poor fellows nevertheless repeatedly exclaimed they heard breakers, and some the firing of guns. [xcvi.]... The joy at a speedy relief affected us all in a most remarkable way. Many burst into tears; some looked at each other with a stupid stare, as if doubtful of the reality of what they saw; while several were in such a lethargic condition, that no animating words could rouse them to exertion. At this affecting period, I proposed offering up our solemn thanks to Heaven for the miraculous deliverance." [xcvii-xcviii.]

THE CENTAUR: "At length one of them broke into a most immoderate swearing fit of joy, which I could not restrain, and declared, that he had never seen land in his life, if what he now saw was not land.” [xcvii.]

THE THOMAS: "After having suffered the horrors of hunger and thirst for many days, they providentially took a small turtle whilst floating asleep on the surface of the water." [xcix.]

BLIGH: "Our bodies were nothing but skin and bones, our limbs were full of sores, and we were clothed in rags."

ESCAPE OF DESERTERS FROM ST. HELENA: " They discovered land right ahead, and steered for it. There being a very heavy surf, they endeavoured to turn the boat's head to it, which, from weakness, they were unable to complete, and soon afterwards the boat upset."

Don Juan, after various adventures in Spain, the land of his birth, has been sent abroad to travel. Our narrative begins in the midst of his voyage from Cadiz bound for Leghorn.

238: xxv, 2. licentiate, i.e., having taken a degree or license to teach. Cf. the French, licencié.

241: xxxiv, 4-5. Cf. Spenser's 'Faerie Queene' II, xii, st. lxxi.

242: xxxvii, 8. like Sancho Panta. So written for the sake of the rhyme. Regularly Sancho Panza. The faithful follower of Don Quixote in Cervantes' famous story.

242: xxxviii. thrumm'd a sail. Inserting short pieces of ropeyarn in a sail, making a rough surface, which, applied to the opening, might stop the leak.

244: xliv, 4. A touch perhaps suggested by Erasmus' famous dialogue, 'The Shipwreck,' in his 'Colloquies,' where, in a similar situation, among other vows there is one of a gigantic candle to St. Christopher if he should bring the petitioner off alive.

245: xlix, 6-8. The curiosa felicitas of phrasing is not often Byron's forte. Here, however, there is classical perfection of phrase. The dim, desolate deep-what three words could more

perfectly convey both the picture and the emotion than these? Cf. stanza ciii, 1. 8: the vast, salt, dread, eternal deep."

250 lxvi, 8. the Argo, in which Jason and his comrades made their voyage in search of the Golden Fleece.

252 lxxiv, 8. Julia's letter. The letter sent Juan by his mistress as he is about to sail; described in canto I, stanzas cxcicxcviii.

254: lxxxiii. in....

The story of Ugolino, who perished of hunger The Tower of Famine," and whom Dante saw in Hell gnawing the head of his arch-enemy, is related in The Inferno,' canto xxxii, 124 ff. and canto xxxiii, 1-90. What æsthetic difference is there between Byron's use of the Horrible and Dante's?

254: lxxxiv.

Cf. in the Ancient Mariner,' Part III, the description of the thirst of the ship's crew.

255 lxxvi. The allusion is to the story of the rich man and Lazarus in the Bible. Cf. 'St. Luke' xvi, 19-26. Cf. D. G. Rossetti's sonnet Lost Days':

"Such spilt water as in dreams must cheat

The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway."

258: xcvi. 3. yet now they were so low. The meaning intended is given more clearly in the first reading of Byron's MS. for which the present was substituted: "but their spirits were so low."

258: xcix, I-3. The hint for this incident Byron may have taken from his own experience. In describing the voyage from Gibraltar to Malta, Galt, who was a fellow-passenger, writes, in his Life of Byron': "In the calms the jolly-boat was several times lowered; and on one of these occasions his lordship with the captain caught a turtle."

260: cv, 6-8. The amiable vanity of boasting of this feat (a vanity here more than redeemed by the exquisitely ludicrous and epigrammatic turn of the verse) never left Lord Byron. Again and again he referred to the exploit in his letters and conversation. For a circumstantial account see his letter to Murray, February 21, 1821.

261: cviii. Compare the account of the casting ashore of Ulysses in the Odyssey,' Bk. V, near the end. This account, together with that of Nausicaa's reception of him in Bk. VI may

have suggested to Byron the present passage, as well as that which follows relating Juan's rescue by Haidée.

DON JUAN: THE ISLES OF GREECE.'

(Canto III, Stanzas lxxxv-cxi.)

The selection here chosen presents in short compass a fair example of the range, variety, audacity, ease, verve, wit, lyric enthusiasm, satire, and tender pathos which are so strangely and inextricably mingled throughout this poem.

After the shipwreck Juan is rescued by Haidée, the daughter of Lambro, a Greek pirate chieftain, lord of the isle on whose strand Juan is thrown. During Lambro's absence Haidée entertains Juan with festivities in her father's halls. A native poet

is present, and the selection opens with the account of his talents. After the song ("The Isles of Greece") placed in his mouth, Byron takes up the theme and comments on it, speaking in his own person.

