 lib. xxxviii. Livy reports that some said he was buried at Liter- 
 num, others at Rome. lb. cap. LV. 
 
 * Trionfo della Castita. 3 See note to stanza XIII. 
 
 M 
 
162 NOTES. 
 
 was, by the assistance of the Signor of Padua, deli- 
 vered into the hands of Pietro Doria. At the intelli- 
 gence of that disaster, the great bell of St. Mark's 
 tower tolled to arms, and the people and the soldiery 
 of the gallies 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 de- 
 mands of the people and the necessities of the state, 
 whose only hope of safety was reposed on 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 sub- 
 mitted 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 re- 
 covered the ascendancy over their maritime rivals- 
 
NOTES. 163 
 
 The Italian communities were no less unjust to 
 their citizens than the Greek republics. Liberty, botli 
 with the one and the other, seems to have been a na- 
 tional, not an individual object : and, notwithstanding 
 the boasted equality before the laws which an ancient 
 Greek writer 1 considered the great distinctive mark 
 between his countrymen and the barbarians, the mu- 
 tual 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 distinc- 
 tion between the liberty of former states, and the sig- 
 nification attached to that word by the happier con- 
 stitution 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 tur- 
 bulence, 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 Spe- 
 roni, when Francis Maria II. Duke of Rovere, pro- 
 posed the question, " which was preferable, the re- 
 public or the principality — the perfect and not dura- 
 ble, 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 
 
 1 The Greek boasted that he was ic-ovo/wo;. See — the last chap- 
 ter of the first book of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. 
 
 M2 
 
164 NOTES. 
 
 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. * 
 
 Stanza LVII. 
 
 " And the crown 
 Which PetrarcNs laureate brow supremely wore 
 Upon afar and foreign soil had grown." 
 
 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 fa- 
 ther, 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 
 intreat 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, 
 
 1 " E intomo alia magnifica risposta," &c. Serassi Vita del 
 Tasso, lib. in. pag. 140. torn. ii. edit. 2. Bergamo. 
 
NOTES. 165 
 
 and would be dearer to them ; and they added, that 
 if there was any thing unpleasing in their letter, he 
 ought to return amongst them, were it only to correct 
 their style 1 . Petrarch seemed at first to listen to 
 the flattery and to the intreaties of his friend, but he 
 did not return to Florence, and preferred a pilgrimage 
 to the tomb of Laura and the shades of Vaucluse. 
 
 Stanza LVIII. 
 
 Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeathed 
 His dust. 
 
 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 se- 
 cure, if not of honour, at least of repose. But the 
 " hyaena 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 
 
 1 ** Accingiti innoltre, se ci e lecito ancor l'esortarti, a com- 
 pire l'lmmortal tua Africa .... Se ti avviene cl'incontrare 
 nel nostro stile cosa che ti dispiaccia, cio debt)' essere un altro 
 motive- ad esaudire i desiderj della tua patria." Storia della Lett. 
 Ital. torn. v. par. i. lib. i. pag. 76. 
 
166 NOTES. 
 
 may be hoped, the excuse, of this ejectment was the 
 making of a new floor for the church; but the fact is, 
 that the tomb-stone 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 accompa- 
 nied by a trait more honourably conformable to the 
 general character of the nation. The principal per- 
 son 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 dis- 
 pensed upon all co temporary merit. The Mar- 
 chioness Lenzoni rescued the tombstone of Boccaccio 
 from the neglect in which it had sometime lain, and 
 found for it an honourable elevation in her own man- 
 sion. 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 Boc- 
 caccio; but the man who exhausted his little patrimony 
 
NOTES. • 167 
 
 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 in- 
 vented a new st}rle, but founded, or certainly fixed, a 
 new language ; who, besides the esteem of every po- 
 lite court of Europe, was thought worthy of employ- 
 ment 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, con- 
 temptible, licentious writer, whose impure remains 
 should besuffered to rot without a record. r That Eng- 
 
 1 Classical Tour, cap. ix. vol. ii. p. 355. edit. 3d. " Of Boccaccio, 
 the modern Petronius, we say nothing ; the abuse of genius is 
 more odious and more contemptible than its absence ; and it im- 
 ports little where the impure remains of a licentious author are 
 consigned to their kindred dust. For the same reason the tra- 
 veller 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 bum I 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 some- 
 where recognized. Whether the inscription so much disputed 
 was ever written on the tomb cannot now be decided, for all me. 
 
168 NOTES. 
 
 lish traveller, unfortunately for those who have to de- 
 plore the loss of a verj* amiable person, is beyond all 
 criticism; but the mortality which did not protect Boc- 
 caccio from Mr. Eustace, must not defend Mr. Eustace 
 from theimpartialjudgmentofhissuccessorj.. — Death 
 may canonize 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 
 
 " II flagello de' Principi, 
 II divin Pietro Aretino," 
 
 it is of little import what censure is passed upon a cox- 
 comb who owes his present existence to the above bur- 
 lesque 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 excom- 
 municate 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 Win an unsafe di- 
 
 morial of this author has disappeared from the church of St. Luke, 
 which is now changed into a lamp warehouse. 
 
NOTES. 1G9 
 
 rector on all occasions. Any perversion and injus- 
 tice 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 Boc- 
 caccio, and gratitude to that source which supplied 
 the muse of Dryden with her last and most harmo- 
 nious 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 in treating 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. 1 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 establish- 
 
 1 " Non enim ubique est, qui in excusationem meam consu;- 
 gens dicat, juvenis scripsil, et majoris coactus imperio." The 
 letter was addressed to Maghinard of Cavalcanti, marshal of the 
 kingdom of Sicily. See Tiraboschi, Storia, &c. torn. v. par. ii. 
 lib. hi. pag. 525. ed. Ven. 1795. 
 
170 NOTES. 
 
 ment of a new and delightful dialect conferred an im- 
 mortalit}' 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 "fa- 
 vourite 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 Boc- 
 caccio, 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 ag£s 
 and nations. An irrevocable value has never been 
 stamped upon any work solely recommended by im- 
 purity. 
 
 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 onl\ r laughed at the gal- 
 lant adventures so unjustly charged upon Queen 
 Theodelinda, whilst the priesthood cried shame upon 
 the debauches drawn from the convent and the her- 
 mitage ; and, most probably for the opposite reason, 
 
NOTES. ( 171 
 
 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 canonization of rogues 
 and laymen. Ser Ciappelletto and Marcellinus are 
 cited with applause even by the decent Muratori. " 
 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 immo- 
 ralities 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 hun- 
 dred years ago: " On se feroit siffler si l'on pretendoit 
 convaincre Boccace de n'avoir pas ete honnete 
 homme, puis qu'il a fait le Decameron." So said 
 one of the best men, and perhaps the best critic, that 
 ever lived — the very martyr to impartiality. 2 But 
 as this information, that in the beginning of the last 
 century one would have been hooted at for pretend- 
 ing that Boccaccio was not a good man, may seem 
 to come from one of those enemies who are to be 
 
 1 Dissertazioni sopra le antichita Italiane. Diss, lviii. p. 253. 
 torn. iii. edit. Milan, 1751. 
 
 2 Eclaircissement, &e. &c. p. 638. edit. Basle, 1741. in the 
 Supplement to Bayle's Dictionary. 
 
172 NOTES. 
 
 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 
 cotemporary, who thought one of the tales of this im- 
 pure writer, worthy a Latin version from his own pen. 
 " I have remarked elseivhere" 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 qfleaming and eloquence, 
 but otherwise are entirely dumb.'''' x 
 
 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 
 
 1 " Animadverti alicubi librum ipstim canum dentibus laces- 
 situm, tuo tamen baculo egregie tuaque voce deftnsam. Nee mi- 
 ratus sum : nam et vires ingenii tui novi, et scio expertus esses 
 hominum genus insolens et ignavum, qui quicquid ipsi vel nolunt 
 vel nesciunt, vel non possunt, in aliis reprehendunt : ad hoc 
 ununa docti et arguti, sed elingues ad reliqua." . . . Epist. Joan. 
 Boccatio. opp. torn. i. p. 540. edit. Basil. 
 
NOTES. 173 
 
 to his memory. Bevius, canon of Padua, at the be- 
 ginning of the 16th century erected at Arqua, oppo- 
 site to the tomb of the Laureate, a tablet, in which 
 he associated Boccaccio to the equal honours of 
 Dante and of Petrarch. 
 
 Stanza LX. 
 
 What is her pyramid of precious stones t 
 
 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 me- 
 morial 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. 1 It was very natural for 
 Corinna 2 to suppose that the statue raised to the 
 Duke of Urbino in the capetta de' depositi was in- 
 tended for his great namesake; but the magnificent 
 
 i Cosmus Medices, Decreto Publico. Pater Patrice. 
 1 Corinne. Iav. xviii. cap. iii. voL iii. page 248. 
 
174 NOTES. 
 
 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 sepul- 
 chral peace which succeeded to the establishment of 
 the reigning families in Italy, our own Sidney has 
 given us a glowing, but a faithful picture. "Not- 
 withstanding 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 remarka- 
 ble, that when Philip the Second of Spain gave Si- 
 enna to the Duke of Florence, his embassador 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 unpros- 
 perous, they still retained such strength, that when 
 Charles VIII. of France, being admitted as a friend 
 with his whole army, which soon after conquered 
 
NOTES. 175 
 
 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 despica- 
 ble weakness, emptiness, poverty and baseness, that 
 they can neither resist the oppressions of their own 
 prince, nor defend him or themselves if they were as- 
 saulted by a foreign enemy. The people are dis- 
 persed 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." 1 From the 
 usurper Cosmo down to the imbecil 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 
 
 i On Government, chap. ii. sect. xxvi. . pag. 208. edit. 1751. 
 Sidney is, together with Locke and Hoadley, one of Mr. Hume's 
 " detpicable" writers. 
 
