11.

Foiled by a woman's hand, before a battered wall.
Stanza Ivi. line last.

Such were the exploits of the Maid of Saragoza. When the author was at Seville she walked daily on the Prado, decorated with medals and orders, by command of the Junta.

12.

The seal Love's dimpling finger hath impressed
Denotes how soft that chin which bears his touch.
Stanza lviii. lines 1 and 2.

Sigilla in mento impressa Amoris digitulo

Vestigio demonstrant Mollitudinem.

AUL. GEL.

13.

Oh, thou Parnassus!

Stanza Ix. line 1.

These stanzas were written in Castri (Delphos), at the foot of Parnassus, now called Ataxuga-Liakura.

14.

Fair is proud Seville; let her country boast

Her strength, her wealth, her site of ancient days.

Stanza lxv. lines 1 and 2.

Seville was the HISPALIS of the Romans.

15.

Ask ye, Baotian shades! the reason why?

Stanza lxx. line 5.

This was written at Thebes, and consequently in the best situation for asking and answering such a question; not as the birth-place of Pindar, but as the capital of Boeotia, where the first riddle was propounded and solved.

66

16.

Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings.

"Medio de fonte leporum

Stanza Ixxxii. line last.

Surgit amari aliquid quod in ipsis floribus angat." LUC.

17.

A traitor only fell beneath the feud.

Stanza lxxxv. line 7.

Alluding to the conduct and death of Solano, the Governor

19.

And thou, my friend! &e.

Stanza xci. line 1.

The Honourable I*. W**. of the Guards, who died of a fever at Coimbra. I had known him ten years, the better half of his life, and the happiest part of mine.

In the short space of one month I have lost her who gave me being, and most of those who had made that being tolerable. To me the lines of YOUNG are no fiction:

"Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?

Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain,
And thrice ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn."

I should have ventured a verse to the memory of the late Charles Skinner Matthews, Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, were he not too much above all praise of mine. His powers of mind, shown in the attainment of greater honours, against the ablest candidates, than those of any graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established his fame on the spot where it was acquired, while his softer qualities live in the recollection of friends who loved him too well to envy his superiority.

NOTES TO CANTO II.

1.

-despite of war and wasting fire

Stanza i. line 4.

PART of the Acropolis was destroyed by the explosion of a magazine during the Venetian siege.

2.

But worse than steel and flame, and ages slow,
Is the dread sceptre and dominion dire

Of men who never felt the sacred glow

That thoughts of thee and thine on polished breasts bestow. Stanza i. line 6.

We can all feel, or imagine, the regret with which the ruins of cities, once the capitals of empires, are beheld; the reflections suggested by such objects are too trite to require recapitulation. But never did the littleness of man, and the vanity of his very best virtues, of patriotism to exalt, and of valour to defend his country, appear more conspicuous than in the record of what Athens was, and the certainty of what

VOL. I.

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she now is. This theatre of contention between mighty factions, of the struggles of orators, the exaltation and deposition of tyrants, the triumph and punishment of generals, is now become a scene of petty intrigue and perpetual disturbance, between the bickering agents of certain British nobility and gentry. "The wild foxes, the owls and serpents in the ruins of Babylon," were surely less degrading than such inhabitants. The Turks have the plea of conquest for their tyranny, and the Greeks have only suffered the fortune of war, incidental to the bravest ; but how are the mighty fallen, when two painters contest the privilege of plundering the Parthenon, and triumph in turn, according to the tenor of each succeeding firman! Sylla could but punish, Philip subdue, and Xerxes burn Athens; but it remained for the paltry Antiquarian, and his despicable agents, to render her contemptible as himself and his pursuits.

The Parthenon, before its destruction in part, by fire during the Venetian siege, had been a temple, a church, and a mosque. In each point of view it is an object of regard: it changed its worshippers; but still it was a place of worship thrice sacred to devotion: its violation is a triple sacrilege. But

"Man, vain man,

"Drest in a little brief authority,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven "As make the angels weep."