Don Juan - Endnotes

Endnotes

The Marquis Gabriel de Castelnau, author of an Essai sur L’Histoire ancienne et moderne de la Nouvelle Russie (Sec. Ed. 3 tom. 1827), was, at one time, resident at Odessa, where he met and made the acquaintance of Armand Emanuel, Duc de Richelieu, who took part in the siege of Ismail. M. Léon de Crousaz-Crétet describes him as “ancien surintendant des théâtres sous l’Empereur Paul.”⁠—Le Duc de Richelieu, 1897, p. 83 —⁠Editor ↩
For Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, second Marquis of Londonderry (1769⁠–⁠1822), see Letters, 1900, IV 108, 109, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
Samuel Ferrand Waddington, born 1759, hop-grower and radical politician, first came into notice as the chairman of public meetings in favour of making peace with the French in 1793. He was the author, inter alia, of A Key to a Delicate Investigation, 1812, and An Address to the People of the United Kingdom, 1812. He was alive in 1822. James Watson (1766⁠–⁠1838), a radical agitator of the following of Thomas Spence, was engaged, in the autumn of 1816, in an abortive conspiracy to blow up cavalry barracks, barricade the streets, and seize the Bank and the Tower. He was tried for high treason before Lord Ellenborough, and acquitted. —⁠Editor ↩
Macbeth, act IV sc. 3, lines 7, 8. —⁠Editor ↩
I say by the law of the land⁠—the laws of humanity judge more gently; but as the legitimates have always the law in their mouths, let them here make the most of it. ↩
Mr. Joseph Carttar, of Deptford, coroner for the County of Kent, addressed the jury at some length. The following sentences are taken from the report of the inquest, contained in The Annual Biography and Obituary for the Year 1823, vol. VII p. 57:

“As a public man, it is impossible for me to weigh his character in any scales that I can hold. In private life I believe the world will admit that a more amiable man could not be found.⁠ ⁠… If it should unfortunately appear that there is not sufficient evidence to prove what is generally considered the indication of a disordered mind, I trust that the jury will pay some attention to my humble opinion, which is, that no man can be in his proper senses at the moment he commits so rash an act as self-murder.⁠ ⁠… The Bible declares that a man clings to nothing so strongly as his own life, I therefore view it as an axiom, and an abstract principle, that a man must necessarily be out of his mind at the moment of destroying himself.”

Byron, probably, read the report of the inquest in Cobbett’s Weekly Register (August 17, 1822, vol. 43, pp. 389⁠–⁠425). The “eulogy” was in perfectly good taste, but there can be little doubt that if “Waddington or Watson” had cut their “carotid arteries,” the verdict would have been different. —⁠Editor ↩
From this number must be excepted Canning. Canning is a genius, almost a universal one, an orator, a wit, a poet, a statesman; and no man of talent can long pursue the path of his late predecessor, Lord C. If ever man saved his country, Canning can, but will he? I for one, hope so.

[The phrase, “great moral lesson,” was employed by the Duke of Wellington, apropos of the restoration of pictures and statues to their “rightful owners,” in a despatch addressed to Castlereagh, under date, Paris, September 19, 1815 (The Dispatches, etc. (ed. by Colonel Gurwood), 1847, VIII 270). The words, “moral lesson,” as applied to the French generally, are to be found in Scott’s Field of Waterloo (conclusion, stanza VI line 3), which was written about the same time as the despatch. Byron quotes them in his “Ode from the French,” stanza IV line 8 (see Poetical Works, 1900, III 434, note 1). There is a satirical allusion to the Duke’s “assumption of the didactic” about teaching a “great moral lesson” in the Preface to the first number of the Liberal (1822, p. XI).] ↩
When Lord Sandwich said “he did not know the difference between orthodoxy and heterodoxy,” Warburton, the bishop, replied, “Orthodoxy, my lord, is my doxy, and heterodoxy is another man’s doxy.” A prelate of the present day has discovered, it seems, a third kind of doxy, which has not greatly exalted in the eyes of the elect that which Bentham calls “Church-of-Englandism.”

[For the “prelate,” see Letters, 1902, VI 101, note 2.] ↩
For the Duke of Wellington and the Holy Alliance, see the Introduction to The Age of Bronze, Poetical Works, 1901, V 538, 561. —⁠Editor ↩
“As the Poem is to be published anonymously, omit the Dedication. I won’t attack the dog in the dark. Such things are for scoundrels and renegadoes like himself” [Revise]. See, too, letter to Murray, May 6, 1819 (Letters, 1900, IV 294); and Southey’s letter to Bedford, July 31, 1819 (Selections from the Letters, etc., 1856, in. 137, 138). According to the editor of the Works of Lord Byron, 1833 (XV 101), the existence of the Dedication “became notorious” in consequence of Hobhouse’s article in the Westminster Review, 1824. He adds, for Southey’s consolation and encouragement, that “for several years the verses have been selling in the streets as a broadside,” and that “it would serve no purpose to exclude them on the present occasion.” But Southey was not appeased. He tells Allan Cunningham (June 3, 1833) that “the new edition of Byron’s works is⁠ ⁠… one of the very worst symptoms of these bad times” (Life and Correspondence, 1850, VI 217). —⁠Editor ↩
In the “Critique on Bertram,” which Coleridge contributed to the Courier, in 1816, and republished in the Biographia Literaria, in 1817 (chap. XXIII), he gives a detailed analysis of “the old Spanish play, entitled Atheista Fulminato [vide ante, the ‘Introduction to Don Juan’]⁠ ⁠… which under various names (Don Juan, the Libertine, etc.) has had its day of favour in every country throughout Europe.⁠ ⁠… Rank, fortune, wit, talent, acquired knowledge, and liberal accomplishments, with beauty of person, vigorous health, and constitutional hardihood⁠—all these advantages, elevated by the habits and sympathies of noble birth and national character, are supposed to have combined in Don Juan, so as to give him the means of carrying into all its practical consequences the doctrine of a godless nature, as the sole ground and efficient cause not only of all things, events, and appearances, but likewise of all our thoughts, sensations, impulses, and actions. Obedience to nature is the only virtue.” It is possible that Byron traced his own lineaments in this too lifelike portraiture, and at the same time conceived the possibility of a new Don Juan, “made up” after his own likeness. His extreme resentment at Coleridge’s just, though unwise and uncalled-for, attack on Maturin stands in need of some explanation. See letter to Murray, September 17, 1817 (Letters, 1900, IV 172). —⁠Editor ↩
“Have you heard that Don Juan came over with a dedication to me, in which Lord Castlereagh and I (being hand in glove intimates) were coupled together for abuse as ‘the two Roberts’? A fear of persecution (sic) from the one Robert is supposed to be the reason why it has been suppressed.”
(Southey to Rev. H. Hill, August 13, 1819, Selections from the Letters, etc., 1856, III 142)

For “Quarrel between Byron and Southey,” see Introduction to The Vision of Judgment, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 475⁠–⁠480; and Letters, 1901, VI 377⁠–⁠399 (Appendix I). —⁠Editor ↩
The reference must be to the detailed enumeration of “the powers requisite for the production of poetry,” and the subsequent antithesis of Imagination and Fancy contained in the Preface to the collected Poems of William Wordsworth, published in 1815. In the Preface to the Excursion (1814) it is expressly stated that “it is not the author’s intention formally to announce a system.” —⁠Editor ↩
Wordsworth’s place may be in the Customs⁠—it is, I think, in that or the Excise⁠—besides another at Lord Lonsdale’s table, where this poetical charlatan and political parasite licks up the crumbs with a hardened alacrity; the converted Jacobin having long subsided into the clownish sycophant [despised retainer⁠—MS. erased] of the worst prejudices of the aristocracy.

[Wordsworth obtained his appointment as Distributor of Stamps for the county of Westmoreland in March, 1813, through Lord Lonsdale’s “patronage” (see his letter, March 6, 1813). The Excursion was dedicated to Lord Lonsdale in a sonnet dated July 29, 1814⁠—

“Oft through thy fair domains, illustrious Peer,
In youth I roamed⁠ ⁠…
Now, by thy care befriended, I appear
Before thee, Lonsdale, and this Work present.”]

↩
Paradise Lost, VII 25, 26. —⁠Editor ↩
“Pale, but not cadaverous:”⁠—Milton’s two elder daughters are said to have robbed him of his books, besides cheating and plaguing him in the economy of his house, etc., etc. His feelings on such an outrage, both as a parent and a scholar, must have been singularly painful. Hayley compares him to Lear. See part third, Life of Milton, by W. Hayley (or Hailey, as spelt in the edition before me).

[The Life of Milton, by William Hailey (sic), Esq., Basil, 1799, p. 186.] ↩
Or⁠—

“Would he subside into a hackney Laureate⁠—
A scribbling, self-sold, soul-hired, scorned Iscariot?”

I doubt if “Laureate” and “Iscariot” be good rhymes, but must say, as Ben Jonson did to Sylvester, who challenged him to rhyme with⁠—

“I, John Sylvester,
Lay with your sister.”

Jonson answered⁠—“I, Ben Jonson, lay with your wife.” Sylvester answered⁠—“That is not rhyme.”⁠—“No,” said Ben Jonson; “but it is true.”

[For Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, see The Age of Bronze, line 538, Poetical Works, 1901, V 568, note 2; and Letters, 1900, IV 108, note 1.] ↩
For the character of Eutropius, the eunuch and minister at the court of Arcadius, see Gibbon, [Decline and Fall, 1825, II 307, 308]. ↩
“Mr. John Murray⁠—As publisher to the Admiralty and of various Government works, if the five stanzas concerning Castlereagh should risk your ears or the Navy List, you may omit them in the publication⁠—in that case the two last lines of stanza 10 [i.e. 11] must end with the couplet (lines 7, 8) inscribed in the margin. The stanzas on Castlerighi (as the Italians call him) are 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.”
—⁠MS. M

—⁠Editor ↩
Commenting on a “pathetic sentiment” of Leoni, the author of the Italian translation of Childe Harold (“Sciagurata condizione di questa mia patria!”), Byron affirms that the Italians execrated Castlereagh “as the cause, by the conduct of the English at Genoa.”

“Surely,” he exclaims, “that man will not die in his bed: there is no spot of the earth where his name is not a hissing and a curse. Imagine what must be the man’s talent for Odium, who has contrived to spread his infamy like a pestilence from Ireland to Italy, and to make his name an execration in all languages.”
—⁠Letter to Murray, May 8, 1820, Letters, 1901, V 22, note 1

—⁠Editor ↩
Charles James Fox and the Whig Club of his time adopted a uniform of blue and buff. Hence the livery of the Edinburgh Review. —⁠Editor ↩
I allude not to our friend Landor’s hero, the traitor Count Julian, but to Gibbon’s hero, vulgarly yclept “The Apostate.” ↩
Begun at Venice, September 6; finished November 1, 1818. —⁠Editor ↩
The pantomime which Byron and his readers “all had seen,” was an abbreviated and bowdlerized version of Shadwell’s Libertine. “First produced by Mr. Garrick on the boards of Drury Lane Theatre,” it was recomposed by Charles Anthony Delpini, and performed at the Royalty Theatre, in Goodman’s Fields, in 1787. It was entitled Don Juan; or, the Libertine Destroyed: A Tragic Pantomimical Entertainment, in Two Acts. Music Composed by Mr. Gluck. “Scaramouch,” the “Sganarelle” of Molière’s Festin de Pierre, was a favourite character of Joseph Grimaldi. He was cast for the part, in 1801, at Sadler’s Wells, and, again, on a memorable occasion, November 28, 1809, at Covent Garden Theatre, when the O.P. riots were in full swing, and (see the Morning Chronicle, November 29, 1809) “there was considerable tumult in the pit.” According to “Boz” (Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi, 1846, II 81, 106, 107), Byron patronized Grimaldi’s “benefits at Covent Garden,” was repeatedly in his company, and when he left England, in 1816, “presented him with a valuable silver snuffbox.” At the end of the pantomime “the Furies gather round him [Don Juan], and the Tyrant being bound in chains is hurried away and thrown into flames.” The Devil is conspicuous by his absence. —⁠Editor ↩
Edward Vernon, Admiral (1684⁠–⁠1757), took Porto Bello in 1739.

William Augustus, second son of George II (1721⁠–⁠1765), fought at the battles of Dettingen, 1743; Fontenoy, 1745; and at Culloden, 1746. For the “severity of the Duke of Cumberland,” see Scott’s Tales of a Grandfather, Prose Works, 1830, VII 852, sq.

James Wolfe, General, born January 2, 1726, was killed at the siege of Quebec, September 13, 1759.

Edward, Lord Hawke, Admiral (1715⁠–⁠1781), totally defeated the French fleet in Quiberon Bay, November 20, 1759.

Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick (1721⁠–⁠1792), gained the victory at Minden, August 1, 1759.

John Manners, Marquess of Granby (1721⁠–⁠1790), commanded the British forces in Germany (1766⁠–⁠1769).

John Burgoyne, General, defeated the Americans at Germantown, October 3, 1777, but surrendered to General Gates at Saratoga, October 17, 1778. He died in 1792.

Augustus, Viscount Keppel, Admiral (1725⁠–⁠1786), was tried by court-martial, January-February, 1779, for allowing the French fleet off Ushant to escape, July, 1778. He was honourably acquitted.

Richard, Earl Howe, Admiral (1725⁠–⁠1799), known by the sailors as “Black Dick,” defeated the French off Ushant, June 1, 1794. —⁠Editor ↩
Compare Macbeth, act IV sc. I, line 65. —⁠Editor ↩
“In the eighth and concluding lecture of Mr. Hazlitt’s canons of criticism, delivered at the Surrey Institution (The English Poets, 1870, pp. 203, 204), I am accused of having ‘lauded Bonaparte to the skies in the hour of his success, and then peevishly wreaking my disappointment on the god of my idolatry.’ The first lines I ever wrote upon Bonaparte were the ‘Ode to Napoleon,’ after his abdication in 1814. All that I have ever written on that subject has been done since his decline;⁠—I never ‘met him in the hour of his success.’ I have considered his character at different periods, in its strength and in its weakness: by his zealots I am accused of injustice⁠—by his enemies as his warmest partisan, in many publications, both English and foreign.

“For the accuracy of my delineation I have high authority. A year and some months ago, I had the pleasure of seeing at Venice my friend the honourable Douglas Kinnaird. In his way through Germany, he told me that he had been honoured with a presentation to, and some interviews with, one of the nearest family connections of Napoleon (Eugène Beauharnais). During one of these, he read and translated the lines alluding to Bonaparte, in the Third Canto of Childe Harold. He informed me, that he was authorized by the illustrious personage⁠—(still recognized as such by the Legitimacy in Europe)⁠—to whom they were read, to say, that ‘the delineation was complete,’ or words to this effect. It is no puerile vanity which induces me to publish this fact;⁠—but Mr. Hazlitt accuses my inconsistency, and infers my inaccuracy. Perhaps he will admit that, with regard to the latter, one of the most intimate family connections of the Emperor may be equally capable of deciding on the subject. I tell Mr. Hazlitt that I never flattered Napoleon on the throne, nor maligned him since his fall. I wrote what I think are the incredible antitheses of his character.

“Mr. Hazlitt accuses me further of delineating myself in Childe Harold, etc., etc. I have denied this long ago⁠—but, even were it true, Locke tells us, that all his knowledge of human understanding was derived from studying his own mind. From Mr. Hazlitt’s opinion of my poetry I do not appeal; but I request that gentleman not to insult me by imputing the basest of crimes⁠—viz. ‘praising publicly the same man whom I wished to depreciate in his adversity:’⁠—the first lines I ever wrote on Bonaparte were in his dispraise, in 1814⁠—the last, though not at all in his favour, were more impartial and discriminative, in 1818. Has he become more fortunate since 1814?”

For Byron’s various estimates of Napoleon’s character and career, see Childe Harold, Canto III, stanza XXXVI line 7, Poetical Works, 1899, II 238, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
Charles François Duperier Dumouriez (1739⁠–⁠1823) defeated the Austrians at Jemappes, November 6, 1792, etc. He published his Mémoires (Hamburg et Leipzig), 1794. For the spelling, see Memoirs of General Dumourier, written by himself, translated by John Fenwick. London, 1794. See, too, Lettre de Joseph Servan, Ex-ministre de la Guerre, Sur le mémoire lu par M. Dumourier le 13 Juin à l’Assemblée Nationale; Bibiothèque Historique de la Révolution, “Justifications,” 7, 8, 9. —⁠Editor ↩
Antoine Pierre Joseph Barnave, born 1761, was appointed President of the Constituent Assembly in 1790. He was guillotined November 30, 1793.

Jean Pierre Brissot de Warville, philosopher and politician, born January 14, 1754, was one of the principal instigators of the revolt of the Champ de Mars, July, 1789. He was guillotined October 31, 1793.

Marie Jean Antoine, Marquis de Condorcet, born September 17, 1743, was appointed President of the Legislative Assembly in 1792. Proscribed by the Girondins, he poisoned himself to escape the guillotine, March 28, 1794.

Honoré Gabriel Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau, born March 9, 1749, died April 2, 1791.

Jérôme Petion de Villeneuve, born 1753, Mayor of Paris in 1791, took an active part in the imprisonment of the king. In 1793 he fell under Robespierre’s displeasure, and to escape proscription took refuge in the department of Calvados. In 1794 his body was found in a field, half eaten by wolves.

Jean Baptiste, Baron de Clootz (better known as Anacharsis Clootz), was born in 1755. In 1790, at the bar of the National Convention, he described himself as the “Speaker of Mankind.” Being suspected by Robespierre, he was condemned to death, March 24, 1794. On the scaffold he begged to be executed last, “in order to establish certain principles.” (See Carlyle’s French Revolution, 1839, III 315.)

Georges Jacques Danton, born October 28, 1759, helped to establish the Revolutionary Tribunal, March 10, and the Committee of Public Safety, April 6, 1793; agreed to proscription of the Girondists, June, 1793; was executed with Camille Desmoulins and others, April 5, 1794.

Jean Paul Marat, born May 24, 1744, physician and man of science, proposed and carried out the wholesale massacre of September 2⁠–⁠5, 1792; was denounced to, but acquitted by, the Revolutionary Tribunal, May, 1793; assassinated by Charlotte Corday, July 13, 1793.

Marie Jean Paul, Marquis de La Fayette, born September 6, 1757, died May 19, 1834.

With the exception of La Fayette, who outlived Byron by ten years, and Lord St. Vincent, all “the famous persons” mentioned in stanzas II⁠–⁠IV had passed away long before the First Canto of Don Juan was written. —⁠Editor ↩
Barthélemi Catherine Joubert, born April 14, 1769, distinguished himself at the engagements of Cava, Montebello, Rivoli, and in the Tyrol. He was afterwards sent to oppose Suvóroff, and was killed at Novi, August 15, 1799.

For Hoche and Marceau, vide ante, Poetical Works, 1899, II 296.

Jean Lannes, Duke of Montebello, born April 11, 1769, distinguished himself at Lodi, Aboukir, Acre, Austerlitz, Jena and, lastly, at Essling, where he was mortally wounded. He died May 31, 1809.

Louis Charles Antoine Desaix de Voygoux, born August 27, 1768, won the victory at the Pyramids, July 21, 1798. He was mortally wounded at Marengo, June 14, 1800.

Jean Victor Moreau, born August 11, 1763, was victorious at Engen, May 3, and at Hohenlinden, December 3, 1800. He was struck by a cannonball at the battle of Dresden, August 27, and died September 2, 1813. —⁠Editor ↩
Hor., Od., IV c. IX l. 25⁠—

“Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona,” etc.

—⁠Editor ↩
Hor., Epist. Ad Pisones, lines 148, 149⁠—

“Semper ad eventum festinat, et in medias res,
Non secus ac notas, auditorem rapit⁠—”

—⁠Editor ↩
[“Quien no ha visto Sevilla, no ha visto maravilla.”]

↩
In his reply to Blackwood (No. XXIX August, 1819), Byron somewhat disingenuously rebuts the charge that Don Juan contained “an elaborate satire on the character and manners of his wife.”

“If,” he writes, “in a poem by no means ascertained to be my production there appears a disagreeable, casuistical, and by no means respectable female pedant, it is set down for my wife. Is there any resemblance? If there be, it is in those who make it⁠—I can see none.”
—⁠Letters, 1900, IV 477

The allusions in stanzas XII⁠–⁠XIV, and, again, in stanzas XXVII⁠–⁠XXIX, are, and must have been meant to be, unmistakable. —⁠Editor ↩
Gregor von Feinagle, born? 1765, was the inventor of a system of mnemonics, “founded on the topical memory of the ancients,” as described by Cicero and Quinctilian. He lectured, in 1811, at the Royal Institution and elsewhere. When Rogers was asked if he attended the lectures, he replied, “No; I wished to learn the Art of Forgetting” (Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers, 1856, p. 42). —⁠Editor ↩
Little she spoke⁠—but what she spoke was Attic all,
With words and deeds in perfect unanimity.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Sir Samuel Romilly, born 1757, lost his wife on the 29th of October, and committed suicide on the 2nd of November, 1818.⁠—

“But there will come a day of reckoning, even if I should not live to see it. I have at least seen Romilly shivered, who was one of the assassins. When that felon or lunatic⁠ ⁠… was doing his worst to uproot my whole family, tree, branch, and blossoms⁠—when, after taking my retainer, he went over to them [see Letters, 1899, III 324]⁠—when he was bringing desolation⁠ ⁠… on my household gods⁠—did he think that, in less than three years, a natural event⁠—a severe, domestic, but an unexpected and common calamity⁠—would lay his carcase in a crossroad, or stamp his name in a verdict of Lunacy! Did he (who in his drivelling sexagenary dotage had not the courage to survive his Nurse⁠—for what else was a wife to him at his time of life?)⁠—reflect or consider what my feelings must have been, when wife, and child, and sister, and name, and fame, and country, were to be my sacrifice on his legal altar⁠—and this at a moment when my health was declining, my fortune embarrassed, and my mind had been shaken by many kinds of disappointment⁠—while I was yet young, and might have reformed what might be wrong in my conduct, and retrieved what was perplexing in my affairs! But the wretch is in his grave,” etc.
—⁠Letter to Murray, June 7, 1819, Letters, 1900, IV 316

—⁠Editor ↩
Maria Edgeworth (1767⁠–⁠1849) published Castle Rackrent, etc., etc., etc., in 1800.

“In 1813,” says Byron, “I recollect to have met them [the Edgeworths] in the fashionable world of London.⁠ ⁠… She was a nice little unassuming ‘Jeannie Deans-looking body,’ as we Scotch say; and if not handsome, certainly not ill-looking.”
(Diary, January 19, 1821, Letters, 1901, V 177⁠–⁠179) —⁠Editor

↩
Sarah Trimmer (1741⁠–⁠1810) published, in 1782, Easy Introduction to the Study of Nature; History of the Robins (dedicated to the Princess Sophia) in 1786, etc. —⁠Editor ↩
Hannah More (1745⁠–⁠1833) published Coelebs in Search of a Wife in 1809. —⁠Editor ↩
Pope, Rape of the Lock, Canto II line 17. —⁠Editor ↩
John Harrison (1693⁠–⁠1776), known as “Longitude” Harrison, was the inventor of watch compensation. He received, in slowly and reluctantly paid instalments, a sum of £20,000 from the Government, for producing a chronometer which should determine the longitude within half a degree. A watch which contained his latest improvements was worn by Captain Cook during his three years’ circumnavigation of the globe. —⁠Editor ↩
“Description des vertus incomparables de l’Huile de Macassar.”

See the Advertisement. [An Historical, Philosophical and Practical Essay on the Human Hair, was published by Alexander Rowland, Jun., in 1816. It was inscribed,

“To her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte of Wales and Cobourg.”]

↩
Where all was innocence and quiet bliss.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
And so she seemed, in all outside formalities.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“ ’Zounds, an I were now by this rascal, I could brain him with his lady’s fan.”
—⁠1 Henry IV, act II, sc. 3, lines 19, 2

—⁠Editor ↩
Wishing each other damned, divorced, or dead.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
According to Medwin (Conversations, 1824, p. 55), Byron “was surprised one day by a Doctor and a Lawyer almost forcing themselves at the same time into my room. I did not know,” he adds, “till afterwards the real object of their visit. I thought their questions singular, frivolous, and somewhat importunate, if not impertinent: but what should I have thought, if I had known that they were sent to provide proofs of my insanity?” Lady Byron, in her Remarks on Mr. Moore’s Life, etc. (Life, pp. 661⁠–⁠663), says that Dr. Baillie (vide post, note 744), whom she consulted with regard to her husband’s supposed insanity, “not having had access to Lord Byron, could not pronounce a positive opinion on this point.” It appears, however, that another doctor, a Mr. Le Mann (see Letters, 1899, III 293, note 1, 295, 299, etc.), visited Byron professionally, and reported on his condition to Lady Byron. Hence, perhaps, the mention of “druggists.” —⁠Editor ↩
“I deem it my duty to God to act as I am acting.”
—⁠Letter of Lady Byron to Mrs. Leigh, February 14, 1816, Letters, 1899, III 311

—⁠Editor ↩
“This is so very pointed.”
—⁠[?Hobhouse]

“If people make application, it is their own fault.”
—⁠[B.]⁠—[Revise]

—⁠Editor ↩
“There is some doubt about this.”
—⁠[H.]

“What has the ‘doubt’ to do with the poem? it is, at least, poetically true. Why apply everything to that absurd woman? I have no reference to living characters.”
—⁠[B.]⁠—[Revise]

Medwin (Conversations, 1824, p. 54) attributes the “breaking open my writing-desk” to Mrs. Charlment (i.e. Mrs. Clermont) the original of “A Sketch,” Poetical Works, 1900, III 540⁠–⁠544. It is evident from Byron’s reply to Hobhouse’s remonstrance that Medwin did not invent this incident, but that someone, perhaps Fletcher’s wife, had told him that his papers had been overhauled. —⁠Editor ↩
First their friends tried at reconciliation.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
The lawyers recommended a divorce.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
He had been ill brought up, besides was
besides being bilious.

or,

The reason was, perhaps, that he was bilious.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
And we may own⁠—since he is now but
laid in earth.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“I could have forgiven the dagger or the bowl⁠—anything but the deliberate desolation piled upon me, when I stood alone upon my hearth, with my household gods shivered around me.⁠ ⁠… Do you suppose I have forgotten it? It has, comparatively swallowed up in me every other feeling, and I am only a spectator upon earth till a tenfold opportunity offers.”
—⁠Letter to Moore, September 19, 1818, Letters, 1900, IV 262, 263

Compare, too⁠—

“I had one only fount of quiet left,
And that they poisoned! My pure household gods
Were shivered on my hearth, and o’er their shrine
Sat grinning Ribaldry and sneering Scorn.”
Marino Faliero, act III sc. II, lines 361⁠–⁠364

—⁠Editor ↩
Save death or litigation⁠—
banishment⁠— so he died.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Compare Leigh Hunt on the illustrations to Andrew Tooke’s Pantheon: “I see before me, as vividly now as ever, his Mars and Apollo⁠ ⁠… and Venus very handsome, we thought, and not looking too modest in a ‘light cymar.’ ”
—⁠Autobiography, 1860, p. 75

—⁠Editor ↩
Defending still their Iliads and Odysseys.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
See Longinus, Section 10, “Ἵνα μὴ ἕν τι περὶ αὐτὴν πάθος φαίνηται, παθῶν δὲ σύνοδος.”

[“The effect desired is that not one passion only should be seen in her, but a concourse of passions.”
(Longinis on the Sublime, by W. Rhys Roberts, 1899, pp. 70, 71)

The Ode alluded to is the famous Φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θεοῖσιν, κ.τ.λ.

“Him rival to the gods I place;
Him loftier yet, if loftier be,
Who, Lesbia, sits before thy face,
Who listens and who looks on thee.”
W. E. Gladstone

“I do not think you are quite held out by the quotation. Longinus says the circumstantial assemblage of the passions makes the sublime; he does not talk of the sublime being soaring and ample.”
—⁠[H.]

“I do not care for this⁠—it must stand.”
—⁠[B.]⁠—[Marginal notes in Revise]]

↩
Bucol., Ecl. II “Alexis.” —⁠Editor ↩
Too much their antique
modest
downright bard by the elision
omission.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Fact! There is, or was, such an edition, with all the obnoxious epigrams of Martial placed by themselves at the end.

[In the Delphin Martial (Amsterdam, 1701) the Epigrammata Obscaena are printed as an Appendix (pp. 2⁠–⁠56),

“[Ne] quiequam desideraretur a morosis quibusdam hominibus.”]

