early reformers, and subsequently prisoners of state, were confined. Across one of the vaults is a beam black with age, on which we were informed that the condemned were formerly executed. In the cells are seven pillars, or, rather, eight, one being half merged in the wall; in some of these are rings for the fetters and the fettered in the pavement the steps of Bonnivard have left their traces. He was confined here several years. It is by this castle that Rousseau has fixed the catastrophe of his Héloïse, in the rescue of one of her children by Julie from the water; the shock of which, and the illness produced by the immersion, is the cause of her death. The chateau is large, and seen along the lake for a great distance. The walls are white. Page 406, line 341. And then there was a little isle. Between the entrances of the Rhone and Villeneuve, not far from Chillon, is a very small island; the only one I could perceive, in my voyage round and over the lake, within its circumference. It contains a few trees (I think not above three), and from its singleness and diminutive size has a peculiar effect upon the view. Page 407, line 56. Hetman. [A Cossack chief.] Page 408, line 129. John Casimir. [He was proclaimed king of Poland in 1649.] Line 157. Rich as a salt or silver mine. This comparison of a salt mine' may, perhaps, be permitted to a Pole, as the wealth of the country consists greatly in the salt mines. Page 417, line 101. Brandy for heroes!' [It appears to have been Dr. Johnson who thus gave honour to Cognac. He was persuaded,' says Boswell, to take one glass of claret. He shook his head, and said, "Poor stuff! - No, Sir, claret is the liquor for boys; port for men ; but he who aspires to be a hero (smiling) must drink brandy."-CROKER'S Boswell, iv. 252.] Page 419, line 1. How pleasant were the songs of Toobonai. The first three sections are taken from an actual song of the Tonga Islanders, of which a prose translation is given in Mariner's Account of the Tonga Islands. Toobonai is not however one of them; but was one of those where Christian and the mutineers took refuge. I have altered and added, but have retained as much as possible of the original. Page 421, line 182. The desert-ship. Oriental figure for the camel or dromedary. The Line 193. Had form'd his glorious namesake's counterpart. The consul Nero who made the unequalled march which deceived Hannibal, and defeated Hasdrubal. Page 423, line 291. And Loch-na-gar with Ida look'd o'er Troy. When very young, about eight years of age, after an attack of the scarlet fever at Aberdeen, I was removed by medical advice into the Highlands. Here I passed occasionally some summers, and from this period I date my love of mountainous countries. I can never forget the effect, a few years afterwards, in England, of the only thing I had long seen, even in miniature, of a mountain, in the Malvern Hills. After I returned to Cheltenham, I used to watch them every afternoon, at sunset, with a sensation which I cannot describe. This was boyish enough; but I was then only thirteen years of age, and it was in the holidays. [Compare the verses entitled Lachin y Gair, page 117.] Page 424, line 407. Than breathes his mimic murmurer in the shell. [Byron alludes in a note to the celebrated passage on the sea-shell in Landor's Gebir.] Page 425, line 447. Sailor or philosopher. Hobbes, the father of Locke's and other philosophy, was an inveterate smoker, -even to pipes beyond computation. Page 426, line 531. That will do for the marines.' That will do for the marines, but the sailors won't believe it,' is an old saying; and one of the few fragments of former jealousies which still survive (in jest only) between these gallant services. Page 427, line 52. No less of human bravery than the brave! Archidamus, king of Sparta, and son of Agesilaus, when he saw a machine invented for the casting of stones and darts, exclaimed that it was the grave of valour.' The same story has been told of some knights on the first application of gunpowder; but the original anecdote is in Plutarch. Page 431, line 121. Around she pointed to a spacious cave. Of this cave (which is no fiction) the original will be found in the ninth chapter of Mariner's Account of the Tonga Islands. I have taken the poetical liberty to transplant it to Toobonai, the last island