No More Learning

]

[207] {480}[Compare the story of the philosopher Jamblichus and the
raising of Eros and Anteros from their "fountain-dwellings. "--_Manfred_,
act ii. sc. 2, line 93, _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 105, note 2. ]

[cw] {481} _Give me the strength of the buffalo's foot_ (_which marks
me_). --[MS. ]

[cx] _The sailless dromedary_----. --[MS. ]

[cy] {482} _Now I can gibe the mightiest_. --[MS. ]

[208] {483}[So, too, in _The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus_ (Marlowe's
_Works_, 1858, p. 112), Faustus stabs his arm, "and with his proper
blood Assures his soul to be great Lucifer's. "]

[cz]

_Walk lively and pliant_.
_You shall rise up as pliant_. --[MS, erased. ]

[209] This is a well-known German superstition--a gigantic shadow
produced by reflection on the Brocken. [See Brewster's _Letters on
Natural Magic_, 1831, p. 128. ]

[da] _And such my command_. --[MS. ]

[210] {484}["Nigris vegetisque oculis. "--Suetonius, _Vitae C. Julius
Caesar_, cap. xiv. , _Opera Omnia_, 1826, i. 105. ]

[211] [_Vide post_, p. 501, note 1. ]

[212] ["Sed ante alias [Julius Caesar] dilexit M. Bruti matrem Serviliam
. . . dilexit et reginas . . . sed maxime Cleopatram" (_ibid. _, i. 113,
115). Cleopatra, born B. C. 69, was twenty-one years old when she met
Caesar, B. C. 48. ]

[db]

_And can_
_It be? the man who shook the earth is gone_. --[MS. ]

[213] {485}["Upon the whole, it may be doubted whether there be a name
of Antiquity which comes down with such a general charm as that of
_Alcibiades_. _Why? _ I cannot answer: who can? "--_Detached Thoughts_
(1821), No. 108, _Letters_, 1901, v. 461. For Sir Walter Scott's note on
this passage, see _Letters_, 1900, iv. 77, 78, note 2. ]

[214] [The outside of Socrates was that of a satyr and buffoon, but his
soul was all virtue, and from within him came such divine and pathetic
things, as pierced the heart, and drew tears from the hearers. --Plato,
_Symp_. , p. 216, D. ]

[215] {486}["Anthony had a noble dignity of countenance, a graceful
length of beard, a large forehead, an aquiline nose: and, upon the
whole, the same manly aspect that we see in the pictures and statues of
Hercules. "--Plutarch's _Lives_, Langhorne's Translation, 1838, p. 634. ]

[216] [As in the "Farnese" Hercules. ]

[217] [The beauty and mien [of Demetrius Poliorcetes] were so inimitable
that no statuary or painter could hit off a likeness. His countenance
had a mixture of grace and dignity; and was at once amiable and awful;
and the unsubdued and eager air of youth was blended with the majesty of
the hero and the king. --Plutarch's _Lives_, Langhorne's Translation,
1838, p. 616.

Demetrius the Besieger rescued Greece from the sway of Ptolemy and
Cassander, B. C. 307. He passed the following winter at Athens, where
divine honours were paid to him under the title of "the Preserver" (?
? ? ? ? ? [o(Sote/r]). He was "the shame of Greece in peace," by reason of
his profligacy--"the citadel was so polluted with his debaucheries, that
it appeared to be kept sacred in some degree when he indulged himself
only with such _Hetaerae_ as Chrysis, Lamia, Demo, and Anticyra. " He was
the unspiritual ancestor of Charles the Second. Once when his father,
Antigonus, had been told that he was indisposed, "he went to see him;
and when he came to the door, he met one of his favourites going out. He
went in, however, and, sitting down by him, took hold of his hand. 'My
fever,' said Demetrius, 'has left me. ' 'I knew it,' said Antigonus, 'for
I met it this moment at the door. '"--Plutarch's _Lives_, _ibid. _, pp.
621-623. ]

