CLV. Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not; (1) Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined, Thou movest-but increasing with the advance, Like climbing some great Alp,which still doth rise, Deceived by its gigantic elegance; Vastness which grows—but grows to harmoniseAll musical in its immensities; [flame Rich marbles-richer painting-shrines where The lamps of gold-and haughty dome, which vies In air with Earth's chief structures, though their frame CLIX. Then pause, and be enlighten'd; there is more In such a survey than the sating gaze Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore The worship of the place; or the mere praise Of art and its great masters who could raise What former time, nor skill, nor thought could The fountain of sublimity displays [plan; Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can. CLX. Or, turning to the Vatican, go see Sits on the firm-set ground-and this the clouds Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp. must claim. CLVII. Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break, The glory which at once upon thee did not dart. Not by its fault-but thine: our outward sense Fools our fond gaze, and, greatest of the great, (1) "I remember very well," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, "my own disappointment when I first visited the Vatican; but on confessing my feelings to a brother stúdent, of whose ingenuousness I had a high opinion, he acknowledged that the works of Raphael had the same effect on him, or rather that they did not produce the effect which he expected. This was a great relief to my mind; and, on inquiring further of other students, I found that those persons only who, from natural imbecility, appeared to be incapable of relishing those divine performances, made pretensions to instantaneous raptures on first beholding them. In justice to myself, however, I must add, that though disappointed and mortified at not finding myself enraptured with the works of this great master, I did not for a moment conceive or suppose that the name of Raphael, and those admirable paintings in particular, owed their reputation to the ignorance and prejudice of mankind; on the contrary, my not relishing them, as I was conscious I ought to have done, was one CLXI. Or view the Lord of the unerring bow, The God of life, and poesy, and lightThe Sun in human limbs array'd, and brow All radiant from his triumph in the fight; The shaft hath just been shot-the arrow bright With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye And nostril beautiful disdain, and might And majesty, flash their full lightnings by, Developing in that one glance the Deity. CLXII. But in his delicate form-a dream of Love,' Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast Long'd for a deathless lover from above, And madden'd in that vision-are exprest All that ideal beauty ever bless'd The mind with, in its most unearthly mood, When each conception was a heavenly guestA ray of immortality-and stood, Starlike, around, until they gather'd to a god! of the most humiliating circumstances that ever happened to me; I found myself in the midst of works executed upon principles with which I was unacquainted: I felt my ignorance, and stood abashed. All the indigested notions of painting which I had brought with me from England, where the art was in the lowest state it had ever been in (it could not, indeed, be lower), were to be totally done away and eradicated from my mind. It was necessary, as it is expressed on a very solemn occasion, that I should become as a little child. Notwithstanding my disappointment, I proceeded to copy some of those excellent works. I viewed them again and again; I even affected to feel their merit and admire them more than I really did. In a short time, a new taste and a new perception began to dawn upon me, and I was convinced that I had originally formed a false opinion of the perfection of the art, and that this great painter was well entitled to the high rank which he holds in the admiration of the world. The truth is, that if these works had really been what I had expected, they would CLXIII. And if it be Prometheus stole from heaven A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which CLXIV. But where is he, the Pilgrim of my song, CLXV. Which gathers shadow, substance, life, and all 161 Through storm and darkness yawns the rending The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief. Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou? Peasants bring forth in safety.-Can it be, O thou that wert so happy, so adored! Through which all things grow phantoms; and the The husband of a year! the father of the dead! cloud Between us sinks and all which ever glow'd, Till Glory's self is twilight, and displays A melancholy halo scarce allow'd To hover on the verge of darkness; rays Sadder than saddest night, for they distract the gaze, And send us prying into the abyss, CLXVII. Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds, have contained beauties superficial and alluring, but by no means such as would have entitled them to the great reputation which they have borne so long, and so justly obtained."