176 NOTES. 
 
 the Tuscan character, that the candid Florentines in 
 excuse for some imperfections in the philanthropic 
 system of Leopold, are obliged to confess that the so- 
 vereign 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. 
 
 Stanza LXIII. 
 An earthquake reeled unheededly away. 
 
 " 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 qf rapid streams, poured back 
 the sea upon the rivers, and tore down the very moun- 
 tains, was not felt by one of the combatants." L Such 
 is the description of Livy. It may be doubted whe- 
 ther modern tactics would admit of such an ab- 
 straction. 
 
 The site of the battle of Thrasimene is not to be 
 
 1 " Tantnsque fuit ardor animorum, acleo intentus pugnae 
 animus, ut eum terra? motum qui multarumurbiumltaliae mag- 
 nas partes prostravit, avertitque cursu rapido stones, mare flumi- 
 iiibus invexit, monies lapsu ingenti proruit, nemo pugnantium 
 senseiit." . . ,-, Tit. Liv. lib. xxii. cap. xii. 
 
NOTES. , 177 
 
 mistaken. The traveller from the village under Cor- 
 tona 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 
 mile-stone from Florence. The ascent thence is not 
 steep but perpetual, and continues for twenty mi- 
 nutes. 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, 1 in the jaws of or rather 
 
 l " Equites ad ipsas fauces saltus tumulis apte tegentibus lo- 
 eat." T. Livii, lib. xxii. cap. iv. 
 
 N 
 
178 NOTES. 
 
 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." 1 On a sum- 
 mit 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 Gua- 
 landra. He soon finds himself in a vale inclosed to 
 the left and in front and behind him by the Gua- 
 landra 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 inclosed 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 Passig- 
 nano, which is pushed into the water by the foot of a 
 high rocky acclivity." 2 There is a woody eminence 
 
 i " Ubi maxime montes Cortonenses Thrasimenus subit." Ibid. 
 2 " Inde colles assurgunt." Ibid. 
 
NOTES. 179 
 
 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. Po- 
 lybius 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 posi- 
 tion. 1 From this spot he dispatched his Balearic 
 and light-armed troops round through theGualandra 
 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 morn- 
 ing before the day had quite broken, so that he per- 
 ceived nothing of the horse and light troops above 
 and about him, and saw only the heavy armed Car- 
 thaginians in front on the hill of Torre. 2 The Consul 
 began to draw out his army in the flat, and in the 
 
 Tov/asv xarel noatrunrov inz wogfiot; Xgifoy uvto; xa.rt'Ka,(&£To xal tovj Ai/Svaj 
 xai toi/j IjSijoaj e^uiv Itt' avtov xa.TwrpaTo'Uihvo'ti JrllSt. lib. 111. cap. 
 83. The account in Polybius is not so easily reconcileable 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. 
 ■ * " A tergo et super caput decepere insidi<s." T. Liv. Sec. 
 
 N 2 
 
180 NOTES. 
 
 mean time the horse in ambush occupied the pass 
 behind him at Borghetto. Thus the Romans were 
 completely inclosed, 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 farther 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 sun-shine, 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 Ro- 
 mans, who were forming their array in the mist, sud- 
 denly 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 
 
NOTES. 181 
 
 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 no where 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 tra- 
 verse 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 San- 
 guinetto 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 
 
182 NOTES. 
 
 foreign Julio Romano more than divides Mantua 
 with her native Virgil. 1 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 un- 
 known; but the postilions on that road have been 
 taught to show the very spot where il Console Ro- 
 mano was slain. Of all who fought and fell in the 
 battle of Thrasimene, the historian himself has, be- 
 sides 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 conve- 
 niently on his way from Sienna to Rome. 
 
 1 About the middle of the Xllth century the coins of Mantua 
 bore on one side the image and figure of Virgil. Zecca d' 
 Italia, pi. xvii. i. 6. . . Voyage dans le Milanais &c. par A. Z. 
 Millin. torn. ii. pag. 2g4. Paris, 18 17. 
 
NOTES. 183 
 
 Stanza LXVI. 
 
 But thou, Clitumnus. 
 
 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 Illustra- 
 tions of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold. 
 
 Stanza LXXI. 
 
 Charming the eye with dread, a matchless cataract. 
 
 I saw the " Cascata del marmore'* of Terni twice, at 
 different periods ; once from the summit of the preci- 
 pice, 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, &c. are rills in compara- 
 tive appearance. Of the fall of Schaff hausen I cannot 
 speak, not yet having seen- it. 
 
 Stanza LXXII. 
 An Iris sits amidst the infernal surge. 
 Of the time, place, and qualities of this kind of Iris 
 
184 NOTES. 
 
 the reader may have seen a short account in a note to 
 Manfred. The fall looks so much like " the hell of 
 waters" that Addison thought the descent alluded to by 
 the gulf in which Alecto plunged into the infernal re- 
 gions. It is singular enough that two of the finest cas- 
 cades in Europe should be artificial — this of the Velino, 
 and the one at Tivoli. The traveller is strongly re- 
 commended to trace the Velino, at least as high as the 
 little lake, called Pie 1 di Lup. The Reatine territory 
 was the Italian Tempe, I and the ancient naturalist, 
 amongst other beautiful varieties, remarked the daily 
 rainbows of the lake Velinus. z A scholar of great 
 name has devoted a treatise to this district alone. 3 
 
 Stanza LXXIII. 
 
 The thundering lauwine. 
 
 In the greater part of Switzerland the avalanches are 
 known by the name of lauwine. 
 
 1 " Reatini me ad sua Tempe duxerunt." Cicer. epist. ad 
 Attic, xv. lib. iv. 
 
 2 " In eodem lacu nullo non die apparere arcus.'* Plin. Hist. 
 Nat. lib. ii. cap. lxii. 
 
 a Aid. Manut. de Reatina urbe agroque. ap. Sallengre Thesaur. 
 torn. i. p. 773. 
 
NOTES. 185 
 
 Stanza LXXV. 
 
 / abhorred 
 Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake, 
 The drill dull lesson, forced down word by word. 
 
 These stanzas may probably remind the reader of 
 Ensign NortherimCs remarks : " D — n Homo," &c. 
 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 be- 
 fore 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 com- 
 positions 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 Shakespeare, 
 ("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 j and I believe no one could, or can 
 
186 NOTES. 
 
 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 01 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 follow- 
 ing his injunctions, he could reflect any honour upon 
 his instructor. 
 
 Stanza LXXIX. 
 
 The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now. 
 
 For a comment on this and the two following 
 stanzas, the reader may consult Historical Illustrations 
 of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold. 
 
 Stanza LXXXII. 
 
 The trebly hundred triumphs! 
 Orosius gives three hundred and twenty for the num- 
 ber of triumphs. He is followed by Panvinius ; and 
 Panvinius by Mr. Gibbon and the modern writers. 
 
NOTES. 187 
 
 Stanza LXXXTII. 
 
 Oh thou, whose chariot rolled on Fortune's wheel, <§-c. 
 
 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. 1 
 
 Stanza LXXXVI. 
 
 And laid him with the earth's preceding clay. 
 
 On the third of September Cromwell gained the vic- 
 tory of Dunbar ; a year afterwards he obtained " his 
 
 1 " Seigneur, vous changez toutes mes ide*es de la fa^n dont je 
 vous vois agir. Je croyois que vous aviez de l'ambiuon, mais 
 aucun amour pour la gloire : je voyoL'bien que votre ame e*toit 
 haute ; mais je ne soupcjonnois pas quelle fat grande." 
 
 Dialogue de Sylla et d'Eucrate. 
 
188 NOTES. 
 
 crowning mercy" of Worcester ; and a few years after, 
 on the same day, which he had ever esteemed the most 
 fortunate for him, died. 
 
 Stanza LXXXVII. 
 
 And thou, dread statue! still existent in 
 The austerestjorm of naked majesty. 
 
 The projected division of the Spada Pompey has al- 
 ready been recorded by the historian of the Decline and 
 Fall of the Roman Empire. Mr. Gibbon found it iu 
 the memorials of Flaminius Vacca,i 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 civilized 
 age this statue was exposed to an actual operation: 
 for the French who acted the Brutus of Voltaire in the 
 Coliseum, resolved that their Caesar 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 
 
 1 Memorie, num. Ivii, pag. Q. ap. Montfaucon Diarium Ita- 
 licum. 
 
NOTES. 189 
 
 the amphitheatre, and to facilitate its transport suffered 
 the temporary amputation of its right arm. The re- 
 publican 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 Cesarean 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. Winkelmann is loth to allow an 
 heroic statue of a Roman citizen, but the Grimani 
 Agrippa, a cotemporary almost, is heroic ; and naked 
 Roman figures were only very rare, not absolutely for- 
 bidden. The face accords much better with the " ho- 
 minem mtegrum et castum et gravem" 2 than with 
 any of the busts of Augustus, and is too stern for him 
 who was beautiful, says Suetonius, at all periods of 1m 
 life. The pretended likeness to Alexander the Great 
 cannot be discerned, but the traits resemble the medal 
 of Pompey. 3 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 
 
 1 Storia delle arti, &c. lib. ix. cap. i. pag. 321, 322, torn. ii. 
 
 2 Cicer. epist. ad Atticum, xi. 6. 
 
 3 Published by Causeus in his Museum Roman um. 
 
190 NOTES. 
 
 s 
 
 empire. It seems that Winkelmann has made a mis- 
 take in thinking that no proof of the identity of this sta- 
 tue, with that which received the bloody sacrifice, can 
 be derived from the spot where it was discovered, t 
 Flaminius Vacca says sotto una cantina, and this can- 
 tina 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. 2 Part of 
 the Pompeian shade, 3 the portico, existed in the begin- 
 ning of the XVth century, and the atrium was still 
 called Satrum. So says Blondus. 4 . At all events, so 
 imposing is the stern majesty of the statue, and so me- 
 morable 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. 
 
