was recalling an incident which had befallen him some time previously (see letter to Moore, January 19, 1815): "When I thought he was going to enact Argus, he bit away the backside of my breeches, and never would consent to any kind of recognition, in despite of all kinds of bones which I offered him." See, too, for another thrust at Argus, Don Juan, Canto III. stanza xxiii. But he should have remembered that this particular Argus "was half a wolf by the she side." His portrait is preserved at Newstead (see Poetical Works, 1898, i. 280, Edition de Luxe).
For the expression of a different sentiment, compare The Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog (first published in Hobhouse's Imit. and Transl., 1809), and the prefatory inscription on Boatswain's grave in the gardens of Newstead, dated November 16, 1808 (Life, p. 73).]
41 [Cintra's "needle-like peaks," to the north-west of Lisbon, are visible from the mouth of the Tagus.]
42 [Compare Ovid, Amores, i. 15, and Pliny, Hist. Nat., iv. 22. Small particles of gold are still to be found in the sands of the Tagus, but the quantity is, and perhaps always was, inconsiderable.]
ap ——where thronging rustics reap.—[MS. erased.]
aq What God hath done—[MS. D.]
ar Those Lusian brutes and earth from worst of wretches purge.—[MS.]
43 ["Lisboa is the Portuguese word, consequently the very best. Ulissipont is pedantic; and as I have Hellas and Eros not very long before, there would be something like an affectation of Greek terms, which I wish to avoid" (letter to Dallas, September 23, 1811: Letters, 1898, ii. 44. See, too, Poetical Works, 1883, p. 5).]
as Ulissipont, or Lisbona.—[MS. pencil.]
at Which poets, prone to lie, have paved with gold.—[MS.] Which poets sprinkle o'er with sands of gold.—[MS. pencil.] Which fabling poets—[D. pencil.]
44 [For Byron's estimate of the Portuguese, see The Curse of Minerva, lines 233, 234, and note to line 231 (Poetical Works, 1898, i. 469, 470). In the last line of the preceding stanza, the substitution of the text for var. i. was no doubt suggested by Dallas in the interests of prudence.]
au Who hate the very hand that waves the sword To shield them, etc.—[MS. D.] To guard them, etc.—[MS. pencil.]
av Mid many things that grieve both nose and ee.—[MS.] Midst many——.—[MS. D.]
aw ——smelleth filthily.—[MS. D.]
ax ——dammed with dirt.—[MS. erased.]
45 [For a fuller description of Cintra, see letter to Mrs. Byron, dated August 11, 1808 (Life, p. 92; Letters, 1898, i. 237). Southey, not often in accord with Byron, on his return from Spain (1801) testified that "for beauty all English, perhaps all existing, scenery must yield to Cintra" (Life and Corr. of R. Southey, ii. 161).]
ay ——views too sweet and vast——.—[MS. erased.]
az ——by tottering convent crowned.—[MS. erased.] Alcornoque.—[Note (pencil).]
46 "The sky-worn robes of tenderest blue." Collins' Ode to Pity [MS. and D.].
ba The murmur that the sparkling torrents keep.—[MS. erased.]
47 [The convent of Nossa Señora (now the Palazio) da Peña, and the Cork Convent, were visited by Beckford (circ. 1780), and are described in his Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal (8vo, 1834), the reissue of his Letters Picturesque and Poetical (4to, 1783).
"Our first object was the convent of Nossa Senhora da Penha, the little romantic pile of white building I had seen glittering from afar when I first sailed by the coast of Lisbon. From this pyramidical elevation the view is boundless; you look immediately down upon an immense expanse of sea.
... A long series of detached clouds of a dazzling whiteness suspended low over the waves had a magic effect, and in pagan times might have appeared, without any great stretch of fancy, the cars of marine divinities, just risen from the bosom of their element."—Italy, etc., p. 249.
"Before the entrance, formed by two ledges of ponderous rock, extends a smooth level of greensward.... The Hermitage, its cell, chapel, and refectory, are all scooped out of the native marble, and lined with the bark of the cork tree. Several of the passages are not only roofed, but floored with the same material ... The shrubberies and garden-plots dispersed amongst the mossy rocks ... are delightful, and I took great pleasure in ... following the course of a transparent rill, which was conducted through a rustic water-shoot, between bushes of lavender and roses, many of the tenderest green."—Ibid., p. 250.
The inscription to the memory of Honorius (d. 159, æt. 95) is on a stone in front of the cave—
"Hic Honorius vitam finivit;
Et ideo cum Deo in coelis revivit."]
48 "I don't remember any crosses there."—[Pencilled note by J.C. Hobhouse.]
The crosses made no impression upon Hobhouse, who, no doubt, had realized that they were nothing but guideposts. For an explanation, see letter of Mr. Matthew Lewtas to the Athenæum, July 19, 1873: "The track from the main road to the convent, rugged and devious, leading up to the mountain, is marked out by numerous crosses now, just as it was when Byron rode along it in 1809, and it would appear he fell into the mistake of considering that the crosses were erected to show where assassinations had been committed."]
49 [Beckford, describing the view from the convent, notices the wild flowers which adorned "the ruined splendour." "Amidst the crevices of the mouldering walls ... I noticed some capillaries and polypodiums of infinite delicacy; and on a little flat space before the convent a numerous tribe of pinks, gentians, and other Alpine plants, fanned and invigorated by the fresh mountain air."—Italy, etc., 1834, p. 229.
The "Prince's palace" (line 5) may be the royal palace at Cintra, "the Alhambra of the Moorish kings," or, possibly, the palace (vide post,
