[515] {437} The Pantheon has been made a receptacle for the busts of modern great, or, at least, distinguished men. The flood of light which once fell through the large orb above on the whole circle of divinities, now shines on a numerous assemblage of mortals, some one or two of whom have been almost deified by the veneration of their countrymen.
["The busts of Raphael, Hannibal Caracci, Pierrin del Vaga, Zuccari, and others ... are ill assorted with the many modern contemporary heads of ancient worthies which now glare in all the niches of the Rotunda."—Historical Illustrations, p. 293.]
[516] This and the three next stanzas allude to the story of the Roman daughter, which is recalled to the traveller by the site, or pretended site, of that adventure, now shown at the Church of St. Nicholas in Carcere. The difficulties attending the full belief of the tale are stated in Historical Illustrations, p. 295.
[The traditional scene of the "Caritas Romana" is a cell forming part of the substructions of the Church of S. Nicola in Carcere, near the Piazza Montanara. Festus (De Verb. Signif., lib. xiv., A. J. Valpy, 1826, ii. 594), by way of illustrating Pietas, tells the story in a few words: "It is said that Ælius dedicated a temple to Pietas on the very spot where a woman dwelt of yore. Her father was shut up in prison, and she kept him alive by giving him the breast by stealth, and, as a reward for her deed, obtained his forgiveness and freedom." In Pliny (Hist. Nat., vii. 36) and in Valerius Maximus (V. 4) it is not a father, but a mother, whose life is saved by a daughter's piety.]
[pe] With her unkerchiefed neck——.—[MS. M. erased.]
[pg] No waiting silence or suspense——.—[MS. M. erased.]
[517] {439} [It was fabled of the Milky Way that when Mercury held up the infant Hercules to Juno's breast, that he might drink in divinity, the goddess pushed him away, and that drops of milk fell into the void, and became a multitude of tiny stars. The story is told by Eratosthenes of Cyrene (B.C. 276), in his Catasterismi (Treatise on Star Legends), No. 44: Opusc. Mythol., Amsterdam, 1688, p. 136.]
[518] The castle of St. Angelo. (See Historical Illustrations.)
[Hadrian's mole or mausoleum, now the Castle of St. Angelo, is situated on the banks of the Tiber, on the site of the "Horti Neronis." "It is composed of a square basement, each side of which measures 247 feet.... A grand circular mole, nearly 1000 feet in circumference, stands on the square basement," and, originally, "supported in its turn a cone of earth covered with evergreens, like the mausoleum of Augustus." A spiral way led to a central chamber in the interior of the mole, which contained, presumably, the porphyry sarcophagus in which Antoninus Pius deposited the ashes of Hadrian, and the tomb of the Antonines. Honorius (A.D. 428) was probably the first to convert the mausoleum into a fortress. The bronze statue of the Destroying Angel, which is placed on the summit, dates from 1740, and is the successor to five earlier statues, of which the first was erected in 1453. The conception and execution of the Moles Hadriana are entirely Roman, and, except in size and solidity, it is in no sense a mimic pyramid.—Ruins and Excavations, etc., by R. Lanciani, 1897, p. 554, sq.]
[519] This and the next six stanzas have a reference to the Church of St. Peter's. (For a measurement of the comparative length of this basilica and the other great churches of Europe, see the pavement of St. Peter's, and the Classical Tour through Italy, ii. 125, et seq., chap, iv.)
[pj] Look to the dome——.—[MS. M.]
[520] [Compare The Prophecy of Dante, iv. 49-53—
Compare, too, Browning's Christmas Eve, sect, x.—
[521] [The ruins which Byron and Hobhouse explored, March 25, 1810 (Travels in Albania, ii. 68-71), were not the ruins of the second Temple of Artemis, the sixth wonder of the world (vide Philo Byzantius, De Septem Orbis Miraculis), but, probably, those of "the great gymnasium near the port of the city." In 1810, and for long afterwards, the remains of the temple were buried under twenty feet of earth, and it was not till 1870 that the late Mr. J. T. Wood, the agent of the Trustees of the British Museum, had so far completed his excavations as to discover the foundations of the building on the exact spot which had been pointed out by Guhl in 1843. Fragments of the famous sculptured columns, thirty-six in number, says Pliny (Hist. Nat., xxxvi. 95), were also brought to light, and are now in the British Museum. (See Modern Discoveries on the Site of Ancient Ephesus, by J. T. Wood, 1890; Hist. of Greek Sculpture, by A. S. Murray, ii. 304.)]
[522] [Compare Don Juan, Canto IX. stanza xxvii. line 2—"I have heard them in the Ephesian ruins howl."]
