[179] Sword-bearer.

[fr] Tambourgi! thy tocsin——.—[MS. D. erased]

[180] [Compare "The Isles of Greece," stanza 7 (Don Juan, Canto III.)—

"Earth! render back from out thy heart A remnant of our Spartan dead! Of the three hundred grant but three To make a new Thermopylae!"

The meaning is, "When shall another Lysander spring from Laconia ('Eurotas' banks') and revive the heroism of the ancient Spartans?"]

[fs] {150} A fawning feeble race, untaught, enslaved, unmanned.—[MS. erased.]

[ft] ——fair Liberty.—[MS. erased, D.]

[181] {151} [Compare The Age of Bronze, vi. lines 39-46.]

[182] [The Wahabees, who took their name from the Arab sheik Mohammed ben Abd-el-Wahab, arose in the province of Nedj, in Central Arabia, about 1760. Half-socialists, half-puritans, they insisted on fulfilling to the letter the precepts of the Koran. In 1803-4 they attacked and ravaged Mecca and Medinah, and in 1808 they invaded Syria and took Damascus. During Byron's residence in the East they were at the height of their power, and seemed to threaten the very existence of the Turkish empire.]

[183] {152} [Byron spent two months in Constantinople (Stamboul, i.e. [Greek: ei)s te po/lin] )—from May 14 to July 14, 1810. The "Lenten days," which were ushered in by a carnival, were those of the second "great" Lent of the Greek Church, that of St. Peter and St. Paul, which begins on the first Monday after Trinity, and ends on the 29th of June.]

[184] {153} [These al-fresco festivities must, it is presumed, have taken place on the two days out of the seven when you "might not 'damn the climate' and complain of the spleen." Hobhouse records excursions to the Valley of Sweet Waters; to Belgrade, where "the French minister gave a sort of fete-champetre," when "the carousal lasted four days," and when "night after night is kept awake by the pipes, tabors, and fiddles of these moonlight dances;" and to the grove of Fanar-Baktchesi.—Travels in Albania, ii. 242-258.]

[185] ["There's nothing like young Love, No! No! There's nothing like young love at last."]

[186] {154} [It has been assumed that "searment" is an incorrect form of "cerement," the cloth dipped "in melting wax, in which dead bodies were enfolded when embalmed" (Hamlet, act i. sc. 4), but the sense of the passage seems rather to point to "cerecloth," "searcloth," a plaster to cover up a wound. The "robe of revel" does but half conceal the sore and aching heart.]

[187] [For the accentuation of the word, compare Chaucer, "The Sompnour's Tale" (Canterbury Tales, line 7631)—

"And dronkennesse is eke a foul record Of any man, and namely of a lord."]

[fu] When Athens' children are with arts endued.—[MS. D.]

[188] [Compare Ecclus. xliv. 8, 9: "There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported. And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been."]

[189] {156} [The "solitary column" may be that on the shore of the harbour of Colonna, in the island of Kythnos (Thermia), or one of the detached columns of the Olympeion.]

[190] [Tritonia, or Tritogenia, one of Athena's names of uncertain origin. Hofmann's Lexicon Universale, Tooke's Pantheon, and Smith's Classical Dictionary are much in the same tale. Lucan (Pharsalia, lib. ix. lines 350-354) derives the epithet from Lake Triton, or Tritonis, on the Mediterranean coast of Libya—

"Hanc et Pallas amat: patrio quae vertice nata Terrarum primum Libyen (nam proxima coelo est, Ut probat ipse calor) tetigit, stagnique quieta Vultus vidit aqua, posuitque in margine plantas, Et se dilecta Tritonida dixit ab unda."]

[191] [Hobhouse dates the first visit to Cape Colonna, January 24, 1810.]

[192] {157} [Athene's dower of the olive induced the gods to appoint her as the protector and name-giver of Athens. Poseidon, who had proffered a horse, was a rejected candidate. (See note by Rev. E. C. Owen, Childe Harold, 1897, p. 175.)]

[193] ["The wild thyme is in great abundance; but there are only two stands of bee-hives on the mountains, and very little of the real honey of Hymettus is to be now procured at Athens.... A small pot of it was shown to me as a rarity" (Travels in Albania, i. 341). There is now, a little way out of Athens, a "honey-farm, where the honey from Hymettus is prepared for sale" (Handbook for Greece, p. 500).]

[fv] ——Pentele's marbles glare.—[MS. D. erased.]

[194] [Stanzas lxxxviii.-xc. are not in the MS., but were first included in the seventh edition, 1814.]

[195] [Byron and Hobhouse, after visiting Colonna, slept at Keratea, and proceeded to Marathon on January 25, returning to Athens on the following day.]

[fw] {158} Preserve alike its form——.—[MS. L.]

[fx] When uttered to the listener's eye——.—[MS. L.]

[fy] The host, the plain, the fight——.—[MS. L.]

[fz] The shattered Mede who flies with broken bow.—[MS. L.]

[196] ["The plain of Marathon is enclosed on three sides by the rocky arms of Parnes and Pentelicus, while the fourth is bounded by the sea." After the first rush, when the victorious wings, where the files were deep, had drawn together and extricated the shallower and weaker centre, which had been repulsed by the Persians and the Sakae, "the pursuit became general, and the Persians were chased to their ships, ranged in line along the shore. Some of them became involved in the impassable marsh, and there perished." (See Childe Harold, edited by H. F. Tozer, 1885, p. 253; Grote's History of Greece, iv. 276. See, too, Travels in Albania, i. 378-384.)]

[ga] To tell what Asia troubled but to hear.—[MS. L.]

[197] [See note to Canto II. stanzas i.-xv., pp. 99, 100.]

[gb] Long to the remnants—.——Ḍ

[198] [The "Ionian blast" is the western wind that brings the voyager across the Ionian Sea.]

[199] {160} [The original MS. closes with this stanza.]

[gc] Which heeds nor stern reproach——.—Ḍ

[gd] {161}Would I had ne'er returned——.—Ḍ

[200] "To Mr. Dallas. The 'he' refers to 'Wanderer' and anything is better than I I I I always I. Yours, BYRON." [4th Revise B.M.]

[ge] But Time the Comforter shall come at last.—[MS. erased.]

[201] [Compare Young's Night Thoughts ("The Complaint," Night i.). Vide ante, p. 95.]

[gf]

Though Time not yet hath ting'd my locks with snow,[Sec.] Yet hath he reft whate'er my soul enjoy'd.—Ḍ

[Sec.] "To Mr. Dallas.

If Mr. D. wishes me to adopt the former line so be it. I prefer the other I confess, it has less egotism—the first sounds affected.

Yours,

B."

[Dallas assented, and directed the printer to let the Roll stand.]

* * * * *



NOTES TO CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.

CANTO II.

1.

Despite of War and wasting fire. Stanza i. line 4.

Part of the Acropolis was destroyed by the explosion of a magazine during the Venetian siege.

[In 1684, when the Venetian Armada threatened Athens, the Turks removed the Temple of Victory, and made use of the materials for the construction of a bastion. In the autumn of 1687, when the city was besieged by the Venetians under Francesco Morosini (1618-1694; Doge of Venice, 1688), "mortars were planted ... near the north-east corner of the rock, which threw their shells at a high angle, with a low charge, into the Acropolis.... On the 25th of September, a Venetian bomb blew up a small powder-magazine in the Propylaea, and on the following evening another fell in the Parthenon, where the Turks had deposited ... a considerable quantity of powder.... A terrific explosion took place; the central columns of the peristyle, the walls of the cella, and the immense architraves and cornices they supported, were scattered around the remains of the temple. The Propylaea had been partly destroyed in 1656 by the explosion of a magazine which was struck by lightning."—Finlay's History of Greece, 1887, i. 185.]

2.

But worse than steel, and flame, and ages slow, Is the dread sceptre and dominion dire. Stanza i. lines 6, 7.

We can all feel, or imagine, the regret with which the ruins of cities, once the capitals of empires, are beheld: the reflections suggested by such objects are too trite to require recapitulation. But never did the littleness of man, and the vanity of his very best virtues, of patriotism to exalt, and of valour to defend his country appear more conspicuous than in the record of what Athens was, and the certainty of what she now is. This theatre of contention between mighty factions, of the struggles of orators, the exaltation and deposition of tyrants, the triumph and punishment of generals, is now become a scene of petty intrigue and perpetual disturbance, between the bickering agents of certain British nobility and gentry. "The wild foxes, the owls and serpents in the ruins of Babylon,"[202] were surely less degrading than such inhabitants. The Turks have the plea of conquest for their tyranny, and the Greeks have only suffered the fortune of war, incidental to the bravest; but how are the mighty fallen, when two painters[203] contest the privilege of plundering the Parthenon, and triumph in turn, according to the tenor of each succeeding firman! Sylla could but punish, Philip subdue, and Xerxes burn Athens; but it remained for the paltry antiquarian, and his despicable agents, to render her contemptible as himself and his pursuits. The Parthenon, before its destruction, in part, by fire during the Venetian siege, had been a temple, a church, and a mosque.[204] In each point of view it is an object of regard: it changed its worshippers; but still it was a place of worship thrice sacred to devotion: its violation is a triple sacrifice. But—

"Man, proud man, Drest in a little brief authority, Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven As make the angels weep." [Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, act ii. sc. 2, lines 117-122.]

3.

Far on the solitary shore he sleeps. Stanza v. line 2.

It was not always the custom of the Greeks to burn their dead; the greater Ajax, in particular, was interred entire. Almost all the chiefs became gods after their decease; and he was indeed neglected, who had not annual games near his tomb, or festivals in honour of his memory by his countrymen, as Achilles, Brasidas, etc., and at last even Antinous, whose death was as heroic as his life was infamous.

