LXXXII. Oh! many a time and oft, had Harold loved, Or dream'd he loved, since rupture 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." LXXVII. 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, Full in the centre stands the bull at bay, Mid wounds, and clinging darts, and lances brast, And foes disabled in the brutal fray : And now the Matadores around him play, Shake the red cloak and poise the ready brand : Once more through all he bursts his thundering way Vaid rage ! the mantle quits the conynge hand, Wraps his fierce eye — 'tis past - he sinks upon the sand! 1 LXXIX. Where his vast neck just mingles with the spine, Sheathed in his form the deadly weapon lies. He stops — he starts - disdaining to decline : Slowly he falls, amidst triumphant cries, Without a groan, without a struggle dies. The decorated car appears - on high 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. 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 pallid victim ! life-abhorring gloom Wrote on his faded brow curst Cain's unresting doom. LXXXIV. Still he beheld, nor mingled with the throng; But view'd them not with misanthropic hate : Fain would he now have join'd the dance, the song; But who may smile that sinks beneath his fate ? Nought that he saw his sadness could abate : Yet once he struggled 'gainst the demon's sway, And as in Beauty's bower he pensive sate, Pour'd forth this unpremeditated lay, To charms as fair as those that soothed his happier day. TO INEZ. LXXX. Such the ungentle sport that oft invites The Spanish maid, and cheers the Spanish swain. Nurtured in blood betimes, his heart delights In vengeance, gloating on another's pain. What private feuds the troubled village stain ! Though now one phalanx'd host should meet the fue, Enough, alas ! in humble homes remain, To meditate 'gainst friends the secret blow, For some slight cause of wrath, whence life's warm stream must flow. 3 LXXXI. But Jealousy has filed : his bars, his bolts, His wither'd centinel, Duenna sage ! And all whereat the generous sow 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 hone 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 mimnicked 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. ] ). Alas! I cannot smile again : 2. I bear, corroding joy and youth ? 3. Nor low Ambition's honours lost, That bids me loathe my present state, And fly from all I prized the most : 4. It is that weariness which springs From all I meet, or hear, or see : To me no pleasure Beauty brings ; 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.) Medio de fonte leporum, Luc. " [" Some bitter bubbles up, and e'en on roses stings.". MS.] B When all were changing thou alone wert true, Here all were noble, save Nobility! 5. It is that settled, ceaseless gloom The fabled Hebrew wanderer bore; That will not look beyond the tomb, But cannot hope for rest before. 6. To zones though more and more remote, 7. And taste of all that I forsake; on! may they still of transport dream, And nc'er, at least like me, awake! 8. With many a retrospection curst; 9. In pity from the search forbear: Simile on - nor venture to unmask Man's heart, and view the Hell that's there. 3 LXXXVI. Such be the sons of Spain, and strange her fate ! They fight for freedom who were never free, A Kingless people for a nerveless state ; Her vassals combat when their chieftains flee, True to the veriest slaves of Treachery : Fond of a land which gave them nought but life, Pride points the path that leads to Liberty ; Back to the struggle, baffled in the strife, War, war is still the cry, “ War even to the knife!", LXXXV. To other zones, howe'er remote, The blight of life — the demon Thought." - MS.] ? [" “ Written January 25, 1810." - MS.] 3 In place of this song, which was written at Athens, January 25. 1810, and which contains, as Moore says, “ some of the dreariest touches of sadness that ever Byron's pen let fall," we find, in the first draught of the Canto, the following: 1. Of northern climes and British ladies, Like me, the lovely girl of Cadiz. Nor fair her locks, like English lasses, 2 The fire, that through those silken lashes From eyes that cannot hide their flashes : In lengthend flow her raven tresses, 3. And frigid even in possession; Their lips are slow at Love's confession. For love ordain'd the Spanish maid is, 4. Vor joys to see a lover tremble, Alike she knows not to dissemble. Howe'er it beats, it beats sincerely, 5. Ne'er taunts you with a mock denial, Her passion in the hour of trial. She dares the deed and shares the danger; LXXXVII. Ye, who would more of Spain and Spaniards know, Go, read whate'er is writ of bloodiest strie: Whate'er keen Vengeance urged on foreign fue Can act, is acting there against man's life : From Aashing scimitar to secret knife, War mouldeth there each weapon to his need So may he guard the sister and the wife, So may he make each curst oppressor bleed, And should her lorer press the plain, 6. She mingles in the gay Bolero, Of Christian knight or Moorish hero, Beneath the twinkling rays of Hesper, 7. of all who venture to behold her; Because her bosom is not colder: Where many a soft and melting maid is, May match the dark-eyed Girl of Cadiz. • Alluding to the conduct and de of Solano, the governor of Cadiz, in May, 1809. S“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, des vastations, 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 hishi 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. 132] 6 The Canto, in the original MS., closes with the following stanzas : Ye, who would more of Spain and Spaniards know, Sights, Saints, Antiques, Arts, Anecdotes, and War, Go! hie ye hence to Paternoster Row Are they not written in the Book of Carr, Green Érin'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 vere writtra after their completion, and such may be my fate bere; but it requires no second sight to foretella tome : che first glimpse or the knight was enough. [In a letter written from Gloraltar. 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 relics each cathedral grace, There may you read (Oh, Pacebus, save Sir John! Fho could not such diplomatists prefer? | Leare Legates to their house, and armies to their graves. Yt bere of Vulpes mention may be made, True to her second husband and her first: 1 The Honourable John Wingfield, of the Guards, who died of a fever at Coimbra (May 14. 