Note 225 — CANTO THE THIRD.[169]
Reading edition
{180}[If the Pineta of Ravenna, bois funèbre, invited Byron "to religious meditation," the mental picture of the "spectre huntsman" pursuing his eternal vengeance on "the inexorable dame"—"that fatal she," who had mocked his woes—must have set in motion another train of thought. Such lines as these would "speak comfortably" to him—
"Because she deem'd I well deserved to die, And made a merit of her cruelty, ... Mine is the ungrateful maid by heaven design'd: Mercy she would not give, nor mercy shall she find." "By her example warn'd, the rest beware; More easy, less imperious, were the fair; And that one hunting, which the Devil design'd For one fair female, lost him half the kind."
Dryden's Theodore and Honoria (sub fine).]