Here giant weeds a passage scarce allow
To Halls deserted, portals gaping wide:
Fresh lessons to the thinking bosom, how
Vain are the pleasaunces on earth supplied;"
Swept into wrecks anon by Time's ungentle tide!

XXIV.

Behold the hall where chiefs were late convened ! 4.B.

Oh! dome displeasing unto British eye!
With diadem hight Foolscap, lo ! a Fiend,

A little Fiend that scoffs incessantly,

There sits in parchment robe arrayed, and by ii.

His side is hung a seal and sable scroll,

Where blazoned glare names known to chivalry,"

And sundry signatures adorn the roll,iv.

iii.

Whereat the Urchin points and laughs with all his soul."

i. Vain are the pleasaunces by art supplied.-[MS. D.]

ii. - yclad, and by.-[MS. D.]

iii. Where blazoned glares a name spelt" Wellesley.”—[MS. D.] iv. are on the roll.—[MS. erased, D.]

v. The following stanzas, which appear in the MS., were excluded at the request of Dallas (see his letter of October 10, 1811, Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron, 1824, pp. 173-187), Letters, 1898, ii. 51:

In golden characters right well designed
First on the list appeareth one Junot; "
Then certain other glorious names we find,
(Which Rhyme compelleth me to place below :)
Dull victors! baffled by a vanquished foe,
Wheedled by conynge tongues of laurels due,
Stand, worthy of each other in a row-
Sirs Arthur, Harry, and the dizzard Hew
Dalrymple, seely wight, sore dupe of t'other tew.

Convention is the dwarfy demon styled

That foiled the knights in Marialva's dome:

XXV.

Convention is the dwarfish demon styled '

1

That foiled the knights in Marialva's dome :
Of brains (if brains they had) he them beguiled,
And turned a nation's shallow joy to gloom.

Of brains (if brains they had) he them beguiled,
And turned a nation's shallow joy to gloom.
For well I wot, when first the news did come
That Vimiera's field by Gaul was lost,
For paragraph ne paper scarce had room,
Such Paans teemed for our triumphant host,
In Courier, Chronicle, and eke in Morning Post.

But when Convention sent his handy work

Pens, tongues, feet, hands combined in wild uproar;
Mayor, Aldermen, laid down the uplifted fork;
The Bench of Bishops half forgot to snore;

1. [On August 21, 1808, Sir Harry Burrard (1755-1813) superseded in command Sir Arthur Wellesley, who had, on the same day, repulsed Junot at Vimiera. No sooner had he assumed his position as commander-in-chief, than he countermanded Wellesley's order to give pursuit and make good the victory. The next day (August 22) Sir Hew Dalrymple in turn superseded Burrard, and on the 23rd, General Kellerman approached the English with certain proposals from Junot, which a week later were formulated by the so-called Convention of Cintra, to which Kellerman and Wellesley affixed their names. When the news reached England that Napoleon's forces had been repulsed with loss, and yet the French had been granted a safe exit from Portugal, the generals were assailed with loud and indiscriminate censure. Burrard's interference with Wellesley's plans was no doubt ill-judged and ill-timed; but the opportunity of pursuit having been let slip, the acceptance of Junot's terms was at once politic and inevitable. A court of inquiry, which was held in London in January, 1809, upheld both the armistice of August 22 and the Convention; but neither Dalrymple nor Burrard ever obtained a second command, and it was not until Talavera (July 28, 1809) had effaced the memories of Cintra that Wellesley was reinstated in popular favour.]

Here Folly dashed to earth the victor's plume,

And Policy regained what arms had lost :

Stern Cobbett, who for one whole week forbore
To question aught, once more with transport leapt,
And bit his devilish quill agen, and swore

With foes such treaty never should be kept,

While roared the blatant Beast, and roared, and raged, and—slept!!

1. [Sir Hew Dalrymple's despatch on the so-called Convention of Cintra is dated September 3, and was published in the London Gazette Extraordinary, September 16, 1808. The question is not alluded to in the Weekly Political Register of September 17, but on the 24th Cobbett opened fire with a long article (pp. 481-502) headed, "Conventions in Portugal," which was followed up by articles on the same subject in the four succeeding issues. Articles iii., iv., v., vi., of the “Definitive Convention provided for the restoration of the French troops and their safe convoy to France, with their artillery, equipments, and cavalry. "Did the men," asks Cobbett (September 24), "who made this promise beat the Duke d'Abrantés [Junot], or were they like curs, who, having felt the bite of the mastiff, lose all confidence in their number, and, though they bark victory, suffer him to retire in quiet, carrying off his bone to be disposed of at his leisure? No, not so; for they complaisantly carry the bone for him." The rest of the article is written in a similar strain.]

