Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (With Byron's Biography). Lord Byron

the beginning of August, 1809. By the end of January, 1810, the French had appeared in force before Seville. Unlike Zaragoza and Gerona, the pleasure-loving city, "after some negotiations, surrendered, with all its stores, foundries, and arsenal complete, and on the 1st of February the king [Joseph] entered in triumph" (Napier's History of the War in the Peninsula, ii. 295).]

71 [A kind of fiddle with only two strings, played on by a bow, said to have been brought by the Moors into Spain.]

cl Not here the Trumpet, but the rebeck sounds.—[MS. erased.]

cm And dark-eyed Lewdness——.—[MS. erased.]

72 [See The Waltz: Poetical Works, 1898, i. 492, note 1.]

cn Not in the toils of Glory would ye sweat.—[MS. erased, D.]

73 [The scene is laid on the heights of the Sierra Morena. The travellers are looking across the "long level plain" of the Guadalquivir to the mountains of Ronda and Granada, with their "hill-forts ...perched everywhere like eagles' nests" (Ford's Handbook for Spain, i. 252). The French, under Dupont, entered the Morena, June 2, 1808. They stormed the bridge at Alcolea, June 7, and occupied Cordoba, but were defeated at Bailen, July 19, and forced to capitulate. Hence the traces of war. The "Dragon's nest" (line 7) is the ancient city of Jaen, which guards the skirts of the Sierras "like a watchful Cerberus." It was taken by the French, but recaptured by the Spanish, early in July, 1808 (History of the War in the Peninsula, i. 71-80).]

74 [The Sierra Morena gets its name from the classical Montes Mariani, not, as Byron seems to imply, from its dark and dusky aspect.]

co ——the never-changing watch.—[MS. D.]

cp The South must own——.—[MS. D.]

cq When soars Gaul's eagle——.—[MS. D.]

75 [As time went on, Byron's sentiments with regard to Napoleon underwent a change, and he hesitates between sympathetic admiration and reluctant disapproval. At the moment his enthusiasm was roused by Spain's heroic resistance to the new Alaric, "the scourger of the world," and he expresses himself like Southey "or another" (vide post, Canto III., pp. 238, 239).]

76 ["A short two-edged knife or dagger ... formerly worn at the girdle" (N. Eng. Dict., art. "Anlace"). The "anlace" of the Spanish heroines was the national weapon, the puñal, or cuchillo, which was sometimes stuck in the sash (Handbook for Spain, ii. 803).]

77 [Compare Macbeth, act v. sc. 5, line 10—

      "The Time has been, my senses would have cooled

       To hear a night-shriek."]

cr ——-the column-scattering bolt afar, The falchion's flash—[MS. erased, D.]

cs The seal Love's rosy finger has imprest On her fair chin denotes how soft his touch: Her lips where kisses make voluptuous nest.—[MS. erased.]

78 [Writing to his mother (August 11, 1809), Byron compares "the Spanish style" of beauty to the disadvantage of the English: "Long black hair, dark languishing eyes, clear olive complexions, and forms more graceful in motion than can be conceived by an Englishman ... render a Spanish beauty irresistible" (Letters, 1898, i. 239). Compare, too, the opening lines of The Girl of Cadiz, which gave place to the stanzas To Inez, at the close of this canto—

      "Oh never talk again to me

       Of northern climes and British ladies."

      But in Don Juan, Canto XII. stanzas lxxiv.-lxxvii., he makes the amende to the fair Briton—

      "She cannot step as doth an Arab barb,

       Or Andalusian girl from mass returning.

      But though the soil may give you time and trouble,

       Well cultivated, it will render double."]

ct Beauties that need not fear a broken vow.—[MS. erased.] ——a lecher's vow.—[MS.]

79 [The summit of Parnassus is not visible from Delphi or the neighbourhood. Before he composed "these stanzas" (December 16), (see note 13.B.) at the foot of Parnassus, Byron had first surveyed its "snow-clad" majesty as he sailed towards Vostizza (on the southern shore of the Gulf of Corinth), which he reached on the 5th, and quitted on the 14th of December. "The Echoes" (line 8) which were celebrated by the ancients (Justin, Hist., lib. xxiv. cap. 6), are those made by the Phædriades, or "gleaming peaks," a "lofty precipitous escarpment of red and grey limestone" at the head of the valley of the Pleistus, facing southwards.—Travels in Albania, i. 188, 199; Geography of Greece, by H. F. Tozer, 1873, p. 230.]

cu Not in the landscape of a fabled lay.—[MS. D.]

80 ["Upon Parnassus, going to the fountain of Delphi (Castri) in 1809, I saw a flight of twelve eagles (Hobhouse said they were vultures—at least in conversation), and I seized the omen. On the day before, I composed the lines to Parnassus [in Childe Harold] and, on beholding the birds, had a hope that Apollo had accepted my homage. I have, at least, had the name and fame of a poet during the poetical period of life (from twenty to thirty). Whether it will last is another matter; but I have been a votary of the deity and the place, and am grateful for what he has done in my behalf, leaving the future in his hands, as I left the past" (B. Diary, 1821).]

cv And walks with glassy steps o'er Aganippe's wave.—[MS. erased.]

cw Let me some remnant of thy Spirit bear Some glorious thought to my petition grant.—[MS. erased, D.]

81 ["Parnassus ... is distinguished from all other Greek mountains by its mighty mass. This, with its vast buttresses, almost fills up the rest of the country" (Geography of Greece, by H.F. Tozer, 1873, p. 226).]

82 [In his first letter from Spain (to F. Hodgson, August 6, 1809) Byron exclaims, "Cadiz, sweet Cadiz!—it is the first spot in the creation ... Cadiz is a complete Cythera."