 1 Storia delle arti, &c. ibid. 
 
 2 Sueton. in vit. August, cap. 31, and in vit. C. J. Caesar, cap. 
 88. Appian says it was burnt down. See a note of Pitiscus to 
 Suetonius, pag. 224. 
 
 s " Tu modo Pompeia lenta spatiare sub umbra." 
 
 Ovid. ar. aman. 
 4 Roma instaurata, lib. ii. fo. 31. 
 
NOTES. 191 
 
 Stanza LXXXVIII. 
 
 And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome ! 
 
 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 his- 
 tory makes particular mention. One of these, of brass 
 in ancient work, was seen by Dionysius * at the temple 
 of Romulus, under the Palatine, and is universally be- 
 lieved to be that mentioned by the Latin historian, as 
 having been made from the money collected by a fine 
 oh usurers, and as standing under the Ruminal fig-tree. * 
 The other was that which Cicero 3 has celebrated both 
 
 XaXxEfc TTOoijuaTa va%aiag ipyacria,;. Antiq. Rom. lib. i. 
 
 2 " Ad ficum Ruminalem simulacra infantium conditorum 
 urbis sub uberibus lupae posnerunt." Liv. Hist. lib. x. cap. Ixix. 
 This was in the year U. C. 455, or 457. 
 
 3 "Turn statua Nattae, turn simulacra Deorum, Romulusque 
 et Remus cum-altrice bellua vi fulminis icti conciderunt." De 
 Divinat. ii. 20. " Tactus est ille etiam qui banc urbem con- 
 didit Romulus, quern inauratum in Capitolio parvum atque lac- 
 tantem, uberibus lupinis inbiantem fuisse meministis." In Ca- 
 tilin. iii. 8. 
 
 " Hie silvestris erat Romani nominis altrix 
 Martia, qua? parvos Mavortis semine natos 
 Uberibus gravidis vitah rore rigebat 
 Quae turn cum pueris flammato fulminis ictu 
 Concidit, atque avulsa pedum vestigia liquit." 
 
 DeConsulatu. lib. ii. (lib. i. de Divinat. cap. ii.) 
 
192 NOTES. 
 
 in prose and verse, and which the historian Dion also 
 records as having suffered the same accident as is al- 
 luded to by the orator. r The question agitated by the 
 antiquaries is, whether the wolf now in the conservators' 
 palace is that of Livy and Dionysius, or that of Cicero, 
 or whether it is neither one or the other. The earlier 
 writers differ as much as the moderns : Lucius Faunus* 
 
 1 'E» yap rS mvnnrivkiu) a,v Jjjjre'yTfj tb ttoXXo! i>wd xfpai/ywy auvtywvedSnaav, 
 tut) a.yaKfJt.et'ra, uXKa ts, xai S»oj ItcI xioyoj tfpujAhov, lixw'y tI tjj Xi/xa'tyij 
 avi T£ Ti« piofxflD xal ci/'y tw pwy.vXw ItyvfASVn ticiars, Dion. Hist. lib. 
 xxxvii. pag. 37. edit. Rob. Steph. 1548. He goes on to mention 
 that the letters of the columns on which the laws were written 
 were liquified and become fyxwfyeJ. All that the Romans did was 
 to erect a large statue to Jupiter, looking towards the east : no 
 mention is afterwards made of the wolf. This happened in 
 A. U. C. 689. The Abate Fea, in noticing this passage of Dion, 
 (Storia delle arti, &c. torn. i. pag. 202. note x.), says, Non 
 ostante, aggiunge Dione, che fosse lenfcrmata, (the wolf), by 
 which it is clear the Abate translated the Xylandro-Leuclavian 
 version, which puts quamvis stabilita for the original 'tSpv'fMint 
 a word that does not mean hen-fermata, but only raised, as may 
 be distinctly seen from another passage" of the same Dion: 
 'HjSov>*»j3'>7 j«,EV oHv 'AypiTWaj xa\ Toy Avyovcrrw faravSa fSpi/Vaj Hist, 
 lib. lvi. Dion says that Agrippa '* wished to raise a statue of 
 Augustus in the Pantheon." 
 
 2 " In eadem porticu cenea lnpa-j cujus uberibus Romulus ac 
 Remus lactantes inhiant, conspicitur: de hac Cicero et Virgilius 
 sempet intellexere. Livhis hoc signum ab iEdilibus ex pecuniis 
 quibus mulctati essent foeneratores, positum innuit. Antea in 
 
NOTES. 193 
 
 says, that it is the one alluded to by both, which is im- 
 possible, and also by Virgil, which may be. Fulvius 
 Ursinus * calls it the wolf of Dionysius, and Marlianus 2 
 talks of it as the one mentioned by Cicero. To him 
 Rycquius tremblingly assents. 3 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 Ci- 
 ceronian statue. 4 Montfaucon 5 mentions it as a point 
 without doubt. Of the latter writers the decisive Win- 
 
 Comitiis ad Ficum Ruminalem, quo loco pueri fuerant expositi 
 locatum pro certo est." Luc. Fauni. de Antiq. Urb. Rom. lib. 
 ii. cap. vii. ap. Sallengre, torn. i. p. 217- In hisXVIIth chap- 
 ter he repeats that the statues were there, but not that they were 
 found there. 
 
 1 Ap. Nardini. Roma Vetus. lib. v. cap. iv. 
 
 2 Marliani. Urb. Rom. topograph, lib. ii. cap. ix. He men- 
 tions another wolf and twins in the Vatican, lib. v. cap. xxi. 
 
 s " Non desuntqui hanc ipsam esse putent, quam adpinximus, 
 quae e comitio in Basilicam Lateranam, cum nonnullisaliisanti- 
 quitatum reliquiis, atque hinc in Capitolium postea relata sit, 
 quamvis Marlianus antiquam Capitolinam esse maluit a Tullio 
 descriptam, cui ut in re nimis dubia, trepide adsentimur." Just. 
 Rycquii de Capit. Roman. Comm. cap. xxi v. pag. 250. edit. 
 Lugd. Bat. 1696. 
 
 * Nardini Roma Vetus. lib. v. cap. iv. 
 
 s " Lupa hodieque in capitolinis prostat aedibus, cum vestigio 
 fulininis quo ictam nairat Cicero. " Diarium. Ttalic. torn, i. 
 p. 174. 
 
 O 
 
194; NOTES. . 
 
 kelmann l 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 Jbtmd } 
 at the Ficus Ruminalis by the Coraitium, by which he 
 does not seem to allude to the church of Saint Theo- 
 dore. Rycquius was the first to make the mistake, and 
 Winkelmann followed Rycquius. 
 
 Flaminius Vacca tells quite a different story, and 
 says he had heard the wolf with the twins was found 2 
 near the arch of Septimius Seyerus. The commen- 
 tator on Winkelmann 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 
 
 1 Storia delle arti, &c. lib. iii. cap. iii. § ii. note 10. Win- 
 kelmann 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. 
 
 2 " Intesi dire, che l'Ercolo di bronzo, che oggi si trova nella 
 sala di Carapidoglio, fu trovato nel foro Romano appresso l'arco 
 di Settimio ; e vi fu trovata anche la lupa di bronzo che allata 
 Romolo e Remo, e sta nella Loggia dc' conservatori." Flam. 
 Vacca. Memorie. num. iii. pag. 1. ap. Montfaucon diar. ltal. 
 torn. i. 
 
NOTES. 195 
 
 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 particu- 
 larize the Romulus and the Remus, especially the first, 
 which his audience remembered to have been in the Ca- 
 pitol, 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 men- 
 tions 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 shews that the 
 statue was not then standing in its former position. 
 Winkelmann 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 sup- 
 posed to make part of the ancient group. It is known 
 that the sacred images of the Capitol were not de- 
 stroyed when injured by time or accident, but were put 
 
 o2 
 
19fi NOTES. 
 
 into certain underground depositaries called favissw.* 
 It may be thought possible that the wolf had been so 
 deposited, and had been replaced in some conspicu- 
 ous situation when the Capitol was rebuilt by Vespa- 
 sian. 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 2 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 Winkel- 
 mann to believe it the wolf of Dionysius. The Capi- 
 toline wolf, however, may have been of the same early 
 date as that at the temple of Romulus. Lactantius 3 
 asserts that in his time the Romans worshipped a wolf; 
 and it is known that the Lupercalia held out to a very 
 
 1 Luc. Faun. ibid. 
 
 e See Note to stanza LXXX. in Historical Illustrations. 
 
 3 " Romuli nutrix Lupa honoribus est aftecta divinis, et 
 ferrem si animal ipsum fuisset, cujus figuram gerit." Lactant. 
 de falsa religione. Lib. 1. cap. 20. pag. 101. edit, varior. i960 j. 
 that is to say, he would rather adore a wolf than a prostitute. 
 His commentator has observed that the opinion of Livy con- 
 cerning 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. 
 
NOTES. 197 
 
 late period ' 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. Euse- 
 bius 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 his- 
 tory, and has left several tokens of his aerial combat with 
 St. Peter at Rome ; notwithstanding that an inscription 
 found in this very island of the Tyber shewed the Simon 
 Magus of Eusebius to be a certain indigenal god, 
 called Semo Sangus or Fidius. * 
 
 » To A. D. 496. Quis credere possit, says Baronius, [Ann. Ec- 
 cle. torn. viii. p. 602. in an. 496.] " viguisse adhuc Romas ad 
 Gelasii tempora, quae fuere ante exordia urbis allata in Italiam 
 Lupercalia ?" Gelasius wrote a letter which occupies four folio 
 pages to Androraachus, the senator, and others, to shew that 
 the rites should be given up. 
 
