Manfred (With Byron's Biography). Lord ByronЧитать онлайн книгу.
climbing moon."
134 [Compare Childe Harold, Canto II. stanzas v.-xi.]
135 The philosopher Jamblicus. The story of the raising of Eros and Anteros may be found in his life by Eunapius. It is well told. ["It is reported of him," says Eunapius, "that while he and his scholars were bathing in the hot baths of Gadara, in Syria, a dispute arising concerning the baths, he, smiling, ordered his disciples to ask the inhabitants by what names the two lesser springs, that were fairer than the rest, were called. To which the inhabitants replied, that 'the one was called Love, and the other Love's Contrary, but for what reason they knew not.' Upon which Iamblichus, who chanced to be sitting on the fountain's edge where the stream flowed out, put his hand on the water, and, having uttered a few words, called up from the depths of the fountain a fair-skinned lad, not over-tall, whose golden locks fell in sunny curls over his breast and back, so that he looked like one fresh from the bath; and then, going to the other spring, and doing as he had done before, called up another Amoretto like the first, save that his long-flowing locks now seemed black, now shot with sunny gleams. Whereupon both the Amoretti nestled and clung round Iamblichus as if they had been his own children ... after this his disciples asked him no more questions."—Eunapii Sardiani Vitæ Philosophorum et Sophistarum (28, 29), Philostratorum, etc., Opera, Paris, 1829, p. 459, lines 20-50.]
136 [There may be some allusion here to "the squall off Meillerie" on the Lake of Geneva (see Letter to Murray, June 27, 1816, Letters, 1899, iii. 333).]
137 [Compare the concluding sentence of the Journal in Switzerland (ibid., p. 364).]
az And live—and live for ever.—[Specimen sheet.]
ba As from a bath—.—[MS, erased.]
138 The story of Pausanias, king of Sparta, (who commanded the Greeks at the battle of Platea, and afterwards perished for an attempt to betray the Lacedæmonians), and Cleonice, is told in Plutarch's life of Cimon; and in the Laconics of Pausanias the sophist in his description of Greece.
[The following is the passage from Plutarch: "It is related that when Pausanias was at Byzantium, he cast his eyes upon a young virgin named Cleonice, of a noble family there, and insisted on having her for a mistress. The parents, intimidated by his power, were under the hard necessity of giving up their daughter. The young woman begged that the light might be taken out of his apartment, that she might go to his bed in secresy and silence. When she entered he was asleep, and she unfortunately stumbled upon the candlestick, and threw it down. The noise waked him suddenly, and he, in his confusion, thinking it was an enemy coming to assassinate him, unsheathed a dagger that lay by him, and plunged it into the virgin's heart. After this he could never rest. Her image appeared to him every night, and with a menacing tone repeated this heroic verse—
'Go to the fate which pride and lust prepare!'
The allies, highly incensed at this infamous action, joined Cimon to besiege him in Byzantium. But he found means to escape thence; and, as he was still haunted by the spectre, he is said to have applied to a temple at Heraclea, where the manes of the dead were consulted. There he invoked the spirit of Cleonice, and entreated her pardon. She appeared, and told him 'he would soon be delivered from all his troubles, after his return to Sparta:' in which, it seems, his death was enigmatically foretold." "Thus," adds the translator in a note, "we find that it was a custom in the pagan as well as in the Hebrew theology to conjure up the spirits of the dead, and that the witch of Endor was not the only witch in the world."—Langhorne's Plutarch, 1838, p. 339.
The same story is told in the Periegesis Græcæ, lib. iii. cap. xvii., but Pausanias adds, "This was the deed from the guilt of which Pausanias could never fly, though he employed all-various purifications, received the deprecations of Jupiter Phyxius, and went to Phigalea to the Arcadian evocators of souls."—Descr. of Greece (translated by T. Taylor), 1794, i. 304, 305.]
139 [Compare—
"But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear
Her never-trodden snow."
Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanza lxxiii. lines 6, 7.
Byron did not know, or ignored, the fact that the Jungfrau was first ascended in 1811, by the brothers Meyer, of Aarau.]
140 [Compare—
"And who commanded (and the silence came)
Here let the billows stiffen and have rest?
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts."
Hymn before Sunrise, etc., by S.T. Coleridge, lines 47, 48, 53.
"Arrived at the Grindenwald; dined, mounted again, and rode to the higher Glacier—twilight, but distinct—very fine Glacier, like a frozen hurricane" (Letters, 1899, iii. 360).]
141 [The idea of the Witches' Festival may have been derived from the Walpurgisnacht on the Brocken.]
142 [Compare—
"Freedom ne'er shall want an heir;
When once more her hosts assemble,
Tyrants shall believe and tremble—
Smile they at this idle threat?
Crimson tears will follow yet."
Ode from the French, v. 8, 11-14. Poetical Works, 1900, iii. 435.
Compare, too, Napoleon's Farewell, stanza 3, ibid., p. 428. The "Voice" prophesies that St. Helena will prove a second Elba, and that Napoleon will "live to fight another day."]
143 [Byron may have had in his mind Thomas Lord Cochrane (1775-1860), "who had done brilliant service in his successive commands—the Speedy, Pallas, Impérieuse, and the flotilla of fire-ships at Basque Roads in 1809." In his Diary, March 10, 1814, he speaks of him as "the stock-jobbing hoaxer" (Letters, 1898, ii. 396, note 1).]
144 [Arimanes, the Aherman of Vathek, the Arimanius of Greek and Latin writers, is the Ahriman (or Angra Mainyu, "who is all death," the spirit of evil, the counter-creator) of the Zend-Avesta, "Fargard," i. 5 (translated by James Darmesteter, 1895, p. 4). Byron may have got the form Arimanius (vide Steph., Thesaurus) from D'Herbelot, and changed it to Arimanes.]
145 [The "formidable Eblis" sat on a globe of fire—"in his hand ... he swayed the iron sceptre that causes ... all the powers of the abyss to tremble."—Vathek, by William Beckford, 1887, p. 178.]
bb The comets herald through the burning skies.—[Alternative reading in MS.]