ap
Eternal Agency!
Ye spirits of the immortal Universe!—[MS. M.]

aq Of inaccessible mountains are the haunts.—[MS. M.]

109 [Faust contemplates the sign of the macrocosm, and makes use of the sign of the Spirit of the Earth. Manfred's written charm may have been "Abraxas," which comprehended the Greek numerals 365, and expressed the all-pervading spirits of the Universe.]

110 [The Prince of the Spirits is Arimanes, vide post, act ii. sc. 4, line 1, seq.]

111 [Compare Childe Harold, Canto I. stanza lxxxiii. lines 8, 9.]

ar Which is fit for my pavilion.—[MS. M.]

as Or makes its ice delay.—[MS. M.]

112 [Compare "Creatures of clay, I receive you into mine empire."—Vathek, 1887, p. 179.]

at The Mind which is my Spirit—the high Soul.—[MS. erased.]

au Answer—or I will teach ye.—[MS. M.]

113 [So the MS., in which the word "say" clearly forms part of the Spirit's speech.]

114 [Compare "Stanzas for Music," i. 3, Poetical Works, 1900, iii 435.]

115 [It is evident that the female figure is not that of Astarte, but of the subject of the "Incantation."]

116 [The italics are not indicated in the MS.]

117 N.B.—Here follows the "Incantation," which being already transcribed and (I suppose) published I do not transcribe again at present, because you can insert it in MS. here—as it belongs to this place: with its conclusion the 1st Scene closes.

[The "Incantation" was first published in "The Prisoner of Chillon and Other Poems. London: Printed for John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1816." Immediately below the title is a note: "The following Poem was a Chorus in an unpublished Witch Drama, which was begun some years ago."]

118[Manfred was done into Italian by a translator "who was unable to find in the dictionaries ... any other signification of the 'wisp' of this line than 'a bundle of straw.'" Byron offered him two hundred francs if he would destroy the MS., and engage to withhold his hand from all past or future poems. He at first refused; but, finding that the alternative was to be a horsewhipping, accepted the money, and signed the agreement.—Life, p. 375, note.]

av I do adjure thee to this spell.—[MS. M.]

119 [Compare—

ὦ δῖος αἰθὴρ, κ.τ.λ.

Æschylus, Prometheus Vinctus, lines 88-91.]

120 [Compare Hamlet's speech to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Hamlet, act ii. sc. 2, lines 286, sq.).]

121 [The germs of this and of several other passages in Manfred may be found, as Lord Byron stated, in the Journal of his Swiss tour, which he transmitted to his sister. "Sept. 19, 1816.—Arrived at a lake in the very nipple of the bosom of the Mountain; left our quadrupeds with a Shepherd, and ascended further; came to some snow in patches, upon which my forehead's perspiration fell like rain, making the same dints as in a sieve; the chill of the wind and the snow turned me giddy, but I scrambled on and upwards. Hobhouse went to the highest pinnacle. ... The whole of the Mountain superb. A Shepherd on a very steep and high cliff playing upon his pipe; very different from Arcadia, (where I saw the pastors with a long Musquet instead of a Crook, and pistols in their Girdles).... The music of the Cows' bells (for their wealth, like the Patriarchs', is cattle) in the pastures, (which reach to a height far above any mountains in Britain), and the Shepherds' shouting to us from crag to crag, and playing on their reeds where the steeps appeared almost inaccessible, with the surrounding scenery, realized all that I have ever heard or imagined of a pastoral existence:—much more so than Greece or Asia Minor, for there we are a little too much of the sabre and musquet order; and if there is a Crook in one hand, you are sure to see a gun in the other:—but this was pure and unmixed—solitary, savage, and patriarchal.... As we went, they played the 'Ranz des Vaches' and other airs, by way of farewell. I have lately repeopled my mind with Nature" (Letters, 1899, in. 354, 355).]