"In sooth he was a strange and wayward youth. Fond of each gentle and each dreadful scene. In darkness and in storm he found delight; Not less than when on ocean-wave serene The Southern sun diffus'd his dazzling sheen; Even sad vicissitude amus'd his soul." Kirke White, too, who was almost Byron's contemporary, and whose verses he professed to admire-- "Would run a visionary boy When the hoarse tempest shook the vaulted sky." This love of Nature in her wilder aspects, which was perfectly genuine, and, indeed, meritorious, was felt to be out of the common, a note of the poetic temperament, worth recording, but unlikely to pass without questioning and remonstrance.] [138] {123} [Alexander's mother, Olympias, was an Epiriote. She had a place in the original draft of Tennyson's _Palace of Art_ (_Life of Lord Tennyson_,. 119)-- "One was Olympias; the floating snake Roll'd round her ankles, round her waist Knotted," etc. Plutarch (_Vitæ_, Lipsiæ:, 1814, vi. 170) is responsible for the legend: Ὢφθη δέ ποτε καὶ δράκων κοιμωμένης τῆς Ὀλυμπιάδου παρεκτεταμένς τῷ σώματι [Ô)\phthê de/ pote kai\ dra/kôn koimôme/nês tê~s O)lympia/dou parektetame/ns tô~| sô/mati], "Now, one day, when Olympias lay abed, beside her body a dragon was espied stretched out at full length." (Compare, too, Dryden's _Alexander's Feast_, stanza ii.)] [139] [Mr. Tozer (_Childe Harold_, p. 236) takes this line to mean "whom the young love to talk of, and the wise to follow as an example," and points to Alexander's foresight as a conqueror, and the "extension of commerce and civilization" which followed his victories. But, surely, the antithesis lies between Alexander the ideal of the young, and Alexander the deterrent example of the old. The phrase, "beacon of the wise," if Hector in _Troilus and Cressida_ (act ii. sc. 2, line 16) is an authority, is proverbial. " ... The wound of peace is surety, Surety secure; but modest doubt is call'd The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches To the bottom of the worst." The beauty, the brilliance, the glory of Alexander kindle the enthusiasm of the young; but the murder of Clytus and the early death which he brought upon himself are held up by the wise as beacon-lights to save others from shipwreck.]