Page 1. Le Cosmopolite. [By Fougeret de Monbron. Byron elsewhere speaks of the book as a great favourite.']

Page 2. Dr. Beattie makes the following observation. [In a letter to Blacklock, September 22, 1766.]

Page 2. Sainte-Palaye. [Mémoires sur l'Ancienne_Chevalerie, by De la Curne de Sainte-Palaye, Paris, 1781.]

Page 2. Roland. [Recherches sur les Prérogatives des Dames chez les Gaulois sur les Cours d'Amours, by le President Rolland, Paris, 1787] Page 2. No waiter, but a knight templar. The Rovers, or the Double Arrangement. [By Hookham Frere in the Anti-Jacobin.]

Page 2. A modern Timon. [Byron had already compared himself with the Athenian Misanthrope in his early verses, Childish Recollections.]

Page 2. A poetical Zeluco. [It was Dr. John Moore's object in his romance entitled Zeluco to trace the fatal effects of a mother's fond compliance with the humors of an only child.]

Page 2. To IANTHE. [The Lady Charlotte Harley, second daughter of Edward fifth Earl of Oxford, in the autumn of 1812, when these lines were addressed to her, had not completed her eleventh year. Mr. Westall's portrait of the juvenile beauty was painted at Lord Byron's request.]

Page 5, line 117. Thus to the elements he pour'd his last Good Night.' [See Lord Maxwell's Good Night, in Scott's Border Minstrelsy:

'Adieu, madame, my mother dear.']

Line 134. Come hither, hither, my little page! [This little page' was Robert Rushton, the son of one of Lord Byron's tenants. I take Robert with me,' says the poet in a letter to his mother, June 22, 1809; [like him, because, like myself, he seems a friendless animal.' Seeing that the boy was sorrowful' at the separation from his parents, Lord Byron, on reaching Gibraltar, sent him back to England.] Page 6, line 157. Mine own would not be dry. [Here follows in the original MS. :

My Mother is a high-born dame,
And much misliketh me;
She saith my riot bringeth shame
On all my ancestry:

I had a sister once I ween,

Whose tears perhaps will flow;
But her fair face I have not seen

For three long years and moe.]

Line 158. Come hither, hither, my staunch yeoman. [William Fletcher, the faithful valet, who, after a service of twenty years, received the 'Pilgrim's' last words at Missolonghi.]

Line 189. He'd tear me where he stands. [Here follows in the original MS. :

Methinks it would my bosom glad,

To change my proud estate,
And be again a laughing lad
With one beloved playmate.

Since youth I scarce have pass'd an hour
Without disgust or pain,

Except sometimes in Lady's bower,
Or when the bowl I drain.]

Line 197. My native land - Good Night! [Originally, the little page' and the yeoman were introduced in the following stanzas:

And of his train there was a henchman page, A peasant boy, who served his master well; And often would his pranksome prate engage Childe Harold's ear, when his proud heart did swell With sable thoughts that he disdain'd to tell. Then would he smile on him, and Alwin smiled, When aught that from his young lips archly fell The gloomy film from Harold's eye beguiled; And pleased for a glimpse appear'd the woeful Childe:

Him and one yeoman only did he take To travel eastward to a far countrie; And, though the boy was grieved to leave the lake On whose fair banks he grew from infancy, Eftsoons his little heart beat merrily With hope of foreign nations to behold, And many things right marvellous to see, Of which our vaunting voyagers oft have told, In many a tome as true as Mandeville's of old.]

Page 7, line 255. And rest ye at Our Lady's house of woe.' The convent of Our Lady of Punishment,' Nossa Señora de Pena, on the summit of the rock. Below, at some distance, is the Cork Convent, where St. Honorius dug his den, over which is his epitaph. From the hills, the sea adds to the beauty of the view. — Note to First Edition. Since the publication of this poem, I have been informed of the misapprehension of the term Nossa Señora de Peña. It was owing to the want of the tilde or mark over the n, which alters the signification of the word: with it, Peña signifies a rock; without it, Pena has the sense I adopted. I do not think it necessary to alter the passage; as, though the common acception affixed to it is, Our Lady of the Rock,' I may well assume the other sense from the severities practised there. - Note to Second Edition.

