felt to be out of the common, a note of
the poetic temperament, worth recording, but unlikely to pass without
questioning and remonstrance.]

[138] {123} [Alexander's mother, Olympias, was an Epiriote. She had a
place in the original draft of Tennyson's _Palace of Art_ (_Life of Lord
Tennyson_,. 119)--

"One was Olympias; the floating snake
Roll'd round her ankles, round her waist
Knotted," etc.

Plutarch (_Vitae_, Lipsiae:, 1814, vi. 170) is responsible for the legend:
[Greek: O)\phthe de/ pote kai\ dra/kon koimome/nes te~s O)lympia/dou
parektetame/ns to~| so/mati], "Now, one day, when Olympias lay abed,
beside her body a dragon was espied stretched out at full length."
(Compare, too, Dryden's _Alexander's Feast_, stanza ii.)]

[139] [Mr. Tozer (_Childe Harold_, p. 236) takes this line to mean "whom
the young love to talk of, and the wise to follow as an example," and
points to Alexander's foresight as a conqueror, and the "extension of
commerce and civilization" which followed his victories. But, surely,
the antithesis lies between Alexander the ideal of the young, and
Alexander the deterrent example of the old. The phrase, "beacon of the
wise," if Hector in _Troilus and Cressida_ (act ii. sc. 2, line 16) is
an authority, is proverbial.

" ... The wound of peace is surety,
Surety secure; but modest doubt is call'd
The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches
To the bottom of the worst."

The beauty, the brilliance, the glory of Alexander kindle the enthusiasm
of the young; but the murder of Clytus and the early death which he
brought upon himself are held up by the wise as beacon-lights to save
others from shipwreck.]

[140] [Byron and Hobhouse sailed for Malta in the brig-of-war _Spider_
on Tuesday, September 19, 1809 (Byron, in a letter to his mother,
November 12, says September 21), and anchored off Patras on the night of
Sunday, the 24th. On Tuesday, the 26th, they were under way at 12 noon,
and on the evening of that day they saw the sun set over Mesalonghi. The
next morning, September 27, they were in the channel between Ithaca and
the mainland, with Ithaca, then in the hands of the French, to the left.
"We were close to it," says Hobhouse, "and saw a few shrubs on a brown
heathy land, two little towns in the hills scattered among trees." The
travellers made "but little progress this day," and, apparently, having
redoubled Cape St. Andreas, the southern extremi