[307] [Marceau (_vide post_, note 2, p. 296) took part in crushing the Vendean insurrection. If, as General Hoche asserts in his memoirs, six hundred thousand fell in Vendée, Freedom's charter was not easily overstepped.] [308] {252} [Compare Gray's lines in _The Fatal Sisters_-- "Iron-sleet of arrowy shower Hurtles in the darken'd air."] [it] _And could the sleepless vultures_----.--[MS.] [iu] _Rustic not rude, sublime yet not austere_.--[MS.] [309] [Lines 8 and 9 may be cited as a crying instance of Byron's faulty technique. The collocation of "awful" with "austere," followed by "autumn" in the next line, recalls the afflictive assonance of "high Hymettus," which occurs in the beautiful passage which he stole from _The Curse of Minerva_ and prefixed to the third canto of _The Corsair_. The sense of the passage is that, as in autumn, the golden mean between summer and winter, the year is at its full, so in the varied scenery of the Rhine there is a harmony of opposites, a consummation of beauty.] [iv] {253} _More mighty scenes may rise--more glaring shine_ _But none unite in one enchanted gaze_ _The fertile--fair--and soft--the glories of old days_.--[MS.] [310] [The "negligently grand" may, perhaps, refer to the glories of old days, now in a state of neglect, not to the unstudied grandeur of the scene taken as a whole; but the phrase is loosely thrown out in order to convey a general impression, "an attaching maze," an engaging attractive combination of images, and must not be interrogated too closely.] [iw] {254} _Around in chrystal grandeur to where falls_ _The avalanche--the thunder-clouds of snow_.--[MS.] [311] [Compare the opening lines of Coleridge's _Hymn before Sunrise in the Valley of Chamouni_-- "Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star In his steep course? So long he seems to pause On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc!" The "thunderbolt" (line 6) recurs in _Manfred_, act i. sc. 1-- "Around his waist are forests braced, The Avalanche in his hand; But ere its fall, that thundering ball Must pause for my command."] [312] {255} [The inscription on the ossuary of the Burgundian troops which fell in the battle of Morat, June 14, 1476, suggested this variant of _Si monumentum quæris_-- "Deo Optimo Maximo. Inclytissimi et fortissimi Burgundiæ ducis exercitus, Moratum obsidens, ab Helvetiis cæsus, hoc sui monumentum reliquit."] [ix] _Unsepulchred they roam, and shriek_----[MS.] [313] [The souls of the suitors when Hermes "roused and shepherded them followed gibbering" (τρίζουσαι [tri/zousai]).--_Od._, xxiv. 5. Once, too, when the observance of the _dies Parentales_ was neglected, Roman ghosts took to wandering and shrieking. "Perque vias Urbis, Latiosque ululasse per agros Deformes animas, vulgus inane ferunt." Ovid, _Fasti_, ii. lines 553, 554.