4.

Here, son of Saturn! was thy favourite throne. Stanza x. line 3.

The Temple of Jupiter Olympius, of which sixteen columns, entirely of marble, yet survive; originally there were one hundred and fifty. These columns, however, are by many supposed to have belonged to the Pantheon.

[The Olympieion, or Temple of Zeus Olympius, on the south-east of the Acropolis, some five hundred yards from the foot of the rock, was begun by Pisistratos, and completed seven hundred years later by Hadrian. It was one of the three or four largest temples of antiquity. The cella had been originally enclosed by a double row of twenty columns at the sides, and a triple row of eight columns at each front, making a hundred and four columns in all; but in 1810 only sixteen "lofty Corinthian columns" were standing. Mr. Tozer points out that "'base' is accurate, because Corinthian columns have bases, which Doric columns have not," and notes that the word "'unshaken' implies that the column itself had fallen, but the base remains."—Childe Harold, 1888, p. 228.]

5.

And bear these altars o'er the long-reluctant brine. Stanza xi. line 9.

The ship was wrecked in the Archipelago.

[The Mentor, which Elgin had chartered to convey to England a cargo consisting of twelve chests of antiquities, was wrecked off the Island of Cerigo, in 1803. His secretary, W. R. Hamilton, set divers to work, and rescued four chests; but the remainder were not recovered till 1805.]

6.

To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spared. Stanza xii. line 2.

At this moment (January 3, 1810), besides what has been already deposited in London, an Hydriot vessel is in the Pyraeus to receive every portable relic. Thus, as I heard a young Greek observe, in common with many of his countrymen—for, lost as they are, they yet feel on this occasion—thus may Lord Elgin boast of having ruined Athens. An Italian painter of the first eminence, named Lusieri[205], is the agent of devastation; and like the Greek finder[206] of Verres in Sicily, who followed the same profession, he has proved the able instrument of plunder. Between this artist and the French Consul Fauvel[207], who wishes to rescue the remains for his own government, there is now a violent dispute concerning a car employed in their conveyance, the wheel of which—I wish they were both broken upon it!—has been locked up by the Consul, and Lusieri has laid his complaint before the Waywode. Lord Elgin has been extremely happy in his choice of Signer Lusieri. During a residence of ten years in Athens, he never had the curiosity to proceed as far as Sunium (now Cape Colonna),[208] till he accompanied us in our second excursion. However, his works, as far as they go, are most beautiful: but they are almost all unfinished. While he and his patrons confine themselves to tasting medals, appreciating cameos, sketching columns, and cheapening gems, their little absurdities are as harmless as insect or fox-hunting, maiden-speechifying, barouche-driving, or any such pastime; but when they carry away three or four shiploads of the most valuable and massy relics that time and barbarism have left to the most injured and most celebrated of cities: when they destroy, in a vain attempt to tear down, those works which have been the admiration of ages, I know no motive which can excuse, no name which can designate, the perpetrators of this dastardly devastation. It was not the least of the crimes laid to the charge of Verres, that he had plundered Sicily, in the manner since imitated at Athens. The most unblushing impudence could hardly go farther than to affix the name of its plunderer to the walls of the Acropolis; while the wanton and useless defacement of the whole range of the basso-relievos, in one compartment of the temple, will never permit that name to be pronounced by an observer without execration.

On this occasion I speak impartially: I am not a collector or admirer of collections, consequently no rival; but I have some early prepossession in favour of Greece, and do not think the honour of England advanced by plunder, whether of India or Attica.

Another noble Lord [Aberdeen] has done better, because he has done less: but some others, more or less noble, yet "all honourable men," have done best, because, after a deal of excavation and execration, bribery to the Waywode, mining and countermining, they have done nothing at all. We had such ink-shed, and wine-shed, which almost ended in bloodshed![209] Lord E.'s "prig"—see Jonathan Wild for the definition of "priggism"[210]—quarrelled with another, Gropius[211] by name (a very good name too for his business), and muttered something about satisfaction, in a verbal answer to a note of the poor Prussian: this was stated at table to Gropius, who laughed, but could eat no dinner afterwards. The rivals were not reconciled when I left Greece. I have reason to remember their squabble, for they wanted to make me their arbitrator.

7.

Her Sons too weak the sacred shrine to guard, Yet felt some portion of their Mother's pains. Stanza xii. lines 7 and 8.

I cannot resist availing myself of the permission of my friend Dr. Clarke, whose name requires no comment with the public, but whose sanction will add tenfold weight to my testimony, to insert the following extract from a very obliging letter of his to me, as a note to the above lines:—"When the last of the Metopes was taken from the Parthenon, and, in moving of it, great part of the superstructure with one of the triglyphs was thrown down by the workmen whom Lord Elgin employed, the Disdar, who beheld the mischief done to the building, took his pipe from his mouth, dropped a tear, and in a supplicating tone of voice, said to Lusieri, [Greek: Telos]!—I was present." The Disdar alluded to was the father of the present Disdar.

[Disdar, or Dizdar, i.e. castle-holder—the warden of a castle or fort (N. Eng. Dict., art. "Dizdar"). The story is told at greater length in Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa, by Edward Daniel Clarke, LL.D., 1810-14, Part II. sect. ii. p. 483.]

8.

Where was thine AEgis, Pallas! that appalled Stern Alaric and Havoc on their way? Stanza xiv. lines i and 2.

According to Zosimus, Minerva and Achilles frightened Alaric from the Acropolis: but others relate that the Gothic king was nearly as mischievous as the Scottish peer.—See Chandler.

[Zosimus, Historiae, lib. v. cap. 6, Corp. Scr. Byz., 1837, p. 253. As a matter of fact, Alaric, King of the Visigoths, occupied Athens in A.D. 395 without resistance, and carried off the movable treasures of the city, though he did not destroy buildings or works of art.—Note by Rev. E. C. Owen, Childe Harold, 1898, p. 162.]

9.

The netted canopy. Stanza xviii. line 2.

To prevent blocks or splinters from falling on deck during action.

10.

But not in silence pass Calypso's isles. Stanza xxix. line 1.

Goza is said to have been the island of Calypso.

[Strabo (Paris, 1853), lib. i. cap. ii. 57 and lib. vii. cap. iii. 50, says that Apollodorus blamed the poet Callimachus, who was a grammarian and ought to have known better, for his contention that Gaudus, i.e. Gozo, was Calypso's isle. Ogygia (Odyssey, i. 50) was

"a sea-girt isle, Where is the navel of the sea, a woodland isle."

It was surely as a poet, not as a grammarian, that Callimachus was at fault.]

11.

Land of Albania! let me bend mine eyes On thee, thou rugged Nurse of savage men! Stanza xxxviii. lines 5 and 6.

Albania comprises part of Macedonia, Illyria, Chaonia, and Epirus. Iskander is the Turkish word for Alexander; and the celebrated Scanderbeg[212] (Lord Alexander) is alluded to in the third and fourth lines of the thirty-eighth stanza. I do not know whether I am correct in making Scanderbeg the countryman of Alexander, who was born at Pella in Macedon, but Mr. Gibbon terms him so, and adds Pyrrhus to the list, in speaking of his exploits.

Of Albania Gibbon remarks that a country "within sight of Italy is less known than the interior of America." Circumstances, of little consequence to mention, led Mr. Hobhouse and myself into that country before we visited any other part of the Ottoman dominions; and with the exception of Major Leake,[213] then officially resident at Joannina, no other Englishmen have ever advanced beyond the capital into the interior, as that gentleman very lately assured me. Ali Pacha was at that time (October, 1809) carrying on war against Ibrahim Pacha, whom he had driven to Berat, a strong fortress, which he was then besieging: on our arrival at Joannina we were invited to Tepaleni, his highness's birthplace, and favourite Serai, only one day's distance from Berat; at this juncture the Vizier had made it his headquarters. After some stay in the capital, we accordingly followed; but though furnished with every accommodation, and escorted by one of the Vizier's secretaries, we were nine days (on account of the rains) in accomplishing a journey which, on our return, barely occupied four. On our route we passed two cities, Argyrocastro and Libochabo, apparently little inferior to Yanina in size; and no pencil or pen can ever do justice to the scenery in the vicinity of Zitza and Delvinachi, the frontier village of Epirus and Albania Proper.

On Albania and its inhabitants I am unwilling to descant, because this will be done so much better by my fellow-traveller, in a work which may probably precede this in publication, that I as little wish to follow as I would to anticipate him.[214] But some few observations are necessary to the text. The Arnaouts, or Albanese, struck me forcibly by their resemblance to the Highlanders of Scotland, in dress, figure, and manner of living. Their very mountains seemed Caledonian, with a kinder climate. The kilt, though white; the spare, active form; their dialect, Celtic in its sound; and their hardy habits, all carried me back to Morven. No nation are so detested and dreaded by their neighbours as the Albanese; the Greeks hardly regard them as Christians, or the Turks as Moslems; and in fact they are a mixture of both, and sometimes neither. Their habits are predatory—all are armed; and the red-shawled Arnaouts, the Montenegrins, Chimariots, and Gegdes, are treacherous;[215] the others differ somewhat in garb, and essentially in character. As far as my own experience goes, I can speak favourably. I was attended by two, an Infidel and a Mussulman, to Constantinople and every other part of Turkey which came within my observation; and more faithful in peril, or indefatigable in service, are rarely to be found. The Infidel was named Basilius; the Moslem, Dervish Tahiri; the former a man of middle age, and the latter about my own. Basili was strictly charged by Ali Pacha in person to attend us; and Dervish was one of fifty who accompanied us through the forests of Acarnania to the banks of Achelous, and onward to Messalonghi in AEtolia. There I took him into my own service, and never had occasion to repent it till the moment of my departure.