Line 275. There thou too, Vathek! England's wealthiest son. [William Beckford (1759-1844), who inherited from his father large estates in the West Indies, resided at Cintra for two years. Vathek, his principal work, Byron says, was one of the tales I had a very early admiration of. For correctness of costume, beauty of description, and power of imagination, it far

Page 8, line 288. Behold the hall where chiefs were late convened! The Convention of Cintra was signed in the palace of the Marchese Marialva. [The armistice, the negotiations, the convention itself, and the execution of its provisions, were all commenced, conducted, and concluded, at the distance of thirty miles from Cintra, with which place they had not the slightest connection, political, military, or local; yet Lord Byron has gravely asserted, in prose and verse, that the convention was signed at the Marquis of Marialva's house at Cintra; and the author of The Diary of an Invalid, improving upon the poet's discovery, detected the stains of the ink spilt by Junot upon the occasion.'Napier's History of the Peninsular War, i. 161. The definitive convention for the evacuation of Portugal by the British army is dated Head Quarters, Lisbon, August 30, 1808.' Byron was not a regular student, but his memory was prodigious and he carried with him lightly a store of historical and classical allusions. To annotate this part of Childe Harold adequately would require large drafts from the history of the Peninsular War.]

Line 296. Whereat the Urchin points, and laughs with all his soul. [The passage stood differently in the original MS. The following stanzas were struck out at the suggestion of Byron's friend Dallas:

In golden characters right well design'd,
First on the list appeareth one Junot;'
Then certain other glorious names we find,
Which rhyme compelleth me to place below;
Dull victors! baffled by a vanquish'd foe,
Wheedled by conynge tongues of laurels due,
Stand, worthy of each other, in a row —
Sir Arthur, Harry, and the dizzard Hew
Dalrymple, seely wight, sore dupe of t' other tew.
Convention is the dwarfish demon styled
That foil'd the knights in Marialva's dome :
Of brains (if brains they had) he them beguiled,
And turn'd a nation's shallow joy to gloom.
For well I wot, when first the news did come,
That Vimiera's field by Gaul was lost,
For paragraph ne paper scarce had room,
Such Prans teem'd for our triumphant host,
In Courier, Chronicle, and eke in Morning Post:

But when Convention sent his handy-work,
Pens, tongues, feet, hands, combined in wild uproar ;
Mayor, aldermen, laid down the uplifted fork;
The Bench of Bishops half forgot to snore;
Stern Cobbett, who for one whole week forbore
To question aught, once more with transport leapt,
And bit his devilish quill agen, and swore
With foe such treaty never should be kept,
Then burst the blatant beast, and roar'd, and raged,
and - slept !

Thus unto Heaven appeal'd the people: Heaven,
Which loves the lieges of our gracious King,
Decrced, that, ere our generals were forgiven,
Inquiry should be held about the thing.

But Mercy cloak'd the babes beneath her wing. And as they spared our foes, so spared we them (Where was the pity of our sires for Byng?); Yet knaves, not idiots, should the law condemn; Then live, ye gallant knights! and bless your judges' phlegm !]

Line 334. Where dwelt of yore the Lusians' luckless queen. [Maria Francesca. Her luckless Majesty went subsequently mad; and Dr. Willis, who so dexterously cudgelled kingly pericraniums, could make nothing of hers.-Byron MS. She died in Brazil in 1816. About ten miles to the right of Cintra,' says Lord Byron in a letter to his mother, is the palace of Mafra, the boast of Portugal, as it might be of any country, in point of magnificence, without elegance. There is a convent annexed: the monks, who possess large revenues, are courteous enough, and understand Latin; so that we had a long conversation. They have a large library, and asked me if the English had any books in their country."]

Page 9, line 389. When Cava's traitor-sire first call'd the band. [In revenge for the violation of his daughter Cava, or Florinda, by King Roderick, Count Julian, one of the Gothic monarch's lieutenants, summoned the Moors to Spain. Pelagio, or Pelayo, whose standard was an oaken cross, resisted most successfully the Moorish invasion.]