[218] {488}[Spercheus was a river-god, the husband of Polydora, the
daughter of Peleus. Peleus casts into the river the hair of his son
Achilles, in the pious hope that his son-in-law would accept the votive
offering, and grant the youth a safe return from the Trojan war. See
_Iliad_, xxiii. 140, _sqq. _]

[219] {489}["Whosoever," says Bacon, "hath anything fixed in his person
that doth induce contempt, hath also a perpetual spur in himself to
rescue and deliver himself from scorn; therefore, all deformed persons
are extreme bold; first, as in their own defence, as being exposed to
scorn, but in process of time by a general habit; also it stirreth in
them industry, and especially of this kind, to watch and observe the
weakness of others, that they may have somewhat to repay. " (Essay
xliv. ). Byron's "chief incentive, when a boy, to distinction was that
mark of deformity on his person, by an acute sense of which he was first
stung into the ambition of being great. "--_Life_, p. 306. ]

[220] [Timur Bey, or Timur Lang, _i. e. _ "the lame Timur" (A. D.
1336-1405), was the founder of the Mogul dynasty. He was the Tamerlane
of history and of legend. Byron had certainly read the selections from
Marlowe's _Tamburlaine the Great_, in Lamb's _Specimens of English
Dramatic Poets_. ]

[221] {491}["I am black, but comely. "--_Song of Solomon_ i. 5. ]

[222] Adam means "_red earth_," from which the first man was formed.
[The word _ad? m_ is said to be analogous to the Assyrian _admu_,
"child"--_i. e. _ "one made" by God. --_Encycl. Bibl. _, art. "Adam. "]

[dc] {492} _This shape into Life_. --[_MS_. ]

[223] {493}[The reference is to the _homunculi_ of the alchymists. See
Retzsch's illustrations to Goethe's _Faust_, 1834, plates 3, 4, 5.
Compare, too, _The Second Part of Faust_, act ii. --

"The glass rings low, the charming power that lives
Within it makes the music that it gives.
It dims! it brightens! it will shape itself.
And see! a graceful dazzling little elf.
He lives! he moves! spruce mannikin of fire,
What more can we? what more can earth desire? "

Anster's Translation, 1886, p. 91. ]

[dd] _Your Interloper_----. --[MS. ]

[224] {494}[Compare _Prisoner of Chillon_, stanza ii. line 35, _Poetical
Works_, 1091, iv. 15, note i. Compare, too, the dialogue between
Mephistopheles and the Will-o'-the Wisp, in the scene on the Hartz
Mountains, in _Faust_, Part I. (see Anster's Translation, 1886, p.
271). ]

[225] {495}[The immediate reference is to the composite forces, German,
French, and Spanish, of the Imperial Army under the command of Charles
de Bourbon: but there is in lines 498-507 a manifest allusion to the
revolutionary movements in South America, Italy, and Spain, which were
at their height in 1822. (See the _Age of Bronze_, section vi. lines
260, _sq. _, _post_, pp. 555-557. )]

[226] {496}[See Euripides, _Hippolytus_, line 733. ]

[de] _Kochlani_----. --[MS. ]

[227] [Kochlani horses were bred in a central province of Arabia. ]

[228] [Byron's knowledge of Huon of Bordeaux was, most probably, derived
from Sotheby's _Oberon; or, Huon de Bourdeux: A Mask_, published in
1802. For _The Boke of Duke Huon of Burdeux_, done into English by Sir
John Bourchier, Lord Berners, see the reprint issued by the Early
English Text Society (E. S. , No. xliii. 1884); and for _Analyse de Huon
de Bordeaux, etc. _, see _Les Epopees Francaises_, by Leon Gautier, 1880,
ii. 719-773. ]

