Note 5. Stanza xxix. Yet Mafra shall one moment claim delay. The extent of Mafra is prodigious; contains a palace, convent, and most superb church. The six organs are the most beautiful I ever beheld in point of decoration; we did not hear them, but were told that their tones were correspondent to their splendour. Mafra is termed the Escurial of Portugal. Note 6. Stanza xxxiii. Well doth the Spanish hind the difference know As I found the Portuguese, so I have characterised them. That they are since improved, at least in courage, is evident. Note 7. Stanza xxxv. When Cava's traitor-sire first call'd the band That dyed thy mountain streams with Gothic gore? Count Julian's daughter, the Helen of Spain. Pelagius preserved his indepenlence in the fastnesses of the Asturias, and the descendants of his followers, after some centuries, completed their struggle by the conquest of Grenada. Note 8. Stanza xlviii. No! as he speeds, he chaunts:-" Viva el Rey !" "Viva el Rey Fernando!"-Long live King Ferdinand! is the chorus of most of the Spanish patriotic songs; they are chiefly in dispraise of the old King Charles, the Queen, and the Prince of Peace. 1 have heard many of them; some of the airs are beautiful. Godoy, the Principe de la Paz, was born at Badajoz, on the frontiers of Portugal, and was originally in the ranks of the Spanish Guards, till his person attracted the Queen's eyes, and raised him to the dukedom of Alcudia, &c. &c. It is to this man that the Spaniards universally impute the ruin of their country. Bears in his cap the badge of crimson hue, Which tells you whom to shun and whom to greet. The red cockade, with "Fernando Septimo" in the centre. Note 10. Stanza li. The ball-piled pyramid, the ever-blazing match, All who have seen a battery will recollect the pyramidal form in which shot and shells are piled. The Sierra Morena was fortified in every defile through which I passed in my way to Seville. Note 11. Stanza Ivi. Foil'd by woman's hand, before a batter'd wall. Such were the exploits of the Maid of Saragoza. When the author was at Seville she walked daily on the Prado, decorated with medals and orders, by command of the Junta. Note 12. Stanza Iviii. The seal love's dimpling finger hath impress'd "Sigilla in mento impressa amoris digitulo Note 13. Stanza Ix. Oh, thou Parnassus! These stanzas were written in Castri (Delphos), at the foot of Parnassus, now called Διακυρα-Liakura. Note 14. Stanza Ixv. Fair is proud Seville; let her country boast Her strength, her wealth, her site of ancient days, Seville was the Hispalis of the Romans. Note 15. Stanza lxx. Ask ye, Boeotian shades! the reason why? This was written at Thebes, and consequently in the best situation for asking and answering such a question; not as the birth-place of Pindar, but as the capital of Boeotia, where the first riddle was propounded and solved. Note 16. Stanza lxxxii. Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings. Surgit amari aliquid quod in ipsis floribus angat."—Luc. Note 17. Stanza lxxxv. A traitor only fell beneath the feud. Alluding to the conduct and death of Solano, the Governor of Cadiz. Note 18. Stanza lxxxvi. "War even to the knife!" "War to the knife;" Palafox's answer to the French general at the siege of Saragoza. Note 19. Stanza xci. And thou, my friend! etc. The honorable 1*. W**. of the Guards, who died of a fever at Coimbra. I had known him ten years, the better half of his life, and the happiest part of mine. In the short space of one month I have lost her who gave me being, and most of those who had made that being tolerable. To me the lines of Young are no fiction: "Insatiate archer! could not one suffice? Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain, I should have ventured a verse to the memory of the late Charles Skinner Matthews, Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, were he not too much above all praise of mine. His powers of mind, shown in the attainment of greater honours, against the ablest candidates, than those of any graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established his fame on the spot where it was acquired, while his softer qualities live in the recollection of friends who loved him too well to envy his superiority. In Mr. Moore's Life of Byron, he says: "Originally the Page and Yeoman of the Childe were introduced to the reader's notice in the following tame stanzas; by expanding the substance of which into their present light, lyric shape, it is almost needless to remark how much the poet has gained in variety and dramatic effect : "In place of that mournful song To Inez,' which contains some of the dreariest touches of sadness that even his pen ever let fall, he had, in the original construction of the poem, been so little fastidious as to content himself with such ordinary sing-song as the following: Oh never tell again to me Of northern climes and British ladies! It has not been your lot to see, Like me, the lovely girl of Cadiz, Although her eye be not of blue, Nor fair her locks, like English lasses, &c. &c. &c." CANTO II. I. COME, blue-eyed maid of heaven!--but thou, alas! Is the dread sceptre and dominion dire Of men who never felt the sacred glow That thoughts of thee and thine on polish'd breasts bestow.' II. Ancient of days! august Athena! where, Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul? Gone, glimmering thro' the dream of things that were; They won, and pass'd away-is this the whole? A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour? The warrior's weapon and the sophist's stole Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower, Dim with the mist of years, grey flits the shade of power. III. Son of the morning, rise! approach you here! Poor child of doubt and death, whose hope is built on reeds. IV. Bound to the earth, he lifts his eye to heaven- ས. Or burst the vanish'd hero's lofty mound; 3 He fell, and falling nations mourn'd around; Where demi-gods appear'd, as records tell. Remove yon Is that a temple where a god may dwell? Why even the worm at last disdains her shatter'd cell! VI. Look on its broken arch, its ruin'd wall, VII. Well didst thou speak, Athena's wisest son! A VIII. Yet if, as holiest men have deem'd, there be With those who made our mortal labours light! The Bactrian, Samian sage, and all who taught the right! IX. There, thou!-whose love and life together fled, When busy memory flashes on my brain? Well-I will dream that we may meet again, For me 't were bliss enough to know thy spirit blest! X. Here let me sit upon this massy stone, Yet these proud pillars claim no passing sigh- XI. But who, of all the plunderers of yon fane The latest relic of her ancient reign; The last, the worst, dull spoiler, who was he? Thy free-born men should spare what once was free; 5 |