Page 10, line 430. For on this morn three po tent Nations meet. [The battle of Talavera.,

Page 11, line 459. Oh, Albuera, glorious field of grief! [This stanza is not in the original MS. It was written at Newstead, in August, 18:1. shortly after the battle of Albuera, May 16, in which Lord Beresford, with great loss to the English, defeated Soult.]

Line 508. No! as he speeds, he chants Viva el Rey!' 'Viva el Rey Fernando!' Long live King Ferdinand! is the chorus of most of the Spanish patriotic songs. They are chiefly in dispraise of the old king Charles, the Queen, and the Prince of Peace. I have heard many of them; some of the airs are beautiful. Don Manual Godoy, the Principe de la Paz, of an ancient but decayed family, was born at Badajoz, on the frontiers of Portugal, and was originally in the ranks of the Spanish guards; till his person attracted the queen's eyes, and raised him to the dukedom of Alcudia, etc., etc. It is to this man that the Spaniards universally impute the ruin of their country.

Page 12, line 523. Bears in his cap the badge of crimson hue. The red cockade, with Fer nando VII.' in the centre.

Line 558. Is it for this the Spanish maid, aroused. The Maid of Saragoza, who by her valour elevated herself to the highest rank of heroines. When the author was at Seville, she walked daily on the Prado, decorated with medals and orders, by command of the Junta. [The exploits of Augustina, the famous heroine of both the sieges of Saragoza, are recorded at length in Southey's History of the Peninsular War. At the time when she first attracted notice, by mounting a battery where her lover had

fallen, and working a gun in his room, she was in her twenty-second year, exceedingly pretty, and in a soft feminine style of beauty.] Line 560. The anlace hath espoused.

Anlace: A short two-edged knife or dagger, broad at the hilt, and tapering to the point, formerly worn at the girdle. New Eng. Dict.]

Page 13, line 594. The seal Love's dimpling finger hath impress'd. Sigilla in mento impressa Amoris digitulo Vestigio demonstrant mollitudinem.' AUL. GEL.

Line 603. Match me, ye climes which poets love to laud. This stanza was written in Turkey. [The scene of the poem shifts abruptly for a few stanzas from Spain to Greece.]

Line 612. Oh, thou Parnassus whom I now survey! These stanzas were written in Castri (Delphi), at the foot of Parnassus. [Upon Parnassus, going to the fountain of Delphi (Castri), in 1809, I saw a light of twelve eagles (Hobhouse says they were vultures at least in conversation), and I seized the omen. On the day before, I composed the lines to Parnassus (in Childe Harold), and on beholding the birds, had a hope that Apollo had accepted my homage. I have at least had the name and fame of a poet, during the poetical period of life (from twenty to thirty);; whether it will last is another matter: but I have been a votary of the deity and the place, and am grateful for what he has done in my behalf, leaving the future in his hands, as I left the past.' - B. Diary, 1821.]

Page 14, line 679. Tread on each other's kibes. [However loose he may be in construction, Byron is generally accurate in his use of words. But in several places he employs kibes (i. e. chilblains) for heels, being apparently misled by the passage in Hamlet (V. i. 150). In stanza Ixix. he uses the expression the seventh day, really the Jewish Sabbath, for the Christian Sunday.]

Page 15, line 706. Ask ye, Baotian shades. This was written at Thebes, and consequently in the best situation for asking and answering such a question.

Line 707. 'Tis to the worship of the solemn Horn. [Lord Byron alludes to a ridiculous custom which formerly prevailed at the publichouses in Highgate, of administering a burlesque oath to all travelers of the middling rank who stopped there. The party was sworn on a pair of horns, fastened, never to kiss the maid when he could the mistress; never to eat brown bread when he could get white; never to drink small beer when he could get strong.' with many other injunctions of the like kind, all which was added the saving clause, less you like it best.']

to

un

Page 16, line 760. With well-timed croupe. The croupe [croupade] is a particular leap taught in the manège.

Page 17, line 817. Full from the fount of Joy's delicious springs.