↩
See his Confessions, lib. I cap. IX; [lib. II cap. II, et passim]. By the representation which Saint Augustine gives of himself in his youth, it is easy to see that he was what we should call a rake. He avoided the school as the plague; he loved nothing but gaming and public shows; he robbed his father of everything he could find; he invented a thousand lies to escape the rod, which they were obliged to make use of to punish his irregularities. ↩
Byron’s early letters are full of complaints of his mother’s violent temper. See, for instance, letter to the Hon. Augusta Byron, April 23, 1805. In another letter to John M. B. Pigot, August 9, 1806, he speaks of her as “Mrs. Byron ‘furiosa’ ” (Letters, 1898, I 60, 101). —⁠Editor ↩
“Having surrendered the last symbol of power, the unfortunate Boabdil continued on towards the Alpuxarras, that he might not behold the entrance of the Christians into his capital.⁠ ⁠… Having ascended an eminence commanding the last view of Granada, the Moors paused involuntarily to take a farewell gaze at their beloved city, which a few steps more would shut from their sight forever.⁠ ⁠… The heart of Boabdil, softened by misfortunes, and overcharged with grief, could no longer contain itself. ‘Allah achbar! God is great!’ said he; but the words of resignation died upon his lips, and he burst into a flood of tears.”
—⁠Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada, by Washington Irving, 1829, II 379⁠–⁠381

—⁠Editor ↩
I’ll tell you a secret⁠—silence! hush!
which you’ll hush.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Spouses from twenty years of age to thirty
Are most admired by women of strict
staid virtue.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
For the particulars of St. Anthony’s recipe for hot blood in cold weather, see Mr. Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints.

[“I am not sure it was not St. Francis who had the wife of snow⁠—in that case the line must run, ‘St. Francis back to reason.’ ”
—⁠[MS. M]

For the seven snowballs, of which “the greatest” was his wife, see Life of “St. Francis of Assisi” (The Golden Legend (edited by F. S. Ellis), 1900, V 221). See, too, the Lives of the Saints, etc., by the Rev. Alban Butler, 1838, II 574.] ↩
The sorceress in Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata. The story of Armida and Rinaldo forms the plot of operas by Glück and Rossini. —⁠Editor ↩
Thinking God might not understand the case.
—⁠[MS. M, Revise]

↩
“Quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante.”
Dante, Inferno, canto V line 138

—⁠Editor ↩
“Conscienzia m’assicura,
La buona compagnia che l’uom francheggia
Sotto l’osbergo del sentirsi pura.”
Inferno, canto XXVIII lines 115⁠–⁠117

—⁠Editor ↩
Deemed that her thoughts no more required control.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
See Ovid, Metamorph., VII 9, sq. —⁠Editor ↩
Campbell’s Gertrude of Wyoming⁠—(I think)⁠—the opening of Canto Second [Part III stanza I lines 1⁠–⁠4]⁠—but quote from memory. ↩
See Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria, chap. I (ed. 1847, I 14, 15); and “Dejection: An Ode,” lines 86⁠–⁠93. —⁠Editor ↩
I say this by the way⁠—so don’t look stern.
But if you’re angry, reader, pass it by.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Juan Boscan, of Barcelona (1500⁠–⁠1544), in concert with his friend Garcilasso, Italianized Castilian poetry. He was the author of the Leandro, a poem in blank verse, of canzoni, and sonnets after the model of Petrarch, and of The Allegory.⁠—History of Spanish Literature, by George Ticknor, 1888, I 513. —⁠Editor ↩
Garcias Lasso or Garcilasso de la Vega (1503⁠–⁠1536), of a noble family at Toledo, was a warrior as well as a poet, “now seizing on the sword and now the pen.” After serving with distinction in Germany, Africa, and Provence, he was killed at Muy, near Frejus, in 1536, by a stone, thrown from a tower, which fell on his head as he was leading on his battalion. He was the author of thirty-seven sonnets, five canzoni, and three pastorals.⁠—Vide ibidem, pp. 522⁠–⁠535. —⁠Editor ↩
A real wittol always is suspicious,
But always also hunts in the wrong place.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Change horses every hour from night till noon.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Except the promises of true theology.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“Oh, Susan! I’ve said, in the moments of mirth,
What’s devotion to thee or to me?
I devoutly believe there’s a heaven on earth,
And believe that that heaven’s in thee.”
“The Catalogue,” Poetical Works of the Late Thomas Little, 1803, p. 128

—⁠Editor ↩
She stood on Guilt’s steep brink, in all the sense
And full security of Innocence.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
To leave these two young people then and there.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“Age Xerxes⁠ ⁠… eo usque luxuria gaudens, ut edicto praemium ei proponeret, qui novum voluptatis genus reperisset.”
—⁠Val. Max, De Dictis, etc., lib. IX cap. 1, ext. 3 —⁠Editor

↩
“You certainly will be damned for all this scene.”
—⁠[H.]

—⁠Editor ↩
Compare Childe Harold, Canto IV stanza III line 2, Poetical Works, II 329, note 3. —⁠Editor ↩
Our coming, nor look brightly till we come.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Sweet is a lawsuit to the attorney⁠—sweet, etc.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
So, too, Falstaff, 1 Henry IV, act II sc. 2, lines 79, 80. —⁠Editor ↩
Who’ve made us wait⁠—God knows how long already,
For an entailed estate, or country-seat,
Wishing them not exactly damned, but dead⁠—he
Knows nought of grief, who has not so been worried⁠—
’Tis strange old people don’t like to be buried.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Byron has not been forgotten at Harrow, though it is a bend of the Cam (Byron’s Pool), not his favourite Duck Pool (now “Ducker”) which bears his name. —⁠Editor ↩
The reference is to the metallic tractors of Benjamin Charles Perkins, which were advertised as a “cure for all disorders, Red Noses,” etc. Compare English Bards, etc., lines 131, 132⁠—

“What varied wonders tempt us as they pass!
The Cow-pox, Tractors, Galvanism, and Gas.”
See Poetical Works, 1898, I 307, note 3

—⁠Editor ↩
Edward Jenner (1749⁠–⁠1823) made his first experiments in vaccination, May 14, 1796. Napoleon caused his soldiers to be vaccinated, and imagined that the English would be gratified by his recognition of Jenner’s discovery.

Sir William Congreve (1772⁠–⁠1828) invented “Congreve rockets” or shells in 1804. They were used with great effect at the battle of Leipzig, in 1813. —⁠Editor ↩
“Mon cher ne touchez pas à la petite Vérole.”
—⁠[H.]⁠—[Revise]

—⁠Editor ↩
Experiments in galvanism were made on the body of Forster the murderer, by Galvani’s nephew, Professor Aldini, January and February, 1803. —⁠Editor ↩
“Put out these lines, and keep the others.”
—⁠[H.]⁠—[Revise]

—⁠Editor ↩
Sir Humphry Davy, P.R.S. (1778⁠–⁠1829), invented the safety-lamp in 1815. —⁠Editor ↩
In a critique of An Account of the Empire of Marocco.⁠ ⁠… To which is added an⁠ ⁠… account of Tombuctoo, the great Emporium of Central Africa, by James Grey Jackson, London, 1809, the reviewer comments on the author’s pedantry in correcting “the common orthography of African names.”

“We do not,” he writes, “greatly object to⁠ ⁠… Fas for Fez, or even Timbuktu for Tombuctoo, but Marocco for Morocco is a little too much.”
—⁠Edinburgh Review, July, 1809 vol. XIV p. 307

—⁠Editor ↩
Sir John Ross (1777⁠–⁠1856) published A Voyage of Discovery⁠ ⁠… for the purpose of Exploring Baffin’s Bay, etc., in 1819; Sir W. E. Parry (1790⁠–⁠1855) published his Journal of a Voyage of Discovery to the Arctic Regions Between 4th April and 18th November, 1818, in 1820. —⁠Editor ↩
Not only pleasure’s sin, but sin’s a pleasure.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
And lose in shining snow their summits blue.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
’Twas midnight⁠—dark and sombre was the night, etc.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
And supper, punch, ghost-stories, and such chat.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“ ‘All that, Egad,’ as Bayes says” [in the Duke of Buckingham’s play The Rehearsal].⁠—Letter to Murray, September 28, 1820, Letters, 1901, V 80. —⁠Editor ↩
“Lobster-sallad, not a lobster-salad. Have you been at a London ball, and not known a Lobster-sallad?”
—⁠[H.]⁠—[Revise]

—⁠Editor ↩
“Tonight, as Countess Guiccioli observed me poring over Don Juan, she stumbled by mere chance on the 137th stanza of the First Canto, and asked me what it meant. I told her, ‘Nothing⁠—but your husband is coming.’ As I said this in Italian with some emphasis, she started up in a fright, and said, ‘Oh, my God, is he coming?’ thinking it was her own.⁠ ⁠… You may suppose we laughed when she found out the mistake. You will be amused, as I was;⁠—it happened not three hours ago.”
—⁠Letter to Murray, November 8, 1819, Letters, 1900, IV 374

It should be borne in mind that the loves of Juan and Julia, the irruption of Don Alfonso, etc., were rather of the nature of prophecy than of reminiscence. The First Canto had been completed before the Countess Guiccioli appeared on the scene. —⁠Editor ↩
And thus as ’twere herself from out them crept.
—⁠[MS. M]

↩
Ere I the wife of such a man had been!
—⁠[MS.]

↩
But while this search was making, Julia’s tongue.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
The Spanish “Cortejo” is much the same as the Italian “Cavalier Servente.” ↩
Donna Julia here made a mistake. Count O’Reilly did not take Algiers⁠—but Algiers very nearly took him: he and his army and fleet retreated with great loss, and not much credit, from before that city, in the year 1775.

[Alexander O’Reilly, born 1722, a Spanish general of Irish extraction, failed in an expedition against Algiers in 1775, in which the Spaniards lost four thousand men. In 1794 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the forces equipped against the army of the French National Convention. He died March 23, 1794.] ↩
The Italian names have an obvious signification. —⁠Editor ↩
The chimney⁠—fit retreat for any lover!
—⁠[MS.]

↩
—may deplore.
—⁠[Alternative reading. MS. M]

↩
“Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh.”
(Job 2:10)

—⁠Editor ↩
“Don’t be read aloud.”
—⁠[H.]⁠—[Revise]

—⁠Editor ↩
—than be put
To drown with Clarence in his Malmsey butt.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
And reckon up our balance with the devil.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“Carissimo, do review the whole scene, and think what you would say of it, if written by another.”
—⁠[H.]

“I would say, read ‘The Miracle’ [‘A Tale from Boccace’] in Hobhouse’s poems, and ‘January and May,’ and ‘Paulo Purganti,’ and ‘Hans Carvel,’ and ‘Joconde.’ These are laughable: it is the serious⁠—Little’s poems and Lalla Rookh⁠—that affect seriously. Now Lust is a serious passion, and cannot be excited by the ludicrous.”
—⁠[B.]⁠—Marginal Notes in Revise]

For the “Miracle,” see Imitations and Translations, 1809, pp. 111⁠–⁠128. “January and May” is Pope’s version of Chaucer’s “Merchant’s Tale.” “Paulo Purganti” and “Hans Carvel” are by Matthew Prior; and for “Joconde” (Nouvelle Tirée de L’Ariosto, canto XXVIII) see Contes et Nouvelles en Vers, de Mr. de la Fontaine, 1691, I 1⁠–⁠19. —⁠Editor ↩
Compare

“The use made in the French tongue of the word tact, to denote that delicate sense of propriety, which enables a man to feel his way in the difficult intercourse of polished society, seems to have been suggested by similar considerations (i.e. similar to those which suggested the use of the word taste).”
—⁠Outlines of Moral Philosophy, by Dugald Stewart, Part I sect. X ed. 1855, p. 48

For D’Alembert’s use of tact, to denote “that peculiar delicacy of perception (which, like the nice touch of a blind man) arises from habits of close attention to those slighter feelings which escape general notice,” see Philosophical Essays, by Dugald Stewart, 1818, p. 603. —⁠Editor ↩
With base suspicion now no longer haunted.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
For the incident of the shoes, Lord Byron was probably indebted to the Scottish ballad⁠—

“Our goodman came hame at e’en, and hame came he;
He spy’d a pair of jack-boots, where nae boots should be,
What’s this now, goodwife? What’s this I see?
How came these boots there, without the leave o’ me!
Boots! quo’ she:
Ay, boots, quo’ he.
Shame fa’ your cuckold face, and ill mat ye see,
It’s but a pair of water stoups the cooper sent to me,” etc.

See James Johnson’s Musical Museum, 1787, etc., V 466. —⁠Editor ↩
Found⁠—heaven knows how⁠—his solitary way.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
William Brodie Gurney (1777⁠–⁠1855), the son and grandson of eminent shorthand writers, “reported the proceedings against the Duke of York in 1809, the trials of Lord Cochrane in 1814, and of Thistlewood in 1820, and the proceedings against Queen Caroline.”⁠—Dict. of Nat. Biog., art. “Gurney.” —⁠Editor ↩
[“Venice, December 7, 1818.

“After that stanza in the first canto of Don Juan (sent by Lord Lauderdale) towards the conclusion of the canto⁠—I speak of the stanza whose two last lines are⁠—

“ ‘The best is that in short-hand ta’en by Gurney,
Who to Madrid on purpose made a journey,’

insert the following stanzas, ‘But Donna Inez,’ etc.”
—⁠[B.]]

The text is based on a second or revised copy of stanzas CXC⁠–⁠CXCVIII. Many of the corrections and emendations which were inserted in the first draft are omitted in the later and presumably improved version. Byron’s first intention was to insert seven stanzas after stanza CLXXXIX, descriptive and highly depreciatory of Brougham, but for reasons of “fairness” (vide infra) he changed his mind. The casual mention of “blundering Brougham” in English Bards, etc. (line 524, Poetical Works, 1898, I 338, note 2), is a proof that his suspicions were not aroused as to the authorship of the review of Hours of Idleness (Edin. Rev., January, 1808), and it is certain that Byron’s animosity was due to the part played by Brougham at the time of the Separation. (In a letter to Byron, dated February 18, 1817, Murray speaks of a certain B. “as your incessant persecutor⁠—the source of all affected public opinion respecting you.”) The stanzas, with the accompanying notes, are not included in the editions of 1833 or 1837, and are now printed for the first time.

I

“ ’Twas a fine cause for those in law delighting⁠—
’Tis pity that they had no Brougham in Spain,
Famous for always talking, and ne’er fighting,
For calling names, and taking them again;
For blustering, bungling, trimming, wrangling, writing,
Groping all paths to power, and all in vain⁠—
Losing elections, character, and temper,
A foolish, clever, fellow⁠—Idem semper!

II

“Bully in Senates, skulker in the Field,1213
The Adulterer’s advocate when duly feed,
The libeller’s gratis Counsel, dirty shield
Which Law affords to many a dirty deed;
A wondrous Warrior against those who yield⁠—
A rod to Weakness, to the brave a reed⁠—
The People’s sycophant, the Prince’s foe,
And serving him the more by being so.

III

“Tory by nurture, Whig by Circumstance,
A Democrat some once or twice a year,
Whene’er it suits his purpose to advance
His vain ambition in its vague career:
A sort of Orator by sufferance,
Less for the comprehension than the ear;
With all the arrogance of endless power,
Without the sense to keep it for an hour.

IV

“The House-of-Commons Damocles of words⁠—
Above him, hanging by a single hair,
On each harangue depend some hostile Swords;
And deems he that we always will forbear?
Although Defiance oft declined affords
A blotted shield no Shire’s true knight would wear:
Thersites of the House. Parolles1214 of Law,
The double Bobadill1215 takes Scorn for Awe.

V

“How noble is his language⁠—never pert⁠—
How grand his sentiments which ne’er run riot!
As when he swore ‘by God he’d sell his shirt
To head the poll!’ I wonder who would buy it
The skin has passed through such a deal of dirt
In grovelling on to power⁠—such stains now dye it⁠—
So black the long-worn Lion’s hide in hue,
You’d swear his very heart had sweated through.

VI

“Panting for power⁠—as harts for cooling streams⁠—
Yet half afraid to venture for the draught;
A go-between, yet blundering in extremes,
And tossed along the vessel fore and aft;
Now shrinking back, now midst the first he seems,
Patriot by force, and courtisan1216 by craft;
Quick without wit, and violent without strength⁠—
A disappointed Lawyer, at full length.

VII

“A strange example of the force of Law,
And hasty temper on a kindling mind⁠—
Are these the dreams his young Ambition saw?
Poor fellow! he had better far been blind!
I’m sorry thus to probe a wound so raw⁠—
But, then, as Bard my duty to Mankind,
For warning to the rest, compels these raps⁠—
As Geographers lay down a Shoal in Maps.”

Note to the Annexed Stanzas on Brougham

“Distrusted by the Democracy, disliked by the Whigs, and detested by the Tories, too much of a lawyer for the people, and too much of a demagogue for Parliament, a contestor of counties, and a Candidate for cities, the refuse of half the Electors of England, and representative at last upon sufferance of the proprietor of some rotten borough, which it would have been more independent to have purchased, a speaker upon all questions, and the outcast of all parties, his support has become alike formidable to all his enemies (for he has no friends), and his vote can be only valuable when accompanied by his Silence. A disappointed man with a bad temper, he is endowed with considerable but not first-rate abilities, and has blundered on through life, remarkable only for a fluency, in which he has many rivals at the bar and in the Senate, and an eloquence in which he has several Superiors. ‘Willing to wound and not afraid to strike, until he receives a blow in return, he has not yet betrayed any illegal ardour, or Irish alacrity, in accepting the defiances, and resenting the disgraceful terms which his proneness to evil-speaking have (sic) brought upon him. In the cases of Mackinnon and Manners,1217 he sheltered himself behind those parliamentary privileges, which Fox, Pitt, Canning, Castlereagh, Tierney, Adam, Shelburne, Grattan, Corry, Curran, and Clare disdained to adopt as their buckler. The House of Commons became the Asylum of his Slander, as the Churches of Rome were once the Sanctuary of Assassins.

“His literary reputation (with the exception of one work of his early career) rests upon some anonymous articles imputed to him in a celebrated periodical work; but even these are surpassed by the Essays of others in the same Journal. He has tried everything and succeeded in nothing; and he may perhaps finish as a Lawyer without practice, as he has already been occasionally an orator without an audience, if not soon cut short in his career.

“The above character is not written impartially, but by one who has had occasion to know some of the baser parts of it, and regards him accordingly with shuddering abhorrence, and just so much fear as he deserves. In him is to be dreaded the crawling of the centipede, not the spring of the tiger⁠—the venom of the reptile, not the strength of the animal⁠—the rancour of the miscreant, not the courage of the Man.

“In case the prose or verse of the above should be actionable, I put my name, that the man may rather proceed against me than the publisher⁠—not without some faint hope that the brand with which I blast him may induce him, however reluctantly, to a manlier revenge.”

Extract from Letter to Murray

“I enclose you the stanzas which were intended for 1st Canto, after the line

‘Who to Madrid on purpose made a journey:’

but I do not mean them for present publication, because I will not, at this distance, publish that of a Man, for which he has a claim upon another too remote to give him redress.

“With regard to the Miscreant Brougham, however, it was only long after the fact, and I was made acquainted with the language he had held of me on my leaving England (with regard to the Dss of D.’s house),1218 and his letter to Me. de Staël, and various matters for all of which the first time he and I foregather⁠—be it in England, be it on earth⁠—he shall account, and one of the two be carried home.

“As I have no wish to have mysteries, I merely prohibit the publication of these stanzas in print, for the reasons of fairness mentioned; but I by no means wish him not to know their existence or their tenor, nor my intentions as to himself: he has shown no forbearance, and he shall find none. You may show them to him and to all whom it may concern, with the explanation that the only reason that I have not had satisfaction of this man has been, that I have never had an opportunity since I was aware of the facts, which my friends had carefully concealed from me; and it was only by slow degrees, and by piecemeal, that I got at them. I have not sought him, nor gone out of my way for him; but I will find him, and then we can have it out: he has shown so little courage, that he must fight at last in his absolute necessity to escape utter degradation.

“I send you the stanzas, which (except the last) have been written nearly two years, merely because I have been lately copying out most of the MSS. which were in my drawers.”

↩
Julia was sent into a nunnery,
And there, perhaps, her feelings may be better.
—⁠[MS. M]

↩
Man’s love is of his life⁠—.
—⁠[MS. M]

↩
“Que les hommes sont heureux d’aller à la guerre, d’exposer leur vie, de se livrer à l’enthousiasme de l’honneur et du danger! Mais il n’y a rien au-dehors qui soulage les femmes.”
—⁠Corinne, ou L’Italie, Madame de Staël, liv., XVIII chap. V ed. 1835, III 209

—⁠Editor ↩
To mourn alone the love which has undone.

or,

To lift our fatal love to God from man.

Take that which, of these three, seems the best prescription. —⁠B. ↩
You will proceed in beauty and in pride,
You will return⁠—.
—⁠[MS. M]

↩
Or,

That word is fatal now
lost for me
deadly now⁠—but let it go.
—⁠[MS. M]

↩
I struggle, but can not collect my mind.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
As turns the needle trembling to the pole
It ne’er can reach⁠—so turns to you my soul.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
With a neat crow-quill, rather hard, but new.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Byron had a seal bearing this motto. —⁠Editor ↩
And there are other incidents remaining
Which shall be specified in fitting time,
With good discretion, and in current rhyme.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
To newspapers, to sermons, which the zeal
Of pious men have published on his acts.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
I’ll call the work “Reflections o’er a Bottle.”
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Here, and elsewhere in Don Juan, Byron attacked Coleridge fiercely and venomously, because he believed that his protégé had accepted patronage and money, and, notwithstanding, had retailed scandalous statements to the detriment and dishonour of his advocate and benefactor (see letter to Murray, November 24, 1818, Letters, 1900, IV 272; and “Introduction to the Vision of Judgment,” Poetical Works, 1901, IV 475). Byron does not substantiate his charge of ingratitude, and there is nothing to show whether Coleridge ever knew why a once friendly countenance was changed towards him. He might have asked, with the Courtenays, Ubi lapsus, quid feci? If Byron had been on his mind or his conscience he would have drawn up an elaborate explanation or apology; but nothing of the kind is extant. He took the abuse as he had taken the favours⁠—for the unmerited gifts of the blind goddess Fortune. (See, too, Letter⁠ ⁠… , by John Bull, 1821, p. 14.) —⁠Editor ↩
Compare Byron’s “Letter to the Editor of My Grandmother’s Review,” Letters, 1900, IV Appendix VII 465⁠–⁠470; and letter to Murray, August 24, 1819, Letters, p. 348:

“I wrote to you by last post, enclosing a buffooning letter for publication, addressed to the buffoon Roberts, who has thought proper to tie a canister to his own tail. It was written offhand, and in the midst of circumstances not very favourable to facetiousness, so that there may, perhaps, be more bitterness than enough for that sort of small acid punch.”

The letter was in reply to a criticism of Don Juan (Cantos I, II) in the British Review (No. XXVII, 1819, vol. 14, pp. 266⁠–⁠268), in which the Editor assumed, or feigned to assume, that the accusation of bribery was to be taken au grand sérieux. —⁠Editor ↩
Hor., Od. III C. XIV lines 27, 28. —⁠Editor ↩
I thought of dyeing it the other day.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Compare Childe Harold, Canto III stanza CVII line 2. —⁠Editor ↩
“Me nec femina, nec puer
Jam, nec spes animi credula mutui,
Nec certare juvat mero;
Nec vincire novis tempora floribus.”
Hor., Od. IV i 30

[In the revise the words nec puer Jam were omitted. On this Hobhouse comments, “Better add the whole or scratch out all after femina.”⁠—

“Quote the whole then⁠—it was only in compliance with your settentrionale notions that I left out the remnant of the line.”
—⁠[B.]]

↩
For “How Fryer Bacon made a Brazen head to speak,” see The Famous Historie of Fryer Bacon (Reprint, London, 1815, pp. 13⁠–⁠18); see, too, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, by Robert Greene, ed. Rev. Alexander Dyce, 1861, pp. 153⁠–⁠181. —⁠Editor ↩
“Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where Fame’s proud temple shines afar?” etc.
Beattie’s Minstrel, Bk. I stanza I lines 1, 2

—⁠Editor ↩
A book⁠—a damned bad picture⁠—and worse bust.
—⁠[MS.]

[“Don’t swear again⁠—the third ‘damn.’ ”
—⁠[H.]⁠—[Revise]]

↩
Byron sat for his bust to Thorwaldsen, in May, 1817. —⁠Editor ↩
This stanza appears to have been suggested by the following passage in the Quarterly Review, April, 1818, vol. XIX p. 203:

“[It was] the opinion of the Egyptians, that the soul never deserted the body while the latter continued in a perfect state. To secure this union, King Cheops is said, by Herodotus, to have employed three hundred and sixty thousand of his subjects for twenty years in raising over the ‘angusta domus’ destined to hold his remains, a pile of stone equal in weight to six millions of tons, which is just three times that of the vast Breakwater thrown across Plymouth Sound; and, to render this precious dust still more secure, the narrow chamber was made accessible only by small, intricate passages, obstructed by stones of an enormous weight, and so carefully closed externally as not to be perceptible.⁠—Yet, how vain are all the precautions of man! Not a bone was left of Cheops, either in the stone coffin, or in the vault, when Shaw entered the gloomy chamber.”

—⁠Editor ↩
Must bid you both farewell in accents bland.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Lines 1⁠–⁠4 are taken from the last stanza of the Epilogue to the Lay of the Laureate, entitled “L’Envoy.” (See Poetical Works of Robert Southey, 1838, X 174.) —⁠Editor ↩
Begun at Venice, December 13, 1818⁠—finished January 20, 1819. ↩
Lost that most precious stone of stones⁠—his modesty.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Compare “The Girl of Cadiz,” Poetical Works, 1900, III 1, and note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
But d⁠⸺⁠n me if I ever saw the like.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Fazzioli⁠—literally, little handkerchiefs⁠—the veils most availing of St. Mark.

[“I fazzioli, or kerchiefs (a white kind of veil which the lower orders wear upon their heads).”
—⁠Letter to Rogers, March 3, 1818, Letters, 1900, IV 208]

↩
Their manners mending, and their morals curing.
She taught them to suppress their vice⁠—and urine.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Compare⁠—

“And fast the white rocks faded from his view
⋮
And then, it may be, of his wish to roam
Repented he.”
Childe Harold, Canto I stanza XII lines 3⁠–⁠6, Poetical Works, 1898, I 24

—⁠Editor ↩

“To breathe a vein⁠ ⁠… to lance it so as to let blood.”

Compare⁠—

Rosalind Is the fool sick?

Biron Sick at heart.

Ros Alack, let it blood.

Love’s Labour’s Lost, act II sc. 1, line 185

—⁠Editor ↩

Sea-sickness death; then pardon Juan⁠—how else
Keep down his stomach ne’er at sea before?
—⁠[MS. M]

↩
“With regard to the charges about the Shipwreck, I think that I told you and Mr. Hobhouse, years ago, that there was not a single circumstance of it not taken from fact: not, indeed, from any single shipwreck, but all from actual facts of different wrecks.”
—⁠Letter to Murray, August 23, 1821

In the Monthly Magazine, vol. LIII (August, 1821, pp. 19⁠–⁠22, and September, 1821, pp. 105⁠–⁠109), Byron’s indebtedness to Sir G. Dalzell’s Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea (1812, 8vo) is pointed out, and the parallel passages are printed in full. —⁠Editor ↩
“Night came on worse than the day had been; and a sudden shift of wind, about midnight, threw the ship into the trough of the sea, which struck her aft, tore away the rudder, started the sternpost, and shattered the whole of her stern-frame. The pumps were immediately sounded, and in the course of a few minutes the water had increased to four feet.⁠ ⁠…

“One gang was instantly put on them, and the remainder of the people employed in getting up rice from the run of the ship, and heaving it over, to come at the leak, if possible. After three or four hundred bags were thrown into the sea, we did get at it, and found the water rushing into the ship with astonishing rapidity; therefore we thrust sheets, shirts, jackets, tales of muslin, and everything of the like description that could be got, into the opening.

