The Works of Lord Byron Volume II Part 70

----_empire's all-conquering foe_.--[MS. M.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[The Venetians were nicknamed Pantaloni. Byron, who seems to have relied on the authority of a Venetian glossary, a.s.sumes that the "by-word" may be traced to the patriotism of merchant-princes "who were reputed to hoist flags with the Venetian lion waving to the breeze on every rock and barren headland of Levantine waters" (_Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi_, translated by J. Addington Symonds, 1890, Introd. part ii. p.

44), and that in consequence of this spread-eagleism the Venetians were held up to scorn by their neighbours as "planters of the lion"--a reproach which conveyed a tribute to their prowess. A more probable explanation is that the "by-word," with its cognates "Pantaleone," the typical masque of Italian comedy--progenitor of our "Pantaloon;" and "pantaloni," "pantaloons," the typical Venetian costume--derive their origin from the baptismal name "Pantaleone," frequently given to Venetian children, in honour of St. Pantaleon of Nicomedia, physician and martyr, whose cult was much in vogue in Northern Italy, and especially in Venice, where his relics, which "coruscated with miracles," were the object of peculiar veneration.

St. Pantaleon was known to the Greek Church as ?a?te?e???

[Pantelee/mon], that is, the "all-pitiful;" and in Latin his name is spelled _Pantaleymon_ and _Pantaleemon_. Hagiologists seem to have been puzzled, but the compiler of the _Acta Sanctorum_, for July 27, St.

Pantaleon's Day in the Roman calendar (x.x.xiii. 397-426), gives the preference to Pantaleon, and explains that he was hailed as Pantaleemon by a divine voice at the hour of his martyrdom, which proclaimed "eum non amplius esse vocandum Pantaleonem, sed Pantaleemonem."

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

It was printed at Cremona, in 1493.]

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

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

[398] ["The battle of Lepanto [October 7, 1571] lasted five hours....

The losses are estimated at 8000 Christians and 30,000 Turks.... The chief glory of the victory rests with Sebastian Veniero and the Venetians."--_Venice, etc._, 1893, p. 368.]

[399] {341} [The story is told in Plutarch's _Life of Nicias_, cap.

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

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

[ls]

_And sends him ransomeless to bless his poet's strains_.--[MS. M.]

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

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

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

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

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

[401] Venice Preserved; Mysteries of Udolpho; The Ghost-Seer, or Armenian; The Merchant of Venice; Oth.e.l.lo.

[For _Venice Preserved, vide ante_, stanza iv. line 7, note. To the _Mysteries of Udolpho_ Byron was indebted for more than one suggestion, _vide ante_, stanza i. line 4, note, and _Mysteries, etc._, London, 1794, 2. 39: "The air bore no sounds, but those of sweetness echoing along each margin of the ca.n.a.l and from gondolas on its surface, while groups of masks were seen dancing on the moonlit terraces, and seemed almost to realize the romance of fairy-land." The scene of Schiller's _Der Geisterseher_ (_Werke_, 1819, x. 97, _sq._) is laid at Venice.

"This [the Doge's palace] was the thing that most struck my imagination in Venice--more than the Rialto, which I visited for the sake of Shylock; and more, too, than Schiller's _Armenian_, a novel which took a great hold of me when a boy. It is also called the _Ghost Seer_, and I never walked down St. Mark's by moonlight without thinking of it, and 'at nine o'clock he died!' [For allusion to the same incident, see Rogers's _Italy_ (_Poems_, 1852, ii. 73).] But I hate things _all fiction_; and therefore the _Merchant_ and _Oth.e.l.lo_ have no great a.s.sociations for me: but _Pierre_ has."--Letter to Murray, Venice, April 2, 1817. (For an earlier reference to the _Ghost-seer_, see _Oscar of Alva: Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 131, note.)]

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

[402] [Sh.e.l.ley, in his _Lines written among the Euganean Hills_, allows to Venice one lingering glory "one remembrance more sublime"--

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

[lx]

_The Past at least is mine--whate'er may come_.

_But when the heart is full the lips must needs lie dumb_.-- [MS. M. erased.]

----_or else mine now were cold and dumb_.--[MS. M.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To rap and knock and enter in our soul, Take hands and dance there."

Browning's _Poetical Works_, 1869, v. 268.]

[mb]

_A tone of music--eventide in spring_.

or, ----_twilight--eve in spring_.--[MS. M, erased.]

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

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