When, in 1810, after the departure of my friend Mr. Hobhouse for England, I was seized with a severe fever in the Morea, these men saved my life by frightening away my physician, whose throat they threatened to cut if I was not cured within a given time. To this consolatory assurance of posthumous retribution, and a resolute refusal of Dr. Romanelli's prescriptions, I attributed my recovery.[gg] I had left my last remaining English servant at Athens; my dragoman was as ill as myself, and my poor Arnaouts nursed me with an attention which would have done honour to civilization. They had a variety of adventures; for the Moslem, Dervish, being a remarkably handsome man, was always squabbling with the husbands of Athens; insomuch that four of the principal Turks paid me a visit of remonstrance at the Convent on the subject of his having taken a woman from the bath—whom he had lawfully bought, however—a thing quite contrary to etiquette. Basili also was extremely gallant amongst his own persuasion, and had the greatest veneration for the church, mixed with the highest contempt of churchmen, whom he cuffed upon occasion in a most heterodox manner. Yet he never passed a church without crossing himself; and I remember the risk he ran in entering St. Sophia, in Stambol, because it had once been a place of his worship. On remonstrating with him on his inconsistent proceedings, he invariably answered, "Our church is holy, our priests are thieves:" and then he crossed himself as usual, and boxed the ears of the first "papas" who refused to assist in any required operation, as was always found to be necessary where a priest had any influence with the Cogia Bashi[216] of his village. Indeed, a more abandoned race of miscreants cannot exist than the lower orders of the Greek clergy.

When preparations were made for my return, my Albanians were summoned to receive their pay. Basili took his with an awkward show of regret at my intended departure, and marched away to his quarters with his bag of piastres. I sent for Dervish, but for some time he was not to be found; at last he entered, just as Signor Logotheti,[217] father to the ci-devant Anglo-consul of Athens, and some other of my Greek acquaintances, paid me a visit. Dervish took the money in his hand, but on a sudden dashed it to the ground; and clasping his hands, which he raised to his forehead, rushed out of the room weeping bitterly. From that moment to the hour of my embarkation, he continued his lamentations, and all our efforts to console him only produced this answer, "[Greek: M'apheinei]", "He leaves me." Signer Logotheti, who never wept before for anything less than the loss of a para (about the fourth of a farthing), melted; the padre of the convent, my attendants, my visitors—and I verily believe that even Sterne's "foolish fat scullion" would have left her "fish-kettle" to sympathize with the unaffected and unexpected sorrow of this barbarian.[218]

For my own part, when I remembered that, a short time before my departure from England, a noble and most intimate associate had excused himself from taking leave of me because he had to attend a female relation "to a milliner's,"[219] I felt no less surprised than humiliated by the present occurrence and the past recollection. That Dervish would leave me with some regret was to be expected; when master and man have been scrambling over the mountains of a dozen provinces together, they are unwilling to separate; but his present feelings, contrasted with his native ferocity, improved my opinion of the human heart. I believe this almost feudal fidelity is frequent amongst them. One day, on our journey over Parnassus, an Englishman in my service gave him a push in some dispute about the baggage, which he unluckily mistook for a blow; he spoke not, but sat down leaning his head upon his hands. Foreseeing the consequences, we endeavoured to explain away the affront, which produced the following answer:—"I have been a robber; I am a soldier; no captain ever struck me; you are my master, I have eaten your bread, but by that bread! (a usual oath) had it been otherwise, I would have stabbed the dog, your servant, and gone to the mountains." So the affair ended, but from that day forward he never thoroughly forgave the thoughtless fellow who insulted him. Dervish excelled in the dance of his country, conjectured to be a remnant of the ancient Pyrrhic: be that as it may, it is manly, and requires wonderful agility. It is very distinct from the stupid Romaika,[220] the dull round-about of the Greeks, of which our Athenian party had so many specimens.

The Albanians in general (I do not mean the cultivators of the earth in the provinces, who have also that appellation, but the mountaineers) have a fine cast of countenance; and the most beautiful women I ever beheld, in stature and in features, we saw levelling the road broken down by the torrents between Delvinachi and Libochabo. Their manner of walking is truly theatrical; but this strut is probably the effect of the capote, or cloak, depending from one shoulder. Their long hair reminds you of the Spartans, and their courage in desultory warfare is unquestionable. Though they have some cavalry amongst the Gegdes, I never saw a good Arnaout horseman; my own preferred the English saddles, which, however, they could never keep. But on foot they are not to be subdued by fatigue.

12.

And passed the barren spot, Where sad Penelope o'erlooked the wave. Stanza xxxix. lines 1 and 2.

Ithaca.

13.

Actium—Lepanto—fatal Trafalgar. Stanza xl. line 5.

Actium and Trafalgar need no further mention. The battle of Lepanto [October 7, 1571], equally bloody and considerable, but less known, was fought in the Gulf of Patras. Here the author of Don Quixote lost his left hand.

["His [Cervantes'] galley the Marquesa, was in the thick of the fight, and before it was over he had received three gun-shot wounds, two in the breast and one on the left hand or arm." In consequence of his wound "he was seven months in hospital before he was discharged. He came out with his left hand permanently disabled; he had lost the use of it, as Mercury told him in the 'Viaje del Parnase,' for the greater glory of the right."—Don Quixote, A Translation by John Ormsby, 1885, Introduction, i. 13.]

14.

And hailed the last resort of fruitless love. Stanza xli. line 3.

Leucadia, now Santa Maura. From the promontory (the Lover's Leap) Sappho is said to have thrown herself.

[Strabo (lib. x. cap. 2, ed. Paris, 1853, p. 388) gives Menander as an authority for the legend that Sappho was the first to take the "Lover's Leap" from the promontory of Leucate. Writers, he adds, better versed in antiquities [Greek: a)rchaiologiko/teroi], prefer the claims of one Cephalus. Another legend, which he gives as a fact, perhaps gave birth to the later and more poetical fiction. The Leucadians, he says, once a year, on Apollo's day, were wont to hurl a criminal from the rock into the sea by way of expiation and propitiation. Birds of all kinds were attached to the victim to break his fall, and, if he reached the sea uninjured, there was a fleet of little boats ready to carry him to other shores. It is possible that dim memories of human sacrifice lingered in the islands, that in course of time victims were transformed into "lovers," and it is certain that poets and commentators, "prone to lie," are responsible for names and incidents.]

15.

Many a Roman chief and Asian King. Stanza xlv. line 4.

It is said, that on the day previous to the battle of Actium, Antony had thirteen kings at his levee.

[Plutarch, in his Antonius, gives the names of "six auxiliary kings who fought under his banners," and mentions six other kings who did not attend in person but sent supplies. Shakespeare (Anthony and Cleopatra, act iii. sc. 6, lines 68-75), quoting Plutarch almost verbatim, enumerates ten kings who were "assembled" in Anthony's train—

"Bocchus, the king of Libya; Archelaus, Of Cappadocia; Philadelphos, king Of Paphlagonia; the Thracian king, Adallas; King Malchus of Arabia; king of Pont; Herod of Jewry; Mithridates, king Of Comagene; Polemon and Amintas, The kings of Mede and Lycaonia, With a more larger list of sceptres."

Other authorities for the events of the campaign and battle of Actium (Dion Cassius, Appian, and Orosius) are silent as to "kings;" but Florus (iv. 11) says that the wind-tossed waters "vomited back" to the shore gold and purple, the spoils of the Arabians and Sabaeans, and a thousand other peoples of Asia.]

16.

Look where the second Caesar's trophies rose. Stanza xlv. line 6.

Nicopolis, whose ruins are most extensive, is at some distance from Actium, where the wall of the Hippodrome survives in a few fragments. These ruins are large masses of brickwork, the bricks of which are joined by interstices of mortar, as large as the bricks themselves, and equally durable.

17.

Acherusia's lake. Stanza xlvii. line 1.

According to Pouqueville, the lake of Yanina; but Pouqueville is always out.

[The lake of Yanina (Janina or Joannina) was the ancient Pambotis. "At the mouth of the gorge [of Suli], where it suddenly comes to an end, was the marsh, the Palus Acherusia, in the neighbourhood of which was the Oracle."—Geography of Greece, by H. F. Tozer, 1873, p. 121.]

18.

To greet Albania's Chief. Stanza xlvii. line 4.

The celebrated Ali Pacha. Of this extraordinary man there is an incorrect account in Pouqueville's Travels. [For note on Ali Pasha (1741-1822), see Letters, 1898, i. 246.]

19.

Yet here and there some daring mountain-band Disdain his power, and from their rocky hold Hurl their defiance far, nor yield, unless to gold. Stanza xlvii. lines 7, 8, and 9.

Five thousand Suliotes, among the rocks and in the castle of Suli, withstood thirty thousand Albanians for eighteen years; the castle at last was taken by bribery. In this contest there were several acts performed not unworthy of the better days of Greece.

[Ali Pasha assumed the government of Janina in 1788, but it was not till December 12, 1803, that the Suliotes, who were betrayed by their leaders, Botzaris and Koutsonika and others, finally surrendered.—Finlay's History of Greece, 1877, vi. 45-50.]

20.

Monastic Zitza! etc. Stanza xlviii. line 1.

The convent and village of Zitza are four hours' journey from Joannina, or Yanina, the capital of the Pachalick. In the valley the river Kalamas (once the Acheron) flows, and, not far from Zitza, forms a fine cataract. The situation is perhaps the finest in Greece, though the approach to Delvinachi and parts of Acarnania and AEtolia may contest the palm. Delphi, Parnassus, and, in Attica, even Cape Colonna and Port Raphti, are very inferior; as also every scene in Ionia, or the Troad: I am almost inclined to add the approach to Constantinople; but, from the different features of the last, a comparison can hardly be made.

