"En vain vos légions l'environnent sans nombre, Il n'a qu'à se lever pour couvrir de son ombre A la fois tous vos fronts; Il n'a qu'à dire un mot pour couvrir vos voix grèles, Comme un char en passant couvre le bruit des ailes De mille moucherons!" _Les Feuilles d'Automne_, par Victor Hugo, Bruxelles, 1833, pp. 59, 63.] [ml] {359} _Could mount into a mind like thine_----.--[MS. M. erased.] [mm] ----_they would not form the Sun_.--[MS. M.] [420] [In a letter to Murray (August 7, 1817) Byron throws out a hint that Scott might not like being called "the Ariosto of the North," and Murray seems to have caught at the suggestion. "With regard to 'the Ariosto of the North,'" rejoins Byron (September 17, 1817), "surely their themes, Chivalry, war, and love, were as like as can be; and as to the compliment, if you knew what the Italians think of Ariosto, you would not hesitate about that.... If you think Scott will dislike it, say so, and I will expunge." Byron did not know that when Scott was at college at Edinburgh he had "had the audacity to produce a composition in which he weighed Homer against Ariosto, and pronounced him wanting in the balance," or that he "made a practice of reading through ... the _Orlando_ of Ariosto once every year" (see _Memoirs of the Life, etc._, 1871, pp. 12, 747); but the parallel had suggested itself. The key-note of "the harpings of the north," the chivalrous strain of "shield, lance, and brand, and plume and scarf," of "gentle courtesy," of "valour, lion-mettled lord," which the "Introduction to _Marmion_" preludes, had been already struck in the opening lines of the _Orlando Furioso_-- "Le Donne, i Cavaliér', l'arme, gli amori, Le cortesíe, l'audaci imprese io canto." Scott, we may be assured, was neither disconcerted nor uplifted by the parallel. Many years before (July 6, 1812), Byron had been at pains to inform him that so august a critic as the Prince Regent "preferred you to every bard past and present," and "spoke alternately of Homer and yourself." Of the "placing" and unplacing of poets there is no end. Byron had already been sharply rebuked by the _Edinburgh Review_ for describing _Christabel_ as a "wild and singularly original and beautiful poem," and his appreciation of Scott provoked the expostulation of a friendlier critic. "Walter Scott," wrote Francis Hodgson, in his anonymous _Monitor of Childe Harold_ (1818), "(_credite posteri_, or rather _præposteri_), is designated in the Fourth Canto of _Childe Harold_ as 'the Northern Ariosto,' and (droller still) Ariosto is denominated 'the Southern Scott.' This comes of mistaking horse-chestnuts for chestnut horses."] [421] {361} The two stanzas xlii. and xliii. are, with the exception of a line or two, a translation of the famous sonnet of Filicaja:--"Italia, Italia, O tu, cui feo la sorte!"--_Poesie Toscane_ 1823, p. 149.