[Medio de fonte leporum Surgit amari aliquid quod in ipeis floribus angat. LUCRETIUS, iv. 1133.]

Page 17. To INEZ. [This song was written at Athens, January 25, 1810. In the original draught of the Canto the following stanzas stood in its place:

Oh never talk again to me

Of northern climes and British ladies; It has not been your lot to see,

Like me, the lovely girl of Cadiz. Although her eye be not of blue Nor fair her locks, like English lasses, How far its own expressive hue The languid azure eye surpasses!

Prometheus-like, from heaven she stole
The fire, that through those silken lashes
In darkest glances seems to roll,

From eyes that cannot hide their flashes : And as along her bosom steal

In lengthen'd flow her raven tresses, You'd swear each clustering lock could feel, And curl'd to give her neck caresses.

Our English maids are long to woo,
And frigid even in possession;
And if their charms be fair to view,
Their lips are slow at love's confession:
But, born beneath a brighter sun,

For love ordain'd the Spanish maid is, And who when fondly, fairly won Enchants you like the girl of Cadiz ?

The Spanish maid is no coquette,

Nor joys to see a lover tremble,
And if she love, or if she hate,

Alike she knows not to dissemble.
Her heart can ne'er be bought or sold-
Howe'er it beats, it beats sincerely;
And, though it will not bend to gold,
"T will love you long and love you dearly.

The Spanish girl that meets your love
Ne'er taunts you with a mock denial,
For every thought is bent to prove

Her passion in the hour of trial.
When thronging foemen menace Spain,
She dares the deed and shares the danger;
And should her lover press the plain,

She hurls the spear, her love's avenger.
And when, beneath the evening star,
She mingles in the gay bolero,
Or sings to her attuned guitar

Of Christian knight or Moorish hero,
Or counts her beads with fairy hand

Beneath the twinkling rays of Hesper, Or joins Devotion's choral band,

To chaunt the sweet and hallow'd vesper; —

fox's answer to the French general at the siege of Saragoza.

Line 899. So may such foes deserve the most remorseless deed! [The Canto in the original MS. closes with the following stanzas:

Ye, who would more of Spain and Spaniards know,
Sights, Saints, Antiques, Arts, Anecdotes, and War,
Go! hie ye hence to Paternoster Row-
Are they not written in the Book of Carr,
Green Erin's Knight, and Europe's wandering star!
Then listen, Readers, to the Man of Ink,

Hear what he did, and sought, and wrote afar;
All these are coop'd within one Quarto's brink,
This borrow, steal, — don't buy, -and tell us what you
think.

There may you read, with spectacles on eyes,
How many Wellesleys did embark for Spain,
As if therein they meant to colonize,

How many troops y-cross'd the laughing main
That ne'er beheld the said return again :
How many buildings are in such a place,
How many leagues from this to yonder plain,
How many relics each cathedral grace,
And where Giralda stands on her gigantic base.

There may you read (Oh, Phoebus, save Sir John!
That these my words prophetic may not err),
All that was said, or sung, or lost, or won,
By vaunting Wellesley or by blundering Frere,
He that wrote half the Necdy Knife-Grinder.
Thus poesy the way to grandeur paves
Who would not such diplomatists prefer?

But cease, my Muse, thy speed some respite craves; Leave Legates to their house, and armies to their graves.

Yet here of Vulpes mention may be made,
Who for the Junta modell'd sapient laws,
Taught them to govern ere they were obey'd:
Certes, fit teacher to command, because
His soul Socratic no Xantippe awes;
Blest with a dame in Virtue's bosom nurst,
With her let silent admiration pause! -
True to her second husband and her first:
On such unshaken fame let Satire do its worst.]

Page 19, line 927. And thou, my friend, since unavailing woe. The Honourable John Wingfield of the Guards, who died of a fever at Coimbra. I had known him ten years, the better half of his life, and the happiest part of mine. In the short space of one month I have lost her who gave me being, and most of those who had made that being tolerable. To me the lines of Young are no fiction:

Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?

Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain, And thrice ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn.' [This and the following stanzas were added in Angust, 1811.]

