LXXVI. There, on the green and village-cotted hill, iз All heroes, who if living still would slay us. High barrows, without marble, or a name, And old Scamander, (if 't is he) remain; A hundred thousand men might fight again With ease; but where I sought for Ilion's walls, The quiet sheep feeds, and the tortoise crawls; LXXVIII. Troops of untended horses; here and there Some little hamlets, with new names uncouth; Whom to the spot their school-boy feelings bear ; 3 LXXIX. Don Juan, here permitted to emerge From his dull cabin, found himself a slave; Forlorn, and gazing on the deep blue surge, O'ershadow'd there by many a hero's grave; Weak still with loss of blood, he scarce could urge A few brief questions; and the answers gave No very satisfactory information About his past or present situation. LXXX. He saw some fellow captives, who appear'd [Proceeding towards the cast, and round the bay distinctly pointed out by Strabo, as the harbour in which the Grecian fleet was stationed, we arrived at the sepulchre of Ajax, upon the ancient Rhætian promontory. In all that remains of former ages, I know of nothing likely to affect the mind by emotions of local enthusiasm more powerfully than this most interesting tomb. It is impossible to view its sublime and simple form without calling to mind the veneration so long paid to it; without picturing to the imagination a successive series of mariners, of kings and heroes, who, from the Hellespont, or by the shores of Troas and Chersonesus, or on the sepulchre itself, poured forth the tribute of their homage; and, finally, without representing to the mind the feelings of a native, or of a traveller, in those times, who, after viewing the existing monument, and witnessing the instances of public and of private regard so constantly bestowed upon it, should have been told the age was to arrive when the existence of Troy, and of the mighty dead entombed upon its plain, would be considered as having no foundation in truth.- DR. E. D. CLARKE] 2 [ The Troad is a fine field for conjecture and snipeshooting, and a good sportsman and an ingenious scholar may exercise their feet and faculties to great advantage upon the spot; or, if they prefer riding, lose their way, as I did, in a cursed quagmire of the Scamander, who wriggles about, as if the Dardan virgins still offered their wonted tribute. The only vestige of Troy, or her destroyers, are the barrows supposed to contain the carcases of Achilles, Antilochus, Ajax, &c.; but Mount Ida is still in high feather, though the sliepherds are now-a-days not much like Ganymede."- Byron Letters, 1810.] 3 [Nothing could be more agreeable than our frequent In Sicily-all singers, duly rear'd In their vocation; had not been attack'd By one of these, the buffo 5 of the party, And bore him with some gaiety and grace, Showing a much more reconciled demeanour, Than did the prima donna and the tenor. LXXXII. In a few words he told their hapless story, LXXXIII "The prima donna, though a little old, And haggard with a dissipated life, And subject, when the house is thin, to cold, Has some good notes; and then the tenor's wife, With no great voice, is pleasing to behold; Last carnival she made a deal of strife By carrying off Count Cesare Cicogna From an old Roman princess at Bologna. LXXXIV. "And then there are the dancers; there's the Nini, rambles. The peasants of the numerous villages, whom we frequently encountered ploughing with their buffaloes, or driving their creaking wicker cars, laden with faggots from the mountains, whether Greeks or Turks, showed no inclination to interrupt our pursuits. Parties of our crew might be seen scattered over the plain, collecting the tortoises which swarm on the sides of the rivulets, and are found under every furze-bush.- HOBHOUSE.] 4 This is a fact. A few years ago a man engaged a company for some foreign theatre, embarked them at an Italian port, and carrying them to Algiers, sold them all. One of the women, returned from her captivity, I heard sing, by a strange coincidence, in Rossini's opera of "L'Italiana in Algieri," at Venice, in the beginning of 1817.-[We have reason to believe that the following, which we take from the MS. journal of a highly respectable traveller, is a more correct account:-" In 1812, a Signor Guariglia induced several young persons of both sexes-none of them exceeding fifteen years of age-to accompany him on an operatic excursion; part to form the opera, and part the ballet. He contrived to get them on board a vessel, which took them to Janina, where he sold them for the basest purposes. Some died from the effect of the climate, and some from suffering. Among the few who returned were a Signor Molinari, and a female dancer named Bonfiglia, who afterwards became the wife of Crespi, the tenor singer. The wretch who so basely sold them was, when Lord Byron resided at Venice, employed as capo de' vestarj, or head tailor, at the Fenice."— GRAHAM.] 