1 Part of the Acropolis was destroyed by the explosion of a magazine during the Venetian siege.-[On the highest part of Lycabettus, as Chandler was informed by an eye-witness, the Venetians, in 1687, placed four mortars and six pieces of cannon, when they battered the Acropolis. One of the bombs was fatal to some of the sculpture on the west front of the Parthenon. "In 1667," says Mr. Hobhouse, "every antiquity of which there is now any trace in the Acropolis, was in a tolerable state of preservation. This great temple might, at that period, be called entire; having been previously a Christian church, it was then a mosque, the most beautiful in the world. At present, only twenty-nine of the Doric columns, some of which no longer support their entablatures, and part of the left wall of the cell, remain standing. Those of the north side, the angular ones excepted, have all fallen. The portion yet standing cannot fail to fill the mind of the indifferent spectator with sentiments of astonishment and awe; and the same reflections arise upon the sight even of the enormous masses of marble ruins which are spread upon the area of the temple. Such scattered fragments will soon constitute the sole remains of the Temple of Minerva."]

We can all feel, or imagine, the regret with which the ruins of cities, once the capitals of empires, are beheld: the reflections suggested by such objects are too trite to require recapitulation. But never did the littleness of man, and the vanity of his very best virtues, of patriotism to exalt, and of valour to defend his country, appear more conspicuous than in the record of what Athens was, and the certainty of what she now is. This theatre of contention between mighty factions, of the struggles of orators, the exaltation and deposition of tyrants, the triumph and punishment of generals, is now become a scene of petty intrigue and perpetual disturbance, between the bickering agents of certain British nobility and gentry. "The wild foxes, the owls and serpents in the ruins of Babylon," were surely less degrading than such inhabitants. The Turks have the plea of conquest for their tyranny, and the Greeks have only suffered the fortune of war, incidental to the bravest; but how are the mighty fallen, when two painters contest the privilege of plundering the Parthenon, and triumph in turn, according to the tenor of each succeeding firman! Sylla could but punish, Philip subdue, and Xerxes burn Athens, but it remained for the paltry antiquarian, and his despicable agents, to render her contemptible as himself and his pursuits. The Parthenon, before its destruction in part, by fire during the Venetian siege, had been a temple, a

3 [In the original MS. we find the following note to this and the five following stanzas, which had been prepared for publication, but was afterwards withdrawn, "from a fear, says the poet," that it might be considered rather as an attack, than a defence of religion:"-" In this age of bigotry, when the puritan and priest have changed places, and the wretched Catholic is visited with the sins of his fathers,' even unto generations far beyond the pale of the commandment, the cast of opinion in these stanzas will, doubtless, meet with many a contemptuous anathema. But let it be remembered, that the spirit they breathe is desponding, not sneering, scepticism; that he who has seen the Greek and Moslem superstitions contending for mastery over the former shrines of Polytheism - who has left in his own, Pharisees, thanking God that they are not like publicans and sinners,' and Spaniards in theirs, abhorring the heretics, who have holpen them in their need, will be not a little bewildered, and begin to think, that as only one of them can be right, they may, most of them, be wrong. With regard to morals, and the effect of religion en mankind, it appears, from all historical testimony, to have had less effect in making them love their neighbours, than inducing that cordial Christian abhorrence between sectaries and schismatics. The Turks and Quakers are the most tolerant : if an Infidel pays his heratch to the former, he may pray how, when, and where he pleases; and the mild tenets, and devout demeanour of the latter, make their lives the truest cominentary on the Sermon on the Mount."]

4["Still wilt thou harp."-- MS.]

5 It was not always the custom of the Greeks to burn their dead; the greater Ajax, in particular, was interred entire. Almost all the chiefs became gods after their decease; and he was indeed neglected, who had not annual games near his tomb, or festivals in honour of his memory by his countrymen, as Achilles, Brasidas, &c., and at last even Antinous, whose death was as heroic as his life was infamous.

[In the original MS., for this magnificent stanza, we find what follows:

"Frown not upon me, churlish Priest! that I Look not for life, where life may never be ;

I am no sneerer at thy phantasy;

Thou pitiest me, -alas! I envy thee,

Thou bold discoverer in an unknown sea,

Of happy isles and happier tenants there;

I ask thee not to prove a Sadducee;

Still dream of Paradise, thou know'st not where,
But lov'st too well to bid thine erring brother share."]

[Lord Byron wrote this stanza at Newstead, in October, 1811, on hearing of the death of his Cambridge friend, young Eddlestone; "making," ," he says, "the sixth, within four months, of friends and relations that I have lost between May and the end of August." See post, Hours of Idleness, "The Cornelian."]

