CANTO THE FOURTH." I. I. I STOOD in Venice, on the "Bridge of Sighs; I saw from out the wave her structures rise "2 1.H. As from the stroke of the Enchanter's wand: [Venice and La Mira on the Brenta. Copied, August, 1817. Begun, June 26. Finished, July 29th. MS. M.] 2. [Byron sent the first stanza to Murray, July 1, 1817, "the shaft of the column as a specimen." Gifford, Frere, and many more to whom Murray "ventured to show it," expressed their approval (Memoir of John Murray, i. 385). "The Bridge of Sighs,'" he explains (i.e. Ponte de Sospiri), "is that which divides, or rather joins, the palace of the Doge to the prison of the state." Compare The Two Foscari, act iv. sc. I "In Venice' but's' a traitor. But me no 'buts,' unless you would pass o'er The Bridge which few repass." This, however, is an anachronism. The Bridge of Sighs was built by Antonio da Ponte, in 1597, more than a century after the death of Francesco Foscari. "It is," says Mr. Ruskin, "a work of no merit and of a late period, owing the interest it possesses chiefly to its pretty name, and to the ignorant sentimentalism of Byron" (Stones of Venice, 1853, ii. 304; iii. 359).] 3. [Compare Mysteries of Udolpho, by Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, 1794, ii. 35, 36— 66 Its terraces crowned with airy yet majestic fabrics . A thousand Years their cloudy wings expand Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles !1 II. She looks a sea Cybele,1 fresh from Ocean, i. At airy distance, with majestic motion, A Ruler of the waters and their powers: throned on her Seventy Isles.—[MS. M. altern. reading, D.] appeared as if they had been called up from the Ocean by the wand of an enchanter."] 1. Sabellicus, describing the appearance of Venice, has made use of the above image, which would not be poetical were it not true.-" Quo fit ut qui supernè [ex specula aliqua eminentiore] urbem contempletur, turritam telluris imaginem medio Oceano figuratam se putet inspicere." [De Veneta Urbis situ Narratio, lib. i. Ital. Ill. Script., 1600, p. 4. Marcus Antonius Coccius Sabellicus (1436-1506) wrote, inter alia, a History of Venice, published in folio in 1487, and Rhapsodia Historiarum Enneades, a condito mundo, usque ad A.C. 1504. His description of Venice (vide supra) was published after his death in 1527. Hofmann does not give him a good character: “Obiit A.C. 1506, turpi morbo confectus, ætat. 70, relicto filio notho." But his Avtoemitáciov implies that he was satisfied with himself. "Quem non res hominum, non omnis ceperat ætas, 66 Lexicon Universale, art. "Marcus," etc. Cybele (sometimes written Cybelle and Cybele), the "mother of the Goddesses," was represented as wearing a mural crown coronamque turritam gestare dicitur" (Albricus Phil., De Imag. Deor., xii.). Venice with her tiara of proud towers is the earth-goddess Cybele, having "suffered a sea-change."] And such she was;-her daughters had their dowers From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East 1 Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.1 In purple was she robed,2 and of her feast Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.". III. In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more, 2. H. i. From spoils of many nations and the East.- ii. Monarchs sate down -[D. erased.] 1. ["Gems wrought into drinking-vessels, among which the least precious were framed of turquoise, jasper, or amethyst... unnumbered jacinths, emeralds, sapphires, chrysolites, and topazes, and, lastly, those matchless carbuncles which, placed on the High Altar of St. Mark's, blazed with intrinsic light, and scattered darkness by their own beams; these are but a sample of the treasures which accrued to Venice" (Villehardouin, lib. iii. p. 129). (See Sketches from Venetian History, 1831, i. 161.)] ... 2. [After the fall of Constantinople, in 1204, "the illustrious Dandolo . . . was permitted to tinge his buskins in the purple hue distinctive of the Imperial Family, to claim exemption from all feudal service to the Emperor, and to annex to the title of Doge of Venice the proud style of Despot of Romania, and Lord of One-fourth and One-eighth of the Roman Empire" (ibid., 1831, i. 167).] 3. [The gondoliers (see Hobhouse's note ii.) used to sing alternate stanzas of the Gerusalemme Liberata, capping each other like the shepherds in the Bucolics. The rival reciters were sometimes attached to the same gondola ; but often the response came from a passing gondolier, a stranger to the singer who challenged the contest. Rogers, in his Those days are gone-but Beauty still is here. The Revel of the earth-the Masque of Italy! IV. But unto us she hath a spell beyond i. The pleasure-place of all festivity.—[MS. M.] Italy, laments the silence which greeted the swan-song of his own gondolier "He sung, As in the time when Venice was Herself, We rested; and the verse was verse divine! We could not err-Perhaps he was the last For none took up the strain, none answer'd him ; The Gondola (Poems, 1852, ii. 79). Compare, too, Goethe's "Letters from Italy," October 6, 1786: "This evening I bespoke the celebrated song of the mariners, who chaunt Tasso and Ariosto to melodies of their own. This must actually be ordered, as it is not to be heard as a thing of course, but rather belongs to the halfforgotten traditions of former times. I entered a gondola by moonlight, with one singer before and the other behind me. They sing their song, taking up the verses alternately. . . 66 Sitting on the shore of an island, on the bank of a canal, or on the side of a boat, a gondolier will sing away with a loud penetrating voice-the multitude admire force above everything-anxious only to be heard as far as possible. Over the silent mirror it travels far."-Travels in Italy, 1883, p. 73.] |