[229] {497}[The so-called statue of Memnon, the beautiful son of
Tithonus and Eos (Dawn), is now known to be that of Amenhotep III. , who
reigned in the eighteenth dynasty, about 1430 B. C. Strabo, ed. 1807. p.
1155, was the first to record the musical note which sounded from the
statue when it was touched by the rays of the rising sun. It used to be
argued (see Gifford's note to _Don Juan_, Canto XIII. stanza lxiv. line
3, ed. 1837, p. 731) that the sounds were produced by a trick, but of
late years it has been maintained that the Memnon's wail was due to
natural causes, the pressure of suddenly-warmed currents of air through
the pores and crevices of the stone. After the statue was restored, the
phenomenon ceased. (See _La statue vocale de Memnon_, par J. A. Letronne,
Paris, 1833, pp. 55, 56. )]

[df] _We'll add a "Count" to it_. --[MS. ]

[dg] {498} ----_my eyes are full_. --[MS. ]

[230] [Charles de Bourbon, Comte de Montpensier et de la Marche, Dauphin
d'Auvergne, was born February 17, 1490. He served in Italy with Bayard,
and helped to decide the victory of Agnadello (A. D. 1510). He was
appointed Constable of France by Francis I. , January, 1515, and fought
at the battle of Marignano, September 13, 1515. Not long afterwards he
lost the king's favour, who was set against him by his mother, Louise de
Savoie; was recalled from his command in Italy, and superseded by Odet
de Foix, brother of the king's mistress. It was not, however, till he
became a widower (Susanne, Duchesse de Bourbon, died April 28, 1521)
that he finally broke with Francis and attached himself to the Emperor
Charles V. _Madame_, the king's mother, not only coveted the vast
estates of the house of Bourbon, but was enamoured of the Constable's
person, and, so to speak, gave him his choice between marriage and a
suit for his fiefs. Charles would have nothing to say to the lady's
proposals or to her son's entreaties, and seeing that rejection meant
ruin, he "entered into a correspondence with the Emperor and the King
[Henry VIII. ] of England . . . and, finding this discovered, went into the
Emperor's service. "

After various and varying successes, both in the South of France and in
Lombardy, he found himself, in the spring of 1527, not so much the
commander-in-chief as the popular _capo_ of a mixed body of German,
Spanish, and Italian _condottieri_, unpaid and ill-disciplined, who had
mutinied more than once, who could only be kept together by the prospect
of unlimited booty, and a timely concession to their demands. "To Rome!
to Rome! " cried the hungry and tumultuous _landsknechts_, and on May 5,
1527, the "late Constable of France," at the head of an army of 30,000
troops, appeared before the walls of the sacred city. On the morning of
the 6th of May, he was killed by a shot from an arquebuse. His epitaph
recounts his honours: "Aucto Imperio, Gallo victo, Superata Italia,
Pontifice obsesso, Roma capta, Borbonius, Hic Jacet;" but in Paris they
painted the sill of his gate-way yellow, because he was a renegade and a
traitor. He could not have said, with the dying Bayard, "Ne me plaignez
pas-je meurs sans avoir servi contre _ma patrie, mon roy_, et mon
serment.
" (See _Modern Universal History_, 1760, xxiv. 150-152, Note C;
_Nouvelle Biographie Universelle_, art. "Bourbon. ")]

[231] {499}[The contrast is between imperial Rome, the Lord of the
world, and papal Rome, "the great harlot which hath corrupted the earth
with her fornications" (_Rev. _ ii. 19). Compare Part II. sc. iii. line
26, _vide post_, p. 521. ]

[232] {500}[Compare _Manfred_, act iii. sc. 4, line 10; and _Childe
Harold_, Canto IV. stanza cxxviii. line 1; _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv.
131, 1899, ii. 423, note 2. ]

[233] {501}["Calvitii vero deformitatem iniquissime ferret, saepe
obtrectatorum jocis obnoxiam expertus. Ideoque et deficientem capillum
revocare a vertice assuerat, et ex omnibus decretis sibi a Senatu
populoque honoribus non aliud aut recepit aut usurpavit libentius, quam
jus laureae coronae perpetuo gestandae. "--Suetonius, _Opera Omnia_, 1826,
pp. 105, 106. ]