3" The thought and the expression," says Professor Clarke, in a letter to Lord Byron, "are here so truly Petrarch's, that I would ask you whether you ever read,—

X.

Here let me sit upon this massy stone, 3 The marble column's yet unshaken base; Here, son of Saturn! was thy fav'rite throne: + Mightiest of many such! Hence let me trace The latent grandeur of thy dwelling-place. It may not be nor ev'n can Fancy's eye Restore what Time hath labour'd to deface. Yet these proud pillars claim no passing sigh; nmoved the Moslem sits, the light Greek carols by.

XI.

But who, of all the plunderers of yon fane On high, where Pallas linger'd, loth to flee The latest relic of her ancient reign; The last, the worst, dull spoiler, who was he? Blush, Caledonia! such thy son could be! England! I joy no child he was of thine : Thy free-born men should spare what once was free; Yet they could violate each saddening shrine, And bear these altars o'er the long-reluctant brine.

XII.

But most the modern Pict's ignoble boast,

To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spared:

Cold as the crags upon his native coast, &
His mind as barren and his heart as hard,

Is he whose head conceived, whose hand prepared,
Aught to displace Athena's poor remains :
Her sons, too weak the sacred shrine to guard,
Yet felt some portion of their mother's pains, 7
And never knew, till then, the weight of Despot's chains.

XIII.

What shall it e'er be said by British tongue, Albion was happy in Athena's tears? Though in thy name the slaves her bosom wrung, Tell not the deed to blushing Europe's ears; The ocean queen, the free Britannia, bears The last poor plunder from a bleeding land: Yes, she, whose gen'rous aid her name endears, Tore down those remnants with a harpy's hand, Which envious Eld forbore, and tyrants left to stand. 8

4 The temple of Jupiter Olymplus, of which sixteen columns, entirely of marble, yet survive: originally there were one hundred and fifty. These columns, however, are by many supposed to have belonged to the Pantheon.

5 See Appendix to this Canto [A], for a note too long to be placed here. The ship was wrecked in the Archipelago. 6 ["Cold and accursed as his native coast."-MS.]

7 I cannot resist availing myself of the permission of my friend Dr. Clarke, whose name requires no comment with the public, but whose sanction will add tenfold weight to my testimony, to insert the following extract from a very obliging letter of his to me, as a note to the above lines: -"When the last of the metopes was taken from the Parthenon, and, in moving of it, great part of the superstructure with one of the triglyphs was thrown down by the workmen whom Lord Elgin employed, the Disdar, who beheld the mischief done to the building, took his pipe from his mouth, dropped a tear, and, in a supplicating tone of voice, said to Lusieri, Ties!. I was present." The Disdar alluded to was the father of the present Disdar.

8 [After stanza xiii. the original MS. has the following:"Come, then, ye classic Thanes of each degree, Dark Hamilton and sullen Aberdeen, Come pilfer all the Pilgrim loves to see, All that yet consecrates the fading scene: Oh! better were it ye had never been,

Nor ye, nor Elgin, nor that lesser wight,
The victim sad of vase-collecting spleen,
House-furnisher withal, one Thomas hight,

Or will the gentle Dilettanti crew
Now delegate the task to digging Gell,
That mighty limner of a birds'-eye view,
How like to Nature let his volumes tell;
Who can with him the folio's limits swell
With all the Author saw, or said he saw ?
Who can topographize or delve so well?
No boaster he, nor impudent and raw,

His pencil, pen, and shade, alike without a flaw."]

1 According to Zosimus, Minerva and Achilles frightened Alaric from the Acropolis; but others relate that the Gothic

XXI.

The moon is up; by Heaven, a lovely eve! Long streams of light o'er dancing waves expand; Now lads on shore may sigh, and maids believe : Such be our fate when we return to land! Meantime some rude Arion's restless hand Wakes the brisk harmony that sailors love; 4 A circle there of merry listeners stand, Or to some well-known measure featly move, Thoughtless, as if on shore they still were free to rove.

XXII.

Through Calpe's straits survey the steepy shore;
Europe and Afric on each other gaze!
Lands of the dark-eyed Maid and dusky Moor
Alike beheld beneath pale Hecate's blaze:
How softly on the Spanish shore she plays,
Disclosing rock, and slope, and forest brown,
Distinct, though darkening with her waning phase;
But Mauritania's giant-shadows frown,

From mountain-cliff to coast descending sombre down.

XXIII.

"T is night, when Meditation bids us feel We once have loved, though love is at an end: The heart, lone mourner of its baffled zeal, Though friendless now, will dream it had a friend. 5 Who with the weight of years would wish to bend, When Youth itself survives young Love and Joy? Alas! when mingling souls forget to blend, Death hath but little left him to destroy! [boy? Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a

king was nearly as mischievous as the Scottish peer. See Chandler.

