The Works of Lord Byron Volume III Part 78

[333] [The metrical rendering of the date (miscalculated from the death instead of the birth of Christ) may be traced to the opening lines of an old ballad (Kolbing's _Siege of Corinth_, p. 53)--

"Upon the sixteen hunder year Of G.o.d, and fifty-three, From Christ was born, that bought us dear, As writings testifie," etc.

See "The Life and Age of Man" (_Burns' Selected Poems_, ed. by J. L.

Robertson, 1889, p. 191).]

[334] [Compare letter to Hodgson, July 16, 1809: "How merrily we lives that travellers be!"--_Letters_, 1898, i. 233.]

[335] {450} [For "capote," compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza lii. line 7, and Byron's note (24.B.), _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 132, 181. Compare, too, letter to Mrs. Byron, November 12, 1809 (_Letters_, 1899, i. 253): "Two days ago I was nearly lost in a Turkish s.h.i.+p of war.... I wrapped myself up in my Albanian capote (an immense cloak), and lay down on deck to wait the worst."]

[336] The last tidings recently heard of Dervish (one of the Arnauts who followed me) state him to be in revolt upon the mountains, at the head of some of the bands common in that country in times of trouble.

[nz] {451} _But those winged days_----.--[MS.]

[337] [Compare Kingsley's _Last Buccaneer_--

"If I might but be a sea-dove, I'd fly across the main-- To the pleasant isle of Aves, to look at it once again."]

[oa] _The kindly few who love my lay_.--[MS.]

[338] [The MS. is dated J^y (January) 31, 1815. Lady Byron's copy is dated November 2, 1815.]

[ob] _Many a year, and many an age_.--[MS. G. Copy.]

[oc] _A marvel from her Moslem bands_.--[MS. G.]

[339] {452} [Timoleon, who had saved the life of his brother Timophanes in battle, afterwards put him to death for aiming at the supreme power in Corinth. Warton says that Pope once intended to write an epic poem on the story, and that Akenside had the same design (_Works_ of Alexander Pope, Esq., 1806, ii. 83).]

[od] _Or could the dead be raised again_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[oe]

----_through yon clear skies_ _Than tower-capt Acropolis_.--[MS. G.]

[of] _Stretched on the edge----.--[MS. G. erased.]_

[340] [Turkish holders of military fiefs.]

[og]

_The turbaned crowd of dusky hue_ _Whose march Morea's fields may rue_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[341] {453} The life of the Turcomans is wandering and patriarchal: they dwell in tents.

[342] [Compare _The Giaour_, line 639 (_vide ante_, p. 116)--"The deathshot hissing from afar."]

[343] {454} [Professor Kolbing admits that he is unable to say how "Byron met with the name of Alp." I am indebted to my cousin, Miss Edith Coleridge, for the suggestion that the name is derived from Mohammed (Lhaz-ed-Dyn-Abou-Choudja), surnamed Alp-Arslan (Arsslan), or "Brave Lion," the second of the Seljuk dynasty, in the eleventh century. "He conquered Armenia and Georgia ... but was a.s.sa.s.sinated by Yussuf Cothuol, Governor of Berzem, and was buried at Merw, in Khora.s.san." His epitaph moralizes his fate: "O vous qui avez vu la grandeur d'Alparslan elevee jusq'au ciel, regardez! le voici maintenant en poussiere."--Hammer-Purgstall, _Histoire de l'Empire Othoman_, i.

13-15.]

[oh] _But now an exile_----.--[MS. G.]

[344] {455} ["The _Lions' Mouths_, under the arcade at the summit of the Giants' Stairs, which gaped widely to receive anonymous charges, were no doubt far more often employed as vehicles of private malice than of zeal for the public welfare."--_Sketches from Venetian History_, 1832, ii.

380.]

[oi] _To waste its future_----.--[MS. G.]

[345] Ali Coumourgi [Damad Ali or Ali c.u.murgi (i.e. son of the charcoal-burner)], the favourite of three sultans, and Grand Vizier to Achmet III., after recovering Peloponnesus from the Venetians in one campaign, was mortally wounded in the next, against the Germans, at the battle of Peterwaradin (in the plain of Carlowitz), in Hungary, endeavouring to rally his guards. He died of his wounds next day [August 16, 1716]. His last order was the decapitation of General Breuner, and some other German prisoners, and his last words, "Oh that I could thus serve all the Christian dogs!" a speech and act not unlike one of Caligula. He was a young man of great ambition and unbounded presumption: on being told that Prince Eugene, then opposed to him, "was a great general," he said, "I shall become a greater, and at his expense."

[For his letter to Prince Eugene, "Eh bien! la guerre va decider entre nous," etc., and for an account of his death, see Hammer-Purgstall, _Historie de l'Empire Othoman_, xiii. 300, 312.]

[oj] {456} _And death-like rolled_----.--[MS. G. erased.]

[ok] _Like comets in convulsion riven_.--[MS. G. Copy erased.]

[ol]

_Impervious to the powerless sun_, _Through sulphurous smoke whose blackness grew_.-- [MS. G. erased.]

[om] {457} _In midnight courts.h.i.+p to Italian maid_.--[MS. G.]

[346] {458} [The siege of Vienna was raised by John Sobieski, King of Poland (1629-1696), September 12, 1683. Buda was retaken from the Turks by Charles VII., Duke of Lorraine, Sobieski's ally and former rival for the kingdom of Poland, September 2, 1686. The conquest of the Morea was begun by the Venetians in 1685, and completed in 1699.]

[on] _By Buda's wall to Danube's side_.--[MS. G.]

[oo] _Pisani held_----.--[MS. G.]

[op] _Than she, the beauteous stranger, bore_.--[MS. G. erased.]

[347] {459} [For Byron's use of the phrase, "Forlorn Hope," as an equivalent of the Turkish Delhis, or Delis, see _Childe Harold_, Canto II. ("The Albanian War-Song"), _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 149, note 1.]

[oq] _By stepping o'er_----.--[MS. G.]

[348] ["Brown" is Byron's usual epithet for landscape seen by moonlight.

Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza xxii. line 6, etc., _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 113, note 3.]

[or] _Bespangled with her isles_----.--[MS. G.]

[349] ["Stars" are likened to "isles" by Campbell, in _The Pleasures of Hope_, Part II.--

"The seraph eye shall count the starry train, Like distant isles embosomed on the main."

And "isles" to "stars" by Byron, in _The Island_, Canto II. stanza xi.

lines 14, 15--

"The studded archipelago, O'er whose blue bosom rose the starry isles."

For other "star-similes," see _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza lx.x.xviii. line 9, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 270, note 2.]

[os]

_And take a dark unmeasured tone._--[MS. G.]

_And make a melancholy moan_, _To mortal voice and ear unknown._--[MS. G. erased.]