21.

Here dwells the caloyer. Stanza xlix. line 6.

The Greek monks are so called.

[Caloyer is derived from the late Greek [Greek: kalo/geros], "good in old age," through the Italian caloieso. Hence the accent on the last syllable.—N. Eng. Dict.]

22.

Nature's volcanic Amphitheatre. Stanza li. line 2.

The Chimariot mountains appear to have been volcanic.

[By "Chimaera's Alps" Byron probably meant the Ceraunian Mountains, which are "woody to the top, but disclose some wide chasms of red rock" (Travels in Albania, i. 73) to the north of Jannina,—not the Acroceraunian (Chimariot) Mountains, which run from north to south-west along the coast of Mysia. "The walls of rock (which do not appear to be volcanic) rise in tiers on every side, like the seats and walls of an amphitheatre" (H. F. Tozer). The near distance may have suggested an amphitheatre; but he is speaking of the panorama which enlarged on his view, and uses the word not graphically, but metaphorically, of the entire "circle of the hills."]

23.

Behold black Acheron! Stanza li. line 6.

Now called Kalamas.

24.

In his white capote. Stanza lii. line 7.

Albanese cloak.

[The capote (feminine of capot, masculine diminutive of cope, cape) was a long shaggy cloak or overcoat, with a hood, worn by soldiers, etc.—N. Eng. Dict., art. "Capote."]

25.

The Sun had sunk behind vast Tomerit. Stanza lv. line 1.

Anciently Mount Tomarus.

["Mount Tomerit, or Tomohr," says Mr. Tozer, "lies north-east of Tepalen, and therefore the sun could not set behind it" (Childe Harold, 1885, p. 272). But, writing to Drury, May 3, 1810, Byron says that "he penetrated as far as Mount Tomarit." Probably by "Tomarit" he does not mean Mount Tomohr, which lies to the north-east of Berat, but Mount Olytsika, ancient Tomaros (vide ante, p. 132, note 1), which lies to the west of Janina, between the valley of Tcharacovista and the sea. "Elle domine," writes M. Carapanos, "toutes les autres montagnes qui l'entourent." "Laos," Mr. Tozer thinks, "is a mere blunder for Aoeus, the Viosa (or Voioussa), which joins the Derapuli a few miles south of Tepaleni, and flows under the walls of the city" (Dodone et ses Ruines, 1878, p. 8). (For the Aoeus and approach to Tepeleni, see Travels in Albania, i. 91.)]

26.

And Laos wide and fierce came roaring by. Stanza lv. line 2.

The river Laos was full at the time the author passed it; and, immediately above Tepaleen, was to the eye as wide as the Thames at Westminster; at least in the opinion of the author and his fellow-traveller. In the summer it must be much narrower. It certainly is the finest river in the Levant; neither Achelous, Alpheus, Acheron, Scamander, nor Cayster, approached it in breadth or beauty.

27.

And fellow-countrymen have stood aloof. Stanza lxvi. line 8.

Alluding to the wreckers of Cornwall.

28.

The red wine circling fast. Stanza lxxi. line 2.

The Albanian Mussulmans do not abstain from wine, and, indeed, very few of the others.

29.

Each Palikar his sabre from him cast. Stanza lxxi. line 7.

Palikar, shortened when addressed to a single person, from [Greek: Palikari] [[Greek: palleka/ri]], a general name for a soldier amongst the Greeks and Albanese, who speak Romaic: it means, properly, "a lad."

30.

While thus in concert, etc. Stanza lxxii. line 9.

As a specimen of the Albanian or Arnaout dialect of the Illyric, I here insert two of their most popular choral songs, which are generally chanted in dancing by men or women indiscriminately. The first words are merely a kind of chorus without meaning, like some in our own and all other languages.

1. Bo, Bo, Bo, Bo, Bo, Bo, 1. Lo, Lo, I come, I come; Naciarura, popuso. be thou silent.

2. Naciarura na civin 2. I come, I run; open the Ha pen derini ti hin. door that I may enter.

3. Ha pe uderi escrotini 3. Open the door by halves, Ti vin ti mar servetini. that I may take my turban.

4. Caliriote me surme 4. Caliriotes[Sec.] with the dark Ea ha pe pse dua tive. eyes, open the gate that I may enter.

5. Buo, Bo, Bo, Bo, Bo, 5. Lo, Lo, I hear thee, my soul. Gi egem spirta esimiro.

6. Caliriote vu le funde 6. An Arnaout girl, in costly Ede vete tunde tunde. garb, walks with graceful pride.

7. Caliriote me surme 7. Caliriot maid of the dark Ti mi put e poi mi le. eyes, give me a kiss.

8. Se ti puta citi mora 8. If I have kissed thee, what hast thou gained? Si mi ri ni veti udo gia. My soul is consumed with fire.

9. Va le ni il che cadale 9. Dance lightly, more Celo more, more celo. gently, and gently still.

10. Plu hari ti tirete 10. Make not so much dust Plu huron cia pra seti. to destroy your embroidered hose.

[Sec.]The Albanese, particularly the women, are frequently termed "Caliriotes," for what reason I inquired in vain.

The last stanza would puzzle a commentator: the men have certainly buskins of the most beautiful texture, but the ladies (to whom the above is supposed to be addressed) have nothing under their little yellow boots and slippers but a well-turned and sometimes very white ankle. The Arnaout girls are much handsomer than the Greeks, and their dress is far more picturesque. They preserve their shape much longer also, from being always in the open air. It is to be observed, that the Arnaout is not a written language: the words of this song, therefore, as well as the one which follows, are spelt according to their pronunciation. They are copied by one who speaks and understands the dialect perfectly, and who is a native of Athens.

1. Ndi sefda tinde ulavossa 1. I am wounded by thy love, and Vettimi upri vi lofsa. have loved but to scorch myself.

2. Ah vaisisso mi privi lofse 2. Thou hast consumed me! Ah, maid! Si mi rini mi la vosse. thou has struck me to the heart.

3. Uti tasa roba stua 3. I have said I wish no dowry, Sitti eve tulati dua. but thine eyes and eyelashes.

4. Roba stinori ssidua 4. The accursed dowry I Qu mi sini vetti dua. want not, but thee only.

5. Qurmini dua civileni 5. Give me thy charms, and Roba ti siarmi tildi eni. let the portion feed the flames.

6. Utara pisa vaisisso me 6. I have loved thee, maid, simi rin ti hapti with a sincere soul, but Eti mi bire a piste si gui thou hast left me like dendroi tiltati. a withered tree.

7. Udi vura udorini udiri 7. If I have placed my hand on cicova cilti mora thy bosom, what have I gained? Udorini talti hollna u ede my hand is withdrawn, but caimoni mora. retains the flame.

I believe the two last stanzas, as they are in a different measure, ought to belong to another ballad. An idea something similar to the thought in the last lines was expressed by Socrates, whose arm having come in contact with one of his "[Greek: hupokolpioi]," Critobulus or Cleobulus, the philosopher complained of a shooting pain as far as his shoulder for some days after, and therefore very properly resolved to teach his disciples in future without touching them.

31.

Tambourgi! Tambourgi! thy 'larum afar. Song, stanza 1, line 1.

These stanzas are partly taken from different Albanese songs, as far as I was able to make them out by the exposition of the Albanese in Romaic and Italian.

32.

Remember the moment when Previsa fell. Song, stanza 8, line 1.

It was taken by storm from the French [October, 1798].

33.

Fair Greece! sad relic of departed Worth! etc. Stanza lxxiii. line 1.

Some thoughts on this subject will be found in the subjoined papers, pp. 187-208.

34.

Spirit of Freedom! when on Phyle's brow Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train. Stanza lxxiv. lines 1 and 2.

Phyle, which commands a beautiful view of Athens, has still considerable remains: it was seized by Thrasybulus, previous to the expulsion of the Thirty.

[Byron and Hobhouse caught their first glance of Athens from this spot, December 25, 1809. (See Byron's note.) "The ruins," says Hobhouse, "are now called Bigla Castro, or The Watchtower."]

35.

Receive the fiery Frank, her former guest. Stanza lxxvii. line 4.

When taken by the Latins, and retained for several years. See Gibbon. [From A.D. 1204 to 1261.]

36.

The Prophet's tomb of all its pious spoil. Stanza lxxvii. line 6.

Mecca and Medina were taken some time ago by the Wahabees, a sect yearly increasing. [Vide supra, p. 151.]

37.

Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow. Stanza lxxxv. line 3.

On many of the mountains, particularly Liakura, the snow never is entirely melted, notwithstanding the intense heat of the summer; but I never saw it lie on the plains, even in winter.

[This feature of Greek scenery, in spring, may, now and again, be witnessed in our own country in autumn—a blue lake, bordered with summer greenery in the foreground, with a rear-guard of "hills of snow" glittering in the October sunshine.]

38.

Save where some solitary column mourns Above its prostrate brethren of the cave. Stanza lxxxvi. lines 1 and 2.

Of Mount Pentelicus, from whence the marble was dug that constructed the public edifices of Athens. The modern name is Mount Mendeli. An immense cave, formed by the quarries, still remains, and will till the end of time.

[Mendeli is the ancient Pentelicus. "The white lines marking the projecting veins" of marble are visible from Athens (Geography of Greece, by H.F. Tozer, 1873, p. 129).]

39.

When Marathon became a magic word. Stanza lxxxix. line 7.

