nds
Which robed our idols, and we see too sure
Nor Worth nor Beauty dwells from out the mind's
Ideal shape of such."

_Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza cxxiii. lines 1-5,
_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 420.]

[52] Mithridates of Pontus. [Mithridates, King of Pontus (B.C. 120-63),
surnamed Eupator, succeeded to the throne when he was only eleven years
of age. He is said to have safeguarded himself against the designs of
his enemies by drugging himself with antidotes against poison, and so
effectively that, when he was an old man, he could not poison himself,
even when he was minded to do so--"ut ne volens quidem senex veneno mori
potuerit."--Justinus, _Hist._, lib. xxxvii. cap. ii.

According to Medwin (_Conversations_, p. 148), Byron made use of the
same illustration in speaking of Polidori's death (April, 1821), which
was probably occasioned by "poison administered to himself" (see
_Letters_, 1899, iii. 285).]

[53] {41}[Compare--

"Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends."

_Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza xiii. line 1.

"...and to me
High mountains are a feeling."

_Ibid._, stanza lxxii. lines 2,3, _Poetical Works_, 1899,
ii. 223, 261.]

[54] [Compare--

"Ye Spirits of the unbounded Universe!"

_Manfred_, act i. sc. 1, line 29, _vide post_, p. 86.]

[55] [Compare _Manfred_, act ii. sc. 2, lines 79-91; and _ibid._, act
iii. sc. 1, lines 34-39; and sc. 4, lines 112-117, _vide post_, pp. 105,
121, 135.]

[k] {42}In the original MS. _A Dream_.

[56] [Sir Walter Scott (_Quarterly Review_, October, 1816, vol. xvi. p.
204) did not take kindly to _Darkness_. He regarded the "framing of such
phantasms" as "a dangerous employment for the exalted and teeming
imagination of such a poet as Lord Byron. The waste of boundless space
into which they lead the poet, the neglect of precision which such
themes may render habitual, make them in respect to poetry what
mysticism is to religion." Poetry of this kind, which recalled "the
wild, unbridled, and fiery imagination of Coleridge," was a novel and
untoward experiment on the part of an author whose "peculiar art" it was
"to show the reader where his purpose tends." The resemblance to
Coleridge is general rather than pa