XXXII.

And the soft quiet hamlet where he dwelt 4 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'd, 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 brook, 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:

XXXIV.

Or, it may be, with demons, who impair 5
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 predestined 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.

Ferrara 6! in thy wide and grass-grown streets,
Whose symmetry was not for solitude,
There seems as 't were 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 impell'd, of those who wore
The wreath which Dante's brow alone had worn before.

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 plunged it. Glory without end
Scatter'd the clouds away-and on that name attend

the temptation of our Saviour, And our unsullied John Locke preferred the presence of a child to complete solitude. 6 [In April, 1817, Lord Byron visited Ferrara, went over the castle, cell. &c., and wrote, a few days after, the Lament of Tasso." One of the Ferrarese asked me," he says, in a letter to a friend, "if I knew Lord Byron,' an acquaintance of his, now at Naples. I told him No!' which was true both ways, for I knew not the impostor; and, in the other, no one knows himself. He stared, when told that I was the real Simon Pure. Another asked me, if I had not translated Tasso. You see what Fame is! how accurate! how boundless! I don't know how others feel, but I am always the lighter and the better looked on when I have got rid of mine, It sits on me like armour on the Lord Mayor's champion; and I got rid of all the husk of literature, and the attendant babble, by answering that I had not translated Tasso, but a namesake had; and, by the blessing of Heaven, I looked so little like a poet, that every body believed me."]

D

1 See Appendix, "Historical Notes," No. X.

2 ["Scott," says Lord Byron, in his MS. Diary, for 1821, "is certainly the most wonderful writer of the day. His novels are a new literature in themselves, and his poetry as good as any if not better (only on an erroneous system), and only ceased to be so popular, because the vulgar were tired of hearing Aristides called the Just,' and Scott the Best, and ostracised him. I know no reading to which I fall with such alacrity as a work of his. I love him, too, for his manliness of character, for the extreme pleasantness of his conversation, and his good-nature towards myself personally. May he prosper! for he deserves it." In a letter, written to Sir Walter, from Pisa, in 1822, he says-"I owe to you far more than the usual obligation for the courtesies of literature and common friendship; for you went out of your way, in 1817, to do me a service, when it required not merely kindness, but courage, to do so; to have been recorded by you in such a manner, would have been a proud memorial at any time; but at such a time, when All the world and his wife,' as the proverb goes, were trying to trample upon me, was something still higher to my self-esteem.. Had it been a common criticism, however eloquent or panegyrical, I should have felt pleased and grateful, but not to the extent which the extraordinary good-heartedness of the whole proceeding must induce in any mind capable of such sensations."]

Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves, 5 And the false semblance but disgraced his brow; Yet still, if fondly Superstition grieves, Know, that the lightning sanctifies below 6 Whate'er it strikes ;-yon head is doubly sacred now. XLII.

Italia! oh Italia! thou who hast

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! that thou wert in thy nakedness
Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim
Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press
To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress;

XLIII.

Then might'st 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. 7

XLIV.

Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him, 8
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
Ægina lay, Piræus 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 shatter'd site, Which only make more mourn'd and more endear'd The few last rays of their far-scatter'd light, And the crush'd relics of their vanish'd 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.

7 The two stanzas xlii. and xliii. are, with the exception of a line or two, a translation of the famous sonnet of Filicaja: "Italia, Italia, O tu cui feo la sorte!"

8 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 Egina towards Megara, I began to contemplate the prospect of the countries around me: Egina was behind, Megara before me; Piræus on the right, Corinth on the left: all which towns, once famous and flourishing, now lie overturned and buried in their ruins. Upon this sight, I could not but think presently within myself, Alas! how do we poor mortals fret and vex ourselves if any of our friends happen to die or be killed, whose life is yet so short, when the carcasses of so many noble cities lie here exposed before me in one view."-See Middleton's Cicero, vol. ii. p. 371.

1 It is Poggio, who, looking from the Capitoline hill upon runed Rome, breaks forth in the exclamation, "Ut nunc ali decore nudata, prostrata jacet, instar gigantei cadaveris corrupti atque undique exesi."

? See Appendix, " Historical Notes," No. XIV.

