[24] ["The souls of the blessed are supposed by some of the Mahommedans to animate green birds in the groves of Paradise."--Note to Southey's _Thalaba_, bk. xi. stanza 5, line 13.] [25] {25}[Compare-- "I wandered lonely as a cloud." _Works_ of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 205.] [26] [Compare-- "Yet some did think that he had little business here." _Ibid_., p. 183. Compare, too, _The Dream_, line 166, _vide post_, p. 39-- "What business had they there at such a time?"] [27] {26}[Compare-- "He sighed, and turned his eyes, because he knew 'Twas but a larger jail he had in view." Dryden, _Palamon and Arcite_, bk. i. lines 216, 217. Compare, too-- "An exile---- Who has the whole world for a dungeon strong." _Prophecy of Dante_, iv. 131, 132.] [28] [Compare-- "The harvest of a quiet eye." _A Poet's Epitaph_, line 51, _Works_ of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 116.] [g] _I saw them with their lake below,_ _And their three thousand years of snow_.--[MS.] [29] [This, according to Ruskin's canon, may be a poetical inaccuracy. The Rhone is blue below the lake at Geneva, but "les embouchures" at Villeneuve are muddy and discoloured.] [30] [Villeneuve.] [31] Between the entrances of the Rhone and Villeneuve, not far from Chillon, is a very small island [Ile de Paix]; the only one I could perceive in my voyage round and over the lake, within its circumference. It contains a few trees (I think not above three), and from its singleness and diminutive size has a peculiar effect upon the view. [32] {27}[Compare-- "Of Silver How, and Grasmere's peaceful lake, And one green island." _Works_ of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 220.] [33] [Compare the Ancient Mariner on the water-snakes-- "O happy living things! no tongue Their beauty might declare," _Ancient Mariner_, Part IV. lines 282, 283. There is, too, in these lines (352-354), as in many others, an echo of Wordsworth. In the _Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle_ it is told how the "two undying fish" of Bowscale Tarn, and the "eagle lord of land and sea" ministered to the shepherd-lord. It was no wonder that the critics of 1816 animadverted on Byron's "communion" with the Lakers. "He could not," writes a Critical Reviewer (Series V. vol. iv. pp. 567-581), "carry many volumes on his tour, but among the few, we will venture to predict, are found the two volumes of poems lately republished by Mr. Wordsworth.... Such is the effect of reading and enjoying the poetry of Mr. W., to whose system (ridiculed alike by those who could not, and who would not understand it) Lord Byron, it is evident, has become a tardy convert, and of whose merits in the poems on our table we have a silent but unequivocal acknowledgment."]