— E. (1) "The death of the Princess Charlotte has been a shock even here (Venice), and must have been an earthquake at home. The fate of this poor girl is melancholy in every respect; dying at twenty or so, in childbed—of a boy too, a present princess and a future queen, and just as she began to be happy, and to enjoy CLXX. herself, and the hopes which she inspired. I feel sorry in every Charles V. a hermit; Louis XIV. a bankrupt in means and glory; CLXXII. These might have been ber destiny; but no, Our hearts deny it: and so young. so fair. Good without effort, great without a foe: But now a bride and mother-and now there! How many ties did that stern moment tear! From thy sire's to his humblest subject's breast Is link'd the electric chain of that despair, Whose shock was as an earthquake's, and opprest The land which loved thee so that none could love thee best. CLXXIII. Lo, Nemi! (1) navell'd in the woody hills And, calm as cherish'd hate, its surface wears All coil'd into itself and round, as sleeps the snake. CLXXIV. And near Albano's scarce divided waves Shine from a sister valley ;-and afar The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves The Latian coast where sprang the epic war, "Arms and the man," whose re-ascending star Rose o'er an empire :-but beneath thy right Tully reposed from Rome;-and where yon bar Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight The Sabine farm was till'd, the weary bard's delight. (2) CLXXV. But I forget.-My Pilgrim's shrine is won Those waves, we follow'd on till the dark Euxine roll'd CLXXVI. Upon the blue Symplegades: long years- (1) The village of Nemi was near the Arician retreat of Egeria, and, from the shades which embosomed the temple of Diana, has preserved to this day its distinctive appellation of The Grove. Nemi is but an evening's ride from the comfortable inn of Albano. (2) The whole declivity of the Alban hill is of unrivalled beauty, and from the convent on the highest point, which has suc We have had our reward and it is here; That we can yet feel gladden'd by the sun, And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear As if there were no man to trouble what is clear. CLXXVII. Oh! that the desert were my dwelling-place, With one fair spirit for my minister, That I might all forget the human race, And, hating no one, love but only her! Ye elements!-in whose ennobling stir I feel myself exalted-Can ye not Accord me such a being? Do I err In deeming such inhabit many a spot ? Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot. CLXXVIII. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, I love not Man the less, but Nature more, Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; Man marks the earth with ruin-his control Stops with the shore ;-upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown. CLXXX. His steps are not upon thy paths,-thy fields Are not a spoil for him,-thou dost arise [wields And shake him from thee; the vile strength he For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray And howling, to his gods, where haply lies His petty hope in some near port or bay, And dashest him again to earth :-there let him lay. CLXXXI. The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, ceeded to the temple of the Latian Jupiter, the prospect embraces all the objects alluded to in this stanza; the Mediterranean; the whole scene of the latter half of the Eneid, and the coast from beyond the mouth of the Tiber, to the headland of Circæum and the Cape of Terracina.- [See Historical Notes, at the end of this Canto, No. XXXI.- E.] And monarchs tremble in their capitais, Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee- Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm, Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime CLXXXIV. And I have loved thee, Ocean! (2) and my joy ד CLXXXV. My task is done (3)—my song hath ceased-my CLXXXVI. Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been— He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell; HISTORICAL NOTES TO CANTO IV. I. STATE DUNGEONS OF VENICE. "I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand." Stanza i. lines 1 and 2. THE Communication between the ducal palace and the prisons of Venice is by a gloomy bridge, or covered gallery, high above the water, and divided by a stone wall into a passage and a cell. The state dungeons, called" pozzi," or wells, were sunk in the thick walls of the palace; and the prisoner when taken out to die was conducted across the (1) When Lord Byron wrote this stanza, he had, no doubt deur of nature,-and thrown among the mere worldly-minded the following passage in Boswell's Johnson floating on his mind and selfish ferocity, the affected polish and repelling coxcombry, -"Dining one day with General Paoli, and talking of his projected of a great public school. How many thousand times did the journey to Italy, A man', said Johnson, who has not been in moody, sullen, and indignant boy wish himself back to the keen Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having air and boisterous billows that broke lonely upon the simple and seen what it is expected a man should see. The grand object of soul-invigorating haunts of his childhood! How did he prefer all travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean. On these some ghost-story; some tale of second-sight; some relation of shores were the four great empires of the world; the Assyrian, Robin Hood's feats; some harrowing narrative of buccaneer the Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman. All our religion, al- exploits, to all of Horace, and Virgil, and Homer, that was dinned most all our law, almost all our arts, almost all that sets us into his repulsive spirit! To the shock of this change is, I susabove savages, has come to us from the shores of the Mediterra-pect, to be traced much of the eccentricity of Lord Byron's future Bean. The General observed, that 'The Mediterranean' would life."