Scott, in the "tenderest strain" of Virgilian melody—
"I decus, i nostrum, melioribus utere fatis!"
Note on MSS. of the Third Canto.
[The following memorandum, in Byron's handwriting, is prefixed to the Transcription:—
"This copy is to be printed from—subject to comparison with the original MS. (from which this is a transcription) in such parts as it may chance to be difficult to decypher in the following. The notes in this copy are more complete and extended than in the former—and there is also one stanza more inserted and added to this, viz. the 33d. B.
Byron. July l0th, 1816.
The "original MS." to which the memorandum refers is not forthcoming (vide ante, p. 212), but the "scraps" (MS.) are now in Mr. Murray's possession. Stanzas i.-iii., and the lines beginning, "The castled Crag of Drachenfels," are missing.
Claire's Transcription (C.) occupies the first 119 pages of a substantial quarto volume. Stanzas xxxiii. and xcix.-cv. and several of the notes are in Byron's handwriting. The same volume contains Sonnet on Chillon, in Byron's handwriting; a transcription of the Prisoners (sic) of Chilion (so, too, the advertisement in the Morning Chronicle, October 29, 1816); Sonnet, "Rousseau," etc., in Byron's handwriting, and transcriptions of Stanzas to ——, "Though the day of my destiny's over;" Darkness; Churchill's Grave; The Dream; The Incantation (Manfred, act ii. sc. 1); and Prometheus.]
