The Works of Lord Byron Volume V Part 151

"But I have sinuous sh.e.l.ls of pearly hue.

Shake one and it awakens; then apply Its polisht lips to your attentive ear, And it remembers its august abodes, And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there."

Compare, too, _The Excursion_, bk. iv.--

"I have seen A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped sh.e.l.l, To which, in silence hushed, his very soul Listened intently," etc.

Landor, in his _Satire upon Satirists_, 1836, p. 29, commenting on Wordsworth's alleged remark that he "would not give five shillings for all the poetry that Southey had written" (see _Letters_, 1900, iv.

Appendix IX. pp. 483, 484), calls attention to this unacknowledged borrowing, "It would have been honester," he says, "and more decorous if the writer of the following verses had mentioned from what bar he drew his wire." According to H. C. Robinson (_Diary_, 1869, iii. 114), Wordsworth acknowledged no obligation to Landor's _Gebir_ for the image of the sea-sh.e.l.l. "From his childhood the sh.e.l.l was familiar to him, etc. The 'Satire' seemed to give Wordsworth little annoyance."]

[395] {615}[In his Preface to Cantos I., II. of _Childe Harold_ (_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 5), Byron relies on the authority of "Ariosto Thomson and Beattie" for the inclusion of droll or satirical "variations" in a serious poem. Nevertheless, Dallas prevailed on him to omit certain "ludicrous stanzas." It is to be regretted that no one suggested the excision of sections xix.-xxi. from the second canto of The Island.]

[396] Hobbes, the father of Locke's and other philosophy, was an inveterate smoker,--even to pipes beyond computation.

["Soon after dinner he [Hobbes] retired to his study, and had his candle, with ten or twelve pipes of tobacco laid by him; then, shutting his door, he fell to smoking, and thinking, and writing for several hours."--_Memoirs of the Family of Cavendish_, by White Kennet, D.D., 1708, pp. 14, 15.]

[fp] _Yet they who love thee best prefer by far_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[397] ["I shall now smoke two cigars, and get me to bed.... The Havannah are the best;--but neither are so pleasant as a hooka or chiboque."--_Journal_, December 6, 1813, _Letters_, 1898, ii. 368.]

[398] {616} This rough but jovial ceremony, used in crossing the line, has been so often and so well described, that it need not be more than alluded to.

[399] {617} "That will do for the marines, but the sailors won't believe it," is an old saying: and one of the few fragments of former jealousies which still survive (in jest only) between these gallant services.

[400] {619} Archidamus, King of Sparta, and son of Agesilaus, when he saw a machine invented for the casting of stones and darts, exclaimed that it was the "grave of valour." The same story has been told of some knights on the first application of gunpowder; but the original anecdote is in Plutarch. [The Greek is "?p????e?, ??d??? ??et? [A)po/lolen, a)ndros a)reta/]," Plutarch's _Scripta Moralia_, 1839, i. 230.]

[fq] {621} _To people in a small embarra.s.sment_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[401] {622} [Fletcher Christian, born 1763, was the fourth son of Charles Christian, an attorney, of Moreland Close, in the parish of Brigham, c.u.mberland. His family, which was of Manx extraction, was connected with the Christians of Ewanrigg, and the Curwens of Workington Hall. His brother Edward became Chief Justice of Ely, and was well known as the editor of _Blackstones Commentaries_. For purposes of verification (see _An Answer to certain a.s.sertions, etc._, 1794, p. 9), Bligh described him as "aged 24 years, five feet nine inches high, blackish or very dark brown complexioned, dark brown hair, strong made, star tatowed on the left breast," etc. According to "Morrison's Journal," high words had pa.s.sed between Bligh and Christian on more than one occasion, and, on the day before the mutiny, a question having arisen with regard to the disappearance of some cocoa-nuts, Christian was cross-examined by the captain as to his share of the plunder. "I really do not know, sir," he replied; "but I hope you do not think me so mean as to be guilty of stealing yours." "Yes," said Bligh, "you ---- hound, I do think so, or you could have given a better account of them." It was after this offensive accusation that Christian determined, in the first instance, to quit the ship, and on the morning of April 28, 1788, finding the mate of the watch asleep, on the spur of the moment resolved to lay violent hands on the captain, and a.s.sume the command of the _Bounty_. The language attributed to Bligh reads like a translation into the vernacular, but if Christian kept his designs to himself, it is strange that they were immediately understood and acted upon by a body of impromptu conspirators. Testimony, whether written or spoken, with regard to the succession of events "in moments like to these," is worth very little; but it is pretty evident that Christian was a gentleman, and that Bligh's violent and unmannerly ratings were the immediate cause of the mutiny.