where any distinct account is left of Christian and his comrades. Page 433, line 226. The kindling ashes to his kindled breast. The tradition is attached to the story of Eloïsa, that when her body was lowered into the grave of Abelard (who had been buried twenty years), he opened his arms to receive her. Page 434, line 334. He tore the topmost button from his vest. In Thibault's account of Frederic the Second of Prussia, there is a singular relation of a young Frenchman, who with his mistress appeared to be of some rank. He enlisted and deserted at Schweidnitz; and after a desperate resistance was retaken, having killed an officer, who attempted to seize him after he was wounded, by the discharge of his musket loaded with a button of his uniform. Some circumstances on his court-martial raised a great interest amongst his judges, who wished to discover his real situation in life, which he offered to disclose, but to the king only, to whom he requested permission to write. This was refused, and Frederic was filled with the greatest indignation, from baffled curiosity, or some other motive, when he understood that his request had been denied. Page 437, line 33. My pleasant task is done. [The Gerusalemme Liberata.] Line 49. Oh Leonora! wilt not thou reply? [Leonora d'Este, sister of the sovereign who imprisoned him from 1579 to 1586. It is not now commonly believed that Tasso suffered for this supposed love of the princess.] Page 444, line 291. A Cortejo.' Cortejo is pronounced Corteho, with an aspirate, according to the Arabesque guttural. It means what there is as yet no precise name for in England, though the practice is as common as in any tramontane country whatever. Page 445, line 363. Raphael, who died in thy embrace. [Raphael died in 1520, according to a tradition vagis amoribus delectatus.] Page 446, line 368. While yet Canova can create below. (In talking thus, the writer, more especially Of women, would be understood to say, He speaks as a spectator, not officially, And always, reader, in a modest way; Since, as all know, without the sex, our sonnets (Signed) Line 369. England! with all thy faults I love thee still.' [Cowper, The Task, ii. 206.] Line 401. Oh that I had the art of easy writing. ['But easy writing's curst hard reading.' SHERIDAN.] Page 449, line 575. No bustling Botherbys. [Compare the satire The Blues.] Page 454, lines 127, 128. Holland deigns to own A sceptre. [The Prince of Orange received the title of King of the Netherlands in 1814.] Page 457, line 68. And doom this body forfeit to the fire. [On the 27th of January, 1302, Dante was mulcted eight thousand lire, and condemned to two years' banishment; and in case the fine was not paid, his goods were to be confiscated. On the 11th of March, the same year, he was sentenced to a punishment due only to the most desperate of malefactors. The decree, that he and his associates in exile should he burned, if they fell into the hands of their enemies, was first discovered, in 1772, by the Conte Ludovico Savioli.] Page 458, line 172. And that fatal she. [Gemma, Dante's wife, by whom he had seven children, did not follow him into exile; but there is no sufficient reason to suppose she was anything but a faithful and good wife. One feels throughout the poem that Byron is thinking a little too much of himself and his own exile.] Page 459, line 91. Nine moons shall rise o'er scenes like this. [Referring to this siege and capture of Rome by the Constable of Bourbon, who himself perished in the assault.] Page 461, line 46. Conquerors on foreign shores and the far wave. Alexander of Parmea, Spinola, Pescara, Eugene of Savoy, Montecucco. Line 47. Discoverers of new worlds. Columbus, Americus Vespucius, Sebastian Cabot. Line 80. He who once enters in a tyrant's hall. [Words from Sophocles quoted by Pompey on taking his last leave of his wife and son.] Line 83. A captive, sees his half of manhood gone. [Odyssey, xvii. 322.] Page 464, line 67. The stream of his great thoughts shali spring from me. [It is well known that Michael Angelo greatly admired Dante. His copy of Dante with illustrations on the broad margins was lost at sea.] Line 87. Her charms to pontiff's proud. See the treatment of Michael Angelo by Julius II., and his neglect by Leo X. Page 465, line 141. What have I done to thee, my people?' [Popule mi, quid feci tibi?'