[266] The reader is apprised, that the name of Lara being Spanish, and no circumstance of local and natural description fixing the scene or hero of the poem to any country or age, the word "Serf," which could not be correctly applied to the lower classes in Spain, who were never vassals of the soil, has nevertheless been employed to designate the followers of our fictitious chieftain. [Byron, writing to Murray, July 14, 1814, says, "The name only is Spanish; the country is not Spain, but the Moon" (not "Morea," as hitherto printed).--_Letters_, 1899, iii. 110. The MS. is dated May 15, 1814.] [267] {324} [For the opening lines to _Lara_, see _Murray's Magazine_, January, 1887, vol. i. p. 3.] [268] [Compare _Childish Recollections_, lines 221-224-- "Can Rank, or e'en a Guardian's name supply The love, which glistens in a Father's eye? For this, can Wealth, or Title's sound atone, Made, by a Parent's early loss, my own?" Compare, too, _English Bards, etc._, lines 689-694, _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 95, 352.] [jc] _First in each folly--nor the last in vice_.--[MS. erased] [jd] {325} _Short was the course the beardless wanderer run_.--[MS.] [je] _Another chief had won_----.--[MS. erased.] [jf] _His friends forgot him--and his dog had died_.--[MS.] [jg] _Without one rumour to relieve his care_.--[MS. erased.] [jh] _That most might decorate that gloomy pile_.--[MS. erased.] [269] {326} [The construction is harsh and obscure, but the meaning is, perhaps, that, though Lara's soul was haughty, his sins were due to nothing worse than pleasure, that they were the natural sins of youth.] [ji] {328} _Their refuge in intensity of thought_.--[MS.] [jj] {329} _The sound of other voices than his own_.--[MS.] [270] ["The circumstance of his having at this time [1808-9] among the ornaments of his study, a number of skulls highly polished, and placed on light stands round the room, would seem to indicate that he rather courted than shunned such gloomy associations."--_Life_, p. 87.] [271] [Compare-- "His train but deemed the favourite page Was left behind to spare his age, Or other if they deemed, none dared To mutter what he thought or heard." _Marmion_, Canto III. stanza xv. lines 19-22.] [272] [Compare-- "Sweetly shining on the eye, A rivulet gliding smoothly by; Which shows with what an easy tide The moments of the happy glide." Dyer's _Country Walk_ (_Poetical Works of Armstrong, Dyer, and Green_, 1858, p. 221).] [273] {331} ["He used, at first, though offered a bed at Annesley, to return every night to Newstead, to sleep; alleging as a reason that he was afraid of the family pictures of the Chaworths."--_Life_, p. 27.] [jk] ----_knelt in painted prayer_.--[MS.] [jl] _His aspect all that best becomes the grave_.--[MS.] [jm] {333} ----_along the gallery crawl_.--[MS.]