"Siste Viator—heroa calcas!" was the epitaph on the famous Count Merci;[221]—what then must be our feelings when standing on the tumulus of the two hundred (Greeks) who fell on Marathon? The principal barrow has recently been opened by Fauvel: few or no relics, as vases, etc. were found by the excavator. The plain of Marathon[222] was offered to me for sale at the sum of sixteen thousand piastres, about nine hundred pounds! Alas!—"Expende[223]—quot libras in duce summo—invenies!"—was the dust of Miltiades worth no more? It could scarcely have fetched less if sold by weight.

PAPERS REFERRED TO BY NOTE 33.

I.[224]

Before I say anything about a city of which every body, traveller or not, has thought it necessary to say something, I will request Miss Owenson,[225] when she next borrows an Athenian heroine for her four volumes, to have the goodness to marry her to somebody more of a gentleman than a "Disdar Aga" (who by the by is not an Aga), the most impolite of petty officers, the greatest patron of larceny[226] Athens ever saw (except Lord E.), and the unworthy occupant of the Acropolis, on a handsome annual stipend of 150 piastres (eight pounds sterling), out of which he has only to pay his garrison, the most ill-regulated corps in the ill-regulated Ottoman Empire. I speak it tenderly, seeing I was once the cause of the husband of "Ida of Athens" nearly suffering the bastinado; and because the said "Disdar" is a turbulent husband, and beats his wife; so that I exhort and beseech Miss Owenson to sue for a separate maintenance in behalf of "Ida." Having premised thus much, on a matter of such import to the readers of romances, I may now leave Ida to mention her birthplace.

Setting aside the magic of the name, and all those associations which it would be pedantic and superfluous to recapitulate, the very situation of Athens would render it the favourite of all who have eyes for art or nature. The climate, to me at least, appeared a perpetual spring; during eight months I never passed a day without being as many hours on horseback: rain is extremely rare, snow never lies in the plains, and a cloudy day is an agreeable rarity. In Spain, Portugal, and every part of the East which I visited, except Ionia and Attica, I perceived no such superiority of climate to our own; and at Constantinople, where I passed May, June, and part of July (1810), you might "damn the climate, and complain of spleen," five days out of seven.[227]

The air of the Morea is heavy and unwholesome, but the moment you pass the isthmus in the direction of Megara the change is strikingly perceptible. But I fear Hesiod will still be found correct in his description of a Boeotian winter.[228]

We found at Livadia an "esprit fort" in a Greek bishop, of all free-thinkers! This worthy hypocrite rallied his own religion with great intrepidity (but not before his flock), and talked of a mass as a "coglioneria."[229] It was impossible to think better of him for this; but, for a Boeotian, he was brisk with all his absurdity. This phenomenon (with the exception indeed of Thebes, the remains of Chaeronea, the plain of Platea, Orchomenus, Livadia, and its nominal cave of Trophonius) was the only remarkable thing we saw before we passed Mount Cithaeron.

The fountain of Dirce turns a mill: at least my companion (who, resolving to be at once cleanly and classical, bathed in it) pronounced it to be the fountain of Dirce,[230] and any body who thinks it worth while may contradict him. At Castri we drank of half a dozen streamlets, some not of the purest, before we decided to our satisfaction which was the true Castalian, and even that had a villanous twang, probably from the snow, though it did not throw us into an epic fever, like poor Dr. Chandler.[231]

From Fort Phyle, of which large remains still exist, the plain of Athens, Pentelicus, Hymettus, the AEgean, and the Acropolis, burst upon the eye at once; in my opinion, a more glorious prospect than even Cintra or Istambol. Not the view from the Troad, with Ida, the Hellespont, and the more distant Mount Athos, can equal it, though so superior in extent.

I heard much of the beauty of Arcadia, but excepting the view from the Monastery of Megaspelion (which is inferior to Zitza in a command of country), and the descent from the mountains on the way from Tripolitza to Argos, Arcadia has little to recommend it beyond the name.

"Sternitur, et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos." AEneid, x. 782.

Virgil could have put this into the mouth of none but an Argive, and (with reverence be it spoken) it does not deserve the epithet. And if the Polynices of Statius, "In mediis audit duo litora campis" (Thebaidos, i. 335), did actually hear both shores in crossing the isthmus of Corinth, he had better ears than have ever been worn in such a journey since.

"Athens," says a celebrated topographer, "is still the most polished city of Greece."[232] Perhaps it may of Greece, but not of the Greeks; for Joannina in Epirus is universally allowed, amongst themselves, to be superior in the wealth, refinement, learning, and dialect of its inhabitants. The Athenians are remarkable for their cunning; and the lower orders are not improperly characterised in that proverb, which classes them with the "Jews of Salonica, and the Turks of the Negropont."

Among the various foreigners resident in Athens, French, Italians, Germans, Ragusans, etc., there was never a difference of opinion in their estimate of the Greek character, though on all other topics they disputed with great acrimony.

M. Fauvel, the French Consul, who has passed thirty years principally at Athens, and to whose talents as an artist, and manners as a gentleman, none who have known him can refuse their testimony, has frequently declared in my hearing, that the Greeks do not deserve to be emancipated; reasoning on the grounds of their "national and individual depravity!" while he forgot that such depravity is to be attributed to causes which can only be removed by the measure he reprobates.

M. Roque,[233] a French merchant of respectability long settled in Athens, asserted with the most amusing gravity, "Sir, they are the same canaille that existed in the days of Themistocles!" an alarming remark to the "Laudator temporis acti." The ancients banished Themistocles; the moderns cheat Monsieur Roque; thus great men have ever been treated!

In short, all the Franks who are fixtures, and most of the Englishmen, Germans, Danes, etc., of passage, came over by degrees to their opinion, on much the same grounds that a Turk in England would condemn the nation by wholesale, because he was wronged by his lacquey, and overcharged by his washerwoman.

Certainly it was not a little staggering when the Sieurs Fauvel and Lusieri, the two greatest demagogues of the day, who divide between them the power of Pericles and the popularity of Cleon, and puzzle the poor Waywode with perpetual differences, agreed in the utter condemnation, "nulla virtute redemptum" (Juvenal, lib. i. Sat. iv. line 2), of the Greeks in general, and of the Athenians in particular. For my own humble opinion, I am loth to hazard it, knowing as I do, that there be now in MS. no less than five tours of the first magnitude, and of the most threatening aspect, all in typographical array, by persons of wit and honour, and regular common-place books: but, if I may say this, without offence, it seems to me rather hard to declare so positively and pertinaciously, as almost everybody has declared, that the Greeks, because they are very bad, will never be better.

Eton and Sonnini[234] have led us astray by their panegyrics and projects; but, on the other hand, De Pauw and Thornton[235] have debased the Greeks beyond their demerits.

The Greeks will never be independent; they will never be sovereigns as heretofore, and God forbid they ever should! but they may be subjects without being slaves. Our colonies are not independent, but they are free and industrious, and such may Greece be hereafter.

At present, like the Catholics of Ireland and the Jews throughout the world, and such other cudgelled and heterodox people, they suffer all the moral and physical ills that can afflict humanity. Their life is a struggle against truth; they are vicious in their own defence. They are so unused to kindness, that when they occasionally meet with it they look upon it with suspicion, as a dog often beaten snaps at your fingers if you attempt to caress him. "They are ungrateful, notoriously, abominably ungrateful!"—this is the general cry. Now, in the name of Nemesis! for what are they to be grateful? Where is the human being that ever conferred a benefit on Greek or Greeks? They are to be grateful to the Turks for their fetters, and to the Franks for their broken promises and lying counsels. They are to be grateful to the artist who engraves their ruins, and to the antiquary who carries them away; to the traveller whose janissary flogs them, and to the scribbler whose journal abuses them. This is the amount of their obligations to foreigners.

II.

Franciscan Convent, Athens, January 23, 1811.[236]

Amongst the remnants of the barbarous policy of the earlier ages, are the traces of bondage which yet exist in different countries; whose inhabitants, however divided in religion and manners, almost all agree in oppression.

The English have at last compassionated their negroes, and under a less bigoted government, may probably one day release their Catholic brethren; but the interposition of foreigners alone can emancipate the Greeks, who, otherwise, appear to have as small a chance of redemption from the Turks, as the Jews have from mankind in general.

Of the ancient Greeks we know more than enough; at least the younger men of Europe devote much of their time to the study of the Greek writers and history, which would be more usefully spent in mastering their own. Of the moderns, we are perhaps more neglectful than they deserve; and while every man of any pretensions to learning is tiring out his youth, and often his age, in the study of the language and of the harangues of the Athenian demagogues in favour of freedom, the real or supposed descendants of these sturdy republicans are left to the actual tyranny of their masters, although a very slight effort is required to strike off their chains.

To talk, as the Greeks themselves do, of their rising again to their pristine superiority, would be ridiculous: as the rest of the world must resume its barbarism, after reasserting the sovereignty of Greece: but there seems to be no very great obstacle, except in the apathy of the Franks, to their becoming an useful dependency, or even a free state, with a proper guarantee;—under correction, however, be it spoken, for many and well-informed men doubt the practicability even of this.

The Greeks have never lost their hope, though they are now more divided in opinion on the subject of their probable deliverers. Religion recommends the Russians; but they have twice been deceived and abandoned by that power, and the dreadful lesson they received after the Muscovite desertion in the Morea has never been forgotten. The French they dislike; although the subjugation of the rest of Europe will, probably, be attended by the deliverance of continental Greece. The islanders look to the English for succour, as they have very lately possessed themselves of the Ionian republic, Corfu excepted.[237] But whoever appear with arms in their hands will be welcome; and when that day arrives, Heaven have mercy on the Ottomans; they cannot expect it from the Giaours.

But instead of considering what they have been, and speculating on what they may be, let us look at them as they are.

