, Truth is a
lie; faith is folly; eat, drink, and die,--then his picture would have
been revolting; but the noble spirit remains, though it is borne down
and trifled with by destiny, and therefore it is not revolting, but
tragic.

Far different from this--as far inferior in tone to Lenau's lines, as it
exceeds them in beauty of workmanship--is the well-known picture of the
scene under the wall in the Siege of Corinth:--

He saw the lean dogs beneath the wall
Hold o'er the dead their carnival;
Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb;
They were too busy to bark at him!
From a Tartar's skull they had stripp'd the flesh,
As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh;
And their white tusks crunch'd o'er the whiter skull,
As it slipp'd through their jaws when their edge grew dull,
As they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead,
When they scarce could rise from the spot where they fed;
So well had they broken a lingering fast
With those who had fallen for that night's repast.
And Alp knew, by the turbans that roll'd on the sand,
The foremost of these were the best of his band:

. . . . . . . . .

The scalps were in the wild dog's maw,
The hair was tangled round his jaw.
Close by the shore, on the edge of the gulf,
There sate a vulture flapping a wolf,
Who had stolen from the hills, but kept away,
Scared by the dogs, from the human prey;
But he seized on his share of a steed that lay,
Pick'd by the birds, on the sands of the bay.

For a parallel to the horribleness of this wonderfully painted scene we
need not go to the Nibelungen, for we shall find nothing like it there:
we must go back to the carved slabs which adorned the banquet halls of
the Assyrian kings, where the foul birds hover over the stricken fields,
and trail from their talons the entrails of the slain.

And for what purpose does Byron introduce these frightful images? Was it
in contrast to the exquisite moonlight scene which tempts the renegade
out of his tent? Was it to bring his mind into a fit condition to be
worked upon by the vision of Francesca? It does but mar and untune the
softening influences of nature, which might have been rendered more
powerful, perhaps, by some slight touch to remind him of his past day's
work, but are blotted out and paralysed by such a mass of horrors.

To go back to Homer.

We must omit for the presen