The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 2Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron
General
The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 2
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron
English poetry
[183] {152} [Byron spent two months in Constantinople (Stamboul, i.e.
εἰς τὴν πόλιν [ei)s tê 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 _fête-champêtre_," 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 recórd
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 quæ vertice nata
Terrarum primum Libyen (nam proxima coelo est,
Ut probat ipse calor) tetigit, stagnique quietâ
Vultus vidit aquâ, posuitque in margine plantas,
Et se dilectâ Tritonida dixit ab undâ."]
[191] [Hobhouse dates the first visit to Cape Colonna, January 24,
1810.]
[192] {157} [Athené'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.)]
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