 2 Eusebius has these words ; x.a\ dvJgiavw wag' v(mv wj 3to;, 
 TirifjiriTtti, h Ttu ilfizgi mrccjMJ} (Atra^O twv Svo y«j5i/g(uv, "x,u>v tTftyja^nv 
 fwfxaixnv Tai/Tiv CifAwn 3/wOriyxrw. Ecclesi. Hist. Lib. ii» cap. xiii. 
 
198 NOTES. 
 
 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 Romu- 
 lus. * 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 
 4~ound there, as Winkelmann says, there would be no 
 doubt of the present statue being that seen by Dionysius. 2 
 But Faunus, in saying that it was- at the Ficus Rumi- 
 nalis 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 
 
 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. 
 
 1 " In essa gli antichi pontefici per toglier la memoria de' 
 giuochi Lupercali istituiti in onore di Romolo, introdussero 
 l'uso di portarvi Bambini oppressi da infermita occulte, accio si 
 liberino per l'intercessionedi questo Santo, come di continucsi 
 sperimenta." Rione xii. Ripa accurata e succinta descrizione, 
 &c. di Roma Moderna dell Ab. Ridolf. Venuti, 1766. 
 
 2 Nardini, lib. v. cap. 11. convicts Pomponius Laetus crassi 
 erroris, in putting the Ruminal fig-tree at the church of Saint 
 Theodore : but, as Livy says, the wolf was at the Ficus Rumi- 
 nalis, and Dionysius at the temple of Romulus, he is obliged, 
 (cap. iv.^ to own that the two were close together, as well as the 
 Lupercal cave, shaded, as it were, by the fig-tree. 
 
NOTES. ' 199 
 
 to the church of Saint Theodore, but to a very differ- 
 ent place, near which it was then thought the Ficus 
 Ruminalis had been, and also the Comi|ium ; 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, 1 and perhaps, on the whole, the marks 
 of the gilding, and of the lightning, are a better argu- 
 ment 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 an- 
 cient city, 2 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 
 
 i " Ad comitium ficus dim Ruminalis germinabat, sub qua 
 lupae rumam, hoc est, mammam, dooente Varrone, suxerantolim 
 Romulus et Remus; non procul a templo hodie D. Mariae 
 Liberatricis appellato ub'iforsan inventa nobilis ilia aenea statua 
 lupae geminos puerulos lactantis, quam hodie in capitolis vide- 
 mus." Olai Borrichii antiqua Urbis Romana facies, cap. x. 
 See also cap. xii. Borrichius wrote after Nardini in 1687- Ap. 
 Graev. Antiq. Rom. torn. iv. p. 1522. 
 
 2 Donatus, lib. xi. cap. 18. gives a medal representing on one 
 side the wolf in the same position as that in the Capitol ; and in 
 the reverse the wolf with the head not reverted. It is of the 
 time of Antoninus Pius. 
 
200 NOTES. 
 
 Impavidos : illam teriti cervice reflexam 
 Muloere alternos, et fingere corpora lingua." « 
 
 Stanza XC. 
 
 For the Roman's mind 
 Was modell'd in a less terrestrial mould. 
 
 It is possible to be a very great man and to be still 
 very inferior to Julius Caesar, the most complete cha- 
 racter, so Lord Bacon thought, of all antiquity. Na- 
 ture seems incapable of such extraordinary combinations 
 as composed his versatile capacity, which was the won- 
 der even of the Romaus themselves. The first general — - 
 the only triumphant politician — inferior to none in elo- 
 quence — comparable to any in the attainments of wis- 
 dom, 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 sej 
 of good sayings — fighting* and making love at the 
 
 1 iEn. viii. 631. See — Dr. Middleton, in his Letter from 
 Rome, who inclines to the Ciceronian wolf, but without exa- 
 mining the subject. 
 
 ' In his tenth book, Lucan shews him sprinkled with the 
 blood of Pharsalia in the arms of Cleopatra, 
 
NOTES. 301 
 
 same moment, and willing to abandon both his empire 
 and his mistress for a sight of the Fountains of the 
 Nile. Such did Julius Csesar appear to his cotempo- 
 raries 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 surpass- 
 ing glory or with his magnanimous, his amiable qualities, 
 as to forget the decision of his impartial countryman : 
 
 HJE WAS JUSTLY SLAIN. * 
 
 Sanguine Thessalicse cladis perfusus adulter 
 Admisit Venerem curis, et miscuit armis; * 
 
 After feasting with his mistress, he sits up all night to converse 
 with the ^Egyptian sages, and tells Achoreus, 
 
 Spes sit mini certa videndi 
 Niliacos fontes, bellum civile relinquam. 
 
 " Sic velut in tuta securi pace trahebant 
 Noctis iter medium." 
 
 Immediately afterwards, he is fighting again and defending 
 
 every position. 
 
 " Sed adest defensor ubique 
 
 Caesar et hos aditus gladiis, hos ignibus arcet 
 
 cceca nocte carinis 
 
 Insiluit Caesar semper feliciter usus 
 
 Praecipiti cursu bellorum et tempore rapto." 
 
 1 " Jure coesus existemetur," says Suetonius after a fair estima- 
 tion of his character, and making use of a phrase which was a 
 
202 NOTES. 
 
 Stanza XCIII. 
 
 What from this barren being do we reap ? 
 Our senses narrow, and our reason frail. 
 
 t( . . . . omnes pene veteres; qui nihil cognosci, nihil 
 percepi, nihil sciri posse dixerunt ; angustos sensus ; 
 imbecillos animos, brevia curricula vitae ; in profundo 
 veritatem demersam; opinionibus et institutis omnia 
 teneri; nihil veritati relinqui: deinceps omnia tenebris 
 circumfusa esse dixerunt." * 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. 
 
 Stanza XCIX. 
 There is a stern round tower of other days. 
 Alluding to the tomb of Cecilia Metella, called Capo 
 di Bove, in the Appian Way. See — Historical Illustra- 
 tions of the IVth Canto of Childe Harold. 
 
 formula in Livy'sjtime. " Melium jure ctiesum pronuntiavit, 
 etiam si regni crimine insons fuerit :" [lib. iv. cap. 48.] and 
 which was continued in the legal judgments pronounced in justi- 
 fiable homicides, such as killing housebreakers. See Sueton. in 
 vit. C. J. Caesar, with the commentary of Pitiscus, p. 184. 
 1 Academ. 1. 13; 
 
NOTES 203 
 
 Stanza CII. 
 
 Prophetic of the doom 
 Heaven gives its favourites — early death. 
 
 *Ov 01 Sso) <pi\ou<riv drfoSvvjtrKei veo$ 
 
 To ya.% OaveTv ook dicr^ov a'AA' dia-^cug $a.ve~v. 
 
 Rich. Franc. Phil. Brunck. Poetae Gnomici, 
 p. 231, edit. 1784. 
 
 Stanza CVIII. 
 
 There is the moral of all human tales ; 
 "*Tis but the same rehearsal of 'the past , 
 First Freedom, and then Glory , Sj-c. 
 
 The author of the Life of Cicero, speaking of the opi- 
 nion entertained of Britain by that orator and his cotem- 
 porary 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 po- 
 verty, enslaved to the most cruel as well as to the most 
 contemptible of tyrants, superstition and religious 
 imposture : while this remote country, anciently the 
 
204 NOTES. 
 
 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 run- 
 ning 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 op- 
 pressor, and, with the loss of liberty, losing every 
 thing that is valuable, sinks gradually again into its ori- 
 ginal barbarism." 1 
 
 Stanza CX. 
 
 And apostolic statues climb 
 To crush the imperial urn, wltose ashes slept sublime. 
 
 The column of Trajan is surmounted by St. Peter; 
 that of Aurelius by St. Paul. See — Historical Illus- 
 trations of the IVth Canto, &c. 
 
 1 The History of the Life of M. Tullius Cicero, sect. vi. vol. ii. 
 p. i02. The contrast has been reversed in a late extraordinary 
 instance. A gentleman was thrown into prison at Paris} efforts 
 were made for his release. The French minister continued to 
 detain him,' under the pretext that he was not an Englishman 
 but only a Roman. See " Interesting facts relating to Joachim 
 Murat," pag. 139. 
 
NOTES. 206 
 
 Stanza CXI. 
 
 Still we Trajan's name adore. 
 
 Trajan was 'proverbially the best of the Raman 
 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 em- 
 peror. " When he mounted the throne," says the his- 
 torian Dion, 2 "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 honored 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 
 
 1 "Hujus tantum memoriae delatum est ut, usque ad nostram 
 aetatem non aliter in Senatu principibus acclamatur, nisi, feli- 
 cior. avgvsto . melior . trajamo . " Eutrop. Brev. Hist. 
 Rom. lib. viii. cap. v. 
 
