[385] The consul Nero, who made the unequalled march which deceived Hannibal, and defeated Asdrubal; thereby accomplishing an achievement almost unrivalled in military annals. The first intelligence of his return, to Hannibal, was the sight of Asdrubal's head thrown into his camp. When Hannibal saw this, he exclaimed with a sigh, that "Rome would now be the mistress of the world." And yet to this victory of Nero's it might be owing that his imperial namesake reigned at all. But the infamy of one has eclipsed the glory of the other. When the name of "Nero" is heard, who thinks of the consul?—But such are human things! [For Hannibal's cry of despair, "Agnoscere se fortunam Carthaginis!" see Livy, lib. xxvii. cap. li. s.f.]
[fm] Tyrant or hero—patriot or a chief.—[MS. erased.]
[386] [Compare Childe Harold, Canto II. stanza v. line i, see Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 102, and 99, note 1.]
[387] {609}[Toobo Neuha is the name of a Tongan chieftain. See Mariner's Account, etc., 1817, 141, sq.]
[388] When very young, about eight years of age, after an attack of the scarlet fever at Aberdeen, I was removed by medical advice into the Highlands. Here I passed occasionally some summers, and from this period I date my love of mountainous countries. I can never forget the effect, a few years afterwards, in England, of the only thing I had long seen, even in miniature, of a mountain, in the Malvern Hills. After I returned to Cheltenham, I used to watch them every afternoon, at sunset, with a sensation which I cannot describe. This was boyish enough: but I was then only thirteen years of age, and it was in the holidays. [Byron spent his summer holidays, 1796-98, at the farm-house of Ballatrich, on Deeside. (See Poetical Works, 1898, i. 192, note 2. For his visit to Cheltenham, in the summer of 1801, see Life, pp. 8, 19.)
[389] {610}[For the eagle's beak, see Childe Harold, Canto III. stanza xviii. line 6, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 226, note 1.]
[390] {611}[Compare Macbeth, act ii. sc. 4, line 13.]
[391] [Compare—"The never-merry clock," Werner, [act iii. sc. 3, line 3].]
[fn] Which knolls the knell of moments out of man.—[MS. D. erased.]
[392] {612} The now well-known story of the loves of the nightingale and rose need not be more than alluded to, being sufficiently familiar to the Western as to the Eastern reader. [Compare Werner, [act iv. sc. 1, lines 380-382]; and The Giaour, lines 21, 33.]