[234] {503}[Francis the First was taken prisoner at the Battle of Pavia,
February 24, 1525. ]

[dh] _With a soldier's firm foot_. --[MS. ]

[235] [Compare _The Siege of Corinth_, line 752, _Poetical Works_, 1900,
iii. 483. There is a note of tragic irony in the soldiers' vain-glorious
prophecy. ]

[di] _With the Bourbon will count o'er_. --[MS. ]

[236] {504}[Brantome (_Memoires, etc. _, 1722, i. 215) quotes a "chanson"
of "Les soldats Espagnols" as they marched Romewards. "Calla calla Julio
Cesar, Hannibal, y Scipion! Viva la fama de Bourbon. "]

[dj] _The General with his men of confidence_. --[MS. ]

[dk] {505} _And present phantom of that deathless world_. --[MS. ]

[237] {506}[When the Uticans decided not to stand a siege, but to send
deputies to Caesar, Cato determined to put an end to his life rather than
fall into the hands of the conqueror. Accordingly, after he had retired
to rest he stabbed himself under the breast, and when the physician
sewed up the wound, he thrust him away, and plucked out his own
bowels. --Plutarch's _Lives_, Langhorne's Translation, 1838, P. 553. ]

[dl] {507} _Of a mere starving_----. --[MS. ]

[dm] ----_Work away with words_. --[MS. ]

[dn] {508} _First City rests upon to-morrow's action_. --[MS. ]

[238] {510}["Des l'aube du lundi 6 mai 1527, le connetable, a cheval, la
cuirasse couverte d'un manteau blanc, marcha vers le Borgo, dont les
murailles, a la hauteur de San-Spirito, etaient d'acces facile. . . .
Bourbon mit pied a terre, et, prenant lui-meme une echelle l'appliqua
tout pres de la porte Torrione. "--_De l'Italie_, par Emile Gebhart,
1876, p. 255. Caesar Grolierius (_Historia expugnatae . . . Urbis_, 1637),
who claims to speak as an eye-witness (p. 2), describes "Borbonius" as
"insignemque veste et armis" (p. 62). ]

[do] _'Tis the morning--Hark! Hark! Hark! _--[MS. ]

[239] {512} Scipio, the second Africanus, is said to have repeated a
verse of Homer [_Iliad_, vi. 448], and wept over the burning of Carthage
[B. C. 146]. He had better have granted it a capitulation.

[dp] _Than such victors should pollute_. --[MS. ]

[240] {514}[Byron retains or adopts the old-fashioned pronunciation of
the word "Rome" _metri gratia_. Compare _The Island_, Canto II. line
199. ]

[241] ["Le bouillant Bourbon, a la tete des plus intrepides assaillans
tenoit, de la main gauche une echelle appuyee centre le mur, et de la
droite faisoit signe a ses soldats de monter pour suivre leurs
camarades; en ce moment il recut dans le flanc une balle d'arquebuse qui
le traversa de part en part; il tomba a terre, mortellement blesse. On
rapporte qu'avant d'expirer il prononca ces mots: 'Officiers et soldats,
cacher ma mort a l'ennemi et marchez toujours en avant; la victoire est
a vous, mon trepas ne peut vous la ravir. '"--_Sac de Rome en 1527_, par
Jacques Buonaparte, 1836, p. 201. ]

[242] {515}["Quand il sentit le coup, se print a cryer: 'Jesus! ' et puis il
dist 'Helas! mon Dieu, je suis mort! ' Si prit son espee par la poignee
en signe de croix en disant tout hault, 'Miserere mei, Deus, secundum
magnam misericordiam tuam. '"--_Chronique de Bayart_, 1836, cap. lxiv. ,
p. 119. For his rebuke of Charles de Bourbon, "Ne me plaignez pas,"
etc. , _vide ante_, p. 499. ]

