Canto IV LIV

E. H. Coleridge's notes to Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, The Works of Lord Byron, Poetry vol. II (John Murray, 1899; Project Gutenberg #25340). Bracketed passages are the editor's; unbracketed are Byron's own (Cantos I-III) or John Cam Hobhouse's (Canto IV, his 'Historical Notes'). Digit footnotes ('[17]') are informational and numbered continuously through the whole book; end-notes keyed '[n.B.]' (Byron) or '[n.H.]' (Hobhouse) follow each canto and are numbered afresh from 1 there. Both kinds are placed here by matching each note's own quoted words against the site's text, not by the number or stanza the note states, because the site's text (Gutenberg #5131) and this edition (#25340) are different editions with different stanza counts in Canto I. Lettered footnotes ('[h]', '[dn]') are manuscript and edition variant readings and are not harvested, matching the treatment of Don Juan's and byron-works-3's lettered notes.

1. Stanza 1, line 1 [As the immortals, for love's sake, divest themselves of their godhead, so do mortals, in the ecstasy of passion, recognize in the object of their love the incarnate presence of deity. Love, like music, can raise a "mortal to the skies" and "bring an angel down." In this stanza there is, perhaps, an intentional obscurity in the confusion of ideas, which are "thrown out" for the reader to shape for himself as he will or can.]
2. Stanza 3, line 1 ["The church of Santa Croce contains much illustrious nothing. The tombs of Macchiavelli, Michael Angelo, Galileo Galilei, and Alfieri make it the Westminster Abbey of Italy" (Letter to Murray, April 26, 1817). Michael Angelo, Alfieri, and Macchiavelli are buried in the south aisle of the church; Galileo, who was first buried within the convent, now rests with his favourite pupil, Vincenzo Viviani, in a vault in the south aisle. Canova's monument to Alfieri was erected at the expense of his so-called widow, Louise, born von Stolberg, and (1772-78) consort of Prince Charles Edward.]
3. Stanza 3, line 1 This name will recall the memory, not only of those whose tombs have raised the Santa Croce into the centre of pilgrimage--the Mecca of Italy--but of her whose eloquence was poured over the illustrious ashes, and whose voice is now as mute as those she sung. Corinna is no more; and with her should expire the fear, the flattery, and the envy, which threw too dazzling or too dark a cloud round the march of genius, and forbad the steady gaze of disinterested criticism. We have her picture embellished or distorted, as friendship or detraction has held the pencil: the impartial portrait was hardly to be expected from a contemporary. The immediate voice of her survivors will, it is probable, be far from affording a just estimate of her singular capacity. The gallantry, the love of wonder, and the hope of associated fame, which blunted the edge of censure, must cease to exist.--The dead have no sex; they can surprise by no new miracles; they can confer no privilege: Corinna has ceased to be a woman--she is only an author; and it may be foreseen that many will repay themselves for former complaisance, by a severity to which the extravagance of previous praises may perhaps give the colour of truth. The latest posterity--for to the latest posterity they will assuredly descend--will have to pronounce upon her various productions; and the longer the vista through which they are seen, the more accurately minute will be the object, the more certain the justice, of the decision. She will enter into that existence in which the great writers of all ages and nations are, as it were, associated in a world of their own, and, from that superior sphere, shed their eternal influence for the control and consolation of mankind. But the individual will gradually disappear as the author is more distinctly seen; some one, therefore, of all those whom the charms of involuntary wit, and of easy hospitality, attracted within the friendly circles of Coppet, should rescue from oblivion those virtues which, although they are said to love the shade, are, in fact, more frequently chilled than excited by the domestic cares of private life. Some one should be found to portray the unaffected graces with which she adorned those dearer relationships, the performance of whose duties is rather discovered amongst the interior secrets, than seen in the outward management, of family intercourse; and which, indeed, it requires the delicacy of genuine affection to qualify for the eye of an indifferent s …
4. Stanza 3, line 6 Alfieri is the great name of this age. The Italians, without waiting for the hundred years, consider him as "a poet good in law."--His memory is the more dear to them because he is the bard of freedom; and because, as such, his tragedies can receive no countenance from any of their sovereigns. They are but very seldom, and but very few of them, allowed to be acted. It was observed by Cicero, that nowhere were the true opinions and feelings of the Romans so clearly shown as at the theatre. In the autumn of 1816, a celebrated improvisatore exhibited his talents at the Opera-house of Milan. The reading of the theses handed in for the subjects of his poetry was received by a very numerous audience, for the most part in silence, or with laughter; but when the assistant, unfolding one of the papers, exclaimed The apotheosis of Victor Alfieri, the whole theatre burst into a shout, and the applause was continued for some moments. The lot did not fall on Alfieri; and the Signor Sgricci had to pour forth his extemporary common-places on the bombardment of Algiers. The choice, indeed, is not left to accident quite so much as might be thought from a first view of the ceremony; and the police not only takes care to look at the papers beforehand, but, in case of any prudential afterthought, steps in to correct the blindness of chance. The proposal for deifying Alfieri was received with immediate enthusiasm, the rather because it was conjectured there would be no opportunity of carrying it into effect.
5. Stanza 3, line 7 [Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803) is one of numerous real and ideal personages with whom, as he tells us (Life, p. 644), Byron was wont to be compared. Moore perceives and dwells on the resemblance. A passage in Alfieri's autobiography (La Vie de V. A. ecrite par Lui-meme, Paris, 1809, p. 17) may have suggested the parallel--
   