. the beginning of one of Dante's letters to the people of Florence.] Page 466, line 34. If, like Pepin, Charles had had a writer. [Referring to Saint Boniface who upheld Pepin.] Line 48. Giusaffa's. [The Valley of Jehoshaphat.] Page 468, line 130. He took Cortana, and then took Rondell. [Cortana, his sword; Rondell, his horse.] Page 470, line 278. Macon. [Another form of Mahound, or Mahomet.] Page 481, line 192. When the moon is on the wave. [These verses were written in Switzerland, in 1816, and transmitted to England for publication, with the third canto of Childe Harold. As they were written,' says Moore, 'immediately after the last fruitless attempt at reconciliation, it is needless to say who was in the poet's thoughts while he penned some of the opening stanzas."] Page 482, line 312. Mix'd with the sweet bells of the sauntering herd. [The germs of this, and of several other passages in Manfred, may be found in the Journal of his Swiss tour, which Lord Byron transmitted to his sister: e. g. 'Sept. 19. -Arrived at a lake in the very bosom of the mountains; left our quadrupeds, and ascended further; came to some snow in patches, upon which my forehead's perspiration fell like rain, making the same dents as in a sieve; the chill of the wind and the snow turned me giddy, but I scrambled on and upwards. Hobhouse went to the highest pinnacle. The whole of the mountains superb. A shepherd on a steep and very high cliff playing upon his pipe; very different from Arcadia. The music of the cows' bells (for their wealth, like the patriarchs', is cattle) in the pastures, which reach to a height far above any mountains in Britain, and the shepherds shouting to us from crag to crag, and playing on their reeds where the steeps appeared almost inaccessible, with the surrounding scenery, realised all that I have ever heard or imagined of a pastoral existence - much more so than Greece or Asia Minor; for there we are a little too much of the sabre and musket order, and if there is a crook in one hand, you are sure to see a gun in the other: but this was pure and unmixed-solitary, savage, and patriarchal. As we went, they played Ranz des Vaches" and other airs, by way of farewell. I have lately repeopled my mind with nature."] Page 485, lines 95, 96. The sunbow's rays still arch The torrent. This iris is formed by the rays of the sun over the lower part of the Alpine torrents: it is exactly like a rainbow come down to pay a visit, and so close that you may walk into it: this effect lasts till noon. Page 486, lines 186, 187. He who from out their fountain dwellings raised Eros and Anteros. [While Jamblicus was bathing with his scholars in the hot baths of Gadara, he summoned up Eros and Anteros from two springs which bore the names of these love-gods.] Page 487, line 276. The Spartan Monarch drew. [The story is related in Plutarch's Life of Cimon. Pausanias murdered the virgin Cleonice by mistake in the night, thinking she was an enemy. He was haunted by her image until at Heraclea he invoked her spirit and obtained this information, that he would soon be delivered from all his troubles, after his return to Sparta.' The oracle was fulfilled by death.] Page 491. MANFRED, ACT III., SCENE I. [The third Act, as originally written, being shown to Mr. Gifford, he expressed his unfavorable opinion of it very distinctly; and Mr. Murray transmitted this opinion to Lord Byron. The result is told in the following extracts from his letters: Venice, April 14, 1817. The third Act is certainly d-d bad, and, like the Archbishop of Grenada's homily (which savoured of the palsy), has the dregs of my fever, during which it was written. It must on no account be published in its present state. I will try and reform it, or re-write it altogether; but the impulse is gone, and I have no chance of making any thing out of it. The speech of Manfred to the Sun is the only part of this Act I thought good myself; the rest is certainly as bad as bad can be, and I wonder what the devil possessed me. I am very glad indeed that you sent me Mr. Gifford's opinion without deduction. Do you suppose me such a booby as not to be very much obliged to him? or that I was not, and am not, convinced and convicted in my conscience of this same overt act of nonsense? I shall try at it again; in the mean time, lay it upon the shelf-the whole Drama I mean. Recollect not to publish, upon pain of I know not what, until I have tried again at the third act. I am not sure that I shall try, and still less that I shall succeed if I do.'