And here it is impossible to reconcile the contrariety of opinions: some, particularly the merchants, decrying the Greeks in the strongest language; others, generally travellers, turning periods in their eulogy, and publishing very curious speculations grafted on their former state, which can have no more effect on their present lot, than the existence of the Incas on the future fortunes of Peru.

One very ingenious person terms them the "natural allies of Englishmen;" another no less ingenious, will not allow them to be the allies of anybody, and denies their very descent from the ancients; a third, more ingenious than either, builds a Greek empire on a Russian foundation, and realises (on paper) all the chimeras of Catharine II. As to the question of their descent, what can it import whether the Mainotes[238] are the lineal Laconians or not? or the present Athenians as indigenous as the bees of Hymettus, or as the grasshoppers, to which they once likened themselves? What Englishman cares if he be of a Danish, Saxon, Norman, or Trojan blood? or who, except a Welshman, is afflicted with a desire of being descended from Caractacus?

The poor Greeks do not so much abound in the good things of this world, as to render even their claims to antiquity an object of envy; it is very cruel, then, in Mr. Thornton to disturb them in the possession of all that time has left them; viz. their pedigree, of which they are the more tenacious, as it is all they can call their own. It would be worth while to publish together, and compare, the works of Messrs. Thornton and De Pauw, Eton and Sonnini; paradox on one side, and prejudice on the other. Mr. Thornton conceives himself to have claims to public confidence from a fourteen years' residence at Pera; perhaps he may on the subject of the Turks, but this can give him no more insight into the real state of Greece and her inhabitants, than as many years spent in Wapping into that of the Western Highlands.

The Greeks of Constantinople live in Fanal;[239] and if Mr. Thornton did not oftener cross the Golden Horn than his brother merchants are accustomed to do, I should place no great reliance on his information. I actually heard one of these gentlemen boast of their little general intercourse with the city, and assert of himself, with an air of triumph, that he had been but four times at Constantinople in as many years.

As to Mr. Thornton's voyages in the Black Sea with Greek vessels, they gave him the same idea of Greece as a cruise to Berwick in a Scotch smack would of Johnny Groat's house. Upon what grounds then does he arrogate the right of condemning by wholesale a body of men of whom he can know little? It is rather a curious circumstance that Mr. Thornton, who so lavishly dispraises Pouqueville on every occasion of mentioning the Turks, has yet recourse to him as authority on the Greeks, and terms him an impartial observer. Now, Dr. Pouqueville is as little entitled to that appellation as Mr. Thornton to confer it on him.

The fact is, we are deplorably in want of information on the subject of the Greeks, and in particular their literature; nor is there any probability of our being better acquainted, till our intercourse becomes more intimate, or their independence confirmed. The relations of passing travellers are as little to be depended on as the invectives of angry factors; but till something more can be attained, we must be content with the little to be acquired from similar sources.[240]

However defective these may be, they are preferable to the parodoxes of men who have read superficially of the ancients, and seen nothing of the moderns, such as De Pauw; who, when he asserts that the British breed of horses is ruined by Newmarket, and that the Spartans[241] were cowards in the field,[242] betrays an equal knowledge of English horses and Spartan men. His "philosophical observations" have a much better claim to the title of "poetical." It could not be expected that he who so liberally condemns some of the most celebrated institutions of the ancient, should have mercy on the modern Greeks; and it fortunately happens, that the absurdity of his hypothesis on their forefathers refutes his sentence on themselves.

Let us trust, then, that, in spite of the prophecies of De Pauw, and the doubts of Mr. Thornton, there is a reasonable hope of the redemption of a race of men, who, whatever may be the errors of their religion and policy, have been amply punished by three centuries and a half of captivity.

III.[243]

Athens, Franciscan Convent, March 17, 1811.

"I must have some talk with this learned Theban."[244]

Some time after my return from Constantinople to this city I received the thirty-first number of the Edinburgh Review[245] as a great favour, and certainly at this distance an acceptable one, from the captain of an English frigate off Salamis. In that number, Art. 3, containing the review of a French translation of Strabo,[246] there are introduced some remarks on the modern Greeks and their literature, with a short account of Coray, a co-translator in the French version. On those remarks I mean to ground a few observations; and the spot where I now write will, I hope, be sufficient excuse for introducing them in a work in some degree connected with the subject. Coray, the most celebrated of living Greeks, at least among the Franks, was born at Scio (in the Review, Smyrna is stated, I have reason to think, incorrectly), and besides the translation of Beccaria and other works mentioned by the Reviewer, has published a lexicon in Romaic and French, if I may trust the assurance of some Danish travellers lately arrived from Paris; but the latest we have seen here in French and Greek is that of Gregory Zolikogloou.[247] Coray has recently been involved in an unpleasant controversy with M. Gail,[248] a Parisian commentator and editor of some translations from the Greek poets, in consequence of the Institute having awarded him the prize for his version of Hippocrates' "[Greek: Peri y(da/ton]," etc., to the disparagement, and consequently displeasure, of the said Gail. To his exertions, literary and patriotic, great praise is undoubtedly due; but a part of that praise ought not to be withheld from the two brothers Zosimado (merchants settled in Leghorn), who sent him to Paris and maintained him, for the express purpose of elucidating the ancient, and adding to the modern, researches of his countrymen. Coray, however, is not considered by his countrymen equal to some who lived in the two last centuries; more particularly Dorotheus of Mitylene,[249] whose Hellenic writings are so much esteemed by the Greeks, that Meletius[250] terms him "[Greek: Meta to Thoukydi/den kai Xenopho/nta a)/ristos E(lle/non]" (p. 224, Ecclesiastical History, iv.).

Panagiotes Kodrikas, the translator of Fontenelle, and Kamarases,[251] who translated Ocellus Lucanus on the Universe into French, Christodoulus,[252] and more particularly Psalida,[253] whom I have conversed with in Joannina, are also in high repute among their literati. The last-mentioned has published in Romaic and Latin a work on True Happiness, dedicated to Catherine II. But Polyzois,[254] who is stated by the Reviewer to be the only modern except Coray who has distinguished himself by a knowledge of Hellenic, if he be the Polyzois Lampanitziotes of Yanina, who has published a number of editions in Romaic, was neither more nor less than an itinerant vender of books; with the contents of which he had no concern beyond his name on the title page, placed there to secure his property in the publication; and he was, moreover, a man utterly destitute of scholastic acquirements. As the name, however, is not uncommon, some other Polyzois may have edited the Epistles of Aristaenetus.

It is to be regretted that the system of continental blockade has closed the few channels through which the Greeks received their publications, particularly Venice and Trieste. Even the common grammars for children are become too dear for the lower orders. Amongst their original works the Geography of Meletius, Archbishop of Athens, and a multitude of theological quartos and poetical pamphlets, are to be met with; their grammars and lexicons of two, three, and four languages are numerous and excellent. Their poetry is in rhyme. The most singular piece I have lately seen is a satire in dialogue between a Russian, English, and French traveller, and the Waywode of Wallachia (or Blackbey, as they term him), an archbishop, a merchant,[255] and Cogia Bachi (or primate), in succession; to all of whom under the Turks the writer attributes their present degeneracy. Their songs are sometimes pretty and pathetic, but their tunes generally unpleasing to the ear of a Frank; the best is the famous "[Greek: Deu/te, pai~des to~n E(lle/non]," by the unfortunate Riga.[256] But from a catalogue of more than sixty authors, now before me, only fifteen can be found who have touched on any theme except theology.

I am intrusted with a commission by a Greek of Athens named Marmarotouri to make arrangements, if possible, for printing in London a translation of Barthelemi's Anacharsis in Romaic, as he has no other opportunity, unless he dispatches the MS. to Vienna by the Black Sea and Danube.

The Reviewer mentions a school established at Hecatonesi,[257] and suppressed at the instigation of Sebastiani:[258] he means Cidonies, or, in Turkish, Haivali; a town on the continent, where that institution for a hundred students and three professors still exists. It is true that this establishment was disturbed by the Porte, under the ridiculous pretext that the Greeks were constructing a fortress instead of a college; but on investigation, and the payment of some purses to the Divan, it has been permitted to continue. The principal professor, named Ueniamin (i.e. Benjamin), is stated to be a man of talent, but a freethinker. He was born in Lesbos, studied in Italy, and is master of Hellenic, Latin, and some Frank languages: besides a smattering of the sciences.

Though it is not my intention to enter farther on this topic than may allude to the article in question, I cannot but observe that the Reviewer's lamentation over the fall of the Greeks appears singular, when he closes it with these words: "The change is to be attributed to their misfortunes rather than to any 'physical degradation.'" It may be true that the Greeks are not physically degenerated, and that Constantinople contained on the day when it changed masters as many men of six feet and upwards as in the hour of prosperity; but ancient history and modern politics instruct us that something more than physical perfection is necessary to preserve a state in vigour and independence; and the Greeks, in particular, are a melancholy example of the near connexion between moral degradation and national decay.

The Reviewer mentions a plan "we believe" by Potemkin[259] for the purification of the Romaic; and I have endeavoured in vain to procure any tidings or traces of its existence. There was an academy in St. Petersburg for the Greeks; but it was suppressed by Paul, and has not been revived by his successor.

