Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 2.djvu/402

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CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE.
[CANTO IV.

XLI.

The lightning rent from Ariosto's bustN11
The iron crown of laurel's mimicked leaves;
Nor was the ominous element unjust,
For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weavesN12
Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves,
And the false semblance but disgraced his brow;
Yet still, if fondly Superstition grieves,
Know, that the lightning sanctifies belowN13
Whate'er it strikes;—yon head is doubly sacred now.


    the Life, etc., 1871, pp. 12, 747); but the parallel had suggested itself. The key-note of "the harpings of the north," the chivalrous strain of "shield, lance, and brand, and plume and scarf," of "gentle courtesy," of "valour, lion-mettled lord," which the "Introduction to Marmion" preludes, had been already struck in the opening lines of the Orlando Furioso

    "Le Donne, i Cavaliér', l'arme, gli amori,
    Le cortesíe, l'audaci imprese io canto."

    Scott, we may be assured, was neither disconcerted nor uplifted by the parallel. Many years before (July 6, 1812), Byron had been at pains to inform him that so august a critic as the Prince Regent "preferred you to every bard past and present," and "spoke alternately of Homer and yourself" Of the "placing" and unplacing of poets there is no end. Byron had already been sharply rebuked by the Edinburgh Review for describing Christabel as a "wild and singularly original and beautiful poem," and his appreciation of Scott provoked the expostulation of a friendlier critic. "Walter Scott," wrote Francis Hodgson, in his anonymous Monitor of Childe Harold (1818), "(credite posteri, or rather præposteri), is designated in the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold as 'the Northern Ariosto,' and (droller still) Ariosto is denominated 'the Southern Scott.' This comes of mistaking horse-chestnuts for chestnut horses."]