[bt] _For ever famed--in many a native song_.--[MS. erased.] ----_a noted song_.--[MS. D.] [57] [Compare Virgil, _Æneid_, i. 100-- "Ubi tot Simois correpta sub undis Scuta virûm galeasque et fortia corpora volvit."] [58] [The standard, a cross made of Asturian oak (_La Cruz de la Victoria_), which was said to have fallen from heaven before Pelayo gained the victory over the Moors at Cangas, in A.D. 718, is preserved at Oviedo. Compare Southey's _Roderick_, XXV.: _Poetical Works_, 1838, ix. 241, and note, pp. 370, 371.] [bu] --_which Pelagius bore_.--[MS. D.] [59] {47} [The Moors were finally expelled from Granada in 1492, in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.] [bv] ----_waxed the Crescent pale_.--[MS. erased.] [60] [The reference is to the Romanceros and Caballerías of the sixteenth century.] [bw] ----_thy little date_.--[MS. erased.] [bx] ----_from rock to rock_ _Blue columns soaring loft in sulphury wreath_ _Fragments on fragments in contention knock_.--[MS. erased, D.] [61] "The Siroc is the violent hot wind that for weeks together blows down the Mediterranean from the Archipelago. Its effects are well known to all who have passed the Straits of Gibraltar."--[MS. D.] [62] {49} [The battle of Talavera began July 27, 1809, and lasted two days. As Byron must have reached Seville by the 21st or 22nd of the month, he was not, as might be inferred, a spectator of any part of the engagement. Writing to his mother, August 11, he says, "You have heard of the battle near Madrid, and in England they would call it a victory--a pretty victory! Two hundred officers and five thousand men killed, all English, and the French in as great force as ever. I should have joined the army, but we have no time to lose before we get up the Mediterranean."--_Letters_, i. 241.] [by] _Their rival scarfs that shine so gloriously_.--[MS. erased.] _Their rural scarfs_----.--[MS. D.] [63] [Compare Campbell's "Hohenlinden"--"Few, few shall part where many meet."] [64] {50} [Compare _Macbeth_, act i. sc. 2, line 51--"Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky."] [65] [In a letter to Colonel Malcolm, December 3, 1809, the Duke admits that the spoils of conquest were of a moral rather than of a material kind. "The battle of Talavera was certainly the hardest fought of modern days.... It is lamentable that, owing to the miserable inefficiency of the Spaniards, ... the glory of the action is the only benefit which we have derived from it.... I have in hand a most difficult task.... In such circumstances one may fail, but it would be dishonourable to shrink from the task."--_Wellington Dispatches_, 1844, iii. 621.] [bz] _There shall they rot--while rhymers tell the fools_ _How honour decks the turf that wraps their clay!_ _Liars avaunt!_----.--[MS.] [66] Two lines of Collins' _Ode_, "How sleep the brave," etc., have been compressed into one--