The Works of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 44

Gothard in 1664, and in 1675-6 commanded on the Rhine, and out-generalled Turenne and the Prince de Conde]

[302] Columbus, Americus Vespusius, Sebastian Cabot.

[Christopher Columbus (circ. 1430-1506), a Genoese, discovered mainland of America, 1498; Amerigo Vespucci (1451-1512), a Florentine, explored coasts of America, 1497-1504; Sebastian Cabot (1477-1557), son of Giovanni Cabotto or Gavotto, a Venetian, discovered coasts of Labrador, etc., June, 1497.]

[303] {263}[Compare--

"Ah! servile Italy, griefs hostelry!

A ship without a pilot in great tempest!"

_Purgatorio_, vi. 76, 77.]

[cf]

_Yet through this many-yeared eclipse of Woe_.

--[MS. Alternative reading.]

_Yet through this murky interreign of Woe_.--[MS. erased.]

[cg] _Which choirs the birds to song_---.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

[ch] _And Pearls flung down to regal Swine evince_.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

[ci] _The wh.o.r.edom of high Genius_----.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

[304] {264}[Alfieri, in his _Autobiography_ ... (1845, _Period III_.

chap. viii. p. 92) notes and deprecates the servile manner in which Metastasio went on his knees before Maria Theresa in the Imperial gardens of Schoenbrunnen.]

[cj] _And prides itself in prost.i.tuted duty_.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

[305] A verse from the Greek tragedians, with which Pompey took leave of Cornelia [daughter of Metellus Scipio, and widow of P. Cra.s.sus] on entering the boat in which he was slain. [The verse, or verses, are said to be by Sophocles, and are quoted by Plutarch, in his Life of Pompey, c. 78, _Vitae_, 1814, vii. 159. They run thus--

?st?? ??? ?? t??a???? ?p??e?eta?, [Greek: O(/stis gar o(s ty/rannon e)mporeu/etai,]

?e???? ?st? d?????, ??? ??e??e??? ?.

[Greek: Kei/nou e)sti dou~los, ka)n e)leu/theros me|.]

("Seek'st thou a tyrant's door? then farewell, freedom!

Though _free_ as air before.")

_Vide Incert. Fab. Fragm_., No. 789, _Trag. Grec. Fragm_., A. Nauck, 1889, p. 316.]

[306] The verse and sentiment are taken from Homer.

[??s? ??? t' ??et?? ?p?a???ta? e????pa ?e??

[Greek: e(/misy ga/r t' a)rete~s a)poai/nytai eu)ry/opa Zeu/s]

???????, e?t? ?? ?? ?at? d?????? ?a????s??.

[Greek: ?Ane/ros, eu~(t? a(/n min kata dou/lion e~)mare(/le|sin.]

_Odyssey_, xvii. 322, 323.]

[307] {265}Petrarch. [Dante died September 14, 1321, when Petrarch, born July 20, 1304, had entered his eighteenth year.]

[308] [Historical events may be thrown into the form of prophecy with some security, but not so the critical opinions of the _soi-disani_ prophet. If Byron had lived half a century later, he might have placed Ariosto and Ta.s.so after and not before Petrarch.]

[ck]

_Was crimsoned with his veins who died to save,_ _Shall be his glorious argument,_----.--[MS, Alternative reading.]

[309] {266}[See the Introduction to the _Lament of Ta.s.so_, _ante_, p.

139, and _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza x.x.xvi. line 2, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 355, note 1.]

[310] [Alfonso d'Este (II.), Duke of Ferrara, died 1597.]

[311] [Compare the opening lines of the _Orlando Furioso_--

"Le Donne, i Cavalier'! l'arme, gli amori, Le Cortesie, l'audaci imprese io canto."

See _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanzas xl., xli., _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 359, 360, note 1.]

[312] [The sense is, "Ariosto may be matched with, perhaps excelled by, Homer; but where is the Greek poet to set on the same pedestal with Ta.s.so?"]

[313] [Compare _Churchill's Grave_, lines 15-19--

"And is this all? I thought,--and do we rip The veil of Immortality, and crave I know not what of honour and of light Through unborn ages, to endure this blight?

So soon, and so successless?"

_Vide ante_, p. 47.]

[cl] {267}

/ _winged_ _The_ <> _blood_----.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

_lightning_ /

[314] [Compare--

"For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise."

_Kubla Khan,_ lines 52, 53, _Poetical Works_. of S. T. Coleridge, 1893, p. 94.]

[315] [Compare--

"By our own spirits are we deified: We Poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof come in the end despondency and madness."

_Resolution and Independence_, vii. lines 5-7, Wordsworth's _Poetical Works_, 1889, p. 175.

Compare, too, Moore's fine apology for Byron's failure to submit to the yoke of matrimony, "and to live happily ever afterwards"--

"But it is the cultivation and exercise of the imaginative faculty that, more than anything, tend to wean the man of genius from actual life, and, by subst.i.tuting the sensibilities of the imagination for those of the heart, to render, at last, the medium through which he feels no less unreal than that through which he thinks. Those images of ideal good and beauty that surround him in his musings soon accustom him to consider all that is beneath this high standard unworthy of his care; till, at length, the heart becoming chilled as the fancy warms, it too often happens that, in proportion as he has refined and elevated his theory of all the social affections, he has unfitted himself for the practice of them."--_Life_, p. 268.]

[316] {269}[So too Wordsworth, in his Preface to the _Lyrical Ballads_ (1800); "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings."]