The Works of Lord Byron Volume V Part 141

[294] {554} I refer the reader to the first address of Prometheus in aeschylus, when he is left alone by his attendants, and before the arrival of the chorus of Sea-nymphs.--_Prometheus Vinctus_, line 88, _sq._

[295] [Franklin published his _Opinions and Conjectures concerning the Properties and Effects of the Electrical Matter and the Means of preserving Buildings, s.h.i.+ps, etc., from Lightning_, in 1751, and in June, 1752, "the immortal kite was flown." It was in 1781, when he was minister plenipotentiary at the Court of France, that the Latin hexameter, "Eripuit clo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis," first applied to him by Turgot, was affixed to his portrait by Fragonard. The line, said to be an adaptation of a line in the _Astronomicon_ of Manilius (lib. i.

104), descriptive of the Reason, "Eripuitque Jovi fulmen viresque tonandi," was turned into French by Nogaret, d'Alembert, and other wits and scholars. It appears on the reverse of a medal by F. Dupre, dated 1786. (See _Works_ of Benjamin Franklin, edited by Jared Sparks, 1840, viii. 537-539; _Life and Times, etc._, by James Parton, 1864, i.

285-291.)]

[296] {555}["To be the first man--_not_ the Dictator, not the Sylla, but the Was.h.i.+ngton, or the Aristides, the leader in talent and truth--is next to the Divinity."--Journal, November 24, 1813, _Letters_, 1898, ii.

340.]

[297] [Simon Bolivar (_El Libertador_), 1783-1830, was at the height of his power and fame at the beginning of 1823. In 1821 he had united New Grenada to Venezuela under the name of the Republic of Columbia, and on the 1st of September he made a solemn entry into Lima. He was greeted with acclaim, but in accepting the honours which his fellow-citizens showered upon him, he warned them against the dangers of tyranny.

"Beware," he said, "of a Napoleon or an Iturbide." Byron, at one time, had a mind to settle in "Bolivar's country" (letter to Ellice, June 12, 1821, _Letters_, 1901, vi. 89); and he christened his yacht _The Bolivar_.]

[298] [A proclamation of Bolivar's, dated June 8, 1822, runs thus: "Columbians, now all your delightful country is free.... From the banks of the Orinoco to the Andes of Peru, the ... army marching in triumph has covered with its protecting arms the entire extent of Columbia."--"Jamaica Papers," _Morning Chronicle_, September 28, 1822.]

[299] {556}[The capitulation of Athens was signed June 21, 1822. "Three days after the Greeks had sworn to observe the capitulation, they commenced murdering their helpless prisoners.... The streets of Athens were stained with the blood of four hundred men, women, and children."--_History of Greece_, by George Finlay, 1877, vi. 283. The sword was hid in the myrtle bough. Hence the allusion. (Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza xx. line 9, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 228, and 291, note 2.)]

[300] [The independence of Chili dated from April 5, 1818, when General Jose de San Martin routed the Spanish army on the plains of Maypo. On the 28th of July, 1821, the Independence of Peru was proclaimed. General San Martin a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of Protector, and, August 3, 4, 1821, issued proclamations, in which he announced the independence of Peru, and bade the Spaniards tremble if they "abused his indulgence."

_Extracts from a Journal written on the Coast of Chili, etc._, by Captain Basil Hall, 1824, i. 266-272.]

[301] [On the 8th of August, 1822, Niketas and Hypsilantes defeated the Turks under Dramali, near Lerna. The Moreotes attributed their good fortune to the generals.h.i.+p of Kolokotrones, a Messenian. Compare with the whole of section vi. the following quotations from an article on the "Numbers of the Greeks," which appeared in the _Morning Chronicle_, September 13, 1822--

"'Trust not for freedom to the Franks, They have a king who buys and sells; In native swords and native ranks The only hope of courage dwells.'

Byron.

"As Russia has now removed her warlike projects, and the Greeks are engaged single-handed with the whole force of the Ottoman Empire, etc.... Byron's Grecian bard can no longer exclaim--

'My country! on thy voiceless sh.o.r.e The heroic lay is tuneless now-- The heroic bosom beats no more.'

"Greece is no longer a 'nation's sepulchre,' the foul abode of slaves, but the living theatre of the patriot's toils and the hero's achievements. Her banners once more float on the mountains, and the battles she has already won show that in every glen and valley, as well as on

'Suli's rock and Parga's sh.o.r.e Exists the remnant of a line Such as the Doric mothers bore.'"]

[302] {557}[An account of these Russian intrigues in Greece is contained in Thomas Gordon's _History of the Greek Revolution_, 1832, i. 194-204.]

[eb] {558} _Of Incas known but as a cloud_.--[MS. erased.]

[ec] _Not now the Roman or the Punic horde_.--[MS.]

[ed] ----_abhorrent of them both_.--[MS.]

[303] [Pelayo, said to be the son of Favila, Duke of Cantabria, was elected king by the Christians of the Asturias in 718, and defeated the Arab generals Suleyman and Manurza. He died A.D. 737.]

