Note 152 — CANTO THE SECOND
Reading edition
{133} [The sentiment that man, "whose breath is in his nostrils," should consider the impermanence of all that is stable and durable before he cries out upon his own mortality, may have been drawn immediately from the famous letter of consolation sent by Sulpitius Severus to Cicero, which Byron quotes in a note to Canto IV. stanza xliv., or, in the first instance, from Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, xv. 20—
"Giace l'alta Cartago; appena i segni Dell' alte sue ruini il lido serba. Muojono le città; muojono i regni: Copre i fasti, e le pompe, arena ed erba; E l'uom d'esser mortal par cue si sdegni!"
Compare, too, Addison's "Reflections in Westminster Abbey," Spectator, No. 26.]