“Notwithstanding the pumps discharged fifty tons of water an hour, the ship certainly must have gone down, had not our expedients been attended with some success. The pumps, to the excellent construction of which I owe the preservation of my life, were made by Mr. Mann of London. As the next day advanced, the weather appeared to moderate, the men continued incessantly at the pumps, and every exertion was made to keep the ship afloat.”
—⁠See “Loss of the American ship Hercules, Captain Benjamin Stout, June 16, 1796,” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 1812, III 316, 317

—⁠Editor ↩
“Scarce was this done, when a gust, exceeding in violence everything of the kind I had ever seen, or could conceive, laid the ship on her beam ends.⁠ ⁠…

“The ship lay motionless, and, to all appearance, irrevocably overset.⁠ ⁠… The water forsook the hold, and appeared between decks.⁠ ⁠…

“Immediate directions were given to cut away the main and mizzenmasts, trusting when the ship righted, to be able to wear her. On cutting one or two lanyards, the mizzenmast went first over, but without producing the smallest effect on the ship, and, on cutting the lanyard of one shroud, the mainmast followed. I had next the mortification to see the foremast and bowsprit also go over. On this, the ship immediately righted with great violence.”
—⁠“Loss of the Centaur Man-of-War, 1782, by Captain Inglefield,” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 1812, III 41

—⁠Editor ↩
Perhaps the whole would have got drunk, but for.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“A midshipman was appointed to guard the spirit-room, to repress that unhappy desire of a devoted crew to die in a state of intoxication. The sailors, though in other respects orderly in conduct, here pressed eagerly upon him.

“ ‘Give us some grog,’ they exclaimed, ‘it will be all one an hour hence.’⁠—‘I know we must die,’ replied the gallant officer, coolly, ‘but let us die like men!’⁠—Armed with a brace of pistols, he kept his post, even while the ship was sinking.”
—⁠“Loss of the Earl of Abergavenny, February 5, 1805,” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 1812, III 418

John Wordsworth, the poet’s brother, was captain of the Abergavenny. See Life of William Wordsworth, by Professor Knight, 1889, I 370⁠–⁠380; see, too, Coleridge’s Anima Poetae, 1895, p. 132. For a contemporary report, see a Maltese paper, Il Cartaginense, April 17, 1805. —⁠Editor ↩
“However, by great exertions of the chain-pumps, we held our own.⁠ ⁠… All who were not seamen by profession, had been employed in thrumming a sail which was passed under the ship’s bottom, and I thought had some effect.⁠ ⁠…

“The Centaur laboured so much, that I could scarce hope she would swim till morning:⁠ ⁠… our sufferings for want of water were very great.⁠ ⁠…

“The weather again threatened, and by noon it blew a storm. The ship laboured greatly; the water appeared in the fore and after-hold. I was informed by the carpenter also that the leathers were nearly consumed, and the chains of the pumps, by constant exertion, and friction of the coils, were rendered almost useless.⁠ ⁠…

“At this period the carpenter acquainted me that the well was stove in⁠ ⁠… and the chain-pumps displaced and totally useless.⁠ ⁠… Seeing their efforts useless, many of them [the people] burst into tears, and wept like children.⁠ ⁠…

“I perceived the ship settling by the head.”
—⁠“Loss of the Centaur,” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 1812, III pp. 45⁠–⁠49

—⁠Editor ↩
’Tis ugly dying in the Gulf of Lyons.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Byron may have had in mind the story of the half-inaudible vow of a monster wax candle, to be offered to St. Christopher of Paris, which Erasmus tells in his “Naufragium.” The passage is scored with a pencil-mark in his copy of the Colloquies. —⁠Editor ↩
Stanza XLIV recalls Cardinal de Retz’s description of the storm at sea in the Gulf of Lyons:

“Everybody were at their prayers, or were confessing themselves.⁠ ⁠… The private captain of the galley caused, in the greatest height of the danger, his embroidered coat and his red scarf to be brought to him, saying, that a true Spaniard ought to die bearing his King’s Marks of distinction. He sat himself down in a great elbow chair, and with his foot struck a poor Neapolitan in the chops, who, not being able to stand upon the Coursey of the Galley, was crawling along, crying out aloud, ‘Sennor Don Fernando, por l’amor de Dios, Confession.’ The captain, when he struck him, said to him, ‘Inimigo de Dios piedes Confession!’ And as I was representing to him, that his inference was not right, he said that that old man gave offence to the whole galley. You can’t imagine the horror of a great storm; you can as little imagine the Ridicule mixed with it. A Sicilian Observantine monk was preaching at the foot of the great mast, that St. Francis had appeared to him, and had assured him that we should not perish. I should never have done, should I undertake to describe all the ridiculous frights that are seen on these occasions.”
—⁠Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, 1723, III 353

—⁠Editor ↩
“Some appeared perfectly resigned, went to their hammocks, and desired their messmates to lash them in; others were securing themselves to gratings and small rafts; but the most predominant idea was that of putting on their best and cleanest clothes. The boats⁠ ⁠… were got over the side.”
—⁠“Loss of the Centaur,” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 1812, III 49, 50

—⁠Editor ↩
Men will prove hungry, even when next perdition.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“Eight bags of rice, six casks of water, and a small quantity of salted beef and pork, were put into the longboat, as provisions for the whole.”
—⁠“Wreck of the Sidney, 1806,” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 1812, III 434

—⁠Editor ↩
“The yawl was stove alongside and sunk.”
—⁠“Loss of the Centaur,” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, III 50

—⁠Editor ↩
“One oar was erected for a mainmast, and the other broke to the breadth of the blankets for a yard.”
—⁠“Loss of the Duke William Transport, 1758,” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, II 387

—⁠Editor ↩
Which being withdrawn, discloses but the frown.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Of one who hates us, so the night was shown
And grimly darkled o’er their faces pale,
And hopeless eyes, which o’er the deep alone
Gazed dim and desolate⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“As rafts had been mentioned by the carpenter, I thought it right to make the attempt.⁠ ⁠… It was impossible for any man to deceive himself with the hopes of being saved on a raft in such a sea.”
—⁠“Loss of the Centaur,” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 1812, III 50. 51

—⁠Editor ↩
“Spars, booms, hencoops, and everything buoyant, was therefore cast loose, that the men might have some chance to save themselves.”
—⁠“Loss of the Pandora,” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, III 197

—⁠Editor ↩
“We had scarce quitted the ship, when she gave a heavy lurch to port, and then went down, head foremost.”
—⁠“Loss of the Lady Hobart,” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, III 378

—⁠Editor ↩
“At this moment, one of the officers told the captain that she was going down⁠ ⁠… and bidding him farewell, leapt overboard:⁠ ⁠… the crew had just time to leap overboard, which they did, uttering a most dreadful yell.”
—⁠“Loss of the Pandora,” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, III 198

—⁠Editor ↩
“The boat, being fastened to the rigging, was no sooner cleared of the greatest part of the water, than a dog of mine came to me running along the gunwale. I took him in.”
—⁠“Shipwreck of the Sloop Betsy, on the Coast of Dutch Guiana, August 5, 1756 (Philip Aubin, Commander),” Remarkable Shipwrecks, Hartford, 1813, p. 175

—⁠Editor ↩
Qy.

“My good Sir! when the sea runs very high this is the case, as I know, but if my authority is not enough, see Bligh’s account of his run to Timor, after being cut adrift by the mutineers headed by Christian.”⁠—[B.]

“Pray tell me who was the Lubber who put the query? surely not you, Hobhouse! We have both of us seen too much of the sea for that. You may rely on my using no nautical word not founded on authority, and no circumstances not grounded in reality.”

—⁠Editor ↩
“It blew a violent storm, and the sea ran very high, so that between the seas the sail was becalmed; and when on the top of the sea, it was too much to have set, but I was obliged to carry it, for we were now in very imminent danger and distress; the sea curling over the stern of the boat, which obliged us to bale with all our might.”
—⁠A Narrative of the Mutiny of the Bounty, by William Bligh, 1790, p. 23

—⁠Editor ↩
“Before it was dark, a blanket was discovered in the boat. This was immediately bent to one of the stretchers, and under it, as a sail, we scudded all night, in expectation of being swallowed up by every wave.”
—⁠“Loss of the Centaur,” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 1812, III 52

—⁠Editor ↩
“The sun rose very fiery and red, a sure indication of a severe gale of wind.⁠—We could do nothing more than keep before the sea.⁠—I now served a teaspoonful of rum to each person,⁠ ⁠… with a quarter of a breadfruit, which was scarce eatable, for dinner.”
—⁠A Narrative, etc., by W. Bligh, 1790, pp. 23, 24

—⁠Editor ↩
“[As] our lodgings were very miserable and confined, I had only in my power to remedy the latter defect, by putting ourselves at watch and watch; so that one half always sat up, while the other half lay down on the boat’s bottom, with nothing to cover us but the heavens.”
—⁠A Narrative of the Mutiny of the Bounty, by William Bligh, 1790, p. 28

—⁠Editor ↩
For Byron’s debts to Mrs. Massingberd, “Jew” King, etc., and for money raised on annuities, see Letters, 1898, II 174, note 2, and letter to Hanson, December 11, 1817, Letters, 1900, IV 187,

“The list of annuities sent by Mr. Kinnaird, including Jews and Sawbridge, amounts to twelve thousand eight hundred and some odd pounds.”

—⁠Editor ↩
“The third day we began to suffer exceedingly⁠ ⁠… from hunger and thirst. I then seized my dog, and plunged the knife in his throat. We caught his blood in the hat, receiving in our hands and drinking what ran over; we afterwards drank in turn out of the hat, and felt ourselves refreshed.”
—⁠“Shipwreck of the Betsy,” Remarkable Shipwrecks, Hartford, 1813, p. 177

—⁠Editor ↩
“One day, when I was at home in my hut with my Indian dog, a party came to my door, and told me their necessities were such that they must eat the creature or starve. Though their plea was urgent, I could not help using some arguments to endeavour to dissuade them from killing him, as his faithful services and fondness deserved it at my hands; but, without weighing my arguments, they took him away by force and killed him.⁠ ⁠… Three weeks after that I was glad to make a meal of his paws and skin which, upon recollecting the spot where they had killed him, I found thrown aside and rotten.”
—⁠The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron, etc., 1768, pp. 47, 48

—⁠Editor ↩
Being driven to distress for want of food, “they soaked their shoes, and two hairy caps in water; and when sufficiently softened ate portions of the leather.” But day after day having passed, and the cravings of hunger pressing hard upon them, they fell upon the horrible and dreadful expedient of eating each other; and in order to prevent any contention about who should become the food of the others, “they cast lots to determine the sufferer.”⁠—“Sufferings of the Crew of the Thomas [Twelve Men in an Open Boat, 1797],” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 1812, III 356 —⁠Editor ↩
“The lots were drawn: ‘the captain, summoning all his strength, wrote upon slips of paper the name of each man, folded them up, put them into a hat, and shook them together. The crew, meanwhile, preserved an awful silence; each eye was fixed and each mouth open, while terror was strongly impressed upon every countenance.’ The unhappy person, with manly fortitude, resigned himself to his miserable associates.”
—⁠“Famine in the American Ship Peggy, 1765,” Remarkable Shipwrecks, Hartford, 1813, pp. 358, 359

—⁠Editor ↩
“He requested to be bled to death, the surgeon being with them, and having his case of instruments in his pocket when he quitted the vessel.”
—⁠“Sufferings of the Crew of the Thomas,” Shipwrecks, etc., 1812, III 357

—⁠Editor ↩
“Yet scarce was the vein divided when the operator, applying his own parched lips, drank the stream as it flowed, and his comrades anxiously watched the last breath of the victim, that they might prey upon his flesh.”
—⁠Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 1812, III 357

—⁠Editor ↩
“Those who indulged their cannibal appetite to excess speedily perished in raging madness,” etc.
—⁠Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea

—⁠Editor ↩
“Another expedient we had frequent recourse to, on finding it supplied our mouths with temporary moisture, was chewing any substance we could find, generally a bit of canvas, or even lead.”
—⁠“The Shipwreck of the Juno on the Coast of Aracan,” 1795, Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 1812, III 270

—⁠Editor ↩
“At noon, some noddies came so near to us that one of them was caught by hand.⁠ ⁠… I divided it into eighteen portions. In the evening we saw several boobies.”
—⁠A Narrative of the Mutiny of the Bounty, by William Bligh, 1790, p. 41

—⁠Editor ↩
“Quand’ ebbe detto ciò, con gli occhi torti
Riprese il teschio misero coi denti,
Che furo all’ osso, come d’un can forti.”
Dante, Inferno, canto XXXIII lines 76⁠–⁠78

—⁠Editor ↩
“Whenever a heavy shower afforded us a few mouthfuls of fresh water, either by catching the drops as they fell or by squeezing them out of our clothes, it infused new life and vigour into us, and for a while we had almost forgot our misery.”
—⁠Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 1812, III 270

Compare The Island, Canto I stanza IX lines 193, 194, Poetical Works, 1901, V 595. —⁠Editor ↩
Compare⁠—

“With throats unslaked, with black lips baked.”
“Ancient Mariner,” Part III line 157

—⁠Editor ↩
“Mr. Wade’s boy, a stout healthy lad, died early, and almost without a groan; while another, of the same age, but of a less promising appearance, held out much longer. Their fathers were both in the foretop, when the boys were taken ill. [Wade], hearing of his son’s illness, answered, with indifference, that he could do nothing for him, and left him to his fate.”
—⁠“Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Juno, 1795,” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 1812, III 273

—⁠Editor ↩
“The other [Father] hurried down.⁠ ⁠… By that time only three or four planks of the quarterdeck remained, just over the quarter gallery. To this spot the unhappy man led his son, making him fast to the rail, to prevent his being washed away.”
—⁠Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea

—⁠Editor ↩
“Whenever the boy was seized with a fit of retching, the father lifted him up and wiped away the foam from his lips; and if a shower came, he made him open his mouth to receive the drops, or gently squeezed them into it from a rag.”
—⁠Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea

—⁠Editor ↩
“In this affecting situation both remained four or five days, till the boy expired. The unfortunate parent, as if unwilling to believe the fact, raised the body, looked wistfully at it, and when he could no longer entertain any doubt, watched it in silence until it was carried off by sea; then wrapping himself in a piece of canvas, sunk down, and rose no more; though he must have lived two days longer, as we judged from the quivering of his limbs when a wave broke over him.”
—⁠“Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Juno, 1795,” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, p. 274

—⁠Editor ↩
“About this time a beautiful white bird, web-footed, and not unlike a dove in size and plumage, hovered over the masthead of the cutter, and, notwithstanding the pitching of the boat, frequently attempted to perch on it, and continued fluttering there till dark. Trifling as such an incident may appear, we all considered it a propitious omen.”
—⁠“Loss of the Lady Hobart, 1803,” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 1812, III 389

—⁠Editor ↩
“I found it necessary to caution the people against being deceived by the appearance of land, or calling out till we were quite convinced of its reality, more especially as fog-banks are often mistaken for land: several of the poor fellows nevertheless repeatedly exclaimed they heard breakers, and some the firing of guns.”
—⁠“Loss of the Lady Hobart,” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 1812, III 391

—⁠Editor ↩
“At length one of them broke out into a most immoderate swearing fit of joy, which I could not restrain, and declared, that he had never seen land in his life, if what he now saw was not so.”
—⁠“Loss of the Centaur,” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, p. 55

—⁠Editor ↩
“The joy at a speedy relief affected us all in a most remarkable way. Many burst into tears; some looked at each other with a stupid stare, as if doubtful of the reality of what they saw; while several were in such a lethargic condition, that no animating words could rouse them to exertion. At this affecting period, I proposed offering up our solemn thanks to Heaven for the miraculous deliverance.”
—⁠“Loss of the Lady Hobart,” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, p. 391

—⁠Editor ↩
After having suffered the horrors of hunger and thirst for many days, “they accidentally descried a small turtle floating on the surface of the water asleep.”⁠—“Sufferings of the Crew of the Thomas,” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, p. 356. —⁠Editor ↩
“An indifferent spectator would have been at a loss which most to admire; the eyes of famine sparkling at immediate relief, or the horror of their preservers at the sight of so many spectres, whose ghastly countenances, if the cause had been unknown, would rather have excited terror than pity. Our bodies were nothing but skin and bones, our limbs were full of sores, and we were clothed in rags.”
—⁠Narrative of the Mutiny of the Bounty, by William Bligh, 1790, p. 80

Compare The Siege of Corinth, lines 1048, 1049, Poetical Works, 1900, III 494, note 3. —⁠Editor ↩
“They discovered land right ahead, and steered for it. There being a very heavy surf, they endeavoured to turn the boat’s head to it, which, from weakness, they were unable to accomplish, and soon afterwards the boat upset.”
—⁠“Sufferings of Six Deserters from St. Helena, 1799,” Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 1812, III, 371

—⁠Editor ↩
Compare lines

“Written after swimming from Sestos to Abydos,”

Poetical Works, 1900, III 13, note 1; see, too, Letters, 1898, I 262, 263, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
Compare⁠—

“How long in that same fit I lay
I have not to declare.”
The Ancient Mariner, Part V lines 393, 394

—⁠Editor ↩
—in short she’s one.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
A set of humbug rascals, when all’s done⁠—
I’ve seen much finer women, ripe and real,
Than all the nonsense of their d⁠⸺⁠d ideal.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Compare Childe Harold, Canto IV stanza I lines 6⁠–⁠9, Poetical Works, 1899, II 366, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
Probably that “Alpha and Omega of Beauty,” Lady Adelaide Forbes (daughter of George, sixth Earl of Granard), whom Byron compared to the Apollo Belvidere. See Letters, 1898, II 230, note 3. —⁠Editor ↩
“The saya or basquiña⁠ ⁠… the outer petticoat⁠ ⁠… is always black, and is put over the indoor dress on going out.”

Compare Μελανείμονες ἅπαντες τὸ πλέον ἐν σάγοις, Strabo, lib. III ed. 1807, I 210. Ford’s Handbook for Spain, 1855, I 111. —⁠Editor ↩
“When Ajax, Ulysses, and Phoenix stand before Achilles, he rushes forth to greet them, brings them into the tent, directs Patroclus to mix the wine, cuts up the meat, dresses it, and sets it before the ambassadors.”
(Iliad, IX 193, sq.)⁠—Study of the Classics, by H. N. Coleridge, 1830, p. 71

—⁠Editor ↩
And such a bed of furs, and a pelisse.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
—which often spread,
And come like opening Hell upon the mind,
No “baseless fabric” but “a wrack behind.”
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Had e’er escaped more dangers on the deep;⁠—
And those who are not drowned, at least may sleep.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Entitled “A Narrative of the Honourable John Byron (Commodore in a late expedition round the world), containing an account of the great distresses suffered by himself and his companions on the coast of Patagonia, from the year 1740, till their arrival in England, 1746. Written by Himself,” London, 1768, 40. For the Hon. John Byron, 1723⁠–⁠86, younger brother of William, fifth Lord Byron, see Letters, 1898, I 3. —⁠Editor ↩
Wore for a husband⁠—or some such like brute.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
—although of late
I’ve changed, for some few years, the day to night.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
The second canto of Don Juan was finished in January, 1819, when the Venetian Carnival was at its height. —⁠Editor ↩
Strabo (lib. XVI ed. 1807, p. 1106) gives various explanations of the name, assigning the supposed redness to the refraction of the rays of the vertical sun; or to the shadow of the scorched mountainsides which form its shores; or, as Ctesias would have it, to a certain fountain which discharged red oxide of lead into its waters. “Abyssinian” Bruce had no doubt that “large trees or plants of coral spread everywhere over the bottom,” made the sea “red,” and accounted for the name. But, according to Niebuhr, the Red Sea is the Sea of Edom, which, being interpreted, is “Red.” —⁠Editor ↩
—just the same
As at this moment I should like to do;⁠—
But I have done with kisses⁠—having kissed
All those that would⁠—regretting those I missed.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Fair as the rose just plucked to crown the wreath,
Soft as the unfledged birdling when at rest.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Compare Mazeppa, lines 829, sq., Poetical Works, 1901, IV 232. —⁠Editor ↩
That finer melody was never heard,
The kind of sound whose echo is a tear,
Whose accents are the steps of Music’s throne.1219
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Moore, quoting from memory from one of Byron’s MS. journals, says that he speaks of “making earnest love to the younger of his fair hostesses at Seville, with the help of a dictionary.”⁠—Life, p. 93. See, too, letter to his mother, August 11, 1809, Letters, 1898, I 240. —⁠Editor ↩
Pressure of hands, et cetera⁠—or a kiss.
—⁠[MS. Alternative reading]

↩
Italian rather more, having more teachers.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“In 1813⁠ ⁠… in the fashionable world of London, of which I then formed an item, a fraction, the segment of a circle, the unit of a million, the nothing of something.⁠ ⁠… I had been the lion of 1812.”
—⁠Extracts from a Diary, January 19, 1821, Letters, 1901, V 177, 178

—⁠Editor ↩
foes, friends, sex, kind, are nothing more to me
Than a mere dream of something o’er the sea.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
For the same archaism or blunder, compare Manfred, act I sc. 4, line 19, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 132. —⁠Editor ↩
Compare “The Prisoner of Chillon,” line 78, Poetical Works, p. 16. —⁠Editor ↩
Holding her sweet breath o’er his cheek and mouth,
As o’er a bed of roses, etc.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Vide post, Canto XVI stanza LXXXVI line 6, note 1198. —⁠Editor ↩
For without heart Love is not quite so good;
Ceres is commissary to our bellies,
And Love, which also much depends on food:
While Bacchus will provide with wine and jellies⁠—
Oysters and eggs are also living food.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
He was her own, her Ocean lover, cast
To be her soul’s first idol, and its last.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
And saw the sunset and the rising moon.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
The MS. and the editions of 1819, 1823, 1828, read “woman.” The edition of 1833 reads “women.” The text follows the MS. and the earlier editions. —⁠Editor ↩
Compare stanza prefixed to Dedication, vide ante, Fragment on the Back of the MS. of Canto I. —⁠Editor ↩
Compare⁠—

“Yes! thy Sherbet to-night will sweetly flow,
See how it sparkles in its vase of snow!”
Corsair, Canto I lines 427, 428, Poetical Works, 1900, III 242

—⁠Editor ↩
A pleasure naught but drunkenness can bring:
For not the blest sherbet all chilled with snow.
Nor the full sparkle of the desert-spring,
Nor wine in all the purple of its glow.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Spread like an Ocean, varied, vast, and bright.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
—I’m sure they never reckoned;
And being joined⁠—like swarming bees they clung,
And mixed until the very pleasure stung.

or,

And one was innocent, but both too young,
Their hearts the flowers, etc.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
In all the burning tongues the Passions teach
They had no further feeling, hope, nor care
Save one, and that was Love.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Pillowed upon her beating heart⁠—which panted
With the sweet memory of all it granted.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Some drown themselves, some in the vices grovel.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Lady Caroline Lamb’s Glenarvon was published in 1816. For Byron’s farewell letter of dismissal, which Lady Caroline embodied in her novel (vol. III chap. IX), see Letters, 1898, II 135, note 1. According to Medwin (Conversations, 1824, p. 274), Madame de Staël catechized Byron with regard to the relation of the story to fact. —⁠Editor ↩
In their sweet feelings holily united,
By Solitude (soft parson) they were wed.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Titus forebore to marry “Incesta” Berenice (see Juv., Sat. VI 158), the daughter of Agrippa I, and wife of Herod, King of Chalcis, out of regard to the national prejudice against intermarriage with an alien. —⁠Editor ↩
Caesar’s third wife, Pompeia, was suspected of infidelity with Clodius (see Langhorne’s Plutarch, 1838, p. 498); Pompey’s third wife, Mucia, intrigued with Caesar (vide Plutarch, p. 447); Muhammad’s favourite wife, Ayesha, on one occasion incurred suspicion; Antonina, the wife of Belisarius, was notoriously profligate (see Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, 1825, III 432, 102). —⁠Editor ↩
Compare Sardanapalus, act I sc. 2, line 252, Poetical Works, 1901, V 23, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
—of ticklish dust.
—⁠[MS. Alternative reading]

↩
“Mr. Hobhouse is at it again about indelicacy. There is no indelicacy. If he wants that, let him read Swift, his great idol; but his imagination must be a dunghill, with a viper’s nest in the middle, to engender such a supposition about this poem.”
—⁠Letter to Murray, May 15, 1819, Letters, 1900, IV 295

—⁠Editor ↩
Two hundred stanzas reckoned as before.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
November 30, 1819. Copied in 1820 (MS. D). Moore (Life, 421) says that Byron was at work on the third canto when he stayed with him at Venice, in October, 1819. “One day, before dinner, [he] read me two or three hundred lines of it; beginning with the stanzas ‘Oh Wellington,’ etc., which, at the time, formed the opening of the third canto, but were afterwards reserved for the commencement of the ninth.” The third canto, as it now stands, was completed by November 8, 1819; see Letters, 1900, IV 375. The date on the MS. may refer to the first fair copy. —⁠Editor ↩
And fits her like a stocking or a glove.
—⁠[MS. D]

↩
“On peut trouver des femmes qui n’ont jamais eu de galanterie, mais il est rare d’en trouver qui n’en aient jamais eu qu’une.”
—⁠Réflexions⁠ ⁠… du Duc de la Rochefoucauld, No. LXXIII

Byron prefixed the maxim as a motto to his “Ode to a Lady whose Lover was killed by a Ball, which at the same time shivered a Portrait next his Heart.”⁠—Poetical Works, 1901, IV 552. —⁠Editor ↩
Merchant of Venice, act IV sc. 1, line 254. —⁠Editor ↩
Had Petrarch’s passion led to Petrarch’s wedding,
How many sonnets had ensued the bedding?
—⁠[MS.]

↩
The Ballad of “Death and the Lady” was printed in a small volume, entitled A Guide to Heaven, 1736, 12mo. It is mentioned in The Vicar of Wakefield (chap. XVII), Works of Oliver Goldsmith, 1854, I 369. See Old English Popular Music, by William Chappell, F.S.A., 1893, II 170, 171. —⁠Editor ↩
See The Prophecy of Dante, Canto I lines 172⁠–⁠174, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 253, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
Milton’s first wife ran away from him within the first month. If she had not, what would John Milton have done?

[Mary Powell did not “run away,” but at the end of the honeymoon obtained her husband’s consent to visit her family at Shotover, “upon a promise of returning at Michaelmas.”

“And in the mean while his studies went on very vigorously; and his chief diversion, after the business of the day, was now and then in an evening to visit the Lady Margaret Lee.⁠ ⁠… This lady, being a woman of excellent wit and understanding, had a particular honour for our author, and took great delight in his conversation; as likewise did her husband, Captain Hobson.”

See, too, his sonnet “To the Lady Margaret Ley.” —⁠The Life of Milton (by Thomas Newton, D.D.), Paradise Regained, ed. (Baskerville), 1758, pp. XVII, XVIII] ↩
“Yesterday a very pretty letter from Annabella.⁠ ⁠… She is a poetess⁠—a mathematician⁠—a metaphysician.”
—⁠Journal November 30, 1813, Letters, 1898, II 357

—⁠Editor ↩
Displayed much more of nerve, perhaps, of wit,
Than any of the parodies of Pitt.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
—toothpicks, a bidet.
—⁠[MS. Alternative reading]

“Dr. Murray⁠—As you are squeamish you may put ‘teapot, tray,’ in case the other piece of feminine furniture frightens you.”
—⁠B.

↩
For Byron’s menagerie, see Werner, act I sc. 1, line 216, Poetical Works, 1902, V 348, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
“But as for canine recollections⁠ ⁠… I had one (half a wolf by the she-side) that doted on me at ten years old, and very nearly ate me at twenty. When I thought he was going to enact Argus, he bit away the backside of my breeches, and never would consent to any kind of recognition, in despite of all kinds of bones which I offered him.”
—⁠Letter to Moore, January 19, 1815, Letters, 1899, III 171, 172

Compare, too, Childe Harold, Canto I. Song, stanza IX, Poetical Works, 1899, II 30. —⁠Editor ↩
Yet for all that don’t stay away too long,
A sofa, like a bed, may come by wrong.
—⁠[MS.]

