On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2)

A boy Achilles, with the centaur's lyre
In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire.
For one long-cherish'd ballad's simple stave,
Rung from the rock, or mingled with the wave,
Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side,
Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide,
Hath greater power o'er each true heart and ear,
Than all the columns Conquest's minions rear;
Invites, when hieroglyphics are a theme
For sages' labors or the student's dream;
Attracts, when History's volumes are a toil—
The first, the freshest bud of Feeling's soil,
Such was this rude rhyme—rhyme is of the rude,
But such inspired the Norseman's solitude,
Who came and conquer'd; such, wherever rise
Lands which no foes destroy or civilize,
Exist; and what can our accomplish'd art
Of verse do more than reach the awaken'd heart?"

82

"Shepherd's Calendar." "Coronatiön," loyal-pastoral for Carnation; "sops in wine," jolly-pastoral for double pink; "paunce," thoughtless pastoral for pansy; "chevisaunce," I don't know (not in Gerarde); "flowre-delice"—pronounce dellice—half made up of "delicate" and "delicious."

83

Herrick, "Dirge for Jephthah's Daughter."

84

"Passionate Pilgrim."

85

In this point compare the "Curse of Minerva" with the "Tears of the Muses."

86

"He,"—Lucifer; ("Vision of Judgment," 24). It is precisely because Byron was not his servant, that he could see the gloom. To the Devil's true servants, their Master's presence brings both cheerfulness and prosperity; with a delightful sense of their own wisdom and virtue; and of the "progress" of things in general:—in smooth sea and fair weather,—and with no need either of helm touch, or oar toil: as when once one is well within the edge of Maelstrom.

87

"Island," ii. 4; perfectly orthodox theology, you observe; no denial of the fall,—nor substitution of Bacterian birth for it. Nay, nearly Evangelical theology, in contempt for the human heart; but with deeper than Evangelical humility, acknowledging also what is sordid in its civilization.

88

November, 1880.—Ed.

89

"Childe Harold," iv. 79; compare "Adonais," and Sismondi, vol. i. p. 148.

90

Adrian the Fourth. Eugenius died in the previous year.

91

"All the multitudes threw themselves on their knees, praying mercy in the name of the crosses they bore: the Count of Blandrata took a cross from the enemies with whom he had served, and fell at the foot of the throne, praying for mercy to them. All the court and the witnessing army were in tears—the Emperor alone showed no sign of emotion. Distrusting his wife's sensibility, he had forbidden her presence at the ceremony; the Milanese, unable to approach her, threw towards her windows the crosses they carried, to plead for them."—Sismondi (French edition), vol. i. p. 378.

92

The most noble and tender confession is in Allegra's epitaph, "I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me."

93

Hypocrisy is too good a word for either Pall Mall or Trianon, being justly applied (as always in the New Testament), only to men whose false religion has become earnest, and a part of their being: so that they compass heaven and earth to make a proselyte. There is no relation between minds of this order and those of common rogues. Neither Tartuffe nor Joseph Surface are hypocrites—they are simply impostors: but many of the most earnest preachers in all existing churches are hypocrites in the highest; and the Tartuffe-Squiredom and Joseph Surface-Masterhood of our virtuous England which build churches and pay priests to keep their peasants and hands peaceable, so that rents and per cents may be spent, unnoticed, in the debaucheries of the metropolis, are darker forms of imposture than either heaven or earth have yet been compassed by; and what they are to end in, heaven and earth only know. Compare again, "Island," ii. 4, "the prayers of Abel linked to deeds of Cain," and "Juan," viii. 25, 26.

94

Perhaps some even of the attentive readers of Byron may not have observed the choice of the three names—Myrrha (bitter incense), Marina (sea lady), Angiolina (little angel)—in relation to the plots of the three plays.

95

I shall have lost my wits very finally when I forget the first time that I pleased my father with a couplet of English verse (after many a year of trials); and the radiant joy on his face as he declared, reading it aloud to my mother with emphasis half choked by tears,—that "it was as fine as anything that Pope or Byron ever wrote!"

96

Of our tingle-tangle-titmouse disputes in Parliament like Robins in a bush, but not a Robin in all the house knowing his great A, hear again Plato: "But they, for ever so little a quarrel, uttering much voice, blaspheming, speak evil one of another,—and it is not becoming that in a city of well-ordered persons, such things should be—no; nothing of them nohow nowhere,—and let this be the one law for all—let nobody speak mischief of anybody (Μηδἑνα κακηγορεἱτο μηδεις)."—Laws, book ii. s. 935; and compare Book iv. 117.

97

A paragraph beginning "I find press corrections always irksome work, and in my last paper trust the reader's kindness to make some corrections in the preceding paper," is here omitted, and the corrections made.—Ed.

98

October 1881.

99

"Jean François Millet." Twenty Etching's and Woodcuts reproduced in Facsimile, and Biographical Notice by William Ernest Henley. London, 1881.

100

I am sorry to find that my former allusion to the boating expedition in this novel has been misconstrued by a young authoress of promise into disparagement of her own work; not supposing it possible that I could only have been forced to look at George Eliot's by a friend's imperfect account of it.

101

I am ashamed to exemplify the miserable work of "review" by mangling and mumbling this noble closing chapter of the "Monastery," but I cannot show the web of work without unweaving it.

102