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INTRODUCTION TO THE FOURTH CANTO.

THE first draft of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold, which embodies the original and normal conception of the poem, was the work of twenty-six days. On the 17th of June, 1817, Byron wrote to Murray: "You are out about the Third Canto: I have not done, nor designed, a line of continuation to that poem. I was too short a time at Rome for it, and have no thought of recommencing." But in spite of this assertion, "the numbers came," and on June 26 he made a beginning. Thirty stanzas " were roughened off" on the Ist of July, fifty-six were accomplished by the 9th, “ninety and eight" by the 15th, and on July 20 he announces "the completion of the fourth and ultimate canto of Childe Harold. It consists of 126 stanzas." One stanza (xl.) was appended to the fair copy. It suggested a parallel between Ariosto "the Southern Scott," and Scott "the Northern Ariosto," and excited some misgiving.

In commending his new poem to Murray (July 20, August 7), Byron notes three points in which it differed from its predecessors it is "the longest of the four;" "it treats more of works of art than of nature;" "there are no metaphysics in it—at least, I think not." In other words, "The Fourth Canto is not a continuation of the Third. I have parted company with Shelley and Wordsworth. Subject-matter and treatment are alike new."

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The poem as it stood was complete, and, as a poem, it lost as well as gained by the insertion of additional stanzas and groups of stanzas, "purple patch" on purple patch," each by itself so attractive and so splendid. The pilgrim finds himself at Venice, on the "Bridge of Sighs." He

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beholds in a vision the departed glories of "a thousand years." The "long array of shadows," the "beings of the mind," come to him "like truth," and repeople the vacancy. But he is an exile, and turns homeward in thought to "the inviolate island of the sage and free." He is an exile and a sufferer. He can and will endure his fate, but "ever and anon" he feels the prick of woe, and with the sympathy of despair would stand a ruin amidst ruins," a desolate soul in a land of desolation and decay. He renews his pilgrimage. He passes Arquà, where "they keep the dust of Laura's lover," lingers for a day at Ferrara, haunted by memories of "Torquato's injured shade," and, as he approaches "the fair white walls "of Florence, he re-echoes the " Italia! oh, Italia!" of Filicaja's impassioned strains. At Florence he gazes, "dazzled and drunk with beauty," at the "goddess in stone," the Medicean Venus, but forbears to describe the indescribable," to break the silence of Art by naming its mysteries. Santa Croce and the other glories "in Arno's dome of Art's most princely shrine," he passes by unsung, if not unseen; but Thrasymene's sheet of silver," the "living crystal" of Clitumnus" "gentlest waters," and Terni's "matchless cataract," on whose verge "an Iris sits," and "lone Soracte's ridge," not only call forth his spirit's homage, but receive the homage of his Muse.

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And now the Pilgrim has reached his goal, "Rome the wonderful," the sepulchre of empire, the shrine of art.

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Henceforth the works of man absorb his attention. Pompey's "dread statue;" the Wolf of the Capitol; the Tomb of Cecilia Metella; the Palatine; the "nameless column" of the Forum; Trajan's pillar; Egeria's Grotto; the ruined Colosseum, "arches on arches," an enormous skeleton," the Colosseum of the poet's vision, a multitudinous ring of spectators, a bloody Circus, and a dying Gladiator; the Pantheon; S. Nicola in Carcere, the scene of the Romana Caritas; St. Peter's "vast and wondrous dome," are all celebrated in due succession. Last of all, he “ turns to the Vatican," to view the Laocoon and the Apollo Belvidere, the counterfeit presentments of ideal suffering and ideal beauty. His "shrine is won;" but ere he bids us farewell he climbs the Alban Mount, and as the Mediterranean once

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more bursts upon his sight, he sums the moral of his arguMan and all his works are as a drop of rain in the Ocean, "the image of eternity, the throne of the Invisible"! Byron had no sooner completed "this fourth and ultimate canto," than he began to throw off additional stanzas. His letters to Murray during the autumn of 1817 announce these successive lengthenings; but it is impossible to trace the exact order of their composition. On the 7th of August the canto stood at 130 stanzas, on the 21st at 133; on the 4th of September at 144, on the 17th at 150; and by November 15 it had reached 167 stanzas. Of nineteen stanzas which were still to be added, six-on the death of the Princess Charlotte (died November 6, 1817)—were written at the beginning of December, and two stanzas (clxxvii., clxxviii.) were forwarded to Murray in the early spring of 1818.