[243] ["'M. de Bourbon,' dit un contemporain, 'termina de vie par mort,
mais avant fist le devoir de bon, Chrestien; car il se confessa et recut
son Createur. "'--_De l'Italie_, par Emile Gebhart, 1876, p. 256. ]

[244] {516}["While I was at work upon that diabolical task of mine,
there came, from time to time, to watch me, some of the Cardinals who
were invested in the castle; and most frequently the Cardinal of Ravenna
and the Cardinal de' Gaddi. I often told them not to show themselves,
since their nasty red caps gave a fair mark for the enemy. "--_Life of
Benvenuto Cellini_, translated by J. A. Symonds, 1888, i. 112. See, too,
for the flight of the Cardinals, _Sac de Rome_, par Jacques Buonaparte,
Paris, 1836, p. 203. ]

[dq] {517} _Covered with gore and glory--those good times_. --[MS. ]

[245] ["Directing my arquebuse where I saw the thickest and most serried
troop of fighting men, I aimed exactly at one whom I remarked to be
higher than the rest; the fog prevented me from being certain whether he
was on horseback or on foot. Then I turned to Alessandro and Cecchino,
and bade them discharge their arquebuses, showing them how to avoid
being hit by the besiegers. When we had fired two rounds apiece, I crept
cautiously up to the walls, and observing a most extraordinary
confusion, I discovered afterwards that one of our shots had killed the
Constable of Bourbon; and from what I subsequently learned he was the
man whom I had first noticed above the heads of the rest. " It is a fact
"that Bourbon was shot dead near the spot Cellini mentions. But the
honour of flying the arquebuse . . . cannot be assigned to any one in
particular. "--_Life of Benvenuto Cellini_, 1888, i. 114, and note. ]

[246] {519}[Compare _Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte_, stanza vi. line 2,
_Poetical Works_, 1900, in. 307, note 3. ]

[dr]

_'Tis the moment_
_When such I fain would show me_. --[MS. ]

[247] {520}[Among the Imperial troops which Charles de Bourbon led
against Rome were at least six thousand Landsknechts, ardent converts to
the Reformed religion, and eager to prove their zeal by the slaughter of
Catholics and the destruction of altars and crucifixes. Their leader,
George Frundsberg, had set out for Rome with the pious intention of
hanging the Pope (see _The Popes of Rome_, by Leopold Ranke, translated
by Sarah Austen, 1866, i. 72). Brantome (_Memoirs de Messire Pierre de
Bourdeille_. . . . Leyde, 1722, i. 230) gives a vivid picture of their
fanatical savagery: "Leur cruaute ne s'estendit pas seulement sur les
personnes, mais sur les marbres et les anciennes statues. Les
Lansquenets, qui nouvellement estoient imbus de la nouvelle Religion, et
les Espagnols encore aussi bien que les autres, s'habilloient en
Cardinaux et evesques en leur habits Pontificaux et se pourmenoient
ainsi parray la Ville. "

In the Schmalkald articles, 1530, the pious belief that the Pope was
Antichrist became an article of the Lutheran creed. Compare the
following extracts, quoted by Hans Schultz in _Der Sacco di Roma_, 1894,
p. 63, from the _Historia von der Romischen Bischoff, etc. _, 1527:

"Der Papst ist fur den Verfasser der Antichrist, der durch Lug und Trug
seine Herrschaft in der Welt behauptet. "

"Quant a l'armee imperiale, on n'en vit jamais de plus etonnante. . . .
Allemands et Espagnols, lutheriens iconoclastes qui brulaient les
eglises, ou furieux mystiques qui brulaient Juils et Maures, barbares
plus raffines que _leur vieux ancetres les Visigoths, les Vandales et
les Huns_, ils frappaient l'Italie d'une terreur sans exemple. "--_De
I'italie_, by E. Gebliart, chap. vii. , "Le Sac de Rome en 1527," p.
245. ]

[ds]

_Hush! don't let him hear you_
_Or he might take you off before your time_. --[MS. ]

[248] {521}["We got with the greatest difficulty to the gate of the
castle. . . . I ascended to the keep, and, at the same instant, Pope
Clement came in through the corridors into the castle; he had refused to
leave the palace of St. Peter earlier, being unable to believe that his
enemies would effect their entrance into Rome. "--_Life of Benvenuto
Cellini_, translated by J. A. Symonds, 1888, i. 114, 115.

