[62] Wordsworth himself, his nephew tells us, had no sense of smell (see the Memoirs, by his nephew Christopher, vol. ii. p. 322).—Ed.
[63] Afterwards Father Faber, priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri.—Ed.
[64] Monte Amiata,—Ed.
[65] On the old high road from Siena to Rome.—Ed.
[66] The mountain between Rydal Head and Helvellyn.—Ed.
[67] Seat Sandal is the mountain between Tongue Ghyll and Grisedale Tarn on the south and east, and the Dunmail Raise road on the west.—Ed.
[68] Compare The Eclipse of the Sun, l. 78, in “Memorials of a Tour on the Continent in 1820” (vol. vi. p. 345).—Ed.
[69] Keppelcove, Nethermost cove, and the cove in which Red Tarn lies bounded by the “skeleton arms” of Striding Edge and Swirrel Edge. Compare Fidelity, l. 17, vol. iii. p. 45—
Ed.
[70] Descending to Ullswater from Helvellyn, Greenside Fell and Mines are passed.—Ed.
[71] The Glenridding Screes are bold rocks on the left as you descend Helvellyn to Patterdale.—Ed.
[72] Glencoign is an offshoot of the Patterdale valley between Glenridding and Goldbarrow.—Ed.
[73] 1845.
[74] See the Fenwick note.—Ed.
[75] These words were quoted to me from Yarrow Unvisited, by Sir Walter Scott, when I visited him at Abbotsford, a day or two before his departure for Italy: and the affecting condition in which he was when he looked upon Rome from the Janicular Mount, was reported to me by a lady who had the honour of conducting him thither.—W.W. 1842. See also the Fenwick note to this poem, and compare Lockhart’s Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott (chapter lxxx. vol. x. p. 104).—Ed.
[76] The Janicular Mount.—Ed.
[77] See the Fenwick note prefixed to this poem.—Ed.
[78] He was then sixty-seven years of age.—Ed.
[79] See the Fenwick note.—Ed.
[80] The Campo Santo, or Burial Ground, founded by Archbishop Ubaldo (1188-1200).—Ed.
[81] “There are forty-three flat arcades, resting on forty-four pilasters.… In the interior there is a spacious hall, the open round-arched windows of which, with their beautiful tracery, sixty-two in number, look out upon a green quadrangle.… The walls are covered with frescoes by the Tuscan School of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, below which is a collection of Roman, Etruscan, and mediaeval sculptures.… The tombstones of persons interred here form the pavement.” (Baedeker’s Northern Italy, p. 324.)—Ed.
[82] Ubaldo conveyed hither fifty-three ship-loads of earth from Mount Calvary, in the Holy Land, in order that the dead might repose in holy ground.—Ed.
[83] The Baptistery in Pisa was begun in 1153 by Diotisalvi, and completed in 1278. It is a circular structure, covered by a conical dome, 190 feet high.—Ed.
[84] The Cathedral of Pisa is a basilica, built in 1063, in the Tuscan style, and has an elliptical dome.—Ed.
[85] The Campanile, or Clock-Tower, rises in eight stories to the height of 179 feet, and (from its oblique position) is known as the Leaning-Tower.—Ed.
[86] 1845.
[87] See the Fenwick note to this poem. Savona is a town on the Gulf of Genoa, capital of the Montenotte Department under Napoleon.—Ed.
[88] The theatre in Savona is dedicated to Chiabrera, who was a native of the place.—Ed.
[89] If any English reader should be desirous of knowing how far I am justified in thus describing the epitaphs of Chiabrera, he will find translated specimens of them in this Volume, under the head of “Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces.”—W.W. 1842.
[90] Tusculum was the birthplace of the elder Cato, and the residence of Cicero.—Ed.
[91] “Satis beatus unicis Sabinis.” Odes, ii. 18, 14.—Ed.
[92] See Horace, Odes, iii. 13.—Ed.
