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

Stanza lx. line 1.

      These stanzas were written in Castri (Delphos), at the foot of Parnassus, now called Λιακυρα (Liakura), Dec. [16], 1809.

      14.

      Fair is proud Seville; let her country boast

       Her strength, her wealth, her site of ancient days.

      Stanza lxv. lines 1 and 2.

      Seville was the Hispalis of the Romans.

      15.

      Ask ye, Boeotian Shades! the reason why?

      Stanza lxx. line 5.

      This was written at Thebes, and consequently in the best situation for asking and answering such a question; not as the birthplace of Pindar, but as the capital of Boeotia, where the first riddle was propounded and solved.

      Byron reached Thebes December 22, 1809. By the first riddle he means, of course, the famous enigma of Oedipus—the prototype of Boeotian wit.]

      16.

      Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings.

      Stanza lxxxii. line 9.

      "Medio de fonte leporum

       Surgit amari aliquid quod in ipseis floribus angat."

      Lucr., iv. 1133.

      17.

      A Traitor only fell beneath the feud.

      Stanza lxxxv. line 7.

      Alluding to the conduct and death of Solano, the governor of Cadiz, in May, 1808.

      The Marquis of Solano, commander-in-chief of the forces at Cadiz, was murdered by the populace. The "Supreme Junta" of Seville had directed him to attack the French fleet anchored off Cadiz, and Admiral Purvis, acting in concert with General Spencer, had offered to co-operate, but Solano was unwilling to take his orders "from a self-constituted authority, and hesitated to commit his country in war with a power whose strength he knew better than the temper of his countrymen." "His abilities, courage, and unblemished character have never been denied."—Napier's War in the Peninsula, i. 20, 21.]

      18.

      "War even to the knife!"

      Stanza lxxxvi. line 9.

      "War to the knife." Palafox's answer to the French general at the siege of Saragoza.

      Towards the close of the first siege of Zaragoza, August 5, 1808, Marshal Lefebvre (1755-1820), under the impression that the city had fallen into his hands, "required Palafox to surrender in these words: 'Quartel-general, Santa Engracia. La Capitulation!' ['Head-quarters, St. Engracia. Capitulation']. The reply was, 'Quartel-general, Zaragoza. Guerra al cuchillo' ['Head-quarters, Zaragoza. War at the knife's point']." Subsequently, December, 1808, when Moncey (1754-1842) again called upon him to surrender, he appealed to the people of Madrid. "The dogs," he said, "by whom he was beset scarcely left him time to clean his sword from their blood; but they still found their grave at Zaragoza." Southey notes that "all Palafox's proclamations had the high tone and something of the inflection of Spanish romance, suiting the character of those to whom it was directed" (Peninsular War, ii. 25; iii. 152; Narrative of the Siege, by C. R. Vaughan, 1809, pp. 22, 23). Napier, whose account of the first siege of Zaragoza is based on Caballero's Victoires et Conquètes des Français, and on the Journal of Lefebvre's Operations (MSS.), does not record these romantic incidents. He attributes the raising of the siege to the "bad discipline of the French, and the system of terror established by the Spanish leaders." The inspirers and proclaimers of "war even to the knife" were, he maintains, Tio or Goodman Jorge (Jorge Ibort) and Tio Murin, and not Palafox, who was ignorant of war, and who, on more than one occasion, was careful to provide for his own safety (History of the War in the Peninsula, i. 41-46).]

      19.

      And thou, my friend! etc.

      Stanza xci. line 1.

      The Honourable John Wingfield, of the Guards, who died of a fever at Coimbra (May 14, 1811). I had known him ten years, the better half of his life, and the happiest part of mine. In the short space of one month I have lost her who gave me being, and most of those who had made that being tolerable. To me the lines of Young are no fiction—

      "Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?

       Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain,

       And thrice ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn."

      Night Thoughts: The Complaint, Night i. (London, 1825, p. 5).

      I should have ventured a verse to the memory of the late Charles Skinner Matthews, Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, were he not too much above all praise of mine. His powers of mind, shown in the attainment of greater honours, against the ablest candidates, than those of any graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established his fame on the spot where it was acquired; while his softer qualities live in the recollection of friends who loved him too well to envy his superiority. [To an objection made by Dallas to this note, Byron replied, "I was so sincere in my note on the late Charles Matthews, and do feel myself so totally unable to do justice to his talents, that the passage must stand for the very reason you bring against it. To him all the men I ever knew were pigmies. He was an intellectual giant. It is true I loved Wingfield better; he was the earliest and the dearest, and one of the few one could never repent of having loved: but in ability—ah! you did not know Matthews,!"—Letters, 1898, ii. 8. [For Charles Skinner Matthews, and the Honourable John Wingfield, see Letters, 1898, i. 150 note, 180 note. See, too, "Childish Recollections," Poems, 1898, i. 96, note.]

      FOOTNOTES:

110 [Vide post, p. 196, note 1.]

111 [In a letter to J. B. S. Morritt, April 26, 1811, Sir Walter Scott writes, "I meditate some wild stanzas referring to the Peninsula; if I can lick them into any shape, I hope to get something handsome from the booksellers for the Portuguese sufferers: 'Silver and gold have I none, but that which I have I will give unto them.' My lyrics are called The Vision of Don Roderick." —Lockhart's Mem. of the Life of Sir W. Scott, 1871, p. 205.]

112 [François Horace Bastien Sebastiani (1772-1851), one of Napoleon's generals, defeated the Spanish at Ciudad Real, March 17, 1809. In his official report he said that he had sabred more than 3000 Spaniards in flight. At the battle of Talavera, July 27, his corps suffered heavily; but at Almonacid, August 11, he was again victorious over the Spanish.]

      CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE

       CANTO THE SECOND.

      Childe Harold

       Canto 2.

       Byron. Joannina in Albania.