Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must XVI. When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse, And fettered thousands bore the yoke of war, Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse,1 Her voice their only ransom from afar :1 See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car Of the o'ermastered Victor stops-the reins Fall from his hands-his idle scimitar Starts from its belt-he rends his captive's chains, And bids him thank the Bard for Freedom and his strains." ii. XVII. Thus, Venice! if no stronger claim were thine, Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot i. And won her hopeless children from afar.—[MS. M., D. erased.] ii. And sends him ransomeless to bless his poet's strains.-[MS. M.] or, And sends him home to bless the poet for his strains.— [MS. D. erased.] I. [The story is told in Plutarch's Life of Nicias, cap. xxix. (Plut. Vit., Lipsiæ, 1813, v. 154). "The dramas of Euripides were so popular throughout all Sicily, that those Athenian prisoners who knew... portions of them, won the affections of their masters. . . . I cannot refrain from mentioning this story, though I fear its trustworthiness is much inferior to its pathos and interest."-Grote's History of Greece, 1869, vii. 186.] ... Thy choral memory of the Bard divine, Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot1. Is shameful to the nations,-most of all, Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall.". XVIII. I loved her from my boyhood-she to me Was as a fairy city of the heart, ii. Rising like water-columns from the sea Of Joy the sojourn, and of Wealth the mart; And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakespeare's art,ii. 2 Had stamped her image in me, and even so, i. Thy love of Tasso's verse should cut the knot.-[MS. M.] 1. [By the Treaty of Paris, May 3, 1814, Lombardy and Venice, which since the battle of Austerlitz had formed part of the French kingdom of Naples, were once more handed over to Austria. Great Britain was represented by "a bungler even in its disgusting trade" (Don Juan, Dedication, stanza xiv.), Lord Castlereagh.] 2. Venice Preserved; Mysteries of Udolpho; The GhostSeer, or Armenian; The Merchant of Venice; Othello. [For Venice Preserved, vide ante, stanza iv. line 7, note. To the Mysteries of Udolpho Byron was indebted for more than one suggestion, vide ante, stanza i. line 4, note, and Mysteries, etc., London, 1794, 2. 39: "The air bore no sounds, but those of sweetness echoing along each margin of the canal and from gondolas on its surface, while groups of masks were seen dancing on the moonlit terraces, and seemed almost to realize the romance of fairy-land." The scene of Schiller's |