5 [A comic singer in the opera buffa. The Italians, however, distinguish the buffo cantante, which requires good singing, from the buffo comico, in which there is more acting.] LXXXV. "As for the figuranti, they are like The rest of all that tribe; with here and there The rest are hardly fitted for a fair; Which might go far, but she don't dance with vigour ; LXXXVI. "As for the men, they are a middling set; The musico is but a crack'd old basin, But being qualified in one way yet, May the scraglio do to set his face in, 2 And as a servant some preferment get; His singing I no further trust can place in : From all the Pope $ makes yearly 't would perplex To find three perfect pipes of the third sex, LXXXVII. "The tenor's voice is spoilt by affectation, And for the bass, the beast can only bellow; In fact, he had no singing education, An ignorant, noteless, timeless, tuneless fellow, But being the prima donna's near relation, Who swore his voice was very rich and mellow, They hired him, though to hear him you'd believe An ass was practising recitative. LXXXVIII. "'T would not become myself to dwell upon My own merits, and though young,—I see, Sir - you Have got a travell'd air, which speaks you one To whom the opera is by no means new: You've heard of Raucocanti + ? -I'm the man; The time may come when you may hear me too; You was not last year at the fair of Lugo, But next, when I'm engaged to sing there-do go. LXXXIX. "Our baritone I almost had forgot, A pretty lad, but bursting with conceit: With graceful action, science not a jot, A voice of not great compass, and not sweet, He always is complaining of his lot, Forsooth, scarce fit for ballads in the street; In lovers' parts his passion more to breathe, Having no heart to show, he shows his teeth." [The figuranti are those dancers of a ballet who do not dance singly, but many together, and serve to fill up the background during the exhibition of individual performers. They correspond to the chorus in the opera. — GRAHAM.] 2 ["To help the ladies in their dress and lacing."- MS.] 3 It is strange that it should be the Pope and the Sultan, who are the chief encouragers of this branch of trade-w()men being prohibited as singers at St. Peter's, and not deemed trust-worthy as guardians of the harem. 4 [Rauco-canti - may be rendered by Hoarse-song] No matter; we should ne'er too much inquire, We will omit the proofs, save one or two: Here I might enter on a chaste description, Therefore I'll make Don Juan leave the ship soon, "T is all the same to me; I'm fond of yielding, Who say strange things for so correct an age; I once had great alacrity in wielding My pen, and liked poetic war to wage, And recollect the time when all this cant Would have provoked remarks which now it shan't. 1 As boys love rows, my boyhood liked a squabble; Whether my verse's fame be doom'd to cease, Of poets who come down to us through distance From every flake, and yet rolls on the same, CI. And so great names are nothing more than nominal, And love of glory's but an airy lust, ["Don Juan will be known, by and by, for what it is intended a satire on abuses in the present states of society, and not an eulogy of vice. It may be now and then voluptuous: I can't help that. Ariosto is worse. Smollett (see Lord Strutwell in Roderick Random) ten times worse; and Fielding no better. No girl will ever be seduced by reading Don Juan: No, no; she will go to Little's Poems, and Rousseau's Romans for that, or even to the immaculate De Staël. They will encourage her, and not the Don, who laughs at that, and-and-most other things. But never mind Ca ira!"- Lord Byron to Mr. Murray, 1822.] 2 ["I stood upon the plain of Troy daily, for more than a month, in 1810; and if any thing diminished my pleasure, it was that the blackguard Bryant had impugned its veracity." Byron Diary, 1821.] 3 [It seems hardly to admit of doubt, that the plain of Anatolia, watered by the Mender, and backed by a mountainous ridge, of which Kazdaghy is the summit, offers the precise territory alluded to by Homer. The long controversy, excited by Mr. Bryant's publication, and since so vehemently agitated, would probably never have existed, had it not been for the erroneous maps of the country which, even to this hour, disgrace our geographical knowledge of that part of Asia. DR. E. D. CLARKE. "Although a real poet is naturally anxious to avail himself of interesting and well-known scenery, and a story hallowed by tradition, yet it is only so far as they suit his purpose, that either tradition or topography will be adhered to: and it is surely preposterous to expect that in a poem, so long, so varied, and so busy as that of Homer, he should exactly conform to the sober rules of the annalist, or the land-surveyor. It was the general opinion of antiquity, that Homer had, in many respects, departed from the truth of history in the action of his poem. Nor can any reason be assigned why he should not, by an equal privilege, have omitted or softened, or altered, such features of the scenery as interfered, in his opinion, with the effect or coherence of his narration. But, while a poet himself is seldom thus particular, it is the privilege of poetry to bestow, even on imaginary scenery, the minuteness and liveliness which convey the idea of accuracy.and if only the general features of his picture are correct, the zeal of his admirers in after-ages will not fail to assign a local Too often in its fury overcoming all Who would as 't were identify their dust From out the wide destruction, which, entombing all, Leaves nothing till "the coming of the just' Save change: I've stood upon Achilles' tomb, 2 And heard Troy doubted 3; time will doubt of Rome. CII. The very generations of the dead Are swept away, and tomb inherits tomb, Until the memory of an age is fled, And, buried, sinks beneath its offspring's doom: Where are the epitaphs our fathers read? Save a few glean'd from the sepulchral gloom Which once-named myriads nameless lie beneath, And lose their own in universal death. 