xcviii. were added after Childe Harold was in the press. Byron sent them to Dallas, October 11, 1811, and, apparently, on the same day composed the Epistle to a Friend (F. Hodgson) in answer to some lines exhorting the Author to be cheerful, and to “Banish Care," and the first poem To Thyrza ("Without a stone to mark the Spot "). "I have sent," he writes, "two or three additional stanzas for both 'Fyttes. I have been again shocked with a death, and have lost one very dear to me in happier times; but I have almost forgot the taste of grief,' and 'supped full of horrors' till I have become callous, nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. It seems as though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered." In one respect he would no longer disclaim identity with Childe Harold. "Death had deprived him of his nearest connections." He had seen his friends "around him fall like leaves in wintry weather." He felt "like one deserted ;" and in the "dusky shadow" of that early desolation he was destined to walk till his life's end. It is not without cause when "a man of great spirit grows melancholy."

In connection with this subject, it may be noted that lines 6 and 7 of stanza xcv. do not bear out Byron's contention to Dallas (Letters, October 14 and 31, 1811), that in these three in memoriam stanzas (ix., xcv., xcvi.) he is bewailing an event which took place after he returned to Newstead. The "more than friend" had "ceased to be" before the wanderer " returned. It is evident that Byron did not take Dallas into his confidence.]

PART of the Acropolis was destroyed by the explosion of a magazine during the Venetian siege.

[In 1684, when the Venetian Armada threatened Athens, the Turks removed the Temple of Victory, and made use of the materials for the construction of a bastion. In the autumn of 1687, when the city was besieged by the Venetians under Francesco Morosini (1618-1694; Doge of Venice, 1688), "mortars were planted . . . near the north-east corner of the rock, which threw their shells at a high angle, with a low charge, into the Acropolis. . . . On the 25th of September, a Venetian bomb blew up a small powder-magazine in the Propylæa, and on the following evening another fell in the Parthenon, where the Turks had deposited . . . a considerable quantity of powder.... A terrific explosion took place; the central columns of the peristyle, the walls of the cella, and the immense architraves and cornices they supported, were scattered around the remains of the temple. The Propylæa had been partly destroyed in 1656 by the explosion of a magazine which was struck by lightning."-Finlay's History of Greece, 1887, i. 185.]

2.

But worse than steel, and flame, and ages slow,
Is the dread sceptre and dominion dire.

Stanza i. lines 6, 7.

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 dis-
turbance, between the bickering agents of certain British
nobility and gentry. "The wild foxes, the owls and serpents
in the ruins of Babylon," ? 1 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 church, and a
mosque.3 In each point of view it is an object of regard :
it changed its worshippers; but still it was a place of worship
thrice sacred to devotion: its violation is a triple sacrifice.
But-
"Man, proud man,

Drest in a little brief authority,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven
As make the angels weep."

[Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, act ii. sc. 2,
lines 117-122.]

I. ["Owls and serpents" are taken from Isa. xiii. 21, 22; foxes" from Lam. v. 18, “Zion is desolate, the foxes walk upon it."]

2. [For Herr Gropius, vide post, note 6.]

3. The Parthenon was converted into a church in the sixth century by Justinian, and dedicated to the Divine Wisdom. About 1460 the church was turned into a mosque. After the siege in 1687 the Turks erected a smaller mosque within the original enclosure. "The only relic of the mosque dedicated by Mohammed the Conqueror (1430-1481) is the base of the minaret... at the south-west corner of the Cella" (Handbook for Greece, p. 319).]

3.

Far on the solitary shore he sleeps.

Stanza v. line 2.

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, etc., and at last even Antinous, whose death was as heroic as his life was infamous.

4.

Here, son of Saturn! was thy favourite throne.

Stanza x. line 3.

The Temple of Jupiter Olympius, 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.

[The Olympieion, or Temple of Zeus Olympius, on the south-east of the Acropolis, some five hundred yards from the foot of the rock, was begun by Pisistratos, and completed seven hundred years later by Hadrian. It was one of the three or four largest temples of antiquity. The cella had been originally enclosed by a double row of twenty columns at the sides, and a triple row of eight columns at each front, making a hundred and four columns in all; but in 1810 only sixteen "lofty Corinthian columns" were standing. Mr. Tozer points out that "base' is accurate, because Corinthian columns have bases, which Doric columns have not," and notes that the word "unshaken' implies that the column itself had fallen, but the base remains."-Childe Harold, 1888, p. 228.]

5.

And bear these altars o'er the long-reluctant brine.
Stanza xi. line 9.

The ship was wrecked in the Archipelago. [The Mentor, which Elgin had chartered to convey to England a cargo consisting of twelve chests of antiquities, was wrecked off the Island of Cerigo, in 1803. His secretary, W. R. Hamilton, set divers to work, and rescued four chests; but the remainder were not recovered till 1805.]