Line 4. And is, despite of war and wasting fire. Part of the Acropolis was destroyed by the explosion of a magazine during the Venetian siege. [The desolation of the Athenian Acropolis affected Byron strongly, and he refers to it several times. Compare The Curse of Minerva.]

Line 19. Son of the morning, rise! approach you here! [Rolfe, in his note on this line, quotes as follows from Tozer: The poet supposes himself to be standing amid the ruins of the

temple of Zeus Olympius by the Ilissus (10, 3 with the Acropolis full in view; in front of him lies a broken sepulchral urn, and not far off is a skull from some neighbouring burial-ground (5. 7); then, as he is proceeding to moralise on human vicissitude, he summons as audience a native (Son of the morning, i. e. an Oriental. who is supposed to be standing near. For a similar instance in Byron of summoning an audience, cf. The Giaour:

Frown not upon me, churlish Priest ! that I
Look not for life, where life may never be;

I am no sneerer at thy phantasy;

Thou pitiest me, alas! I envy thee,
Thou bold discoverer in an unknown sea,

Of happy isles and happier tenants there;

I ask thee not to prove a Sadducee;

Still dream of Paradise thou know'st not where, But lov'st too well to bid thine erring brother share.]

Line 81. For me 't were bliss enough to know thy spirit blest! [In a letter to Dallas, dated October 14, 1811, Byron says: 'I think it proper to state to you, that this stanza alludes to an event which has taken place since my arrival here (Newstead Abbey), and not to the death of any male friend.']

Page 21, line 84. Here, son of Saturn, was the fav'rite throne. The temple of Jupiter Olympius, of which sixteen columns, entirely of marble, yet survive.

Line 91. But who, of all the plunderers of you fane. [Byron refers to the marbles of the Par thenon taken to England by Lord Elgin, a Scotchman. Compare The Curse of Minerva.]

Line 117. Which envious Eld forbore, and ty rants left to stand. [After stanza xiii. the original MS. has the following:

Come, then, ye classic Thanes of each degree, Dark Hamilton and sullen Aberdeen, Come pilfer all the Pilgrim loves to see, All that yet consecrates the fading scene: Oh better were it ye had never been, Nor ye, nor Elgin, nor that lesser wight, The victim sad of vase-collecting spleen, House-furnisher withal, one Thomas hight, Than ye should bear one stone from wrong'd Athena's site.

Or will the gentle Dilettanti crew

Now delegate the task to digging Gell,
That mighty limner of a birds'-eye view,
How like to Nature let his volumes tell;
Who can with him the folio's limits swell
With all the Author saw, or said he saw ?
Who can topographise or delve so well?
No boaster he, nor impudent and raw,
His pencil, pen, and shade, alike without a flaw.]

Line 118. Where was thine Ægis, Pallas, that appall'd. According to Zosimus, Minerva and Achilles frightened Alaric from the Acropolis:

but others relate that the Gothic king was nearly as mischievous as the Scottish peer.

Page 22, line 145. The dark blue sea. [These words occur a number of times in Byron and have the effect of an Homeric epithet.]

Line 155. The well-reeved guns, the netted canopy. To prevent blocks or splinters from falling on deck during action.

Line 190. Through Calpe's straits survey the steepy shore. [Calpe, the Greek name of Gibraltar.]

Page 23, line 253. But not in silence pass Calypso's isles. Goza is said to have been the island of Calypso. [Goza is near Malta. The real island, Ogygia, of the Odyssey, is of course mythical. In the Télémaque of Fénelon, Mentor and Telemachus visit the island, and Mentor pushes the youth from a cliff into the sea to save him from the seductive charms of Calypso, who was thus bereft of both Odysseus and his son.]

Page 24, line 266. Sweet Florence, could another ever share. [Mrs. Spencer Smith, whose acquaintance the poet formed at Malta, -see Miscellaneous Poems, September, 1809, To Florence, p. 157. In one so imaginative as Lord Byron, who, while he infused so much of his life into his poetry, mingled also not a little of poetry with his life, it is difficult,' says Moore, 'in unravelling the texture of his feelings, to distinguish at all times between the fanciful and the real. His description here, for instance, of the unmoved and "loveless heart," with which he contemplated even the charms of this attractive person, is wholly at variance with the statements in many of his letters; and, above all, with one of the most graceful of his lesser poems, addressed to this same lady, during a thunderstorm on his road to Zitza.']

