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Gaul's locust host, and earth from fellest foemen purge.

"These Lusian brutes, and earth from worst of wretches purge." MS.]

19.-Stanza xvi., line 1.

What beauties doth Lisboa first unfold!

["A friend advises Ulissipont; but Lisboa is the Portuguese word, consequently the best. Ulissipont is pedantic; and as I had lugged in Hellas and Eros not long before, there would have been something like an affectation of Greek terms, which I wished to avoid. On the submission of Lusitania to the Moors, they changed the name of the capital, which till then had been Ulisipo, or Lispo; because, in the Arabic alphabet, the letter p is not used. Hence, I believe, Lisboa; whence, again, the French Lisbonne, and our Lisbon,-God knows which the earlier corruption!"-Byron, MS.]

20. Stanza xvi., line 3.

Which poets vainly pave with sands of gold,

["Which poets, prone to lie, have paved with gold."—MS.]

21. Stanza xvii., line 4.

'Mid many things unsightly to strange ee;

["Mid many things that grieve both nose and ee."-MS.]

22. Stanza xviii., line 3.

Lo! Cintra's glorious Eden intervenes

["To make amends for the filthiness of Lisbon, and its still filthier inhabitants, the village of Cintra, about fifteen miles from the capital is, perhaps, in every respect, the most delightful in Europe. It contains beauties of every description, natural and artificial: palaces and gardens rising in the midst of rocks, cataracts, and precipices; convents on stupendous heights; a distant view of the sea and the Tagus; and, besides (though that is a secondary consideration), is remarkable as the scene of Sir Hew Dalrymple's convention. It unites in itself all the wildness of the western Highlands with the verdure of the south of France."-Lord B. to Mrs. Byron, 1809.]

23. Stanza xx, line 4.

And rest ye at " Our Lady's house of woe;"

The convent of "Our Lady of Punishment," Nossa Señora de Pena, on the summit of the rock. Below, at some distance, is the Cork Convent, where St. Honorius dug his den, over which is his epitaph. From the hills, the sea adds to the beauty of the view.-Note to 1st Edition. Since the publication of this poem, I have been informed [by Walter Scott] of the misapprehension of the term Nossa Señora de Peña. It was owing to the want of the tilde or mark over the , which alters the signification of the word: with it, Peña signifies a rock; without it, Pena has the sense I adopted. I do not think it necessary to alter the passage; as though the common acceptation affixed to it is "Our Lady of the Rock," I may well assume the other sense from the severities practised there.-Note to 2nd Edition.

24. Stanza xxi., line 9

Throughout this purple land, where law secures not life.

It is a well known fact, that in the year 1809, the assassinations in the streets of Lisbon and its vicinity were not confined by the Portuguese to their countrymen; but that Englishmen were daily butchered: and so far from redress being obtained, we were requested not to interfere if we perceived any compatriot defending himself against his allies. I was once stopped in the way to the theatre at eight o'clock in the evening, when the streets were not more empty than they generally are at that hour, opposite to an open shop, and in a carriage with a friend: had we not fortunately been armed, I have not the least doubt that we should have "adorned a tale" instead of telling one.

25.-Stanza xxii., line 6.

There thou too, Vathek! England's wealthiest son,

[William Beckford, Esq., son of the once-celebrated alderman, and heir to his enormous wealth, published, at the early age of eighteen, "Memoirs of extraordinary Painters;" and in the following year the romance "Vathek." After sitting for Hindon in several Parliaments, this gifted person fixed for a time his residence in Portugal, where the memory of his magnificence was fresh at the period of Lord Byron's pilgrimage. Returning to England, he realised all the outward shows of Gothic grandeur in his unsubstantial pageant of Fonthill Abbey; and later indulged his fancy with another monument of architectural caprice in the vicinity of Bath, which has been converted since his death into the chapel of a cemetery.]

26.-Stanza xxii., line 9.

Meek Peace voluptuous lures was ever wont to shun.

["When Wealth and Taste their worst and best have done, Meek Peace pollution's lure voluptuous still must shun."-MS.]

F

27.-Stanza xxiv., line 1.

Behold the hall where chiefs were late convened!

The Convention of Cintra was signed in the palace of the Marchese Marialva. [This is a mistake. "The armistice, the negotiations, the convention itself, and the execution of its provisions, were all," says Napier," commenced, conducted, and concluded at the distance of thirty miles from Cintra, with which place they had not the slightest connection, political, military, or local."]

28.-Stanza xxviii., line 1.

To horse! to horse! he quits, for ever quits

["After remaining ten days in Lisbon, we travelled on horseback to Seville; a distance of nearly four hundred miles. The horses are excellent: we rode seventy miles a-day."-B. Letters, 1809.]

29.-Stanza xxix., line 2.

Where dwelt of yore the Lusians' luckless queen;

"Her luckless Majesty went subequently mad; and Dr. Willis, who so dexterously cudgelled kingly pericraniums, could make nothing of hers." -Byron, MS. [Willis was accustomed to strike his patients to render them submissive, and disease being, like death, a leveller, he treated kings the same as their subjects. The Queen, after many years of insanity, died at the Brazils in 1816.]

30.-Stanza xxix., line 6.

But here the Babylonian whore hath built

The extent of Mafra is prodigious; it contains a palace, convent, and most superb church. The six organs are the most beautiful I ever beheld, in point of decoration: we did not hear them, but were told that their tones were correspondent to their splendour. Mafra is termed the Escurial of Portugal. ["About ten miles to the right of Cintra," says Lord Byron, in a letter to his mother, "is the palace of Mafra, the boast of Portugal, as it might be of any country, in point of magnificence, without elegance. There is a convent annexed: the monks, who possess large revenues, are courteous enough, and understand Latin; so that we had a long conversation. They have a large library, and asked me if the English had any books in their country."-Mafra was erected by John V., in pursuance of a vow, made in a dangerous fit of illness, to found a convent for the use of the poorest friary in the kingdom. Upon inquiry, this poorest was found at Mafra; where twelve Franciscans lived together in a hut.]

