Page images
PDF
EPUB

même année, ce bon patriote institua la Republique son héritière, à condition qu'elle employeroit ses biens à entretenir le college dont on projettoit la fondation.

Il paroit que Bonnivard mourut en 1570; mais on ne peut l'assurer, parcequ'il y a une lacune dans le Nécrologe depuis le mois de Juillet 1570 jusques en 1571.

Note 2, page 3, line 3.
In a single night.

Ludovico Sforza, and others.-The same is asserted of Marie Antoinette's, the wife of Louis XVI. though not in quite so short a period. Grief is said to have the same effect: to such, and not to fear, this change in her's was to be attributed.

Note 3, page 10, line 11.

From Chillon's snow-white battlement.

The Chateau de Chillon is situated between Clarens and Villeneuve, which last is at one extremity of the Lake of Geneva. On its left are the entrances of the Rhone, and opposite are the Heights of Melleirie and the range of Alps above Boveret and St. Gingo.

Near it, on a hill behind, is a torrent; below it, washing its walls, the lake has been fathomed to the depth of 800 feet (French measure); within it are a range of dungeons, in which the early reformers, and subsequently prisoners of state, were confined. Across one of the vaults is a beam black with age,

THE PRISONER OF CHILLON, &c.

65

on which we were informed that the condemned were formerly executed. In the cells are seven pillars, or, rather, eight, one being half merged in the wall; in some of these are rings for the fetters and the fettered: in the pavement the steps of Bonnivard have left their traces-he was confined here several years.

It is by this castle that Rousseau has fixed the catastrophe of his Heloise, in the rescue of one of her children by Julie from the water; the shock of which, and the illness produced by the immersion, is the cause of her death.

The chateau is large, and seen along the lake for a great distance. The walls are white.

Note 4, page 24, line 10.

And then there was a little isle.

Between the entrances of the Rhone and Villeneuve, not far from Chillon, is a very small island; the only one I could perceive, in my voyage round and over the lake, within its circumference. It contains a few trees, (I think not above three,) and from its singleness and diminutive size has a peculiar effect upon the view.

When the foregoing poem was composed I was not sufficiently aware of the history of Bonnivard, or I should have endeavoured to dignify the subject by an attempt to celebrate his courage and his virtues. Some account of his life will be found in a note appended to the " Sonnet on Chillon," with which I have been VOL. VI.

F

66 NOTES TO THE PRISONER OF CHILLON, &C.

furnished by the kindness of a citizen of that Republic which is still proud of the memory of a man worthy of the best age of ancient freedom.

Note 5, page 28, line 2.

Leman! these names are worthy of thy shore. Geneva, Ferney, Coppet, Lausanne.

Note 6, page 54, line 16.

Like to the Pontic monarch of old days.

Mithridates of Pontus.

MANFRED.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, "Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

« PreviousContinue »