[304] [For the "fabulous sketches" of the Zegri and Abencerrages, rival Moorish tribes, whose quarrels, at the close of the fifteenth century, deluged Granada with blood, see the _Civil Wars of Granada_, a prose fiction, interspersed with ballads, by Gines Perez de Hita, published in 1595. An opera, _Les Abencerages_, by Cherubini, was performed in Paris in 1813. Chateaubriand's _Les Aventures du dernier Abencerrage_ was not published till 1826.]

[ee] _And yet have left worse enemies than they_.--[MS. erased.]

[305] [Ferdinand VII. returned to Madrid in March, 1814. "No sooner was he established on his throne ... than he set himself to restore the old absolutism with its worst abuses. The n.o.bles recovered their privileges ... the Inquisition resumed its activity; and the Jesuits returned to Spain.... A _camarilla_ of worthless courtiers and priests conducted the government, and urged the king to fresh acts of revolutionary violence.

For six years Spain groaned under a royalist 'reign of terror.'"--_Encycl. Brit._, art. "Spain," vol. 22, p. 345.]

[ef] _As rose on his remorseless ear the cry_.--[MS. erased.]

[eg] {559} _The re-awakened virtue_----.--[MS. erased.]

[eh] ----_is on the sh.o.r.e_.--[MS. erased.]

[306] "'St. Jago and close Spain!' the old Spanish war-cry." ["Santiago y serra Espana."]

[ei] _The wild Guerilla on Morena_----.--[MS. erased]

[ej] _Of eagle-eyed_----.--[MS. erased.]

[307] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto I. stanzas liv.-lvi., _Poetical Works_, i. 57, 58, 91, 92 (note II). The "man" was Tio Jorge (Jorge Ibort), _vide ibid._, p. 94.]

[308] {560} The Arragonians are peculiarly dexterous in the use of this weapon, and displayed it particularly in former French wars.

[309] [_Vide ante_, the Introduction to the _Age of Bronze_, pp, 537-540.]

[310] [Patrick Henry, born May 29, 1736, died June 6, 1799, was one of the leading spirits of the American Revolution. His father, John Henry, a Scotchman, a cousin of the historian, William Robertson, had acquired a small property in Virginia. Patrick was not exactly "forest born,"

but, as a child, loved to play truant "in the forest with his gun or over his angle-rod." He first came into notice as an orator in the "Parson's Cause," a suit brought by a minister of the Established Church to recover his salary, which had been fixed at 16,000 lbs. of tobacco.

In his speech he is said to have struck the key-note of the Revolution by arguing that "a king, by disallowing acts of a salutary nature, from being the father of his people, degenerates into a tyrant, and forfeits all right to his subjects' obedience." His famous speech against the "Stamps Act" was delivered in the House of Burgesses of Virginia, May 29, 1765. One pa.s.sage, with which, no doubt, Byron was familiar, has pa.s.sed into history. "Caesar had his Brutus--Charles the First had his Cromwell--and George the Third--" Henry was interrupted with a shout of "Treason! treason!!" but finished the sentence with, and "George the Third _may profit by their example_. If _this_ be treason, make the most of it."

Henry was delegate to the first Continental Congress, five times Governor of Virginia, and was appointed U.S. Senator in 1794.

His contemporaries said that he was "the greatest orator that ever lived." He seems to have exercised a kind of magical influence over his hearers, which they could not explain, which charmed and overwhelmed them, and "has left behind a tradition of bewitching persuasiveness and almost prophetic sublimity."--See _Life of Patrick Henry_, by William Wirt, 1845, _pa.s.sim._]

[ek] {561} ----_to one Napoleon_.--[MS. erased.]

[el] ----_thy poor old wall forgets_.--[MS. erased.]

[311] ["I have been over Verona. The amphitheatre is wonderful--beats even Greece. Of the truth of Juliet's story they seem tenacious to a degree, insisting on the fact, giving a date (1303), and showing a tomb.

It is a plain, open, and partly decayed sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden, once a cemetery, now ruined to the very graves. The situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their love.... The Gothic monuments of the Scaliger princes pleased me, but 'a poor virtuoso am I.'"--Letter to Moore, November 7, 1816, _Letters_, 1899, iii. 386, 387.

The tombs of the Scaligers are close to the Church of Santa Maria l'Antica. Juliet's tomb, "of red Verona marble," is in the garden of the _Orfanotrofio_, between the Via Cappucini and the Adige. It is not "that ancient vault where all the kindred of the Capulets lie," which has long since been destroyed. Since 1814 Verona had been under Austria's sway, and had "treacherously" forgotten her republican traditions.]

[312] {562}[Francesco Can Grande della Scala died in 1329. It was under his roof that Dante learned

"... how salt his food who fares Upon another's bread--how steep his path Who treadeth up and down another's stairs."

For anecdotes of Can Grande, see _Commedia, etc._, by E. H. Plumptre, D.D., 1886, I. cxx., cxxi.; and compare _Dante at Verona_, by D. G.

Rossetti, _Works_, 1886, i. 1-17.]

[313] [Ippolito Pindemonte, the modern Tibullus (1753-1828). (See _Letters_, 1900, iv. 127, note 4.)]

[314] [Claudian's famous old man of Verona, "_qui suburbium numquam egressus est_."

"Indocilis rerum, vicinae nescius urbis, Adspectu fruitur liberiore poli."

C. Claudiani _Opera_, lii., _Epigrammata_, ii. lines 9, 10 (ed. 1821, iii. 427).]