9.

Zoroaster was born in Bactriana, Pythagoras in Samos. 29 xxii, I. Calpe, the ancient name of Gibraltar. Mauritania, the ancient name of Morocco.

8.

30: xxv. Is this stanza Wordsworthian in spirit? In what respects is it unlike Wordsworth's manner of conceiving and expressing Nature ? In the next stanza, placed in careful rhetorical antithesis to this, the note and the plaint of the personal Byron recur. Cf. stanza xxxvii. See also Canto III, xciixcvi, and Manfred,' Act II, scene ii.

31: xxvii.

Cf. Wordsworth's 'Prelude' IV, 354-364. This stanza was an afterthought, and was first published in the seventh edition, 1814.

2. Mount Athos, on whose slopes are many monasteries of the Greek Church.

32: xxxviii.

"Albania comprises parts of Macedonia, Illyria, Chaonia, and Epirus. Iskander is the Turkish word for Alexander" [Byron's note.

2. Beacon of the wise is a Shaksperian echo. Cf. Troilus and Cressida II, ii, 17: "Modest doubt is called The beacon of the wise."

3.

George Castriota (1404-1467), called Scanderbeg, i.e., Iskander Bey, or Lord Alexander, who successfully defended his fatherland, Albania, against the attacks of the Turks.

32: xxxix, I.

3. The mount.

The barren spot. Ithaca.

The white cliffs of Leucadia, whence Lesbian Sappho is said to have cast herself, from disappointed love.

9. Apparently, 'the only immortality is the subjective immortality given by verse.'

33: xliii, 3. "Of Albania Gibbon remarks that a country 'within sight of Italy is less known than the interior of America'' [Byron's note. 34: xlv.

Ambracia's gulf. Arta, where the battle of Actium (31 B. C.) was fought. Here Antony, owing to the flight of Cleopatra's galleys during the engagement, was overcome by Augustus.

6. "Nicopolis [the city of victory], whose ruins are most extensive, is at some distance from Actium" [Byron's note. built by Augustus to commemorate Actium.

35: xlvii, 2.

The primal city. The chief city, Janina.

It was

4. Albania's chief. Ali Pasha, who subdued the country and extended his pashalik over the greater part of Greece. A severe and barbarous, but an able ruler, whose picturesque character greatly interested Byron.

35: xlviii. "The convent and village of Zitza are four hours' journey from Joannina or Yanina, the capital of the Pachalick. In the valley the river Kalamas (once the Acheron) flows, and, not far from Zitza forms a fine cataract. The situation is, perhaps, the finest in Greece " . [Byron's note.

35: xlix, 6. caloyer, from the late Greek kaλóyŋpos, “good old man, ," the usual term for monks in Greece. 37: liii. The site of the oracle of Dodona, long unknown, was determined only in 1876. It is at Dramisus, south of Janina. 37: lv. Tomerit. "Anciently Mount Tomarus" [Byron's note.-Now Mount Olytsika, to the west of Janina. Laos, perhaps a blunder for Aous (modern Viosa). "The finest river in the Levant" [Byron.

38: Ivi, 7. Santons. A kind of dervish or Mahometan monk.

38: Iviii, 5.

Delhi. Turkish word for madmen; hence a term

for the battle-intoxicated Turkish warriors.

7. Nubian eunuch.

39: lx, 1. The Ramazan, or Turkish Lent, or month of fasting. The fasting, however, is confined to the day-time. 40: Ixiii, 4. the Teian. Anacreon, of Teos. It is probable that Byron remembered Moore's version (of 1800).

• Wine con

quers Age' is more often the burden of Anacreon's song, as of Hafiz's.

But see Ode I:

"I saw the smiling bard of pleasure,

The minstrel of the Teian measure . . .

... His tresses wore a silvery dye,

But beauty sparkled in his eye;

Sparkled in his eyes of fire,

Through the mist of soft desire."

And cf. Odes vii, xxxix, xlvii.

40 lxiii, 5-9. A curious prevision! Three weeks after 'Childe Harold' was published Ali committed his worst atrocity, causing the massacre of nearly seven hundred inhabitants of Gardiki, in revenge for wrongs done his mother and sister nearly

thirty years before. His own bloody death occurred in 1822, when he was treacherously assassinated by Mohammed Pasha. 41 lxx, I. Utraikey. A village on the gulf of Arta, near Actium.

41: lxxi, 7. "Palikar, from παλικαρι [παλλήκαρι], a general name for a soldier amongst the Greeks and Albanese who speak Romaic: it means, properly, 'a lad.' [Byron's note. 42: The song 'Tambourgi.' "These stanzas are partly taken from different Albanese songs, as far as I was able to make them out by the exposition of the Albanese in Romaic and Italian' [Byron's note.

42: Song, I.

French tambour.

Tambourgi, Turkish for drummer; from the

42: Song, 2. Camese, kilt or skirt: French chemise. So Spenser's Amazon is arrayed

"All in a camis light of purple silk."

