(Vol. iv., pp. 223. 285.)
I am much obliged to your correspondents who have taken the trouble to
answer my Query respecting the lines in _Childe Harold_; but I am sorry
that you did not print one of the replies "at considerable length" to
which you allude in your note to MR. CROSSLEY'S brief one: for MR.
CROSSLEY'S settlement of the question will hardly, I think, appear so
satisfactory to all readers as it evidently does to him. Will you allow
me to explain the reasons for thinking so?
In his opinion it is quite transparent that Lord Byron meant to say,
speaking to the Ocean of its shores:
"Thy waters wasted them when they were free,
And many a tyrant since" (has wasted them).
But in my former letter I quoted a German translator's version of the
lines, and he did not understand them thus; and I have just referred to
a French translator's, and he also differs from MR. CROSSLEY. In fact,
his view of the matter so completely tallies with mine, that I will,
with your permission, quote his words:
"Tes rivages sont des empires, où tout est changé, excepté toi.
Que sont devenus l'Assyrie, la Grèce, Rome, Carthage? Tes flots
battaient leurs frontières aux jours de la liberté, comme depuis
sous le règne de plus d'un tyran."
This passage is taken from the complete translation of Lord Byron's
Works, published at Paris in 1836, by M. Benjamin de Laroche, vol. i. p.
754.
M. de Laroche was no doubt led to form his opinion of the real meaning
of these two lines from a careful consideration of those which
immediately precede and immediately follow. The theme of the poet is the
proud superiority of the ocean to human authority, and its insensibility
to human vicissitude. He rebukes the haughty assumption that "Britannia
rules the waves;" he refers in proof to the striking fact, that of the
two most memorable tempests recorded in the naval history of Spain and
England, the one aided our triumph, and the other tore the fruits of a
triumph from us.
"The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the proud title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war,
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar."
And then he proceeds, according to my view of the passage, and according
to the French translator's view, to point out, that while the shores of
the ocean are changed, the action of the ocean continues the same; that
it wasted the empires of the ancient world when they were free, and
wasted them when they fell under the sway of tyrants:
"Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee--
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since their shores obey."
Here there seems to be a logical sequence, which is surely not to be
found if the semicolon is kept, as MR. CROSSLEY wishes to keep it, after
the word "since."
"Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since;"
meaning, as he declares, that many a tyrant since has wasted them. There
may be grammatical construction here, but what becomes of the meaning?
The direct force of the words would surely be, that the ocean was in the
habit of ravaging its shores in times of liberty, but that it left off
when the tyrants began. I suppose it will be admitted that this is not
exactly what the poet wished to convey. To his real meaning it will, I
hope, be allowed to be essential that the statement should be made, that
the ocean's ravages continue; and if this is not done in the fourth
line, it is done nowhere,--the chain of reasoning is left without a
link. To say that the ocean wasted empires once, and tyrants did it
afterwards, is as little to the purpose as it would have been to say, in
the preceding stanza, that the ocean destroyed the Armada, but that
Nelson won Trafalgar. The lines become incoherent.
I beg pardon for trespassing so long on your attention; but the question
seems to have excited some interest, and I think the occasion may plead
my excuse.