[93] See Horace, Epistles, i. 10, 49—
Vacuna was a Sabine divinity. She had a sanctuary near Horace’s Villa. (Compare Pliny, Nat. Hist. iii. 42, 47.) A traveller in Italy writes: “Following a path along the brink of the torrent Digentia, we passed a towering rock, on which once stood Vacuna’s shrine.” See also Ovid, Fasti, vi. 307.—Ed.
[94] The Bay of Naples. Neapolis (the new city) received its ancient name of Parthenope from one of the Sirens, whose body was said to have been washed ashore in that bay. Sil. 12, 33.—Ed.
[95] See Georgics, iv. 564.—Ed.
[96] Virgil died at Brundusium, but his remains were carried to his favourite residence, Naples, and were buried by the side of the road leading to Puteoli—the Via Puteolana. His tomb is still pointed out near Posilipo,—close to the sea, and about half way from Naples to Puteoli, the Scuola di Virgilio.
“The monument, now called the tomb of Virgil, is not on the road which passes through the tunnel of Posilipo; but if the Via Puteolana ascended the hill of Posilipo, as it may have done, the situation of the monument would agree very well with the description of Donatus.” (George Long, in Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography.)
The inscription said to have been placed on the tomb was as follows:—
Ed.
[97] The catacombs were subterranean chambers and passages, usually cut out of the solid rock, and used as places of burial, or of refuge. The early Christians made use of the catacombs in the Appian Way for worship, as well as for sepulture.—Ed.
[98] The Carcer Mamertinus,—one of the most ancient Roman structures,—overhung the Forum, as Livy tells us, “imminens foro,” underneath the Capitoline hill. It still exists, and is entered from the sacristy of the church of S. Giuseppe de Falagnami, to the left of the arch of Severus. It was originally a well (the Tullianum of Livy), and afterwards a prison, in which Jugurtha was starved to death, and Catiline’s accomplices perished. There are two chambers in the prison, one beneath the other; the lower-most containing, in its rock floor, a spring, which rises nearly to the surface. For the legend connected with it see the next note.—Ed.
[99] According to the legend, St. Peter, who was imprisoned in the Carcer Mamertinus under Nero, caused this spring to flow miraculously in order to baptize his jailors. Hence the building is called S. Pietro in Carcere.—Ed.
[100] Compare “Despondency Corrected,” The Excursion, book iv. l. 1058—
Ed.
[101] See the Fenwick note.—Ed.
[102] It would be ungenerous not to advert to the religious movement that, since the composition of these verses in 1837, has made itself felt, more or less strongly, throughout the English Church;—a movement that takes, for its first principle, a devout deference to the voice of Christian antiquity. It is not my office to pass judgment on questions of theological detail; but my own repugnance to the spirit and system of Romanism has been so repeatedly and, I trust, feelingly expressed, that I shall not be suspected of a leaning that way, if I do not join in the grave charge, thrown out, perhaps in the heat of controversy, against the learned and pious men to whose labours I allude. I speak apart from controversy; but, with strong faith in the moral temper which would elevate the present by doing reverence to the past, I would draw cheerful auguries for the English Church from this movement, as likely to restore among us a tone of piety more earnest and real than that produced by the mere formalities of the understanding, refusing, in a degree, which I cannot but lament, that its own temper and judgment shall be controlled by those of antiquity.—W.W. 1842.
[Sir George Beaumont told me that, when he first visited Italy, pine-trees of this species abounded, but that on his return thither, which was more than thirty years after, they had disappeared from many places where he had been accustomed to admire them, and had become rare all over the country, especially in and about Rome. Several Roman villas have within these few years passed into the hands of foreigners, who, I observed with pleasure, have taken care to plant this tree, which in course of years will become a great ornament to the city and to the general landscape. May I venture to add here, that having ascended the Monte Mario, I could not resist embracing the trunk of this interesting monument of my departed friend’s feelings for the beauties of nature, and the power of that art which he loved so much, and in the practice of which he was so distinguished?—I.F.]
