LXXVII. Again he comes; nor dart nor lance avail, Nor the wild plunging of the tortured horse; Though man and man's avenging arms assail, Vain are his weapons, vainer is his force. One gallant steed is stretch'd a mangled corse; Another, hideous sight! unseam'd appears, His gory chest unveils life's panting source; Though death-struck, still his feeble frame he rears; Staggering, but stemming all, his lord unharm'd he bears. LXXVIII. Foil'd, bleeding, breathless, furious to the last, Mid wounds, and clinging darts, and lances brast, Shake the red cloak and poise the ready brand: Once more through all he bursts his thundering way Vain rage! the mantle quits the conynge hand, Wraps his fierce eye-'tis past-he sinks upon the sand ! ! LXXIX. Where his vast neck just mingles with the spine, The corse is piled-sweet sight for vulgar eyes 2— Four steeds that spurn the rein, as swift as shy, Hurl the dark bulk along, scarce seen in dashing by. LXXX. Such the ungentle sport that oft invites For some slight cause of wrath, whence life's warm stream must flow. 9 LXXXI. But Jealousy has fled his bars, his bolts, His wither'd centinel, Duenna sage! And all whereat the generous soul revolts, Which the stern dotard deem'd he could encage, Have pass'd to darkness with the vanish'd age. Who late so free as Spanish girls were seen (Ere War uprose in his volcanic rage,) With braided tresses bounding o'er the green, While on the gay dance shone Night's lover-loving Queen ? [The reader will do well to compare Lord Byron's animated picture of the popular "sport" of the Spanish nation, with the very circumstantial details contained in the charming "Letters of Don Leucadio Doblado," (i. e. the Rev. Blanco White) published in 1822. So inveterate was, at one time, the rage of the people for this amusement, that even boys mimicked its features in their play. In the slaughter-house itself the professional bull-fighter gave public lessons; and such was the force of depraved custom, that ladies of the highest rank were not ashamed to appear amidst the filth and horror of the shambles. The Spaniards received this sport from the Moors, among whom it was celebrated with great pomp and splendour. See various Notes to Mr. Lockhart's Collection of Ancient Spanish Ballads. 1822] LXXXII. Oh! many a time and oft, had Harold loved, Or dream'd he loved, since rapture is a dream; But now his wayward bosom was unmoved, For not yet had he drunk of Lethe's stream; And lately had he learn'd with truth to deem Love has no gift so grateful as his wings: How fair, how young, how soft soe'er he seem, Full from the fount of Joy's delicious springs 4 Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings. LXXXIII. Yet to the beauteous form he was not blind, Though now it moved him as it moves the wise: Not that Philosophy on such a mind E'er deign'd to bend her chastely-awful eyes: But Passion raves itself to rest, or flies; And Vice, that digs her own voluptuous tomb, Had buried long his hopes, no more to rise: Pleasure's pall'd victim! life-abhorring gloom Wrote on his faded brow curst Cain's unresting doom. LXXXIV. Still he beheld, nor mingled with the throng; To charms as fair as those that soothed his happier day. TO INEZ. J. NAY, smile not at my sullen brow; Yet Heaven avert that ever thou And dost thou ask what secret woe It is not love, it is not hate, Nor low Ambition's honours lost, It is that weariness which springs Thine eyes have scarce a charm for me. 2 ["The trophy corse is reared- disgusting prize". Or, "The corse is reared - sparkling the chariot flies."- MS.] 3 ["The Spaniards are as revengeful as ever. At Santa Otella I heard a young peasant threaten to stab a woman (an old one to be sure, which mitigates the offence), and was told, on expressing some small surprise, that this ethic was by no means uncommon."-MS.] And when, beneath the evening star, Of Christian knight or Moorish hero, Or joins devotion's choral band, To chaunt the sweet and hallow'd vesper : — In each her charms the heart must move May match the dark-eyed Girl of Cadiz. Alluding to the conduct and death of Solano, the governor of Cadiz, in May, 1809. 5" War to the knife." Palafox's answer to the French general at the siege of Saragoza. [In his proclamation, also, he stated, that, should the French commit any robberies, devastations, and murders, no quarter should be given them. The dogs by whom he was beset, he said, scarcely left him time to clean his sword from their blood, but they still found their grave at Saragoza. All his addresses were in the same spirit. "His language," says Mr. Southey, "had the high tone, and something of the inflation of Spanish romance, suiting the character of those to whom it was directed." See || History of the Peninsular War, vol. iii. p. 152] 6 The Canto, in the original MS., closes with the following stanzas: Ye, who would more of Spain and Spaniards know. Go! hie ye hence to Paternoster Row Are they not written in the Book of Carr, Green Erin's Knight and Europe's wandering star! Then listen, Readers, to the Man of Ink, Hear what he did, and sought, and wrote afar. All these are coop'd within one Quarto's brink, This borrow, steal,- don't buy, and tell us what you think. Porphyry said, that the prophecies of Daniel were written after their completion, and such may be my fate here; but it requires no second sight to foretell a tome: the first glimpse of the knight was enough. [In a letter written from Gibraltar, August 6. 