Contradictory accounts are given of Christian's death. It is generally believed that in the fourth year of the settlement on Pitcairn Island the Tahitians formed a plot to ma.s.sacre the Englishmen, and that Christian was shot when at work in his plantation (_The Mutineers, etc._, by Lady Belcher, 1870, p. 163; _The Mutiny, etc._, by Rosalind A.

Young, 1894, p. 28). On the other hand, Amasa Delano, in his _Narrative of Voyages, etc._ (Boston, 1817, cap. v. p. 140), a.s.serts that Captain Mayhew Folger, who was the first to visit the island in 1808, "was very explicit in his inquiry at the time, as well as in his account of it to me, that they lived under Christian's government several years after they landed; that during the whole time they enjoyed tolerable harmony; that Christian became sick, and died a natural death." It stands to reason that the ex-pirate, Alexander Smith, who had developed into John Adams, the pious founder of a patriarchal colony, would be anxious to draw a veil over the early years of the settlement, and would satisfy the curiosity of visitors who were officers of the Royal Navy, as best he could, and as the spirit moved him.]

[fr] {625} _The ruined remnant of the land's defeat_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[402] {626}[Compare _The Siege of Corinth_, lines 438, 439, Poetical Works, 1900, iii. 467.]

[403] {629} Of this cave (which is no fiction) the original will be found in the ninth chapter of "Mariner's Account of the Tonga Islands"

[1817, i. 267-279]. I have taken the poetical liberty to transplant it to Toobonai, the last island where any distinct account is left of Christian and his comrades.

[The following is the account given by Mariner: "On this island [Hoonga]

there is a peculiar cavern, which was first discovered by a young chief, whilst diving after a turtle. The nature of this cavern will be better understood if we imagine a hollow rock rising sixty feet or more above the surface of the water, into the cavity of which there is no known entrance but one, and that is on the side of the rock, as low down as six feet under the water, into which it flows; and, consequently, the base of the cavern may be said to be the sea itself." Mariner seeing some young chiefs diving into the water one after another, and not rise again, he inquired of the last, ... what they were about? "'Follow me,'"

said he, "'and I will take you where you have never been before....'"

Mariner prepared to follow his companion, and, guided by the light reflected from his heels, entered the opening in the rock, and rose into the cavern. The light was sufficient, after remaining about five minutes, to show objects with some little distinctness; ...

Nevertheless, as it was desirable to have a stronger light, Mariner dived out again, and, priming his pistol, tied plenty of gnatoo tight round it, and wrapped the whole up in a plantain-leaf: he directed an attendant to bring a torch in the same way. Thus prepared, he re-entered the cavern, unwrapped the gnatoo, fired it by the flash of the powder, and lighted the torch. "The place was now illuminated tolerably well....

It appeared (by guess) to be about forty feet wide in the main part, but it branched off, on one side, in two narrower portions. The medium height seemed also about forty feet. The roof was hung with stalact.i.tes in a very curious way, resembling, upon a cursory view, the Gothic arches and ornaments of an old church." According to one of the matabooles present, the entire family of a certain chief had, in former times, been condemned to death for conspiring against a rival tyrant--the chief to be taken out to sea and drowned, the rest of the family to be ma.s.sacred. One of the chiefs daughters was a beautiful girl, to whom the youth who discovered the cave was attached. "He had long been enamoured of this young maiden, but had never dared to make her acquainted with the soft emotions of his heart, knowing that she was betrothed to a chief of higher rank and greater power, but now, ... no time was to be lost; he flew to her abode ... declared himself her deliverer if she would trust to his honour.... Soon her consenting hand was clasped in his: the shades of evening favoured their escape ... till her lover had brought a small canoe to a lonely part of the beach. In this they speedily embarked.... They soon arrived at the rock, he leaped into the water, and she, instructed by him, followed close after; they rose into the cavern, and rested from their fatigue, partaking of some refreshments which he had brought there for himself...." Here she remained, visited from time to time by her more fortunate Leander, until he was enabled to carry her off to the Fiji islands, where they dwelt till the death of the tyrant, when they returned to Vavaoo, "and lived long in peace and happiness."]