262: lxxxv-vi. On this passage cf. Ruskin, Fiction, Fair and Foul' 53: "Note first here . . . the concentrating and foretelling power. ・・ Then, note the estimate of height and depth in poetry, swept in an instant, high lyric to low rational.' Pindar to Pope (knowing Pope's height, too, all the while, no man better); then, the poetic power of France-resumed in a wordBéranger; then the cut at Marmion, entirely deserved yet kindly given, for everything he names in these two stanzas is the best of its kind; then Romance in Spain on-the last war (present war not being to Spanish poetical taste), then, Goethe, the real heart of all Germany, and last, the aping of the Trecentisti which has since consummated itself in Pre-Raphaelitism! comes the mock at himself—the modern English Greek then to amazement, forth he thunders in his Achilles voice." 262: lxxxv, 4. Ça ira. The famous revolutionary song of the French, 1789,-"It will speed."

Lastly and

7. Practically all of Pindar's extant poetry consists of the Epinikian Odes, in celebration of the victors in the Greek games. Many of these, as, for example, the first six Olympian Odes, celebrate the winners in "horse-races,' as their nominal subjects.

262: lxxxvi, I. The contemporary chansons of Béranger and Desaugiers were very popular at this period,

6. a quarto tale. Such as Scott and Byron himself were pouring forth.

6. Madame de Staël's famous book' De l'Allemagne,' in which, among other subjects, Goethe and other German authors are discussed, appeared in 1810.

7. the Trecentisti. The Italian poets and artists of the fourteenth century.

263, THE SONG, I, 4. Delos, the smallest island of the Cyclades in the Ægean, and the birthplace of Apollo, was fabled to have risen from the sea.

263, 2, 1. The Scian muse is Homer (who wielded "the hero's harp"). Scio (or Chios) was one of the seven cities which claimed to be the birthplace of Homer. The Teian muse, Anacreon, born at Teios, in Asia Minor,—the singer of love and wine.

6. Islands of the Blest, Insula Fortunatæ, islands mentioned in Greek legend as existing in the far Atlantic, where the souls of the blessed were conveyed after death. Cf. Andrew Lang's poem The Fortunate Islands' (a paraphrase from Lucian).

265, 11, 4. Forced to flee from his native land, Anacreon was kindly received by Polycrates, tyrant of Samos.

265, 12. For several years previous to the battle of Marathon, in which he proved himself "Freedom's best and bravest friend,” Miltiades reigned as "tyrant" over the Chersonesus.

265, 13, 2. Suli's rock. Suli is a fortress upon a rocky height on the river Suli, about thirty miles southwest of Janina. Parga, a town on the coast of Epirus opposite the island of Paxo.

6. The Heraclidæ, or descendants of Hercules, who conquered the Peloponnesus in the period before the Trojan war, are here put for the Greeks as a whole.

265, 16. Sunium, a promontory at the southern extremity of Attica, where, on the cliff three hundred feet above the sea, are the ruins of a temple of Athene. Byron's note refers to Sophocles' 'Ajax,' 1217 ff. :

"O, could I be where the woody foreland, washed by the wave, beetles o'er the main, 'neath Sunium's lofty plain."

266: lxxxvii, 6. Horace's

"si vis me flere, dolendum est Primum ipsi tibi " ('Ars Poetica,' 102-3).

May we justly infer from the mocking tone of this stanza that the poet in this case has not felt that which he makes us feel so keenly in the noble lyric which precedes? Or is the change of tone rather a sign of intenser feeling?

267: xc, 8. 'The Memoirs of John, Duke of Marlborough,' by William Coxe, Archdeacon of Wiltshire, in three volumes, appeared at London in 1818-19.

267: xci, 5. Cf. the Life of Milton, in Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets.'

267 xcii, 3. Suetonius and Plutarch relate nothing of "Cæsar's earliest acts before he was fifteen or sixteen years of age. Το the subject of "Titus' youth" Suetonius devotes a couple of short chapters.

4. An edition of Burns, with an Account of his Life by Dr. James Currie, was published at Liverpool in 1800.

5. Cromwell's pranks. The early life of Cromwell has been the subject of many stories of wildness and debauchery, principally the invention of cavaliers and royalists.

In Mark Noble's 'Memoirs of the Cromwell Family,' 1787, vol. I, pp. 93 ff., (where possibly Byron may have read them), many of these stories are related, including accounts of the young Cromwell's depredations upon orchards and dove-houses, his supposed boyhood meeting and combat with the young Prince Charles, his prowess in athletic sports, and his roystering. These stories have been investigated in Sanford's 'Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion,' 174-268.

267: xciii, 1-2. Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth started out with democratic, or at least republican, principles, which, to Byron's implacable indignation, they afterwards abandoned. The two former met in 1794 and formed their scheme of "Pantisocracy," for a communistic colony on the banks of the Susquehanna. The question "whether the marriage contract shall be dissolved, if agreeable to one or both parties," was under discussion. (Hence, Byron's “All are not moralists.") Cf. Byron's 'Observations upon an Article in Blackwood's Magazine,' in 1820: "He [Southey] was one of the projectors of a scheme called 'pantisocracy,' for having all things, including women, in com. mon.. and he sets up as a moralist."