was dedicated to the
glory of the house of Este; and, though the poet was in disgrace, the
duke was not to be propitiated by an attack upon the poem. Moreover,
Salviati did not publish his theses in his own name, but under a _nom de
guerre_, "L'Infarinato."]

[mj] {358} _And baffled Gaul whose rancour could allow_.--[MS. M.
erased.]

[mk] _Which grates upon the teeth_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[419] [Hobhouse, in his note x., quotes Boileau, but not in full. The
passage runs thus--

"Tous les jours, a la cour, un sot de qualite
Peut juger de travers avec impunite,
A Malherbe, a Racan, prefere Theophile,
Et le clinquant du Tasse a tout l'or de Virgile."

Perhaps he divined that the phrase, "un sot de qualite," might glance
back on a "noble author," who was about to admit that he could not
savour Horace, and who turned aside from Mantua and memories of Virgil
to visit Ferrara and the "cell" where Tasso was "encaged." (See
Darmesteter's _Notes to Childe Harold_, pp. 201, 217.)

If "the Youth with brow serene," as Hugo calls him, had lived to read
_Dedain. A Lord Byron, en_ 1811, he would have passed a somewhat
different criticism on French poetry in general--

"En vain vos legions l'environnent sans nombre,
Il n'a qu'a se lever pour couvrir de son ombre
A la fois tous vos fronts;
Il n'a qu'a dire un mot pour couvrir vos voix greles,
Comme un char en passant couvre le bruit des ailes
De mille moucherons!"
_Les Feuilles d'Automne_, par Victor Hugo,
Bruxelles, 1833, pp. 59, 63.]

[ml] {359} _Could mount into a mind like thine_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[mm] ----_they would not form the Sun_.--[MS. M.]

[420] [In a letter to Murray (August 7, 1817) Byron throws out a hint
that Scott might not like being called "the Ariosto of the North," and
Murray seems to have caught at the suggestion. "With regard to 'the
Ariosto of the North,'" rejoins Byron (September 17, 1817), "surely
their themes, Chivalry, war, and love, were as like as can be; and as to
the compliment, if you knew what the Italians think of Ariosto, you
would not hesitate about that.... If you think Scott will dislike it,
say so, and I will expunge." Byron did not know that when Scott was at
college at Edinburgh he had "had the audacity to produce a composition
in which he weighed Homer against Ariosto, and pronounced him wanting in
t