2 To prevent blocks or splinters from falling on deck during action.

3 ["From Discipline's stern law," &c. — MS.] 4["Plies the brisk instrument that sailors love."— MS.] ["Bleeds the lone heart, once boundless in its zeal, And friendless now, yet dreams it had a friend."MS.]

6 ["Ah! happy years! I would I were once more a boy." -MS.]

[One of Lord Byron's chief delights was, as he himself states in one of his journals, after bathing in some retired spot, to seat himself on a high rock above the sea, and there remain for hours, gazing upon the sky and the waters. "He led the life," says Sir Egerton Brydges, "as he wrote the strains, of a true poct. He could sleep, and very frequently did sleep, wrapped up in his rough great coat, on the hard boards of a deck, while the winds and the waves were roaring round him on every side, and could subsist on a crust and a glass of water. It would be difficult to persuade me, that he who is a coxcomb in his manners, and artificial in his habits of life, could write good poetry."]

2 Goza is said to have been the island of Calypso.-["The identity of the habitation assigned by poets to the nymph Calypso, has occasioned much discussion and variety of opinion. Some place it at Malta, and some at Goza."Hoare's Classical Tour.]

3 [For an account of this accomplished but eccentric lady,

XXIX.

But not in silence pass Calypso's isles, 2 The sister tenants of the middle deep; There for the weary still a haven smiles, Though the fair goddess long hath ceased to weep, And o'er her cliffs a fruitless watch to keep For him who dared prefer a mortal bride : Here, too, his boy essay'd the dreadful leap Stern Mentor urged from high to yonder tide; While thus of both bereft, the nymph-queen doubly sighed.

XXX.

Her reign is past, her gentle glories gone: But trust not this: too easy youth, beware! A mortal sovereign holds her dangerous throne, And thou may'st find a new Calypso there. Sweet Florence! could another ever share This wayward, loveless heart, it would be thine: But check'd by every tie, I may not dare To cast a worthless offering at thy shrine, Nor ask so dear a breast to feel one pang for mine.

XXXI.

Thus Harold deem'd, as on that lady's eye He look'd, and met its beam without a thought Save Admiration glancing harmless by : Love kept aloof, albeit not far remote, Who knew his votary often lost and caught, But knew him as his worshipper no more, And ne'er again the boy his bosom sought: Since now he vainly urged him to adore, Well deem'd the little God his ancient sway was o'er.

XXXII.

Fair Florence found, in sooth with some amaze, One who, 't was said, still sigh'd to all he saw, Withstand, unmoved, the lustre of her gaze, Which others hail'd with real or mimic awe, [law; Their hope, their doom, their punishment, their All that gay Beauty from her bondsmen claims: And much she marvell'd that a youth so raw Nor felt, nor feign'd at least, the oft-told flames, Which, though sometimes they frown, yet rarely anger dames.

XXXIII.

Little knew she' that seeming marble heart, Now mask'd in silence or withheld by pride, Was not unskilful in the spoiler's art, 4 And spread its snares licentious far and wide;" Nor from the base pursuit had turn'd aside, As long as aught was worthy to pursue: But Harold on such arts no more relied; And had he doted on those eyes so blue, Yet never would he join the lover's whining crew.

whose acquaintance the poet formed at Malta, see Miscellaneous Poems, September, 1809, "To Florence." "In one so imaginative as Lord Byron, who, while he infused so much of his life into his poetry, mingled also not a little of poetry with his life, it is difficult," says Moore, "in unravelling the texture of his feelings, to distinguish at all times between the fanciful and the real. His description here, for instance, of the unmoved and loveless heart,' with which he contemplated even the charms of this attractive person, is wholly at variance with the statements in many of his letters; and, above all, with one of the most graceful of his lesser poems, addressed to this same lady, during a thunder-storm on his road to Zitza."]

4 [Against this line it is sufficient to set the poet's own de claration, in 1821 :-"I am not a Joseph, nor a Scipio, but I can safely affirm, that I never in my life seduced any woman."]

["We have here another instance of his propensity to

XXXIV.

Not much he kens, I ween, of woman's breast, Who thinks that wanton thing is won by sighs; What careth she for hearts when once possess'd? Do proper homage to thine idol's eyes; But not too humbly, or she will despise Thee and thy suit, though told in moving tropes: Disguise ev'n tenderness, if thou art wise; Brisk Confidence still best with woman copes: Pique her and soothe in turn, soon Passion crowns thy hopes.

XXXV.