 • Tip it yag cwfAari "ppwrt xal tij -^vyn i}Xft<t£Wj tuj fj.fff' vvi 
 
 y»igu>j afAS'hvica-^ui . . . xosi out* IipfloVH, ovrt xaS^gfj nvd, aMa N xdi navv 
 ttavrag tov; ayaQov; lvi{/M xai IfAoyaTwut' xdi ita vovto ovrt ?<j5o$ej?o riva 
 avriuy, own ty.ierti . . Sioj3oXa~f ti mutrva. htiffrivt xal ojy»f jijmctb ISovhovrt' 
 
 9uif ft y^frniAaiun twv aXXtuTgiwv fins xat qwwy T«y allwjiv wniiyj-ia 
 
 <p&ovjj.ao; ft ovi in' &vto1; fxaWoy n fty.<efAtT/o; tyaifp, xal fS it Jj?^. 
 p.tf iwitjxliaf fft/VtyiVETOi xai rv yn^ovaia M/xyotfgfTrwf cojuiAh" ayatinthf fj.lt 
 vaot' <poj3fgo; It if.tt$efl, it\hy vo'Ktjj.ioi;, wy. Hist. Rom. lib. lxviii. cap. 
 vi & vii. torn. ii. p. 1 123, 1 124. edit. Hamb. 1760. 
 
206 NOTES. 
 
 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." 
 
 Stanza CXIV. 
 
 Rienziy last of Romans. 
 
 The name and exploits of Rienzi must be familiar 
 to the reader of Gibbon. Some details and inedited 
 manuscripts relative to this unhappy hero, will be seen 
 in the Illustrations of the IVth Canto. 
 
 Stanza CXV. 
 
 Egeria ! sweet creation of some heart 
 Whichjbund no mortal resting-place so fair 
 As thine ideal breast. 
 
 The respectable authority of Flaminius Vacca would 
 incline us to believe in the claims of the Egerian 
 grotto. 1 He assures us that he saw an inscription in 
 
 1 " Poco lontano dal detto luogo si scende ad un casaletto, del 
 quale ne 90no Padroni li Cafarelli, che con questo nome e chin- 
 
NOTES. 207 
 
 • 
 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 1 of Ovid 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 
 Yalle di Caffarelli, from the dukes of that name who 
 
 mato il luogo ; vi e una fontana sotto una gran volta antica, chc 
 al presente si gode, e li Romani vi vanno Testate a ricrearsi ; nel 
 pavimento di essa fonte si legge in un epitaffio essere quella la 
 fonte di Egeria, dedicata alle ninfe. e questa, dice l'epitafno, essere 
 la medesima fonte in cui fu convertita." Memorie, &c. ap. Nar- 
 dini, pag. 13. He does not give the inscription. 
 
 1 " In villa Justiniana extat ingens lapis quadratus solidus in 
 quo sculpia haec duo Ovidii carmina sunt 
 
 iEgeria est quae praebet aquas dea grata Camoenis 
 Ilia Numae conjunx consiliumque fuit. 
 
 Qui lapis videtur ex eodem Egeria? fonte, aut ejus vicinia iithuc 
 comportatus." Diarium. Italic, p. 153. 
 
208 NOTES. 
 
 made over their fountain to the Pallavicini, with sixty 
 rubbia of adjoining land. 
 
 There can be little doubt that this long dell is thfr 
 Egerian valley of Juvenal, and the pausing place of 
 Umbritius, notwithstanding the generality of his com- 
 mentators 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. l The tufo, or 
 pumice, which the poet prefers to marble, is the sub- 
 stance composing the bank in which the grotto is sunk. 
 
 The modern topographers 2 find in the grotto the 
 statue of the nymph and nine niches for the Muses, and 
 
 > De Magnit. Vet. Rom. ap. Gra?v. Ant. Rom. torn. iv. 
 p. 1507. 
 
 1 Echinard. Descrizione di Roma e dell* agro Romano cor- 
 retto dall* Abate Venuti in Roma, 1750. They believe in the 
 grotto and nymph. "Simulacro di questo fonte, essendovi sculpite 
 le aoque a pie di esso." . 
 
NOTES. 209 
 
 a late traveller 1 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. 2 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 
 
 1 Classical Tour. chap. vi. p. 217. vol. ii. 
 
 a '* Substitit ad veteres arcus, madidamque Capenam, 
 Hie ubi nocturnae Numa constituebat amicae. 
 Nunc sacri fontis nemus, et delubra locantur 
 Judseis quorum cophinum fcenumqae supellex. 
 Omnis enim populo mercedem pendere jussa est 
 Arbor, et ejectis mendicat silva Camcenis. 
 In vallem Egerise descendimus, et speluncas 
 Dissimiles veris : quanto praestantius esset 
 Numen aquae, viridi si margine clauderet undas 
 Herba, nee ingenuum violarent marmora tophum." 
 
 Sat. III. 
 
210 NOTES. 
 
 in these caves ; for he expressly assigns other fanes (de- 
 lubra) to these divinities above the valle}', 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 * 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 inventiou, 
 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 "mistrans- 
 lation by his acquaintance with Pope : he carefully pre- 
 serves the correct plural— 
 
 " Thence slowly winding down the vale, we view 
 The Egerian grots; oh, how unlike the true !" 
 
 The valley abounds with springs, 2 and over these 
 springs, which the Muses might haunt from their neigh- 
 
 1 Lib. iii. cap. iii. 
 
 2 " Undique e solo aqua? scaturiunt." Nardini, lib. iii. 
 cap. iii. 
 
, NOTES. 211 
 
 bouring 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 * 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 antiqua- 
 ries' 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 repre- 
 sent 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 struc- 
 ture at the end of the Spina, which was probably the 
 chapel of the god Consus. This ceil is half beneath 
 the soil, as it must have been in the circus itself, for 
 Dionysius 2 could not be persuaded to believe that this 
 divinity was the Roman Neptune, because his altar was 
 underground. 
 
 1 Echinard, &c. Cic. cit. p. 207-298- 
 
 2 Antiq. Rom. lib. ii. cap. xxxi. 
 
 P 2 
 
212 NOTES. 
 
 Stanza CXXVII. 
 Yet let us ponder boldly. 
 
 tl At all events," says the author of the Academical 
 Questions, " I trust, whatever may be the fate of my 
 own speculations, that philosophy will regain that esti- 
 mation which it ought to possess. The free and philo- 
 sophic spirit of our nation has been the theme of admira- 
 tion 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 lauguage 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 slum- 
 bers 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." Preface, p. 
 xiv, xv. vol. i. 1805. 
 
NOTES. 213 
 
 Stanza CXXXII. 
 
 Great Nemesis ! 
 Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long. 
 
 We read in Suetonius that Augustus, from a warn- 
 ing received in a dream, x 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 pos- 
 ture of supplication. The object of this self degrada- 
 tion was the appeasement of Nemesis, the perpetual 
 attendant on good fortune, of whose power the Roman 
 conquerors were also reminded by certain symbols at- 
 tached 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 Winkelmann 2 had rectified the 
 
 1 Sueton. in vit. Augusti. cap. Ql. Casaubon, in the note, 
 refers to Plutarch's Lives of Camillus and iEmilius Paulus, and 
 also to his apothegms, for the character of this deity.' The hol- 
 lowed hand was reckoned the last degree of degradation : and 
 when the dead body of the prsefect ltufinus was borne about in 
 triumph by the people, the indignity was increased by putting 
 his hand in that position. 
 
 2 Storia delle arti, &c lib. xii. cap. iii. torn. ii. p. 422. Vis- 
 
214 NOTES. 
 
 mistake, one fiction was called in to support another. 
 It vyas the same fear of the sudden termination of pros- 
 perity 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 iEsepus 
 by Adrastus, probably the prince of that name who 
 killed the son of Cnesus by mistake. Hence the 
 goddess was called Adrastea. * 
 
 The Reman Nemesis was sacred and august: 
 there was a temple to her in the Palatine under 
 the name of Rhamnusia : 2 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. 3 This is the last superstition 
 
 conti calls the statue, however, a Cybele. It is given in the 
 Museo Pio-Clement. torn. i. par. 40. The Abate FeaXSpiega- 
 zione dei Rami. Storia, &c. torn. iii. p. 513.) calls it a Chri- 
 sippus. 
 
 1 Diet, de Bayle, article Adrastea. 
 
 2 It is enumerated by the regionary Victor. 
 
 3 Fortunse hujusce diei. Cicero mentions her, de legib. 
 lib. ii. 
 
NOTES. 215 
 
 which retains its hold over the human heart ; and 
 from concentrating in one object the credulity so na- 
 tural to man, has always appeared strongest in those 
 unembarrassed by other articles of belief. The anti- 
 quaries have supposed this goddess to be synonimous 
 with fortune and with fate : 1 but it was in her vindictive 
 quality that she was worshipped under the name of 
 Nemesis. 
 
 Stanza CXL. 
 
 i" see before me the Gladiator lie. 
 
 Whether the wonderful statue which suggested this 
 image be a laquearian gladiator, which in spite of Win- 
 kelmann's criticism has been stoutly maintained, 2 or 
 
 1 DEAE NEMESI 
 SIVM FORTUNAE 
 PISTORIVS 
 RVGIANVS 
 V. C. LEGAT. 
 LEG. XIII. G. 
 GORD. 
 
 See Questiones Romanae, &c. Ap. Grasv. Antiq. Roman, torn, 
 v. p. 942. See also Muratori. Nov. Thesaur. Inscrip. Vet. torn, 
 i. p. 88, 89, where there are three Latin and one Greek inscrip- 
 tion to Nemesis, and others to Fate. 
 2 By the Abate Bracci, dissertazione supra unclipeo votivo. &c. 
 
216 NOTES. 
 
 s 
 
 whether it be a Greek herald, as that great antiquary 
 positively asserted, * or whether it is to be thought a 
 Spartan or barbarian shield-bearer, according to the 
 opinion of his Italian editor, 2 it must assuredly seem 
 a copy of that masterpiece of Ctesilaus which re- 
 presented " a wounded man dying who perfectly ex- 
 pressed what there remained of life in him." 3 Mont- 
 faucon 4 and Maffei 5 thought it the identical statue ; 
 but that statue was of bronze. The gladiator was 
 once in the villa Ludovizi, and was bought by Clement 
 XII. The right arm is an entire restoration of Mi- 
 chael Angelo. 6 
 
 Preface, pag. 7. who accounts for the cord round the neck, but 
 not for the horn, which it does not appear the gladiators them- 
 selves ever used. Note A, Storia delle arti, torn. ii. p. 205. 
 
