[221] [In his "Essay, Supplementary to the Preface," to his "Poems" of 1815, Wordsworth, commenting on a pa.s.sage on Night in Dryden"s _Indian Emperor_, says, "Dryden"s lines are vague, bombastic, and senseless....
The verses of Dryden once celebrated are forgotten." He is not pa.s.sing any general criticism on "him who drew _Achitophel_." In a letter to Sir Walter Scott (November 7, 1805), then engaged on his great edition of Dryden"s _Works_, he admits that Dryden is not "as a poet any great favourite of mine. I admire his talents and genius highly, but he is not a poetical genius. The only qualities I can find in Dryden that are _essentially_ poetical, are a certain ardour and impetuosity of mind, with an excellent ear" (_Life of Wordsworth_, by W. Knight, 1889, ii.
26-29). Scott may have remarked on Wordsworth"s estimate of Dryden in conversation with Byron.]
{178}[de] _While swung the signal from the sacred tower._--[MS.]
{179}[df]
_Are not these pretty stanzas?--some folks say--_ _Downright in print_--.--[MS.]
[222] [Compare Coleridge"s _Lines to Nature_, which were published in the _Morning Herald_, in 1815, but must have been unknown to Byron--
"So will I build my altar in the fields, And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be."]
[223] ["As early as the fifth or sixth century of the Christian era, the port of Augustus was converted into pleasant orchards, and a lovely grove of pines covered the ground where the Roman fleet once rode at anchor.... This advantageous situation was fortified by art and _labour_, and in the twentieth year of his age, the Emperor of the West ... retired to ... the walls and mora.s.ses of Ravenna."--Gibbon"s _Decline and Fall_, 1825, ii. 244, 245.]
[224] ["The first time I had a conversation with Lord Byron on the subject of religion was at Ravenna, my native country, in 1820, while we were riding on horseback in an extensive solitary wood of pines. The scene invited to religious meditation. It was a fine day in spring.
"How," he said, "raising our eyes to heaven, or directing them to the earth, can we doubt of the existence of G.o.d?--or how, turning them to what is within us, can we doubt that there is something more n.o.ble and durable than the clay of which we are formed?""--Count Gamba.]
{180}[225] [If the _Pineta_ of Ravenna, _bois funebre_, invited Byron "to religious meditation," the mental picture of the "spectre huntsman"
pursuing his eternal vengeance on "the inexorable dame"--"that fatal she," who had mocked his woes--must have set in motion another train of thought. Such lines as these would "speak comfortably" to him--
"Because she deem"d I well deserved to die, And _made a merit_ of her cruelty, ...
Mine is the ungrateful maid by heaven design"d: Mercy she would not give, nor mercy shall she find."
"By her example warn"d, the rest beware; More easy, less imperious, were the fair; And that one hunting, which the Devil design"d For one fair female, lost him half the kind."
Dryden"s _Theodore and Honoria_ (_sub fine_).]
[226]
?spe?e pa?ta fe?e?? [Greek: Espere panta phereis]
Fe?e?? ?????--fe?e?? a??a, [Greek: Phereis oinon--phereis aiga,]
Fe?e?? ate?? pa?da. [Greek: Phereis materi paida.]
_Fragment of Sappho._
[??spe?e, p??ta f????, ?sa fa?????? ?s??das" a????
[Greek: We/spere, pa/nta phe/ron, o(/sa phai/nolis e)ske/das" au)/os]
F??e?? ??? f??e?? a??a, F??e?? ?p? at??? pa?da.
[Greek: Phe/reis oi)/n phe/reis ai~)ga, Phe/reis a)/py mate/ri pai~da.]
_Sappho_, Memoir, Text, by Henry Thornton Wharton, 1895, p. 136.
"Evening, all things thou bringest Which dawn spread apart from each other; The lamb and the kid thou bringest, Thou bringest the boy to his mother."
J.A. Symonds.
Compare Tennyson"s _Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After_--"Hesper, whom the poet call"d the Bringer home of all good things."]
{181}[227]
"Era gia l"ora che volge il disio Ai naviganti, e intenerisce il cuore; Lo di ch" han detto ai dolci amici addio; E che lo nuovo peregrin" damore Punge, se ode squilla di lontano, Che paia il giorno pianger che si more."
Dante"s _Purgatory_, canto viii., lines 1-6.
This last line is the first of Gray"s Elegy, taken by him without acknowledgment.
[228] See Suetonius for this fact.
["The public joy was so great upon the occasion of his death, that the common people ran up and down with caps upon their heads. And yet there were some, who for a long time trimmed up his tomb with spring and summer flowers, and, one while, placed his image upon his rostra dressed up in state robes, another while published proclamations in his name, as if he was yet alive, and would shortly come to Rome again, with a vengeance to all his enemies."--_De XII. Caes._, lib. vi. cap. lvii.]
[dg]
_But I"m digressing--what on earth have Nero And Wordsworth--both poetical buffoons, etc._--[MS.]
{182}[229] [See _De Poetica_, cap. xxiv. See, too, the Preface to Dryden"s "Dedication" of the _aeneis_ (_Works_ of John Dryden, 1821, xiv.
130-134). Dryden is said to have derived his knowledge of Aristotle from Dacier"s translation, and it is probable that Byron derived his from Dryden. See letter to Hodgson (_Letters_, 1891, v. 284), in which he quotes Aristotle as quoted in Johnson"s _Life of Dryden_.]
CANTO THE FOURTH.
I.
NOTHING so difficult as a beginning In poesy, unless perhaps the end; For oftentimes when Pegasus seems winning The race, he sprains a wing, and down we tend, Like Lucifer when hurled from Heaven for sinning; Our sin the same, and hard as his to mend, Being Pride,[230] which leads the mind to soar too far, Till our own weakness shows us what we are.
II.
But Time, which brings all beings to their level, And sharp Adversity, will teach at last Man,--and, as we would hope,--perhaps the Devil, That neither of their intellects are vast: While Youth"s hot wishes in our red veins revel, We know not this--the blood flows on too fast; But as the torrent widens towards the Ocean, We ponder deeply on each past emotion.[231]
III.
As boy, I thought myself a clever fellow, And wished that others held the same opinion; They took it up when my days grew more mellow, And other minds acknowledged my dominion: Now my sere Fancy "falls into the yellow Leaf,"[232] and Imagination droops her pinion, And the sad truth which hovers o"er my desk Turns what was once romantic to burlesque.
IV.
And if I laugh at any mortal thing, "T is that I may not weep; and if I weep, "T is that our nature cannot always bring Itself to apathy, for we must steep[dh]
Our hearts first in the depths of Lethe"s spring,[di]
Ere what we least wish to behold will sleep: Thetis baptized her mortal son in Styx; A mortal mother would on Lethe fix.
V.
Some have accused me of a strange design Against the creed and morals of the land, And trace it in this poem every line: I don"t pretend that I quite understand My own meaning when I would be _very_ fine; But the fact is that I have nothing planned, Unless it were to be a moment merry-- A novel word in my vocabulary.
VI.
To the kind reader of our sober clime This way of writing will appear exotic; Pulci[233] was sire of the half-serious rhyme,[dj]
Who sang when Chivalry was more quixotic, And revelled in the fancies of the time, True Knights, chaste Dames, huge Giants, Kings despotic; But all these, save the last, being obsolete, I chose a modern subject as more meet.