No More Learning

i, line 117. ]

[383] [Compare _The Age of Bronze_, lines 271-279. ]

[384]

"Lucullus, when frugality could charm.
Had roasted turnips in the Sabine farm. "

POPE [_Moral Essays_, i. 218, 219. ]

[385] The consul Nero, who made the unequalled march which deceived
Hannibal, and defeated Asdrubal; thereby accomplishing an achievement
almost unrivalled in military annals. The first intelligence of his
return, to Hannibal, was the sight of Asdrubal's head thrown into his
camp. When Hannibal saw this, he exclaimed with a sigh, that "Rome would
now be the mistress of the world. " And yet to this victory of Nero's it
might be owing that his imperial namesake reigned at all. But the infamy
of one has eclipsed the glory of the other. When the name of "Nero" is
heard, who thinks of the consul? --But such are human things! [For
Hannibal's cry of despair, "Agnoscere se fortunam Carthaginis! " see
Livy, lib. xxvii. cap. li. _s. f. _]

[fm] _Tyrant or hero--patriot or a chief_. --[MS. erased. ]

[386] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza v. line i, see
_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 102, and 99, note 1. ]

[387] {609}[Toobo Neuha is the name of a Tongan chieftain. See Mariner's
_Account, etc. _, 1817, 141, _sq. _]

[388] When very young, about eight years of age, after an attack of the
scarlet fever at Aberdeen, I was removed by medical advice into the
Highlands. Here I passed occasionally some summers, and from this period
I date my love of mountainous countries. I can never forget the effect,
a few years afterwards, in England, of the only thing I had long seen,
even in miniature, of a mountain, in the Malvern Hills. After I returned
to Cheltenham, I used to watch them every afternoon, at sunset, with a
sensation which I cannot describe. This was boyish enough: but I was
then only thirteen years of age, and it was in the holidays. [Byron
spent his summer holidays, 1796-98, at the farm-house of Ballatrich, on
Deeside. (See _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 192, note 2. For his visit to
Cheltenham, in the summer of 1801, see _Life_, pp. 8, 19. )

[389] {610}[For the eagle's beak, see _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza
xviii. line 6, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 226, note 1. ]

[390] {611}[Compare _Macbeth_, act ii. sc. 4, line 13. ]

[391] [Compare--"The never-merry clock," _Werner_, act iii. sc. 3, line
3. ]

[fn] _Which knolls the knell of moments out of man_. --[MS. D. erased. ]

[392] {612} The now well-known story of the loves of the nightingale and
rose need not be more than alluded to, being sufficiently familiar to
the Western as to the Eastern reader. [Compare _Werner_, act iv. sc. 1,
lines 380-382; and _The Giaour_, lines 21, 33. ]

[fo] _Which kindled by another's_--. --[MS. D. ]

[393] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanzas lxxii. , lxxv. Once
again the language and the sentiment recall Wordsworth's _Tintern
Abbey_. (See _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 261, note 2. )]

[394] {613} If the reader will apply to his ear the sea-shell on his
chimney-piece, he will be aware of what is alluded to. If the text
should appear obscure, he will find in _Gebir_ the same idea better
expressed in two lines. The poem I never read, but have heard the lines
quoted, by a more recondite reader--who seems to be of a different
opinion from the editor of the _Quarterly Review_, who qualified it in
his answer to the Critical Reviewer of his _Juvenal_, as trash of the
worst and most insane description. It is to Mr. Landor, the author of
_Gebir_, so qualified, and of some Latin poems, which vie with Martial
or Catullus in obscenity, that the immaculate Mr. Southey addresses his
declamation against impurity!

[These are the lines in _Gebir_ to which Byron alludes--

"But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue.

* * * * *

Shake one and it awakens; then apply
Its polisht lips to your attentive ear,
And it remembers its august abodes,
And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there. "

Compare, too, _The Excursion_, bk. iv. --

"I have seen
A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell,
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intently," etc.