[103] The Monte Mario is to the north-west of Rome, beyond the Janiculus and the Vatican. The view from the summit embraces Rome, the Campagna, and the sea. It is capped by the villa Millini, in which the “magnificent solitary pine-tree” of this sonnet still stands, amidst its cypress plantations.—Ed.
[104] “It was Mr. Theed, the sculptor, who informed us of the pine-tree being the gift of Sir George Beaumont.” H.C. Robinson. (See Memoirs of Wordsworth, by his nephew, vol. ii. p. 330.)—Ed.
[105] From the Mons Pincius, “collis hortorum,” where were the gardens of Lucullus, there is a remarkable view of modern Rome.—Ed.
[106] Within a couple of hours of my arrival at Rome, I saw from Monte Pincio, the Pine tree as described in the sonnet; and, while expressing admiration at the beauty of its appearance, I was told by an acquaintance of my fellow-traveller, who happened to join us at the moment, that a price had been paid for it by the late Sir G. Beaumont, upon condition that the proprietor should not act upon his known intention of cutting it down.—W.W. 1842.
[Sight is at first sight a sad enemy to imagination and to those pleasures belonging to old times with which some exertions of that power will always mingle: nothing perhaps brings this truth home to the feelings more than the city of Rome; not so much in respect to the impression made at the moment when it is first seen and looked at as a whole, for then the imagination may be invigorated and the mind’s eye quickened; but when particular spots or objects are sought out, disappointment is I believe invariably felt. Ability to recover from this disappointment will exist in proportion to knowledge, and the power of the mind to reconstruct out of fragments and parts, and to make details in the present subservient to more adequate comprehension of the past.—I.F.]
[107] The Tarpeian rock, from which those condemned to death were hurled, is not now precipitous, as it used to be: the ground having been much raised by successive heaps of ruin.—Ed.
[108] Niebuhr, in his Lectures on Roman History (1826-29), was one of the first to point out the legendary character of much of the earlier history, and its “historical impossibility.” He explained the way in which much of it had originated in family and national vanity, etc.—Ed.
[109] Clio, daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the first-born of the Muses, presided over History. It was her office to record the actions of illustrious heroes.—Ed.
[110] 1845.
[111] 1845.
[112] 1845.
[I have a private interest in this Sonnet, for I doubt whether it would ever have been written but for the lively picture given me by Anna Ricketts of what she had witnessed of the indignation and sorrow expressed by some Italian noblemen of their acquaintance upon the surrender, which circumstances had obliged them to make, of the best portion of their family mansions to strangers.—I.F.]
[114] 1845.
[115] 1845.
[This Sonnet is founded on simple fact, and was written to enlarge, if possible, the views of those who can see nothing but evil in the intercessions countenanced by the Church of Rome. That they are in many respects lamentably pernicious must be acknowledged; but, on the other hand, they who reflect, while they see and observe, cannot but be struck with instances which will prove that it is a great error to condemn in all cases such mediation as purely idolatrous. This remark bears with especial force upon addresses to the Virgin.—I.F.]
[116] Albano, 10 miles south-east of Rome, is a small town and episcopal residence, a favourite autumnal resort of Roman citizens. It is on the site of the ruins of the villa of Pompey. Monte Carlo (the Monte Calvo of this sonnet) is the ancient Mons Latialis, 3127 feet high. At its summit a convent of Passionist Monks occupies the site of the ancient temple of Jupiter.—Ed.
[117] The ilex-grove of the Villa Doria is one of the most marked features of Albano.—Ed.
[118] 1845.
[119] The Anio joins the Tiber north of Rome, flowing from the north-east past Tivoli.—Ed.
[120] 1845.
[121] 1845.
[122] The ancient Classic period, and that of the Renaissance.—Ed.
[123] This period seems to have been already entered. Compare Mrs. Browning’s “Poems before Congress,” passim.—Ed.
[124] The Carthaginian general Hannibal defeated the Roman Consul C. Flaminius, near the lacus Trasimenus, 217 B.C., with a loss of 15,000 men. (See Livy, book xxii. 4, etc.)—Ed.