4 CIII. I canter by the spot each afternoon Where perish'd in his fame the hero-boy, Who lived too long for men, but died too soon For human vanity, the young De Foix ! A broken pillar, not uncouthly hewn, CIV. pass each day where Dante's bones are laid: A little cupola, more neat than solemn, Protects his dust, but reverence here is paid 6 To the bard's tomb 7, and not the warrior's column: The time must come, when both alike decay'd, habitation to even the wildest of his features. The sexton of And call to count what is of them become ; 5 The pillar which records the battle of Ravenna is about two miles from the city, on the opposite side of the river to the road towards Forli. Gaston de Foix, who gained the battle, was killed in it: there fell on both sides twenty thousand men. The present state of the pillar and its site is described in the text. [De Foix was Duke of Nemours, and nephew to Louis XII., who gave him the government of Milan, and made him general of his army in Italy. The young hero signalised his valour and abilities in various actions, which terminated in the battle of Ravenna, fought on Easter-day, 1512. After he had obtained the victory, he could not be dissuaded from pursuing a body of Spanish infantry, which retreated in good order. Making a furious charge on this brave troop, he was thrown from his horse, and despatched by a thrust of a pike. He perished in his twenty-fourth year, and the king's affliction for his death embittered all the joy arising from his success.-MORERI.] 6 ["Protects his tomb, but greater care is paid." — MS.] 7 [Dante was buried ("in sacra minorum ææde") at Ravenna, in a handsome tomb, which was erected by his protector, Guido da Polenta, restored by Bernardo Bembo in 1483, again restored hy Cardinal Corsi in 1692, and replaced by a more magnificent sepulchre in 1780, at the expense of the Cardinal Luigi Valent Gonzaga. The Florentines having in vain and frequently attempted to recover his body, crowned his image in a church, and his picture is still one of the idols of their cathedral. Hosuocse.] ["I have drunk deep of passions as they pass, And dearly bought the bitter power to give."-MS.] ["To pastry-cooks and moths, and there an end.'"' - GIFFORD.] [What! must I go with Wordy to the cooks? Read were it but your Grandmother's to vex- Cut off from tasting your Castalian tea."-MS.] ["Away, then, with the senseless iteration of the word popularity! In every thing which is to send the soul into herself, to be admonished of her weakness, or to be made conscious of her strength; wherever life and nature are described as operated upon by the creative or abstracting virtue of the imagination; wherever the instinctive wisdom of antiquity, and her heroic passions, uniting, in the heart of the Poet, with the meditative wisdom of later ages, have produced that accord of sublimated humanity, which is at once a history of the remote past, and a prophetic announcement of the remotest future-there, the Poet must reconcile himself What can I prove "a lion" then no more? And sigh, "I can't get out," like Yorick's starling; Why then I'll swear, as poet Wordy swore, (Because the world won't read him, always snarling) That taste is gone, that fame is but a lottery, Drawn by the blue-coat misses of a coterie. 8 CX. Oh!" darkly, deeply, beautifully blue," As some one somewhere sings about the sky, And I, ye learned ladies, say of you; They say your stockings are so— (Heaven knows why, I have examined few pair of that hue); CXI. Yet some of you are most seraphic creatures For sometimes such a world of virtues cover; I knew one woman of that purple school, The loveliest, chastest, best, but CXII. quite a fool. Humboldt, "the first of travellers," but not The last, if late accounts be accurate, Invented, by some name I have forgot, As well as the sublime discovery's date, An airy instrument, with which he sought To ascertain the atmospheric state, By measuring "the intensity of blue: " 10 Oh, Lady Daphne ! let me measure you! 11 for a season to few and scattered hearers."-WORDSWORTH'S Second Preface.] ["Not having look'd at many of that hue, Nor garters save those of the honi soit'-which lie 10 [The cyanometer-an instrument invented for ascertaining the intensity of the blue colour of the sky. On the summit of high mountains, elevated above the grosser portions of the atmosphere, it might be curious to compare experiments with those made with the same kind of instrument by M. Saussure on the Alps; but it is mere ostentation to talk, as M. de Humboldt does, of such experiments made at sea with a view of being useful to navigation. We prefer, as more simple and more correct, that natural diaphanometer, which for ages has regulated the prognostics of mariners — "a great paleness of the setting sun, a wan colour, an extraordinary disfiguration of its disc;" though we should be cautious in admitting that these meteorological phenomena are the unequivocal signs of a tempest. The marine barometer is far more important to the mariner than hygrometers or cyanometers. By this instrument a change of weather never fails to be indicated by the least rising or falling of the mercury in the tube; the descent. in tropical latitudes, of an eighth of an inch, when at a distance from the land, is the unequivocal indication of an approaching storm. Many a ship has been saved from destruction by the timely notice given by this instrument to prepare for a storm; and no ship should be permitted to go to sea without one.BARROW.] ["The slave-market is a quadrangle, surrounded by a covered gallery, and ranges of small and separate apartments. Here the poor wretches sit in a melancholy posture. Such of them, both men and women, to whom dame Nature has been niggardly of her charms, are set apart for the vilest purposes: but such girls as have youth and beauty, pass their time well enough. The retailers of this human ware are the Jews, who take good care of their slaves' education, that they may sell the better: their choicest they keep at home, and there you must go, if you would have better than ordinary; for it is here, as in markets for horses, the handsomest do not always appear, but are kept within doors."