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i.

St. Mark yet sees his Lion1 where he stood 3.H.
Stand, but in mockery of his withered power,
Over the proud Place where an Emperor sued, 2
And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour
When Venice was a Queen with an unequalled dower.

i. Even on the pillar

—[MS. M., D. erased.]

the present one, which, by its splendour, makes us forget the original.

66 The vessel is all ornament; we ought to say, it is overladen with ornament; it is altogether one piece of gilt carving, for no other use. . . This state-galley is a good index to show what the Venetians were, and what they considered themselves."-Travels in Italy, 1883, p. 68. Compare, too, Wordsworth's sonnet of the Venetian Republic "—

66

On the Extinction

"She was a maiden City, bright and free;
No guile seduced, no force could violate;
And, when she took unto herself a Mate,
She must espouse the everlasting Sea."

Works, 1888, p. 180.]

1. [For "Lion," see Hobhouse's note iii. The "Horses of St. Mark" (vide post, stanza xiii. line 1), which, according to history or legend, Augustus "conveyed" from Alexandria to Rome, Constantine from Rome to Constantinople, Dandolo, in 1204, from Constantinople to Venice, Napoleon, in 1797, from Venice to Paris, and which were restored to the Venetians by the Austrians in 1815, were at one time supposed to belong to the school of Lysippus. Haydon, who published, in 1817, a curious etching of "The Elgin Horse's Head," placed side by side with the "Head of one of the Horses .. .. now at Venice," subscribes the following critical note: "It is astonishing that the great principles of nature should have been so nearly lost in the time between Phidias and Lysippus. Compare these two heads. The Elgin head is all truth, the other all manner." Hobhouse pronounces the "Horses" to be "irrevocably Chian," but modern archæologists regard both "school" and exact period as uncertain.]

2. [According to Milman (Hist. of Lat. Christianity, v 144), the humiliation of Barbarossa at the Church of St. Mark took place on Tuesday, July 24, 1177. À propos of the return of the Pope and Emperor to the ducal palace, he quotes "a curious passage from a newly recovered poem,

XII.

4.H.

The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns—
An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt;
Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains
Clank over sceptred cities; Nations melt
From Power's high pinnacle, when they have felt
The sunshine for a while, and downward go
Like Lauwine loosened from the mountain's belt;
Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo ! 1 5.H.

Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe. 2

i.

who quelled the imperial foe.—[MS. M. erased.]
empire's all-conquering foe.-[MS. M.]

by Godfrey of Viterbo, an attendant on the Emperor. So great was the press in the market that the aged Pope was thrown down

"Jam Papa perisset in arto,

Cæsar ibi vetulum ni relevasset eum." "This," he remarks, "is an odd contrast of real life with romance."]

1. ["Oh, for one hour of Dundee !" was the exclamation of a Highland chieftain at the battle of Sheriff-muir, November 13, 1715 (Scott's Tales of a Grandfather, III. Series, chap. x.; Prose Works, Paris, 1830, vii. 768). Wordsworth makes the words his own in the sonnet, "In the Pass of Killicranky (an Invasion being expected, October, 1803) " (Works, 1888, p. 201)

“O for a single hour of that Dundee,

Who on that day the word of onset gave !"

And Coleridge, in a letter to Wordsworth (February 8, 1804), thinking, perhaps, less of the chieftain than the sonnet, exclaims, "Oh for one hour of Dundee !' How often shall I sigh,‘Oh for one hour of The Recluse!"—an aspiration which Byron would have worded differently.]

2. [Compare Marino Faliero, act iv. sc. 2, lines 157, 158– "Doge Dandolo survived to ninety summers, To vanquish empires, and refuse their crown." "The vessels that bore the bishops of Soissons and

VOL. II.

XIII.

Before St. Mark still glow his Steeds of brass,
Their gilded collars glittering in the sun;
But is not Doria's menace1 come to pass ? 6.H.
Are they not bridled?-Venice, lost and won,
Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,
Sinks, like a sea-weed, unto whence she rose ! 2

i.

into whence she rose.-[Editions 1818-1891.] Troyes, the Paradise and the Pilgrim, were the first which grappled with the Towers of Constantinople [April, 1204].

The bishops of Soissons and of Troyes would have placed the blind old Doge Dandolo on the imperial throne; his election was opposed by the Venetians.... But probably the wise patriotism of Dandolo himself, and his knowledge of the Venetian mind, would make him acquiesce in the loss of an honour so dangerous to his country. Venice might have sunk to an outpost, as it were, of the Eastern Empire."-Milman's Hist. of Lat. Christianity, v. 350, 353, 354.]

1. [Hobhouse's version (see Hist. Notes, No. vi.) of the war of Chioggia is not borne out by modern research. For example, the long speech which Chinazzo attributes to the Genoese admiral, Pietro Doria, is probably mythical. The actual menace of the "bitting and bridling the horses of St. Mark" is assigned by other historians to Francesco Carrara. Doria was not killed by a stone bullet from the cannon named The Trevisara, but by the fall of the Campanile in Chioggia, which had been struck by the bullet. (Venice, an Historical Sketch of the Republic, by Horatio F. Brown, 1893, pp. 225-234.)]

2. [Compare the opening lines of Byron's Ode on Venice"Oh Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls

Are level with the waters, there shall be

A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls,

A loud lament along the sweeping sea!"

Shelley, too, in his Lines written among the Euganean Hills, bewailed the approaching doom of the "sea-girt city." But threatened cities, like threatened men, live long, and

XIII.

Before St. Mark still glow his Steeds of brass,
Their gilded collars glittering in the sun;
But is not Doria's menace1 come to pass ? 6.H.
Are they not bridled?-Venice, lost and won,
Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,
Sinks, like a sea-weed, unto whence she rose !i2

i. into whence she rose.-[Editions 1818-1891.] Troyes, the Paradise and the Pilgrim, were the first which grappled with the Towers of Constantinople [April, 1204].

The bishops of Soissons and of Troyes would have placed the blind old Doge Dandolo on the imperial throne; his election was opposed by the Venetians. But probably the wise patriotism of Dandolo himself, and his knowledge of the Venetian mind, would make him acquiesce in the loss of an honour so dangerous to his country. . . . Venice might have sunk to an outpost, as it were, of the Eastern Empire."-Milman's Hist. of Lat. Christianity, v. 350, 353, 354.]

1. [Hobhouse's version (see Hist. Notes, No. vi.) of the war of Chioggia is not borne out by modern research. For example, the long speech which Chinazzo attributes to the Genoese admiral, Pietro Doria, is probably mythical. The actual menace of the "bitting and bridling the horses of St. Mark" is assigned by other historians to Francesco Carrara. Doria was not killed by a stone bullet from the cannon named The Trevisara, but by the fall of the Campanile in Chioggia, which had been struck by the bullet. (Venice, an Historical Sketch of the Republic, by Horatio F. Brown, 1893, pp. 225-234.)]

2. [Compare the opening lines of Byron's Ode on VeniceOh Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls

Are level with the waters, there shall be
A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls,

A loud lament along the sweeping sea!"

Shelley, too, in his Lines written among the Euganean Hills, bewailed the approaching doom of the "sea-girt city." But threatened cities, like threatened men, live long, and

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