1809, to his friend Hodson, Lord Byron says-"I have seen Sir John Carr at Seville and Cadiz; and, like Swift's barber, have been down on my knees to beg he would not put me into black and white."] There may you read, with spectacles on eyes, How many troops y-cross'd the laughing main All that was said, or sung, or lost, or won, By vaunting Wellesley or by blundering Frere, Thus poesy the way to grandeur paves Who would not such diplomatists prefer? But cease, my Muse. thy speed some respite craves, Yet here of Vulpes mention may be made, His soul Socratic no Xantippe awes; The Honourable John Wingfield, of the Guards, who died of a fever at Coimbra (May 14. 1811). I had known him ten years, the better half of his life, and the happiest part of In the short space of one month, I have lost her who gave me being, and most of those who had made that being tolerable. To me the lines of Young are no fiction: mine. Insataite archer! could not one suffice? Tay shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain, I should have ventured a verse to the memory of the late Charles Skinner Matthews, Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, were he not too much above all praise of mine. His powers of mind, shown in the attainment of greater honours, against the ablest candidates, than those of any graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established [The Needy Knife-grinder," in the Anti-jacobin, was a joint production of Messrs. Frere and Canning.] his fame on the spot where it was acquired; while his softer qualities live in the recollection of friends who loved him too well to envy his superiority. [This and the following stanza were added in August, 1811. In one of his school-boy poems, entitled "Childish Recollections," Lord Byron has thus drawn the portrait of young Wingfield : "Alonzo! best and dearest of my friends, Thy name ennobles him who thus commends : If hope anticipates the words of truth, All, all that brothers should be, but the name." Matthews, the idol of Lord Byron at college, was drowned, while bathing in the Cam, on the 2d of August. The following passage of a letter from Newstead to his friend Scrope Davies, written immediately after the event, bears the impress of strong and even agonised feelings:-" My dearest Davies; some curse hangs over me and mine. My mother lies a corpse in the house; one of my best friends is drowned in a ditch. What can I say, or think, or do? I received a letter from him the day before yesterday. My dear Scrope, if you can spare a moment, do come down to me - I want a friend. Matthews's last letter was written on Friday, on Saturday he was not. In ability, who was like Matthews ? How did we all shrink before him. You do me but justice in saying I would have risked my paltry existence to have preserved his. This very evening did I mean to write, inviting him, as I invite you, my very dear friend, to visit me. What will our poor Hobhouse feel? His letters breathe but of Matthews. Come to me, Scrope, I am almost desolate-left almost alone in the world!"-Matthews was the son of John Matthews, Esq. (the representative of Herefordshire, in the parliament of 1802-6), and brother of the author of "The Diary of an Invalid," also untimely snatched away.] 2 ["Beloved the most."-MS.] 3" Dec. 30th, 1809."- MS.] 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."] 2 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 III. Son of the morning, rise! approach you here! Come -but molest not yon defenceless urn: Look on this spot - a nation's sepulchre ! Abode of gods, whose shrines no longer burn. Even gods must yield religions take their turn: 'Twas Jove's -'tis Mahomet's - and other creeds Will rise with other years, till man shall learn Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds; Poor child of Doubt and Death, whose hope is built on reeds. 3 IV. Bound to the earth, he lifts his eye to heaven Is't not enough, unhappy thing to know Thou art? Is this a boon so kindly given, That being, thou would'st be again, and go, Thou know'st not, reck'st not, to what region, so On earth no more, but mingled with the skies? Still wilt thou dream on future joy and woe? Regard and weigh yon dust before it flies: That little urn saith more than thousand homilies. V. Or burst the vanish'd Hero's lofty mound; Why ev'n the worm at last disdains her shatter'd cell ! 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 on 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 commentary 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 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, 1911, 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 P trarch's, that I would ask you whether you ever read, — • Poi quando 'l vero sgombra Quel dolce error pur li medesmo assido, Me freddo, pietra morta in pietra viva; In guisa d'uom chè pensi e piange e scriva; ' "Thus rendered by Wilmot, - • But when rude truth destroys The loved illusion of the dreamed sweets, I sit me down on the cold rugged stone, Les cold, less dead than I, and think and weep alone.'"] The temple of Jupiter Olymplus, of which sixteen columns, entirely of maride, 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, Tixes! I was present." The Disdar alluded to was the father of the present Disdar. [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, Oh! better were it ye had never been, Than ye should bear one stone from wrong'd Athena's site. |