sights of Rome are described without being reduced to the form of a catalogue; thus the Palatine leads on to the Forum ; this suggests Rienzi; and when he is called 'a new-born Numa,' the mention of that king brings in by association the fountain of Egeria.

In some cases a sort of interlude is introduced; as the song of 'Tambourgi' between the subject of Albania and that of Greece (2. 649, and the description of sunset when leaving Venice to visit the other cities of Italy (4. 235).

d. Personification, or Prosopopoeia.

This is where abstract ideas, and the like, are invested with personal attributes, and have a living agency ascribed to them. Spenser is especially fond of elaborating such figures with much detail, so that one of them frequently occupies an entire stanza. It was probably in imitation of him that Byron introduced several personifications on a large scale into his first Canto, viz. that of the Demon of Folly at the Convention of Cintra (1. 290 foll.), that of Chivalry (1. 405–413), and that of Battle (1.423-431). After a time, however, the poet seems either to have tired of these, or to have found them superfluous owing to the abundance of metaphorical language in his style, for they do not occur in the other cantos. But the simpler kind of personification is common throughout the poem, and is often very effective. The following are examples—

Where Desolation plants her famish'd brood: (1. 483)

From morn till night, from night till startled Morn
Peeps blushing on the revel's laughing crew: (1. 675, 676)
Expectation mute

Gapes round the silent circle's peopled walls: (1. 748, 749)

But ere his sackcloth garb Repentance wear: (2. 742)

Beneath these battlements, within those walls
Power dwelt amidst her passions: (3. 424, 425)

In his lair

Fix'd Passion holds his breath: (3.792)

Where Courage falls in her despairing files: (4. 556)

And Circumstance, that unspiritual god

And miscreator. (4. 1122)

e. Idealised expressions for familiar objects or ideas. Byron is often happy in inventing such expressions, and by this means dignifying what is ordinary in itself. Thus with him a bee-hive is a 'fragrant fortress' (2. 823), a bird-cage a 'wiry dome' (3. 133), a bay window a 'window'd niche' (3. 199), a ship a 'winged sea-girt citadel' (2. 249), the discharge of a cannon-ball 'the smoke of blazing bolts' (1. 409), a dance 'a sound of revelry by night' (3. 181). Similarly, of the determined defenders of a castle it is said that they 'from their rocky hold Hurl their defiance far' (2. 422); and the suspicious seclusion of women in Turkey is expressed by 'those Houries whom ye scarce allow To taste the gale lest love should ride the wind' (1. 607).

f. Similes.

In respect of these there is a marked difference between the two first and the two last cantos. In Canto 1 there are no similes, for comparisons like—

Childe Harold bask'd him in the noontide sun,
Disporting there like any other fly, (1. 28, 29)

are almost too slight to be reckoned under this head, and those in Canto 2 are few and brief (151, 491); on the other hand, in Cantos 3 and 4 they are of frequent occurrence. Byron's similes are usually compressed into a small compass, like Dante's, not expanded in the style of Tasso and Spenser; and the concentration thus given is often extremely forcible; but here and there greater elaboration is introduced, as in—

Even as a broken mirror, which the glass

In every fragment multiplies; and makes

A thousand images of one that was,

The same, and still the more, the more it breaks.

(3. 289-292)

Compare 3. 129-135, and especially 4. 172-180, where the simile occupies an entire stanza. In such cases the details are rarely ornamental, but contain a further application of the comparison, as where the demoralising effect of prosperity on a nation, and its consequent downfall, are compared to the heat of the sun melting snow and causing an avalanche :

Nations melt

From power's high pinnacle, when they have felt

The sunshine for a while, and downward go

Like lauwine loosen'd from the mountain's belt. (4. 103-6) Byron's similes are drawn from a variety of sources, but mostly from objects of external nature-clouds, rocks, trees, animals, etc. Sometimes he illustrates the better-known by the less-known, or material by mental and spiritual phenomena -a process which is only occasionally admissible for the purpose of enhancing an effect; as when the steely surface of a lake is said to be ‘calm as cherished Hate' (4. 1555), and the rainbow above a waterfall is compared to 'Love watching Madness with unalterable mien' (4. 648), and the precipices on either side of the Rhone valley are likened to—

Lovers who have parted

In hate, whose mining depths so intervene,

That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted.