I’ve known the friend betrayed⁠—.
—⁠[MS. D]

↩
The Pyrrhic war-dance represented “by rapid movements of the body, the way in which missiles and blows from weapons were avoided, and also the mode in which the enemy was attacked” (Dict. of Ant.). Dodwell (Tour Through Greece, 1819, II 21, 22) observes that in Thessaly and Macedon dances are performed at the present day by men armed with their musket and sword. See, too, Hobhouse’s description (Travels in Albania, 1858, I 166, 167) of the Albanian war-dance at Loutráki. —⁠Editor ↩
“Their manner of dancing is certainly the same that Diana is sung to have danced on the banks of Eurotas. The great lady still leads the dance, and is followed by a troop of young girls, who imitate her steps, and, if she sings, make up the chorus. The tunes are extremely gay and lively, yet with something in them wonderfully soft. The steps are varied according to the pleasure of her that leads the dance, but always in exact time, and infinitely more agreeable than any of our dances.”
—⁠Lady M. W. Montagu to Pope, April 1, O.S., 1817, Letters, etc., 1816, p. 138

The “kerchief-waving” dance is the Romaika. See “The Waltz,” line 125, Poetical Works, 1898, I 492, note 1. See, too, Voyage Pittoresque⁠ ⁠… by the Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier, 1782, vol. I Planche 33. —⁠Editor ↩
That would have set Tom Moore, though married, raving.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“Upon the whole, I think the part of Don Juan in which Lambro’s return to his home, and Lambro himself are described, is the best, that is, the most individual, thing in all I know of Lord B.’s works. The festal abandonment puts one in mind of Nicholas Poussin’s pictures.”
—⁠Table Talk of S. T. Coleridge, June 7, 1824

—⁠Editor ↩
Compare Hudibras, Part I canto III lines 1, 2⁠—

“Ay me! what perils do environ
The man that meddles with cold iron!”

Byron’s friend, C. S. Matthews, shouted these lines, con intenzione, under the windows of a Cambridge tradesman named Hiron, who had been instrumental in the expulsion from the University of Sir Henry Smyth, a riotous undergraduate. (See letter to Murray, October 19, 1820.) —⁠Editor ↩
All had been open, heart, and open house,
Ever since Juan served her for a spouse.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“Rispose allor Margutte: a dirtel tosto,
Io non credo più al nero ch’ all’ azzurro;
Ma nel cappone, o lesso, o vuogli arrosto,
E credo alcuna volta anche nel burro;
Nella cervogia, e quando io n’ ho nel mosto,
E molto più nell’ aspro che il mangurro;
Ma sopra tutto nel buon vino ho fede,
E credo che sia salvo chi gli crede.”
Pulci, Morgante Maggiore, Canto XVIII stanza CXV

—⁠Editor ↩
For instance, if a first or second wife.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
And send him forth like Samson strong in blindness.
—⁠[MS. D]

And make him Samson-like⁠—more fierce with blindness.
—⁠[MS. M]

↩
Not so the single, deep, and wordless ire,
Of a strong human heart⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“Almost all Don Juan is real life, either my own, or from people I knew. By the way, much of the description of the furniture, in Canto Third, is taken from Tully’s Tripoli (pray note this), and the rest from my own observation. Remember, I never meant to conceal this at all, and have only not stated it, because Don Juan had no preface, nor name to it.”
—⁠Letter to Murray, August 23, 1821, Letters, 1901, V 346

The first edition of Tully’s Tripoli is entitled Narrative of a Ten Years’ Residence in Tripoli In Africa: From the original correspondence in the possession of the Family of the late Richard Tully, Esq., the British Consul, 1816, 410. The book is in the form of letters (so says the Preface) written by the Consul’s sister. The description of Haidée’s dress is taken from the account of a visit to Lilla Kebbiera, the wife of the Bashaw (p. 30); the description of the furniture and refreshments from the account of a visit to “Lilla Amnani,” Hadgi Abderrahmam’s Greek wife (pp. 132⁠–⁠137). It is evident that the “Chiel” who took these “notes” was the Consul’s sister, not the Consul:

“Lilla Aisha, the Bey’s wife, is thought to be very sensible, though rather haughty. Her apartments were grand, and herself superbly habited. Her chemise was covered with gold embroidery at the neck; over it she wore a gold and silver tissue jileck, or jacket without sleeves, and over that another of purple velvet richly laced with gold, with coral and pearl buttons set quite close together down the front; it had short sleeves finished with a gold band not far below the shoulder, and discovered a wide loose chemise of transparent gauze, with gold, silver, and ribbon strips. She wore round her ancles⁠ ⁠… a sort of fetter made of a thick bar of gold so fine that they bound it round the leg with one hand; it is an inch and a half wide, and as much in thickness: each of these weighs four pounds. Just above this a band three inches wide of gold thread finished the ends of a pair of trousers made of pale yellow and white silk.”

Page 132.

“[Lilla] rose to take coffee, which was served in very small china cups, placed in silver filigree cups; and gold filigree cups were put under those presented to the married ladies. They had introduced cloves, cinnamon, and saffron into the coffee, which was abundantly sweetened; but this mixture was very soon changed, and replaced by excellent simple coffee for the European ladies.⁠ ⁠…”

Page 133.

“The Greek then showed us the gala furniture of her own room.⁠ ⁠… The hangings of the room were of tapestry, made in pannels of different coloured velvets, thickly inlaid with flowers of silk damask; a yellow border, of about a foot in depth, finished the tapestry at top and bottom, the upper border being embroidered with Moorish sentences from the Koran in lilac letters. The carpet was of crimson satin, with a deep border of pale blue quilted; this is laid over Indian mats and other carpets. In the best part of the room the sofa is placed, which occupies three sides in an alcove, the floor of which is raised. The sofa and the cushions that lay around were of crimson velvet, the centre cushions were embroidered with a sun in gold of highly embossed work, the rest were of gold and silver tissue. The curtains of the alcove were made to match those before the bed. A number of looking-glasses, and a profusion of fine china and crystal completed the ornaments and furniture of the room, in which were neither tables nor chairs. A small table, about six inches high, is brought in when refreshments are served; it is of ebony, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, tortoiseshell, ivory, gold and silver, of choice woods, or of plain mahogany, according to the circumstances of the proprietor.”

Page 136.

“On the tables were placed all sorts of refreshments, and thirty or forty dishes of meat and poultry, dressed different ways; there were no knives nor forks, and only a few spoons of gold, silver, ivory, or coral.⁠ ⁠…”

Page 137.

“The beverage was various sherbets, some composed of the juice of boiled raisins, very sweet; some of the juice of pomegranates squeezed through the rind; and others of the pure juice of oranges. These sherbets were copiously supplied in high glass ewers, placed in great numbers on the ground.⁠ ⁠… After the dishes of meat were removed, a dessert of Arabian fruits, confectionaries, and sweetmeats was served; among the latter was the date-bread. This sweetmeat is made in perfection only by the blacks at Fezzan, of the ripe date of the country.⁠ ⁠… They make it in the shape of loaves, weighing from twenty to thirty pounds; the stones of the fruit are taken out, and the dates simply pressed together with great weights; thus preserved, it keeps perfectly good for a year.”

—⁠Editor ↩
“He writes like a man who has that clear perception of the truth of things which is the result of the guilty knowledge of good and evil; and who, by the light of that knowledge, has deliberately preferred the evil with a proud malignity of purpose, which would seem to leave little for the last consummating change to accomplish. When he calculates that the reader is on the verge of pitying him, he takes care to throw him back the defiance of laughter, as if to let him know that all the Poet’s pathos is but the sentimentalism of the drunkard between his cups, or the relenting softness of the courtesan, who the next moment resumes the bad boldness of her degraded character. With such a man, who would wish either to laugh or to weep?”
—⁠Eclectic Review (Lord Byron’s Mazeppa), August, 1819, vol. XII p. 150

—⁠Editor ↩
For that’s the name they like to cant beneath.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
The upholsterer’s “fiat lux” had bade to issue.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
This dress is Moorish, and the bracelets and bar are worn in the manner described. The reader will perceive hereafter, that as the mother of Haidée was of Fez, her daughter wore the garb of the country. [vide ante, note 287.] ↩
The bar of gold above the instep is a mark of sovereign rank in the women of the families of the Deys, and is worn as such by their female relatives. [Vide Eclectic Review] ↩
This is no exaggeration: there were four women whom I remember to have seen, who possessed their hair in this profusion; of these, three were English, the other was a Levantine. Their hair was of that length and quantity, that, when let down, it almost entirely shaded the person, so as nearly to render dress a superfluity. Of these, only one had dark hair; the Oriental’s had, perhaps, the lightest colour of the four. ↩
Compare⁠—

“Yet there was round thee such a dawn
Of Light ne’er seen before,
As Fancy never could have drawn,
And never can restore.”
Song by Rev. C. Wolfe (1791⁠–⁠1823)

Compare, too⁠—

“She was a form of Life and Light
That, seen, became a part of sight.”
The Giaour, lines 1127, 1128

—⁠Editor ↩
“… but Psyche owns no lord⁠—
She walks a goddess from above;
All saw, all praised her, all adored,
But no one ever dared to love.”
The Golden Ass of Apuleius; in English verse, entitled “Cupid and Psyche,” by Hudson Gurney, 1799

—⁠Editor ↩
King John, act IV sc. 2, line 11. —⁠Editor ↩
“Richard Crashaw (died 1650), the friend of Cowley, was honoured,” says Warton, “with the praise of Pope; who both read his poems and borrowed from them. After he was ejected from his Fellowship at Peterhouse for denying the covenant, he turned Roman Catholic, and died canon of the church at Loretto.”

Cowley sang his “In Memoriam”⁠—

“Angels (they say) brought the famed Chappel there;
And bore the sacred Load in Triumph through the air:⁠—
’Tis surer much they brought thee there, and They,
And Thou, their charge, went singing all the way.”
The Works, etc., 1668, pp. 29, 30

—⁠Editor ↩
Believed like Southey⁠—and perused like Crashaw.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
The second chapter of Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria is on the “supposed irritability of men of genius.” Ed. 1847, I 29. —⁠Editor ↩
Their poet a sad Southey.
—⁠[MS. D]

↩
Of rogues⁠—.
—⁠[MS. D]

↩
Of which the causers never know the cause.
—⁠[MS. D]

↩
Vide St. August. Epist., XXXVI, cap. XIV,

“Ille [Ambrosius, Mediolanensis Episcopus] adjecit; Quando hic sum, non jejuno sabbato; quando Romae sum, jejuno sabbato.”
—⁠Migne’s Patrologiae Cursus, 1845, XXXIII 151

—⁠Editor ↩
From the high lyrical to the low rational.
—⁠[MS. D]

↩
The allusion is to Coleridge’s eulogy of Southey in the Biographia Literaria (ed. 1847, I 61):

“In poetry he has attempted almost every species of composition known before, and he has added new ones; and if we except the very highest lyric⁠ ⁠… he has attempted every species successfully.”

But the satire, primarily and ostensibly aimed at Southey, now and again glances at Southey’s eulogist.] ↩
[“Goethe pourroit représenter la littérature allemande toute entière.”
—⁠De L’Allemagne, par Mme. la Baronne de Staël-Holstein, 1818, I 227

—⁠Editor ↩
The poet is not “a sad Southey,” but is sketched from memory.

“Lord Byron,” writes Finlay (History of Greece, VI 335, note), “used to describe an evening passed in the company of Londos [a Morean landowner, who took part in the first and second Greek Civil Wars], at Vostitza (in 1809), when both were young men, with a spirit that rendered the scene worthy of a place in Don Juan. After supper Londos, who had the face and figure of a chimpanzee, sprang upon a table,⁠ ⁠… and commenced singing through his nose Rhiga’s Hymn to Liberty. A new qadi, passing near the house, inquired the cause of the discordant hubbub. A native Mussulman replied, ‘It is only the young primate Londos, who is drunk, and is singing hymns to the new panaghia of the Greeks, whom they call Eleutheria.’ ”

(See letter to Andreas Londos (undated), Letters, 1901, VI 320, note 1.) —⁠Editor ↩
The Μακάρων νῆσοι [Hesiod, Works and Days, line 169] of the Greek poets were supposed to have been the Cape de Verd Islands, or the Canaries. ↩
Euboea looks on Marathon,
And Marathon looks on the sea, etc.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
See Aeschylus, Persae, 463, sq.; and Herodotus, VIII 90. Harpocration records the preservation, in the Acropolis, of the silver-footed throne on which Xerxes sat when he watched the battle of Salamis from the slope of Mount Aegaleos. —⁠Editor ↩
The Heroic heart awakes no more.
—⁠[MS. D]

↩
For “that most ancient military dance, the Pyrrhica,” see Travels, by E. D. Clarke, 1814, part II sect. 11, p. 641; and for specimens of “Cadmean characters,” vide Travels, p. 593. —⁠Editor ↩
After his birthplace Teos was taken by the Persians, BC 510, Anacreon migrated to Abdera, but afterwards lived at Samos, under the protection of Polycrates. —⁠Editor ↩
Which Hercules might deem his own.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
See the translation of a speech delivered to the Pargiots, in 1815, by an aged citizen:

“I exhort you well to consider, before you yield yourselves up to the English, that the King of England now has in his pay all the kings of Europe⁠—obtaining money for this purpose from his merchants; whence, should it become advantageous to the merchants to sell you, in order to conciliate Ali, and obtain certain commercial advantages in his harbours, the English will sell you to Ali.”
—⁠“Parga,” Edinburgh Review, October, 1819. vol. 32, pp. 263⁠–⁠293

Here, perhaps, the “Franks” are the Russians. Compare⁠—

“Greeks only should free Greece,
Not the barbarian with his masque of peace.”
The Age of Bronze, lines 298, 299, Poetical Works, 1901, V 557, note 1

—⁠Editor ↩
Γενοίμαν, ἵν’ ὑλᾶεν ἔπεστι πόν-
του πρόβλημ’ ἁλίκλυστον, ἄ-
κραν ὑπὸ πλάκα Σουνίου, κ.τ.λ.
Sophocles, Ajax, lines 1190⁠–⁠1192

—⁠Editor ↩
Compare⁠—

“What poets feel not, when they make,
A pleasure in creating,
The world, in its turn, will not take
Pleasure in contemplating.”
Matthew Arnold (Motto to Poems, 1869, vol. I Flyleaf)

—⁠Editor ↩
For this “sentence,” see Journal, November 16, 1813, Letters, 1898, II 320, note 1; see, too, letter to Rogers, 1814, Letters, 1899, III 89, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
In digging drains for a new water-closet.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
For Edmund Hoyle (1672⁠–⁠1769), see English Bards, etc., lines 966⁠–⁠968, Poetical Works, 1898, I 372, note 4. —⁠Editor ↩
William Coxe (1747⁠–⁠1828), Archdeacon of Wilts, a voluminous historian and biographer, published Memoirs of John, Duke of Marlborough, in 1817⁠–⁠1819. —⁠Editor ↩
See Life of Milton, Works of Samuel Johnson, 1825, VII pp. 67, 68, 80, et vide ante, note 270. —⁠Editor ↩
According to Suetonius, the youthful Titus amused himself by copying handwriting, and boasted that he could have made a first-rate falsarius. One of Caesar’s “earliest acts” was to crucify some jovial pirates, who had kidnapped him, and with whom he pretended to be on pleasant if not friendly terms. —⁠Editor ↩
James Currie, M.D. (1756⁠–⁠1805), published, anonymously, the Works of Robert Burns, with an account of his Life, etc., in 1800. —⁠Editor ↩
“He [Cromwell] was very notorious for robbing orchards, a puerile crime⁠ ⁠… but grown so scandalous and injurious by the frequent spoyls and damages of Trees, breaking of Hedges, and Enclosures, committed by this Apple-Dragon, that many solemn complaints were made both to his Father and Mother for redresse thereof; which missed not their satisfaction and expiation out of his hide,” etc.
—⁠Flagellum, by James Heath, 1663, p. 5

See, too, for his “name of a Royster” at Cambridge, A Short View of the Late Troubles in England, by Sir William Dugdale, 1681, p. 459. —⁠Editor ↩
In The Friend, 1818, II 38, Coleridge refers to “a plan⁠ ⁠… of trying the experiment of human perfectibility on the banks of the Susquehanna;” and Southey, in his Letter to William Smith, Esq. (1817), (Essays Moral and Political, by Robert Southey, 1832, II 17), speaks of his “purpose to retire with a few friends into the wilds of America, and there lay the foundations of a community,” etc.; but the word “Pantisocracy” is not mentioned. It occurs, perhaps, for the first time in print, in George Dyer’s biographical sketch of Southey, which he contributed to Public Characters of 1799⁠–⁠1800, p. 225,

“Coleridge, no less than Southey, possessed a strong passion for poetry. They commenced, like two young poets, an enthusiastic friendship, and in connection with others, struck out a plan for settling in America, and for having all things in common. This scheme they called Pantisocracy.”

Hence, the phrase must have “caught on,” for, in a footnote to his review of Coleridge’s Literary Life (Edin. Rev., August, 1817, vol. XXVIII p. 501), Jeffrey speaks of “the Pantisocratic or Lake School.” —⁠Editor ↩
Wordsworth was “hired,” but not, like Burns, “excised.” Hazlitt (Lectures on the English Poets, 1870, p. 174) is responsible for the epithet: “Mr. Wordsworth might have shown the incompatibility between the Muse and the Excise,” etc. —⁠Editor ↩
Confined his pedlar poems to democracy.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Coleridge began his poetical contributions to the Morning Post in January, 1798; his poetical articles in 1800. —⁠Editor ↩
Flourished its sophistry for aristocracy.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Coleridge was married to Sarah Fricker, October 5; Southey to her younger sister Edith, November 15, 1795. Their father, Stephen Fricker, who had been an innkeeper, and afterwards a potter at Bristol, migrated to Bath about the year 1780. For the last six years of his life he was owner and manager of a coal wharf. He had inherited a small fortune, and his wife brought him money, but he died bankrupt, and left his family destitute. His widow returned to Bristol, and kept a school. In a letter to Murray, dated September 11, 1822 (Letters, 1901, VI 113), Byron quotes the authority of “Luttrell,” and “his friend Mr. Nugent,” for the statement that Mrs. Southey and “Coleridge’s Sara⁠ ⁠… before they were married⁠ ⁠… were milliner’s or dressmaker’s apprentices.” The story rests upon their evidence. It is certain that in 1794, when Coleridge appeared upon the scene, the sisters earned their living by going out to work in the houses of friends, and were not, at that time, “milliners of Bath.” —⁠Editor ↩
For Joanna Southcott (1750⁠–⁠1814), see Letters, 1899, III 128⁠–⁠130, note 2. —⁠Editor ↩
Here follows, in the original MS.⁠—

“Time has approved Ennui to be the best
Of friends, and opiate draughts; your love and wine,
Which shake so much the human brain and breast,
Must end in languor;⁠—men must sleep like swine:
The happy lover and the welcome guest
Both sink at last into a swoon divine;
Full of deep raptures and of bumpers, they
Are somewhat sick and sorry the next day.”

—⁠Editor ↩
“Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.”
Hor., Epist. Ad Pisones, line 359

—⁠Editor ↩
Wordsworth’s Benjamin the Waggoner, was written in 1805, but was not published till 1819. “Benjamin” was servant to William Jackson, a Keswick carrier, who built Greta Hall, and let off part of the house to Coleridge. —⁠Editor ↩
“There’s something in a flying horse,
There’s something in a huge balloon;
But through the clouds I’ll never float
Until I have a little Boat,
Shaped like the crescent-moon.”
Wordsworth’s Peter Bell, stanza I

—⁠Editor ↩
For Medea’s escape from the wrath of Jason,

“Titaniacis ablata draconibus,”
see Ovid., Met., VII 398

—⁠Editor ↩
In his “Essay, Supplementary to the Preface,” to his “Poems” of 1815, Wordsworth, commenting on a passage on Night in Dryden’s Indian Emperor, says,

“Dryden’s lines are vague, bombastic, and senseless.⁠ ⁠… The verses of Dryden once celebrated are forgotten.”

He is not passing any general criticism on “him who drew ‘Achitophel.’ ” In a letter to Sir Walter Scott (November 7, 1805), then engaged on his great edition of Dryden’s Works, he admits that Dryden is not “as a poet any great favourite of mine. I admire his talents and genius highly, but he is not a poetical genius. The only qualities I can find in Dryden that are essentially poetical, are a certain ardour and impetuosity of mind, with an excellent ear” (Life of Wordsworth, by W. Knight, 1889, II 26⁠–⁠29). Scott may have remarked on Wordsworth’s estimate of Dryden in conversation with Byron. —⁠Editor ↩
While swung the signal from the sacred tower.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Are not these pretty stanzas?⁠—some folks say⁠—
Downright in print⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Compare Coleridge’s “Lines to Nature,” which were published in the Morning Herald, in 1815, but must have been unknown to Byron⁠—

“So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be.”

—⁠Editor ↩
“As early as the fifth or sixth century of the Christian era, the port of Augustus was converted into pleasant orchards, and a lovely grove of pines covered the ground where the Roman fleet once rode at anchor.⁠ ⁠… This advantageous situation was fortified by art and labour, and in the twentieth year of his age, the Emperor of the West⁠ ⁠… retired to⁠ ⁠… the walls and morasses of Ravenna.”
—⁠Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, 1825, II 244, 245

—⁠Editor ↩
“The first time I had a conversation with Lord Byron on the subject of religion was at Ravenna, my native country, in 1820, while we were riding on horseback in an extensive solitary wood of pines. The scene invited to religious meditation. It was a fine day in spring. ‘How,’ he said, ‘raising our eyes to heaven, or directing them to the earth, can we doubt of the existence of God?⁠—or how, turning them to what is within us, can we doubt that there is something more noble and durable than the clay of which we are formed?’ ”
—⁠Count Gamba

—⁠Editor ↩
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)

—⁠Editor ↩
Εσπερε παντα φερεις
Φερεις οινον⁠—φερεις αιγα
Φερεις ματερι παιδα.
Fragment of Sappho

[Ϝέσπερε, πάντα φέρων, ὅσα φαίνολις ἐσκέδασ’ αὔως·
Φέρεις οἴν φέρεις αἶγα, Φέρεις ἄπυ ματέρι παῖδα.
Sappho, Memoir, Text, by Henry Thornton Wharton, 1895, p. 136

“Evening, all things thou bringest
Which dawn spread apart from each other;
The lamb and the kid thou bringest,
Thou bringest the boy to his mother.”
J. A. Symonds

Compare Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After”⁠—

“Hesper, whom the poet call’d the Bringer home of all good things.”]

↩
“Era già l’ora che volge il disio
Ai naviganti, e intenerisce il cuore;
Lo di ch’ han detto ai dolci amici addio;
E che lo nuovo peregrin’ damore
Punge, se ode squilla di lontano,
Che paia il giorno pianger che si more.”
Dante’s Purgatory, canto VIII, lines 1⁠–⁠6

This last line is the first of Gray’s Elegy, taken by him without acknowledgment. ↩
See Suetonius for this fact.

[“The public joy was so great upon the occasion of his death, that the common people ran up and down with caps upon their heads. And yet there were some, who for a long time trimmed up his tomb with spring and summer flowers, and, one while, placed his image upon his rostra dressed up in state robes, another while published proclamations in his name, as if he was yet alive, and would shortly come to Rome again, with a vengeance to all his enemies.”
—⁠De XII Caes., lib. VI cap. LVII]

↩
But I’m digressing⁠—what on earth have Nero
And Wordsworth⁠—both poetical buffoons, etc.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
See De Poetica, cap. XXIV. See, too, the Preface to Dryden’s “Dedication” of the Aeneis (Works of John Dryden, 1821, XIV 130⁠–⁠134). Dryden is said to have derived his knowledge of Aristotle from Dacier’s translation, and it is probable that Byron derived his from Dryden. See letter to Hodgson (Letters, 1891, V 284), in which he quotes Aristotle as quoted in Johnson’s Life of Dryden. —⁠Editor ↩
“Till Pride and worse Ambition threw me down,
Warring in Heaven against Heaven’s matchless King.”
Paradise Lost, IV 40, 41

—⁠Editor ↩
“Time hovers o’er, impatient to destroy,
And shuts up all the passages of joy:
In vain their gifts the bounteous seasons pour,
The fruit autumnal, and the vernal flow’r;
With listless eyes the dotard views the store,
He views, and wonders that they please no more.”
Johnson’s Vanity of Human Wishes

—⁠Editor ↩
“… my May of Life
Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf.”
Macbeth, act V sc. 3, lines 22, 23

—⁠Editor ↩
Itself to that fit apathy whose deed.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
First in the icy depths of Lethe’s spring.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
See “Introduction to the Morgante Maggiore,” Poetical Works, 1901, IV 280. —⁠Editor ↩
Pulci being Father⁠—.
—⁠[MS. Alternative reading]

↩
“Cum canerem reges et praelia, Cynthius aurem
Vellit, et admonuit.”
Virgil, Ecl. VI lines 3, 4

—⁠Editor ↩
—from its mother’s knee
When its last weaning draught is drained for ever,
The child divided⁠—it were less to see,
Than these two from each other torn apart.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
See Herodotus (Cleobis and Biton), I 31. The sentiment is in a fragment of Menander.

Ὅν οἱ θεοὶ φιλοῦσιν ἀποθνήσκει νέος

or

Ὅν γὰρ φιλεῖ θεὸς ἀποθνήσκει νέος.
Menandri at Philomenis reliquiae, edidit Augustus Meineke, p. 48

See Letters, 1898, II 22, note 1. Byron applied the saying to Allegra in a letter to Sir Walter Scott, dated May 4, 1822, Letters, 1901, VI 57. —⁠Editor ↩
Compare Childe Harold, Canto II stanza XCVI line 7. Compare, too, Young’s Night Thoughts (“The Complaint,” Night I ed. 1825, p. 5). —⁠Editor ↩
Compare Swift’s “little language” in his letter to Stella: Podefar, for instance, which is supposed to stand for “Poor dear foolish rogue,” and Ppt., which meant “Poor pretty thing.”⁠—See The Journal of Stella, edited by G. A. Aitken, 1901, XXXV note 1, and “Journal: March, 1710⁠–⁠11,” 165, note 2. —⁠Editor ↩
For theirs were buoyant spirits, which would bound
’Gainst common failings, etc.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
The reference may be to Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” which, to Medwin’s wonderment, “delighted” Byron (Conversations, 1824, p. 264). De Quincy’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater appeared in the London Magazine, October, November, 1821, after Cantos III, IV, V, of Don Juan were published. But, perhaps, he was contrasting the “simpler blisses” of Juan and Haidée with Shelley’s mystical affinities and divagations. —⁠Editor ↩
—had set their hearts a bleeding.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“The shadowy desert, unfrequented woods,
I better brook than flourishing peopled towns:
There can I sit alone, unseen of any,
And to the nightingale’s complaining notes
Tune my distresses, and record, my woes.”
Two Gentlemen of Verona, act V sc. 4, lines 2⁠–⁠6

—⁠Editor ↩
Called social, where all Vice and Hatred are.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Moved with her dream⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Strange state of being!⁠—for ’tis still to be⁠—
And who can know all false what then we see?
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Compare the description of the “spacious cave,” in The Island, Canto IV lines 121, sq., Poetical Works, 1901, V 629, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
—methought.
—⁠[MS. Alternative reading]

↩
The reader will observe a curious mark of propinquity which the poet notices, with respect to the hands of the father and daughter. Lord Byron, we suspect, is indebted for the first hint of this to Ali Pacha, who, by the by, is the original of Lambro; for, when his lordship was introduced, with his friend Hobhouse, to that agreeable mannered tyrant, the Vizier said that he knew he was the Megalos Anthropos (i.e. the great Man), by the smallness of his ears and hands.⁠—Galt. See Byron’s letter to his mother, November 12, 1809, Letters, 1898, I 251. —⁠Editor ↩
And if I did my duty as thou hast,
This hour were thine, and thy young minions last.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Till further orders should his doom assign.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Loving and loved⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
But thou, sweet fury of the fiery rill,
Makest on the liver a still worse attack;
Besides, thy price is something dearer still.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“As squire Sullen says, ‘My head aches consumedly,’ ‘Scrub, bring me a dram!’ Drank some Imola wine, and some punch!”
—⁠Extracts from a Diary, February 25, 1821, Letters, 1901, V 209

For rack or “arrack” punch, see Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, a Novel Without a Hero, chap. VI ed. 1892, p. 44. —⁠Editor ↩
“At Fas [Fez] the houses of the great and wealthy have, within-side, spacious courts, adorned with sumptuous galleries, fountains, basons of fine marble, and fishponds, shaded with orange, lemon, pomegranate, and fig trees, abounding with fruit, and ornamented with roses, hyacinths, jasmine, violets, and orange flowers, emitting a delectable fragrance.”
—⁠Account of the Empire of Marocco and Suez, by James Grey Jackson, 1811, pp. 69, 70

—⁠Editor ↩
Beauty and Passion were the natural dower
Of Haidée’s mother, but her climate’s force
Lay at her heart, though sleeping at the source.

or,

But in her large eye lay deep Passion’s force,
Like to a lion sleeping by a source.

or,

But in her large eye lay deep Passion’s force,
As sleeps a lion by a river’s source.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Compare Manfred, act III sc. 1, line 128, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 125. —⁠Editor ↩
The blood gushed from her lips, and ears, and eyes:
Those eyes, so beautiful⁠—beheld no more.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
This is no very uncommon effect of the violence of conflicting and different passions. The Doge Francis Foscari, on his deposition in 1457, hearing the bells of St. Mark announce the election of his successor, “mourut subitement d’une hémorragie causée par une veine qui s’éclata dans sa poitrine” [see Sismondi, 1815, X 46, and Daru, 1821, II 536; see, too, The Two Foscari, act V sc. I, line 306, and Introduction to the Two Foscari, Poetical Works, 1901, V 118, 193], at the age of eighty years, when

“Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him?”
(Macbeth, act V sc. 1, lines 34⁠–⁠36)

Before I was sixteen years of age I was witness to a melancholy instance of the same effect of mixed passions upon a young person, who, however, did not die in consequence, at that time, but fell a victim some years afterwards to a seizure of the same kind, arising from causes intimately connected with agitation of mind. ↩
The view of the Venus of Medici instantly suggests the lines in the “Seasons” [the description of “Musidora bathing” in “Summer”]⁠—

“… With wild surprise,
As if to marble struck, devoid of sense,
A stupid moment motionless she stood:
So stands the statue that enchants the world.”
Hobhouse

A still closer parallel to this stanza, and to Childe Harold, Canto IV stanzas XLIX, CXL, CXLI, CLX, CLXI, is to be found in Thomson’s Liberty, pt. IV lines 131⁠–⁠206, where the “Farnese Hercules,” the “Dying Gladiator,” the “Venus of Medici,” and the “Laocoön” group, are commemorated as typical works of art. —⁠Editor ↩
Distinct from life, as being still the same.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
—working slow.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Have dawned a child of beauty, though of sin.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“… Duncan is in his grave:
After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.”
Macbeth, act III sc. 2, lines 22, 23

—⁠Editor ↩
No stone is there to read, nor tongue to say,
No dirge⁠—save when arise the stormy seas.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“But now I am cabined, cribbed,” etc.
Macbeth, act III sc. 4, line 24

—⁠Editor ↩
Jacob Bryant (1715⁠–⁠1804) published his Dissertation concerning the War of Troy, etc., in 1796. See The Bride of Abydos, Canto II lines 510, sq., Poetical Works, 1900, III 179, note 1. See, too, Extracts from a Diary, January 11, 1821, Letters, 1901, V 165, 166,

“I have stood upon that plain [of Troy] daily, for more than a month, in 1810; and if anything diminished my pleasure, it was that the blackguard Bryant had impugned its veracity.”

