bt, the
following passage in Boswell's _Johnson_ floating in his mind.... 'The
grand object of all travelling is to see the shores of the
Mediterranean. On those shores were the four great empires of the
world--the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman' (_Life of
Johnson_, 1876, p. 505)."--Note to _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza
clxxxii. ed. 1891.]

[550] [See letter to Murray, September 24, 1818: "What does 'thy waters
_wasted_ them' mean (in the Canto)? _That is not me_. Consult the MS.
_always_." Nevertheless, the misreading appeared in several editions.
(For a correspondence on the subject, see _Notes and Queries_, first
series, vol. i. pp. 182, 278, 324, 508; vol. ix. p. 481; vol. x. pp.
314, 434.)]

[qh] _Thy waters wasted them while they were free_.--[Editions 1818,
1819, 1823, and Galignani, 1825.]

[qi] _Unchangeable save calm thy tempests ply_.--[MS. M., D.]

[qj] {461}
_The image of Eternity and Space_
_For who hath fixed thy limits_----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[551] [Compare Tennyson's _In Memoriam_, lv. stanza 6--

"Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match'd with him."]

[552] ["While at Aberdeen, he used often to steal from home unperceived;
sometimes he would find his way to the seaside" (_Life_, p. 9). For an
account of his feats in swimming, see _Letters_, 1898, i. 263, note 1;
and letter to Murray, February 21, 1821. See, too, for a "more perilous,
but less celebrated passage" (from Old Lisbon to Belem Castle), _Travels
in Albania_, ii. 195.]

[553] ["It was a thought worthy of the great spirit of Byron, after
exhibiting to us his Pilgrim amidst all the most striking scenes of
earthly grandeur and earthly decay ... to conduct him and us at last to
the borders of 'the Great Deep.' ... The image of the wanderer may well
be associated, for a time, with the rock of Calpe, the shattered temples
of Athens, or the gigantic fragments of Rome; but when we wish to think
of this dark personification as of a thing which is, where can we so
well imagine him to have his daily haunt as by the roaring of the waves?
It was thus that Homer represented Achilles in his moments of
ungovernable and inconsolable grief for the loss of Patroclus. It was
thus he chose to depict the paternal despair of Chryseus--

"[Greek: Be/ d' a)ke/on para\ thi~na polyphloi/sboio thala/sses]"

Note by Professor Wilson, ed. 1837.]

[qk] {46