of the airs are beautiful. Don Manuel Godoy, the Principe de la Paz, of an ancient but decayed family, was born at Badajoz, on the frontiers of Portugal, and was originally in the ranks of the Spanish guards, till his person attracted the queen's eyes, and raised him to the dukedom of Alcudia, &c., &c. It is to this man that the Spaniards universally impute the ruin of their country. * The red cockade, with "Fernando VII." in the centre. + All who have seen a battery will recollect the pyramidal form in which shot and shells are piled. The Sierra Morena was fortified in every defile through which I passed in my way to Seville. Such were the exploits of the Maid of Saragoza, who by her valor elevated herself to the highest rank of heroines. When the author was at Seville she walked daily on the Prado, decorated with medals and orders by command of the Junta. The exploits of Augustina, the famous heroine of both the sieges of Saragoza, are recorded at length in Southey's History of the Peninsular War. At the time when she first attracted notice by mounting a battery where her lover had fallen, and working a gun in his room, she was in her twenty-second year, exceedingly pretty, and in a soft feminine style of beauty. LIX. Match me, ye climes! which poets love to laud; There your wise Prophet's paradise we find, LX. Oh, thou Parnassus!† whom I now survey, But soaring snow-clad through thy native sky, Oft have I dream'd of Thee! whose glorious name Who knows not, knows not man's divinest lore: And now I view thee, 't is alas! with shame That I in feeblest accents must adore. When I recount thy worshippers of yore I tremble, and can only bend the knee; Nor raise my voice, nor vainly dare to soar, But gaze beneath thy cloudy canopy In silent joy to think at last I look on thee! LXII. Happier in this than mightiest bards have been, Whose fate to distant homes confined their lot, Shall I unmoved behold the hallow'd scene, Which others rave of, though they know it not? Though here no more Apollo haunts his grot, And thou, the Muses' seat, art now their grave, Some gentle spirit still pervades the spot, Sighs in the gale, keeps silence in the cave, And glides with glassy foot o'er yon melodious wave. LXIII. Of thee hereafter.-Ev'n amidst my strain I turn'd aside to pay my homage here; Forgot the land, the sons, the maids of Spain; Her fate, to every freeborn bosom dear; And hail'd thee, not perchance without a tear. Now to my theme-but from thy holy haunt Let me some remnant, some memorial bear; Yield me one leaf of Daphne's deathless plant, Nor let thy votary's hope be deem'd an idle vaunt. LXIV. But ne'er didst thou, fair Mount! when Greece was young, See round thy giant base a brighter choir, The song of love than Andalusia's maids, Ah! that to these were given such peaceful shades Some o'er thy Thamis row the ribbon'd fair, In whose dread name both men and maids are sworn, As Greece can still bestow, though Glory fly her | And consecrate the oath || with draught, and dance glades. * This stanza was written in Turkey. + These stanzas were written in Castri (Delphos), at the foot of Parnassus, now called Atakupa (Liakura), Dec. 1809. + Seville was the Hispalis of the Romans. 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 Bootia, where the first riddle was propounded and solved. till morn. merly prevailed at the public-houses in Highgate, of administering a burlesque oath to all travellers of the middling rank who stopped there. The party was sworn on a pair of horns, fastened, "never to kiss the maid when he could the mistress; never to eat brown bread when he could get white; never to drink small beer when he could get strong," with many other injunctions of the like kind,— to all which was added the saving clause, "unless you like i Lord Byron alludes to a ridiculous custom which for- it best." THE POETICAL WORKS OF LORD BYRON. CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE. A Bomaunt. L'univers est une espèce de livre, dont on n'a lu que la première page quand on n'a vu que son pays. J'en ai feuilleté un assez grand nombre, que j'ai trouvé également mauvaises. Cet examen ne m'a point été infructueux. Je haïssais ma patrie. Toutes les impertinences des peuples divers, parmi lesquels j'ai vécu, m'ont réconcilié avec elle. Quand je n'aurais tiré d'autre bénéfice do Ies voyages que celui-là, je n'en regretterais ni les frais ni les fatigues. LE COSMOPOLITE.* PREFACE TO THE FIRST AND SECOND CANTOS. THE following poem was written, for the most part, amidst the scenes which it attempts to describe. It was begun in Albania; and the parts relative to Spain and Portugal were composed from the author's observations in those countries. Thus much it may be necessary to state for the correctness of the descriptions. The scenes attempted to be sketched are in Spain, Portugal, Epirus, Acarnania, and Greece. There, for the present, the poem stops: its reception will determine whether the author may venture to conduct his readers to the capital of the East, through Ionia and Phrygia: these two cantos are merely experimental. A fictitious character is introduced for the sake of giving some connection to the piece; which, however, makes no pretensions to regularity. It has been suggested to me by friends, on whose opinions I set a high value, that in this fictitious character, "Childe Harold," I may incur the suspicion of having intended some real personage: this I beg leave, once for all, to disclaim; Harold is the child of imagination, for the purpose I have stated. In some very trivial particulars, and those merely local, there might be grounds for such a notion; but in the main points, I should hope, none whatever. It is almost superfluous to mention that the appellation "Childe," as "Childe Waters," "Childe Childers," etc., is used as more consonant with the old structure of versi fication which I have adopted. The "Good-Night," in the beginning of the first canto, was suggested by "Lord Maxwell's Good-Night," in the Border Minstrelsy, edited by Mr. Scott. With the different poems which have been published on Spanish subjects, there may be found some slight coincidence in the first part, which treats of the Peninsula, but it can only be casual; as, with the exception of a few concluding stanzas, the whole of this poem was written in the Levant. The stanza of Spenser, according to one of our most successful poets, admits of every variety. Dr. Beattie makes the following observation:-"Not long ago I began a poem in the style and stanza of Spenser, in which I propose to give full scope to my inclination, and be either droll or pathetic, descriptive or sentimental, tender or satirical, as the humor strikes me; for, if I mistake not, the measure which I have adopted admits equally of all these kinds of composition." Strengthened in my opinion by such authority, and by the example of some in the highest order of Italian poets, I shall make no apology for attempts at similar variations in the following composition; satisfied that, if they are unsuccessful, their failure must be in the execution rather than in the design, sanctioned by the practice of Ariosto, Thomson, and Beattie. LONDON, February, 1812. *Par M. de Montbron, Paris, 1798. Lord Byron somewhere calls it " an amusing little volume, full of French flippancy." I ADDITION TO THE PREFACE. sans peur," though not " sans reproche." If the story of the institution of the "Garter" be not a fable, the knights of that order have for several centuries borne the badge of a Countess of Salisbury, of indifferent memory. So much for chivalry. Burke need not have regretted that its days are over, though Marie-Antoinette was quite as chaste as most of those in whose honor lances were shivered and knights unhorsed. Before the days of Bayard, and down to those of Sir Joseph Banks (the most chaste and celebrated of ancient and modern times), few exceptions will be found to this statement; and I fear a little investigation will teach us not to regret these monstrous mummeries of the middle ages. HAVE now waited till almost all our periodical jour- | be, although very poetical personages and true knights nals have distributed their usual portion of criticism. To the justice of the generality of their criticism I have nothing to object: it would ill become me to quarrel with their very slight degree of censure, when, perhaps, if they had been less kind they had been more candid. Returning, therefore, to all and each my best thanks for their liberality, on one point alone shall I venture an observation. Amongst the many objections justly urged to the very indifferent character of the "vagrant Childe" (whom, notwithstanding many hints to the contrary, I still maintain to be a fictitious personage), it has been stated that, besides the anachronism, he is very unknightly, as the times of the Knights were times of Love, Honor, and so forth. Now, it so happens that the good old times, when "l'amour du bon vieux tems, l'amour antique" flourished, I now leave "Childe Harold" to live his day, such as were the most profligate of all possible centuries. Those he is. It had been more agreeable, and certainly more who have any doubts on this subject may consult Sainte- easy, to have drawn an amiable character; it had been Palaye, passim, and more particularly vol. ii., p. 69. The easy to varnish over his faults, to make him do more and vows of chivalry were no better kept than any other vows express less; but he never was intended as an example, whatsoever; and the songs of the Troubadours were not further than to show that early perversion of mind and more decent, and certainly much less refined than those morals leads to satiety of past pleasures and disappointof Ovid. The "Cours d'amour, parlemens d'amour, ou de ment in new ones, and that even the beauties of nature courtésie et de gentilesse" had much more of love than of and the stimulus of travel (except ambition, the most courtesy or gentleness. See Roland on the same subject powerful of all excitements) are lost on a soul so constiwith Sainte-Palaye. Whatever other objection may be tuted, or rather misdirected. Had I proceeded with the urged to that most unamiable personage Childe Harold, poem, this character would have deepened as he drew to he was so far perfectly knightly in his attributes-"No the close; for the outline which I once meant to fill up waiter, but a knight templar." By the by, I fear that Sir for him was, with some exceptions, the sketch of a modern Tristrem and Sir Lancelot were no better than they should | Timon,* perhaps a poetical Zeluco. LONDON, 1813. Ah! mayst thou ever be what now thou art, Young Perit of the West!-'t is well for me *In one of his early poems-"Childish Recollections"-Lord Byron compares himself to the Athenian misanthrope, of whose bitter apophthegms many are upon record, though no authentic particulars of his life have core down to us: "Weary of love, of lif, devoured with spleen, The Lady Charlotte Harley, second daughter of Edward fifth Happier, that while all younger hearts shall bleed, But mix'd with pangs to Love's even loveliest hours Oh! let that eye, which, wild as the gazelle's,? This much, dear maid, accord; nor question why Such is thy name with this my verse entwined; Of him who hail'd thee, loveliest as thou wast, of 1812, when these lines were addressed to her, had not com "You have the eyes of a gazelle" is considered all over the East as the greatest compliment that can be paid to a woman. |