Hobhouse, in his Travels in Albania, 1858, II 93, sq., discusses at length the identity of the barrows of the Troad with the tumuli of Achilles, Ajax, and Protesilaus, and refutes Bryant’s arguments against the identity of Cape Janissary and the Sigean promontory. —⁠Editor ↩
All heroes who alive perhaps
if still alive.
—⁠[MS. Alternative reading]

↩
—and mountain-bounded
and mountain-outlined plain.
—⁠[MS. Alternative reading]

↩
“The whole region was, in a manner, in possession of the Salsette’s crew, parties of whom, in their white summer dresses, might be seen scattered over the plains collecting the tortoises, which swarm on the sides of the rivulets, and are found under every furze-bush.”
—⁠Travels in Albania, 1858, II 116

See, too, for mention of “hundreds of tortoises” falling “from the overhanging branches, and thick underwood,” into the waters of the Mender, Travels, etc., by E. D. Clarke, 1812, Part II sect. I p. 96. —⁠Editor ↩
—and land tortoise crawls.
—⁠[MS. Alternative reading]

↩
—their learned researches bear.
—⁠[MS. Alternative reading]

↩
This is a fact. A few years ago a man engaged a company for some foreign theatre, embarked them at an Italian port, and carrying them to Algiers, sold them all. One of the women, returned from her captivity, I heard sing, by a strange coincidence, in Rossini’s opera of L’Italiana in Algieri, at Venice, in the beginning of 1817.

[We have reason to believe that the following, which we take from the MS. journal of a highly respectable traveller, is a more correct account:

“In 1812 a Signor Guariglia induced several young persons of both sexes⁠—none of them exceeding fifteen years of age⁠—to accompany him on an operatic excursion; part to form the opera, and part the ballet. He contrived to get them on board a vessel, which took them to Janina, where he sold them for the basest purposes. Some died from the effect of the climate, and some from suffering. Among the few who returned were a Signor Molinari, and a female dancer named Bonfiglia, who afterwards became the wife of Crespi, the tenor singer. The wretch who so basely sold them was, when Lord Byron resided at Venice, employed as capo de’ vestarj, or head tailor, at the Fenice.”
—⁠Maria Graham (Lady Callcot). Ed. 1832]

↩
A comic singer in the opera buffa. The Italians, however, distinguish the buffo cantante, which requires good singing, from the buffo comico, in which there is more acting. —⁠Ed. 1832. —⁠Editor ↩
The figuranti are those dancers of a ballet who do not dance singly, but many together, and serve to fill up the background during the exhibition of individual performers. They correspond to the chorus in the opera.⁠—Maria Graham. —⁠Editor ↩
To help the ladies in their dress and lacing.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
It is strange that it should be the Pope and the Sultan, who are the chief encouragers of this branch of trade⁠—women being prohibited as singers at St. Peter’s, and not deemed trustworthy as guardians of the harem.

“Scarcely a soul of them can read. Pacchierotti was one of the best informed of the castrati⁠ ⁠… Marchesi is so grossly ignorant that he wrote the word opera, opperra, but Nature has been so bountiful to the animal, that his ignorance and insolence were forgotten the moment he sang.”
—⁠Venice, etc., by a Lady of Rank, 1824, II 86

—⁠Editor ↩
The N. Engl. Dict. cites Bunyan, Walpole, Fielding, Miss Austen, and Dickens as authorities for the plural “was.” See art. “be.” Here, as elsewhere, Byron wrote as he spoke. —⁠Editor ↩
He never shows his feelings, but his teeth.
—⁠[MS. Alternative reading]

↩
“Our firman arrived from Constantinople on the 30th of April (1810).”
—⁠Travels in Albania, 1858, II 186

—⁠Editor ↩
That each pulled, different ways⁠—and waxing rough,
Had cuffed each other, only for the cuff.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“O, who can hold a fire in his hand,
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?”
Richard II, act I sc. 3, lines 294, 295

—⁠Editor ↩
Having had some experience in my youth.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“Don Juan will be known, by and by, for what it is intended⁠—a Satire on abuses in the present states of society, and not an eulogy of vice. It may be now and then voluptuous:⁠—I can’t help that. Ariosto is worse. Smollett (see Lord Strutwell in vol. 2nd of R[oderick] R[andom] [1793, pp. 119⁠–⁠127]) ten times worse; and Fielding no better.”
—⁠Letter to Murray, December 25, 1822, Letters, 1901, VI 155, 156

—⁠Editor ↩
Vide ante, note 321.

“It seems hardly to admit of doubt, that the plain of Anatolia, watered by the Mender, and backed by a mountainous ridge, of which Kazdaghy is the summit, offers the precise territory alluded to by Homer. The long controversy, excited by Mr. Bryant’s publication, and since so vehemently agitated, would probably never have existed, had it not been for the erroneous maps of the country which, even to this hour, disgrace our geographical knowledge of that part of Asia.”
—⁠Travels, etc., by E. D. Clarke, 1812, Part II sect, I p. 78

—⁠Editor ↩
The pillar which records the battle of Ravenna is about two miles from the city, on the opposite side of the river to the road towards Forli. Gaston de Foix [(1489⁠–⁠1512) Duc de Nemours, nephew of Louis XII], who gained the battle, was killed in it: there fell on both sides twenty thousand men. The present state of the pillar and its site is described in the text.

[Beyond the Porta Sisi, about two miles from Ravenna, on the banks of the Ronco, is a square pillar (La Colonna de Francesi), erected in 1557 by Pietro Cesi, president of Romagna, as a memorial of the battle gained by the combined army of Louis XII and the Duke of Ferrara over the troops of Julius II and the King of Spain, April 11 1512. —⁠Handbook of Northern Italy, p. 548] ↩
Compare Childe Harold, Canto IV stanza LVII line I, Poetical Works, 1899, II 371, note I. See, too, Preface to the Prophecy of Dante, Poetical Works, IV 243. —⁠Editor ↩
Protects his tomb, but greater care is paid.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
With human ordure is it now defiled,
As if the peasant’s scorn this mode invented
To show his loathing of the thing he soiled.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Those sufferings once reserved for Hell alone.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Its fumes are frankincense; and were there nought
Even of this vapour, still the chilling yoke
Of silence would not long be borne by Thought.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
I have drunk deep of passions as they pass,
And dearly bought the bitter power to give.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
See, for instance, Wilson’s review of Don Juan, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, August, 1819, vol. V p. 512, sq.:

“To confess⁠ ⁠… to his Maker, and to weep over in secret agonies the wildest and most fantastic transgressions of heart and mind, is the part of a conscious sinner, in whom sin has not become the sole principle of life and action.⁠ ⁠… But to lay bare to the eye of man⁠—and of woman⁠—all the hidden convulsions of a wicked spirit,” etc.

—⁠Editor ↩
What! must I go with Wordy to the cooks?
Read⁠—were it but your Grandmother’s to vex⁠—
And let me not the only minstrel be
Cut off from tasting your Castalian tea.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Compare⁠—

“I leave them to their daily ‘tea is ready,’
Snug coterie, and literary lady.”
Beppo, stanza LXXVI lines 7, 8, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 184, note

—⁠Editor ↩
The caged starling, by its repeated cry, “I can’t get out! I can’t get out!” cured Yorick of his sentimental yearnings for imprisonment in the Bastille. See Sterne’s Sentimental Journey, ed. 1804, pp. 100⁠–⁠106. —⁠Editor ↩
In his Essay, Supplement to the Preface (Poems by William Wordsworth, ed. 1820, III 315⁠–⁠348), Wordsworth maintains that the appreciation of great poetry is a plant of slow growth, that immediate recognition is a mark of inferiority, or is to be accounted for by the presence of adventitious qualities:

“So strange, indeed, are the obliquities of admiration, that they whose opinions are much influenced by authority will often be tempted to think that there are no fixed principles in human nature for this art to rest upon.⁠ ⁠… Away, then, with the senseless iteration of the word popular!⁠ ⁠… The voice that issues from this spirit [of human knowledge] is that Vox Populi which the Deity inspires. Foolish must he be who can mistake for this a local acclamation, or a transitory outcry⁠—transitory though it be for years, local though from a Nation. Still more lamentable is his error who can believe that there is anything of divine infallibility in this clamour of that small though loud portion of the community ever governed by factitious influence, which under the name of the Public, passes itself upon the unthinking for the People.”

Naturally enough Byron regarded this pronouncement as a taunt if not as a challenge. Wordsworth’s noble appeal from a provincial to an imperial authority, from the present to the future, is not strengthened by the obvious reference to the popularity of contemporaries. —⁠Editor ↩
Southey’s Madoc in Wales, Poetical Works, Part I Canto V Ed. 1838, V 39. —⁠Editor ↩
Not having looked at many of that hue,
Nor garters⁠—save those of the “honi soit”⁠—which lie
Round the Patrician legs which walk about,
The ornaments of levee and of rout.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Probably Lady Charlemont. See “Journal,” November 22, 1813. —⁠Editor ↩
The cyanometer, an instrument for ascertaining the intensity of the blue colour of the sky, was invented by Horace Bénédict de Saussure (1740⁠–⁠1799); see his Essai sur l’Hygrométrie. F. H. Alexander von Humboldt (1769⁠–⁠1859) “made great use of his instrument on his voyages, and ascertained by the colour the degree of blueness, the accumulation and the nature of the non-transparent exhalations of the air.”⁠—Alexander von Humboldt, by Professor Klencke, translated by Juliette Bauer, 1852, pp. 45, 46. —⁠Editor ↩
I’ll back a London “Bas” against Peru.

or,

I’ll bet some pair of stocking beat Peru.

or,

And so, old Sotheby, we’ll measure you.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“The slave-market is a quadrangle, surrounded by a covered gallery, and ranges of small and separate apartments.” Here the poor wretches sit in a melancholy posture. “Before they cheapen ’em, they turn ’em about from this side to that, survey ’em from top to bottom.⁠ ⁠… Such of ’em, both men and women, to whom Dame Nature has been niggardly of her charms, are set apart for the vilest services: but such girls as have youth and beauty pass their time well enough.⁠ ⁠… The retailers of this human ware are the Jews, who take good care of their slaves’ education, that they may sell the better: their choicest they keep at home, and there you must go, if you would have better than ordinary; for ’tis here, as ’tis in markets for horses, the handsomest don’t always appear, but are kept within doors.”
—⁠A Voyage Into the Levant, by M. Tournefort, 1741, II 198, 199

See, too, for the description of the sale of two Circassians and one Georgian, Voyage de Vienne à Belgrade,⁠ ⁠… par N. E. Kleeman, 1780, pp. 141, 142. The “lowest offer for the prize Circassian was 4,000 piastres.” —⁠Editor ↩
The females stood, till chosen each as victim
To the soft oath of “Ana seing Siktum!”1220
—⁠[MS.]

↩
For fear the Canto should become too long.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Canto V was begun at Ravenna, October the 16th, and finished November the 20th, 1820. It was published August 8, 1821, together with Cantos III and IV. —⁠Editor ↩
This expression of Homer has been much criticized. It hardly answers to our Atlantic ideas of the ocean, but is sufficiently applicable to the Hellespont, and the Bosphorus, with the Aegean intersected with islands.

[Vide Iliad, XIV 245, etc. Homer’s “ocean-stream” was not the Hellespont, but the rim of waters which encircled the disk of the world.] ↩
“The pleasure of going in a barge to Chelsea is not comparable to that of rowing upon the canal of the sea here, where, for twenty miles together, down the Bosphorus, the most beautiful variety of prospects present themselves. The Asian side is covered with fruit trees, villages, and the most delightful landscapes in nature; on the European stands Constantinople, situated on seven hills; showing an agreeable mixture of gardens, pine and cypress trees, palaces, mosques, and public buildings, raised one above another, with as much beauty and appearance of symmetry as your ladyship ever saw in a cabinet adorned by the most skilful hands, where jars show themselves above jars, mixed with canisters, babies, and candlesticks. This is a very odd comparison: but it gives me an exact idea of the thing.”
—⁠See letter to Mr. Pope, No. XL June 17, 1717, and letter to the Countess of Bristol, No. XLVI n.d., Letters of the Lady Mary Worthy Montagu, 1816, pp. 183⁠–⁠219

See, too, letter to Mrs. Byron, June 28, 1810, Letters, 1890, I 280, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
For Byron’s “Marys,” see Poetical Works, 1898, I 192, note 2. —⁠Editor ↩
The “Giant’s Grave” is a height on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, much frequented by holiday parties; like Harrow and Highgate.

[“The Giant’s Mountain, 650 feet high, is almost exactly opposite Buyukdereh⁠ ⁠… It is called by the Turks Yoshadagh, Mountain of Joshua, because the Giant’s Grave on the top is, according to the Muslim legend, the grave of Joshua. The grave was formerly called the Couch of Hercules; but the classical story is that it was the tomb of Amycus, king of the Bebryces [on his grave grew the Laurus insana, a branch of which caused strife (Plin., Hist. Nat., lib. XVI cap. XLIV ed. 1593, II 198)]. The grave is 20 feet long, and 5 feet broad; it is within a stone enclosure, and is planted with flowers and bushes.”
—⁠Handbook for Constantinople, p. 103]

↩
For then the Parca are most busy spinning
The fates of seamen, and the loud winds raise.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
That he a man of rank and birth had been,
And then they calculated on his ransom,
And last not least⁠—he was so very handsome.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
It chanced that near him, separately lotted,
From out the group of slaves put up for sale,
A man of middle age, and⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“The object of Suwarof’s campaign of 1789 was the conquest of Belgrade and Serbia, that of Wallachia by the Austrians, etc. Neither of these plans succeeded.”
—⁠The Life of Field-Marshal Suwarof, by L. M. P. Tranchant de Laverne, 1814, pp. 105, 106

—⁠Editor ↩
The Turkish zecchino is a gold coin, worth about seven shillings and sixpence. The para is not quite equal to an English halfpenny. —⁠Editor ↩
Candide’s increased satisfaction with life is implied in the narrative. For example, in chap. XVIII, where Candide visits Eldorado:⁠—

“Never was there a better entertainment, and never was more wit shown at table than that which fell from His Majesty. Cacambo explained the king’s bons mots to Candide, and notwithstanding they were translated, they still appeared bons mots.”

This was after supper. See, too, Part II chap. II. —⁠Editor ↩
See Plutarch in Alex., Q. Curt. Hist. Alexand., and Sir Richard Clayton’s “Critical Inquiry into the Life of Alexander the Great,” 1763 [from the Examen Critique, etc., of Guilhem de Clermont-Lodève, Baron de Sainte Croix, 1775.]

[“He used to say that sleep and the commerce with the sex were the things that made him most sensible of his mortality,⁠ ⁠… He was also very temperate in eating.”
—⁠Plutarch’s Alexander, Langhorne, 1838, p. 473]

↩
But for mere food, I think with Philip’s son,
Or Ammon’s⁠—for two fathers claimed this one.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
The assassination alluded to took place on the 8th of December, 1820, in the streets of Ravenna, not a hundred paces from the residence of the writer. The circumstances were as described.

[“December 9, 1820. I open my letter to tell you a fact, which will show the state of this country better than I can. The commandant of the troops is now lying dead in my house. He was shot at a little past eight o’clock, about two hundred paces from my door. I was putting on my great coat to visit Madame la Comtessa G., when I heard the shot. On coming into the hall, I found all my servants on the balcony, exclaiming that a man was murdered. I immediately ran down, calling on Tita (the bravest of them) to follow me. The rest wanted to hinder us from going, as it is the custom for everybody here, it seems, to run away from ‘the stricken deer.’⁠ ⁠… we found him lying on his back, almost, if not quite, dead, with five wounds; one in the heart, two in the stomach, one in the finger, and the other in the arm. Some soldiers cocked their guns, and wanted to hinder me from passing. However, we passed, and I found Diego, the adjutant, crying over him like a child⁠—a surgeon, who said nothing of his profession⁠—a priest, sobbing a frightened prayer⁠—and the commandant, all this time, on his back, on the hard, cold pavement, without light or assistance, or anything around him but confusion and dismay. As nobody could, or would, do anything but howl and pray, and as no one would stir a finger to move him, for fear of consequences, I lost my patience⁠—made my servant and a couple of the mob take up the body⁠—sent off two soldiers to the guard⁠—despatched Diego to the Cardinal with the news, and had him carried upstairs into my own quarters. But it was too late⁠—he was gone.⁠ ⁠… I had him partly stripped⁠—made the surgeon examine him, and examined him myself. He had been shot by cut balls or slugs. I felt one of the slugs, which had gone through him, all but the skin.⁠ ⁠… He only said, ‘O Dio!’ and ‘Gesu!’ two or three times, and appeared to have suffered little. Poor fellow! he was a brave officer; but had made himself much disliked by the people.”
—⁠Letter to Moore, December 9, 1820, Letters, 1901, V 133. The commandant’s name was Del Pinto (Life, p. 472)]

↩
—so I had
Him borne, as soon’s I could, up several pair
Of stairs⁠—and looked to⁠—But why should I add
More circumstances?⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
And now as silent as an unstrung drum.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
The light and elegant wherries plying about the quays of Constantinople are so called. ↩
Ilderim, a Syrian Tale, by Henry Gally Knight, was published in 1816; Phrosyne, a Grecian Tale, and Alashtar, an Arabian Tale, in 1817. Moore’s Lalla Kookh also appeared in 1817. —⁠Editor ↩
St. Bartholomew was “discoriate, and flayed quick” (Golden Legend, 1900, V 43). —⁠Editor ↩
We from impalement⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“Many of the seraï and summerhouses [on the Bosphorus] have received these significant, or rather fantastic names: one is the Pearl Pavilion; another is the Star Palace; a third the Mansion of Looking-glasses.”
—⁠Travels in Albania, 1858, II 243

↩
Of speeches, beauty, flattery⁠—there is no
Method more sure⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Guide des Voyageurs; Directions for Travellers, etc.⁠—Rhymes, Incidental and Humorous; Rhyming Reminiscences; Effusions in Rhyme, etc.⁠—Lady Morgan’s Tour in Italy; Tour Through Istria, etc., etc.⁠—Sketches of Italy; Sketches of Modern Greece, etc., etc.⁠—Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold, by J. C. Hobhouse, 1818. —⁠Editor ↩
In Turkey nothing is more common than for the Mussulmans to take several glasses of strong spirits by way of appetiser. I have seen them take as many as six of raki before dinner, and swear that they dined the better for it: I tried the experiment, but fared like the Scotchman, who having heard that the birds called kittiwakes were admirable whets, ate six of them, and complained that “he was no hungrier than when he began.” ↩
“Everything is so still [in the court of the Seraglio], that the motion of a fly might be heard, in a manner; and if anyone should presume to raise his voice ever so little, or show the least want of respect to the Mansion-place of their Emperor, he would instantly have the bastinado by the officers that go the rounds.”
—⁠A Voyage in the Levant, by M. Tournefort, 1741, II 183

—⁠Editor ↩
A common furniture. I recollect being received by Ali Pacha, in a large room, paved with marble, containing a marble basin, and fountain playing in the centre, etc., etc.

[Compare Childe Harold, Canto II stanza LXII⁠—

“In marble-paved pavilion, where a spring
Of living water from the centre rose,
Whose bubbling did a genial freshness fling,
And soft voluptuous couches breathed repose,
Ali reclined, a man of war and woes,” etc.]

↩
A reminiscence of Newstead. Compare Moore’s song, “Oft in the Stilly Night”⁠—

“I feel like one
Who treads alone
Some banquet-hall deserted.”

—⁠Editor ↩
A small, snug chamber on a winter’s night,
Well furnished with a book, friend, girl, or glass, etc.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
I pass my days in long dull galleries solely.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
When this stanza was written Byron was domiciled in the Palazzo Guiccioli (in the Via di Porta Adriana) at Ravenna; but he may have had in his mind the monks’ refectory at Newstead Abbey, “the dark gallery, where his fathers frowned” (Lara, Canto I line 137), or the corridors which form the upper story of the cloisters. —⁠Editor ↩
“Nabuchodonosor,” here used metri gratiâ, is Latin (see the Vulgate) and French (see J. P. De Béranger, Chansons Inédites, 1828, p. 48) for Nebuchadnezzar. —⁠Editor ↩
See Ovid’s Metamorphoses, lib. IV lines 55⁠–⁠58⁠—

“In Babylon, where first her queen, for state,
Raised walls of brick magnificently great,
Lived Pyramus and Thisbe, lovely pair!
He found no Eastern youth his equal there,
And she beyond the fairest nymph was fair.”
Garth

—⁠Editor ↩
Babylon was enlarged by Nimrod, strengthened and beautified by Nabuchadonosor, and rebuilt by Semiramis.

[Pliny (Nat. Hist., lib. VIII cap. XLII ed. 1593, I 392) cites Juba, King of Mauretania, died AD 19, as his authority for the calumny.] ↩
In an Erratum of her Horse for Courier.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Queen Caroline⁠—whose trial (August⁠—November, 1820) was proceeding whilst this canto was being written⁠—was charged with having committed adultery with Bartolommeo Bergami, who had been her courier, and was, afterwards, her chamberlain. —⁠Editor ↩
“Memoir on the Ruins of Babylon, by Claudius James Rich, Esq., Resident for the Honourable East India Company at the Court of the Pasha of Bagdad, 1815,” pp. 61⁠–⁠64: Second Memoir on Babylon,⁠ ⁠… 1818, by Claudius James Rich. See the plates at the end of the volume. —⁠Editor ↩
If they shall not as soon cut off my head.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
A pair of drawers⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Compare “Extracts from a Diary,” January 24, 1821, Letters, 1901, V 184. —⁠Editor ↩
Kings are not more imperative than rhymes.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
He looked almost in modesty a maid.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Features of a gate⁠—a ministerial metaphor: “the feature upon which this question hinges.” See the “Fudge Family,” or hear Castlereagh.

[Phil. Fudge, in his letter to Lord Castlereagh, says⁠—

“As thou would’st say, my guide and teacher
In these gay metaphoric fringes,
I must embark into the feature
On which this letter chiefly hinges.”

Moore’s note adds,

“Verbatim from one of the noble Viscount’s speeches:⁠—‘And now, sir, I must embark into the feature on which this question chiefly hinges.’ ”
—⁠Fudge Family in Paris, Letter II

See, too, post, the Preface to Cantos VI, VII, and VIII, note 2.] ↩
Compare⁠—

“A snake’s small eye blinks dull and sly,
And the lady’s eyes they shrunk in her head,
Each shrunk up to a serpent’s eye.”
Christabel, Part II lines 583⁠–⁠585

—⁠Editor ↩
A few years ago the wile of Muchtar Pacha complained to his father of his son’s supposed infidelity: he asked with whom, and she had the barbarity to give in a list of the twelve handsomest women in Yanina. They were seized, fastened up in sacks, and drowned in the lake the same night. One of the guards who was present informed me, that not one of the victims uttered a cry, or showed a symptom of terror at so sudden a “wrench from all we know, from all we love.”

[See The Giaour, line 1328, Poetical Works, 1900, III 144, note 1.] ↩
As Venus rose from Ocean⁠—bent on them
With a far-reaching glance, a Paphian pair.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
But there are forms which Time adorns, not wears,
And to which Beauty obstinately clings.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Legend has credited Ninon de Lenclos (1620⁠–⁠1705) with lovers when she had “come to fourscore years.” According to Voltaire, John Casimir, ex-king of Poland, succumbed to her secular charms (see Mazeppa, line 138, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 212, note 1).

“In her old age, her house was the rendezvous of wits and men of letters. Scarron is said to have consulted her on his romances, Saint-Evremond on his poems, Molière on his comedies, Fontenelle on his dialogues, and La Rochefoucauld on his maxims. Coligny, Sévigné, etc., were her lovers and friends. At her death, in 1705, she bequeathed to Voltaire two thousand francs, to expend in books.”
—⁠Biographic Universelle, art. “Lenclos”

—⁠Editor ↩
“Her fair maids were ranged below the sofa, to the number of twenty, and put me in mind of the pictures of the ancient nymphs. I did not think all nature could have furnished such a scene of beauty,” etc.
—⁠Lady M. W. Montagu to the Countess of Mar, April 18, O.S. 1717, ed. 1816, p. 163

—⁠Editor ↩
“Nil admirari prope res est una, Numici,
Solaque quae possit facere et servare beatum.”
Hor., Epist., lib. 1, ep. VI lines 1, 2

—⁠Editor ↩
“Not to admire, is all the Art I know
To make men happy, and to keep them so,
(Plain Truth, dear Murray, needs no flow’rs of speech,
So take it in the very words of Creech).”
“To Mr. Murray” (Lord Mansfield), Pope’s Imitations of Horace, Book I epist. VI lines 1⁠–⁠4

Thomas Creech (1659⁠–⁠1701) published his Translation of Horace in 1684. In the second edition, 1688, p. 487, the lines run⁠—

“Not to admire, as most are wont to do,
It is the only method that I know,
To make Men happy and to keep ’em so.”

—⁠Editor ↩
Johnson placed judgment and friendship above admiration and love.

“Admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne; judgment and friendship like being enlivened.”