 1 Either Polifontes, herald ofLaius, killed byCEdipus; orCe- 
 preas, herald of Euritheus, killed by the Athenians when he 
 endeavoured to drag the Heraclidae from the altar of mercy, and 
 in whose honour they instituted annual games, continued to the 
 time of Hadrian ; or Anthemocritus, the Athenian herald, killed 
 by the Megarenses, who never recovered the impiety. See Storia, 
 delle arti, &c. torn. ii. pag. 203, 204, 205, 206, 207. lib. ix. 
 cap. ii. 
 
 2 Storia, &c. torn. ii. p. 207- Not. (A). 
 
 * " Vulneratum deficientem fecit in quo possit intelligi quan- 
 tum restat animae." Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. xxxiv. cap. 8. 
 
 4 Antiq. torn. iii. par. 2. tab. 155. 
 
 5 Race. stat. tab. 64. 
 
 6 Mus. Capitol, torn. iii. p. 154. edit. 1755. 
 
, NOTES. 217 
 
 Stanza CXLI. 
 
 He, their sire, 
 Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday. 
 
 Gladiators were of two kinds, compelled and volun- 
 tary ; and were supplied from several conditions ; from 
 slaves sold for that purpose ; from culprits ; from bar- 
 barian 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, (aitctorati,) others from a depraved 
 ambition : at last even knights and senators were ex- 
 hibited, a disgrace of which the first tyrant was na- 
 turally the first inventor. 1 In the end, dwarfs, and 
 even women, fought ; an enormity prohibited by Se- 
 verus. Of these the most to be pitied undoubtedly 
 were the barbarian captives ; and to this species a 
 Christian writer 2 justly applies the epithet u 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. 3 No war, 
 
 1 Julius Caesar, who rose by the fall of the aristocracy, brought 
 Furius Leptitius and A. Calenus upon the arena. 
 
 2 Tertullian, " certe quidcm et innocentes gladiatores in 
 ludum veniunt, at voluptatis public* hostiae fiant." Just. Lips. 
 Saturn. Sermon, lib. ii. cap. iii. 
 
 3 Vopiscus. in vit. Aurel. and, in vit. Claud, ibid. 
 
218 NOTES. 
 
 says Lipsius, t was ever so destructive to the human 
 race as these sports. In spite of the laws of Constan- 
 tine 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 be- 
 fore the usual immense concourse of people. Al- 
 machius or Telemachus, an eastern monk, who had 
 travelled to Rome intent on his holy purpose, rushed 
 into the midst of the area, and endeavoured to separate 
 the combatants. The praetor Alypius, a person in- 
 credibly attached to these games, 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 abo- 
 lished the shows, which were never afterwards revived. 
 The story is told by Theodoret 3 and Cassiodorus, 4 and 
 seems worthy of credit notwithstanding its place in 
 
 1 " Credo imo scio nullum bellum tantam cladem vastitiemque 
 generihumano intulisse, quam hos ad voluptatem ludos." Just. 
 Lips. ibid. lib. i. cap. xii. 
 
 2 Augustinus, (lib. vi. confess, cap. viii.) " Alypium suum 
 gladiatrii spectaculi inhiatu incredibiliter abreptum," scribit. 
 ib. lib. i. cap. xii. 
 
 3 Hist. JEccles. cap. xxvi. lib. v. 
 
 * Cassiod. Tripartita. 1. x. c. xi. Saturn, ib. ib. 
 
NOTES. 219 
 
 the Roman martyrology. 1 Besides the torrents of 
 blood which flowed at the funerals, in the amphitheatres, 
 the circus, the forums, and other public places, gladia- 
 tors 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 him- 
 self to suppose the loss of courage, and the evident de- 
 generacy of mankind, to be nearly connected with the 
 abolition of these bloody spectacles. 2 , 
 
 Stanza CXLII. 
 
 Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise 
 Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd. 
 
 When one gladiator wounded another, he shouted 
 " he has it," " hoc habet," or " habet." The wounded 
 
 1 Baronins. ad. ann. et in notis ad Martyrol. Rom. 1. Jan. 
 See — Marangoni delle memorie sacre e profane dell' Anfiteatro 
 Flavio, p. 25. edit. 1746. 
 
 2 " Quod ? non tu Lipsi momentum aliquod habuisse censes ad 
 virtutem ? Magnum. Tempora nostra, nosque ipsos videamus. 
 Oppidum ecce unum alterumve captum, direptumest; tumultus 
 circa nos, non in nobis: et tamen concidimus et turbamur. 
 Ubi robur, ubi tot per annos meditata sapientise studia ? ubi ille 
 animus qui possit dicere, si fractus illabatur orhis ?" &c. ibid, 
 lib. ii. cap. xjcv.. The prototype of Mr. Windham's panegyric 
 on bull-baiting. 
 
220 NOTES. 
 
 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 occasion- 
 ally so savage that they were impatient if a combat 
 lasted longer than ordinary without wounds or death. 
 The emperor's presence generally saved the van- 
 quished : and it is recorded as an instance of Cara- 
 calla'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 horse- 
 men and piccadores have fought the bull, the matadore 
 steps forward ar.d 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 
 
NOTES. 221 
 
 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 gentle- 
 man 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 con- 
 tinued their applauses as another horse fell bleeding to 
 the ground. One bull killed three horses off Ms own 
 horns. He was saved by acclamations which were re- 
 doubled 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 gallopping round an arena with his bowels 
 trailing on the ground, and turns from the spectacle 
 and the spectators with horror and disgust. 
 
 Stanza CXLIV. 
 
 lake laurels on the baldjirst Ccesar's brow. 
 
 Suetonius informs us that Julius Caesar was parti- 
 cularly 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. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 Stanza CXLV. 
 
 While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand. 
 
 This is quoted in the Decline and Fall of the Roman 
 Empire; and a notice on the Coliseum may be seen in 
 the Historical Illustrations to the IVth Canto of Childe 
 Harold. 
 
 Stanza CXLVI. 
 
 spared and blest by time. 
 
 " 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 Remarks, &c. on Italy, p. 137. sec. edit. 
 
NOTES. 223 
 
 Stanza CXLVII. 
 
 And they who feel for genius may repose 
 Their eyes on Jwnoured forms, whose busts around 
 them close. 
 
 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 venera- 
 tion of their countrymen. 
 
 Stanza CXLVIII. 
 
 There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light. 
 
 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 
 shewn at the church of St. Nicholas in carcere. The 
 difficulties attending the full belief of the tale are 
 stated in Historical Illustrations, &c. 
 
224 ' NOTES. 
 
 Stanza CLII. 
 
 Turn to the Mole which Hadrian reared on high. 
 
 The castle of St. Angelo. See — Historical Illustra- 
 tions. 
 
 Stanza CLIII. 
 
 This and the six next 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, vol. ii. pag. 125. 
 et seq. chap. iv. 
 
 Stanza CLXXI. ' 
 
 the strange fate 
 Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns. 
 
 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. 
 
NOTES. 225 
 
 Stanza CLXXIII. 
 
 Lo, Nemi ! navelled in the woody hills. 
 
 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 even- 
 ing's ride from the comfortable inn of Albano. 
 
 Stanza CLXXIV. 
 
 And afar 
 The Tyber winds, and the broad ocean laves 
 The Latian coast, Sfc. fyc. 
 
 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 Ju- 
 piter, the prospect embraces all the objects alluded to 
 in the cited stanza : the Mediterranean ; the whole scene 
 of the latter half of the iEneid, and the coast from 
 beyond the mouth of the Tyber to the headland of 
 Circasum 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. 
 
226 NOTES. 
 
 The former was thought some years ago the actual 
 site, as may be seen from Middleton'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 esta- 
 blish the identity of this valley with the " Ustica" of 
 Horace ; and it seems possible that the mosaic pave- 
 ment 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 — " Ustica cubantis."—\t 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 
 
NOTES. 227 
 
 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 de- 
 nominated, and which may have taken its name from the 
 Digentia. Licenza contains 700 inhabitants. On a 
 peak a little way beyond is Civitella, containing 300. 
 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 Vico-varo, 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 thi» h;ll the rivulet of Licenza flows, and is almost ab- 
 sorbed 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. 
 Quern 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 Vespa- 
 
 a<2 
 
328 NOTES. 
 
 sian. ' With these helps, and a position correspond- 
 ing exactly to every thing which the poet has told us of 
 his retreat, we may feel tolerably secure of our she. 
 
 The hill which should be Lucretilis is called Cam- 
 panile, and by following up the rivulet to the pre- 
 tended 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, 
 
 f*. . ; .. .to frigus amabile 
 f essis vomere tauris 
 Prsebes, 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 
 
 ' MP. CJESAR VESPAS1ANVS 
 
 PONTIFEX MAXIMVS. TRFB. 
 
 POTEST. CENSOR. JEVZM 
 
 VICTORIA. VETVSTATE ILLAPoA\f. 
 
 SVA. IMPENSA. RESTITV1T. 
 