Landor, in his _Satire upon Satirists_, 1836, p. 29, commenting on
Wordsworth's alleged remark that he "would not give five shillings for
all the poetry that Southey had written" (see _Letters_, 1900, iv.
Appendix IX. pp. 483, 484), calls attention to this unacknowledged
borrowing, "It would have been honester," he says, "and more decorous if
the writer of the following verses had mentioned from what bar he drew
his wire. " According to H. C. Robinson (_Diary_, 1869, iii. 114),
Wordsworth acknowledged no obligation to Landor's _Gebir_ for the image
of the sea-shell. "From his childhood the shell was familiar to him,
etc. The 'Satire' seemed to give Wordsworth little annoyance. "]

[395] {615}[In his Preface to Cantos I. , II. of _Childe Harold_
(_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 5), Byron relies on the authority of
"Ariosto Thomson and Beattie" for the inclusion of droll or satirical
"variations" in a serious poem. Nevertheless, Dallas prevailed on him to
omit certain "ludicrous stanzas. " It is to be regretted that no one
suggested the excision of sections xix. -xxi. from the second canto of
The Island. ]

[396] Hobbes, the father of Locke's and other philosophy, was an
inveterate smoker,--even to pipes beyond computation.

["Soon after dinner he [Hobbes] retired to his study, and had his
candle, with ten or twelve pipes of tobacco laid by him; then, shutting
his door, he fell to smoking, and thinking, and writing for several
hours. "--_Memoirs of the Family of Cavendish_, by White Kennet, D. D. ,
1708, pp. 14, 15. ]

[fp] _Yet they who love thee best prefer by far_. --[MS. D. erased. ]

[397] ["I shall now smoke two cigars, and get me to bed. . . . The Havannah
are the best;--but neither are so pleasant as a hooka or
chiboque. "--_Journal_, December 6, 1813, _Letters_, 1898, ii. 368. ]

[398] {616} This rough but jovial ceremony, used in crossing the line,
has been so often and so well described, that it need not be more than
alluded to.

[399] {617} "That will do for the marines, but the sailors won't believe
it," is an old saying: and one of the few fragments of former jealousies
which still survive (in jest only) between these gallant services.

[400] {619} Archidamus, King of Sparta, and son of Agesilaus, when he
saw a machine invented for the casting of stones and darts, exclaimed
that it was the "grave of valour. " The same story has been told of some
knights on the first application of gunpowder; but the original anecdote
is in Plutarch. [The Greek is "? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? , ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? [A)po/lolen,
a)ndro\s a)reta/]," Plutarch's _Scripta Moralia_, 1839, i. 230. ]

[fq] {621} _To people in a small embarrassment_. --[MS. D. erased. ]

[401] {622} [Fletcher Christian, born 1763, was the fourth son of
Charles Christian, an attorney, of Moreland Close, in the parish of
Brigham, Cumberland. His family, which was of Manx extraction, was
connected with the Christians of Ewanrigg, and the Curwens of Workington
Hall. His brother Edward became Chief Justice of Ely, and was well known
as the editor of _Blackstones Commentaries_. For purposes of
verification (see _An Answer to certain Assertions, etc. _, 1794, p. 9),
Bligh described him as "aged 24 years, five feet nine inches high,
blackish or very dark brown complexioned, dark brown hair, strong made,
star tatowed on the left breast," etc. According to "Morrison's
Journal," high words had passed between Bligh and Christian on more than
one occasion, and, on the day before the mutiny, a question having
arisen with regard to the disappearance of some cocoa-nuts, Christian
was cross-examined by the captain as to his share of the plunder. "I
really do not know, sir," he replied; "but I hope you do not think me so
mean as to be guilty of stealing yours. " "Yes," said Bligh,
"you ---- hound, I do think so, or you could have given a better account
of them. " It was after this offensive accusation that Christian
determined, in the first instance, to quit the ship, and on the morning
of April 28, 1788, finding the mate of the watch asleep, on the spur of
the moment resolved to lay violent hands on the captain, and assume the
command of the _Bounty_. The language attributed to Bligh reads like a
translation into the vernacular, but if Christian kept his designs to
himself, it is strange that they were immediately understood and acted
upon by a body of impromptu conspirators. Testimony, whether written or
spoken, with regard to the succession of events "in moments like to
these," is worth very little; but it is pretty evident that Christian
was a gentleman, and that Bligh's violent and unmannerly ratings were
the immediate cause of the mutiny.