31.-Stanza xxxii., line 6.

Or fence of art, like China's vasty wall 9

["Or art's vain fence, like China's vasty wall ?"—MS.]

32.-Stanza xxxiii., line 9.

'Twixt him and Lusian slave, the lowest of the low.

As I found the Portuguese, so I have characterised them. That they are since improved, at least in courage, is evident. The late exploits of Lord Wellington have effaced the follies of Cintra. He has, indeed, done wonders: he has, perhaps, changed the character of a nation, reconciled rival superstitions, and baffled an enemy who never retreated before his predecessors.-1812. [In the Peninsular War the "Lusian slave" proved greatly superior to the "Spanish hind." When commanded by English officers, and brigaded with English troops, the Portuguese made excellent soldiers.]

33.-Stanza xxxiv,, line 2.

Dark Guadiana rolls his power along

["But ere the bounds of Spain have far been pass'd,
For ever famed in many a noted song."-MS.

Lord Byron seems to have thus early acquired enough of Spanish to understand the grand body of ancient popular poetry,-unequalled in Europe, which must ever form the pride of that magnificent language. Of one of the best of the ballads of the Grenada war-the "Romance muy doloroso del sitio y toma de Alhama,"-he has given a beautiful version.]

34.-Stanza xxxv., line 4.

That dyed thy mountain streams with Gothic gore?

Count Julian's daughter, the Helen of Spain. Pelagius preserved his independence in the fastnesses of the Asturias, and the descendants of his followers, after some centuries, completed their struggle by the conquest of Grenada. [Count Julian's daughter, called Cava by the Moors, is called Florinda by the Spaniards. She is said to have been violated by Roderick, the King of the Goths, and her father, in revenge, invited the Moors to invade Spain. The Goths were defeated, (A.D.711,) Roderick was killed, and the Moors remained masters of the greater part of the Peninsula, but Pelagius kept them at bay, and even recovered from them portions of the territory they had won.]"

35.-Stanza xxxviii., line 8.

Death rides upon the sulphury Siroc,

-"from rock to rock

Blue columns soar aloft in sulphurous wreath,
Fragments on fragments in confusion knock."-MS.]

36.-Stanza xxxix., lien 9.

To shed before his shrine the blood he deems most sweet.

["A bolder prosopopoeia," says a nameless critic, "or one better imagined or expressed, cannot easily be found in the whole range of ancient and modern poetry. Unlike the 'plume of Horror,' or the

'eagle-winged Victory,' described by our great epic poet, this gigantic figure is a distinct object, vested with all the attributes calculated to excite terror and admiration."]

37. Stanza xli., line 9.

And fertilise the field that each pretends to gain.

[The following note was reluctantly suppressed by Lord Byron at the urgent request of a friend. It alludes, inter alia, to the then recent publication of Sir Walter Scott's "Vision of Don Roderick," the profits of which had been devoted to the cause of Portuguese patriotism:"We have heard wonders of the Portuguese lately, and their gallantry. Pray Heaven it continue; yet 'would it were bed-time, Hal, and all were well! They must fight a great many hours, by 'Shrewsbury clock,' before the number of their slain equals that of our countrymen butchered by these kind creatures, now metamorphosed into 'caçadores,' and what not. I merely state a fact, not confined to Portugal; for in Sicily and Malta we are knocked on the head at a handsome average nightly, and not a Sicilian or Maltese is ever punished! The neglect of protection is disgraceful to our government and governors; for the murders are as notorious as the moon that shines upon them, and the apathy that overlooks them. The Portuguese, it is to be hoped, are complimented with the 'Forlorn Hope,'-if the cowards are become brave (like the rest of their kind, in a corner), pray let them display it. But there is a subscription for these garv-due, (they need not be ashamed of the epithet once applied to the Spartans); and all the charitable patronymics, from ostentatious A to diffident Z., and 17. 18. Od. from An Admirer of Valour,' are in requisition for the lists at Lloyd's, and the honour of British benevolence. Well! we have fought, and subscribed, and bestowed peerages, and buried the killed by our friends and foes; and, lo! all this is to be done over again! Like Lien Chi (in Goldsmith's Citizen of the World), as we 'grow older, we grow never the better. It would be pleasant to learn who will subscribe for us, in or about the year 1815, and what nation will send fifty thousand men, first to be decimated in the capital, and then decimated again (in the Irish fashion, nine out of ten), in the bed of honour;' which, as Serjeant Kite says, is considerably larger and more commodious than the bed of Ware.' Then they must have a poet to write the Vision of Don Perceval,' and generously bestow the profits of the well and widely printed quarto, to rebuild the 'Backwynd' and the Canongate,' or furnish new kilts for the half-roasted Highlanders. Lord Wellington, however, has enacted marvels; and so did his Oriental brother, whom I saw charioteering over the French flag, and heard clipping bad Spanish, after listening to the speech of a patriotic cobler of Cadiz, on the event of his own entry into that city, and the exit of some five thousand bold Britons out of this 'best of all possible worlds. Sorely were we puzzled how to dispose of that same victory of Talavera; and a victory it surely was somewhere, for everybody claimed it. The Spanish despatch and mob called it Cuesta's, and made no great mention of the Viscount; the French called it theirs (to my great discomfiture,-for a French consul stopped my mouth in Greece with a pestilent Paris gazette, just as I had killed Sebastiani 'in buckram,' and King Joseph 'in Kendal green'),— and we have not yet determined what to call it, or whose; for, certes, it

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