["O, who can hold a fire in his hand,

By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?"

Richard II., act i. sc. 3, lines 294, 295.]

[EI] Having had some experience in my youth.—[MS. erased.]

[258] ["Don Juan will be known, by and by, for what it is intended—a Satire on abuses in the present states of society, and not an eulogy of vice. It may be now and then voluptuous:—I can't help that. Ariosto is worse. Smollett (see Lord Strutwell in vol. 2nd of R[oderick] R[andom][1793, pp. 119-127]) ten times worse; and Fielding no better."—Letter to Murray, December 25, 1822, Letters, 1901, vi. 155, 156.]

[259] {211} [Vide ante, [p. 204, note 1]. "It seems hardly to admit of doubt, that the plain of Anatolia, watered by the Mender, and backed by a mountainous ridge, of which Kazdaghy is the summit, offers the precise territory alluded to by Homer. The long controversy, excited by Mr. Bryant's publication, and since so vehemently agitated, would probably never have existed, had it not been for the erroneous maps of the country which, even to this hour, disgrace our geographical knowledge of that part of Asia."—Travels, etc., by E.D. Clarke, 1812, Part II. sect, i. p. 78.]

[260] {212}The pillar which records the battle of Ravenna is about two miles from the city, on the opposite side of the river to the road towards Forli. Gaston de Foix [(1489-1512) Duc de Nemours, nephew of Louis XII.], who gained the battle, was killed in it: there fell on both sides twenty thousand men. The present state of the pillar and its site is described in the text.

[Beyond the Porta Sisi, about two miles from Ravenna, on the banks of the Ronco, is a square pillar (La Colonna de Francesi), erected in 1557 by Pietro Cesi, president of Romagna, as a memorial of the battle gained by the combined army of Louis XII. and the Duke of Ferrara over the troops of Julius II. and the King of Spain, April 11 1512.—Handbook of Northern Italy, p. 548.]

[261] [Compare Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanza lvii. line i, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 371, note i. See, too, Preface to the Prophecy of Dante, ibid., iv. 243.]

[EJ] Protects his tomb, but greater care is paid.—[MS.]