[133] [For Mrs. Spencer Smith, see _Letters_, 1898, i. 244, 245, note. Moore (_Life_, pp. 94, 95) contrasts stanzas xxx.-xxxv., with their parade of secret indifference and plea of "a loveless heart," with the tenderness and warmth of his after-thoughts in Albania ("Lines composed during a Thunderstorm," etc.), and decides the coldness was real, the sentiment assumed. He forgets the flight of time. The lines were written in October, 1809, within a month of his departure from "Calypso's isles," and the _Childe Harold_ stanzas belong to the early spring of 1810. "Ou sont les neiges d'antan?" Moreover, he speaks by the card. Writing at Athens, January 16, 1810, he tells us, "The spell is broke, the charm is flown."] [134] {120} [More than one commentator gravely "sets against" this line--Byron's statement to Dallas (_Corr. of Lord Byron_, Paris, 1824, iii. 91), "I am not a Joseph or a Scipio; but I can safely affirm that never in my life I seduced any woman." Compare _Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi_, 1890, ii. 12, "Never have I employed the iniquitous art of seduction ... Languishing in soft and thrilling sentiments, I demanded from a woman a sympathy and inclination of like nature with my own. If she fell ... I should have remembered how she made for me the greatest of all sacrifices.... I should have worshipped her like a deity. I could have spent my life's blood in consoling her; and without swearing eternal constancy, I should have been most stable on my side in loving such a mistress."] [er] {121} _Brisk Impudence_----.--[MS.] [es] _Youth wasted, wretches born_----.--[MS. erased.] [135] [Compare Lucretius, iv. 1121-4-- "Adde quod absumunt viris pereuntque labore, * * * * * Labitur interea res, et Babylonica fiunt: Languent officia, atque ægrotat fama vacillans."] [et] {122} _Climes strange withal as ever mortal head_.--[MS.] [eu] _Suspected in its little pride of thought_.--[MS. erased.] [136] ["Were counselled or advised." The passive "were ared" seems to lack authority. (See _N. Eng. Dict._, art. "Aread.")] [ev] _Her not unconscious though her weakly child_. or, ----_her rudest child_.--[MS. erased.] [137] [Compare the description of the thunderstorm in the Alps (Canto III. stanzas xcii.-xcvi., pp. 273-275); and _Manfred_, act ii. sc. 2-- "My joy was in the wilderness; to breathe The difficult air of the iced mountain-top-- * * * * * In them my early strength exulted; or To follow through the night the moving moon, The stars and their development; or catch The dazzling lightnings till my eyes grew dim." Beattie, who describes the experiences of his own boyhood in the person of Edwin in _The Minstrel_, had already made a like protestation--