[ [62] {48}[Compare—
"But here [i.e. in 'the realm of death'] all is
So shadowy and so full of twilight, that
It speaks of a day past."
Cain, act ii. sc. 2.
[ [63] ["Selected," that is, by "frequent travellers" (vide supra, [line 12]).]
——then most pleased, I shook
My inmost pocket's most retired nook,
And out fell five and sixpence.—[MS.]
[ [64] [Byron was a lover and worshipper of Prometheus as a boy. His first English exercise at Harrow was a paraphrase of a chorus of the Prometheus Vinctus of Æschylus, line 528, sq. (see Poetical Works, 1898, i. 14). Referring to a criticism on Manfred (Edinburgh Review, vol xxviii. p. 431) he writes (October 12, 1817, Letters, 1900, iv. 174): "The Prometheus, if not exactly in my plan, has always been so much in my head, that I can easily conceive its influence over all or any thing that I have written." The conception of an immortal sufferer at once beneficent and defiant, appealed alike to his passions and his convictions, and awoke a peculiar enthusiasm. His poems abound with allusions to the hero and the legend. Compare the first draft of stanza xvi. of the Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte (Poetical Works, 1900, iii. 312, var. ii.); The Prophecy of Dante, iv. 10, seq.; the Irish Avatar, stanza xii. line 2, etc.]
[ [65] {49}[Compare—
Τοιαῦτ' ἐπηύρου τοῦ φιλανθρώπου τρόπου
P. V., line 28.