ushered in by a carnival, were those of the second "great" Lent of the Greek Church, that of St. Peter and St. Paul, which begins on the first Monday after Trinity, and ends on the 29th of June.]
184 [These al-fresco festivities must, it is presumed, have taken place on the two days out of the seven when you "might not 'damn the climate' and complain of the spleen." Hobhouse records excursions to the Valley of Sweet Waters; to Belgrade, where "the French minister gave a sort of fête-champêtre," when "the carousal lasted four days," and when "night after night is kept awake by the pipes, tabors, and fiddles of these moonlight dances;" and to the grove of Fanar-Baktchesi.—Travels in Albania, ii. 242-258.]
185 "There's nothing like young Love, No! No! There's nothing like young love at last."]
186 [It has been assumed that "searment" is an incorrect form of "cerement," the cloth dipped "in melting wax, in which dead bodies were enfolded when embalmed" (Hamlet, act i. sc. 4), but the sense of the passage seems rather to point to "cerecloth," "searcloth," a plaster to cover up a wound. The "robe of revel" does but half conceal the sore and aching heart.]
187 [For the accentuation of the word, compare Chaucer, "The Sompnour's Tale" (Canterbury Tales, line 7631)—
"And dronkennesse is eke a foul recórd
Of any man, and namely of a lord."]
fu When Athens' children are with arts endued.—[MS. D.]
188 [Compare Ecclus. xliv. 8, 9: "There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported. And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been."]
189 [The "solitary column" may be that on the shore of the harbour of Colonna, in the island of Kythnos (Thermia), or one of the detached columns of the Olympeion.]
190 [Tritonia, or Tritogenia, one of Athena's names of uncertain origin. Hofmann's Lexicon Universale, Tooke's Pantheon, and Smith's Classical Dictionary are much in the same tale. Lucan (Pharsalia, lib. ix. lines 350-354) derives the epithet from Lake Triton, or Tritonis, on the Mediterranean coast of Libya—
"Hanc et Pallas amat: patrio quæ vertice nata
Terrarum primum Libyen (nam proxima coelo est,
Ut probat ipse calor) tetigit, stagnique quietâ
Vultus vidit aquâ, posuitque in margine plantas,
Et se dilectâ Tritonida dixit ab undâ."]
191 [Hobhouse dates the first visit to Cape Colonna, January 24, 1810.]
192 [Athené's dower of the olive induced the gods to appoint her as the protector and name-giver of Athens. Poseidon, who had proffered a horse, was a rejected candidate. (See note by Rev. E. C. Owen, Childe Harold, 1897, p. 175.)]
193 ["The wild thyme is in great abundance; but there are only two stands of bee-hives on the mountains, and very little of the real honey of Hymettus is to be now procured at Athens.... A small pot of it was shown to me as a rarity" (Travels in Albania, i. 341). There is now, a little way out of Athens, a "honey-farm, where the honey from Hymettus is prepared for sale" (Handbook for Greece, p. 500).]
fv ——Pentele's marbles glare.—[MS. D. erased.]
194 [Stanzas lxxxviii.-xc. are not in the MS., but were first included in the seventh edition, 1814.]
195 [Byron and Hobhouse, after visiting Colonna, slept at Keratéa, and proceeded to Marathon on January 25, returning to Athens on the following day.]
fw Preserve alike its form——.—[MS. L.]
fx When uttered to the listener's eye——.—[MS. L.]
fy The host, the plain, the fight——.—[MS. L.]
fz The shattered Mede who flies with broken bow.—[MS. L.]
196 ["The plain of Marathon is enclosed on three sides by the rocky arms of Parnes and Pentelicus, while the fourth is bounded by the sea." After the first rush, when the victorious wings, where the files were deep, had drawn together and extricated the shallower and weaker centre, which had been repulsed by the Persians and the Sakæ, "the pursuit became general, and the Persians were chased to their ships, ranged in line along the shore. Some of them became involved in the impassable marsh, and there perished." (See Childe Harold, edited by H. F. Tozer, 1885, p. 253; Grote's History of Greece, iv. 276. See, too, Travels in Albania, i. 378-384.)]
ga To tell what Asia troubled but to hear.—[MS. L.]
197 [See note to Canto II. stanzas i.-xv., pp. 99, 100.]
gb Long to the remnants—.——[D.]
198 [The "Ionian blast" is the western wind that brings the voyager across the Ionian Sea.]
199 [The original MS. closes with this stanza.]
gc Which heeds nor stern reproach——.—[D.]
gd Would I had ne'er returned——.—[D.]
"To Mr. Dallas.
The 'he' refers to 'Wanderer' and anything is better than I I I I always I.
Yours,
BYRON."
4th