-Rome, May 5. I have re-written the greater part, and returned what is not altered in the proof you sent me. The Abbot is become a good man, and the Spirits are brought in at the death. You will find, I think, some good poetry in this new Act, here and there; and if so, print it, without sending me farther proofs, under Mr. Gifford's correction, if he will have the goodness to overlook it.'] Line 13. The sought Kalon' found. [The beautiful, the summum bonum of human existence.] Page 492, line 56. Against your ordinances? prove and punish! [Thus far the text stands as originally written. The sequel of the scene, as given in the first MS., is as follows: Abbot. Then, hear and tremble! For the headstrong wretch Who in the mail of innate hardihood Would shield himself, and battle for his sins, There is the stake on earth, and beyond earth eternal Man. Charity, most reverend father, Becomes thy lips so much more than this menace, That I would call thee back to it: but say, What wouldst thou with me? Abbot. It may be there are Things that would shake thee - but I keep them back, And give thee till to-morrow to repent. Then if thou dost not all devote thyself To penance, and with gift of all thy lands To the monasteryMan. I understand thee, well? Abbot. Expect no mercy; I have warn'd thee. Man. (opening the casket). There is a gift for thee within this casket. Stop [MANFRED opens the casket, strikes a light, and burns some incense. Ho! Ashtaroth! The DEMON ASHTAROTH appears, singing as follows:The raven sits On the raven-stone, And his black wing flits O'er the milk-white bone; To and fro, as the night-winds blow, The fetters creak- and his ebon beak Croaks to the close of the hollow sound; And this is the tune, by the light of the moon, To which the witches dance their roundMerrily, merrily, cheerily, cheerily, Merrily, merrily, speeds the ball: The dead in their shrouds, and the demons in clouds, Flock to the witches' carnival. Abbot. I fear thee not-hence - hence- To its extremest peak-watch with him there Man. No, this will serve for the present. Take him up. Ash. Come, friar ! now an exorcism or two, And we shall fly the lighter. ASHTAROTH disappears with the ABBOT, singing as follows: A prodigal son, and a maid undone, And a widow re-wedded within the year; MANFRED alone. Man. Why would this fool break in on me, and force My art to pranks fantastical? - no matter, It was not of my seeking. My heart sickens, And weighs a fix'd foreboding on my soul: But it is calm calm as a sullen sea After the hurricane; the winds are still, But the cold waves swell high and heavily, And there is danger in them. Such a rest Is no repose. My life hath been a combat, And every thought a wound, till I am scarr'd In the immortal part of me. What now?] Line 88. When Rome's sixth emperor was near his last. [See Suetonius' Life of Nero, xlix.] Page 493, lines 176, 177. The giant sons Of the embrace of angels. Genesis, ch. vi., verses 2 and 4. Page 494, line 248. The Lady Astarte, his. [The drama originally proceeded thus: Her. Look-look-the towerThe tower's on fire. Oh, heavens and earth! what sound, What dreadful sound is that? [A crash like thunder. Manuel. Help, help, there! - to the rescue of the Count, The Count's in danger, what ho! there! approach! [The Servants, Vassals, and Peasantry approach, stupefied with terror. If there be any of you who have heart, And love of human kind, and will to aid [MANUEL goes in. [HERMAN goes in. Hark! Re-enter MANUEL and HERMAN, bearing MANFRED in their arms. Manuel. Hie to the castle, some of ye, and bring What aid you can. Saddle the barb, and speed For the leech to the city-quick! some water there! Her. His cheek is black- but there is a faint beat Still lingering about the heart. Some water. [They sprinkle MANFRED with water; after a pause, he gives some signs of life. Manuel. He seems to strive to speak-comecheerly, Count! He moves his lips-canst hear him? I am old, Manuel. Oh what a death is this! that I should live To shake my grey hairs over the last chief Of the house of Sigismund! And such a death! [MANFRED, having said