Manfred (With Byron's Biography). Lord Byron

av I do adjure thee to this spell.—[MS. M.]

119 [Compare—

      ὦ δῖος αἰθὴρ, κ.τ.λ.

      Æschylus, Prometheus Vinctus, lines 88-91.]

120 [Compare Hamlet's speech to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Hamlet, act ii. sc. 2, lines 286, sq.).]

121 [The germs of this and of several other passages in Manfred may be found, as Lord Byron stated, in the Journal of his Swiss tour, which he transmitted to his sister. "Sept. 19, 1816.—Arrived at a lake in the very nipple of the bosom of the Mountain; left our quadrupeds with a Shepherd, and ascended further; came to some snow in patches, upon which my forehead's perspiration fell like rain, making the same dints as in a sieve; the chill of the wind and the snow turned me giddy, but I scrambled on and upwards. Hobhouse went to the highest pinnacle. ... The whole of the Mountain superb. A Shepherd on a very steep and high cliff playing upon his pipe; very different from Arcadia, (where I saw the pastors with a long Musquet instead of a Crook, and pistols in their Girdles).... The music of the Cows' bells (for their wealth, like the Patriarchs', is cattle) in the pastures, (which reach to a height far above any mountains in Britain), and the Shepherds' shouting to us from crag to crag, and playing on their reeds where the steeps appeared almost inaccessible, with the surrounding scenery, realized all that I have ever heard or imagined of a pastoral existence:—much more so than Greece or Asia Minor, for there we are a little too much of the sabre and musquet order; and if there is a Crook in one hand, you are sure to see a gun in the other:—but this was pure and unmixed—solitary, savage, and patriarchal.... As we went, they played the 'Ranz des Vaches' and other airs, by way of farewell. I have lately repeopled my mind with Nature" (Letters, 1899, in. 354, 355).]

122 [Compare—

      "Like an unbodied joy, whose race is just begun."

      To a Skylark, by P. B. Shelley, stanza iii. line 5.]

123 ["Passed whole woods of withered pines, all withered; trunks stripped and barkless, branches lifeless; done by a single winter,—their appearance reminded me of me and my family" (Letters, 1899, iii. 360).]

124 ["Ascended the Wengen mountain.... Heard the Avalanches falling every five minutes nearly—as if God was pelting the Devil down from Heaven with snow balls" (Letters, 1899, in. 359).]

aw Like foam from the round ocean of old Hell.—[MS. M.]

125 ["The clouds rose from the opposite valley, curling up perpendicular precipices like the foam of the Ocean of Hell, during a Spring-tide—it was white, and sulphury, and immeasurably deep in appearance. The side we ascended was (of course) not of so precipitous a nature; but on arriving at the summit, we looked down the other side upon a boiling sea of cloud, dashing against the crags on which we stood (these crags on one side quite perpendicular) ... In passing the masses of snow, I made a snowball and pelted Hobhouse with it" (ibid, pp. 359. 360).]

126 [The fall of the Rossberg took place September 2, 1806. "A huge mass of conglomerate rock, 1000 feet broad and 100 feet thick, detached itself from the face of the mountain (Rossberg or Rufiberg, near Goldau, south of Lake Zug), and slipped down into the valley below, overwhelming the villages of Goldau, Busingen, and Rothen, and part of Lowertz. More than four hundred and fifty human beings perished, and whole herds of cattle were swept away. Five minutes sufficed to complete the work of destruction. The inhabitants were first roused by a loud and grating sound like thunder ... and beheld the valleys shrouded in a cloud of dust; when it had cleared away they found the face of nature changed."—Handbook of Switzerland, Part 1. pp 58, 59.]

127 [The critics of the day either affected to ignore or severely censured (e.g. writers in the Critical, European, and Gentleman's Magazines) the allusions to an incestuous passion between Manfred and Astarte. Shelley, in a letter to Mrs. Gisborne, November 16, 1819, commenting on Calderon's Los Cabellos de Absalon, discusses the question from an ethical as well as critical point of view: "The incest scene between Amon and Tamar is perfectly tremendous. Well may Calderon say, in the person of the former—

      Si sangre sin fuego hiere

       Qua fara sangre con fuego.'

      Incest is, like many other incorrect things, a very poetical circumstance. It may be the defiance of everything for the sake of another which clothes itself in the glory of the highest heroism, or it may be that cynical rage which, confounding the good and the bad in existing opinions, breaks through them for the purpose of rioting in selfishness and antipathy."—Works of P. B. Shelley, 1880, iv. 142.]

ax ——and some insaner sin.—[MS. erased.]

128 [Compare Childe Harold, Canto III. stanza v. lines 1, 2.]

129 This iris is formed by the rays of the sun over the lower part of the Alpine torrents; it is exactly like a rainbow come down to pay a visit, and so close that you may walk into it: this effect lasts till noon. ["Before ascending the mountain, went to the torrent (7 in the morning) again; the Sun upon it forming a rainbow of the lower part of all colours, but principally purple and gold; the bow moving as you move; I never saw anything like this; it is only in the Sunshine" (Letters, 1899, iii, 359).]

130 ["Arrived at the foot of the Mountain (the Yung frau, i.e. the Maiden); Glaciers; torrents; one of these torrents nine hundred feet in height of visible descent ... heard an Avalanche fall, like thunder; saw Glacier—enormous. Storm came on, thunder, lightning, hail; all in perfection, and beautiful.... The torrent is in shape curving over the rock, like the tail of a white horse streaming in the wind, such as it might be conceived would be that of the 'pale horse' on which Death is mounted in the Apocalypse. It is neither mist nor water, but a something between both; it's immense height ... gives it a wave, a curve, a spreading here, a condensation there, wonderful and indescribable" (ibid., pp. 357, 358).]

ay Wherein seems glassed——.—[MS. of extract, February 15, 1817.]

131 [Compare Childe Harold, Canto III. stanza lxxii. lines 2, 3, note 2.]

132 [Compare Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanza clxxxiv. line 3, note 2.]

133 [Compare—

      "The moving moon went up the sky."

      The Ancient Mariner, Part IV. line 263.

      Compare, too—