— TOURNEFORT.] 2 [The manner of purchasing slaves is thus described in the plain and unaffected narrative of a German merchant, "which," says Mr. Thornton, " as I have been able to ascertain its general authenticity, may be relied upon as correct." The girls were introduced to me one after another. A Circassian maiden, eighteen years old, was the first who presented herself: she was well-dressed, and her face was covered with a veil. She advanced towards me, bowed down and kissed my hand: by order of her master she walked backwards and forwards, to show her shape and the easiness of her gait and carriage. When she took off her veil, she displayed a bust of the most attractive beauty: she rubbed her checks with a wet napkin to prove that she had not used art to heighten her complexion; and she opened her inviting lips, to show a regular set of teeth of pearly whiteness. I was permitted to feel her pulse, that I might be convinced of the good state of her health and constitution. She was then ordered to retire while we deliberated upon the bargain. The price of this beautiful girl was four thousand piastres."See Voyage de N. E. Kleeman, and also Thornton's Turkey, vol. ii. p. 289.] 3["The females stood, till chosen each as victim To the soft oath of Ana seing Siktum !'"-MS.] 4 [Canto V. was begun at Ravenna. October the 16th, and finished November the 20th, 1820. It was published late in 1821, along with Cantos III. and IV.; and here the Poet meant to stop for what reason, the subjoined extracts from his letters will show: February 16. 1821. "The fifth is so far from being the last of Don Juan, that it is hardly the beginning. I meant to take him the tour of Europe, with a proper mixture of siege, Hoping no very old vizier might choose, The females stood, as one by one they pick'd 'em, To make a mistress, or fourth wife, or victim : 3 CXVIL All this must be reserved for further song ; Must be postponed discreetly for the present; I'm sensible redundancy is wrong, But could not for the muse of me put less in 't: And now delay the progress of Don Juan, Till what is call'd in Ossian the fifth Duan. Don Juan. CANIO THE FIFTH I. WHEN amatory poets sing their loves battle, and adventure, and to make him finish as Anarcharsis Cloots, in the French Revolution. To how many cantos this may extend, I know not, nor whether (even if I live) I shall complete it; but this was my notion. I meant to have made him a Cavalier Servente in Italy, and a cause for a divorce in England, and a sentimental Werther-faced man' in Germany, so as to show the different ridicules of the society in each of those countries, and to have displayed him gradually gáté and blasé as he grew older, as is natural. But I had not quite fixed whether to make him end in hell, or in an unhappy marriage; not knowing which would be the severest: the Spanish tradition says hell: but it is probably only an allegory of the other state. You are now in possession of my notions on the subject." July 6. 1821. At the particular request of the Countess Guiccioli I have promised not to continue Don Juan. You will therefore look upon these three Cantos as the last of the poem. She had read the two first in the French translation, and never ceased beseeching me to write no more of it. The reason of this is not at first obvious to a superficial observer of FOREIGN manners; but it arises from the wish of all women to exalt the sentiment of the passions, and to keep up the illusion which is their empire. Now, Don Juan strips off this illusion, and laughs at that and most other things. I never knew a woman who did not protect Rousseau, nor one who did not dislike De Grammont, Gil Blas, and all the comedy of the passions, when brought out naturally. But king's blood must keep word,' as Sergeant Bothwell says. September 4. 1821. "I read over the Juans, which are excellent. Your squad are quite wrong; and so you'll find, by and by. I regret that I do not go on with it, for I had all the plan for several cantos, and different countries and climes. You say nothing of the note I enclosed to you, which will explain why I agreed to discontinue it." In Madame Guiccioli's note, here referred to, she had said, "Remember, my Byron, the promise you have made me. Never shall I be able to tell you the satisfaction I feel from it; so great are the sentiments of pleasure and confidence with which the sacrifice you have made has inspired me." In a posteript to the note she adds, "Mi reveresce solo che Den Giovanni non resti all' Inferno." "I am only sorry that Don Juan was not left in the infernal regions."] 5 [See APPENDIX: "Hoblouse's Historical Notes to the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold."] |