See Boswell’s Life of Johnson, 1876, p. 450. —⁠Editor ↩
There is nothing, perhaps, more distinctive of birth than the hand. It is almost the only sign of blood which aristocracy can generate. ↩
In old pictures of the Fall, it is a cherub who whispers into the ear of Eve. The serpent’s coils are hidden in the foliage of the tree. —⁠Editor ↩
The very women half forgave her face.
—⁠[MS. Erased]

↩
Had his instructions⁠—where and how to deal.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
And husbands now and then are mystified.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Narrow javelins, once known as archegays⁠—the assegais of Zulu warfare. —⁠Editor ↩
But nature teaches what power cannot spoil
And, though it was a new and strange sensation,
Young female hearts are such a genial soil
For kinder feelings, she forgot her station.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
War with your heart⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
See Fielding’s History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, Bk. I chap. V. —⁠Editor ↩
“ ‘But if my boy with virtue be endued,
What harm will beauty do him?’ Nay, what good?
Say, what avail’d, of old, to Theseus’ son,
The stern resolve? what to Bellerophon?⁠—
O, then did Phaedra redden, then her pride
Took fire to be so steadfastly denied!
Then, too, did Sthenobaea glow with shame,
And both burst forth with unextinguish’d flame!”
Gifford, Juvenal, Sat. X 473⁠–⁠480

The adventures of Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, and Bellerophon are well known. They were accused of incontinence, by the women whose inordinate passions they had refused to gratify at the expense of their duty, and sacrificed to the fatal credulity of the husbands of the disappointed fair ones. It is very probable that both the stories are founded on the Scripture account of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife.⁠—Footnote, Juvenal, ed. 1817, II pp. 49, 50. —⁠Editor ↩
The poets and romances⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
And this strong second cause (to tire no longer
Your patience) shows the first must still be stronger.
—⁠[MS. Alternative reading]

↩
“By Heaven! methinks, it were an easy leap,
To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon.”
Henry IV, act I sc. 3, lines 201, 202

—⁠Editor ↩
Like natural Shakespeare on the immortal page.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“And when I have stol’n upon these sons-in law,
Then kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.”
King Lear, act IV sc. 6, lines 185, 186

—⁠Editor ↩
“A woman scorn’d is pitiless as fate,
For, there, the dread of shame adds stings to hate.”
Gifford’s Juvenal, Sat. X lines 481, 482, ed. 1817, II p. 50

—⁠Editor ↩
“Yes⁠—my valour is certainly going! it is sneaking off! I feel it oozing out, as it were, at the palms of my hands!”
—⁠Sheridan’s Rivals, act V sc. 3

↩
Or all the stuff which uttered by the “Blues” is.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
But prithee⁠—get my women in the way,
That all the stars may gleam with due adorning.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Of Cantemir or Knollēs⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
It may not be unworthy of remark, that Bacon, in his essay on “Empire” (Essays, No. XX), hints that Solyman was the last of his line; on what authority, I know not. These are his words:

“The destruction of Mustapha was so fatal to Solyman’s line; as the succession of the Turks from Solyman until this day is suspected to be untrue, and of strange blood; for that Selymus the second was thought to be supposititious.”

But Bacon, in his historical authorities, is often inaccurate. I could give half a dozen instances from his Apophthegms only.

[Selim II (1524⁠–⁠1574) succeeded his father as Sultan in 1566. Hofmann (Lexicon Univ.) describes him as “meticulosus, effeminatus, ebriosus,” but neither Demetrius Cantemir, in his History of the Growth and Decay of the Othman Empire (translated by N. Tyndal, 1734); nor The Turkish History (written by Mr. Knolles, 1701), cast any doubts on his legitimacy. Byron complained of the omission from the notes to the first edition of Don Juan, of his corrections of Bacon’s “Apophthegms” (see Letters, 1901, V Appendix VI pp. 597⁠–⁠600), in a letter to Murray, dated January 21, 1821⁠—vide Letters, p. 220.] ↩
Gibbon. —⁠Editor ↩
Because he kept them wrapt up in his closet, he
Ruled fair wives and twelve hundred whores, unseen,
More easily than Christian kings one queen.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Then ended many a fair Sultana’s trip:
The Public knew no more than does this rhyme;
No printed scandals flew⁠—the fish, of course,
Were better⁠—while the morals were no worse.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
No sign of its depression anywhere.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“We attempted to visit the Seven Towers, but were stopped at the entrance, and informed that without a firman it was inaccessible to strangers.⁠ ⁠… It was supposed that Count Bulukof, the Russian minister, would be the last of the Moussafirs, or imperial hostages, confined in this fortress; but since the year 1784 M. Ruffin and many of the French have been imprisoned in the same place; and the dungeons⁠ ⁠… were gaping, it seems, for the sacred persons of the gentlemen composing his Britannic Majesty’s mission, previous to the rupture between Great Britain and the Porte in 1809.”
—⁠Hobhouse, Travels in Albania, 1858, II 311, 312

—⁠Editor ↩
“The princess” (Asma Sultana, daughter of Achmet III) “complained of the barbarity which, at thirteen years of age, united her to a decrepit old man, who, by treating her like a child, had inspired her with nothing but disgust.”
—⁠Memoirs of Baron de Toil, 1786, I 74

See, too, Mémoires, etc., 1784, I 84, 85. —⁠Editor ↩
The connection between “horns” and Heaven, to which Byron twice alludes, is not very obvious. The reference may be to the Biblical “horn of salvation,” or to the symbolical horns of Divine glory as depicted in the Moses of Michel Angelo. Compare Mazeppa, lines 177, 178, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 213. —⁠Editor ↩
—with solemn air and wise.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Virginity in these unhappy climes.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
This stanza, which Byron composed in bed, February 27, 1821 (see Extracts from a Diary, Letters, 1901, V 209), is not in the first edition. On discovering the omission, he wrote to Murray:

“Upon what principle have you omitted⁠ ⁠… one of the concluding stanzas sent as an addition?⁠—because it ended, I suppose, with⁠—

‘And do not link two virtuous souls for life
Into that moral centaur, man and wife?’

Now, I must say, once for all, that I will not permit any human being to take such liberties with my writings because I am absent. I desire the omissions to be replaced (except the stanza on Semiramis)⁠—particularly the stanza upon the Turkish marriages.”
—⁠Letter to Murray, August 31, 1821, Extracts from a Diary, Letters, p. 351

—⁠Editor ↩
Meanwhile as Homer sometimes sleeps, much more
The modern muse may be allowed to snore.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Two MSS. (A, B) are extant, A in Byron’s handwriting, B a transcription by Mrs. Shelley. The variants are marked respectively MS. A, MS. B.

Motto:

“Thinkest thou that because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale? Aye! and ginger shall be hot in the mouth too.”
—⁠Twelfth Night, or What You Will, Shakespeare, act II sc. 3, lines 109⁠–⁠112.⁠—[MS. B]

This motto, in an amended form, which was prefixed to the First Canto in 1833, appears on the title-page of the first edition of Cantos VI, VII, VIII, published by John Hunt in 1823. —⁠Editor ↩
See Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, act IV sc. 3, lines 216, 217. —⁠Editor ↩
Jacob Behmen (or Boehm) stands for “mystic.” Byron twice compares him with Wordsworth (see Letters, 1899, III 239, 1900, IV 238). —⁠Editor ↩
Man with his head reflects (as Spurzheim tells),
But Woman with the heart⁠—or something else.

or,

Man’s pensive part is (now and then) the head,
Woman’s the heart or anything instead.
—⁠[MS. A. Alternative reading]

↩
Like to a Comet’s tail⁠—.
—⁠[MS. A erased]

↩
O’erbalance all the Caesar’s victories.
—⁠[MS. A]

Outbalance all the Caesar’s victories.
—⁠[MS. B]

In the Shelley copy “o’erbalance” has been erased and “outbalance” inserted in Byron’s handwriting. The lines must have been intended to run thus⁠—

’Tis not his conquests keep his name in fashion
But Actium lost; for Cleopatra’s eyes
Outbalance all the Caesar’s victories.

↩
I wish that they had been eighteen⁠—.
—⁠[MS. A erased]

↩
To Mary Chaworth. Compare

“Our union would have healed feuds⁠ ⁠… it would have joined lands broad and rich; it would have joined at least one heart.”
—⁠Detached Thoughts, 1821, Letters, 1901, V 441

—⁠Editor ↩
Cato gave up his wife Martia to his friend Hortensius; but, on the death of the latter, took her back again. This conduct was censured by Caesar, who observed that Cato had an eye to the main chance.

“It was the wealth of Hortensius. He lent the young man his wife, that he might make her a rich widow.”
—⁠Langhorne’s Plutarch, 1838, pp. 539, 547

—⁠Editor ↩
Othello, act I sc. I, lines 19⁠–⁠24. —⁠Editor ↩
—though with greater latitude.
—⁠[MS. A]

↩
—with one foolish woman wed.
—⁠[MS. B]

↩
The famous bed, measuring twelve feet square, to which an allusion is made by Shakespeare in Twelfth Night, act III sc. 2, line 44, was formerly preserved at the Saracen’s Head at Ware, in Hertfordshire. The bed was removed from Ware to the Rye House in 1869. —⁠Editor ↩
His Highness the sublimest of mankind,
The greatest, wisest, bravest, [and the] best,
Proved by his edicts somewhat blind,
Who saw his virtues as they saw the rest⁠—
His Highness quite connubially inclined
Had deigned that night to be Gulbeyaz’ guest.
—⁠[MS. A]

↩
See Waverley [chap. XX]. ↩
May look like what I need not mention here
—⁠[MS. A]

↩
Are better signs if such things can be signed.
—⁠[MS. A]

↩
For St. Francis of Assisi, and the “seven great balls of snow,” of which “the greatest” was “his wife,” see The Golden Legend, 1900, V 221, vide ante, note 69. —⁠Editor ↩
The words medio, etc., are to be found in Ovid., Metam., lib. II line 137; the doctrine, Virtus est medium vitiorum, in Horace, Epist., lib. I, ep. XVIII line 9. —⁠Editor ↩
In the damned line (’tis worth, at least, a curse)
Which I have examined too close.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Self-love that whetstone of Don Cupid’s art.
—⁠[MS. A]

↩
—with love despairs.
—⁠[MS. A erased]

↩
Lady Noel’s will was proved February 22, 1812. She left to the trustees a portrait of Byron⁠ ⁠… with directions that it was not to be shown to his daughter Ada till she attained the age of twenty-one; but that if her mother was still living, it was not to be so delivered without Lady Byron’s consent.⁠—Letters, 1901, VI 42, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
Which diddles you⁠—.
—⁠[MS. A erased]

↩
I’m a philosopher; G‑d damn them all.
—⁠[MS. B]

↩
Bills, women, wives, dogs, horses and mankind.
—⁠[MS. B erased]

↩
Is more than I know, and, so, damn them both.
—⁠[MS. A erased]

↩
When we lie down⁠—wife, spouse, or bachelor
By what we love not, to sigh for the light.
—⁠[MS. A erased]

↩
By their infernal bedfellow⁠—.
—⁠[MS. A erased]

↩
The comparison of Queen Caroline to snow may be traced to an article in the Times of August 23, 1820:

“The Queen may now, we believe, be considered as triumphing! For the first three years at least of her Majesty’s painful peregrinations, she stands before her husband’s admiring subjects ‘as white as unsunned snows.’ ”

Political bards and lampoonists of the king’s party thanked the Times for “giving them that word.” —⁠Editor ↩
According to Gronow (Reminiscences, 1889, I 62), a practical joke of Dan Mackinnon’s (vide ante, note 1217) gave Byron a hint for this scene in the harem:

“Lord Wellington was curious about visiting a convent near Lisbon, and the lady abbess made no difficulty. Mackinnon hearing this contrived to get clandestinely within the sacred walls⁠ ⁠… at all events, when Lord Wellington arrived Dan Mackinnon was to be seen among the nuns, dressed out in their sacred costume, with his whiskers shaved; and, as he possessed good features, he was declared to be one of the best-looking among those chaste dames. It was supposed that this adventure, which was known to Lord Byron, suggested a similar episode in Don Juan.”

—⁠Editor ↩
Caligula⁠—vide Suetonius, De XII Caes., C. Caes. Calig., cap. XXX,

“Infensus turbae faventi adversus studium exclamavit: ‘Utinam populus Romanus unam cervicem haberet!’ ”

—⁠Editor ↩
My wish were general but no worse.
—⁠[MS. A erased]

↩
That Womankind had only one⁠—say heart.
—⁠[MS. A erased]

↩
The ladies of the Seraglio. ↩
Demetrius Cantemir, hospodar of Moldavia. His work, the History of the Growth and Decay of the Othman Empire, was translated into English by N. Tyndal, 1734. He died in 1723. —⁠Editor ↩
Baron de Tott, in his Memoirs Concerning the State of the Turkish Empire (1786, I 72), gives the title of this functionary as Kiaya Kadun, i.e. Mistress or Governess of the Ladies. —⁠Editor ↩
The repetition of the same rhyme-word was noted in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, July, 1823, vol. XIV p. 90. —⁠Editor ↩
“I guess, ’twas frightful there to see
A lady so richly clad as she⁠—
Beautiful exceedingly.”
Christabel, Part I lines 66⁠–⁠68

—⁠Editor ↩
“It is in the adjacent climates of Georgia, Mingrelia, and Circassia, that nature has placed, at least to our eyes, the model of beauty, in the shape of the limbs, the colour of the skin, the symmetry of the features, and the expression of the countenance: the men are formed for action, the women for love.”
—⁠Gibbon, [Decline and Fall, etc., 1825, III 126]

↩
Padisha is the Turkish title of the Grand Signior. ↩
Katinka was the name of the youngest sister of Theresa, the “Maid of Athens.”⁠—See letter to H. Drury, May 3, 1810, Letters, 1898, I 269, note 1; and Poetical Works, 1900, III 15, note 1.

It is probable that the originals of Katinka and Dudù were two Circassians who were presented for sale to Nicolas Ernest Kleeman (see his Voyage de Vienne, etc., 1780, pp. 142, 143) at Kaffa, in the Crimea. Of the first he writes,

“Elle me baisa la main, et par l’ordre de son maître, elle se promena en long et en large, pour me faire remarquer sa taille mince et aisée. Elle avoit un joli petit pied.⁠ ⁠… Quand elle a en ôté son voile elle a présenté à mes yeux une beauté très-attrayante; ses cheveux étoient blonds argentés; elle avoit de grands yeux bleux, le nez un peu long, et les lèvres appétissantes. Sa figure étoit régulière, son teint blanc, délicat, les joues couvertes d’un charmant vermilion.⁠ ⁠… La seconde étoit un peu petite, assez grasse, et avoit les cheveux roux, l’air sensuel et revenant.”

Kleeman pretended to offer terms, took notes, and retired. But the Circassians are before us still. —⁠Editor ↩
Macbeth, act II sc. 2, line 36. —⁠Editor ↩
By which no doubt its Baptism came to pass.
—⁠[MS. A erased]

↩
The Devil in Hell might melt but never settle.
—⁠[MS. A erased]

↩
Hence the title of the satire, The Age of Bronze. —⁠Editor ↩
For Woman’s silence startles more than thunder.
—⁠[MS. A erased]

↩
Compare Beppo, stanza XXII line 2, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 166, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
With no less true and feminine surprise.
—⁠[MS. A erased]

↩
Julius Caesar, act III sc. II, line 216. —⁠Editor ↩
“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,” etc.
Inferno, Canto I, lines 1, 2

—⁠Editor ↩
Himself in an age when men grow good,
As Life’s best half is done⁠—.
—⁠[MS. A erased]

↩
But out of reach⁠—a most provoking sight.
—⁠[MS. A erased]

↩
That ere her unreluctant lips could ope.
—⁠[MS. A]

↩
One of the advocates employed for Queen Caroline in the House of Lords spoke of some of the most puzzling passages in the history of her intercourse with Bergami, as amounting to “odd instances of strange coincidence.”⁠—Ed. 1833, XVI 160. —⁠Editor ↩
At least as red as the Flamingo’s breast.
—⁠[MS. A erased]

↩
Byron used Kaff for Caucasus, vide ante, English Bards, etc., line 1022, Poetical Works, 1898, I 378, note 3. But there may be some allusion to the fabulous Kaff, “anciently imagined by the Asiatics to surround the world, to bind the horizon on all sides.” There was a proverb “From Kaf to Kaf,” i.e. “the wide world through.” See, too, D’Herbelot’s Bibliothèque Orientale, 1697, art. “Caf.” —⁠Editor ↩
See L. A. Seneca, De Irâ, lib. II cap. 25. —⁠Editor ↩
Oh thou her lawful grandson Alexander
Let not this quality offend⁠—.
—⁠[MS. A erased]

↩
Compare The Age of Bronze, lines 434, sq., Poetical Works, 1901, V 563, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
To call a man a whoreson⁠—.
—⁠[MS. A erased]

↩
But a man’s grandmother is deemed fair game.
—⁠[MS. A]

↩
It is probable that Byron knew that there was a “hint of illegitimacy” in his own pedigree. John Byron of Clayton, grandfather of Richard the second Lord Byron, was born, out of wedlock, to Elizabeth, daughter of William Costerden, of Blakesley, in Lancashire, widow to George Halgh of Halgh (sic), and second wife of Sir John Byron of Clayton, “little Sir John with the great beard.” He succeeded to Newstead and the Lancashire estates, not as heir-at-law, but by deed of gift. (See letter to Murray, October 20, 1820, Letters, 1901, V 99, note 2.) —⁠Editor ↩
Aubry de la Motraye, in describing the interior of the Grand Signior’s palace, into which he gained admission as the assistant of a watchmaker who was employed to regulate the clocks, says that the eunuch who received them at the entrance of the harem, conducted them into a hall:

“Cette salle est incrustee de porcelaines fines; et le lambris doré et azuré qui orne le fond d’une coupole qui regne au-dessus, est des plus riches.⁠ ⁠… Une fontaine artificielle et jaillissante, dont le bassin est d’un prétieux marbre verd qui m’a paru serpentin ou jaspe, s’élevoit directement au milieu, sous le dôme.⁠ ⁠… Je me trouvai la tête si pleine de Sophas de prétieux plafonds, de meubles superbes, en un mot, d’une si grande confusion de matériaux magnifiques,⁠ ⁠… qu’il seroit difficile d’en donner une idée claire.”
—⁠Voyages, 1727, I 220, 222

—⁠Editor ↩
“Il n’ya point de Religieuses⁠ ⁠… point de novices, plus soumises à la volonté de leur abbesse que ces filles [les Odaliques] le sont à leurs maitresses.”
—⁠A. de la Motraye, Voyages, 1727, I 338

—⁠Editor ↩
—though seen not heard
For it is silent.
—⁠[MS. A erased]

↩
“How fares my Kate? What! sweeting, all amort?”
—⁠Taming of the Shrew, act IV sc. 3, line 36

“Amort” is said to be a corruption of à la mort. Byron must have had in mind his silent ecstasy of grief when the Countess Guiccioli endeavoured to break the announcement of Allegra’s death (April, 1822).

“ ‘I understand,’ said he; ‘it is enough; say no more.’ A mortal paleness spread itself over his face, his strength failed him, and he sunk into a seat. His look was fixed, and the expression such that I began to fear for his reason; he did not shed a tear.”
(Life, p. 368)

—⁠Editor ↩
“His guilty soul, at enmity with gods and men, could find no rest; so violently was his mind torn and distracted by a consciousness of guilt. Accordingly his countenance was pale, his eyes ghastly, his pace one while quick, another slow [citus modo, modo tardus incessus]; indeed, in all his looks there was an air of distraction.”
—⁠Sallust, Catilina, cap. XV sf.

—⁠Editor ↩
“These [the seventh and eighth] Cantos contain a full detail (like the storm in Canto Second) of the siege and assault of Ismael, with much of sarcasm on those butchers in large business, your mercenary soldiery.⁠ ⁠… With these things and these fellows it is necessary, in the present clash of philosophy and tyranny, to throw away the scabbard. I know it is against fearful odds; but the battle must be fought; and it will be eventually for the good of mankind, whatever it may be for the individual who risks himself.”
—⁠Letter to Moore, August 8, 1822, Letters, 1901, VI 101

—⁠Editor ↩
Byron attributes this phrase to Orator Henley (Letters, 1898, I 227); and to Bayes in the Duke of Buckingham’s play, The Rehearsal (Letters, 1901, V 80). —⁠Editor ↩
Of Fenelon, of Calvin and of Christ.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Compare Childe Harold, Canto II stanza VII line 1, Poetical Works, 1899, II 103, note 2. —⁠Editor ↩
Picking a pebble on the shore of Truth.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“Sir Isaac Newton, a little before he died, said, ‘I don’t know what I may seem to the world; but, as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.’ ”
—⁠Spence, Anecdotes (quoting Chevalier Ramsay), 1858, p. 40

—⁠Editor ↩
From fools who dread to know the truth of Life.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Compare

“Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog,”
lines 7, sq., Poetical Works, 1898, I 280

—⁠Editor ↩
Aleksandr Vasilievitch Suvóroff (1729⁠–⁠1800) opened his attack on Ismail, November 30, 1790. His forces, including Kossacks, exceeded 27,000 men.⁠—Essai sur l’Histoire Ancienne et Moderne de la Nouvelle Russie, par le Marquis Gabriel de Castelnau, 1827, II 201. —⁠Editor ↩
“Ismaël est situé sur la rive gauche du bras gauche (i.e. the ilia) du Danube.”
—⁠Essai sur l’Histoire Ancienne et Moderne de la Nouvelle Russie

—⁠Editor ↩
—“à peu près à quatre-vingts verstes de la mer: elle a près de trois milles toises de tour.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 201

—⁠Editor ↩
“On a compris dans ces fortifications un faubourg moldave, situé à la gauche de la ville, sur une hauteur qui la domine: l’ouvrage a été terminé par un Grec. Pour donner une idée des talens de cet ingénieur, il suffira de dire qu’il fit placer les palissades perpendiculairement sur le parapet, de manière qu’elles favorisaient les assiégeans, et arrêtaient le feu des assiégés.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 202

—⁠Editor ↩
“Le rempart en terre est prodigieusement élevé à cause de l’immense profondeur du fossé; il est cependant absolument rasant: il n’y a ni ouvrage avancé, ni chemin couvert.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 202

—⁠Editor ↩
Casemate is a work made under the rampart, like a cellar or cave, with loopholes to place guns in it, and is bomb proof. —⁠Milit. Dict. —⁠Editor ↩
When the breastwork of a battery is only of such height that the guns may fire over it without being obliged to make embrasures, the guns are said to fire in barbet. —⁠Milit. Dict. —⁠Editor ↩
“Un bastion de pierres, ouvert par une gorge très-étroite, et dont les murailles son fort épaisses, a une batterie casematée et une à barbette; il défend la rive du Danube. Du côté droit de la ville est un cavalier de quarante pieds d’élévation à pic, garni de vingt-deux pièces de canon, et qui défend la partie gauche.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 202

—⁠Editor ↩
“Du côté du fleuve, la ville est absolument ouverte; les Turcs ne croyaient pas que les Russes pussent jamais avoir une flotille dans le Danube.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 203

—⁠Editor ↩
Meknop [supposed to be a corruption of McNab], etc., in line three, are real names: Strongenoff stands for Strogonof, Tschitsshakoff for Tchitchagof, and, perhaps, Chokenoff for Tchoglokof. —⁠Editor ↩
—these discords of damnation.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“La première attaque était composée de trois colonnes, commandées par les lieutenans-généraux Paul Potiemkin, Serge Lwow, les généraux-majors Maurice Lascy, Théodore Meknop.⁠ ⁠… Trois autres colonnes⁠ ⁠… avaient pour chefs le comte de Samoïlow, les généraux Êlie de Bezborodko, Michel Koutousow; les brigadiers Orlow, Platow, Ribaupierre.⁠ ⁠… La troisième attaque par eau n’avait que deux colonnes, sous les ordres des généraux-majors Ribas et Arséniew, des brigadiers Markoff et Tchépéga,” etc.
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 207

Compare⁠—

“Oscharoffsky and Rostoffsky,
And all the others that end in-offsky.
⋮
And Kutousoff he cut them off,” etc.
Southey’s “March to Moscow,” 1813

—⁠Editor ↩
Count Boris Petrowitch Scheremetov, Russian general, died 1819; Prince Alexis Borisovitch Kourakin (1759⁠–⁠1829), and Count Alexis Iwanowitch Moussine-Pouschkine (1744⁠–⁠1817) were distinguished statesmen; Chrematoff is, perhaps, a rhyming double of Scherematoff, and Koklophti “a match-piece” to Koclobski. —⁠Editor ↩
Captain Smith, in the song⁠—

“A Captain bold, in Halifax,
That dwelt in country quarters,
Seduc’d a maid who hang’d herself
One Monday in her garters.”

See George Colman’s farce, Love Laughs at Locksmiths, 1818, p. 31. —⁠Editor ↩
Compare⁠—

“While to my shame I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That for a fantasy and trick of fame
Go to their graves like beds.”
Hamlet, act IV sc. 4, lines 56⁠–⁠59

—⁠Editor ↩
The Conquest seemed not difficult⁠—.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“On s’était proposé deux buts également avantageux, par la construction de deux batteries sur l’île qui avoisine Ismaël: le premier, de bombarder la place, d’en abattre les principaux édifices avec du canon de quarante-huit, effet d’autant plus probable, que la ville étant bâtie en amphithéâtre, presque aucun coup ne serait perdu.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 203

—⁠Editor ↩
“Le second objet était de profiter de ce moment d’alarme pour que la flottille, agissant en même temps, put détruire celle des Turcs. Un troisième motif, et vraisemblablement le plus plausible, était de jeter la consternation parmi les Turcs, et de les engager à capituler.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 203

—⁠Editor ↩
Unless they are as game as bull-dogs or even tarriers.

or,

A thing which sometimes hath occurred to warriors,
Unless they happened to be as game as tarriers.
—⁠[MS. A. Alternative reading]

Unless they are Game as bull-dogs or even terriers.
—⁠[MS. B]

(Byron erased the reading of MS. B and superscribed the reading of the text.) ↩
“Une habitude blâmable, celle de mépriser son ennemi, fut la cause.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 203

—⁠Editor ↩
“… du défaut de perfection dans la construction des batteries; on voulait agir promptement, et on négligea de donner aux ouvrages la solidité qu’ils exigaient.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 203

—⁠Editor ↩
“Le même esprit fit manquer l’effet de trois brûlots; on calcula mal la distance; on se pressa d’allumer la méche, ils brûlèrent au milieu du fleuve, et quoiqu’il fût six heures du matin, les Turcs, encore couchés, n’en prirent aucun ombrage.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 203

—⁠Editor ↩
“1er Dec. 1790. La flottille russe s’avança vers les sept heures; il en était neuf lorsqu’elle se trouva à cinquante toises de la ville [d’Ismaël]: elle souffrit, avec une constance calme, un feu de mitraille et de mousqueterie.⁠ ⁠…”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 204

—⁠Editor ↩
“… près de six heures⁠ ⁠… les batteries de terre secondaient la flottille; mais on reconnut alors que les canonnades ne suffiraient pas pour réduire la place, on fit la retraite à une heure. Un lançon sauta pendant l’action, un autre dériva par la force du courant, et fut pris par l’ennemi.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 204

—⁠Editor ↩
For Delhis, see Poetical Works, 1899, II, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
“Les Turcs perdirent beaucoup de monde et plusieurs vaisseaux. A peine la retraite des Russes fut-elle remarquée, que les plus braves d’entre les ennemis se jetèrent dans de petites barques et essayèrent une descente: le Comte de Damas les mit en fuite, et leur tua plusieurs officiers et grand nombre de soldats.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 204

—⁠Editor ↩
“On ne tarirait pas si on voulait rapporter tout ce que les Russes firent de mémorable dans cette journée; pour conter les hauts faits d’armes, pour particulariser toutes les actions d’éclat, il faudrait composer des volumes.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 204

—⁠Editor ↩
“Parmi les étrangers, le prince de Ligne se distingua de manière à mériter l’estime générale; de vrais chevaliers français, attirés par l’amour de la gloire, se montrèrent dignes d’elle: les plus marquans étaient le jeune Duc de Richelieu, les Comtes de Langeron et de Damas.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 204

Andrault, Comte de Langeron, born at Paris, January 13, 1763, on the outbreak of the Revolution (1790) took service in the Russian Army. He fought against the Swedes in 1790, and the Turks in 1791, and, after serving as a volunteer in the army of the Duke of Brunswick (1792⁠–⁠93), returned to Russia, and was raised to the rank of general in 1799. He commanded a division of the Russian Army in the German campaign of 1813, and entered Paris with Blücher, March 30, 1814. He was afterwards Governor of Odessa and of New Russia; and, a second time, fought against the Turks in 1828. He died at St. Petersburg, July 4, 1831. Joseph Elizabeth Roger, Comte de Damas d’Antigny, born at Paris, September 4, 1765, owed his commission in the Russian Army to the influence of the Prince de Ligne. He fought against the Turks in 1787⁠–⁠88, and was distinguished for bravery and daring. At the Restoration in 1814 he reentered the French Army, was made Governor of Lyons; shared the temporary exile of Louis XVIII at Ghent in 1815, and, in the following year, as commandant of a division, took part in repressing the revolutionary disturbances in the central and southern departments of France. He died at Cirey, September 3, 1823.⁠—La Grande Encyclopédie. —⁠Editor ↩
Charles Joseph, Prince de Ligne, was born at Brussels, May 12, 1735. In 1782 he visited St. Petersburg as envoy of the Emperor Joseph II, won Catherine’s favour, and was appointed Field Marshal in the Russian Army. In 1788 he was sent to assist Potemkin at the siege of Ochakof. His Mélanges Militaires, etc., were first published in 1795. He died in November, 1814.

