XXXII. And the soft quiet hamlet where he dwelt 1 For they can lure no further; and the ray XXXIII. Developing the mountains, leaves, and flowers, If from society we learn to live, 'Tis solitude should teach us how to die; It hath no flatterers; vanity can give No hollow aid; alone -man with his God must strive: 1 XXXIV. Or, it may be, with demons, who impair? The strength of better thoughts, and seek their prey Of moody texture from their earliest day, ["Half way up He built his house, whence as by stealth he caught That soothed, not stirr'd.". ROGERS.] 2 The struggle is to the full as likely to be with demons as with our better thoughts. Satan chose the wilderness for the temptation of our Saviour. And our unsullied John Locke preferred the presence of a child to complete solitude. Deeming themselves predestined to a doom Which is not of the pangs that pass away; Making the sun like blood, the earth a tomb, The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom. XXXV. Ferrara ! in thy wide and grass-grown streets, There seems as 't were a curse upon the seats Of petty power impell'd, of those who wore The wreath which Dante's brow alone had worn before. XXXVI. And Tasso is their glory and their shame. Hark to his strain ! and then survey his cell ! 1 [In April, 1817, Lord Byron visited Ferrara, went over the castle, cell, &c., and wrote, a few days after, the Lament of Tasso. "One of the Ferrarese asked me," he says, in a letter to a friend, "if I knew 'Lord Byron,' an acquaintance of his, now at Naples. I told him 'No!' which was true both ways, for I knew not the impostor: and, in the other, no one knows himself. He stared, when told that I was the real Simon Pure. Another asked me, if I had not translated Tasso. You see what Fame is; how accurate! how boundless! I don't know how others feel, but I am always the lighter and the better looked on when I have got rid of mine. It sits on me like armour on the Lord Mayor's champion ; and I got rid of all the husk of literature, and the attendant babble, by answering that I had not translated Tasso, but a namesake had; and, by the blessing of Heaven, I looked so little like a poet, that every body believed me."] The insulted mind he sought to quench, and blend Where he had plunged it. Glory without end XXXVII. The tears and praises of all time; while thine Thou formest in his fortunes bids us think From thee if in another station born, Scarce fit to be the slave of him thou mad'st to mourn: XXXVIII. Thou! form'd to eat, and be despised, and die, XXXIX. Peace to Torquato's injured shade! 't was his 1 See Appendix, " Historical Notes," No. X. 1 The tide of generations shall roll on, And not the whole combined and countless throng Compose a mind like thine? though all in one Condensed their scatter'd rays, they would not form a sun. XL. Great as thou art, yet parallel'd by those, The southern Scott 1, the minstrel who call'd forth And, like the Ariosto of the North, 2 Sang ladye-love and war, romance and knightly worth. if ["Scott," says Lord Byron, in his MS. Diary, for 1821,"is certainly the most wonderful writer of the day. His novels are a new literature in themselves, and his poetry as good as any not better (only on an erroneous system), and only ceased to be so popular, because the vulgar were tired of hearing Aristides called the Just,' and Scott the Best, and ostracised him. I know no reading to which I fall with such alacrity as a work of his. I love him, too, for his manliness of character, for the extreme pleasantness of his conversation, and his good-nature towards myself personally. May he prosper ! for he deserves it." In a letter, written to Sir Walter, from Pisa, in 1822, he says" I owe to you far more than the usual obligation for the courtesies of literature and common friendship; for you went out of your way, in 1817, to do me a service, when it required not merely kindness, but courage, to do so; to have been recorded by you in such a manner, would have been a proud memorial at any time; but at such a time, when All the world and his wife,' as the proverb goes, were trying to trample upon me, was something still higher to my selfesteem. Had it been a common criticism, however eloquent or panegyrical, I should have felt pleased and grateful, but not to the extent which the extraordinary good-heartedness of the whole proceeding must induce in any mind capable of such sens ations."] 2["I do not know whether Scott will like it, but I have called him the Ariosto of the North,' in my text. If he should not, say so in time." Lord B. to Mr. Murray, August 1817.] XLI. The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust The iron crown of laurel's mimic'd leaves; For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves Know, that the lightning sanctifies below 3 XLII. Italia! oh Italia! thou who hast The fatal gift of beauty, which became A funeral dower of present woes and past, On thy sweet brow is sorrow plough'd by shame, XLIII. Then might'st thou more appal; or, less desired, For thy destructive charms; then, still untired, Quaff blood and water; nor the stranger's sword Victor or vanquish'd, thou the slave of friend or foe. 4 1, 2, 3 See Appendix, " Historical Notes," Nos. XI. XII. XIII. The two stanzas xlii. and xliii. are, with the exception of a line or two, a translation of the famous sonnet of Filicaja :"Italia, Italia, O tu cui feo la sorte!" 1 |