CXVII Yet, though dull Hate as duty should be taught, Though the grave closed between us,- 't were the same, And an attainment, - all would be in vain, Still thou would'st love me, still that more than life retain. CXVIII The child of love, though born in bitterness, As, with a sigh, I deem thou might'st have been to me! 1. Dull hate. On t'enseigne la haine de ton père. Ce mot explique 'la fin comme le début du III chant. Byron n'a pas pu voir sa fille; il ne la verra pas. Il sait que la mère est implacable. Il adresse à l'en fant, pour qu'elle les lise plus tard, ces vers d'outre-tombe et lui dit : « Je sais qu'un jour tu m'aimeras ! » Ce jour vint fort tard, mais il vint: Ada, en mourant, demanda à être ensevelie auprès de son père. TO JOHN HOBHOUSE, ESQ., A. M., F. R.S.1 ETC. ETC. ETC. « Visto ho Toscana, Lombardia, Romagna, Venice, January 2, 1818. MY DEAR HOBHOUSE, AFTER an interval of eight years between the composition of the first and last cantos of Childe Harold, the conclusion of the poem is about to be submitted to the public. In parting with so. old a friend, it is not extraordinary that I should recur to one still older and better,-to one who has beheld the birth and death of the other, and to whom I am far more indebted for the social advantages of an enlightened friendship, than-though not ungrateful—I can, or could be, to Childe Harold, for any public favour reflected through the poem on the poet, to one whom I have known long, and accompanied far, whom I have found wakeful over my sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my prosperity and firm in my adversity, true in counsel and trusty in peril, to a friend often tried and never found wanting;to yourself. In so doing, I recur from fiction to truth; and in dedicating to you in its complete, or at least concluded state, a poetical work which is the longest, the most thoughtful and comprehensive of my compositions, I wish to do honour to myself by the record of many years' intimacy with a man of learning, of 1. John Hobhouse, Esquire, Artium magister, Fellow Royal Society (maître ès arts, membre de la Société royale de Londres). talent, of steadiness, and of honour. It is not for minds like ours to give or to receive flattery; yet the praises of sincerity have ever been permitted to the voice of friendship; and it is not for you, nor even for others, but to relieve a heart which has not elsewhere, or lately, been so much accustomed to the encounter of good-will as to withstand the shock firmly that I thus attempt to commemorate your good qualities, or rather the advantages which I have derived from their exertion. Even the recurrence of the date of this letter, the anniversary of the most unfortunate day of my past existence1, but which cannot poison my future while I retain the resource of your friendship, and of my own faculties, will henceforth have a more agreeable recollection for both, inasmuch as it will remind us of this my attempt to thank you for an indefatigable regard, such as few men have experienced, and no one could experience without thinking better of his species and of himself. It has been our fortune to traverse together, at various periods, the countries of chivalry, history, and fable-Spain, Greece, Asia Minor, and Italy; and what Athens and Constantinople were to .us a few years ago, Venice and Rome have been more recently. The poem also, or the pilgrim, or both, have accompanied me from first to last; and perhaps it may be a pardonable vanity which Induces me to reflect with complacency on a composition which in some degree connects me with the spot where it was produced, and the objects it would fain describe; and however unworthy it may be deemed of those magical and memorable abodes, however short it may fall of our distant conceptions and immediate impressions, yet as a mark of respect for what is venerable, and of feeling for what is glorious, it has been to me a source of pleasure in the production, and I part with it with a kind of regret, which I hardly suspected that events could have left me for imaginary objects. With regard to the conduct of the last canto, there will be found less of the pilgrim than in any of the preceding, and that little slightly, if at all, separated from the author speaking in his own person. The fact is, that I had become weary of drawing a line which every one seemed determined not to perceive like the Chinese in Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World", whom nobody 1. The most unfortunate day. Le jour de sou mariage, selon lui. would believe to be a Chinese, it was in vain that I asserted, and imagined that I had drawn, a distinction between the author and the pilgrim; and the very anxiety to preserve this difference, and disappointment at finding it unavailing, so far crushed my efforts in the composition, that I determined to abandon it altogether and have done so. The opinions which have been, or may be, formed on that subject, are now a matter of indifference : the work is to depend on itself, and not on the writer; and the author, who has no resources in his own mind beyond the reputation, transient or permanent, which is to arise from his literary efforts, deserves the fate of authors. In the course of the following canto it was my intention, either in the text or in the notes, to have touched upon the present state of Italian literature, and perhaps of manners. But the text, within the limits I proposed, I soon found hardly sufficient for the labyrinth of external objects, and the consequent reflections; and for the whole of the notes, excepting a few of the shortest, I am indebted to yourself, and these were necessarily limited to the elucidation of the text. It is also a delicate, and no very grateful task, to dissert upon the literature and manners of a nation so dissimilar; and requires an attention and impartiality which would induce us,-though perhaps no inattentive observers, nor ignorant of the language or customs of the people amongst whom we have recently abodeto distrust, or at least defer our judgment, and more narrowly examine our information. The state of literary, as well as political party, appears to run, or to have run, so high, that for a stranger to steer impartially between them is next to impossible. It may be enough, then, at least for my purpose, to quote from their own beautiful language—“ Mi pare che in un paese tutto « poetico, che vanta la lingua la più nobile ed insieme la più « dolce, tutte tutte le vie diverse si possono tentare, e che sinche « la patria di Alfieri e di Monti non ha perduto l'antico valore, « in tutte essa dovrebbe essere la prima." Italy has great names still-Canova, Monti, Ugo Foscolo, Pindemonte, Visconti, Morelli, Cicognara, Albrizzi, Mezzophanti, Mai, Mustoxidi, Aglietti, and Vaca, will secure to the present generation an honourable place in most of the departments of Art, Science, and Belles Lettres; and in some the very highest-Europe-the World—has but one Canova. It has been somewhere said by Alfieri, that "La pianta uomo « nasce più robusta in Italia che in qualunque altra terra―e che gli « stessi atroci delitti che vi si commettono ne sono una prova. Without subscribing to the latter part of his proposition, a dangerous doctrine, the truth of which may be disputed on better grounds, namely, that the Italians are in no respect more ferocious than their neighbours, that man must be wilfully blind, or ignorantly heedless, who is not struck whit the extraordinary capacity of this people, of, if such a word be admissible, their capabilities, the facility or their acquisitions, the rapidity of their conceptions, the fire of their genius, their sense of beauty, and, amidst all the disadvantages of repeated revolutions, the desolation of battles, and the despair of ages, their still unquenched "longing after immortality",—the immortality of independence. And when we ourselves, in riding round the walls of Rome, heard the simple lament of the labourers' chorus, "Roma! Roma! Roma! Roma non è più come era prima", it was difficult not to contrast this melancholy dirge with the bacchanal roar of the songs of exultation still yelled from the London taverns, over the carnage of Mont St. Jean, and the betrayal of Genoa, of Italy, of France, and of the world, by men whose conduct you yourself have exposed in a work worthy of the better days of our history. For me,― "Non movero mai corda Ove la turba di sue ciance assorda" What Italy has gained by the late transfer of nations, it were useless for Englishmen to inquire, till it becomes ascertained that England has acquired something more than a permanent army and a suspended Habeas Corpus; it is enough for them to look at home. For what they have done abroad, and especially in the South, "Verily the will have their reward", and at no very distant period. Wishing you, my dear Hobhouse, a safe and agreeable return to that country whose real welfare can be dearer to none than to yourself, I dedicate to you this poem in its completed state; and repeat once more how truly I am ever Your obliged And affectionate friend, |