38.

An Iris sits amidst the infernal surge.

Stanza lxxii. line 3.

Of the time, place, and qualities of this kind of Iris the reader may have seen a short account in a note to Manfred. The fall looks so much like "the hell of waters" that Addison thought the descent alluded to by the gulf in which Alecto plunged into the infernal regions. It is singular enough that two of the finest cascades in Europe should be artificial-this of the Velino, and the one at Tivoli. The traveller is strongly recommended to trace the Velino, at least as high as the little lake, called Pie' di Lup. The Reatine territory was the Italian Tempe,' and the ancient naturalist, amongst other beautiful varieties, remarked the daily rainbows of the lake Velinus. 2 A scholar of great name has devoted a treatise to this district alone.3

39.

The thundering lauwine.

Stanza lxxiii. line 5.

In the greater part of Switzerland the avalanches are known by the name of lauwine.

40.

I abhorr'd

Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake,

The drill'd dull lesson, forced down word by word.
Stanza lxxv. lines 6, 7, and 8.

These stanzas may probably remind the reader of Ensign Northerton's remarks: "D-n Homo," &c. but the reasons

"Reatini me ad sua Tempe duxerunt." Cicer. epist. ad Attic. xv. lib. iv.

2 "In eodem lacu nullo non die apparere arcus." Plin. Hist. Nat, lib. ii. cap. lxii.

Ald. Manut. de Reatina urbe agroque, ap. Sallengre Thesaur. tom. i. p. 773.

I wish to express

for our dislike are not exactly the same. that we become tired of the task before we can comprehend the beauty; that we learn by rote before we can get by heart; that the freshness is worn away, and the future pleasure and advantage deadened and destroyed, by the didactic anticipation, at an age when we can neither feel nor understand the power of compositions which it requires an acquaintance with life, as well as Latin and Greek, to relish, or to reason upon. For the same

reason we never can be aware of the fulness of some of the finest passages of Shakespeare, ("To be or not to be," for instance), from the habit of having them hammered into us at eight years old, as an exercise, not of mind but of memory: so that when we are old enough to enjoy them, the taste is gone, and the appetite palled. In some parts of the Continent, young persons are taught from more common authors, and do not read the best classics till their maturity. I certainly do not speak on this point from any pique or aversion towards the place of my education. I was not a slow, though an idle boy; and I believe no one could, or can be more attached to Harrow than I have always been, and with reason;—a part of the time passed there was the happiest of my life; and my preceptor, (the Rev. Dr. Joseph Drury), was the best and worthiest friend I ever possessed, whose warnings I have remembered but too well, though too late-when I have erred, and whose counsels I have but followed when I have done well or wisely. If ever this imperfect record of my feelings towards him should reach his eyes, let it remind him of one who never thinks of him but with gratitude and veneration—of one who would more gladly boast of having been his pupil, if, by more closely following his injunctions, he could reflect any honour upon his instructor.

41.

The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now.

Stanza lxxix. line 5.

For a comment on this and the two following stanzas, the

reader may consult Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold.

42.

The trebly hundred triumphs.

Stanza lxxxii. line 2.

Orosius gives three hundred and twenty for the number of triumphs. He is followed by Panvinius; and Panvinius by Mr. Gibbon and the modern writers.

43.

Oh thou, whose chariot roll'd on Fortune's wheel, &c.

Stanza lxxxiii. line 1. Certainly were it not for these two traits in the life of Sylla, alluded to in this stanza, we should regard him as a monster unredeemed by any admirable quality. The atonement of his voluntary resignation of empire may perhaps be accepted by us, as it seems to have satisfied the Romans, who if they had not respected must have destroyed him. There could be no mean, no division of opinion; they must have all thought, like Eucrates, that what had appeared ambition was a love of glory, and that what had been mistaken for pride was a real grandeur

And laid him with the earth's preceding clay.

