censure. Burrard's interference with Wellesley's plans was no doubt ill-judged and ill-timed; but the opportunity of pursuit having been let slip, the acceptance of Junot's terms was at once politic and inevitable. A court of inquiry, which was held in London in January, 1809, upheld both the armistice of August 22 and the Convention; but neither Dalrymple nor Burrard ever obtained a second command, and it was not until Talavera (July 28, 1809) had effaced the memories of Cintra that Wellesley was reinstated in popular favour.]
bj ——at the mention sweat.—[MS. D.]
bk More restless than the falcon as he flies.—[MS. erased.]
52 [With reference to this passage, while yet in MS., an early reader (?Dallas) inquires, "What does this mean?" And a second (?Hobhouse) rejoins, "What does the question mean? It is one of the finest stanzas I ever read."]
53 [Byron and Hobhouse sailed from Falmouth, July 2, 1809; reached Lisbon on the 6th or 7th; and on the 17th started from Aldea Galbega ("the first stage from Lisbon, which is only accessible by water") on horseback for Seville. "The horses are excellent—we rode seventy miles a day" (see letters of August 6 to F. Hodgson, and August 11, 1809, to Mrs. Byron; Letters, 1898, i. 234, 236).]
bl ——long foreign to his soul.—[MS. erased.]
bm ——the strumpet and the bowl.—[MS. D]
bn And countries more remote his hopes engage.—[MS. erased.]
bo Where dwelt of yore the Lusians' crazy queen,—[MS.] Where dwelt of yore Lusania's——.—[D.]
54 [Her luckless Majesty went subsequently mad; and Dr. Willis, who so dexterously cudgelled kingly pericraniums, could make nothing of hers. (For the Rev. Francis Willis, see Poetical Works, 1898, i. 416.)
Maria I. (b. 1734), who married her uncle, Pedro III., reigned with him 1777-86, and, as sole monarch, from 1786 to 1816. The death of her husband, of her favourite confessor, Ignatio de San Caetano, who had been raised by Pombal from the humblest rank to the position of archbishop in partibus, and of her son, turned her brain, and she became melancholy mad. She was only queen in name after 1791, and in 1799 her son, Maria José Luis, was appointed regent. Beckford saw her in 1787, and was impressed by her dignified bearing. "Justice and clemency," he writes, "the motto so glaringly misapplied on the banner of the abhorred Inquisition, might be transferred, with the strictest truth, to this good princess" (Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal, 1834, p. 256). Ten years later, Southey, in his Letters from Spain, 1797, p. 541, ascribes the "gloom" of the court of Lisbon to "the dreadful malady of the queen." When the Portuguese royal family were about to embark for Brazil in November, 1807, the queen was once more seen in public after an interval of sixteen years. "She had to wait some while upon the quay for the chair in which she was to be carried to the boat, and her countenance, in which the insensibility of madness was only disturbed by wonder, formed a striking contrast to the grief which appeared in every other face" (Southey's History of the Peninsular War, i. 110).]
bp Childe Burun——.—[MS.]
bq Less swoln with culture soon the vales extend And long horizon-bounded realms appear.—[MS. erased.]
br Say Muse what bounds——.—[MS. D.]
55 The Pyrenees.—[MS.]
56 [If, as stanza xliii. of this canto (added in 1811) intimates, Byron passed through "Albuera's plain" on his way from Lisbon to Seville, he must have crossed the frontier at a point between Elvas and Badajoz. In that case the "silver streamlet" may be identified as the Caia. Beckford remarks on "the rivulet which separates the two kingdoms" (Italy, etc., 1834, p. 291).]
bs But eer the bounds of Spain have far been passed.—[MS. D.]
bt For ever famed—in many a native song.—[MS. erased.] ——a noted song.—[MS. D.]
57 [Compare Virgil, Æneid, i. 100—
"Ubi tot Simois correpta sub undis
Scuta virûm galeasque et fortia corpora volvit."]
58 [The standard, a cross made of Asturian oak (La Cruz de la Victoria), which was said to have fallen from heaven before Pelayo gained the victory over the Moors at Cangas, in A.D. 718, is preserved at Oviedo. Compare Southey's Roderick, XXV.: Poetical Works, 1838, ix. 241, and note, pp. 370, 371.]
bu —which Pelagius bore.—[MS. D.]
59 [The Moors were finally expelled from Granada in 1492, in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.]
bv ——waxed the Crescent pale.—[MS. erased.]
60 [The reference is to the Romanceros and Caballerías of the sixteenth century.]
bw ——thy little date.—[MS. erased.]
bx ——from rock to rock Blue columns soaring loft in sulphury wreath Fragments on fragments in contention knock.—[MS. erased, D.]
61 "The Siroc is the violent hot wind that for weeks together blows down the Mediterranean from the Archipelago. Its effects are well known to all who have passed the Straits of Gibraltar."—[MS. D.]
62 [The battle of Talavera began July 27, 1809, and lasted two days. As Byron must have reached Seville by the 21st or 22nd of the month, he was not, as might be inferred, a spectator of any part of the engagement. Writing to his mother, August 11, he says, "You have heard of the battle near Madrid, and in England they would call it a victory—a pretty victory! Two hundred officers and five thousand men killed, all English, and the French in as great force as ever. I should have joined the army, but we have no time to lose before we get up the Mediterranean."—Letters, i. 241.]