[pm] Their glittering breastplate in the sun——.—[MS. M. erased.]
[523] [Compare Canto II. stanza lxxix. lines 2, 3—
[524] [The emphasis is on the word "fit." The measure of "fitness" is the entirety of the enshrinement or embodiment of the mortal aspiration to put on immortality. The vastness and the sacredness of St. Peter's make for and effect this embodiment. So, too, the living temple "so defined," great with the greatness of holiness, may become the enshrinement and the embodiment of the Spirit of God.]
[525] [This stanza may be paraphrased, but not construed. Apparently, the meaning is that as the eye becomes accustomed to the details and proportions of the building, the sense of its vastness increases. Your first impression was at fault, you had not begun to realize the almost inconceivable vastness of the structure. You had begun to climb the mountain, and the dazzling peak seemed to be close at your head, but as you ascend, it recedes. "Thou movest," but the building expands; "thou climbest," but the Alp increases in height. In both cases the eye has been deceived by gigantic elegance, by the proportion of parts to the whole.]
[po] And fair proportions which beguile the eyes.—[MS. M. erased.]
[pt] Before your eye—and ye return not as ye came.—[MS. M. erased.]
[pu] In that which Genius did, what great Conceptions can.—[MS. M. erased.]
[526] [Pliny tells us (Hist. Nat., xxxvi. 5) that the Laocoon which stood in the palace of Titus was the work of three sculptors, natives of Rhodes; and it is now universally admitted that the statue which was found (January 14, 1516) in the vineyard of Felice de' Freddi, not far from the ruins of the palace, and is now in the Vatican, is the statue which Pliny describes. M. Collignon, in his Histoire de la Sculpture Grecque, gives reasons for assigning the date of the Laocoon to the first years of the first century B.C. It follows that the work is a century later than the frieze of the great altar of Pergamos, which contains the figure of a young giant caught in the toils of Athena's serpent—a theme which served as a model for later sculptors of the same school. In 1817 the Laocoon was in the heyday of its fame, and was regarded as the supreme achievement of ancient art. Since then it has been decried and dethroned. M. Collignon protests against this excessive depreciation, and makes himself the mouthpiece of a second and more temperate reaction: "On peut ... gôuter mediocrement le mélodrame, sans méconnaître pour cela les réelles qualités du groupe. La composition est d'une structure irréprochable, d'une harmonie de lignes qui défie toute critique. Le torse du Laocoon trahit une science du nu pen commune" (Hist. de la Sculp. Grecque, 1897, ii. 550, 551).]
[pw] Shackles its living rings, and——.—[MS. M. erased.]
[527] [In his description of the Apollo Belvidere, Byron follows the traditional theory of Montorsoli, the pupil of Michael Angelo, who restored the left hand and right forearm of the statue. The god, after his struggle with the python, stands forth proud and disdainful, the left hand holding a bow, and the right hand falling as of one who had just shot an arrow. The discovery, in 1860, of a bronze statuette in the Stroganoff Collection at St. Petersburg, which holds something like an ægis and a mantle in the left hand, suggested to Stephani a second theory, that the Belvidere Apollo was a copy of a statue of Apollo Boëdromios, an ex-voto offering on the rout of the Gauls when they attacked Delphi (B.C. 278). To this theory Furtwaengler at one time assented, but subsequently came to the conclusion that the Stroganoff bronze was a forgery. His present contention is that the left hand held a bow, as Montorsoli imagined, whilst the right grasped "a branch of laurel, of which the leaves are still visible on the trunk which the copyist added to the bronze original." The Apollo Belvidere is, he concludes, a copy of the Apollo Alexicacos of Leochares (fourth century B.C.), which stood in the Cerameicos at Athens. M. Maxime Collignon, who utters a word of warning as to the undue depreciation of the statue by modern critics, adopts Furtwaengler's later theory (Masterpieces of Ancient Greek Sculpture, by A. Furtwaengler, 1895, ii. 405, sq.).]
[528] {447} [The "delicate" beauty of the statue recalled the features of a lady whom he had once thought of making his wife. "The Apollo Belvidere," he wrote to Moore (May 12, 1817), "is the image of Lady Adelaide Forbes. I think I never saw such a likeness."]
[529] [It is probable that lines 1-4 of this stanza contain an allusion to a fact related by M. Pinel, in his work, Sur l'Insanité, which Milman turned to account in his Belvidere Apollo, a Newdigate Prize Poem of 1812—
Milman's Poetical Works, Paris, 1829, p. 180.
Compare, too, Coleridge's Kubla Khan, lines 14-16—
Poetical Works, 1893, p. 94.]
