weapon, the puñal, or cuchillo, which was sometimes stuck in the sash (Handbook for Spain, ii. 803).]
77 [Compare Macbeth, act v. sc. 5, line 10—
"The Time has been, my senses would have cooled
To hear a night-shriek."]
cr ——-the column-scattering bolt afar, The falchion's flash—[MS. erased, D.]
cs The seal Love's rosy finger has imprest On her fair chin denotes how soft his touch: Her lips where kisses make voluptuous nest.—[MS. erased.]
78 [Writing to his mother (August 11, 1809), Byron compares "the Spanish style" of beauty to the disadvantage of the English: "Long black hair, dark languishing eyes, clear olive complexions, and forms more graceful in motion than can be conceived by an Englishman ... render a Spanish beauty irresistible" (Letters, 1898, i. 239). Compare, too, the opening lines of The Girl of Cadiz, which gave place to the stanzas To Inez, at the close of this canto—
"Oh never talk again to me
Of northern climes and British ladies."
But in Don Juan, Canto XII. stanzas lxxiv.-lxxvii., he makes the amende to the fair Briton—
"She cannot step as doth an Arab barb,
Or Andalusian girl from mass returning.
But though the soil may give you time and trouble,
Well cultivated, it will render double."]
ct Beauties that need not fear a broken vow.—[MS. erased.] ——a lecher's vow.—[MS.]
79 [The summit of Parnassus is not visible from Delphi or the neighbourhood. Before he composed "these stanzas" (December 16), (see note 13.B.) at the foot of Parnassus, Byron had first surveyed its "snow-clad" majesty as he sailed towards Vostizza (on the southern shore of the Gulf of Corinth), which he reached on the 5th, and quitted on the 14th of December. "The Echoes" (line 8) which were celebrated by the ancients (Justin, Hist., lib. xxiv. cap. 6), are those made by the Phædriades, or "gleaming peaks," a "lofty precipitous escarpment of red and grey limestone" at the head of the valley of the Pleistus, facing southwards.—Travels in Albania, i. 188, 199; Geography of Greece, by H. F. Tozer, 1873, p. 230.]
cu Not in the landscape of a fabled lay.—[MS. D.]
80 ["Upon Parnassus, going to the fountain of Delphi (Castri) in 1809, I saw a flight of twelve eagles (Hobhouse said they were vultures—at least in conversation), and I seized the omen. On the day before, I composed the lines to Parnassus [in Childe Harold] and, on beholding the birds, had a hope that Apollo had accepted my homage. I have, at least, had the name and fame of a poet during the poetical period of life (from twenty to thirty). Whether it will last is another matter; but I have been a votary of the deity and the place, and am grateful for what he has done in my behalf, leaving the future in his hands, as I left the past" (B. Diary, 1821).]
cv And walks with glassy steps o'er Aganippe's wave.—[MS. erased.]
cw Let me some remnant of thy Spirit bear Some glorious thought to my petition grant.—[MS. erased, D.]
81 ["Parnassus ... is distinguished from all other Greek mountains by its mighty mass. This, with its vast buttresses, almost fills up the rest of the country" (Geography of Greece, by H.F. Tozer, 1873, p. 226).]
82 [In his first letter from Spain (to F. Hodgson, August 6, 1809) Byron exclaims, "Cadiz, sweet Cadiz!—it is the first spot in the creation ... Cadiz is a complete Cythera." See, too, letter to Mrs. Byron, August 11, 1809 (Letters, 1898, i. 234, 239).]
cx While boyish blood boils gaily, who can 'scape The lurking lures of thy enchanting gaze.—[MS. erased.]
83 [It must not be supposed that the "thousand altars" of Cadiz correspond with and are in contrast to the "one dome" of Paphos. The point is that where Venus fixes her shrine, at Paphos or at Cadiz, altars blaze and worshippers abound (compare Æneid, i. 415-417)—
"Ipsa Paphum sublimis abit, sedesque revisit
Læta suas, ubi templum illi, centumque Sabæo
Ture calent aræ."]
84 [Compare Milton's Paradise Lost, i.—
... from morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve.]
85 [It was seldom that Byron's memory played him false, but here a vague recollection of a Shakespearian phrase has beguiled him into a blunder. He is thinking of Hamlet's jibe on the corruption of manners, "The age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe" (act v. sc. 1, line 150), and he forgets that a kibe is not a heel or a part of a heel, but a chilblain.]
cy ——though in lieu Of true devotion monkish temples share The hours misspent, and all in turns is Love or Prayer.—— MS. erased.]
cz ——or rule the hour in turns.——[D.]
86 [As he intimates in the Preface to Childe Harold, Byron had originally intended to introduce "variations" in his poem of a droll or satirical character. Beattie, Thomson, Ariosto, were sufficient authorities for these humorous episodes. The stanzas on the Convention of Cintra (stanzas xxv.-xxviii. of the MS.), and the four stanzas on Sir John Carr; the concluding stanzas of the MS., which were written in this lighter vein, were suppressed at the instance of Dallas, or Murray, or Gifford. From a passage in a letter to Dallas (August 21, 1811), it appears that Byron had almost made up his mind to leave out "the two stanzas of a buffooning cast on London's Sunday" (Letters, 1898, i. 335). But, possibly, owing to their freedom from any compromising personalities, or because wiser counsels prevailed, they were allowed to stand, and continued (wrote Moore in 1832) to "disfigure the poem."]
87 [A whiskey is a light carriage in which the traveller is whisked along.]