There is a slip of the pen, and it can only be a slip of the pen, in p. 58, No. 31, of the Edinburgh Review, where these words occur: "We are told that when the capital of the East yielded to Solyman"—It may be presumed that this last word will, in a future edition, be altered to Mahomet II.[260] The "ladies of Constantinople," it seems, at that period spoke a dialect, "which would not have disgraced the lips of an Athenian." I do not know how that might be, but am sorry to say that the ladies in general, and the Athenians in particular, are much altered; being far from choice either in their dialect or expressions, as the whole Attic race are barbarous to a proverb:—

"[Greek: O) A)the~nai, pro/te cho/ra], [Greek: Ti/ gaida/rous tre/pheis to/ra];"[261]

In Gibbon, vol. x. p. 161, is the following sentence:—"The vulgar dialect of the city was gross and barbarous, though the compositions of the church and palace sometimes affected to copy the purity of the Attic models." Whatever may be asserted on the subject, it is difficult to conceive that the "ladies of Constantinople," in the reign of the last Caesar, spoke a purer dialect than Anna Comnena[262] wrote, three centuries before: and those royal pages are not esteemed the best models of composition, although the princess [Greek: glo~ttan ei~)chen A)KRIBOE A)ttikisou/san].[263] In the Fanal, and in Yanina, the best Greek is spoken: in the latter there is a flourishing school under the direction of Psalida.

There is now in Athens a pupil of Psalida's, who is making a tour of observation through Greece: he is intelligent, and better educated than a fellow-commoner of most colleges. I mention this as a proof that the spirit of inquiry is not dormant among the Greeks.

The Reviewer mentions Mr. Wright,[264] the author of the beautiful poem Horae Ionicae, as qualified to give details of these nominal Romans and degenerate Greeks; and also of their language: but Mr. Wright, though a good poet and an able man, has made a mistake where he states the Albanian dialect of the Romaic to approximate nearest to the Hellenic; for the Albanians speak a Romaic as notoriously corrupt as the Scotch of Aberdeenshire, or the Italian of Naples. Yanina, (where, next to the Fanal, the Greek is purest,) although the capital of Ali Pacha's dominions, is not in Albania, but Epirus; and beyond Delvinachi in Albania Proper up to Argyrocastro and Tepaleen (beyond which I did not advance) they speak worse Greek than even the Athenians. I was attended for a year and a half by two of these singular mountaineers, whose mother tongue is Illyric, and I never heard them or their countrymen (whom I have seen, not only at home, but to the amount of twenty thousand in the army of Vely Pacha[265]) praised for their Greek, but often laughed at for their provincial barbarisms.

I have in my possession about twenty-five letters, amongst which some from the Bey of Corinth, written to me by Notaras, the Cogia Bachi, and others by the dragoman of the Caimacam[266] of the Morea (which last governs in Vely Pacha's absence), are said to be favourable specimens of their epistolary style. I also received some at Constantinople from private persons, written in a most hyperbolical style, but in the true antique character.

The Reviewer proceeds, after some remarks on the tongue in its past and present state, to a paradox (page 59) on the great mischief the knowledge of his own language has done to Coray, who, it seems, is less likely to understand the ancient Greek, because he is perfect master of the modern! This observation follows a paragraph, recommending, in explicit terms, the study of the Romaic, as "a powerful auxiliary," not only to the traveller and foreign merchant, but also to the classical scholar; in short, to every body except the only person who can be thoroughly acquainted with its uses; and by a parity of reasoning, our own language is conjectured to be probably more attainable by "foreigners" than by ourselves! Now, I am inclined to think, that a Dutch Tyro in our tongue (albeit himself of Saxon blood) would be sadly perplexed with "Sir Tristram,"[267] or any other given "Auchinleck MS." with or without a grammar or glossary; and to most apprehensions it seems evident that none but a native can acquire a competent, far less complete, knowledge of our obsolete idioms. We may give the critic credit for his ingenuity, but no more believe him than we do Smollett's Lismahago,[268] who maintains that the purest English is spoken in Edinburgh. That Coray may err is very possible; but if he does, the fault is in the man rather than in his mother tongue, which is, as it ought to be, of the greatest aid to the native student.—Here the Reviewer proceeds to business on Strabo's translators, and here I close my remarks.

Sir W. Drummond, Mr. Hamilton, Lord Aberdeen, Dr. Clarke, Captain Leake, Mr. Gell, Mr. Walpole,[269] and many others now in England, have all the requisites to furnish details of this fallen people. The few observations I have offered I should have left where I made them, had not the article in question, and above all the spot where I read it, induced me to advert to those pages, which the advantage of my present situation enabled me to clear, or at least to make the attempt.

I have endeavoured to waive the personal feelings which rise in despite of me in touching upon any part of the Edinburgh Review; not from a wish to conciliate the favour of its writers, or to cancel the remembrance of a syllable I have formerly published, but simply from a sense of the impropriety of mixing up private resentments with a disquisition of the present kind, and more particularly at this distance of time and place.

ADDITIONAL NOTE ON THE TURKS.

The difficulties of travelling in Turkey have been much exaggerated, or rather have considerably diminished, of late years. The Mussulmans have been beaten into a kind of sullen civility very comfortable to voyagers.

It is hazardous to say much on the subject of Turks and Turkey; since it is possible to live amongst them twenty years without acquiring information, at least from themselves. As far as my own slight experience carried me, I have no complaint to make; but am indebted for many civilities (I might almost say for friendship), and much hospitality, to Ali Pacha, his son Vely Pacha of the Morea, and several others of high rank in the provinces. Suleyman Aga, late Governor of Athens, and now of Thebes, was a bon vivant, and as social a being as ever sat cross-legged at a tray or a table. During the carnival, when our English party were masquerading, both himself and his successor were more happy to "receive masks" than any dowager in Grosvenor-square.[270]

On one occasion of his supping at the convent, his friend and visitor, the Cadi[271] of Thebes, was carried from table perfectly qualified for any club in Christendom; while the worthy Waywode himself triumphed in his fall.

In all money transactions with the Moslems, I ever found the strictest honour, the highest disinterestedness. In transacting business with them, there are none of those dirty peculations, under the name of interest, difference of exchange, commission, etc., etc., uniformly found in applying to a Greek consul to cash bills, even on the first houses in Pera.

With regard to presents, an established custom in the East, you will rarely find yourself a loser; as one worth acceptance is generally returned by another of similar value—a horse, or a shawl.

In the capital and at court the citizens and courtiers are formed in the same school with those of Christianity; but there does not exist a more honourable, friendly, and high-spirited character than the true Turkish provincial Aga, or Moslem country gentleman. It is not meant here to designate the governors of towns, but those Agas who, by a kind of feudal tenure, possess lands and houses, of more or less extent, in Greece and Asia Minor.

The lower orders are in as tolerable discipline as the rabble in countries with greater pretensions to civilisation. A Moslem, in walking the streets of our country-towns, would be more incommoded in England than a Frank in a similar situation in Turkey. Regimentals are the best travelling dress.

The best accounts of the religion and different sects of Islamism may be found in D'Ohsson's[272] French; of their manners, etc., perhaps in Thornton's English. The Ottomans, with all their defects, are not a people to be despised. Equal at least to the Spaniards, they are superior to the Portuguese. If it be difficult to pronounce what they are, we can at least say what they are not: they are not treacherous, they are not cowardly, they do not burn heretics, they are not assassins, nor has an enemy advanced to their capital. They are faithful to their sultan till he becomes unfit to govern, and devout to their God without an inquisition. Were they driven from St. Sophia to-morrow, and the French or Russians enthroned in their stead, it would become a question whether Europe would gain by the exchange. England would certainly be the loser.

With regard to that ignorance of which they are so generally, and sometimes justly accused, it may be doubted, always excepting France and England, in what useful points of knowledge they are excelled by other nations. Is it in the common arts of life? In their manufactures? Is a Turkish sabre inferior to a Toledo? or is a Turk worse clothed or lodged, or fed and taught, than a Spaniard? Are their Pachas worse educated than a Grandee? or an Effendi[273] than a Knight of St. Jago? I think not.

I remember Mahmout, the grandson of Ali Pacha, asking whether my fellow-traveller and myself were in the upper or lower House of Parliament. Now, this question from a boy of ten years old proved that his education had not been neglected. It may be doubted if an English boy at that age knows the difference of the Divan from a College of Dervises; but I am very sure a Spaniard does not. How little Mahmout, surrounded as he had been entirely by his Turkish tutors, had learned that there was such a thing as a Parliament, it were useless to conjecture, unless we suppose that his instructors did not confine his studies to the Koran.

In all the mosques there are schools established, which are very regularly attended; and the poor are taught without the church of Turkey being put into peril. I believe the system is not yet printed (though there is such a thing as a Turkish press, and books printed on the late military institution of the Nizam Gedidd);[274] nor have I heard whether the Mufti and the Mollas have subscribed, or the Caimacan and the Tefterdar taken the alarm, for fear the ingenuous youth of the turban should be taught not to "pray to God their way." The Greeks also—a kind of Eastern Irish papists—have a college of their own at Maynooth,—no, at Haivali; where the heterodox receive much the same kind of countenance from the Ottoman as the Catholic college from the English legislature. Who shall then affirm that the Turks are ignorant bigots, when they thus evince the exact proportion of Christian charity which is tolerated in the most prosperous and orthodox of all possible kingdoms? But though they allow all this, they will not suffer the Greeks to participate in their privileges: no, let them fight their battles, and pay their haratch (taxes), be drubbed in this world, and damned in the next. And shall we then emancipate our Irish Helots? Mahomet forbid! We should then be bad Mussulmans, and worse Christians: at present we unite the best of both—jesuitical faith, and something not much inferior to Turkish toleration.

APPENDIX.