3 In 1817, Lord Byron visited Florence, on his way to Rome. "I remained," he says, "but a day: however, I went to the two galleries, from which one returns drunk with ety. The Venus is more for admiration than love; but there are sculpture and painting, which, for the first time, at ali gave me an idea of what people mean by their cant about those two most artificial of the arts. What struck me most were, the mistress of Raphael, a portrait; the mistress of Tran, a portrait; a Venus of Titian in the Medici Gallery; the Venus; Canova's Venus, also, in the other gallery: Titian's mistress is also in the other gallery (that is, in the Fitti Palace gallery); the Parca of Michael Angelo, a pictare; and the Antinous, the Alexander, and one or two not Tery decent groups in marble; the Genius of Death, a sleep1 ng figure, &c. &c. I also went to the Medici chapel. Fine Frippery in great slabs of various expensive stones, to commeorate fifty rotten and forgotten carcasses. It is unfinished, and will remain so." We find the following note of a second Tax to the galleries in 1821, accompanied by the author of The Pleasures of Memory:"-" My former impressions vre confirmed; but there were too many visitors to allow me to feel any thing properly. When we were (about thirty forty all stuffed into the cabinet of gems and knickLackeries, in a corner of one of the galleries, I told Rogers that it felt like being in the watch-house.' I heard one bold Brison declare to the woman on his arm, looking at the Venus Titian, 'Well, now, that is really very fine indeed!'-an observation which, like that of the landlord in Joseph Andrews, on the certainty of death,' was (as the landlord's we observed) 'extremely true.' In the Pitti Palace, I did not omit Goldsmith's prescription for a connoisseur, viz. that

1

Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould:

L.

We gaze and turn away, and know not where, Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the hearts Reels with its fulness; therefor ever thereChain'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!4 while thy lips are With lava kisses melting while they burn, Shower'd on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn?>

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 recall such visions, and create, From what has been, or might be, things which Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below.

[grow

the pictures would have been better if the painter had taken more pains, and to praise the works of Peter Perugino.'"] Οφθαλμοὺς ἑστιῶν.

66

4

Atque oculos pascat uterque suos."- OVID. Amor. lib. ii.

5 [The delight with which the pilgrim contemplates the ancient Greek statues at Florence, and afterwards at Rome, is such as might have been expected from any great poet, whose youthful mind had, like his, been imbued with those classical ideas and associations which afford so many sources of pleasure, through every period of life. He has gazed upon these masterpieces of art with a more susceptible, and, in spite of his disavowal, with a more learned eye, than can be traced in the effusions of any poet who had previously expressed, in any formal manner, his admiration of their beauty. It may appear fanciful to say so; but we think the genius of Byron is, more than that of any other modern poet, akin to that peculiar genius which seems to have been diffused among ail the poets and artists of ancient Greece; and in whose spirit, above all its other wonders, the great specimens of sculpture seem to have been conceived and executed. His creations, whether of beauty or of strength, are all single creations. He requires no grouping to give effect to his favourites, or to tell his story. His heroines are solitary symbols of loveliness, which require no foil; his heroes stand alone as upon marble pedestals, displaying the naked power of passion, or the wrapped up and reposing energy of grief. The artist who would illustrate, as it is called, the works of any of our other poets, must borrow the mimic splendours of the pencil. He who would transfer into another vehicle the spirit of Byron, must pour the liquid metal, or hew the stubborn rock. What he loses in ease, he will gain in power. He might draw from Medora, Gulnare, Lara, or Manfred, subjects for relievos, worthy of enthusiasm almost as great as Harold has himself displayed on the contemplation of the loveliest and the sternest relics of the inimitable genius of the Greeks.WILSON.]

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 resolved 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, 5 Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore: 6 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 7 Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore, Upon a far and foreign soil had grown, [own. His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled-not thine

LVIII.

Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeath'd8

His dust, and lies it not her Great among, With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed O'er him who form'd the Tuscan's siren tongue?

[Only a week before the poet visited the Florence gallery, he wrote thus to a friend :-"I know nothing of painting, Depend upon it, of all the arts, it is the most artificial and unnatural, and that by which the nonsense of mankind is most imposed upon. I never yet saw the picture or the statue which came a league within my conception or expectation; but I have seen many mountains, and seas, and rivers, and views, and two or three women, who went as far beyond it." -Byron Letters.]

2,3,4 See Appendix, "Historical Notes," Nos. xv. XVI. XVII. The church of Santa Croce contains much illustrious nothing. The tombs of Machiavelli, Michael Angelo, Galileo, and Alfieri, make it the Westminster Abbey of Italy. I did not admire any of these tombs - beyond their contents.

That music in itself, whose sounds are song,
The poetry of speech? No ; · even his tomb
Uptorn, must bear the hyæna bigot's wrong,
No more amidst the meaner dead find room,
Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for whom !
LIX.

And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust;
Yet for this want more noted, as of yore
The Cæsar's pageant, shorn of Brutus' bust,
Did but of Rome's best Son remind her more.
Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore,
Fortress of falling empire! honour'd sleeps

The immortal exile ; — Arqua, too, her store

Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps, [weeps. While Florence vainly begs her banish'd dead and

LX.

