Note 296 — CANTO THE THIRD.
Reading edition
[According to Lady Blessington (Conversations, p. 176), Byron maintained that the image of the broken mirror had in some mysterious way been suggested by the following quatrain which Curran had once repeated to him:—
"While memory, with more than Egypt's art Embalming all the sorrows of the heart, Sits at the altar which she raised to woe, And finds the scene whence tears eternal flow."
But, as M. Darmesteter points out, the true source of inspiration was a passage in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy—"the book," as Byron maintained, "in my opinion most useful to a man who wishes to acquire the reputation of being well-read with the least trouble" (Life, p. 48). Burton is discoursing on injury and long-suffering. "'Tis a Hydra's head contention; the more they strive, the more they may; and as Praxiteles did by his glass [see Cardan, De Consolatione, lib. iii.], when he saw a scurvy face in it, break it in pieces; but for the one he saw, he saw many more as bad in a moment; for one injury done, they provoke another cum fanore, and twenty enemies for one."—Anatomy of Melancholy, 1893, ii. 228. Compare, too, Carew's poem, The Spark, lines 23-26—
"And as a looking-glass, from the aspect, Whilst it is whole doth but one face reflect, But being crack'd or broken, there are shewn Many half-faces, which at first were one.
Anderson's British Poets, 1793, iii. 703.]