[404] {631} This may seem too minute for the general outline (in Mariner's Account) from which it is taken. But few men have travelled without seeing something of the kind--on _land_, that is. Without adverting to Ellora, in Mungo Park's last journal, he mentions having met with a rock or mountain so exactly resembling a Gothic cathedral, that only minute inspection could convince him that it was a work of nature.

[Ellora, a village in the Nizam's dominions, is thirteen miles north-west of Aurangabad. "It is famous for its rock-caves and temples.

The chief building, called the kailas, ... is a great monolithic temple, isolated from surrounding rock, and carved outside as well as in.... It is said to have been built about the eighth century by Raja Edu of Ellichpur."--Hunter's _Imperial Gazetteer of India_, 1885, iv. 348-351.

The pa.s.sage in Mungo Park's _Journal of a Mission to the Interior of Africa_, 1815, p. 75, runs thus: "June 24th [1805],--Left Sullo, and travelled through a country beautiful beyond imagination, with all the possible diversities of _rock_, sometimes towering up like ruined castles, spires, pyramids, etc. We pa.s.sed one place so like a ruined Gothic abbey, that we halted a little, before we could satisfy ourselves that the niches, windows, etc., were all natural rock."]

[405] [Byron's quadrisyllable was, probably, a poetic licence. There is, however, an obsolete plural, _stalact.i.tae_, to be found in the works of John Woodward, M.D., _Fossils of England_, 1729, i. 155.]

[fs] {632} _Where Love and Torquil might lie safe from men_.--[MS. D.

erased.]

[406] {633} The reader will recollect the epigram of the Greek anthology, or its translation into most of the modern languages--

"Whoe'er thou art, thy master see-- He was, or is, or is to be."

[Byron is quoting from memory an "Ill.u.s.tration" in the notes to _Collections from the Greek Anthology_, by the Rev. Robert Bland, 1813, p. 402--

"Whoe'er thou art, thy Lord and master see.

Thou wast my Slave, thou art, or thou shall be."

The couplet was written by George Granville, Lord Lansdowne (1667-1735), as an _Inscription for a Figure representing the G.o.d of Love_. (See _The Genuine Works, etc._, 1732, I. 129.)]

[407] {634} The tradition is attached to the story of Elosa, that when her body was lowered into the grave of Abelard (who had been buried twenty years), he opened his arms to receive her.

[The story is told by Bayle, who quotes from a ma.n.u.script chronicle of Tours, preserved in the notes of Andreas Querceta.n.u.s, affixed to the _Historia Calamitatum Abaelardi_: "Eadem defuncta ad tumulam apertum depertata, maritus ejus qui multis diebus ante eam defunctus fuerat, elevatis brachiis eam recepit, et ita earn amplexatus brachia sua strinxit."--See Petri Abelardi _Opera_, Paris, 1616, ii. 1195.]

[ft] {636} _Too late it might be still at least to die_.--[MS. D.

erased.]

[fu] {637} _The crag as droop a bird without her young_.--[MS. D.

erased.]

[408] In Thibault's account of Frederick the Second of Prussia, there is a singular relation of a young Frenchman, who with his mistress appeared to be of some rank. He enlisted and deserted at Schweidnitz; and after a desperate resistance was retaken, having killed an officer, who attempted to seize him after he was wounded, by the discharge of his musket loaded with a _b.u.t.ton_ of his uniform. Some circ.u.mstances on his court-martial raised a great interest amongst his judges, who wished to discover his real situation in life, which he offered to disclose, but to the king only, to whom he requested permission to write. This was refused, and Frederic was filled with the greatest indignation, from baffled curiosity or some other motive, when he understood that his request had been denied. [_Mes Souvenirs de vingt ans de sejour a Berlin, ou Frederic Le Grand, etc._, Paris, 1804, iv. 145-150.]

[fv] _He tore a silver vest_----.--[MS. D. erased.]

[fw] {639} _Their hollow shrine_----.--[MS. D. erased.]

[fx]

_As only a yet infant_----.--[MS. D.]

{_As only an infantine World_----.

{_As only a yet unweaned World_----.--[Alternative readings. MS. D.]