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Madame Chanve's kitchen was not a thing to boast of, and her price, for the Latin Quarter, was rather high I think we paid three francs, wine included, which would be for most of us distinctly a prix-de-luxe. But oh, it was such fun; we were so young; Childe was so delightful. The fun was best, of course, when we were few, and could all sit up near to him, and none need lose a word.
Byron, in his "Childe Harold," Canto II., alludes to the story of Arion, when, describing his voyage, he represents one of the seamen making music to entertain the rest: "The moon is up; by Heaven a lovely eve! Long streams of light o'er dancing waves expand; Now lads on shore may sigh and maids believe; Such be our fate when we return to land!
The musician in "Abt Vogler," the artist in "Andrea del Sarto," the early Christian in "A Death in the Desert," the Arab horseman in "Muteykeh," the sailor in "Herve Kiel," the mediæval knight in "Childe Roland," the Hebrew in "Saul," the Greek in "Balaustion's Adventure," the monster in "Caliban," the immortal dead in "Karshish," all these and a hundred more histories of the soul show Browning's marvelous versatility.
"I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face Beneath its garniture of curly gold, Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold An arm in mine, to fix me to the place. That way he used, ... Alas! one hour's disgrace!" Robert Browning. Childe Roland.
Childe Harold was followed by a series of metrical tales, the Giaour, the Bride of Abydos, the Corsair, Lara, the Siege of Corinth, Parisina, and the Prisoner of Chillon, all written in the years 1813-1816.
The following lines are from the "Childe Harold" of Byron: "Now turning to the Vatican go see Laocoon's torture dignifying pain; A father's love and mortal's agony With an immortal's patience blending; vain The struggle! vain against the coiling strain And gripe and deepening of the dragon's grasp The old man's clinch; the long envenomed chain Rivets the living links; the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang and stifles gasp on gasp."
On one side of it, half a dozen broad shelves supported a goodly row of well-bound volumes, among which the time-honored golden names of Shakespeare and Scott glittered invitingly, together with such works as Chapman's Homer, Byron's "Childe Harold," the Poems of John Keats, Gibbon's Rome, and Plutarch; while mingled with these were the devotional works in French of Alphonse de Liguori, the "Imitation," also in French, and a number of books with titles in Norwegian, altogether an heterogenous collection of literature, yet not without interest as displaying taste and culture on the part of those to whom it belonged.
Of the latter he says, "His is the greatest name in poetry ... all the rest are barbarians." In 1809 Byron, when only twenty-one years of age, started on a tour of Europe and the Orient. The poetic results of this trip were the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, with their famous descriptions of romantic scenery.
The party broke up without having made themselves responsible for any of the orgies of which Childe Harold raves, and which Dallas in good earnest accepts as veracious, when the poet and his friend Hobhouse started for Falmouth, on their way "outre mer." There is no romance of Munchausen or Dumas more marvellous than the adventures attributed to Lord Byron abroad.
In the morning the old woman was gone; but for six nights after, as sure as the supper was spread, there was she at the back door, and the little girl always asked her in. Childe Charity's aunt said she would let her get enough of beggars. Her cousins made game of what they called her genteel visitor.
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