NOTES. 229 
 
 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 disco- 
 vered 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. * We shall not be so lucky as a 
 late traveller in finding the occasional pine still pend- 
 ant 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. 2 
 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 Rus- 
 tica. 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 as- 
 
 1 See — Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto, p. 43. 
 
 2 See— Classical Tour, &c. chap. vii. p. 250. vol. ik 
 
230 NOTES. 
 
 suredly only acacias and other common garden shrubs. 1 
 The extreme disappointment experienced by choosing 
 the Classical Tourist as a guide in Italy must be 
 allowed to find vent in a few observations, which, it is 
 asserted without fear of contradiction, will be confirmed 
 by every one who has selected the same conductor 
 through the same country. This author is in fact 
 one of the most inaccurate, unsatisfactory writers 
 that have in our times attained a temporary reputa- 
 tion, and is very seldom to be trusted even when he 
 speaks of objects which he must be presumed to 
 have seen. His errors, from the simple exaggeration 
 to the downright mistatement, are so frequent as to 
 induce a suspicion that he had either never visited the 
 spots described, or had 4 trusted to the fidelity of former 
 writers. Indeed the Classical Tour has every charac- 
 teristic of a mere compilation of former notices, strung 
 together upon a very slender thread of personal observa- 
 tion, and swelled out by those decorations which are 
 so easily supplied by a systematic adoption of all the 
 common places of praise, applied to every thing, and 
 therefore signifying nothing. 
 
 The style which one person thinks cloggy and cum- 
 
 1 " 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, &c. chap. xi. vol. ii. oct. 365. 
 
NOTES. 231 
 
 brous, and unsuitable, may be to the taste of others, 
 and such may experience some salutary excitement in 
 ploughing through the periods of the Classical Tour. 
 It must be said, however, that polish and weight are 
 apt to beget an expectation of value. It is amongst 
 the pains of the damned to toil up a climax with a huge 
 round stone. 
 
 The tourist had the choice of his words, but there 
 was no such latitude allowed to that of his sentiments. 4 
 The love of virtue and of liberty, which must have dis- 
 tinguished the character, certainly adorns the pages of 
 Mr. Eustace, and the gentlemanly spirit, so recom- 
 mendatory either in an author or his productions, is 
 very conspicuous throughout the Classical Tour. But 
 these generous qualities are the foliage of such a per- 
 formance, and may be spread about it so prominently 
 and profusely, as to embarrass those who wish to see 
 and find the fruit at hand. The unction of the divine, 
 and the exhortations of the moralist, may have made 
 this work something more and better than a book 
 of travels, but they have not made it a book of tra- 
 vels; and this observation applies more especially 
 to that enticing method of instruction conveyed by the 
 perpetual introduction of the same Gallic Helot to reel 
 and bluster before the rising generation, and terrify it 
 into decency by the display of all the excesses of the 
 revolution. An animosity against atheists and regicides 
 
 ^ 
 
232 NOTES. 
 
 in general, and Frenchmen specifically, may be honour- 
 able, and may be useful, as a record ; but that antidote 
 should either be administered in any work rather than a 
 tour, or, at least, should be served up apart, and not 
 so mixed with the whole mass of information and re- 
 flection, as to give a bitterness to every page : for who 
 would choose to have the antipathies of any man, how- 
 ever just, for his travelling companions ? A tourist, 
 unless he aspires to the credit of prophecy, is not an- 
 swerable for the changes which may take place in the 
 country which he describes ; but his reader may very 
 fairly esteem all his political portraits and deductions as 
 so much waste paper, the moment they cease to assist, 
 and more particularly if they obstruct, his actual 
 survey. 
 
 Neither encomium nor accusation of any govern- 
 ment, or governors, is meant to be here offered, but it 
 is stated as an incontrovertible fact, that the change 
 operated, either by the addressof the late imperial system, 
 or by the disappointment of every expectation by those 
 who have succeeded to the Italian thrones, has been so 
 considerable, and is so apparent, as not only to put 
 Mr. Eustace's Antigallican philippics entirely out of 
 date, but even to throw some suspicion upon the compe- 
 tency and candour of the author himself. A remark- 
 able example may be found in the instance of Bologna, 
 over whose papal attachments, and consequent desol*- 
 
NOTES. 233 
 
 tion, the tourist pours forth such strains of condolence 
 and revenge, made louder by the borrowed trumpet of 
 Mr. Burke. Now Bologna is at this moment, and has 
 been for some years, notorious amongst the states of 
 Italy for its attachment to revolutionary principles, 
 and was almost the only city which made any demon- 
 strations in favour of the unfortunate Murat. This 
 change may, however, have been made since Mr. Eus- 
 tace visited this country;., but the traveller whom he 
 has thrilled with horror at the projected stripping of 
 the copper from the cupola of St. Peter's, must be 
 much relieved to find that sacrilege out of the power 
 of the French, or any other plunderers, the cupola 
 being covered with 'lead. ' 
 
 If the conspiring voice of otherwise rival critics had 
 not given considerable currency to the Classical Tour, 
 it would have been unnecessary to warn the reader, 
 that however it may adorn his library, it will be of little 
 or no service to him in his carriage ; and if the judgment 
 
 1 " What, then, will be the astonishment, or rather the 
 
 horror, of my reader when I inform him 
 
 the French Committee turned its attention to Saint Peter's, and 
 employed a company of Jews to estimate and purchase the gold, 
 silver, and bronze that adorn the inside of the edifice, as well as 
 the copper that covers the vaults and dome on the outside." 
 Chap. iv. p. 130. vol. ii. The story about the Jews is positively 
 denied at Rome. 
 
234 NOTES. 
 
 of those critics had hitherto been suspended, no attempt 
 would have been made to anticipate their decision. As 
 it is, those who stand in the 1 elation of posterity to Mr. 
 Eustace, may be permitted to appeal from cotemporary 
 praises, and are perhaps more likely to be just in pro- 
 portion as the causes of love and hatred are the farther 
 removed. This appeal had, in some measure, been 
 made before the above remarks were written ; for one 
 of the most respectable of the Florentine publishers, 
 who had been persuaded by the repeated inquiries of 
 those on their journey southwards, to reprint a cheap 
 edition of the Classical Tour, was, by the concurring ad- 
 vice of returning travellers, induced to abandon his de- 
 sign, although he had already arranged his types and 
 paper, and had struck off one or two of the first* 
 sheets. 
 
 The writer of these notes would wish to part (like 
 Mr. Gibbon) on good terms with the Pope and the 
 Cardinals, but he does not think it necessary to extend 
 the same discreet silence to their humble partisans. 
 
Afier the frank avowal contained in the prefatory 
 address, it may appear somewhat a presumption to at- 
 tempt the task which is there formally declined as 
 above the means of the author who writes, and of the 
 friend to whom he addresses, the letter. 
 
 In fact it had been the wish of Lord Byron, and of 
 the compiler of the foregoing notes, to say something 
 of the literary and political condition of Italy, and 
 they had made preparation of some materials, the deli- 
 berate rejection of which was the origin of the above 
 confession. 
 
 Time and opportunity have, however, very much in- 
 creased those materials in number, and, it is believed, 
 in value, and the consequence has been the appearance 
 of a short memoir on Italian literature, at the end of 
 the Historical Illustrations of the IVth Canto, and the 
 commencement of a longer treatise, which will be pub- 
 lished separately in the course of the present year. 
 
 This latter work will attempt a survey of the revolu- 
 tions of Italy, from the French invasion in 1796 to the 
 present day. It is compiled from information on which 
 the author believes he may implicitly rely, and it con- 
 tains a series of facts and portraits which, he presumes, 
 are for the most part unknown to his countrymen. 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 Pages 118, 120, 201, for oe, read se. 
 
 Page"157. The dates of the three decrees against Dante are A. 0. 
 1302, 1314* and 1316. 
 
POEMS. 
 
The effect of the original ballad (which existed 
 both in Spanish and Arabic) was such that it 
 was forbidden to be sung by the Moors, on pain 
 of death, within Granada. 
 
240 v POEMS. 
 
 ROMANCE MUY DOLOROSO 
 
 SITIO Y TOMA DE ALHAMA, EL QUAL DEZIA EN ARAVIGO 
 
 ASSI. 
 
 1. 
 
 Passeavase el Rey Moro 
 Por la ciudad de Granada, 
 Desde las puertas de Elvira 
 Hasta las de Bivarambla. 
 
 Ay de mi, Alhama ! 
 
 % 
 Cartas le fueron venidas 
 Que Alhama era ganada. 
 Las cartas echo en el fuego, 
 Y al mensagero matava. 
 
 Ay de mi, Alhama ! 
 
POEMS. 241 
 
 A VERY MOURNFUL BALLAD 
 
 ON THE 
 
 SIEGE AND CONQUEST OF ALHAMA, 
 
 Which, in the Arabic language, is to the following purport. 
 
 1. 
 
 The Moorish King rides up and down 
 Through Granada's royal town, 
 From Elvira's gates to those 
 Of Bivarambla on he goes. 
 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
 2. 
 Letters to the monarch tell 
 How Alhama's city fell ; 
 In the fire the scroll he threw, 
 And the messenger he slew. 
 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
242 POEMS. 
 
 3. 
 Descavalga de una mula, 
 
 Y en un cavallo cavalga 
 Por el Zacatin arriba 
 Subido se avia al Alhambra. 
 
 Ay de mi, Alhama I 
 
 4. 
 Como en el Alhambra estuvo, 
 Al mismo punto mandava 
 Que se toquen las trompetas 
 Con anafiles de plata. 
 
 Ay de mi, Alhama I 
 
 5. 
 
 Y que atambores de guerra 
 Apriessa toquen alarma ; 
 Por que lo oygan sus Moros, 
 Los de la Vega y Granada. 
 
 Ay de mi, Alhama f 
 
POEMS. 
 
 He quits his mule, and mounts his horse, 
 And through the street directs his course ; 
 Through the street of Zacatin 
 To the Alhambra spurring in. 
 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
 4. 
 When the Alhambra walls he gained, 
 On the moment he ordained 
 That the trumpet straight should sound 
 With the silver clarion round. 
 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
 5. 
 