So, too, Jacques Buonaparte (_Le Sac de Rome_, 1836, p. 202): "Le Pape
Clement, avoit entendu les cris des soldats; il se sauvoit
precipitamment par un long corridor pratique dans un mur double et se
laissoit emporter de son palais an chateau Saint-Ange. "]

[249] {526}[Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons, was slain by Achilles,
who wept over her as she lay a-dying, bewailing her beauty and her
daring. For the picture, see Pausanias, _Descriptio Graeciae_, lib, v.
cap. 11, 2. ]

[250] {527}[See _Gen_. vi. 2, the motto of _Heaven and Earth, ante_, p,
277. ]

[251] ["It came to pass the same day, that in Echatane a city of Media,
Sara the daughter of Raguel was also reproached by her father's maids;
because that she had been married to seven husbands, whom Asmodeus the
evil spirit had killed before they had lain with her. . . . And as he went,
he remembered the words of Raphael, and took the ashes of the perfumes,
and put the heart and the liver of the fish thereupon, and made smoke
therewith. The which smell when the evil spirit had smelled, he fled
into the utmost parts of Egypt. "--_Tobit_ iii. 7, 8; viii. 2, 3. ]

[dt] {528} _The first born who burst the winter sun_. --[MS. ]

[du] ----_through the brine_. --[MS. ]

[252] {533}[Lucifer or Mephistopheles, renamed Caesar, wears the shape of
the Deformed Arnold. It may be that Byron intended to make Olimpia
bestow her affections, not on the glorious Achilles, but the witty and
interesting Hunchback. ]




THE AGE OF BRONZE;

OR,

CARMEN SECULARE ET ANNUS HAUD MIRABILIS. [dv]

"Impar _Congressus_ Achilli. "[253]




INTRODUCTION TO _THE AGE OF BRONZE_.


_The Age of Bronze_ was begun in December, 1822, and finished on January
10, 1823. "I have sent," he writes (letter to Leigh Hunt, _Letters_,
1901, vi. 160), "to Mrs. S[helley], for the benefit of being copied, a
poem of about seven hundred and fifty lines length--The Age of
Bronze,--or _Carmen Seculare et Annus haud Mirabilis_, with this
Epigraph--'Impar _Congressus_ Achilli. ' It is calculated for the reading
part of the million, being all on politics, etc. , etc. , etc. , and a
review of the day in general,--in my early _English Bards_ style, but a
little more stilted, and somewhat too full of 'epithets of war' and
classical and historical allusions. If notes are necessary, they can be
added. "

On March 5th he forwarded the "Proof in Slips" ("and certainly the
_Slips_ are the most conspicuous part of it") to his new publisher, John
Hunt; and, on April 1, 1823, _The Age of Bronze_ was published, but not
with the author's name.

Ten years had gone by since he had published, only to disclaim, the
latest of his boyish satires, _The Waltz_, and more than six years since
he had written, "at the request of Douglas Kinnaird," the stilted and
laboured _Monody on the Death of . . . Sheridan_. In the interval
(1816-1822) he had essayed any and every measure but the heroic, and, at
length, as a tardy recognition of his allegiance to "the great moral
poet of all times, of all climes, of all feelings, and of all stages of
existence" (_Observations upon "Observations,"_ _Letters_, 1901, v.
590), he reverts, as he believes, to his "early _English Bards_ style,"
the style of Pope.

The brazen age, the "Annus Haud Mirabilis," which the satirist would
hold up to scorn, was 1822, the year after Napoleon's death, which
witnessed a revolution in Spain, and the Congress of Allied Sovereigns
at Verona.