"T is an old lesson; Time approves it true,
And those who know it best, deplore it most;
When all is won that all desire to woo,
The paltry prize is hardly worth the cost:
Youth wasted, minds degraded, honour lost,
These are thy fruits, successful Passion! these!
If, kindly cruel, early hope is crost,
Still to the last it rankles, a disease,

Not to be cured when love itself forgets to please.

XXXVI.

Away! nor let me loiter in my song,
For we have many a mountain-path to tread,
And many a varied shore to sail along,
By pensive Sadness, not by Fiction, led —
Climes, fair withal as ever mortal head
Imagined in its little schemes of thought;
Or e'er in new Utopias were ared,

To teach man what he might be, or he ought; If that corrupted thing could ever such be taught.

XXXVII.

Dear Nature is the kindest mother still, Though always changing in her aspect mild; From her bare bosom let me take my fill, Her never-wean'd, though not her favour'd child. Oh! she is fairest in her features wild, Where nothing polish'd dares pollute her path: To me by day or night she ever smiled, Though I have mark'd her when none other hath, And sought her more and more, and loved her best in wrath.

XXXVIII.

Land of Albania! where Iskander rose, Theme of the young, and beacon of the wise, And he his namesake, whose oft-baffled foes Shrunk from his deeds of chivalrous emprize : Land of Albania 2! let me bend mine eyes On thee, thou rugged nurse of savage men! The cross descends, thy minarets arise, And the pale crescent sparkles in the glen, Through many a cypress grove within each city's ken.

self-misrepresentation. However great might have been the irregularities of his college life, such phrases as the spoiler's art,' and spreading snares,' were in no wise applicable to them."- MOORE.]

1["Brisk Impudence," &c. - MS.]

2 See Appendix to this Canto, Note [B].

3 Ithaca." Sept. 24th," says Mr. Hobhouse, "we were in the channel, with Ithaca, then in the hands of the French, to the west of us. We were close to it, and saw a few shrubs on a brown heathy land, two little towns in the hills, scattered amongst trees, and a windmill or two, with a tower on the heights. That Ithaca was not very strongly garrisoned, you will easily believe, when I tell, that a month afterwards, when the Ionian Islands were invested by a British squadron, it was surrendered into the hands of a sergeant and seven

XXXIX.

Childe Harold sail'd, and pass'd the barren spot Where sad Penelope o'erlook'd the wave; 3 And onward view'd the mount, not yet forgot, The lover's refuge, and the Lesbian's grave. Dark Sappho could not verse immortal save That breast imbued with such immortal fire? Could she not live who life eternal gave? If life eternal may await the lyre, That only Heaven to which Earth's children may aspire.

XL.

"T was on a Grecian autumn's gentle eve
Childe Harold hail'd Leucadia's cape afar; 4
A spot he long'd to see, nor cared to leave:
Oft did he mark the scenes of vanish'd war,
Actium, Lepanto, fatal Trafalgar ; ›
Mark them unmoved, for he would not delight
(Born beneath some remote inglorious star)

In themes of bloody fray, or gallant fight, [wight. But loathed the bravo's trade, and laughed at martial

XLI.

But when he saw the evening star above Leucadia's far-projecting rock of woe, And hail'd the last resort of fruitless love, He felt, or deem'd he felt, no common glow: And as the stately vessel glided slow Beneath the shadow of that ancient mount, He watch'd the billows' melancholy flow, And, sunk albeit in thought as he was wont, More placid seem'd his eye, and smooth his pallid front. 6

XLII.

Morn dawns and with it stern Albania's hills, Dark Suli's rocks, and Pindus' inland peak, Robed half in mist, bedew'd with snowy rills, Array'd in many a dun and purple streak, Arise; and, as the clouds along them break, Disclose the dwelling of the mountaineer; Here roams the wolf, the eagle whets his beak, Birds, beasts of prey, and wilder men appear, [year. And gathering storms around convulse the closing

XLIII.

Now Harold felt himself at length alone, And bade to Christian tongues a long adieu; Now he adventured on a shore unknown, Which all admire, but many dread to view: His breast was arm'd 'gainst fate, his wants were few; Peril he sought not, but ne'er shrank to meet : The scene was savage, but the scene was new; This made the ceaseless toil of travel sweet, [heat. Beat back keen winter's blast, and welcomed summer's

men." For a very curious account of the state of the kingdom of Ulysses in 1816, see Williams's Travels, vol. ii. p. 427.]

4 Leucadia, now Santa Maura. From the promontory (the Lover's Leap) Sappho is said to have thrown herself.[Sept. 28th, we doubled the promontory of Santa Maura, and saw the precipice which the fate of Sappho, the poetry of Ovid, and the rocks so formidable to the ancient mariners, have made for ever memorable."-- HOBHOUSE.]