Amongst an enslaved people, obliged to have recourse to foreign presses even for their books of religion, it is less to be wondered at that we find so few publications on general subjects than that we find any at all. The whole number of the Greeks, scattered up and down the Turkish empire and elsewhere, may amount, at most, to three millions; and yet, for so scanty a number, it is impossible to discover any nation with so great a proportion of books and their authors as the Greeks of the present century. "Aye," but say the generous advocates of oppression, who, while they assert the ignorance of the Greeks, wish to prevent them from dispelling it, "ay, but these are mostly, if not all, ecclesiastical tracts, and consequently good for nothing." Well! and pray what else can they write about? It is pleasant enough to hear a Frank, particularly an Englishman, who may abuse the government of his own country; or a Frenchman, who may abuse every government except his own, and who may range at will over every philosophical, religious, scientific, sceptical, or moral subject, sneering at the Greek legends. A Greek must not write on politics, and cannot touch on science for want of instruction; if he doubts he is excommunicated and damned; therefore his countrymen are not poisoned with modern philosophy; and as to morals, thanks to the Turks! there are no such things. What then is left him, if he has a turn for scribbling? Religion and holy biography; and it is natural enough that those who have so little in this life should look to the next. It is no great wonder then, that in a catalogue now before me of fifty-five Greek writers, many of whom were lately living, not above fifteen should have touched on anything but religion. The catalogue alluded to is contained in the twenty-sixth chapter of the fourth volume of Meletius' Ecclesiastical History.

[The above forms a preface to an Appendix, headed "Remarks on the Romaic or Modern Greek Language, with Specimens and Translations," which was printed at the end of the volume, after the "Poems," in the first and successive editions of Childe Harold. It contains (1) a "List of Romaic Authors;" (2) the "Greek War-Song," [Greek: Deu~te, Pai~des to~n E(lle/non]; (3) "Romaic Extracts," of which the first, "a Satire in dialogue" (vide Note III. supra), is translated (see Epigrams, etc., vol. vi. of the present issue); (4) scene from [Greek: O Kaphenes] (the Cafe), translated from the Italian of Goldoni by Spiridion Vlanti, with a "Translation;" (5) "Familiar Dialogues" in Romaic and English; (6) "Parallel Passages from St. John's Gospel;" (7) "The Inscriptions at Orchomenos from Meletius" (see Travels in Albania, etc., i. 224); (8) the "Prospectus of a Translation of Anacharsis into Romaic, by my Romaic master, Marmarotouri, who wished to publish it in England;" (9) "The Lord's Prayer in Romaic" and in Greek.

The Excursus, which is remarkable rather for the evidence which it affords of Byron's industry and zeal for acquiring knowledge, than for the value or interest of the subject-matter, has been omitted from the present issue. The "Remarks," etc., are included in the "Appendix" to Lord Byron's Poetical Works, 1891, pp. 792-797. (See, too, letter to Dallas, September 21, 1811: Letters, ii. 43.)]

* * * * *



FOOTNOTES:

[202] {166} ["Owls and serpents" are taken from Isa. xiii. 21, 22; "foxes" from Lam. v. 18, "Zion is desolate, the foxes walk upon it."]

[203] [For Herr Gropius, vide post, note 6.]

[204] [The Parthenon was converted into a church in the sixth century by Justinian, and dedicated to the Divine Wisdom. About 1460 the church was turned into a mosque. After the siege in 1687 the Turks erected a smaller mosque within the original enclosure. "The only relic of the mosque dedicated by Mohammed the Conqueror (1430-1481) is the base of the minaret ... at the south-west corner of the Cella" (Handbook for Greece, p. 319).]

[205] {168} ["Don Battista Lusieri, better known as Don Tita," was born at Naples. He followed Sir William Hamilton "to Constantinople, in 1799, whence he removed to Athens." "It may be said of Lusieri, as of Claude Lorraine, 'If he be not the poet, he is the historian of nature.'"—Travels, etc., by E. D. Clarke, 1810-1823, Part II. sect. ii. p. 469, note. See, too, Poetical Works, 1898, i. 455.]

[206] ["Mirandum in modum (canes venaticos diceres) ita odorabantur omnia et pervestigabant, ut, ubi quidque esset, aliqua ratione invenirent" (Cicero, In Verrem, Act. II. lib. iv. 13). Verres had two finders: Tlepolemus a worker in wax, and Hiero a painter. (See Introduction to The Curse of Minerva: Poems, 1898, i. 455.)]

[207] [M. Fauvel was born in Burgundy, circ. 1754. In 1787 he was attached to the suite of the Count Choiseul-Gouffier, French Ambassador at Constantinople, and is said to have prepared designs and illustrations for his patron's Voyage Pittoresque de la Grece, vol. i. 1787, vol. ii. 1809. He settled at Athens, and was made vice-consul by the French Government. In his old age, after more than forty years' service at Athens, he removed finally to Smyrna, where he was appointed consul-general.—Biographic des Contemporains (Rabbe), 1834, art. "(N.) Fauvel."]

[208] {169} In all Attica, if we except Athens itself and Marathon, there is no scene more interesting than Cape Colonna.[Sec.1] To the antiquary and artist, sixteen columns are an inexhaustible source of observation and design; to the philosopher, the supposed scene of some of Plato's conversations will not be unwelcome; and the traveller will be struck with the beauty of the prospect over "Isles that crown the AEgean deep:" but, for an Englishman, Colonna has yet an additional interest, as the actual spot of Falconer's[Sec.2] shipwreck. Pallas and Plato are forgotten in the recollection of Falconer and Campbell:—

"Here in the dead of night, by Lonna's steep,[Sec.3] The seaman's cry was heard along the deep."

This temple of Minerva may be seen at sea from a great distance. In two journeys which I made, and one voyage to Cape Colonna, the view from either side, by land, was less striking than the approach from the isles. In our second land excursion, we had a narrow escape from a party of Mainotes, concealed in the caverns beneath. We were told afterwards, by one of their prisoners, subsequently ransomed, that they were deterred from attacking us by the appearance of my two Albanians: conjecturing very sagaciously, but falsely, that we had a complete guard of these Arnaouts at hand, they remained stationary, and thus saved our party, which was too small to have opposed any effectual resistance. Colonna is no less a resort of painters than of pirates; there

"The hireling artist plants his paltry desk, And makes degraded nature picturesque."

See Hodgson's Lady Jane Grey, etc.[Sec.4][1809, p. 214].

But there Nature, with the aid of Art, has done that for herself. I was fortunate enough to engage a very superior German artist; and hope to renew my acquaintance with this and many other Levantine scenes, by the arrival of his performances.

[Sec.1] [This must have taken place in 1811, after Hobhouse returned to England.—Travels in Albania, i. 373, note.]

[Sec.2] [William Falconer (1732-1769), second mate of a vessel in the Levant trade, was wrecked between Alexandria and Venice. Only three of the crew survived. His poem, The Shipwreck, was published in 1762. It was dedicated to the Duke of York, and through his intervention he was "rated as a midshipman in the Royal Navy." Either as author or naval officer, he came to be on intimate terms with John Murray the first, who thought highly of his abilities, and offered him (October 16, 1768) a partnership in his new bookselling business in Fleet Street. In September, 1769, he embarked for India as purser of the Aurora frigate, which touched at the Cape, but never reached her destination. See Memoir, by J. S. Clarke; The Shipwreck, 1804, pp. viii.-xlvi.]

[Sec.3] Yes, at the dead of night, etc.—Pleasures of Hope, lines 149, 150.

[Sec.4] [The quotation is from Hodgson's "Lines on a Ruined Abbey in a Romantic Country," vide ante, Canto I., p. 20, note.]

[209] {171} ["It was, however, during our stay in the place, to be lamented that a war, more than civil, was raging on the subject of Lord Elgin's pursuits in Greece, and had enlisted all the French settlers and the principal Greeks on one side or the other of the controversy. The factions of Athens were renewed."—Travels in Albania, etc., i. 243.]

[210] This word, in the cant language, signifies thieving.—Fielding's History of Jonathan Wild, i. 3, note.

[211] This Sr. Gropius was employed by a noble Lord for the sole purpose of sketching, in which he excels: but I am sorry to say, that he has, through the abused sanction of that most respectable name, been treading at humble distance in the steps of Sr. Lusieri.—A shipful of his trophies was detained, and I believe confiscated, at Constantinople in 1810. I am most happy to be now enabled to state, that "this was not in his bond;" that he was employed solely as a painter, and that his noble patron disavows all connection with him, except as an artist. If the error in the first and second edition of this poem has given the noble Lord a moment's pain, I am very sorry for it: Sr. Gropius has assumed for years the name of his agent; and though I cannot much condemn myself for sharing in the mistake of so many, I am happy in being one of the first to be undeceived. Indeed, I have as much pleasure in contradicting this as I felt regret in stating it.—[Note to Third Edition.]

[According to Bryant's Dict. of Painters, and other biographical dictionaries, Karl Wilhelm Gropius (whom Lamartine, in his Voyage en Orient, identifies with the Gropius "injustement accuse par lord Byron dans ses notes mordantes sur Athenes") was born at Brunswick, in 1793, travelled in Italy and Greece, making numerous landscape and architectural sketches, and finally settled at Berlin in 1827, where he opened a diorama, modelled on that of Daguerre, "in connection with a permanent exhibition of painting.... He was considered the first wit in Berlin, where he died in 1870." In 1812, when Byron wrote his note to the third edition of Childe Harold, Gropius must have been barely of age, and the statement "that he has for years assumed the name of his (a noble Lord's) agent" is somewhat perplexing.]

[212] {173} [George Castriota (1404-1467) (Scanderbeg, or Scander Bey), the youngest son of an Albanian chieftain, was sent with his four brothers as hostage to the Sultan Amurath II. After his father's death in 1432 he carried on a protracted warfare with the Turks, and finally established the independence of Albania. "His personal strength and address were such as to make his prowess in the field resemble that of a knight of romance." He died at Lissa, in the Gulf of Venice, and when the island was taken by Mohammed II., the Turks are said to have dug up his bones and hung them round their necks, either as charms against wounds or "amulets to transfer his courage to themselves." (Hofmann's Lexicon Universale; Gorton's Biog. Dict., art. "Scanderbeg.")]