[530] [The fire which Prometheus stole from heaven was the living soul, "the source of all our woe." (Compare Horace, Odes, i. 3. 29-31—
[532] [Charlotte Augusta (b. January 7, 1796), only daughter of the Prince Regent, was married to Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, May 2, 1816, and died in childbirth, November 6, 1817.
Other poets produced their dirges; but it was left to Byron to deal finely, and as a poet should, with a present grief, which was felt to be a national calamity.
Southey's "Funeral Song for the Princess Charlotte of Wales" was only surpassed in feebleness by Coleridge's "Israel's Lament." Campbell composed a laboured elegy, which was "spoken by Mr ... at Drury Lane Theatre, on the First Opening of the House after the Death of the Princess Charlotte, 1817;" and Montgomery wrote a hymn on "The Royal Infant, Still-born, November 5, 1817."
Not a line of these lamentable effusions has survived; but the poor, pitiful story of common misfortune, with its tragic irony, uncommon circumstance, and far-reaching consequence, found its vates sacer in the author of Childe Harold.]
[533] {452} [Compare Canto III. stanza xxxiv. lines 6, 7—
[534] [Mr. Tozer traces the star simile to Homer (Iliad, viii. 559)— Πάντα δέ τ' εἴδεται ἄστρα, γέγηθε δέ τε φρένα ποιμήν
[535] [Compare Macbeth, act iii. sc. 2, lines 22, 23—
[536] [Compare Coriolanus, act iii. sc. 3, lines 121, 122—
[537] {453} Mary died on the scaffold; Elizabeth, of a broken heart; Charles V., a hermit; Louis XIV., a bankrupt in means and glory; Cromwell, of anxiety; and, "the greatest is behind," Napoleon lives a prisoner. To these sovereigns a long but superfluous list might be added of names equally illustrious and unhappy.
[qa] Which sinks——.—[MS. M.]
[538] [The simile of the "earthquake" was repeated in a letter to Murray, dated December 3, 1817: "The death of the Princess Charlotte has been a shock even here, and must have been an earthquake at home.... The death of this poor Girl is melancholy in every respect, dying at twenty or so, in childbed—of a boy too, a present princess and future queen, and just as she began to be happy, and to enjoy herself, and the hopes which she inspired."]
[539] {454} The village of Nemi was near the Arician retreat of Egeria, and, from the shades which embosomed the temple of Diana, has preserved to this day its distinctive appellation of The Grove. Nemi is but an evening's ride from the comfortable inn of Albano.
[The basin of the Lago di Nemi is the crater of an extinct volcano. Hence the comparison to a coiled snake. Its steel-blue waters are unruffled by the wind which lashes the neighbouring ocean into fury. Hence its likeness to "cherished hate," as contrasted with "generous and active wrath."]
[qb] And calm as speechless hate——.—[MS. M.]
[540] [The spectator is supposed to be looking towards the Mediterranean from the summit of Monte Cavo. Tusculum, where "Tully reposed," lies to the north of the Alban Hills, on the right; but, as Byron points to a spot "beneath thy right," he probably refers to the traditional site of the Villa Ciceronis at Grotta Ferrata, and not to an alternative site at the Villa Ruffinella, between Frascati and the ruins of Tusculum. Horace's Sabine farm, on the bank of Digentia's "ice-cold rivulet," is more than twenty miles to the north-east of the Alban Hills. The mountains to the south and east of Tusculum intercept the view of the valley of the Licenza (Digentia), where the "farm was tilled." Childe Harold had bidden farewell to Horace, once for all, "upon Soracte's ridge," but recalls him to keep company with Virgil and Cicero.]
[541] ["Calpe's rock" is Gibraltar (compare Childe Harold, Canto II. stanza xxii. line i). "Last" may be the last time that Byron and Childe Harold saw the Mediterranean together. Byron had last seen it—"the Midland Ocean"—by "Calpe's rock," on his return journey to England in 1811. Or by "last" he may mean the last time that it burst upon his view. He had not seen the Mediterranean on his way from Geneva to Venice, in October-November, 1816, or from Venice to Rome, April—May, 1817; but now from the Alban Mount the "ocean" was full in view.]
[542] ["After the stanza (near the conclusion of Canto 4th) which ends with the line—
"'As if there was no man to trouble what is clear,'
insert the two following stanzas (clxxvii., clxxviii.). Then go on to the stanza beginning, 'Roll on thou,' etc., etc. You will find the place of insertion near the conclusion—just before the address to the Ocean.
"These two stanzas will just make up the number of 500 stanzas to the whole poem.
