Passion or feeling, purpose, grief or zeal,- | This, it should seem, was not reserved for me; I know that thou wilt love me; though my name Should be shut from thee, as a spell still fraught With desolation,—and a broken claim: Though the grave closed between us,— 'twere the same, I know that thou wilt love me; though to My blood from out thy being, were an aim, The child of love,-though born in bit- And nurtured in convulsion. Of thy sire Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea, CANTO IV. Visto ho Toscana, Lombardia, Romagna, ARIOSTO, Satira n. Venice, January 2, 1818. TO JOHN HOBHOUSE, ESQ. MY DEAR HOBHOUSE, AFTER an interval of eight years between the composition of the first and last cantos of Childe Harold, the conclusion of the poem is about to be submitted to the public. In parting with so old a friend it is not extraordinary that I should recur to one still older and better,-to one who has beheld the birth and death of the other, and to whom I am far more indebted for the social advantages of an enlightened friendship, than—though not ungrateful—I can, or could be, to Childe Harold, for any public favour reflected through the poem on the poet,-to one, whom I have known long, and accompanied far, whom "Citizen of the World," whom nobody would believe to be a Chinese, it was in vain that I asserted, and imagined, that I had drawn a distinction between the author and the pilgrim; and the very anxiety to preserve this difference, and disappointment at finding it unavailing, so far crushed my efforts in the composition, that I determined to abandon it altogether—and have done so. The opinions which have been, or may be, formed on that subject, are now a matter of indifference; the work is to depend on itself, and not on the writer; and the author, who has no resources in his own mind beyond the reputation, transient or permanent, which is to arise from his literary efforts, deserves the fate of authors. I have found wakeful over my sickness and ❘ that I had become weary of drawing a line kind in my sorrow, glad in my prosperity which every one seemed determined not to and firm in my adversity, true in counsel perceive: like the Chinese in Goldsmith's and trusty in peril-to a friend often tried and never found wanting;-to yourself. In so doing, I recur from fiction to truth, and in dedicating to you in its complete, or at least concluded state, a poetical work which is the longest, the most thoughtful and comprehensive of my compositions, I wish to do honour to myself by the record of many years intimacy with a man of learning, of talent, of steadiness, and of honour. It is not for minds like ours to give or to receive flattery; yet the praises of sincerity have ever been permitted to the voice of friendship, and it is not for you, nor even for others, but to relieve a heart which has not elsewhere, or lately, been so much accustomed to the encounter of good-will as to withstand the shock firmly, that In the course of the following canto it was I thus attempt to commemorate your good my intention, either in the text or in the qualities, or rather the advantages which notes, to have touched upon the present state I have derived from their exertion. Even of Italian literature, and perhaps of manthe recurrence of the date of this letter, ners. But the text, within the limits I prothe anniversary of the most unfortunate posed, I soon found hardly sufficient for the day of my past existence, but which labyrinth of external objects and the concannot poison my future while I retain the sequent reflections; and for the whole of the resource of your friendship, and of my own notes, excepting a few of the shortest, I am faculties, will henceforth have a more agree-indebted to yourself, and these were necesable recollection for both, inasmuch as it will remind us of this my attempt to thank you for an indefatigable regard, such as few men have experienced, and no one could experience without thinking better of his species and of himself. It has been our fortune to traverse together, at various periods, the countries of chivalry, history, and fable-Spain, Greece, Asia Minor, and Italy: and what Athens and Constantinople were to us a few years ago, Venice and Rome have been more recently. The poem also, or the pilgrim, or both, have accompanied me from first to last; and perhaps it may be a pardonable vanity which induces me to reflect with complacency on a composition which in some degree connects me with the spot where it was produced, and the objects it would fain describe; and however unworthy it may be deemed of those magical and memorable abodes, however short it may fall of our distant conceptions and immediate impressions, yet as a mark of respect for what is venerable, and a feeling for what is glorious, it has been to me a source of pleasure in the production, and I part with it with a kind of regret, which I hardly suspected that events could have left me for imaginary objects. With regard to the conduct of the last canto there will be found less of the pilgrim than in any of the preceding, and that little slightly, if at all, separated from the author speaking in his own person. The fact is, sarily limited to the elucidation of the text. It is also a delicate, and no very grateful task, to dissert upon the literature and manners of a nation so dissimilar; and requires an attention and impartiality which would induce us, though perhaps no inattentive observers, nor ignorant of the language or customs of the people amongst whom we have recently abode, to distrust, or at least defer our judgment, and more narrowly examine our information. The state of literary, as well as political party, appears to run, or to have run, so high, that for a stranger to steer impartially between them is next to impossible. It may be enough then, at least for my purpose, to quote from their own beautiful language"Mi pare che in un paese tutto poetico, che vanta la lingua la più nobile ed insieme la più dolce, tutte le vie diverse si possono tentare, e che sinche la patria di Alfieri e di Monti non ha perduto