Contradictory accounts are given of Christian's death. It is generally
believed that in the fourth year of the settlement on Pitcairn Island
the Tahitians formed a plot to massacre the Englishmen, and that
Christian was shot when at work in his plantation (_The Mutineers,
etc. _, by Lady Belcher, 1870, p. 163; _The Mutiny, etc. _, by Rosalind A.
Young, 1894, p. 28). On the other hand, Amasa Delano, in his _Narrative
of Voyages, etc. _ (Boston, 1817, cap. v. p. 140), asserts that Captain
Mayhew Folger, who was the first to visit the island in 1808, "was very
explicit in his inquiry at the time, as well as in his account of it to
me, that they lived under Christian's government several years after
they landed; that during the whole time they enjoyed tolerable harmony;
that Christian became sick, and died a natural death. " It stands to
reason that the ex-pirate, Alexander Smith, who had developed into John
Adams, the pious founder of a patriarchal colony, would be anxious to
draw a veil over the early years of the settlement, and would satisfy
the curiosity of visitors who were officers of the Royal Navy, as best
he could, and as the spirit moved him. ]

[fr] {625} _The ruined remnant of the land's defeat_. --[MS. D. erased. ]

[402] {626}[Compare _The Siege of Corinth_, lines 438, 439, Poetical
Works, 1900, iii. 467. ]

[403] {629} Of this cave (which is no fiction) the original will be
found in the ninth chapter of "Mariner's Account of the Tonga Islands"
[1817, i. 267-279]. I have taken the poetical liberty to transplant it
to Toobonai, the last island where any distinct account is left of
Christian and his comrades.

[The following is the account given by Mariner: "On this island [Hoonga]
there is a peculiar cavern, which was first discovered by a young chief,
whilst diving after a turtle. The nature of this cavern will be better
understood if we imagine a hollow rock rising sixty feet or more above
the surface of the water, into the cavity of which there is no known
entrance but one, and that is on the side of the rock, as low down as
six feet under the water, into which it flows; and, consequently, the
base of the cavern may be said to be the sea itself. " Mariner seeing
some young chiefs diving into the water one after another, and not rise
again, he inquired of the last, . . . what they were about? "'Follow me,'"
said he, "'and I will take you where you have never been before. . . . '"
Mariner prepared to follow his companion, and, guided by the light
reflected from his heels, entered the opening in the rock, and rose into
the cavern. The light was sufficient, after remaining about five
minutes, to show objects with some little distinctness; . . .
Nevertheless, as it was desirable to have a stronger light, Mariner
dived out again, and, priming his pistol, tied plenty of gnatoo tight
round it, and wrapped the whole up in a plantain-leaf: he directed an
attendant to bring a torch in the same way. Thus prepared, he re-entered
the cavern, unwrapped the gnatoo, fired it by the flash of the powder,
and lighted the torch. "The place was now illuminated tolerably well. . . .
It appeared (by guess) to be about forty feet wide in the main part, but
it branched off, on one side, in two narrower portions. The medium
height seemed also about forty feet. The roof was hung with stalactites
in a very curious way, resembling, upon a cursory view, the Gothic
arches and ornaments of an old church.
" According to one of the
matabooles present, the entire family of a certain chief had, in former
times, been condemned to death for conspiring against a rival
tyrant--the chief to be taken out to sea and drowned, the rest of the
family to be massacred. One of the chiefs daughters was a beautiful
girl, to whom the youth who discovered the cave was attached. "He had
long been enamoured of this young maiden, but had never dared to make
her acquainted with the soft emotions of his heart, knowing that she was
betrothed to a chief of higher rank and greater power, but now, . . . no
time was to be lost; he flew to her abode . . . declared himself her
deliverer if she would trust to his honour. . . . Soon her consenting hand
was clasped in his: the shades of evening favoured their escape . . . till
her lover had brought a small canoe to a lonely part of the beach. In
this they speedily embarked. . . . They soon arrived at the rock, he leaped
into the water, and she, instructed by him, followed close after; they
rose into the cavern, and rested from their fatigue, partaking of some
refreshments which he had brought there for himself. . . . " Here she
remained, visited from time to time by her more fortunate Leander, until
he was enabled to carry her off to the Fiji islands, where they dwelt
till the death of the tyrant, when they returned to Vavaoo, "and lived
long in peace and happiness. "]

[404] {631} This may seem too minute for the general outline (in
Mariner's Account) from which it is taken. But few men have travelled
without seeing something of the kind--on _land_, that is. Without
adverting to Ellora, in Mungo Park's last journal, he mentions having
met with a rock or mountain so exactly resembling a Gothic cathedral,
that only minute inspection could convince him that it was a work of
nature.