Josef de Ribas (1737⁠–⁠c. 1797). —⁠Editor ↩
“L’Amiral de Ribas⁠ ⁠… déclara, en plein conseil, que ce n’était qu’en donnant l’assaut qu’on obtiendrait la place: cet avis parut hardi; on lui opposa mille raisons, auxquelles il répondit par de meilleures.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II, 205

—⁠Editor ↩
Prince (Gregor Alexandrovitch) Potemkin, born 1736, died October 15, 1791.

“He alighted from his carriage in the midst of the highway, threw himself on the grass, and died under a tree,”
(Life of Catherine II, by W. Tooke, 1880, III 324)

His character has been drawn by Louis Philippe, Comte de Ségur, who, writes Tooke (Life of Catherine II, p. 326), “lived a long time in habits of intimacy with him, and was so obliging as to delineate it at our solicitation.”

“In his person were collected the most opposite defects and advantages of every kind. He was avaricious and ostentatious,⁠ ⁠… haughty and obliging, politic and confiding, licentious and superstitious, bold and timid, ambitious and indiscreet; lavish of his bounties to his relations, his mistresses, and his favourites, yet frequently paying neither his household nor his creditors. His consequence always depended on a woman, and he was always unfaithful to her. Nothing could equal the activity of his mind, nor the indolence of his body. No dangers could appal his courage; no difficulties force him to abandon his projects. But the success of an enterprise always brought on disgust.⁠ ⁠… Everything with him was desultory; business, pleasure, temper, carriage. His presence was a restraint on every company. He was morose to all that stood in awe of him, and caressed all such as accosted him with familiarity.⁠ ⁠… None had read less than he; few people were better informed.⁠ ⁠… One while he formed the project of becoming Duke of Courland; at another he thought of bestowing on himself the crown of Poland. He frequently gave intimations of an intention to make himself a bishop, or even a simple monk. He built a superb palace, and wanted to sell it before it was finished. In his youth he had pleased her [Catherine] by the ardour of his passion, by his valour, and by his masculine beauty.⁠ ⁠… Become the rival of Orloff, he performed for his sovereign whatever the most romantic passion could inspire. He put out his eye, to free it from a blemish which diminished his beauty. Banished by his rival, he ran to meet death in battle, and returned with glory.”

—⁠Editor ↩
“Ce projet, remis à un autre jour, éprouva encore les plus grandes difficultés; son courage les surmonta: il ne s’agíssait que de déterminer le Prince Potiemkin; il y réussit. Tandis qu’il se démenait pour l’exécution de projet agréé, on construisait de nouvelles batteries; on comptait, le 12 décembre, quatre-vingts pièces de canon sur le bord du Danube, et cette journée se passa en vives canonnades.”
—⁠Histoire de la Nouvelle Russie, II 205

—⁠Editor ↩
Into all aspirants for martial praise.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“Le 13e, une partie des troupes était embarquée; on allait lever le siège: un courrier arrive.⁠ ⁠… Ce courrier annonce, de la part du prince, que le maréchal Souwarow va prendre le commandement des forces réunies sous Ismaël.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 205

—⁠Editor ↩
“La lettre du Prince Potiemkin à Souwarow est très courte; elle peint le caractere de ces deux personnages. La voici dans toute sa teneur: ‘Vous prendrez Ismaël à quel frix que ce soit!’ ”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 205

—⁠Editor ↩
“[Le courrier] est témoin des cris de joie du Turc, qui se croyait à la fin de ses maux.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 205

—⁠Editor ↩
“Beat,” as in “deadbeat,” is occasionally used for “beaten.”⁠—See N.E.D., art. “Beat,” 10. —⁠Editor ↩
“Le 16e, on voit venir de loin deux hommes courant à toute bride: on les prit pour des Kozaks; l’un était Souwarow, et l’autre son guide, portant un paquet gros comme le poing, et renfermant le bagage du général.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 205

M. de Castelnau in his description of the arrival of Suvóroff on the field of battle (Hist. de la N. R., 1827, II pp, 205, 206) summarizes the Journal of the Duc de Richelieu. The original passage runs as follows:⁠—

“L’arrivée du comte Souvorow produisit un grand effet parmi les troupes.⁠ ⁠… La manière d’être plus que simple, puis-qu’il logeait sous une canonnière, et qu’il n’avait pas même de chaises dans sa tente, son affabilité, sa bonhomie lui conciliaient l’affection de tous les individus de son armée. Cet homme singulier qui ressemble plus à un chef de cosaques ou de Tartares, qu’au général d’une armée européenne, est doué d’une intrépidité et d’une hardiesse peu communes.⁠ ⁠… La manière de vivre, de s’habiller et de parler du comte Souvorow, est aussi singulière que ses opinions militaires.⁠ ⁠… Il mangeait dans sa tente assis par terre autour d’une natte sur laquelle il prenait le plus détestable repas. L’après-midi, un semblable repas lui servait de souper, il s’endormait ensuite pendant quelques heures, passait une partie de la nuit à chanter, et à la pointe du jour il sortait presque nu et se roulait sur l’herbe assurant que cet exercice lui était necessaire pour le préserver des rhumatismes.⁠ ⁠… Sa manière de s’exprimer dans toutes les langues est aussi singulière que toute sa façon d’être, ses phrases sont incohérentes, et s’il n’est pas insensé, il dit et fait du moins tout ce qu’il faut pour le paraître; mais il est heureux et cette qualité dont le Cardinal Mazarin faisait tant de cas, est, à bon droit, fort estimée de l’Impératrice et du Prince Potemkin⁠ ⁠… Le moment de l’arrivée du Comte Souvorow fut annoncé par une décharge générale des batteries ou camp et de la flotte.”
—⁠Journal de mon Voyage en Allemagne. Soc. Imp. d’Hist. de Russie, 1886, tom. LIV pp. 168, 169

—⁠Editor ↩
That sage John Bull⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

That fool John Bull⁠—.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“La première attaque était composée de trois colonnes⁠ ⁠… Trois autres colonnes, destinées à la seconde attaque, avaient pour chefs, etc.⁠ ⁠… La troisième attaque par eau n’avait que deux colonnes.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 207

—⁠Editor ↩
“On construisit de nouvelles batteries le 18e.⁠ ⁠… On tint un conseil de guerre, on y examina les plans pour l’assaut proposés par M. de Ribas, ils réunirent tous les souffrages.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 208

—⁠Editor ↩
For once by some odd sort of magnanimity.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Bellona shook her spear with much sublimity.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Fact: Suwaroff did this in person. ↩
—and neither swerve nor spill.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“Le 19e et le 20e, Souwarow exerçailes soldats; il leur montra comment il fallait s’y prendre pour escalader; il enseigna aux recrues la manière de donner le coup de baïonnette.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 208

—⁠Editor ↩
“Pour ces exercices d’un nouveau genre, il se servit de fascines disposées de manière a représenter un Turc.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nauvelle Russie, II 208

—⁠Editor ↩
At which your wise men laughed, but all their Wit is
Lost, for his repartee was taking cities.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
For some were thinking of their wives and families,
And others of themselves (as poet Samuel is).
—⁠[MS. Alternative reading]

And others of themselves (as my friend Samuel is).
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
For a detailed account of Suvóroff’s personal characteristics, see The Life of Field-Marshal Souvaroff, by L. M. P. Tranchant de Laverne, 1814, pp. 267⁠–⁠291; and Suvóroff, by Lieut.-Colonel Spalding, 1890, pp. 222⁠–⁠229.

Byron’s epithet “buffoon” (line 5) may, perhaps, be traced to the following anecdote recorded by Tranchant de Laverne (p. 281):

“During the first war of Poland⁠ ⁠… he published, in the order of the day, that at the first crowing of the cock the troops would march to attack the enemy, and caused the spy to send word that the Russians would be upon them some time after midnight. But about eight o’clock Souvarof ran through the camp, imitating the crowing of a cock.⁠ ⁠… The enemy, completely surprised, lost a great number of men.”

For his “praying” (line 6), vide ibid., pp. 272, 273:

“He made a short prayer after each meal, and again when going to bed. He usually performed his devotions before an image of St. Nicholas, the patron saint of Russia.”

“Half-dirt” (line 5) is, however, a calumny (ibid. p. 272):

“It was his custom to rise at the earliest dawn; several buckets of cold water were thrown over his naked body.”

The same writer (p. 268) repudiates the charges of excessive barbarity and cruelty brought against Suvóroff by C. F. P. Masson, in his Mémoires Secrets sur la Russie (vide, e.g., ed. 1800, I 311):

“Souvorow ne scroit que le plus ridicule bouffon, s’il n’étoit pas montré le plus barbare guerrier. C’est un monstre, qui renferme dans le corps d’un singe l’âme d’un chien de boucher. Attila, son compatriote, et don’t il descend, peut-être ne fut ni si heureux, ni si féroce.”

Suvóroff did not regard himself as “half-demon.”

“Your pencil,” he reminded the artist Müller, “will delineate the features of my face. These are visible: but my inner man is hidden. I must tell you that I have shed rivers of blood. I tremble, but I love my neighbour. In my whole life I have made no one unhappy; not an insect hath perished by my hand. I was little; I was big. In fortune’s ebb and flow, relying on God, I stood immovable⁠—even as now.”
(Suvóroff, 1890, p. 228, note)

—⁠Editor ↩
See, for instance, “The Storm,” in “Souvarof’s Catechism,” Appendix (pp. 299⁠–⁠305) to the Life, etc., by Tranchant de Laverne, 1814:

“Break down the fence.⁠ ⁠… Fly over the walls! Stab them on the ramparts!⁠ ⁠… Fire down the streets! Fire briskly!⁠ ⁠… Kill every enemy in the streets! Let the cavalry hack them!” etc.

—⁠Editor ↩
The “tusk” of the plough is the coulter or share. Compare “Dens vomeris” (Virg., Georg., I 22). —⁠Editor ↩
Of thine imaginary deathless bough
The unebbing sea of blood and tears must flow.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Entailed upon Humanity’s estate.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
As a brook’s stream to cope with Ocean’s flood shed
But still we moderns equal you in bloodshed.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
As in a General’s letter when well whacked
Whatever deeds be done I will relate ’em,
With some small variations in the text
Of killed and wounded who will not be missed.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Whose leisure hours are wasted on an harlot.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
The desperate death-cry and the Battle’s roar.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
End of Canto 7. 1822. —⁠[MS.] ↩
“La nuit était obscure; un brouillard épais ne nous permettait de distinguer autre chose que le feu de notre artillerie, dont l’horizon était embrasé de tous côtés: ce feu, partant du milieu du Danube, se réfléchissait sur les eaux, et offrait un coup d’oeil très-singulier.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 209

—⁠Editor ↩
“À peine eut-on parcouru l’espace de quelques toises au-delà des batteries, que les Turcs, qui n’avaient point tiré pendant toute la nuit s’apperçevant de nos mouvemens, commencèrent de leur côté un feu très-vif, qui embrasa le reste de l’horizon: mais ce fut bien autre chose lorsque, avancés davantage, le feu de la mousqueterie commença dans toute l’étendue du rempart que nous appercevions. Ce fut alors que la place parut à nos yeux comme un volcan dont le feu sortait de toutes parts.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 209

—⁠Editor ↩
“Un cri universel d’allah, qui se répétait tout autour de la ville, vint encore rendre plus extraordinaire cet instant, dont il est impossible de se faire une idée.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 209

—⁠Editor ↩
Allah Hu! is properly the war-cry of the Mussulmans, and they dwell on the last syllable, which gives it a wild and peculiar effect.

[See The Giaour, line 734, Poetical Works, 1900, III 120, note 1; see, too, Siege of Corinth, line 713, Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 481.] ↩
“Toutes les colonnes étaient en mouvement; celles qui attaquaient par eau commandées par le général Arséniew, essuyèrent un feu épouvantable, et perdirent avant le jour un tiers de leurs officiers.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 209

—⁠Editor ↩
“But Thy1221 most dreaded instrument,
In working out a pure intent,
Is Man⁠—arrayed for mutual slaughter⁠—
Yea, Carnage is thy daughter!”
Wordsworth’s “Thanksgiving Ode” (January 18, 1816), stanza XII lines 20, 23

[Wordsworth omitted the lines in the last edition of his poems, which was revised by his own hand.] ↩
The Duc de Richelieu⁠—.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“Le Prince de Ligne fut blessé au genou; le Duc de Richelieu eut une balle entre le fond de son bonnet et sa tête.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 210

For the gallantry of Prince Charles de Ligne (died September 14, 1792) eldest son of Prince Charles Joseph de Ligne (1735⁠–⁠1814), see The Prince de Ligne, 1899, II 46.

Armand Emanuel du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, born 1767, a grandson of Louis François Duc de Richelieu, the Marshal of France (1696⁠–⁠1780), served under Catherine II, and afterwards under the Czar Paul. On the restoration of Louis XVIII he entered the King’s household; and after the battle of Waterloo took office as President of the Council and Minister for Foreign Affairs. His Journal de mon Voyage en Allemagne, which was then unpublished, was placed at the disposal of the Marquis de Castelnau (see Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, 1827, I 241). It has been printed in full by the Société Impériale d’Histoire de Russie, 1886, tom. LIV pp. 111⁠–⁠198. See for further mention of the manuscript, Le Duc de Richelieu, par Raoul de Cisternes, 1898, Preface, p. 3, note 1. He died May 17, 1822, two months before Cantos VI, VII, VIII were completed. —⁠Editor ↩
“Le brigadier Markow, insistant pour qu’on emportât le prince blessé, reçut un coup de fusil qui lui fracassa le pied.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 210

—⁠Editor ↩
“Trois cents bouches à feu vomissaient sans interruption, et trente mille fusils alimentaient sans reláche une grêle de balles.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 210

—⁠Editor ↩
“Les troupes, déja débarquées, se portèrent á droite pour s’emparer d’une batterie; et celles débarquées plus bas, principalement composées des grenadiers de Fanagorie, escaladaient le retranchement et la palissade.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 210

—⁠Editor ↩
A fact: see the Waterloo Gazettes. I recollect remarking at the time to a friend:⁠—

“There is fame! a man is killed, his name is Grose, and they print it Grove.” I was at college with the deceased, who was a very amiable and clever man, and his society in great request for his wit, gaiety, and “Chansons à boire.”

In the London Gazette Extraordinary of June 22, 1815, Captain Grove, 1st Guards, is among the list of killed. In the supplement to the London Gazette, published July 3, 1815, the mistake was corrected, and the entry runs, “1st Guards, 3rd Batt. Lieut. Edward Grose, (Captain).” I am indebted to the courtesy of the Registrar of the University of Cambridge for the information that Edward Grose matriculated at St. John’s College as a pensioner, December 7, 1805. Thanks to the “misprint” in the Gazette, and to Byron, he is “a name forever.”⁠—Vir nullâ non donatus lauru! —⁠Editor ↩
At the Battle of Mollwitz, April 10, 1741,

“the king vanishes for sixteen hours into the regions of Myth ‘into Fairyland,’⁠ ⁠… of the king’s flight⁠ ⁠… the king himself, who alone could have told us fully, maintained always rigorous silence, and nowhere drops the least hint. So that the small fact has come down to us involved in a great bulk of fabulous cobwebs, mostly of an ill-natured character, set a-going by Voltaire, Valori, and others.”
—⁠Carlyle’s Frederick the Great, 1862, III 314, 322, sq.

—⁠Editor ↩
See General Valancey and Sir Lawrence Parsons.

Charles Vallancey (1721⁠–⁠1812), general in the Royal Engineers, published an “Essay on the Celtic Language,” etc., in 1782.

“The language [the Iberno-Celtic],” he writes (p. 4), “we are now going to explain, had such an affinity with the Punic, that it may be said to have been, in a great degree, the language of Hanibal (sic), Hamilcar, and of Asdrubal.”

Sir Laurence Parsons (1758⁠–⁠1841), second Earl of Rosse, represented the University of Dublin 1782⁠–⁠90, and afterwards King’s County, in the Irish House of Commons. He was an opponent of the Union. In a pamphlet entitled Defence of the Ancient History of Ireland, published in 1795, he maintains (p. 158) “that the Carthaginian and the Irish language being originally the same, either the Carthaginians must have been descended from the Irish, or the Irish from the Carthaginians.” —⁠Editor ↩
The Portuguese proverb says that “hell is paved with good intentions.” —⁠[See Vision of Judgment, stanza XXXVII line 8, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 499, note 2] ↩
At least the sharp faints of that “burning marle.”
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“The Nervii marched to the number of sixty thousand, and fell upon Caesar, as he was fortifying his camp, and had not the least notion of so sudden an attack. They first routed his cavalry, and then surrounded the twelfth and the seventh legions, and killed all the officers. Had not Caesar snatched a buckler from one of his own men, forced his way through the combatants before him, and rushed upon the barbarians; or had not the tenth legion, seeing his danger, ran from the heights where they were posted, and mowed down the enemy’s ranks, not one Roman would have survived the battle.”
—⁠Plutarch, Caesar, Langhorne’s translation, 1838, p. 502

—⁠Editor ↩
“As near a field of corn, a stubborn ass⁠ ⁠…
E’en so great Ajax son of Telamon.”
The Iliad, Lord Derby’s translation, bk. XI lines 639, 645

—⁠Editor ↩
Nor care a single damn about his corps.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“N’apercevant plus le commandant du corps dont je faisais partie, et ignorant où je devais porter mes pas, je crus reconnaître le lieu où le rempart était situé; on y faisait un feu assez vif, que je jugeai être celui⁠ ⁠… du général-major de Lascy.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 210

The speaker is the Duc de Richelieu. See, for original, his Journal de mon Voyage, etc., Soc. Imp. d’Hist. de Russie, tom. LIV p. 179. —⁠Editor ↩
For he was dizzy, busy, and his blood
Lightening along his veins, and where he heard
The liveliest fire, and saw the fiercest flood
Of Friar Bacon’s mild discovery, shared
By Turks and Christians equally, he could
No longer now resist the attraction of gunpowder
But flew to where the merry orchestra played louder.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Gunpowder is said to have been discovered by this friar. [N.B. Though Friar Bacon seems to have discovered gunpowder, he had the humanity not to record his discovery in intelligible language.] ↩
—whose short breath, and long faces
Kept always pushing onwards to the Glacis.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
1 Henry IV, act III sc. 1, line 53. —⁠Editor ↩
And that mechanic impulse⁠—.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Hamlet, act III, sc. 1, lines 79, 80. —⁠Editor ↩
“Talus: the slope or inclination of a wall, whereby, reclining at the top so as to fall within its base, the thickness is gradually lessened according to the height.”
—⁠Milit. Dict.

—⁠Editor ↩
“Appelant ceux des chasseurs qui étaient autour de moi en assez grand nombre, je m’avançai et reconnus ne m’être point trompé dans mon calcul; c’était en effet cette colonne qui à l’instant parvenait au sommet du rempart. Les Turcs de derrière les travers et les flancs des bastions voisins fasaient sur elle un feu très-vif de canon et de mousqueterie. Je gravis, avec les gens qui m’avaient suivi, le talus intérieur du rempart.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 210

—⁠Editor ↩
Baron Menno van Coehoorn (circ. 1641⁠–⁠1704), a Dutch military engineer, the contemporary and rival of Vauban, invented a mortar which bore his name. He was the author of a celebrated work on fortification, published in 1692. ↩
“Ce fut dans cet instant que je reconnus combien l’ignorance du constructeur des palissades était importante pour nous; car, comme elles étaient placées au milieu du parapet,” etc.
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 211

—⁠Editor ↩
They were but two feet above the level. —⁠[MS.]

“Il y avait de chaque côté neuf à dix pieds sur lesquels on pouvait marcher; et les soldats, après être montés, avaient pu se ranger commodément sur l’espace extérieur et enjamber ensuite les palissades, qui ne s’élevaient que d’à-peu-près deux pieds au-dessus du niveau de la terre.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 211

—⁠Editor ↩
Friederich Wilhelm, Baron von Bülow (1755⁠–⁠1816), was in command of the 4th corps of the Prussian Army at Waterloo. August Wilhelm Antonius Neidhart von Gneisenau (1760⁠–⁠1831) was chief of staff, and after Blücher was disabled by a fall at Ligny, assumed temporary command, June 16⁠–⁠17, 1815. He headed the triumphant pursuit of the French on the night of the battle. For Blücher’s official account of the battles of Ligny and Waterloo (subscribed by Gneisenau), see W. H. Maxwell’s Life of the Duke of Wellington, 1841, III 566⁠–⁠571; and for Wellington’s acknowledgment of Blücher’s “cordial and timely assistance,” see Dispatches, 1847, VIII 150. See, too, The Life of Wellington, by the Right Hon. Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart., 1899, II 88, et passim. —⁠Editor ↩
—as feminine of feature.
—⁠[MS.]

Led him on⁠—although he was the gentlest creature,
As kind in heart as feminine of feature.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Pistol’s “Bezonian” is a corruption of bisognoso⁠—a rogue, needy fellow. Byron, quoting from memory, confuses two passages. In 2 Henry VI, act IV sc. 1, line 134, Suffolk says,

“Great men oft die of vile bezonians;”

in 2 Henry IV, act V sc. 3, line 112, Pistol says,

“Under which King, Besonian? speak or die.”

—⁠Editor ↩
“Le Général Lascy, voyant arriver un corps, si à-propos à son secours, s’avança vers l’officier qui l’avait conduit, et, le prenant pour un Livonien, lui fit, en allemand, les complimens les plus flatteurs; le jeune militaire (le Duc de Richelieu) qui parlait parfaitement cette langue, y répondit avec sa modestie ordinaire.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 211

—⁠Editor ↩
The Task, Bk. I line 749. It was pointed out to Cowper that the same thought had been expressed by Isaac Hawkins Browne, in “The Fireside, a Pastoral Soliloquy,” lines 15, 16 (Poems, ed. 1768, p. 125)⁠—

“I have said it at home, I have said it abroad,
That the town is Man’s world, but that this is of God.”

There is a parallel passage in M. T. Varro, Rerum Rusticarum, lib. III i 4,

“Nee minim, quod divina natura dedit agros, ars humami aedificavit urbes.”

—See The Task, etc., ed. by H. T. Griffith, 1896, II 234. —⁠Editor ↩
Sulla spoke of himself as the “fortunate,” and in the twenty-second book of his Commentaries, finished only two days before his death, “he tells us that the Chaldeans had predicted, that after a life of glory he would depart in the height of his prosperity.” He was fortunate, too, with regard to his funeral, for, at first, a brisk wind blew which fanned the pile into flame, and it was not till the fire had begun to die out that the rain, which had been expected throughout the day, began to fall in torrents.⁠—Langhorne’s Plutarch, 1838, pp. 334, 335. See, too, “Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte,” stanza VII Poetical Works, 1900, III 308, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
Daniel Boone (1735⁠–⁠1820) was the grandson of an English settler, George Boone, of Exeter. His great work in life was the conquest of Kentucky. Following in the steps of another pioneer, John Finley, he left his home in North Carolina in May, 1769, and, after numerous adventures, effected a settlement on the Kentucky river. He constructed a fort, which he named Boonesborough, and carried on a protracted campaign with varying but final success against the Indians. When Kentucky was admitted into the Union, February 4, 1791, he failed to make good his title to his property at Boonesborough, and withdrew to Mount Pleasant, beyond the Ohio. Thence, in 1795, he removed to Missouri, then a Spanish possession. Napoleon wrested Missouri from the Spaniards, only to sell the territory to the United States, with the result that in 1810 he was confirmed in the possession of 850 out of the 8000 acres which he had acquired in 1795.

“Boone was then seventy-five years of age, hale and strong. The charm of the hunter’s life clung to him to the last, and in his eighty-second year he went on a hunting excursion to the mouth of the Kansas river.”
—⁠Appleton’s Encyclopedia, etc., art. “Boone”

His fine and gracious nature reveals itself in his autobiography (The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon, Formerly a Hunter; Containing a Narrative of the Wars of Kentucky; Imlay’s North America, 1793, II 52⁠–⁠54).

“One day,” he writes (pp. 330, sq.), “I undertook a tour through the country, and the diversity and beauties of nature⁠ ⁠… expelled every gloomy and vexatious thought. Just at the close of day the gentle gales retired, and left the place to the disposal of a profound calm. Not a breeze shook the most tremulous leaf. I had gained the summit of a commanding ridge, and, looking round with astonishing delight, beheld the ample plains, the beauteous tracts below. On the other hand, I surveyed the famous river Ohio, that rolled in silent dignity, marking the western boundary of Kentucky with inconceivable grandeur.⁠ ⁠… All things were still. I kindled a fire near a fountain of sweet water, and feasted on the loins of a buck, which a few hours before I had killed.⁠ ⁠… No populous city, with all the varieties of commerce and stately structures, could afford so much pleasure to my mind as the beauties of nature I found here.”

(See, too, The Kentucky Pioneers, by John Brown, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 1887, vol. LXXV pp. 48⁠–⁠71.) —⁠Editor ↩
For John Kyrle, “the Man of Ross” (1635⁠–⁠1724), see Pope’s Moral Essays, epist. III lines 249⁠–⁠284. See, too, Letters of S. T. Coleridge, 1895 (letter to R. Southey, July 13, 1794), I 77. —⁠Editor ↩
Byron seems to have derived his knowledge of Catherine’s vie intime from the Mémoires Secrets sur la Russie, of C. F. P. Masson, which were published in Amsterdam in 1800, and translated into English in the same year. —⁠Editor ↩
Michailo Smolenskoi Koutousof (1743⁠–⁠1813), who was raised to eminence through the influence of Potemkin, was in command of the Austro-Russian Army at Austerlitz. During the retreat from Moscow he repulsed Napoleon at Malo-yaroslavetz, and pursued the French to Kalisz. Tolstoy introduces Koutousof in his novel, War and Peace, and dwells on his fatalism. —⁠Editor ↩
“Parmi les colonnes, une de celles qui souffrirent le plus était commandée par le général Koutouzow (aujourd’hui Prince de Smolensko). Ce brave militaire réunit l’intrépidité à un grand nombre de connaissances acquises; il marche au feu avec la même gaîeté qu’il va à une fête; il sait commander avec autant de sang froid qu’il déploie d’esprit et d’amabilité dans le commerce habituél de la vie.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 212

—⁠Editor ↩
“Ce brave Koutouzow se jeta dans le fossé, fut suivi des siens, et ne pénétra jusqu’au haut du parapet qu’après avoir éprouvé des difficultés incroyables. (Le brigadier de Ribaupierre perdit la vie dans cette occasion: il avail fixé l’estime générale, et sa mort occasionna beaucoup de regrets.) Les Turcs accoururent en grand nombre; cette multitude repoussa deux fois le général jusqu’au fossé.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie

—⁠Editor ↩
“Quelques troupes russes, emportées par le courant, n’ayant pu débarquer sur le terrain qu’on leur avait prescrit,” etc.
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 213

—⁠Editor ↩
“A Cavalier is an elevation of earth, situated ordinarily in the gorge of a bastion, bordered with a parapet, and cut into more or fewer embrasures, according to its capacity.”
—⁠Milit. Dict.

