of dolour, a ship without a pilot in a
horrid tempest:--not the mistress of provinces, but a brothel!"

Ariosto, canto 17:--

_O d' ogni vitio fetida sentina
Dormi Italia imbriaco._

"O inebriated Italy, thou sleepest the sink of every filthy vice!"

And Petrarch:--

_Del'empia Babilonia, ond'e fuggita
Ogni vergogna, ond'ogni bene e fuori,
Albergo di dolor, madre d'errori
Son fuggit'io per allungar la vita._

"From the impious Babylon (the Papal Court) from whence all shame and
all good are fled, the inn of dolour, the mother of errors, have I
hastened away to prolong my life."

[448] _The fables old of Cadmus_.--Cadmus having slain the dragon which
guarded the fountain of Dirce, in Boeotia, sowed the teeth of the
monster. A number of armed men immediately sprang up, and surrounded
Cadmus, in order to kill him. By the counsel of Minerva he threw a
precious stone among them, in striving for which they slew one another.
Only five survived, who afterwards assisted him to build the city of
Thebes.--Vid. Ovid. Met. iv.

_Terrigenae pereunt per mutua vulnera fratres._

[449]

_So fall the bravest of the Christian name,
While dogs unclean.--_

Imitated from a fine passage in Lucan, beginning--

_Quis furor, O Cives! quae tanta licentia ferri,
Gentibus invisis_ Latium _praebere cruorem?_

[450] The Mohammedans.

[451] Constantinople.

[452] _Beyond the Wolgian Lake._--The Caspian Sea, so called from the
large river Volga, or Wolga, which empties itself into it.

[453]

_Their fairest offspring from their bosoms torn,
(A dreadful tribute !)--_

By this barbarous policy the tyranny of the Ottomans was long sustained.
The troops of the Turkish infantry and cavalry, known by the name of
Janissaries and Spahis, were thus supported. "The sons of
Christians--and those the most completely furnished by nature--were
taken in their childhood from their parents by a levy made every five
years, or oftener, as occasion required."--SANDYS.

[454] Mohammedans.

[455]

_O'er Afric's shores
The sacred shrines the Lusian heroes rear'd.--_

See the note on book v. p. 137.

[456] _Of deepest west._--Alludes to the discovery and conquest of the
Brazils by the Portuguese.

[457] The poet, having brought his heroes to the shore of India,
indulges himself with a review of the state of the western and eastern
worlds; the latter of which is now, by