181). I had known him ter years, the better half of his life, and the happiest part of In the short space of one month, I have lost her who ve me being, and most of those who had made that being tolerable. To me the lines of Young are no fiction: * Insataite archer ! could not one suffice ? Tuy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain, And thrice ere thrice yon moon had tilld her horn." I should hare ventured a verse to the memory of the late Charles Skinner Matthews, Fellow of Downing College, Carnbridge, were he not too much above all praise of mine. His powers of mind, shown in the attainment of greater nosaurs, against the ablest candidates, than those of any graduate oa record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established 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, Th; name ennobles him who thus commends : 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 inmediately after the event, bears the impress of strong and even agonised feelings : -" My dearest Daries; 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 erening 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.] ? [“ Beloved the most." - MS.) 3(“ Dec. 30th, 1809." — MS.] [The * Needy Knife-grinder," in the Anti-jacobin, was a joint production of Messrs. Frere and Canning.] | Part of the Acropolis was destroyed by the explosion of a church, and a mosque. In each point of view it is an object “ Man, proud man, Drest in a little brief authority, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As make the angels weep." tolerable state of preservation. This great temple might, at that period, be called entire;- having been previously a 3. [In the original MS. we find the following note to this Christian church, it was then a mosque, the most beautiful in and the fire following stanzas, which had been prepared for the world. At present, only twenty-nine of the Doric columns, publication, but was afterwards withdrawn, “ from a fear, some of which no longer support their entablatures, and part of says the poet, "that it might be considered rather as an attack, the left wall of the cell, remain standing. Those of the north than a detence of religion :"-"In this age of bigotry, when side, the angular ones excepted, have all fallen. The portion the puritan and priest have changed places, and the wretched yet standing cannot fail to fill the mind of the indifferent Catholic is visited with the sins of his fathers,' even unto spectator with sentiments of astonishment and awe; aud the generations far beyond the pale of the commandment, the cast same reflections arise upon the sight even of the enormous of opinion in these stanzas will, doubtless, meet with many a masses of marble ruins which are spread upon the area of the contemptuous anathema. But let it be remembered, that the temple. Such scattered fragments will soon constitute the spirit they breathe is desponding, not sneering, scepticism; sole remains of the Temple of Minerva."] that he who has seen the Greek and Moslem superstitions 2 We can all feel, or imagine, the regret with which the contending for mastery over the former shrines of Polytheism ruins of cities, once the capitals of empires, are beheld ; the who has left in his own, Pharisees, thanking God that reflections suggested by such objects are too trite to require they are not like publicans and sinners; and Spaniards in vanity of his very best virtues, of patriotism to exalt, and of need, - will be not a little bewildered, and begin to think, valour to defend his country, appear more conspicuous than that as only one of them can be right, they may, most of them, in the record of what Athens was, and the certainty of what be wrong. With regard to morals, and the effect of religion she now is. This theatre of contention between mighty fac on mankind, it appears, from all historical testimony, to have tions, of the struggles of orators, the exaltation and deposition had less effect in making them love their neighbours, than in. of tyrants, the triumph and punishment of generals, is now ducing that cordial Christian abhorrence between sectaries and become a scene of petty intrigue and perpetual disturbance, schismatics. The Turks and Quakers are the most tolerant: between the bickering agents of certain British nobility and is an Infidel pays his heratch to the former, he may pray how, gentry. “ The wild foxes, the owls and serpents in the ruins when, and where he pleases ; and the mild tenets, and devout of Babylon," were surely less degrading than such inhabitants. demeanour of the latter, make their lives the truest comThe Turks have the plea of conquest for their tyranny, and mentary on the Sermon on the Mount."] the Greeks have only suffered the fortune of war, incidental * (" Still wilt thou harp." - MS.) to the bravest ; but how are the mighty fallen, when two painters contest the privilege of plundering the Parthenon, and 5. It was not always the custom of the Greeks to burn their triumph in turn, according to the tenor of cach succeeding dead; the greater Ajax, in particular, was interred entire. firman!. Sylla could but punish, Philip subdue, and Xerxes Almost all the chiefs became gods after their decease ; and burn Athens ; but it remained for the paltry antiquarian, and he was indeed neglected, who had not annual games near his his despicable agents, to render her contemptible as himself tomb, or festivals in honour of his memory by his countrymen, and his pursuits. The Parthenon, before its destruction in ! as Achilles, Brasidas, &c., and at last even Antinous, whose part, by fire during the Venetian siege, had been a temple, a death was as heroic as his life was infamous. ! (In the original MS., for this magnificent stanza, we find hat 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, Or happy isles and happier tenants there; I ask thee not to prove a Sadducee; Still dream of Paradise, thou know'st not where, : (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 Loaths, of friends and relations that I have lost betwe40 May and the end of August." See post, Hours of Idleness, The Cornelian."] ("The thought and the expression," says Professor Clarke, in a letter to Lord Byron, “ are here so truly Post trarch's, that I would ask you whether you ever read, Poi quando 'l vero sgombra In guisa d'uom chè pensi e piange e scriva;' " Thus rendered by Wilmot, -• But wlien rude truth destroys The loved illusion of the dreamed sweets, I si me down on the cold rugged stone, Len cold, less dead than I, and think and weep alone.'"] • The temple of Jupiter Olympius, 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. * See Appendix to this Canto (A), for a note too long to be placed here. The ship was wrecked in the Archipelago. 8 [“ 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, anı, 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, Tinos! I was present.' The Disdar alluded to was the father of the present Disdar, [Aster stanza xiii. the original MS. has the following:"Corr.e, then, ye ciassic Thanes of each degree, Dark Hamilton and sullea Aberdeen, House-furnisher withal, one Thomas hight, 3 |