"Answer when you receive this. I sent back the packets yesterday, and hope they will arrive in safety."—D.]
[543] [His desire is towards no light o' love, but for the support and fellowship of his sister. Compare the opening lines of the Epistle to Augusta—
[544] {457} [Compare Childe Harold, Canto III. stanza lxxii. lines 8, 9; and Epistle to Augusta, stanza xi.]
[545] [Compare Ps. cvii. 26, "They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths."]
[qf] And dashest him to earth again: there let him lay!—[D.]
[546] ["Lay" is followed by a plainly marked period in both the MSS. (M. and D.) of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold. For instances of the same error, compare "The Adieu," stanza 10, line 4, and ["Pignus Amoris"], stanza 3, line 3 (Poetical Works, 1898, i. 232, note, and p. 241). It is to be remarked that Hobhouse, who pencilled a few corrections on the margin of his own MS. copy, makes no comment on this famous solecism. The fact is that Byron wrote as he spoke, with the "careless and negligent ease of a man of quality," and either did not know that "lay" was not an intransitive verb or regarded himself as "super grammaticam."]
[547] {459} [Compare Campbell's Battle of the Baltic (stanza ii. lines 1, 2)—
[qg] These oaken citadels which made and make.—[MS. M. erased.]
[548] The Gale of wind which succeeded the battle of Trafalgar destroyed the greater part (if not all) of the prizes—nineteen sail of the line—taken on that memorable day. I should be ashamed to specify particulars which should be known to all—did we not know that in France the people were kept in ignorance of the event of this most glorious victory in modern times, and that in England it is the present fashion to talk of Waterloo as though it were entirely an English triumph—and a thing to be named with Blenheim and Agincourt—Trafalgar and Aboukir. Posterity will decide; but if it be remembered as a skilful or as a wonderful action, it will be like the battle of Zama, where we think of Hannibal more than of Scipio. For assuredly we dwell on this action, not because it was gained by Blucher or Wellington, but because it was lost by Buonaparte—a man who, with all his vices and his faults, never yet found an adversary with a tithe of his talents (as far as the expression can apply to a conqueror) or his good intentions, his clemency or his fortitude.
Look at his successors throughout Europe, whose imitation of the worst parts of his policy is only limited by their comparative impotence, and their positive imbecility.—[MS. M.]
[549] {460} ["When Lord Byron wrote this stanza, he had, no doubt, the following passage in Boswell's Johnson floating in his mind.... 'The grand object of all travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean. On those shores were the four great empires of the world—the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman' (Life of Johnson, 1876, p. 505)."—Note to Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanza clxxxii. ed. 1891.]
[550] [See letter to Murray, September 24, 1818: "What does 'thy waters wasted them' mean (in the Canto)? That is not me. Consult the MS. always." Nevertheless, the misreading appeared in several editions. (For a correspondence on the subject, see Notes and Queries, first series, vol. i. pp. 182, 278, 324, 508; vol. ix. p. 481; vol. x. pp. 314, 434.)]
[qh] Thy waters wasted them while they were free.—[Editions 1818, 1819, 1823, and Galignani, 1825.]
[qi] Unchangeable save calm thy tempests ply.—[MS. M., D.]
[551] [Compare Tennyson's In Memoriam, lv. stanza 6—
[552] ["While at Aberdeen, he used often to steal from home unperceived; sometimes he would find his way to the seaside" (Life, p. 9). For an account of his feats in swimming, see Letters, 1898, i. 263, note 1; and letter to Murray, February 21, 1821. See, too, for a "more perilous, but less celebrated passage" (from Old Lisbon to Belem Castle), Travels in Albania, ii. 195.]
[553] ["It was a thought worthy of the great spirit of Byron, after exhibiting to us his Pilgrim amidst all the most striking scenes of earthly grandeur and earthly decay ... to conduct him and us at last to the borders of 'the Great Deep.' ... The image of the wanderer may well be associated, for a time, with the rock of Calpe, the shattered temples of Athens, or the gigantic fragments of Rome; but when we wish to think of this dark personification as of a thing which is, where can we so well imagine him to have his daily haunt as by the roaring of the waves? It was thus that Homer represented Achilles in his moments of ungovernable and inconsolable grief for the loss of Patroclus. It was thus he chose to depict the paternal despair of Chryseus—" Βή δ' ἀκέων παρὰ θῖνα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης." Note by Professor Wilson, ed. 1837.]
[ql] Fatal—and yet it shakes me not—farewell.—[MS. M.]
[qm] Ye! who have traced my Pilgrim to the scene.—[MS. M.]