The Works of Lord Byron Volume II Part 57

Stanza xlvii. "Yet, Italy! through every other land,"--

Stanza li. "Appear'dst thou not to Paris in this guise?"--

Stanza lii. "Glowing, and circ.u.mfused in speechless love,"--

Stanza liv.-lx. "In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie,"--"What is her Pyramid of precious stones?"--

Stanza lx.x.x.-lx.x.xii. "The Goth, the Christian--Time--War--Flood, and Fire,"--"Alas! the lofty city! and alas!"--

Stanza lx.x.xv. "Sylla was first of victors; but our own,"--

Stanza lx.x.xvi. "The third of the same Moon whose former course,"--

Stanza xciii.-xcvi. "What from this barren being do we reap?"--"Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be,"--

Stanza cix. "Admire--exult--despise--laugh--weep,--for here,"--

Stanza cxii.-cxiv. "Where is the rock of Triumph, the high place,"--"Then turn we to her latest Tribune's name,"--

Stanza cxxiii. "Who loves, raves--'tis youth's frenzy--but the cure,"--

Stanza cxxv.-cxxvii. "Few--none--find what they love or could have loved,"--"Yet let us ponder boldly--'tis a base,"--

Stanza cx.x.xv.-cx.x.xvii. "That curse shall be Forgiveness,--Have I not,"--"But I have lived, and have not lived in vain,"--

Stanza clii. "Turn to the Mole which Hadrian reared on high,"--

Stanza clxvii.-clxxii. "Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds,"--(On the death of the Princess Charlotte, November 6, 1817.)--"These might have been her destiny--but no,"--

Stanza clxxiii. "Lo, Nemi! navelled in the woody hills,"--

Stanza clxxiv. "And near, Albano's scarce divided waves,"--

Stanza clxxvii. "Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,"--(1818.)

Stanza clxxviii. "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,"--(1818.)

Stanza clx.x.xi. "The armaments which thunderstrike the walls,"--

Stanza clx.x.xii. "Thy sh.o.r.es are empires, changed in all save thee,"--

(52 stanzas.)

ADDITIONS INCLUDED IN MS. D.,[363] BUT NOT AMONG MSS. M.

Stanza xli. "The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust,"--

Stanza xcvii. "But France got drunk with blood to vomit crime,"--

Stanza xcviii. "Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying,"--

Stanza cxx. "Alas! our young affections run to waste,"--

Stanza cxxi. "Oh, Love! no habitant of earth thou art,"--

Stanza cxxii. "Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,"--

Stanza cxxiv. "We wither from our youth, we gasp away,"--

(Seven stanzas.)

TO

JOHN HOBHOUSE, ESQ., A.M., F.R.S.,

&c., &c., &c.

Venice, _January_ 2, 1818.

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,[364] 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 indebted for the social advantages of an enlightened friendship, than--though not 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 accompanied far, whom I have found wakeful over my sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my prosperity and firm in my adversity, 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 encounter of good-will as to withstand the shock firmly, that I thus attempt to commemorate your good qualities, or rather the advantages 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,[365] 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 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 himself.

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 objects it would fain describe; and however 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 pilgrim 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 determined not to perceive: like the Chinese in Goldsmith's _Citizen of the World_,[366] whom n.o.body would believe to be a Chinese, it was in vain that I a.s.serted, and imagined that I had drawn, a distinction between the author and the pilgrim; and the very anxiety to preserve this difference, 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 literary efforts, deserves the fate of authors.

In the course of the following canto it was my intention, either in the text or in the notes, to have touched upon the present 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 objects, and the consequent reflections: and for the whole of the notes, excepting a few of the shortest, I am indebted to yourself,[367] and these were necessarily limited to the elucidation of the text.

It is also a delicate, and no very grateful task, to dissert upon the literature and manners of a nation so dissimilar; and requires an attention and impartiality which would induce us,--though perhaps no inattentive observers, nor ignorant of the language or customs of the people amongst whom we have recently abode--to distrust, 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 impartially 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 n.o.bile 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 l'antico valore, in tutte essa dovrebbe essere la prima." Italy has great names still--Canova,[368]

Monti, Ugo Foscolo, Pindemonte, Visconti, Morelli, Cicognara, Albrizzi, Mezzofanti, 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 commettono ne sono una prova." Without subscribing to the latter part of his proposition, a dangerous doctrine, the truth of which may be disputed on better grounds, namely, that the Italians are in no respect more ferocious than their neighbours, that man must be wilfully blind, or ignorantly heedless, who is not struck with the extraordinary capacity of this people, or, if such a word be admissible, their _capabilities_,[369] 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,"[370]--the immortality of independence. And when we ourselves, 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!"[371] it was difficult not to contrast this melancholy dirge with the baccha.n.a.l roar of the songs of exultation still yelled from the London taverns, over the carnage of Mont St. Jean,[372] and the betrayal 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.[373] For me,--

"Non movero mai corda Ove la turba di sue ciance a.s.sorda."

What Italy has gained by the late transfer of nations, it were useless for Englishmen to enquire, till it becomes ascertained that England has acquired something more than a permanent army and a suspended Habeas Corpus;[374] 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 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.