Line 291. Was not unskilful in the spoiler's art. [It is common to quote in extenuation of this line Byron's statement to Dallas in 1821: ‘I am not a Joseph, nor a Scipio, but I can safely affirm, that I never in my life seduced any woman.']

Line 307. 'Tis an old lesson; Time approves it true. [It is interesting to compare with this stanza Shakespeare's Sonnet 129, The expense of spirit in a waste of shame.']

Page 25, line 334. Land of Albania, where Iskander rose. [Iskander is the Turkish word for Alexander; and the celebrated Scanderbeg (Lord Alexander) is alluded to in the third and fourth lines of the stanza.]

Line 344. Where sad Penelope o'erlook'd the wave. Ithaca. [The lover's refuge is the rock of Leucadia from which Sappho is fabled to have thrown herself. Sappho is called dark in accordance with the description of Ovid, Candida si non sum (Her. xv. 35).]

Page 26, line 397. Ambracia's gulf behold. [Here was fought the battle of Actium where Mark Antony lost the world to follow Cleopatra. Nicopolis was built by Augustus opposite to Actium as a trophy of the victory.]

Line 415. Acherusia's lake. According to Pouqueville, the lake of Yanina: but Pouqueville is always out. [The lake of Yanina, or

Line 424. Monastic Zitza. The convent and village of Zitza are four hours' journey from Joannina, or Yanina, the capital of the Pachalick. In the valley the river Kalamas (once the Acheron) flows, and, not far from Zitza, forms a fine cataract. The situation is perhaps the finest in Greece.

Page 27, line 438. Here dwells the caloyer. The Greek monks are so called. [kaλóyepos, good old man.]

Line 488. Laos wide and fierce. [ A mistake for Aous, the modern Viosa.]

Page 28, line 498. Survey'd the dwelling of this chief of power. ['He (Ali Pacha) had heard that an Englishman of rank was in his dominions, and left orders in Yanina, with the commandant, to provide a house, and supply me with every kind of necessary, gratis. . I rode out on the vizier's horses, and saw the palaces of himself and grandsons. I shall never forget the singular scene on entering Tepaleen, at five in the afternoon, as the sun was going down. It brought to my mind (with some change of dress, however) Scott's description of Branksome Castle in his Lay, and the feudal system. The Albanians in their dresses (the most magnificent in the world, consisting of a long white kilt, gold-worked cloak, crimson velvet goldlaced jacket and waistcoat, silver-mounted pistols and daggers); the Tartars, with their high caps; the Turks in their vast pelisses and turbans; the soldiers and black slaves with the horses, the former in groups, in an immense large open gallery in front of the palace, the latter placed in a kind of cloister below it; two hundred steeds ready caparisoned to move in a moment; couriers entering or passing out with despatches; the kettle-drums beating; boys calling the hour from the minaret of the mosque; altogether, with the singular appearance of the building itself, formed a new and delightful spectacle to a stranger.' - Byron in a letter to his mother, November 12, 1809.]

Line 532. Ramazani's fast. [The Turkish lent. Compare FitzGerald's stanza in the Rubaiyat : · 'As under cover of departing Day

Slunk hunger-stricken Ramazan away."] Page 29, line 593. And fellow-countrymen have stood aloof. Alluding to the wreckers of Corn wall.

Page 30, line 632. The red wine circling fast. The Albanian Mussulmans do not abstain from wine, and, indeed, very few of the others.

Line 637. Each Palikar. 'Palikar,' a soldier.

Line 649. Tambourgi. A drummer. — These stanzas are partly taken from different Albanese songs, as far as I was able to make them out by the exposition of the Albanese in Romaic and Italian.

Page 31, line 686. Let the yellow-hair'd Giaours. Yellow is the epithet given to the Russians. Horsetail, the insignia of a Pacha. - Delhis.