   "Voici une esquisse du caractere que je manifestais dans les premieres annees de ma raison naissante. Taciturne et tranquille pour l'ordinaire, mais quelquefois extremement petulant et babillard, presque toujours dans les extremes, obstine et rebelle a la force, fort soumis aux avis qu'on me donnait avec amitie, contenu plutot par la crainte d'etre gronde que par toute autre chose, d'une timidite excessive, et inflexible quand on voulait me prendre a rebours."
   
   The resemblance, as Byron admits, "related merely to our apparent personal dispositions." Both were noble, both were poets, both were "patrician republicans," and both were lovers of pleasure as well as lovers and students of literature; but their works do not provoke comparison. "The quality of 'a narrow elevation' which [Matthew] Arnold finds in Alfieri," is not characteristic of the author of Childe Harold and Don Juan.
   
   Of this stanza, however, Alfieri's fine sonnet to Florence may have been the inspiration. I have Dr. Garnett's permission to cite the following lines of his admirable translation (Italian Literature, 1898, p. 321):--
   
   "Was Angelo born here? and he who wove Love's charm with sorcery of Tuscan tongue, Indissolubly blent? and he whose song Laid bare the world below to world above? And he who from the lonely valley clove The azure height and trod the stars among? And he whose searching mind the monarch's wrong, Fount of the people's misery did prove?"]
6. Stanza 3, line 9 The affectation of simplicity in sepulchral inscriptions, which so often leaves us uncertain whether the structure before us is an actual depository, or a cenotaph, or a simple memorial not of death but life, has given to the tomb of Machiavelli no information as to the place or time of the birth or death, the age or parentage, of the historian.
   
   TANTO NOMINI NVLLVM PAR ELOGIVM NICCOLAVS MACHIAVELLI.
   
   There seems at least no reason why the name should not have been put above the sentence which alludes to it.
   
   It will readily be imagined that the prejudices which have passed the name of Machiavelli into an epithet proverbial of iniquity exist no longer at Florence. His memory was persecuted, as his life had been, for an attachment to liberty incompatible with the new system of despotism, which succeeded the fall of the free governments of Italy. He was put to the torture for being a "libertine," that is, for wishing to restore the republic of Florence; and such are the undying efforts of those who are interested in the perversion, not only of the nature of actions, but the meaning of words, that what was once patriotism, has by degrees come to signify debauch. We have ourselves outlived the old meaning of "liberality," which is now another word for treason in one country and for infatuation in all. It seems to have been a strange mistake to accuse the author of The Prince, as being a pander to tyranny; and to think that the Inquisition would condemn his work for such a delinquency. The fact is, that Machiavelli, as is usual with those against whom no crime can be proved, was suspected of and charged with atheism; and the first and last most violent opposers of The Prince were both Jesuits, one of whom persuaded the Inquisition "benche fosse tardo," to prohibit the treatise, and the other qualified the secretary of the Florentine republic as no better than a fool. The father Possevin was proved never to have read the book, and the father Lucchesini not to have understood it. It is clear, however, that such critics must have objected not to the slavery of the doctrines, but to the supposed tendency of a lesson which shows how distinct are the interests of a monarch from the happiness of mankind. The Jesuits are re-established in Italy, and the last chapter of The Prince may again call forth a particular refutation from those who are employed once more in moulding the minds of the rising generation, so as to …