Microsoft Word Byron and Scott 1809-1824

136: Le Sage, Gil Blas, Book IX, Chapter IV; the river is in fact the Erêma. 
137: Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part I, Chapter XXVIII. 

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traffickers were the honourable of the earth,’
138
had long passed into a state of the third class, existing 
merely because not demolished, and ready to give way to the first impulse of outward force. The art of 
the Venetian rulers in stooping to their circumstances, and bending where they must otherwise have 
broken, could only protract this semblance of independence until the storm of the French Revolution 
destroyed Venice, among many other governments which had been respected by other conquerors from 
a reverence to antiquity, or from a regard for existing institutions, the very reverse of the principle 
which acutated the republican generals. It is surely vain to mourn for a nation which, if restored to 
independence, could not defend or support itself; and it would be worse than vain, were it possible, to 
restore the Signoria with all its oligarchical terrors of denunciation, and secret imprisonment, and 
judicial murder. What is to be wished for Italy, is the amalgamation of its various petty states into one 
independent and well-governed kingdom, capable of asserting and maintaining her place among the 
nations of Europe. To this desirable order of things nothing can be a stronger obstacle than the 
reinstatement of the various petty divisions of that fair country, each incapable of defending itself, hut 
ready to lend its aid to destroy its neighbours. 
Of Italy, in its present state, it is impossible to think or speak without recognizing the truth as well 
as the beauty of the following lines. 
XXVI. 
‘The commonwealth of kings, the men of Rome! 
And even since, and now, fair Italy! 
Thou art the garden of the world, and home 
Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree; 
Even in thy desart, what is like to thee? [p.224] 
Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste 
More rich than other climes’ fertility; 
Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced 
With an immaculate charm which cannot be defaced.’—p.1. 
Through these delightful regions the Pilgrim wanders, awakened by the flashes of his imagination 
that of the reader, as the face of the country suggests topics of moral interest, and reminds us 
alternately of the achievements of the great of former days, in arms and in literature, and as local 
description mingles itself with the most interesting topics of local history. Arqua, ‘the mountain where 
he died,’
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suggests the name of Petrarch; the deserted Ferrara the fame and the fate of Tasso fitly 
classed with Dante and Ariosto, the bards of Hell and Chivalry. Florence and its statues, Thrasimene 
and Clitumnus start up before us with their scenery and their recollections. Perhaps there are no verses 
in our language of happier descriptive power than the two stanzas which characterize the latter river. In 
general, poets find it so difficult to leave an interesting subject, that they injure the distinctness of the 
description by loading it so as to embarrass rather than excite the fancy of the reader; or else, to avoid 
that fault, they confine themselves to cold and abstract generalities. The author has in the following 
stanzas admirably steered his course between these extremes; while they present the outlines of a 
picture as pure and brilliant as those of Claude Lorraine, the task of filling up the more minute 
particulars is judiciously left to the imagination of the reader; and it must be dull indeed if it does not 
supply what the poet has left unsaid, or but generally and briefly intimated. While the eye glances over 
the lines, we seem to feel the refreshing coolness of the scene—we hear the bubbling tale of the more 
rapid streams, and see the slender proportions of the rural temple reflected in the crystal depth of the 
calm pool. 
LXVI. 
‘But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave 
Of the most living crystal that was e’er 
The haunt of river-nymph, to gaze and lave 
Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear 
Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer 
Grazes – the purest god of gentle waters! 
And most serene of aspect, and most clear; 
Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters, 
A mirror and a bath for Beauty’s youngest daughters! 
LXVII.