l'antico valore, in tutte essa dovrebbe essere la prima." Italy has great names still-Canova, Monti, Ugo Foscolo, Pindemonti, Visconti, Morelli, Cicognara, Albrizzi, Mezzofanti, Mai, Mustoxidi, Aglietti, and Vacca, will secure to the present generation an honourable place in most of the departments of Art, Science, and Belles Lettres; and in some the very highest;-Europe-the Worldhas but one Canova. It has been somewhere said by Alfieri, that "La pianta uomo nasce più robusta in Italia che in qualunque altra terra—e che dowers From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless Pour'd in her lap all gems in sparkling In purple was she robed, and of her feast Monarchs partook, and deem'd their dignity increased. gli stessi atroci delitti che vi si commettono | She looks a sea-Cybele, fresh from ocean, ne sono una prova." Without subscribing Rising with her tiara of proud towers to the latter part of his proposition, a dan At airy distance, with majestic motion, gerous doctrine, the truth of which may be A ruler of the waters and their powers: disputed on better grounds, namely, that And such she was ;—her daughters had their the Italians are in no respect more ferocious than their neighbours, that man must be wilfully blind, or ignorantly heedless, who is not struck with the extraordinary capacity of this people, or, if such a word be admissible, their capabilities, the facility of their acquisitions, the rapidity of their conceptions, the fire of their genius, their sense of beauty, and amidst all the disadvantages of repeated revolutions, the desolation of battles and the despair of ages, their still unquenched “longing after immortality,”—the immortality of independence. And when we ourselves, in riding round the walls of Rome, heard the simple lament of the labourers' chorus, "Roma! Roma! Roma! Roma non è più come era prima,” | it was difficult not to contrast this melancholy dirge with the bacchanal roar of the songs of exultation still yelled from the London taverns, over the carnage of Mont St. Jean, and the betrayal of Genoa, of Italy, of France, and of the world, by men whose conduct you yourself have exposed in a work worthy of the better days of our history. For me, "Non movero mai corda In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more, But unto us she hath a spell beyond "Ove la turba di sue ciance assorda." What Italy has gained by the late transfer of nations, it were useless for English-The beings of the mind are not of clay; men to inquire, till it becomes ascerEssentially immortal, they create tained that England has acquired something And multiply in us a brighter ray more than a permanent army and a suspended Habeas Corpus; it is enough for them to look at home. For what they have done abroad, and especially in the South, "Verily they will have their reward," and at no very distant period. Wishing you, my dear Hobhouse, a safe and agreeable return to that country whose real welfare can be dearer to none than to yourself, I dedicate to you this poem in its And affectionate friend, I STOOD in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; And more beloved existence: that which Fate And with a fresher growth replenishing the void. Such is the refuge of our youth and age, Yet there are things whose strong reality O'er her wild universe is skilful to diffuse: I saw or dream'd of such, but let them go- And whatsoe'er they were-are now but so: Let these too go—for waking Reason deems | But is not Doria's menace come to pass? I've taught me other tongues—and in strange eyes Have made me not a stranger; to the mind Perhaps I loved it well: and should I lay ion bar My name from out the temple where the dead The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord; The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reignsAnEmperor tramples where an Emperor knelt; Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces,and chains Clank over sceptred cities; nations melt From power's high pinnacle, when they have felt The sunshine for a while, and downward go Like lauwine loosen'd from the mountain's belt: Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo! Th`octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe. Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass, Their gilded collars glittering in the sun; | Are they not bridled?—Venice, lost and won, Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done, Sinks, like a sea-weed, into whence she rose! Better be whelm'd beneath the waves, and shun, Even in destruction's depth, her foreign foes, From whom submission wrings an infamous repose. In youth she was all glory,-a new Tyre,Her very by-word sprung from victory, The "Planter of theLion," which through fire And blood she bore o'er subject earth and sea; Though making many slaves, herself still free, And Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite; Witness Troy's rival, Candia! Vouch it, ye Immortal waves that saw Lepanto's fight! For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight. Statues of glass-all shiver'd—the long file Of her dead Doges are declined to dust; But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pile Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust; When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse, And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his strains. Thus, Venice,if no stronger claim were thine, I loved her from my boyhood-she to me Had stamp'd her image in me, and even so, Perchance even dearer in her day of woe, | Aside for ever: it may be a sound— a show. Existence may be borne, and the deep root The commonwealth of kings, the men of And even since, and now, fair Italy! All suffering doth destroy, or is destroy'd, Return to whence they came-with like And perish with the reed on which they leant; But ever and anon of griefs subdued Back on the heart the weight which it would Even in thy desert, what is like to thee? The Moon is up, and yet it is not night— A single star is at her side, and reigns still Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remains |