[Ellora, a village in the Nizam's dominions, is thirteen miles
north-west of Aurangabad. "It is famous for its rock-caves and temples.
The chief building, called the kailas, . . . is a great monolithic temple,
isolated from surrounding rock, and carved outside as well as in. . . . It
is said to have been built about the eighth century by Raja Edu of
Ellichpur. "--Hunter's _Imperial Gazetteer of India_, 1885, iv. 348-351.
The passage in Mungo Park's _Journal of a Mission to the Interior of
Africa_, 1815, p. 75, runs thus: "June 24th [1805],--Left Sullo, and
travelled through a country beautiful beyond imagination, with all the
possible diversities of _rock_, sometimes towering up like ruined
castles, spires, pyramids, etc. We passed one place so like a ruined
Gothic abbey, that we halted a little, before we could satisfy ourselves
that the niches, windows, etc. , were all natural rock. "]

[405] [Byron's quadrisyllable was, probably, a poetic licence. There is,
however, an obsolete plural, _stalactitae_, to be found in the works of
John Woodward, M. D. , _Fossils of England_, 1729, i. 155. ]

[fs] {632} _Where Love and Torquil might lie safe from men_. --[MS. D.
erased. ]

[406] {633} The reader will recollect the epigram of the Greek
anthology, or its translation into most of the modern languages--

"Whoe'er thou art, thy master see--
He was, or is, or is to be. "

[Byron is quoting from memory an "Illustration" in the notes to
_Collections from the Greek Anthology_, by the Rev. Robert Bland, 1813,
p. 402--

"Whoe'er thou art, thy Lord and master see.
Thou wast my Slave, thou art, or thou shall be. "

The couplet was written by George Granville, Lord Lansdowne (1667-1735),
as an _Inscription for a Figure representing the God of Love_. (See _The
Genuine Works, etc. _, 1732, I. 129. )]

[407] {634} The tradition is attached to the story of Eloisa, that when
her body was lowered into the grave of Abelard (who had been buried
twenty years), he opened his arms to receive her.

[The story is told by Bayle, who quotes from a manuscript chronicle of
Tours, preserved in the notes of Andreas Quercetanus, affixed to the
_Historia Calamitatum Abaelardi_: "Eadem defuncta ad tumulam apertum
depertata, maritus ejus qui multis diebus ante eam defunctus fuerat,
elevatis brachiis eam recepit, et ita earn amplexatus brachia sua
strinxit. "--See Petri Abelardi _Opera_, Paris, 1616, ii. 1195. ]

[ft] {636} _Too late it might be still at least to die_. --[MS. D.
erased. ]

[fu] {637} _The crag as droop a bird without her young_. --[MS. D.
erased. ]

[408] In Thibault's account of Frederick the Second of Prussia, there is
a singular relation of a young Frenchman, who with his mistress appeared
to be of some rank. He enlisted and deserted at Schweidnitz; and after a
desperate resistance was retaken, having killed an officer, who
attempted to seize him after he was wounded, by the discharge of his
musket loaded with a _button_ of his uniform. Some circumstances on his
court-martial raised a great interest amongst his judges, who wished to
discover his real situation in life, which he offered to disclose, but
to the king only, to whom he requested permission to write. This was
refused, and Frederic was filled with the greatest indignation, from
baffled curiosity or some other motive, when he understood that his
request had been denied. [_Mes Souvenirs de vingt ans de sejour a
Berlin, ou Frederic Le Grand, etc. _, Paris, 1804, iv. 145-150. ]

[fv] _He tore a silver vest_----. --[MS. D. erased. ]

[fw] {639} _Their hollow shrine_----. --[MS. D. erased. ]

[fx]

_As only a yet infant_----. --[MS. D. ]
{_As only an infantine World_----.
{_As only a yet unweaned World_----. --[Alternative readings. MS. D. ]





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