(3.879-881)

It rarely happens that he cumulates similes, i. e. uses more than one to illustrate the same point, a practice which is common in Milton; but this also is sometimes found in Childe Harold,' as

Even as a flame unfed, which runs to waste

With its own flickering, or a sword laid by,

Which eats into itself, and rusts ingloriously. (3.394-6) Compare 3. 280-8, where as many as six follow one another. Here and there features which belong to the simile are attributed to that to which it is compared; thus Byron says that Soracte

From out the plain

Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break,

And on the curl hangs pausing. (4.667-9; cp. 1557)

D

His similes often lose their strict form and pass into metaphorical expressions, as where the lady of the harem is said to be 'tamed to her cage' (2. 544); and where the waters of the cataract are compared to souls in torment :

The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss,
And boil in endless torture; while the sweat
Of their great agony, wrung out from this
Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet.

(4.617-620)

Where they are condensed into a single word they are called tropes, as- nor coin'd my cheek to smiles.' (3. 1052)

It is hardly surprising in one who wrote rapidly and used many metaphors that he occasionally confuses them. Thus in the following there is a confusion between water in a spring and water in a cauldron:

Nor is it discontent to keep the mind

Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil

In the hot throng. (3. 655-7; cp. 4. 726, 727)

g. Epithets.

(1) Ornamental epithets, which heighten pictorial effect; these are the commonest of all, and occasionally are powerfully descriptive, as 'lonely,' applied to the peak of Athos (2. 236), 'phosphoric,' of a lake seen by flashes of lightning (3. 873), 'torn,' of the storm-tost sea (3. 803). These epithets are frequently alliterative to the substantive they belong to; e.g. 'wild weeds' (1. 132), ' fiery foot' (1. 480), 'fairy form' (1. 572).

(2) Idealising. This purple land,' i. e. land of bloodshed

(1. 269); 'dun hot breath of war' (1. 498); 'glowing hours,' for a time of pleasurable excitement (3. 194).

(3) Sympathetic and unsympathetic; such as represent some fellow feeling, or the opposite, between nature and

man:

Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,

Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore: (4. 505, 506)
The eloquent air breathes - burns with Cicero: (4. 1008)

And to the reckless gales unmanly moaning kept: (1. 108) And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray. (4.1617) (4) Etymological; which explain the meaning of a proper name; Morena's dusky height,' the Sierra Morena being supposed to signify 'the dark range' (1. 531; see note in loc.); the 'never-trodden snow' of the Jungfrau, or Virgin mountain (4. 655). Possibly in 'white Achelous' tide 'the modern Aspropotamo, or white river (2. 620), and 'Nemi, navell'd in the woody hills'-Nemi from Lat. nemus (4. 1549), the epithets are not etymological, but the poet's own description.

(5) Antithetical; where two epithets are contrasted, or the same epithet is repeated in two contrasted uses.

Their bleach'd bones, and blood's unbleaching stain: (1.906)
Red gleam'd the cross, and waned the crescent pale: (1.394)
To doubtful conflict, certain slaughter, bring: (2.401)
Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer. (3.999)

(6) Negative: the usage of these is noticeable, where they gain force by accumulation; this is specially suitable to the last, or Alexandrine, line of a stanza :

Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

(7) Anticipatory, which anticipate a result:

In his bosom slept

The silent thought; (1. 105)

i.e. the thought remained, so that it was not uttered. Flowers fresh in hue, and many in their class, Implore the pausing step; (4. 1050)

i.e. implore the step that it may pause.

And thou, who never yet of human wrong

(4. 1611)

Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis; (4. 1180, 1181)

i. e. left the scale so that it should be unbalanced.

h. Archaisms.

These are introduced into the poem as an accompaniment to