[cj] {89} _And marked the almost dreaming air_, _Which speaks the sweet repose that's there_.-- [MS. of Fair Copy.] [59] {90} "Aye, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction?" _Measure for Measure_, act iii. sc. I, lines 115, 116. [Compare, too, _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza iv. line 5.] [ck] _Whose touch thrills with mortality_, _And curdles to the gazer's heart_.--[MS. of Fair Copy.] [60] I trust that few of my readers have ever had an opportunity of witnessing what is here attempted in description; but those who have will probably retain a painful remembrance of that singular beauty which pervades, with few exceptions, the features of the dead, a few hours, and but for a few hours, after "the spirit is not there." It is to be remarked in cases of violent death by gun-shot wounds, the expression is always that of languor, whatever the natural energy of the sufferer's character; but in death from a stab the countenance preserves its traits of feeling or ferocity, and the mind its bias, to the last. [According to Medwin (1824, 4to, p. 223), an absurd charge, based on the details of this note, was brought against Byron, that he had been guilty of murder, and spoke from experience.] [61] [In Dallaway's _Constantinople_ (p. 2) [Rev. James Dallaway (1763-1834) published _Constantinople Ancient and Modern, etc_., in 1797], a book which Lord Byron is not unlikely to have consulted, I find a passage quoted from Gillies' _History of Greece_(vol. i. p. 335), which contains, perhaps, the first seed of the thought thus expanded into full perfection by genius: "The present state of Greece, compared to the ancient, is the silent obscurity of the grave contrasted with the vivid lustre of active life."--Moore, _Note to Edition_ 1832.] [62] {91} [From hence to the conclusion of the paragraph, the MS. is written in a hurried and almost illegible hand, as if these splendid lines had been poured forth in one continuous burst of poetic feeling, which would hardly allow time for the pen to follow the imagination.--(_Note to Edition_ 1837. The lines were added to the Second Edition.)] [cl] _Fountain of Wisdom! can it be_.--[MS. erased.] [63] [Compare-- "Son of the Morning, rise! approach you here!" _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza iii. line 1.] [cm] _Why is not this Thermopylæ_; _These waters blue that round you lave_ _Degenerate offspring of the free_-- _How name ye them what shore is this?_ _The wave, the rock of Salamis?_--[MS.] [cn] {92} _And he who in the cause expires_, _Will add a name and fate to them_ _Well worthy of his noble stem_.--[MS.] [co] _Commenced by Sire--renewed by Son_.--[MS.] [cp] _Attest it many a former age_ _While kings in dark oblivion hid_.--[MS.] [cq] _There let the Muse direct thine eye_.--[MS.]