What though she share no more, and shared in vain,
A sway surpassing that of Charlemagne,
Which swept from Moscow to the southern seas!
Yet still she rules the pastoral realm of cheese,
Where Parma views the traveller resort,
To note the trappings of her mimic court.
But she appears! Verona sees her shorn

Of all her beams-while nations gaze and mourn-
Ere yet her husband's ashes have had time
To chill in their inhospitable clime;

(If e'er those awful ashes can grow cold ;--
But no, their embers soon will burst the mould ;)
She comes !--the Andromache (but not Racine's,
Nor Homer's,)-Lo! on Pyrrhus' arm1 she leans!
Yes! the right arm, yet red from Waterloo,
Which cut her lord's half-shattered sceptre through,
Is offered and accepted? Could a slave
Do more? or less ?-and he in his new grave!
Her eye-her cheek-betray no inward strife,
And the Ex-Empress grows as Ex a wife!
So much for human ties in royal breasts!

Why spare men's feelings, when their own are jests?

XVIII.

But, tired of foreign follies, I turn home,

And sketch the group-the picture 's yet to come.

i. She comes the Andromache of Europe's Queens,

And led by Pyrrhus' arm on which she leans.-[MS. M.]

"

44

750

760

1. [La Quotidienne of December 4, 1822, has a satirical reference to a passage in the Courrier, which attached a diplomatic importance to the "galanterie respectueuse que le duc de Wellington aurait faite à cette jeune Princesse." We read, too, of another victorious foe, the King of Prussia, giving "la main à l'archduchesse Marie-Louise jusqu'à son carrosse (Le Constitutionnel, November 19, 1822). All the world wondered" what Andromache did, and how she would faredans ce galère. It is difficult to explain the allusion to Pyrrhus. Andromache was the unwilling bride of Pyrrhus or Neoptolemus, whose father had slain her husband, Hector; Marie Louise the willing bride of Neipperg, who had certainly fought at Leipsic, but who could not be said to have given the final blow to Napoleon at Waterloo. Pyrrhus must stand for the victorious foe, and the right arm on which the too-forgiving Andromache leant, must have been offered by "the respectful gallantry" of the Duke of Wellington.]

VOL. V.

2 P

My Muse 'gan weep, but, ere a tear was spilt,
She caught Sir William Curtis in a kilt!1
While thronged the chiefs of every Highland clan
To hail their brother, Vich Ian Alderman !
Guildhall grows Gael, and echoes with Erse roar,
While all the Common Council cry "Claymore!
To see proud Albyn's tartans as a belt
Gird the gross sirloin of a city Celt,
She burst into a laughter so extreme,

That I awoke-and lo! it was no dream!

770

Here, reader, will we pause :-if there's no harm in This first-you'll have, perhaps, a second "Carmen."

B. Jn 10th 1823.

1. [Sir William Curtis (1752-1805), maker of sea biscuits at Wapping, was M.P. for the City of London 1790-1818, Lord Mayor 1795-6. George IV. affected his society, visited him at Ramsgate, and sailed with him in his gorgeously appointed yacht. When the king visited Scotland in August, 1822, Curtis followed in his train. On first landing at Leith, "Sir William Curtis, who had celtified himself on the occasion, marched joyously in his scanty longitude of kilt." At the Levee, August 17, "Sir William Curtis again appeared in the Royal tartan, but he had forsaken the philabeg and addicted himself to the trews" (Morning Chronicle, August 19, 20, 1822). "The Fat Knight" was seventy years of age, and there was much joking at his expense. See, for instance, some lines in Hudibrastic measure," Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 92, Part II. p. 606

"

And who is he, that sleek and smart one
Pot-bellied pyramid of Tartan?

So mountainous in pinguitude,

Ponderibus librata SUIS,

He stands like pig of lead, so true is.
That his abdomen throws alone
A Body-guard around the Throne !"}

2. [Lines 771, 772 are not in the MS.]

THE ISLAND;

OR,

CHRISTIAN AND HIS COMRADES.

INTRODUCTION TO THE ISLAND.

THE first canto of The Island was finished January 10, 1823, We know that Byron was still at work on "the poeshie," January 25 (Letters, 1901, vi. 164), and may reasonably conjecture that a somewhat illegible date affixed to the fourth canto, stands for February 14, 1823. The MS. had been received in London before April 9 (ibid., p. 192); and on June 26, 1823, The Island; or, The Adventures of Christian and his Comrades, was published by John Hunt.

Byron's "Advertisement," or note, prefixed to The Island contains all that need be said with regard to the sources of the poem.

Two separate works were consulted: (1) A Narrative of the Mutiny on board His Majesty's Ship Bounty, and the subsequent Voyage of... the Ship's Boat from Tofoa, one of the Friendly Islands, to Timor, a Dutch Settlement in the East Indies, written by Lieutenant William Bligh, 1790; and (2) An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands, Compiled and Arranged from the Extensive Communications of Mr. William Mariner, by John Martin, M.D., 1817.

According to George Clinton (Life and Writings of Lord Byron, 1824, p. 656), Byron was profoundly impressed by Mariner's report of the scenery and folklore of the Friendly Islands, was "never tired of talking of it to his friends," and, in order to turn this poetic material to account, finally bethought him that Bligh's Narrative of the mutiny of the Bounty would serve as a framework or structure "for an embroidery of rare device"-the figures and foliage of a tropical pattern. That, at least, is the substance of Clinton's analysis of the "sources" of The Island, and whether he spoke, or only feigned to speak, with authority, his criticism is sound and to the point. The story of the mutiny of the Bounty, which is faithfully related in the first canto, is not, as the second title implies, a prelude to the "Adventures of Christian and his Comrades," but to a description of "The Island," an Ogygia of the South Seas.

It must be borne in mind that Byron's acquaintance with