[81] ["Parnassus ... is distinguished from all other Greek mountains by its mighty mass. This, with its vast buttresses, almost fills up the rest of the country" (Geography of Greece, by H.F. Tozer, 1873, p. 226).]
[82] [{63}] [In his first letter from Spain (to F. Hodgson, August 6, 1809) Byron exclaims, "Cadiz, sweet Cadiz!—it is the first spot in the creation ... Cadiz is a complete Cythera." See, too, letter to Mrs. Byron, August 11, 1809 (Letters, 1898, i. 234, 239).]
While boyish blood boils gaily, who can 'scape
The lurking lures of thy enchanting gaze.—[MS. erased.]
[83] [{64}] [It must not be supposed that the "thousand altars" of Cadiz correspond with and are in contrast to the "one dome" of Paphos. The point is that where Venus fixes her shrine, at Paphos or at Cadiz, altars blaze and worshippers abound (compare Æneid, i. 415-417)—
"Ipsa Paphum sublimis abit, sedesque revisit
Læta suas, ubi templum illi, centumque Sabæo
Ture calent aræ.">[
[84] [Compare Milton's Paradise Lost, i.—
... from morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve.]
[85] [It was seldom that Byron's memory played him false, but here a vague recollection of a Shakespearian phrase has beguiled him into a blunder. He is thinking of Hamlet's jibe on the corruption of manners, "The age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe" (act v. sc. 1, line 150), and he forgets that a kibe is not a heel or a part of a heel, but a chilblain.]