CIV. 'Twas not for fiction chose Rousseau this spot, Peopling it with affections; but he found It was the scene which passion must allot To the miud's purified beings; 'twas the ground Where early Love his Psyche's zone unbound, And hallow'd it with loveliness: 'tis lone, And wonderful, and deep, and hath a sound, And sense, and sight of sweetness: here the Rhone Hath spread himself a couch, the Alps have rear'd a throne. CV. Lausanne! and Ferney! ye have been the abodes23 They were gigantic minds, and their steep aim Thus far have I proceeded in a theme On man and man's research could deign do more Is a stern task of soul:-No matter,-it is taught. CXVI. To aid thy mind's development-to watch I know not what is there, yet something like to this. CXVII. Yet, though dull hate as duty should be taught, CXVIII. 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 honor to myself by the record of many years' intimacy with a man of learning, of talent, of steadiness, and of honor. 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 existence, 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. The child of love,-though born in bitterness, And nurtured in convulsion. Of thy sire These were the elements,-and thine no less. As yet such are around thee,-but thy fire Shall bo more temper'd, and thy hope far higher. Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea, And from the mountains where I now respire, Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee, As, with a sigh, I deem thou might'st have been to Have accompanied me from first to last; and per me! CANTO IV. Visto ho Toscans, Lombardia, Romagna, Venice, January 2, 1818. ΤΟ JOHN HOBHOUSE, ESQ., A.M. F.R.S. &c., &c., &c. MY DEAR HOBHOUSE, 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, haps 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 object, 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 glori. ous, 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 AFTER an interval of eight years between the to perceive: like the Chinese in Goldsmith's "Citcomposition of the first and last cantos of Childe izen of the World," whom nobody would believe to Harold, the conclusion of the poem is about to be be a Chinese, it was in vain that I asserted, and imsubmitted to the public. In parting with so old a agined that I had drawn, a distinction between the friend, it is not extraordinary that I should recur to author and the pilgrim; and the very anxiety to one still older and better,-to one who has beheld preserve this difference, and disappointment at findthe birth and death of the other, and to whom I am iug it unavailing, so far erushed my efforts in the far more indebted for the social advantages of an composition, that I determined to abandon it altoenlightened friendship, than-though not ungrate-gether and have done so. The opinions which ful-I can or could be, to Childe Harold for any have been, or may be, formed on that subject, are public favor reflected through the poem on the poet, now a matter of indifference; the work is to depend -to one, whom I have known long, and accompa- on itself, and not on the writer; and the author, nied far; whom I have found wakeful over my sick-who has no resources in his own mind beyond the ness, and kind in my sorrow; glad in my prosperity, reputation, transient or permanent, which is to and firm in my adversity; true in counsel, and trusty arise from his literary efforts, deserves the fate of in peril,--to a friend often tried and never found authors. wanting to yourself. In the course of the following canto, it was my intention, either in the text or in the notes, to have something more than a permanent army and a szstouched upon the present state of Italian literature, pended Habeas Corpus; it is enough for them to and perhaps of manners. But the text, within the look at home. For what they have done abroad, limits I proposed, I soon found hardly sufficient for and especially in the South, "Verily they will have the labyrinth of external objects and the conse- their reward," and at no very distant period. quent 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 abode,-to 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 diversi 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 stillCanova, Monti, Ugo Foscolo, Pindemonte, Visconti, Morelli, Cicognara, Albrizzi, Mezzophanti, Mai, Mustoxidi, Agiletti, and Vacca, will secure to the present generation an honorable place in most of the departments of Art, Science, and Belles Lettres; and in some of the very highest;-Europethe World-has but one Canova. 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, I. I STOOD in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;1 I saw from out the wave her structures rise O'er the far times, when many a subject land II. She looks a sea-Cybele fresh from ocean III. In Venice, Tasso's echoes are no more,3 IV. 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 neighdors, that man must be wilfully blind, or ignorantly heedless, who is not struck with the extraordinary capacity of this people, or, if such a word be admis-The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy. sible, their capabilities, the facility of 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 laborers' 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 But unto us she hath a spell beyond V. The beings of the mind are not of clay; it becomes ascertained that England has acquired And with a fresher growth replenishing the void. Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar Have flung a desolate cloud o'er Venice' lovely X. My name from out the temple where the dead Are honor'd by the nations-let it beAnd light the laurels on a loftier head! And be the Spartan's epitaph on me"Sparta hath many a worthier son than he."4 Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need; The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree I planted, they have torn me,-and I bleed: I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed. XI. The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord; And, annual marriage now no more renew'd, The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored, Neglected garment of her widowhood! St. Mark yet sees his Lion where he stood Stand, but in mockery of his wither'd power, Over the proud place where an Emperor sued, And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour When Venice was a queen with an unequall'd dower. walls. XVI. When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse, And fetter'd thousands bore the yoke of war Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse," Her voice their only ransom from afar; See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car Of the o'ermaster'd victor stops, the reins Fall from his hands-his idle scimitar Starts from its belt-he rends his captive's chains, And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his strains. XVII. Thus, Venice, if no stronger claim were thine, Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot, Thy choral memory of the Bard divine, Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot Which ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot Is shameful to the nations,-most of all, Albion! to thee: the Ocean queen should not Abandon Ocean's children; in the fall Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall XVIII. I loved her from my boyhood-she to me Rising like water-columns from the sea, And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakspeare's art, 12 XXIV. And how and why we know not, nor can trace Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show. The mourn'd, the loved, the lost-too many!-yet Fill'd with the face of heaven, which, from afar, And now they change; a paler shadow strews Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly The last still loveliest, till-'tis gone and all is |