Of these additions the most notable are four stanzas on Venice (including stanza xiii. on "The Horses of St. Mark"); "The sunset on the Brenta " (stanzas xxvii.-xxix.) ; The tombs in Santa Croce,-the apostrophe to "the all Etruscan three," Petrarch, Dante, Boccaccio (stanzas liv.-lx.); "Rome a chaos of ruins-antiquarian ignorance" (stanzas lxxx.-lxxxii.); "The nothingness of Man-the hope of the future-Freedom" (stanzas xciii.-xcviii.); "The Tarpeian Rock-the Forum-Rienzi" (stanzas cxii.-cxiv.); “Love, Life, and Reason" (stanzas cxx.-cxxvii.); "The Curse of Forgiveness" (stanzas cxxxv.-cxxxvii.); "The Mole of Hadrian" (stanza clii.); "The death of the Princess Charlotte" (stanzas clxvii.-clxxii.); "Nemi" (stanzas clxxiii., clxxiv.); "The Desert and one fair Spirit" (stanzas clxxvii., clxxviii.).

Some time during the month of December, 1817, Byron wrote out a fair copy of the entire canto, numbering 184 stanzas (MS. D.); and on January 7, 1818, Hobhouse left Venice for England, with the "whole of the MSS.," viz. Beppo (begun October, 1817), and the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold, together with a work of his own, a volume of essays on Italian literature, the antiquities of Rome, etc., which he had put together during his residence in Venice (JulyDecember, 1817), and proposed to publish as an appendix to Childe Harold. In his preface to Historical Illustrations,

etc., 1818, Hobhouse explains that on his return to England he considered that this "appendix to the Canto would be swelled to a disproportioned bulk," and that, under this impression, he determined to divide his material into two parts. The result was that "such only of the notes as were more immediately connected with the text " were printed as " Historical Notes to Canto the Fourth," and that his longer dissertations were published in a separate volume, under his own name, as Historical Illustrations to the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold. To these "Historical Notes" an interest attaches apart from any consideration of their own worth and importance; but to understand the relation between the poem and the notes, it is necessary to retrace the movements of the poet and his annotator.

Byron and Hobhouse left the Villa Diodati, October 5, 1816, crossed the Simplon, and made their way together, viû Milan and Verona, to Venice. Early in December the friends parted company. Byron remained at Venice, and Hobhouse proceeded to Rome, and for the next four months devoted himself to the study of Italian literature, in connection with archæology and art. Byron testifies (September 14, 1817) that his researches were "indefatigable," that he had "more real knowledge of Rome and its environs than any Englishman who has been there since Gibbon." Hobhouse left Rome for Naples, May 21; returned to Rome, June 9; arrived at Terni, July 2; and early in July joined Byron on the Brenta, at La Mira. The latter half of the year (July-December, 1817) was occupied in consulting 66 the best authorities" in the Ducal Library at Venice, with a view to perfecting his researches, and giving them to the world as an illustrative appendix to Childe Harold. It is certain that Byron had begun the fourth canto, and written some thirty or more stanzas, before Hobhouse rejoined him at his villa of La Mira on the banks of the Brenta, in July, 1817; and it would seem that, although he had begun by saying "that he was too short a time in Rome for it," he speedily overcame his misgivings, and accomplished, as he believed, the last "fytte " of his pilgrimage. The first draft was Byron's unaided composition, but the "additional stanzas were largely due to Hobhouse's suggestions in the course of

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