2. "Blatant beast.'* A figure for the mob. I think first used by Smollett, in his Adventures of an Atom.† Horace has the 'bellua multorum capitum.' In England, fortunately enough, the illustrious mobility has not even one."—[MS.]

[Spenser (Faerie Queene, bk. vi. cantos iii. 24; xii. 27, sq.) personifies the vox populi, with its thousand tongues, as theblatant beast."

t [In The History and Adventures of an Atom (Smollett's Works, 1872, vi. 385), Foksi-Roku (Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland) passes judgment on the populace. "The multitude, my lords, is a many-headed monster, it is a Cerberus that must have a sop; it is a wild beast, so ravenous that nothing but blood will appease its appetite; it is a whale, that must have a barrel for its amusement; it is a demon, to which we must offer human sacrifice. ... Bihn-Goh must be the victim -happy if the sacrifice of his single life can appease the commotions of his country." Foksi-Roku's advice is taken, and Bihn-Goh (Byng) “is crucified for cowardice."]

[Horace, Odes, II. xiii. 34: "Bellua centiceps."]

For chiefs like ours in vain may laurels bloom! Woe to the conquering, not the conquered host, Since baffled Triumph droops on Lusitania's coast.

XXVI.

And ever since that martial Synod met,
Britannia sickens, Cintra! at thy name;

And folks in office at the mention fret,i

And fain would blush, if blush they could, for

shame.

How will Posterity the deed proclaim!

Will not our own and fellow-nations sneer,

To view these champions cheated of their fame,

By foes in fight o'erthrown, yet victors here,

Where Scorn her finger points through many a coming year?

i.

Thus unto Heaven appealed the people: Heaven
Which loves the lieges of our gracious King,
Decreed that ere our Generals were forgiven,
Enquiry should be held about the thing.
But Mercy cloaked the babes beneath her wing;
And as they spared our foes so spared we them;
(Where was the pity of our Sires for Byng?)1
Yet knaves, not idiots should the law condemn;
Then live ye gallant Knights! and bless your Judges' phlegm!
at the mention sweat.-[MS. D.]

66

I. By this query it is not meant that our foolish generals should have been shot, but that Byng [Admiral John Byng, born 1704, was executed March 14, 1757] might have been spared; though the one suffered and the others escaped, probably for Candide's reason 'pour encourager les autres.' [MS]

["Dans ce pays-ci il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres."-Candide, xxii.]

XXVII.

So deemed the Childe, as o'er the mountains he
Did take his way in solitary guise:

Sweet was the scene, yet soon he thought to flee,
More restless than the swallow in the skies: "
Though here awhile he learned to moralise,
For Meditation fixed at times on him;
And conscious Reason whispered to despise
His early youth, misspent in maddest whim;
But as he gazed on truth his aching eyes grew dim.1

XXVIII.

To horse! to horse! he quits, for ever quits 2

A scene of peace, though soothing to his soul: ".
Again he rouses from his moping fits,

But seeks not now the harlot and the bowl.iii.
Onward he flies, nor fixed as yet the goal
Where he shall rest him on his pilgrimage;

i. More restless than the falcon as he flies.-[MS. erased.]
long foreign to his soul.—[MS. erased.]

ii.

iii.

the strumpet and the bowl.-[MS. D.]

1. [With reference to this passage, while yet in MS., an early reader (? Dallas) inquires, "What does this mean?" And a second (? Hobhouse) rejoins, "What does the question mean? It is one of the finest stanzas I ever read."]

2. [Byron and Hobhouse sailed from Falmouth, July 2, 1809; reached Lisbon on the 6th or 7th; and on the 17th started from Aldea Galbega ("the first stage from Lisbon, which is only accessible by water") on horseback for Seville. "The horses are excellent-we rode seventy miles a day" (see letters of August 6 to F. Hodgson, and August 11, 1809, to Mrs. Byron; Letters, 1898, i. 234, 236).]