 And when the hollow drums of war 
 Beat the loud alarm afar, 
 That the Moors of town and plain 
 Might answer to the martial strain, 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
 r 2 
 
244 POEMS. 
 
 6. 
 Los Moros que el son oyeron, 
 Que al sangriento Marte llama, 
 Uno a uno, y dos a dos, 
 Un gran esquadron formavan. 
 Ay de mij Alhama ! 
 
 7. 
 Alii hablo un Moro viejo ; 
 Desta manera hablava : — 
 Para que nos llamas, Rey ? 
 Para que es este llamada ? 
 
 Ay de mi, Alhama ! 
 
 8. 
 Aveys de saber, amigos, 
 Una nueva desdichada : 
 Que Cristianos, con braveza, 
 Ya nos han tornado Alhama. 
 
 Ay de mi, Alhama ! 
 
POEMS. 245 
 
 6. 
 
 Then the Moors by this aware 
 That bloody Mars recalled them there, 
 One by one, and two by two, 
 In increasing squadrons flew. 
 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
 7. 
 Out then spake an aged Moor 
 In these words the king before, 
 " Wherefore call on us, oh king ? 
 " What may mean this gathering?* 1 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
 8. 
 " Friends ! ye have alas ! to know 
 " Of a most disastrous blow, 
 " That the Christians, stern and bold, 
 " Have obtained Alhama's hold." 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
246 poems. 
 
 9. 
 
 Alii hablo un viejo Alfaqui, 
 De barba crecida y cana : — 
 Bien se te eraplea, buen Rey, 
 Buen Rey ; bien se te empleava. 
 Ay de mi, Alhama ! 
 
 10. 
 
 Mataste los Bencerrages, 
 Que era la flor de Granada ; 
 Cogiste los tornadizos 
 De Cordova la nombrada. 
 
 Ay de mi, Alhama ! 
 
 11. 
 
 Por esso mereces, Rey 
 Una pena bien doblada ; 
 Que te pierdas tu y el rayno, 
 Y que se pierda Granada. 
 
 Ay de mi, Alhama ! 
 
poems. 247 
 
 9.. 
 
 Out then spake old Alfaqui, 
 With his beard so white to see, 
 " Good King ! thou art justly served, 
 " Good King ! this thou hast deserved. 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
 10. 
 
 " By thee were slain, in evil hour, 
 " The Abencerrage, Granada's flower ; 
 * And strangers were received by thee 
 " Of Cordova the chivalry. 
 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
 11. 
 
 " And for this, oh King ! is sent 
 " On thee a double chastisement, 
 " Thee and thine, thy crown and realm 
 " One last wreck shall overwhelm. 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
248 POEMS. 
 
 12. 
 Si no se respetan leyes, 
 Es ley que todo se pierda ; 
 
 Y que se pierda Granada, 
 
 Y que te pierdas en ella. 
 
 Ay de mi, Alhama ! 
 
 13. 
 Fuego por los ojos vierte, 
 El Rey que esto oyera. 
 
 Y como el otro de leyes 
 De leyes tambien hablava. 
 
 Ay de mi, Alhama ! 
 
 14. 
 Sabe un Rey que no ay leyes 
 D6 darle a Reyes disgusto. — 
 Esso dize el Rey Moro 
 Relinchando de colera. 
 
 Ay de mi, Alhama ! 
 
poems. 249 
 
 12. 
 " He who holds no laws in awe, 
 " He. must perish by the law; 
 " And Grenada must be won, 
 " And thyself with her undone." 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
 13. 
 Fire flashed from out the old Moor's eyes, 
 The Monarch's wrath began to rise, 
 Because he answered, and because 
 He spake exceeding well of laws. 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
 14. 
 " There is no law to say such things 
 " As may disgust the ear of kings :" — 
 Thus, snorting with his choler, said 
 The Moorish King, and doomed him' dead. 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
250 , POEMS. 
 
 15. 
 
 Moro Alfaqui, Moro Alfaqui, 
 El de la vellida barba, 
 El Rey te manda prender, 
 For la perdida de Alhama. 
 
 Ay de mi, Alhama ! 
 
 16. 
 
 Y cortarte la cabeza, 
 
 Y ponerla en el Alhambra, 
 Por que a ti castigo sea, 
 
 Y otros tiemblen en miralla. 
 
 Ay de mi, Alhama ! 
 
 17. 
 Cavalleros, hombres buenos, 
 Dezid de mi parte al Rey, 
 Al Rey Moro de Granada, 
 Como no le devo nada. 
 
 Ay de mi, Alhama ! 
 
POEMS. 251 
 
 15. 
 
 Moor Alfaqui ! Moor Alfaqui ! 
 Though thy beard so hoary be, 
 The King hath sent to have thee seized, 
 For Albania's loss displeased, 
 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
 16. 
 And to fix thy head upon 
 High Alhambra's loftiest stone ; 
 That this for thee should be the law, 
 And others tremble when they saw. 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
 17. 
 " Cavalier ! and man of worth ! 
 " Let these words of mine go forth ; 
 " Let the Moorish Monarch know, 
 " That to him I nothing owe: 
 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
252 POEMS. 
 
 18. 
 
 f 
 
 De averse Alhama perdido 
 A mi me pesa en el alma. 
 Que si el Rey perdio su tierra, 
 Otro mucho mas perdiera. 
 
 Ay de mi, Alhama ! 
 
 19. 
 
 Perdieran hijos padres, 
 Y casados las casadas : 
 Las cosas que mas amara 
 Perdio V un y el otro fama. 
 
 Ay de mi, Alhama ! 
 
 20. 
 Perdi una hij a donzella 
 Que era la flor d' esta tierra, 
 Cien doblas dava por ell a, 
 No me las estimo en nada. 
 
 Ay de mi, Alhama ! 
 
POEMS. 253 
 
 18. 
 <c But on my soul Alhama weighs, 
 u And on my inmost spirit preys; 
 " And if the King his land hath lost, 
 " Yet others may have lost the most. 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
 19. 
 " Sires have lost their children, wives 
 " Their lords, and valiant men their lives ; 
 " One what best his love might claim 
 " Hath lost, another wealth, or fame. 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
 20. ■ 
 
 " I lost a damsel in that hour, 
 " Of all the land the loveliest flower ; 
 " Doubloons a hundred I would pay, 
 " And think her ransom cheap that day." 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
254 POEMS. 
 
 21. 
 Diziendo assi al hacen Alfaqui, 
 Le cortaron la cabeca, 
 Y la elevan al Alhambra, 
 Assi come el Rey lo manda. 
 
 Ay de mi, Alhama ! 
 
 Hombres, nifios y mugeres, 
 Lloran tan grande perdida. 
 Lloravan todas las damas 
 Quantas en Granada avia. 
 
 Ay de mi, Alhama ! 
 
 Por las calles y ventanas 
 Mucho luto parecia ; 
 Llora el Rey como fembra, 
 Qu* es mucho lo que perdia. 
 
 Ay de mi, Alhama ! 
 
POEMS. 255 
 
 21. 
 
 And as these things the old Moor said, 
 They severed from the trunk his head ; 
 And to the Alhambra's wall with speed 
 'Twas carried, as the King decreed. 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
 And men and infants therein weep 
 Their loss, so heavy and so deep ; 
 Granada's ladies, all she rears 
 Within her walls, burst into tears. 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
 And from the windows o'er the walls 
 The sable web of mourning falls ; 
 The King weeps as a woman o'er 
 His loss ; for it is much and sore. 
 Woe is me, Alhama ! 
 
256 
 
 POEMS. 
 
 SONETTO DI VITTORELLI. 
 
 ■ y ' PER MONACA. 
 
 Sonetto composto in nome di un genitore, a cui era morta poco innanzi una 
 figlia appena maritata ; e diretto al genitore della sacra sposa. 
 
 Di due vaghe donzelle, oneste, accorte 
 Lieti e miseri padri il eiel ne feo, 
 II ciel, che degne di piu nobil sorte 
 L 1 una e V altra veggendo, ambo chiedeo. 
 
 La mia fu tolta da veloce morte 
 A le fumanti tede d' imeneo : 
 La tua, Francesco, in sugellate porte 
 Eterna prigioniera or si rendeo. 
 
 Ma tu almeno potrai da la gelosa 
 Irremeabil soglia, ove s 1 asconde, 
 La sua tenera udir voce pietosa. 
 
 Io verso un fiume d' amarissim 1 onda, 
 
 Corro a quel marmo, in cui la figlia or posa, 
 Batto, e ribatto, ma nessun risponde. 
 
poems. 257 
 
 TRANSLATION FROM VITTORELLI. 
 
 ON A NUN. 
 
 Sonnet composed in the name of a father whose daughter had recently died 
 shortly after her marriage ; and addressed to the father of her who had 
 lately taken the veil. 
 
 Of two fair virgins, modest, though admired, 
 
 Heaven made us happy ; and now, wretched sires, 
 Heaven for a nobler doom their worth desires, 
 
 And gazing upon either, both required. 
 
 Mine, while the torch of Hymen newly fired 
 
 Becomes extinguished, soon — too soon — expires : 
 But thine, within the closing grate retired, 
 Eternal captive, to her God aspires. 
 
 But thou at least from out the jealous door, 
 Which shuts between your never-meeting eyes, 
 May'st hear her sweet and pious voice once more : 
 
 / to the marble, where my daughter lies, 
 Rush, — the swoln flood of bitterness I pour, 
 And knock, and knock, and knock — but none replies. 
 
 s 
 
T. DAVISON, LOMBARD-STREET, WHITEFRIARS, LONDOV. 
 
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