this, erpires. Her. His eyes are fix'd and lifeless. He is gone. Manuel. Close them - My old hand quivers. -He departsWhither? I dread to think - but he is gone.] Page 500, line 31. The Avogadori. [The Avogadori were three in number: they were the conductors of criminal prosecutions on the part of the state; and no act of the councils was valid, unless sanctioned by the presence of one of them.] Page 501, line 91. The following words. [Marino Faliero, della bella moglie — altri la gode, ed egli la mantiene.' (SANUTO.) Meaning: Marino Faliero, of the fair wife, another enjoys her, and he maintains her.'] Page 502, line 201. Dandolo. [Enrico Dandolo, the great Doge, ruled from 1192 to 1205. When Constantinople was taken by the Crusaders, Dandolo might have been emperor in place of Baldwin of Flanders.] Page 505, line 379. The chief of the arsenal. [This officer was chief of the artisans of the arsenal, and commanded the Bucentaur, for the safety of which, even if an accidental storm should arise, he was responsible with his life. He mounted guard at the ducal palace during an interregnum, and bore the red standard be fore the new Doge on his inauguration.] Page 507, line 522. Saint Mark's shall strike that hour! The bells of San Marco were never rung but by order of the Doge. One of the pretexts for ringing this alarm was to have been an announcement of the appearance of a Genoese fleet off the Lagune. Line 535. The Pozzi and the Piombi. [The wells' and leaden roofs' just referred to.] Page 508, line 601. Near to the church where sleep my sires. [The Doges too were all buried in St. Mark's before Faliero: it is singular that when his immediate predecessor, Andrea Dandolo, died, the ten made a law that all the future doges should be buried with their families, in their own churches, -one would think by a kind of presentiment. So that all that is said of his Ances tral Doges, as buried at St. John's and St. Paul's, is altered from the fact, they being in St. Mark's. Make a note of this, and put Editor as the subscription to it. As I make such pretensions to accuracy, I should not like to be twitted even with such trifles on that score. Of the play they may say what they please, but not so of my costume and dram. pers. - they having been real existences.'- BYRON, Letter to Murray, October 12, 1820.] Page 509, line 59. The dying Roman said, ''t was but a name.' [The words of Brutus, according to Dio Cassius.] Page 520, lines 132, 133. They think themselves Engaged in secret. An historical fact. Page 533, line 352. San Polo. The Doge's family palace. Page 538. BENINTENDE. [In the notes to Marino Faliero, it may be as well to say that Benintende was not really of the Ten, but merely Grand Chancellor, a separate office, although an important: it was an arbitrary alteration of mine.'- BYRON, Letter to Murray, October 12, 1820.] Page 539, line 93. On festal Thursday. Giovedi grasso -'fat or greasy Thursday,`which I cannot literally translate in the text, was the day. His Line 102. Let their mouths be gagg'd. torical fact. Page 542, line 308. Conscript fathers. The Venetian senate took the same title as the Roman, of conscript fathers.' Page 544, lines 450, 451. Like to the courtesan Who fired Persepolis. [At the instigation of Thais, Alexander set fire to Persepolis after a revel in 331 B. C.] Page 548, line 704. 'Tis with age, then. This was the actual reply of Bailli [Jean Bailly, who was guillotined November 10, 1793], maire of Paris, to a Frenchman who made him the same reproach on his way to execution, in the earliest part of their revolution. I find in reading over (since the completion of this tragedy), for the first time these six years, Venice Preserved, a similar reply on a different occasion by Renault, and other coincidences arising from the subject. I need hardly remind the gentlest reader, that such coincidences must be accidental, from the very facility of their detection by reference to so popular a play on the stage and in the closet as Otway's chef-d'œuvre. Line 754. When the Hebrew 's in thy palaces. The chief palaces on the Brenta now belong to the Jews. Page 549, line 794. Thou den of drunkards with the blood of princes! Of the first fifty Doges, five abdicated-five were banished with their eyes put out-five were MASSACRED — and nine deposed. Page 550. SARDANAPALUS. [Byron