_Don Juan_, Canto XII. stanza lxxii. line 8.]

[11] {18} [Ruskin (_Modern Painters_, Part IV. chap. i. sect. 9,
"Touching the Grand Style," 1888, iii. 8, 9) criticizes these five lines
107-111, and points out that, alike in respect of accuracy and
inaccuracy of detail, they fulfil the conditions of poetry in
contradistinction to history. "Instead," he concludes, "of finding, as
we expected, the poetry distinguished from the history by the omission
of details, we find it consisting entirely in the addition of details;
and instead of it being characterized by regard only of the invariable,
we find its whole power to consist in the clear expression of what is
singular and particular!"]

[12] The Chateau de Chillon is situated between Clarens and Villeneuve,
which last is at one extremity of the Lake of Geneva. On its left are
the entrances of the Rhone, and opposite are the heights of Meillerie
and the range of Alps above Boveret and St. Gingo. Near it, on a hill
behind, is a torrent: below it, washing its walls, the lake has been
fathomed to the depth of 800 feet, French measure: within it are a range
of dungeons, in which the early reformers, and subsequently prisoners of
state, were confined. Across one of the vaults is a beam black with age,
on which we were informed that the condemned were formerly executed. In
the cells are seven pillars, or, rather, eight, one being half merged in
the wall; in some of these are rings for the fetters and the fettered:
in the pavement the steps of Bonnivard have left their traces. He was
confined here several years. It is by this castle that Rousseau has
fixed the catastrophe of his Heloise, in the rescue of one of her
children by Julie from the water; the shock of which, and the illness
produced by the immersion, is the cause of her death. The chateau is
large, and seen along the lake for a great distance. The walls are
white.

["Le chateau de Chillon ... est situe dans le lac sur un rocher qui
forme une presqu'isle, et autour du quel j'ai vu sonder a plus de cent
cinquante brasses qui font pres de huit cents pieds, sans trouver le
fond. On a creuse dans ce rocher des caves et des cuisines au-dessous du
niveau de l'eau, qu'on y introduit, quand on veut, par des robinets.
C'est-la que fut detenu six ans prisonnier Francois Bonnivard ... homme
d'un merite rare, d'une droiture et d'une fermete a toute epreuve, ami
de la liberte, quoique Savoyard, et tolerant quoiqu