NOTES TO MELPOMENE.

NOTE 1, Stanza IV., p. 154.

"Sorrow appeareth in full many a shape,

And none are skilled to tell the whence or why

Such tears are shed-such moans the heart escape."

It has been the fate of most authors of fiction, to be identified with their heroes and heroines, or, in other words, to be charged with pouring forth the feelings of their own hearts through such proxies. This was peculiarly the case with poor L. E. L. "She sang of the sorrows of the beguiled, the disappointed, and the broken-hearted maiden; love foredoomed, love linked to woe, and fated to death; the hopelessness of hope, the reality of pain, the mockery of life; and consequently was considered by the prejudging mass to be the poor, disappointed, broken-hearted, forlorn damsel which she painted,” and was subjected to the illiberal cavil of self-constituted critics and envious competitors. No liberal and candid mind can doubt, for a moment, that the tender melancholy, and pensive breathings of L. F. L.'s writings arose entirely from sympathy, and a large capacity to enter into the miseries of others.

NOTE 2, Stanza IX., p. 156.

"Brave Ghibelline!"

Dante.

"It is said, that during his exile he wrote, or completed, in one hundred

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cantos, his immortal poem, the Divina Commedia.'"-Lives of the Eminent Men of Italy.

Tasso.

NOTE 3, Stanza X., p. 157.

"Thou next unrivalled son of Italy."

NOTE 4, Stanza XI.,

P. 157.

"And wove a wreath of immortality

While pent behind a dungeon's gloomy grate!"

Tasso wrote his great poem, or a part of it, "Gierusalemme Liberata,” in the dungeons of Ferrara, while confined there as a lunatic by his oppressor Alfonso.

Byron.

NOTE 5, Stanza XI., p. 157.

"Albion's sad son! who fledst her shores in hate."

Bishop Heber, Falconer,* and Miss Jewsbury.

Shelley and Keats.

NOTE 7, Stanza XIV., p. 159.

"Two hapless sons repose in Rome."

* Falconer was lost with the Aurora frigate, on, or not far from, the coast of India.

NOTE 8, Stanza XVII. p. 160.

"For since the burning Lesbian swept her lyre,

Gave love a language-built the Sapphic rhyme."

The Sapphic verse, so named from the poetess Sappho, who was the originator of it, consists of five feet; the first a trochee, the second a spondee, the third a dactyl, and the fourth and fifth trochees. Sappho accompanied every three of these verses with an Adonic (a measure used in lamenting the fate of Adonis), which consists of a dactyl and a spondee; and in this she has been imitated by Horace, Catullus, and others.

NOTE 9, Stanza XXVII., p. 164.

"On Afric's shore there is a lonely tomb."

At Cape Coast, in Western Africa.

NOTE 10, Stanza XXVIII., p. 165.

"Yes, there beneath the castle wall she lies."

"She sleeps in the barren sands of Africa, and the mournful music of the billows to which she listened in her solitary sea-girt dwelling, is now the dirge that resounds over her distant grave. She had herself predicted her own fate, though speaking in the character of another :

"Where my fathers' bones are lying,

There my bones will never lie.

Mine shall be a lonelier ending,

Mine shall be a wilder grave,

Where the shout and shriek are blending,
Where the tempests meet the wave;

Or perhaps a fate more lonely

In some drear and distant ward,

Where my weary eyes meet only
Hired nurse and sullen guard.'"

Fraser's Magazine for January, 1840.

NOTE 11, Stanza XXVIII. p. 165.

"And gleaming white her monument doth rise,

Greeting the traveller's eye."

"A handsome marble tablet is now, it appears, on its way to Cape Coast."-Blanchard.

NOTES TO DREAMS OF ITALY.

NOTE 1, Sect. VI., p. 189.

"Where cities thick in ruin lie."

"Between Terracina and Visterna on the road to Rome, a distance of thirty miles, once stood, it is said, twenty-three Volscian cities.

"Invasions of the Saracens, in the middle ages, aided the progress of destruction; and we have now to seek, amid unpeopled woods, noxious swamps, and pastures on which graze buffaloes, for the cities of Latinus, Turnus, and Eneas."-Spalding's History of Italy and the Italian Islands.

"There is no district in Latium," says Spalding, "more interesting than the region about the mouth of the Tiber, the scene of the last half of the Eneid. In the magic mirror of poetry, we behold here the glade of the Laurentine Forest, and tread with solemn pleasure those solitary woods and meadows, which the power of genius has peopled with heroic beauty. Here was the site of the classical Ostia, and Laurentum, the city of Father Latinus."

NOTE 3, Sect. VI., p. 190.

"Survey where PLINY's villa stood."

Castle Fusano, an old turreted mansion, situated on the Campagna, in a clump of tall pines, a little to the south of the swamp, has been fixed upon by most antiquaries as Pliny's villa.

NOTE 4, Sect. VI., p. 190.

"Where CICERO, LUCRETIA dwelt."

"Near the southern frontier of Latium, the columns and fragments of Cicero's paternal mansion lie scattered in the cloisters and kitchen-gardens of the little church and monastery of San Domenico Abate.

"The bank is still green, though less shady than when his pleasure-ground covered it; the seats on which he sat, with his brother and Atticus, have crumbled away; but the lofty poplars' may yet be found."

"Eleven miles from the modern gate, we should look for Collatia, the dwelling of Lucretia."—Spalding's History of Italy, &c.

NOTE 5, Sect. VII., p. 191.

"Or on the rock he often sought,
Near the old castle Tulmino,
Or midst the hills of Gubbio,
Moulding imperishable thought."

"In the district of Gubbio, according to the Latin inscription under a marble bust of him against a wall in one of the chambers, Dante is recorded to have written a considerable portion of the 'Divina Commedia.' Near the castle of Tulmino, a rock has been pointed out as a favorite resort of the inspired poet, while engaged in that marvellous and melancholy composition.

"There, nobly pensive, Dante sat and thought.'