The Works of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 3

Compare, too--

"She came into the cave, but it was merely To see her bird reposing in his nest."

_Don Juan,_ Canto II. stanza clxviii. lines 3, 4.]

[10] {17}[Compare--

"Those polar summers, _all_ sun, and some ice."

_Don Juan_, Canto XII. stanza lxxii. line 8.]

[11] {18} [Ruskin (_Modern Painters_, Part IV. chap. i. sect. 9, "Touching the Grand Style," 1888, iii. 8, 9) criticizes these five lines 107-111, and points out that, alike in respect of accuracy and inaccuracy of detail, they fulfil the conditions of poetry in contradistinction to history. "Instead," he concludes, "of finding, as we expected, the poetry distinguished from the history by the omission of details, we find it consisting entirely in the addition of details; and instead of it being characterized by regard only of the invariable, we find its whole power to consist in the clear expression of what is singular and particular!"]

[12] 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 Meillerie and the range of Alps above Boveret and St. Gingo. Near it, on a hill behind, is a torrent: below it, was.h.i.+ng 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, 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 Helose, 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.

["Le chateau de Chillon ... est situe dans le lac sur un rocher qui forme une presqu'isle, et autour du quel j'ai vu sonder a plus de cent cinquante bra.s.ses qui font pres de huit cents pieds, sans trouver le fond. On a creuse dans ce rocher des caves et des cuisines au-dessous du niveau de l'eau, qu'on y introduit, quand on veut, par des robinets.

C'est-la que fut detenu six ans prisonnier Francois Bonnivard ... homme d'un merite rare, d'une droiture et d'une fermete a toute epreuve, ami de la liberte, quoique Savoyard, et tolerant quoique pretre," etc. (_La Nouvelle Helose_, par J. J. Rousseau, partie vi. Lettre 8, note (1); _Oeuvres completes_, 1836, ii. 356, note 1).

With Byron's description of Chillon, compare that of Sh.e.l.ley, contained in a letter to Peac.o.c.k, dated July 12, 1816 (_Prose Works of P. B.

Sh.e.l.ley_, 1880, ii. 171, sq.). The belief or tradition that Bonivard's prison is "below the surface of the lake," for which Sh.e.l.ley as well as Rousseau is responsible, but which Byron only records in verse, may be traced to a statement attributed to Bonivard himself, who says (_Memoires, etc._, 1843, iv. 268) that the commandant thrust him "en unes croctes desquelles le fond estoit plus bas que le lac sur lequel Chillon estoit citue." As a matter of fact, "the level [of _les souterrains_] is now three metres higher than the level of the water, and even if we take off the difference arising from the fact that the level of the lake was once much higher, and that the floor of the halls has been raised, still the halls must originally have been built about two metres above the surface of the lake."--_Guide_, etc., pp. 28, 29.]

[13] {19}[The "real Bonivard" might have indulged in and, perhaps, prided himself on this feeble and irritating _paronomasy_; but nothing can be less in keeping with the bearing and behaviour of the tragic and sententious Bonivard of the legend.]

[14] [Compare--

"...I'm a forester and breather Of the steep mountain-tops."

_Werner_, act iv. sc. 1.]

[e] _But why withhold the blow?--he died_. [MS.]

[f] {20}_To break or bite_----.--[MS.]

[15] [Compare "With the aid of Suleiman's ataghan and my own sabre, we scooped a shallow grave upon the spot which Darvell had indicated" (_A fragment of a Novel by Byron, Letters,_ 1899, iii. Appendix IX. p.

452).]

[16] [Compare--

"And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain."

_Christabel_, by S. T. Coleridge, part ii. lines 412, 413.]

[17] [It is said that his parents handed him over to the care of his uncle, Jean-Aime Bonivard, when he was still an infant, and it is denied that his father was "literally put to death."]

[18] {21}[Kolbing quotes parallel uses of the same expression in _Werner_, act iv. sc. 1; Churchill's _The Times_, line 341, etc.; but does not give the original--

"But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd, Than that which, withering on the virgin-thorn," etc.

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act i. sc. i, lines 76, 77.]

[19] [Compare--

"The first, last look of Death revealed."

_The Giaour_, line 89, note 2.

Byron was a connoisseur of the incidents and by-play of "sudden death,"

so much so that Goethe was under the impression that he had been guilty of a venial murder (see his review of _Manfred_ in his paper _Kunst and Alterthum_, _Letters_, 1901, v. 506, 507). A year after these lines were written, when he was at Rome (Letter to Murray, May 30, 1817), he saw three robbers guillotined, and observed himself and them from a psychological standpoint.

"The ghastly bed of Sin" (lines 182, 183) may be a reminiscence of the death-bed of Lord Falkland (_English Bards_, etc., lines 680-686; _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 351, note 2).]

[20] {22}[Compare--

"And yet I could not die."

_Ancient Mariner_, Part IV. line 262.]

[21] {23}[Compare--

"I wept not; so all stone I felt within."

Dante's _Inferno_, x.x.xiii. 47 (Cary's translation).]

[22] {24}[Compare "Song by Glycine"--

"A sunny shaft did I behold, From sky to earth it slanted; And poised therein a bird so bold-- Sweet bird, thou wert enchanted," etc.

_Zapolya_, by S. T. Coleridge, act ii. sc. 1.]

[23] [Compare--

"When Ruth was left half desolate, Her Father took another Mate."

_Ruth_, by W. Wordsworth, _Works_, 1889, p. 121.]

[24] ["The souls of the blessed are supposed by some of the Mahommedans to animate green birds in the groves of Paradise."--Note to Southey's _Thalaba_, bk. xi. stanza 5, line 13.]

[25] {25}[Compare--

"I wandered lonely as a cloud."

_Works_ of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 205.]

[26] [Compare--

"Yet some did think that he had little business here."

_Ibid_., p. 183.