Canto IV XXXIX

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 2, line 6 [Solerti (Vita, i. 418) combats the theory advanced by Hobhouse (see note x.), that Lionardo Salviati, in order to curry favour with Alphonso, was responsible for "the opposition which the Jerusalem encountered from the Cruscan Academy." He assigns their unfavourable criticism to literary sentiment or prejudice, and not to personal animosity or intrigue. The Gerusalemme Liberata was dedicated to the glory of the house of Este; and, though the poet was in disgrace, the duke was not to be propitiated by an attack upon the poem. Moreover, Salviati did not publish his theses in his own name, but under a nom de guerre, "L'Infarinato."]
2. Stanza 2, line 6 Perhaps the couplet in which Boileau depreciates Tasso may serve as well as any other specimen to justify the opinion given of the harmony of French verse--
   
   "A Malherbe, a Racan, prefere Theophile, Et le clinquant du Tasse a tout l'or de Virgile." Sat. ix. v. 176.
   
   The biographer Serassi, out of tenderness to the reputation either of the Italian or the French poet, is eager to observe that the satirist recanted or explained away this censure, and subsequently allowed the author of the Jerusalem to be "a genius sublime, vast, and happily born for the higher flights of poetry." To this we will add, that the recantation is far from satisfactory, when we examine the whole anecdote as reported by Olivet. The sentence pronounced against him by Bouhours is recorded only to the confusion of the critic, whose palinodia the Italian makes no effort to discover, and would not, perhaps, accept. As to the opposition which the Jerusalem encountered from the Cruscan academy, who degraded Tasso from all competition with Ariosto, below Bojardo and Pulci, the disgrace of such opposition must also in some measure be laid to the charge of Alfonso, and the court of Ferrara. For Leonard Salviati, the principal and nearly the sole origin of this attack, was, there can be no doubt, influenced by a hope to acquire the favour of the House of Este: an object which he thought attainable by exalting the reputation of a native poet at the expense of a rival, then a prisoner of state. The hopes and efforts of Salviati must serve to show the contemporary opinion as to the nature of the poet's imprisonment; and will fill up the measure of our indignation at the tyrant jailer. In fact, the antagonist of Tasso was not disappointed in the reception given to his criticism; he was called to the court of Ferrara, where, having endeavoured to heighten his claims to favour, by panegyrics on the family of his sovereign, he was in turn abandoned, and expired in neglected poverty. The opposition of the Cruscans was brought to a close in six years after the commencement of the controversy; and if the Academy owed its first renown to having almost opened with such a paradox, it is probable that, on the other hand, the care of his reputation alleviated rather than aggravated the imprisonment of the injured poet. The defence of his father and of himself, for both were involved in the censure of Salviati, found employment for many of his solitary hours, and …
3. Stanza 2, line 9 [Hobhouse, in his note x., quotes Boileau, but not in full. The passage runs thus--
   
   "Tous les jours, a la cour, un sot de qualite Peut juger de travers avec impunite, A Malherbe, a Racan, prefere Theophile, Et le clinquant du Tasse a tout l'or de Virgile."
   
   Perhaps he divined that the phrase, "un sot de qualite," might glance back on a "noble author," who was about to admit that he could not savour Horace, and who turned aside from Mantua and memories of Virgil to visit Ferrara and the "cell" where Tasso was "encaged." (See Darmesteter's Notes to Childe Harold, pp. 201, 217.)
   
   If "the Youth with brow serene," as Hugo calls him, had lived to read Dedain. A Lord Byron, en 1811, he would have passed a somewhat different criticism on French poetry in general--
   
   "En vain vos legions l'environnent sans nombre, Il n'a qu'a se lever pour couvrir de son ombre A la fois tous vos fronts; Il n'a qu'a dire un mot pour couvrir vos voix greles, Comme un char en passant couvre le bruit des ailes De mille moucherons!" Les Feuilles d'Automne, par Victor Hugo, Bruxelles, 1833, pp. 59, 63.]