based his drama on a passage in Diodorus Siculus ii., which reads as follows: This prince surpassed all his predecessors in effeminacy, luxury, and cowardice. He never went out of his palace, but spent all his time among a company of women, dressed and painted like them, and employed like them at the distaff. He placed all his happiness and glory in the possession of immense treasures, in feasting and rioting, and indulging himself in all the most infamous and criminal pleasures. He ordered two verses to be put upon his tomb, signifying that he carried away with him all he had eaten, and all the pleasures he had enjoyed, but left everything else behind him- an epitaph, says Aristotle, fit for a hog. Arbaces, governor of Media, having found means to get into the palace, and having with his own eyes seen Sardanapalus in the midst of his infamous seraglio, enraged at such a spectacle, and not able to endure that so many brave men should be subject to a prince more soft and effeminate than the women themselves, immediately formed a conspiracy against him. Beleses, governor of Babylon, and several others, entered into it. On the first rumour of this revolt, the king hid himself in the inmost part of his palace. Being afterwards obliged to take the field with some forces which he had assembled, he at first gained three successive victories over the enemy, but was afterwards overcome, and pursued to the gates of Nineveh; wherein he shut himself, in hopes the rebels would never be able to take a city so well fortified, and stored with provisions for a considerable time. The siege proved, indeed, of very great length. It had been de clared by an ancient oracle that Nineveh could never be taken, unless the river became an enemy to the city. These words buoyed up Sardanapalus, because he looked upon the thing as impossible. But when he saw that the Tigris, by a violent inundation, had thrown down twenty stadia (two miles and a half) of the city wall, and by that means opened a passage to the enemy, he understood the meaning of the oracle, and thought himself lost. He resolved, however, to die in such a manner as, according to his opinion, should cover the infamy of his scandalous and effeminate life. He ordered a pile of wood to be made in his palace, and setting fire to it, burnt himself, his eunuchs, his women, and his treasures.'] Page 555, line 299. Eat, drink, and love; the rest's not worth a fillip.' A monument representing Sardanapalus was found there [at Anchialus], warranted by an inscription in Assyrian characters, of course in the old Assyrian language, which the Greeks, whether well or ill, interpreted thus: "Sardanapalus, son of Anacyndaraxes, in one day founded Anchialus and Tarsus. Eat, drink, play: all other human joys are not worth a fillip." Supposing this version nearly exact (for Arrian says it was not quite so), whether the purpose has not been to invite to civil order a people disposed to turbulence, rather than to recommend immoderate luxury, may perhaps reasonably be questioned.' MITFORD'S Greece, ix. 311. Page 573, line 145. Bring the mirror. ['In the third act, when Sardanapalus calls for a mirror to look at himself in his armour, recollect to quote the Latin passage from Juvenal upon Otho (a similar character, who did the same thing).' BYRON, Letter to Murray, May 30, 1821. The lines in the Second Satire are thus translated by Gifford : This grasps a mirror-pathic Otho's boast A MIRROR, 'midst the arms of civil rage! '] Page 590, line 200. Some twenty stadia. About two miles and a half. Page 595. THE TWO FOSCARI. [A paragraph from W. R. Thayer's Short History of Venice will throw some light on the state of affairs and on the particular events which underlie this play: We feel that the old Venice is passing away. Instead of the sureness with which she had held aloof from foreign complications, there is now indecision. The old-time statesman was a helmsman, who knew every headland by day and the pilot stars by night. But the new statesmen were jugglers, each trying to keep a dozen balls in the air - so many were the interests and so swift the changes. The spirit of the Renaissance also, that solvent of mediævalism, is working, and at Venice as elsewhere its first effect is to liberate the intellect without strengthening the morals. Political |