('Faerie Queene,' V, v, 2. 43: Song, 8. When Previsa fell. "It was taken by storm from the French " [by Ali Pasha's forces, October, 1798]. [Byron's note.

43: Song, 10. Ali's eldest son, Mukhtar, the Pasha of Berat, had been sent against the Russians, who, in 1809, invaded the trans-Danubian provinces of the Ottoman Empire (E. H. Coleridge).

6

Giaour. The Turkish term for infidel'; here meaning the Russians. Usually for the Christians in general, as in st. lxxvii. -his horse-tail. The insignia of a Pasha.

Selictar-sword-bearer.

43: Song, II. 44: Ixxiii. Cf. Byron's song from 'Don Juan,' "The Isles of Greece," above, p. 263. See also 'The Giaour,' the lines beginning,

"Tis Greece, but living Greece no more," where follows the same appeal to the memory of Thermopyla.

44: lxxiv, 1-2. "Phyle, which commands a beautiful view of Athens, has still considerable remains it was seized by Thrasybulus, previous to the expulsion of the Thirty [Tyrants from Athens]." [Byron's note. From this spot Byron had his first view of Athens.

45: lxxvii.

Othman's race.

Othman was the founder of the

Ottoman dynasty, in the thirteenth century.

3. The Serai, or Seraglio, is the palace of the Sultan.

4. "When taken by the Latins and retained for several years [1204-1261]." [Byron's note.

5. The sect of the Wahabees, founded by the Arab sheik Wahab, attacked and sacked Mecca and Medina in 1803-4.

46: lxxix, 2.

Stamboul: Constantinople. Empress of their reign: reign in the sense of regnum; hence capital of their (the Greek's) empire.'

46: lxxxi, I.

Caique. A small boat (Turkish kaik).

The

47: lxxxvi, 1–2. "Of Mount Pentelicus, from whence the marble was dug that constructed the public edifices of Athens. modern name is Mount Mendeli. An immense cave, formed by the quarries, still remains, and will to the end of time" [Byron's

note.

3. Tritonia.

47: lxxxvii, 3.

olive.

One of the names applied to Athena (Minerva).
Minerva's (Athena's) gift to Athens was the

48 lxxxviii. Stanzas lxxxviii-xc were first included in the seventh edition, 1814.

9. Athena's tower. The Parthenon. Tower is a word which Byron uses, poetically, for any considerable building.

48: xc, 8. The mound supposed to mark the burial place of the Athenians slain in the battle, on the plain of Marathon, was opened not long before Byron's visit. "What then must be our feelings when standing on the tumulus of the two hundred (Greeks) who fell on Marathon? The principal barrow has recently been opened by Fauvel: few or no relics, as vases, etc., were found by the excavator. [Byron's note.

:

49 xci, 3. With th' Ionian blast, i.e., coming, as Byron did, borne on by the Western winds over the Ionian sea.

49 xcv-xcviii.

These stanzas were written after Byron's return in 1811, while the two Cantos were passing through the press.

49 : xcv. The poet, about to end his song, and stating his reasons for giving up the struggle for poetic fame, comes in this stanza to add another reason in the loss of some nameless friend, perhaps the mysterious and unknown Thyrza of other poems.

49 xcvi, 6. The Parent. Byron's mother died after his return to England, but before he was able to see her. About the same time died also some three or four of his old friends, chief of whom perhaps was Matthews. But here probably the friend (Eddlestone) referred to in stanza ix, is again commemorated. 50: xcviii. A pathetic commentary upon this concluding stanza of the first part of Childe Harold' is afforded by a passage in Byron's letter of October 11, 1811, to his friend Dallas, inclosing these additional stanzas for the press. "I have been again shocked with a death," he writes, "and have lost one very dear to me in happier times; but I have almost forgot the taste of grief,' and 'supped full of horrors' till I have become callous, nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. It seems as though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered."

CANTO III

Begun, near Lausanne, Switzerland, early in May, 1816, and finished on the 27th of the following month. Published November 18th, 1816.

More directly personal than the preceding cantos and with less of the conventional Childe Harold, this canto is the noblest record of the Byron of 1810-1816. These years had been years of sudden fame, abounding life, and startling vicissitude for the poet. Once more, at the end of this period, separated from his wife, execrated by the public that had but now adored him, he set out on his travels, from which he was never again to return. And once more, under the stimulus of travel, living a new life, he poured forth his mind in these tumultuous, resonant, and eloquent stanzas. Again, but more loosely, an itinerary (Waterloo, the Rhine, Switzerland) is followed throughout the canto. Byron is six years older: experience, brilliant and bitter, has matured him; and his art has matured. There is greater fire and force; his imagination is more impressive and grandiose; external nature is more grandly felt and rendered; his historical and human sympathies are broader and deeper. So his style becomes more vigorous but