What is her pyramid of precious stones ??

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 accustom'd 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 LXII.

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, swoll'n to rivers with their gore, Reek through the sultryplain, withlegions scattered o'er,

LXIII.

Like to a forest fell'd by mountain winds;
And such the storm of battle on this day,
And such the frenzy, whose convulsion blinds
To all save carnage, that, beneath the fray,
An earthquake reel'd unheededly away! 10
None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet,
And yawning forth a grave for those who lay

Upon their bucklers for a winding sheet; [meet! Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations

That of Alfieri is heavy; and all of them seem to be overloaded. What is necessary but a bust and name? and perhaps a date? the last for the unchronological, of whom I am one. But all your allegory and eulogy is infernal, and worse than the long wigs of English numskulls upon Roman bodies, in the statuary of the reigns of Charles the Second, William, and Anne."-Byron Letters, 1817.]

5,6,7,8 See Appendix, "Historical Notes," Nos. XVIII. XIX. XX. and xxI.

9 See Appendix," Historical Notes," No. XXII.

10 See Appendix, "Historical Notes," No. XXII.-[AN earthquake which shook all Italy occurred during the battle, and was unfelt by any of the combatants.]

And on thy happy shore a Temple 3 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 tales.

[The lovely peaceful mirror reflected the mountains of Monte Pulciana, and the wild fowl skimming its ample surare, touched the waters with their rapid wings, leaving circles and trains of light to glitter in gray repose. As we moved ng, one set of interesting features vielded to another, and every change excited new delight. Yet, was it not among these tranquil scenes that Hannibal and Flaminius met? Was not the blush of blood upon the silver lake of ThrasiSene?"-H. W. WILLIAMS.]

No book of travels has omitted to expatiate on the temple of the Clitumnus, between Foligno and Spoleto; and no site, enery, even in Italy, is more worthy a description. For account of the dilapidation of this temple, the reader is referred to Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold," p. 35.

This pretty little gem stands on the acclivity of a bank erlooking its crystal waters, which have their source at the distance of some hundred yards towards Spoleto. The temple, fronting the river, is of an oblong form, in the Corinthian der Four columns support the pediment, the shafts of hich are covered in spiral lines, and in forms to represent the scales of fishes: the bases, too, are richly sculptured. Within the building is a chapel, the walls of which are ered with many hundred names; but we saw none which could recognise as British. Can it be that this classical ple is seldom visited by our countrymen, though celebrated by Dryden and Addison To future travellers from Britain will surely be rendered interesting by the beautiful lines of Lord Byron, flowing as sweetly as the lovely stream which they describe."-H. W. WILLIAMS.]

[Perhaps there are no verses in our language of happier descriptive power than the two stanzas which characterise the Cutumnus. In general poets find it so difficult to leave an

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. 4

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 pitiless horror set, 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

interesting subject, that they injure the distinctness of the description by loading it so as to embarrass, rather than excite, the fancy of the reader; or else, to avoid that fault, they confine themselves to cold and abstract generalities. Byron has, in these stanzas, admirably steered his course betwixt these extremes: while they present the outlines of a picture as pure and as brilliant as those of Claude Lorraine, the task of filling up the more minute particulars is judiciously left to the imagination of the reader; and it must be dull indeed if it does not supply what the poet has left unsaid, or but generally and briefly intimated. While the eye glances over the lines, we seem to feel the refreshing coolness of the scene- we hear the bubbling tale of the more rapid streams, and see the slender proportions of the rural temple reflected in the crystal depth of the calm pool, — SIR WALTER SCOTT.] 5 I saw the Cascata del Marmore of Terni twice, at different periods; once from the summit of the precipice, and again from the valley below. The lower view is far to be preferred, if the traveller has time for one only; but in any point of view, either from above or below, it is worth all the cascades and torrents of Switzerland put together: the Staubach, Reichenbach, Pisse Vache, fall of Arpenaz, &c. are rills in comparative appearance. Of the fall of Schaffhausen I cannot speak, not yet having seen it. -["The stunning sound, the mist, uncertainty, and tremendous depth, bewildered the senses for a time, and the eye had little rest from the impe. tuous and hurrying waters, to search into the mysterious and whitened gulf, which presented, through a cloud of spray, the apparitions, as it were, of rocks and overhanging wood. The wind, however, would sometimes remove for an instant this misty veil, and display such a scene of havoc as appalled the soul." H. W. WILLIAMS.]