CANTO IV.]
CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE.
359
Each year brings forth its millions—but how long
The tide of Generations shall roll on,
And not the whole combined and countless throng
Compose a mind like thine? though all in one[1]
Condensed their scattered rays—they would not form a Sun.[2]
XL.
Great as thou art, yet paralleled by those,
Thy countrymen, before thee born to shine,
The Bards of Hell and Chivalry: first rose
The Tuscan Father's Comedy Divine;
Then, not unequal to the Florentine,
The southern Scott, the minstrel who called forth
A new creation with his magic line,
And, like the Ariosto of the North,[3]
Sang Ladye-love and War, Romance and Knightly Worth.
- ↑ Could mount into a mind like thine——.—[MS. M. erased.]
- ↑ ——they would not form the Sun.—[MS. M.]
- ↑ [In a letter to Murray (August 7, 1817) Byron throws out a hint that Scott might not like being called "the Ariosto of the North," and Murray seems to have caught at the suggestion. "With regard to 'the Ariosto of the North,'" rejoins Byron (September 17, 1817), "surely their themes, Chivalry, war, and love, were as like as can be; and as to the compliment, if you knew what the Italians think of Ariosto, you would not hesitate about that.... If you think Scott will dislike it, say so, and I will expunge." Byron did not know that when Scott was at college at Edinburgh he had "had the audacity to produce a composition in which he weighed Homer against Ariosto, and pronounced him wanting in the balance," or that he "made a practice of reading through ... the Orlando of Ariosto once every year" (see Memoirs of