-Sir E. Brydges. be a noble subject for a poem...-Croker's Boswell. (2) "This passage would perhaps be read without emotion, if we did not know that Lord Byron was here describing his actual feelings and habits, and that this was an unaffected picture of his propensities and amusements even from childhood,when he listened to the roar, and watched the bursts, of the northern ocean on the tempestuous shores of Aberdeenshire. It was a fearful and violent change at the age of ten years to be separated from this congenial solitude,-this independence, so suited to his haughty and contemplative spirit,-this rude gran (3) "It was a thought worthy of the great spirit of Byron, after exhibiting to us his Pilgrim amidst all the most striking scenes of earthly grandeur and earthly decay,-after teaching us, like him, to sicken over the mutability, and vanity, and emptiness of human greatness, to conduct him and us at last to the borders of the great Deep.' It is there that we may perceive an image of the awful and unchangeable abyss of eternity, into whose bosom so much has sunk, and all shall one day sink,-of that eternity wherein the scorn and the contempt of man, and the melancholy of great, and the fretting of little minds, shall be at 3. DI CHI MI FIDO GUARDAMI DIO The copyist has followed, not corrected, the solecisms; some of which are, however, not quite so decided, since the letters were evidently scratched in the dark. It only need be observed, that bestemmia and mangiar may be read in the first lica Romana. II. SONGS OF THE GONDOLIERS Stanza iil. line 1. gallery to the other side, and being then led back into the other compartment, or cell, upon the bridge, was there strangled. The low portal through which the criminal was taken into this cell is now walled up; but the passage is still open, and is still known by the name of the Bridge of Sighs. The pozzi are under the flooring of the chamber at the foot of the bridge. They were formerly twelve, but on the first arrival of the French, the Venetians hastily blocked or broke up the inscription, which was probably written by a prideeper of these dungeons. You may still, how-soner confined for some act of impiety committed at ever, descend by a trap-door, and crawl down a funeral; that Cortellarius is the name of a parish on terra firma, near the sea ; and that the last initials through holes, half-choked by rubbish, to the depth of two stories below the first range. If you are in evidently are put for Viva la santa Chiesa Cattowant of consolation for the extinction of patrician power, perhaps you may find it there; scarcely a ray of light glimmers into the narrow gallery which leads to the cells, and the places of confinement themselves are totally dark. A small hole in the wall admitted the damp air of the passages, and served for the introduction of the prisoner's food. A wooden pallet, raised a foot from the ground, was the only furniture. The conductors tell you that a light was not allowed. The cells are about five paces in length, two and a half in width, and seven feet in height. They are directly beneath one another, and respiration is somewhat difficult in the lower holes. Only one prisoner was found when the republicans descended into these hideous recesses, and he is said to have been confined sixteen years. But the inmates of the dungeons beneath had left traces of their repentance, or of their despair, which are still visible, and may, perhaps, owe something to recent ingenuity. Some of the detained appear to have offended against, and others to have belonged to, the sacred body, not only from their signatures, but from the churches and belfries which they have scratched upon the walls. The reader may not object to see a specimen of the records prompted by so terrific a solitude. As nearly as they could be copied by more than one pencil, three of them are as follows: 1. NON TI FIDAR AD ALCUNO PENSA e TACI 1607. ADI 2. GENARO. FUI RE- 2. UN PARLAR POCO et NEGARE PRONTO et UN PENSAR AL FINE PUO DARE LA VITA A NOI ALTRI MESCHINI 1605. EGO 10H BAPTISTA AD rest for ever. No one, but a true poet of man anb of nature would have dared to frame such a termination for such a Pilgrimage. The image of the wanderer may well be associateb, The well-known song of the gondoliers, of alter nate stanzas, from Tasso's Jerusalem, has died with the independence of Venice. Editions of the poem, with the original in one column and the Venetian variations on the other, as sung by the boatmen. were once common, and are still to be found. The following extract will serve to show the difference between the Tuscan epic and the "Canto alla Barcariola." ORIGINAL. Canto l'arme pietose, e 'l capitanc Che 'l gran Sepolcro liberò di Cristo. E in van l' Inferno a lui s' oppose, e in vano S' armò d' Asia, e di Libia il popol misto, VENETIAN. L'arme pietose de Cantar gho vogia, Missier Pluton non l' ha bu mai paura: On the 7th of last January, the author of Childe Harold, and another Englishman, the writer of this notice, rowed to the Lido with two singers, one of whom was a carpenter, and the other a gondolier. The former placed himself at the prow, the latter at the stern, of the boat. A little after leaving the quay of the Piazzetta, they began to sing, and continued their exercise until we arrived at the island. They gave us, amongst other essays, the Death of for a time, with the rock of Calpe, the shattered temples of Athens or the gigantic fragments of Rome; but when we wish to think of this bark personification as of a thing which is, where can we |