Stanza lxxxvi. line 4. On the third of September Cromwell gained the victory of Dunbar; a year afterwards he obtained "his crowning mercy" of Worcester; and a few years after, on the same day, which he had ever esteemed the most fortunate for him, died.

Seigneur, vous changez toutes mes idées de la façon dont je vous vois agir. Je croyois que vous aviez de l'ambition, mais aucun amour pour la gloire : je voyois bien que votre ame étoit haute; mais je ne soupçonnois pas qu'elle fût grande."-Dialogue de Sylla et d'Eucrate.

1

45.

And thou, dread statue! still existent in
The austerest form of naked majesty.

Stanza lxxxvii. lines 1 and 2. The projected division of the Spada Pompey has already been recorded by the historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Mr. Gibbon found it in the memorials of Flaminius Vacca, and it may be added to his mention of it that Pope Julius III. gave the contending owners five hundred crowns for the statue; and presented it to Cardinal Capo di Ferro, who had prevented the judgment of Solomon from being executed upon the image. In a more civilized age this statue was exposed to an actual operation: for the French who acted the Brutus of Voltaire in the Coliseum, resolved that their Cæsar should fall at the base of that Pompey, which was supposed to have been sprinkled with the blood of the original dictator. The nine foot hero was therefore removed to the arena of the amphitheatre, and to facilitate its transport suffered the temporary amputation of its right arm. The republican tragedians had to plead that the arm was a restoration: but their accusers do not believe that the integrity of the statue would have protected it. The love of finding every coincidence has discovered the true Cæsarean ichor in a stain near the right knee; but colder criticism has rejected not only the blood but the portrait, and assigned the globe of power rather to the first of the emperors than to the last of the republican masters of Rome. Winkelmann' is loth to allow an heroic statue of a Roman citizen, but the Grimani Agrippa, a cotemporary almost, is heroic; and naked Roman figures were only very rare, not absolutely forbidden. The face accords much better with the "hominem integrum et castum et gravem, ,"3 than with any of the busts of Augustus, and is too

1 Memorie, num. Ivii. pag. 9. ap. Montfaucon Diarium Italicum. 2 Storia delle arti, &c. lib. ix. cap. 1. pag. 321, 322, tom. ii. Cicer. Epist. ad Atticum, xi. 6.

VOL. II.

R

stern for him who was beautiful, says Suetonius, at all periods of his life. The pretended likeness to Alexander the Great cannot be discerned, but the traits resemble the medal of Pompey.1 The objectionable globe may not have been an ill applied flattery to him who found Asia Minor the boundary, and left it the centre of the Roman empire. It seems that Winkelmann has made a mistake in thinking that no proof of the identity of this statue, with that which received the bloody sacrifice, can be derived from the spot where it was discovered. 2 Flaminius Vacca says sotto una cantina, and this cantina is known to have been in the Vicolo de' Leutari near the Cancellaria, a position corresponding exactly to that of the Janus before the basilica of Pompey's theatre, to which Augustus transferred the statue after the curia was either burnt, or taken down. 3 Part of the Pompeian shade, the portico, existed in the beginning of the XVth century, and the atrium was still called Satrum. So says Blondus. At all events, so imposing is the stern majesty of the statue, and so memorable is the story, that the play of the imagination leaves no room for the exercise of the judgment, and the fiction, if a fiction it is, operates on the spectator with an effect not less powerful than truth.

46.

And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome!

Stanza lxxxviii. line 1.

Ancient Rome, like modern Sienna, abounded most probably with images of the foster-mother of her founder: but there were

' Published by Causeus in his Museum Romanum.

2 Storia delle arti, &c. ibid.

3 Sueton. in vit. August. cap. 31, and in vit. C. J. Cæsar, cap. 88. Appian says it was burnt down. See a note of Pitiscus to Suetonius, pag. 224.

"Tu modo Pompeia lenta spatiare sub umbra.”
Ovid. Ar. Aman.

5 Roma instaurata, lib. ii. fo. 31.