—⁠Editor ↩
“… longèrent le rempart, après la prise du cavalier, et ouvrirent la porte dite de Kilia aux soldats du général Koutouzow.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 213

—⁠Editor ↩
“Il était réservé aux Kozaks de combler de leurs corps la partie du fossé où ils combattaient; leur colonne avail été divisée entre MM. Platow et d’Orlow⁠ ⁠…”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 213

—⁠Editor ↩
“… la première partie, devant se joindre à la gauche du général Arséniew, fut foudroyée par le feu des batteries, et parvint néanmoins au haut du rempart.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 213

—⁠Editor ↩
“Les Turcs la laissèrent un peu s’avancer, dans la ville, et firent deux sorties par les angles saillans des bastions.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 213

—⁠Editor ↩
Fatal to warriors as to women⁠—these.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“Alors, se trouvant prise en queue, elle fut écrasée; cependant le Lieutenant-colonel Yesouskoï, qui commandait la réserve composée d’un bataillon du regiment de Polozk, traversa le fossé sur les cadavres des Kozaks⁠ ⁠…”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvell Russia, II 212

—⁠Editor ↩
“… et extermina tous les Turcs qu’il eut en tête: ce brave homme fut tué pendant l’action.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 213

—⁠Editor ↩
“L’autre partie des Kozaks, qu’ Orlow commandait, souffrit de la manière la plus cruelle: elle attaqua à maintes reprises, fut souvent repoussée, et perdit les deux tiers de son monde (c’est ici le lieu de placer une observation, que nous prenons dans les mémoires qui nous guident; elle fait remarquer combien il est raal vu de donner beaucoup de cartouches aux soldats qui doivent emporter un poste de vive force, et par conséquent où la baïonnette doit principalement agir; ils pensent ne devoir se servir de cette derniere arme, que lorsque les cartouches sont epuisées: dans cette persuasion, ils retardent leur marche, et restent plus long-temps exposés au canon et à la mitraille de l’ennemi).”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 214

—⁠Editor ↩
“La jonction de la colonne de Meknop⁠—(le général fut nial secondé et tué)⁠—ne put s’effectuer avec celle qui l’avoisinait,⁠ ⁠… ces colonnes attaquèrent un bastion, et éprouvèrent une résistance opiniâtre; raais bientôt des cris de victoire se font entendre de toutes parts, et le bastion est emporté: le séraskier défendait cette partie.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 214

—⁠Editor ↩
“… un officier de marine Anglais veut le faire prisonnier, et reçoit un coup de pistolet qui l’étend roide mort.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 214

—⁠Editor ↩
“Les Russes passent trois mille Turcs au fil de l’épée; seize baïonnettes percent à la fois le séraskier.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 214

—⁠Editor ↩
“La ville est emportée; l’image de la mort et de la désolation se représente de tous les côtés le soldat furieux n’écoute plus la voix de ses officiers, il ne respire que le carnage; altéré de sang, tout est indifférent pour lui.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 214

—⁠Editor ↩
As do the subtle snake’s denounced of old.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Which most of all doth man characterise.
—⁠[MS. Alternative reading]

↩
As Autumn winds disperse the yellow leaves.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
See “The Blues,” Ecl. I line 25, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 574, note 3. —⁠Editor ↩
“Je sauvai la vie à une fille de dix ans, don’t l’innocence et la candeur formaient un contraste bien frappant avec la rage de tout ce qui m’environnait. En arrivant sur le bastion où commença le carnage, j’aperçus un groupe de quatre femmes égorgées, entre lesquelles cet enfant, d’une figure charmante, cherchait un asile contre la fureur de deux Kozaks qui étaient sur le point de la massacrer,”
—⁠Duc de Richelieu. (See Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 217)

—⁠Editor ↩
“Who never mentions Hell to ears polite.”
—⁠Pope, Moral Essays, ep. IV, line 150

—⁠Editor ↩
“Ce spectacle m’attira bientôt, et je n’hésitai pas, comme on peut le croire, à prendre entre mes bras cette infortunée, que les barbares voulaient y poursuivre encore. J’eus bien de la peine à me retenir et à ne pas percer ces misérables du sabre que je tenais suspendu sur leur tête:⁠—je me contentai cependant de les éloigner, non sans leur prodiguer les coups et les injures qu’ils méritaient.⁠ ⁠…”
—⁠Duc de Richelieu, vide Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 217

—⁠Editor ↩
“… J’eus le plaisir d’apercevoir que ma petite prisonnière n’avait d’autre mal qu’une coupure legere que lui avail faite au visage le même fer qui avail percé sa mére.”
—⁠Duc de Richelieu, Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie

The Turks clamoured for the child, and Richelieu was forced to give way. But in the original the story ends unhappily.

“Je fus obligé de céder á leurs instances et á celles de l’officier qui parlementait avec eux;⁠ ⁠… ce ne fut pas sans de grandes difficultés et sans une promesse expresse de la parl de cet officier [Colonel Ribas] de me la faire rendre aussitôt que les Tures auraient mis bas les armes. Je me séparai donc de cet enfant qui m’était déjà devenu très-cher, et même a présent, je ne puis penser á ce moment sans amertume, puisque malgré toutes les recherches et les peines que je me donnai pour la retrouver, il me fut impossible d’y réussir, el je n’ai que trop sujet de craindre qu’elle n’ait péri malheureusement.”
—⁠Société Impériale d’Histoire de Russie, tom. LIV p. 185

—⁠Editor ↩
Sir Walter Scott (Quarterly Review, October, 1816, vol. XVI p. 177) says that a “brother-poet” compared Byron’s features to the sculpture of a beautiful alabaster vase, only seen to perfection when lighted up from within. Byron alludes to this comparison in his Detached Thoughts, October 15, 1821, Letters, 1901, V 408. It may be noted that Lorenzo Bartolini, the Italian sculptor who took a bust of Byron at Pisa, in the spring of 1822, had been employed by Napoleon, in 1814, to design marble vases for a terrace at Elba, which were to be illuminated at night “from within.” —⁠Editor ↩
A Russian military order. ↩
“Le sultan périt dans l’action en brave homme, digne d’un meilleur destin; ce fut lui qui rallia les Turcs lorsque l’ennemi pénétra dans la place⁠ ⁠… ce sultan, d’une valeur éprouvée, surpassait en générosité les plus civilisés de sa nation; cinq de ses fils combattaient à ses côtés, il les encourageait par son exemple.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 215

—⁠Editor ↩
“When Charles XII reached Bender, August 1, 1709, he refused, in the first instance, to cross the river Dniester, and on yielding to the representations of the Turks, he declined to enter the town, but decided on remaining encamped on an island, in spite of the assurances of the inhabitants that it was occasionally flooded.”

But, perhaps, Byron had in mind Voltaire’s remarks on Charles’s Opiniâtreté. (See Histoire de Charles XII, 1772, p. 377. See, too, Charles XII, by Oscar Browning, 1899, pp. 231⁠–⁠234.) —⁠Editor ↩
—like celestial patience.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Because a hunchback⁠—.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
In battle to old age and ugliness.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
In one immortal glance, and then he died.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“Tous cinq furent tous tués sous ces yeux: il ne cessa point de se battre, répondit par des coups de sabre aux propositions de se rendre, et ne fut atteint du coup mortel qu’après avoir abattu de sa main beaucoup de Kozaks des plus acharnée à sa prise; le reste de sa troupe fut massacré.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 215

—⁠Editor ↩
“Quoique les Russes fussent répandus dans la ville, le bastion de pierre résistait encore; il était défendu par un vicillard, pacha à trois queues, et commandant les forces réunies à Ismaël. On lui proposa une capitulation; il demanda si le reste de la ville était conquis; sur cette réponse, il autorisa quelques-uns de ces officiers à capituler avec M. de Ribas.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 215

—⁠Editor ↩
“Pendant ce colloque, il resta étendu sur des tapis placés sur les ruines de la forteresse, fumant sa pipe avec la même tranquillité et la même indifférence que s’il eût été étranger à tout ce qui se passait.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 215

—⁠Editor ↩
Of burning cities, those full moons of slaughter
Was imaged back in blood instead of water.
—⁠[MS. Alternative reading]

↩
Would you do less, “pro focis et pro aris”?
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Compare⁠—

“Spread⁠—spread for Vitellius, the royal repast,
Till the gluttonous despot be stuffed to the gorge!”
“The Irish Avatar,” stanza 20, Poetical Works, 1891, IV 559

—⁠Editor ↩
“On égorgea indistinctement, on saccagea la place; et la rage du vainqueur⁠ ⁠… se répandit comme un torrent furieux qui a renversé les digues qui le rétenaient: personne obtint de grâce, et trente huit mille huit cent soixante Turcs périrent dans cette journée de sang.”
—⁠Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 216

—⁠Editor ↩
—of my peroration.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
—the cause I cannot guess⁠—
I hardly think it was commiseration.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
In the original Russian⁠—

“Slava bogu! slava vam!
Krépost vzata I ya tam;”

a kind of couplet; for he was a poet.

[J. H. Castéra (Vie de Catherine II, 1797, II 374) relates this incident in connection with the fall of Turtukey (or Tutrakaw) in Bulgaria, giving the words in French, “Gloire à Dieu! Louange à Catherine! Toutoukai est pris. Souwaroff y est entré.” W. Tooke (Life of Catherine II, 1800, III 278). Castéra’s translator, gives the original Russian with an English version. But according to Spalding (Suvóroff, 1890, pp. 42, 43), the words, which were written on a scrap of paper, and addressed to Soltikoff, ran thus:

“Your Excellency, we have conquered. Glory to God! Glory to you! Alexander Suvóroff.”

When Ismail was taken he wrote to Potemkin, “The Russian standard floats above the walls of Ismail,” and to the Empress, “Proud Ismail lies at your Majesty’s feet.” The tenor of the poetical message on the fall of Tutrakaw recalls the triumphant piety of the Emperor William I of Germany. See, too, for “mad Suwarrow’s rhymes,” Canto IX stanza LX lines 1⁠–⁠4.] ↩
Stanzas I⁠–⁠VIII, which are headed “Don Juan, Canto III, July 10, 1819,” are in the handwriting of (?) the Countess Guiccioli. Stanzas IX, X, which were written on the same sheet of paper, are in Byron’s handwriting. The original MS. opens with stanza XI, “Death laughs,” etc. (See letter to Moore, July 12, 1822, Letters, 1901, VI 96.) —⁠Editor ↩
“Faut qu’ lord Villain-ton ait tout pris;
N’y a plus d’ argent dans c’ gueux de Paris.”
De Béranger, “Complainte d’une de ces Demoiselles a l’Occasion des Affaires du Temps (Février, 1816),” Chansons, 1821, II 17

Compare a retaliatory epigram which appeared in a contemporary newspaper⁠—

“These French petit-maîtres who the spectacle throng,
Say of Wellington’s dress qu’il fait vilain ton!
But, at Waterloo, Wellington made the French stare
When their army he dressed à la mode Angleterre!”

—⁠Editor ↩
Oh Wellington (or “Vilainton”)⁠—.
—⁠[MS. B]

↩
Query, Ney?⁠—Printer’s Devil. [Michel Ney, Duke of Elchingen, “the bravest of the brave” (see “Ode from the French,” stanza I Poetical Works, 1900, III 431), born January 10, 1769, was arrested August 5, and shot December 7, 1815.] ↩
The story of the attempted assassination (February 11, 1818) of the Duke of Wellington, which is dismissed by Alison in a few words (Hist. of Europe (1815⁠–⁠1852), 1853, I 577, 578), occupies many pages of the Supplementary Despatches (1865, XII 271⁠–⁠546). Byron probably drew his own conclusions as to the Kinnaird-Marinet incident, from the Letter to the Duke of Wellington on the Arrest of M. Marinet, by Lord Kinnaird, 1818. The story, which is full of interest, may be briefly recounted. On January 30, 1818, Lord Kinnaird informed Sir George Murray (Chief of the Staff of the Army of Occupation) that a person, whose name he withheld, had revealed to him the existence of a plot to assassinate the Duke of Wellington. At 12:30 a.m., February 11, 1818, the Duke, on returning to his Hotel, was fired at by an unknown person; and then, but not till then, he wrote to urge Lord Clancarty to advise the Prince Regent to take steps to persuade or force Kinnaird to disclose the name of his informant. A Mr. G. W. Chad, of the Consular Service, was empowered to proceed to Brussels, and to seek an interview with Kinnaird. He carried with him, among other documents, a letter from the Duke to Lord Clancarty, dated February 12, 1818. A postscript contained this intimation:

“It may be proper to mention to you that the French Government are disposed to go every length in the way of negotiation with the person mentioned by Lord Kinnaird, or others, to discover the plot.”

Kinnaird absolutely declined to give up the name of his informant, but, acting on the strength of the postscript, which had been read but not shown to him, started for Paris with “the great unknown.” Some days after their arrival, and while Kinnaird was a guest of the Duke, the man was arrested, and discovered to be one Nicholle or Marinet, who had been appointed receveur under the restored government of Louis XVIII, but during the Cent jours had fled to Belgium, retaining the funds he had amassed during his term of office. Kinnaird regarded this action of the French Government as a breach of faith, and in a “Memorial” to the French Chamber of Peers, and his Letter, maintained that the Duke’s postscript implied a promise of a safe conduct for Marinet to and from Paris to Brussels. The Duke, on the other hand, was equally positive (see his letter to Lord Liverpool, May 30, 1818) “that he never intended to have any negotiations with anybody.” Kinnaird was a “dog with a bad name.” He had been accused (see his Letter to the Earl of Liverpool, 1816, p. 16) of “the promulgation of dangerous opinions,” and of intimacy “with persons suspected.” The Duke speaks of him as “the friend of Revolutionists”! It is evident that he held the dangerous doctrine that a promise to a rogue is a promise, and that the authorities took a different view of the ethics of the situation. It is clear, too, that the Duke’s postscript was ambiguous, but that it did not warrant the assumption that if Marinet went to Paris he should be protected. The air was full of plots. The great Duke despised and was inclined to ignore the pistol or the dagger of the assassin; but he believed that “mischief was afoot,” and that “great personages” might or might not be responsible. He was beset by difficulties at every turn, and would have been more than mortal if he had put too favourable a construction on the scruples, or condoned the imprudence of a “friend of Revolutionists.” —⁠Editor ↩
The reference may be to the Duke of Wellington’s intimacy with Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster. Byron had “passed that way” himself (see Letters, 1898, II 251, note I, 323, etc.), and could hardly attack the Duke on that score. —⁠Editor ↩
“Thou art the best o’ the cut-throats.”
Macbeth, act III sc. 4, line 17

—⁠Editor ↩
“I have supped full of horrors.”
Macbeth, act V sc. 5, line 13

—⁠Editor ↩
Vide speeches in Parliament, after the battle of Waterloo. ↩
“I at this time got a post, being for fatigue, with four others. We were sent to break biscuit, and make a mess for Lord Wellington’s hounds. I was very hungry, and thought it a good job at the time, as we got our own fill, while we broke the biscuit⁠—a thing I had not got for some days. When thus engaged, the Prodigal Son was never once out of my mind; and I sighed, as I fed the dogs, over my humble situation and my ruined hopes.”
—⁠Journal of a Soldier of the 71st Regiment, 1806 to 1815 (Edinburgh, 1822), pp. 132, 133

—⁠Editor ↩
“We are assured that Epaminondas died so poor that the Thebans buried him at the public charge; for at his death nothing was found in his house but an iron spit.”
—⁠Plutarch’s Fabius Maximus, Langhorne’s translation, 1838, p. 140

See, too, Cornelius Nepos, Epam., cap. III

“Paupertatem adeo facilè perpessus est, ut de Republica nihil praeter gloriam ceperit.”

—⁠Editor ↩
For Pitt’s refusal to accept £100,000 from the merchants of London towards the payment of his debts, or £30,000 from the King’s Privy Purse, see Pitt, by Lord Rosebery, 1891. p. 231. —⁠Editor ↩
To you this one unflattering Muse inscribes.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
He strips from man his mantle (which is dear
Though beautiful in youth) his carnal skin.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Hamlet, act III sc. I, line 56. —⁠Editor ↩
“O dura messorum ilia!” etc.
—⁠Hor., Epod. III 4

—⁠Editor ↩
Ye iron guts⁠—.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“Ce n’est qu’à l’édition de 1635 qu’on voit paraître la devise que Montaigne avait adoptée, le que sais-je? avec l’emblème des balances.⁠ ⁠… Ce que sais-je que Pascal a si sévèrement analysé se lit au chapitre douze du livre II; il caractérise parfaitement la philosophie de Montaigne; il est la conséquence de cette maxime qu’il avait inscrite en grec sur les solives de sa librairie: ‘Il n’est point de raisonnement au quel on n’oppose un raissonnement contraire.’ ”
—⁠Oeuvres de⁠ ⁠… Montaigne, 1837, “Notice Bibliographique,” p. XVII

—⁠Editor ↩
Concerning the Pyrrhonists or Sceptics and their master Pyrrho, who held that Truth was incomprehensible (inprensibilis), and that you may not affirm of aught that it be rather this or that, or neither this nor that (οὐ μᾶλλον οὕτως ἔχει τόδε ἢ ἐκείνως ἢ οὐδετέρως), see Aul. Gellii Noct. Attic., lib. XI cap. V. —⁠Editor ↩
See Othello, [act II sc. 3, lines 206, 207:

“Well, God’s above all, and there be souls must be saved; and there be souls must not be saved⁠—Let’s have no more of this.”]

↩
Hamlet, act V sc. 2, lines 94, 98, 102. —⁠Editor ↩
For “Lycanthropy,” see “The Soldier’s Story” in the Satyricôn of Petronius Arbiter, cap. 62; see, too, Letters on Demonology, etc., by Sir W. Scott, 1830, pp. 211, 212. —⁠Editor ↩
In respect of suavity and forbearance Melancthon was the counterpart of Luther. John Arrowsmith (1602⁠–⁠1657), in his Tractica Sacra, describes him as

“Vir in quo cum pietate doctrina, et cum utrâque candor certavit.”

—⁠Editor ↩
Like Moses or like Cobbett who have ne’er.

Moses and Cobbet proclaim themselves the “meekest of men.” See their writings. —⁠[MS.]

Like Moses who was “very meek” had ne’er.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
See his “Correspondance avec L’Impératrice de Russie,” Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire, 1836, X 393⁠–⁠477. M. Waliszewski, in his Story of a Throne, 1895, I 224, has gathered a handful of these flowers of speech:

“She is the chief person in the world.⁠ ⁠… She is the fire and life of nations.⁠ ⁠… She is a saint.⁠ ⁠… She is above all saints.⁠ ⁠… She is equal to the mother of God.⁠ ⁠… She is the divinity of the North.⁠—Te Catherinam laudamus, te Dominam confitemur, etc., etc.”

—⁠Editor ↩
Of everything that ever cursed a nation.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“It is still more difficult to say which form of government is the worst⁠—all are so bad. As for democracy, it is the worst of the whole; for what is (in fact) democracy?⁠—an Aristocracy of Blackguards.”

—See “My Dictionary” (May 1, 1821), Letters, 1901, V 405, 406. —⁠Editor ↩
Though priests and slaves may join the servile cry.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
In Greece I never saw or heard these animals; but among the ruins of Ephesus I have heard them by hundreds.

[See Childe Harold, Canto IV stanza CLIII line 6, Poetical Works, 1899, II 441; and Siege of Corinth, line 329, ibid., 1900, III 462, note 1.] ↩
Whereas the others hunt for rascal spiders.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Which still are strongly fluttering to be free.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Compare The Age of Bronze, line 576, sq., Poetical Works, 1901, V 570. —⁠Editor ↩
Nadir Shah, or Thamas Kouli Khan, born November, 1688, invaded India, 1739⁠–⁠40, was assassinated June 19, 1747. —⁠Editor ↩
—went mad and was
Killed because what he swallowed would not pass.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
He was killed in a conspiracy, after his temper had been exasperated by his extreme costivity to a degree of insanity.

[To such a height had his madness (attributed to melancholia produced by dropsy) attained, that he actually ordered the Afghan chiefs to rise suddenly upon the Persian guard, and seize the⁠ ⁠… chief nobles; but the project being discovered, the intended victims conspired in turn, and a body of them, including Nadir’s guard, and the chief of his own tribe of Afshar, entered his tent at midnight, and, after a moment’s involuntary pause⁠—when challenged by the deep voice at which they had so often trembled⁠—rushed upon the king, who being brought to the ground by a sabre-stroke, begged for life, and attempted to rise, but soon expired beneath the repeated blows of the conspirators. —⁠The Indian Empire, by R. Montgomery Martin (1857), I 172] ↩
Compare Childe Harold, Canto I stanza LXVII line 5, Poetical Works, 1899, II 64, note 3. —⁠Editor ↩
Or the substrata⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Compare Preface to Cain, Poetical Works, 1901, V 210, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
Vide ante, Canto VIII stanza CXXVI. —⁠Editor ↩
Hamlet, act I sc. 5, line 189. —⁠Editor ↩
I never know what’s next to come⁠—.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
It is possible that the phrase “painted snows” was suggested by Tooke’s description of the winter-garden of the Taurida Palace:

“The genial warmth,⁠ ⁠… the voluptuous silence that reigns in this enchanting garden, lull the fancy into sweet romantic dreams: we think ourselves in the groves of Italy, while torpid nature, through the windows of this pavilion, announces the severity of a northern winter.”
(The Life, etc., 1800, III 48)

—⁠Editor ↩
O’er limits which mightily⁠—
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
—in Youth and Glory’s pillory.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
In his Notes sur le Don Juanisme (Mercure de France, 1898, XXVI 66), M. Bruchard says that this phrase defines and summarizes the Byronic Don Juan. —⁠Editor ↩
The Empress smiled while all the Orloff frowned⁠—
A numerous family, to whose heart or hand
Mild Catherine owed the chance of being crowned.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
C. F. P. Masson, in his Mémoires Secrets, etc., 1880, I 150⁠–⁠178, gives a list of twelve favourites, and in this Canto, Don Juan takes upon himself the characteristics of at least three, Lanskoi, Zoritch (or Zovitch), and Plato Zoubof. For example (p. 167),

“Zoritch⁠ ⁠… est le seul étranger qu’elle ait osé créer son favori pendant son regne. C’étoit un Servien échappé du bagne de Constantinople où il étoit prisonnier: il parut, pour la première fois, en habit de hussard à la cour. Il éblouit tout le monde par sa beauté, et les vielles dames en parlent encore comme d’un Adonis.”

M. Waliszewski, in his Romance of an Empress (1894), devotes a chapter to “Private Life and Favouritism” (II 234⁠–⁠286), in which he graphically describes the election and inauguration of the Vremienchtchik, “the man of the moment,” paramour regnant, and consort of the Empress pro hac vice:

“ ‘We may observe in Russia a sort of interregnum in affairs, caused by the displacement of one favourite and the installation of his successor.’⁠ ⁠… The interregnums are, however, of very short duration. Only one lasts for several months, between the death of Lanskoi (1784) and the succession of Iermolof.⁠ ⁠… There is no lack of candidates. The place is good.⁠ ⁠… Sometimes, too, on the height by the throne, reached at a bound, these spoilt children of fate grow giddy.⁠ ⁠… It is over in an instant, at an evening reception it is noticed that the Empress has gazed attentively at some obscure lieutenant, presented but just before⁠ ⁠… next day it is reported that he has been appointed aide-de-camp to her Majesty. What that means is well known. Next day he finds himself in the special suite of rooms.⁠ ⁠… The rooms are already vacated, and everything is prepared for the newcomer. All imaginable comfort and luxury⁠ ⁠… await him; and, on opening a drawer, he finds a hundred thousand roubles [about £20,000], the usual first gift, a foretaste of Pactolus. That evening, before the assembled court, the Empress appears, leaning familiarly on his arm, and on the stroke of ten, as she retires, the new favourite follows her.”
(ibid., pp. 246⁠–⁠249)

—⁠Editor ↩
After the death or murder of her husband, Peter III, Catherine Alexievna (1729⁠–⁠1796) (born Sophia Augusta), daughter of the Prince of Anhalt Zerbst, was solemnly crowned (September, 1762) Empress of all the Russias. —⁠Editor ↩
And almost died for the scarce-fledged Lanskoi.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
He was the grande passion of the grande Catherine. See her Lives under the head of “Lanskoi.”

Lanskoi was a youth of as fine and interesting a figure as the imagination can paint. Of all Catherine’s favourites, he was the man whom she loved the most. In 1784 he was attacked with a fever, and perished in the arms of her Majesty. When he was no more, Catherine gave herself up to the most poignant grief, and remained three months without going out of her palace of Tzarsko-selo. She afterwards raised a superb monument to his memory. (See Life of Catherine II, by W. Tooke, 1800, III 88, 89.) —⁠Editor ↩
Ten months after the death of Lanskoi, the Empress consoled herself with Iermolof, described, by Bezborodky, as “a modest refined young man, who cultivates the society of serious people.” In less than a year this excellent youth is, in turn, displaced by Dmitrief Mamonof. His petit nom was Red Coat, and, for a time, he is a “priceless creature.”

“He has,” says Catherine, “two superb black eyes, with eyebrows outlined as one rarely sees; about the middle height, noble in manner, easy in demeanour.”

But Mamonof suffered from “scruples of conscience,” and, after a while, with Catherine’s consent and blessing, was happily married to the Princess Shtcherbatof, a maid of honour, and not, as Byron supposed, a rival “man of the moment.”⁠—See The Story of a Throne, by K. Waliszewski, 1895, II 135, sq. —⁠Editor ↩
This was written long before the suicide of that person. [For “his parts of speech” compare⁠—

“… that long mandarin
C‑stle-r‑agh (whom Fum calls the Confucius of Prose)
Was rehearsing a speech upon Europe’s repose
To the deep double bass of the fat Idol’s nose.”
Moore’s “Fum and Hum, the Two Birds of Royalty”]

↩
Compare Beppo, stanza XVII line 8, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 165. See, too, letter to Hoppner, December 31, 1819, Letters, 1900, IV 393. —⁠Editor ↩
Beneath his chisel⁠—

or,

Beneath his touches⁠—.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
—and bound fair Helen in a bond.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Hor., Sat., lib. I sat. III lines 107, 108. ↩
That Riddle which all read, none understand.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
—thou Sea which lavest Life’s sand.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“Fortune and victory sit on thy helm.”
—⁠Richard III, act V, sc. 3, line 79

—⁠Editor ↩
“Catherine had been handsome in her youth, and she preserved a gracefulness and majesty to the last period of her life. She was of a moderate stature, but well proportioned; and as she carried her head very high, she appeared rather tall. She had an open front, an aquiline nose, an agreeable mouth, and her chin, though long, was not misshapen. Her hair was auburn, her eyebrows black and rather thick, and her blue eyes had a gentleness which was often affected, but oftener still a mixture of pride. Her physiognomy was not deficient in expression; but this expression never discovered what was passing in the soul of Catherine, or rather it served her the better to disguise it.”
—⁠Life of Catherine II, by W. Tooke, III 381 (translated from Vie de Catherine II (J. H. Castéra), 1797, II 450)

—⁠Editor ↩
“His fortune swells him: ’Tis rank, he’s married.”
—⁠Sir Giles Overreach, in Massinger’s New Way to Pay Old Debts, act V sc. 1

—⁠Editor ↩
Hamlet, act III sc. IV lines 58, 59. —⁠Editor ↩
“Not Caesar’s empress would I deign to prove;
No! make me mistress to the man I love.”
Pope, “Eloisa to Abelard,” lines 87, 88

—⁠Editor ↩
O’er whom an Empress her Crown-jewels scattering
Was wed with something better than a ring.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“Several persons who lived at the court affirm that Catherine had very blue eyes, and not brown, as M. Rulhières has stated.”
—⁠Life of Catherine II, by W. Tooke, 1800, III 382

—⁠Editor ↩
The historic Catherine (aet. 62) was past her meridian in the spring of 1791. —⁠Editor ↩
Her figure, and her vigour, and her rigour.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
In its sincere beginning, or dull end.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
For such all women are just then, no doubt.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Of such sensations, in the drowsy drear
After⁠—which shadows the, say⁠—second year.
—⁠[MS.]

Of that sad heavy, drowsy, doubly drear
After, which shadows the first⁠—say, year.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Stanza LXXVI is not in the MS. —⁠Editor ↩
A Russian estate is always valued by the number of the slaves upon it. ↩
The “Protassova” (born 1744) was a cousin of the Orlofs. She survived Catherine by many years, and was, writes M. Waliszewski (The Story of a Throne, 1895, II 193), “present at the Congress of Vienna, covered with diamonds like a reliquary, and claiming precedence of every one.” She is named l’éprouveuse in a note to the Mémoires Secrets, 1800, I 148. —⁠Editor ↩
And not be dazzled by its early glare.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
End of Canto 9th, Augt. Sept., 1822. B. ↩
In a most natural whirling of rotation.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Since Adam⁠—gloriously against an apple.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“Neither Pemberton nor Whiston, who received from Newton himself the history of his first Ideas of Gravity, records the story of the falling apple. It was mentioned, however, to Voltaire by Catherine Barton (afterwards Mrs. Conduit), Newton’s niece. We saw the apple tree in 1814.⁠ ⁠… The tree was so much decayed that it was taken down in 1820.”
(Memoirs, etc., of Sir Isaac Newton, by Sir David Brewster, 1855, I 27, note 1)

Voltaire tells the story thus (Éléments de la Philosophie de Newton, Partie III chap. III):

“Un jour, en l’année 1666 [1665], Newton, retiré à la campagne, et voyant tomber des fruits d’un arbre, à ce que m’a conté sa nièce (Madame Conduit), se laissa aller à une méditation profonde sur la cause qui entraîne ainsi tous les corps dans une ligne qui, si elle était prolongée, passerait à peu près par le centre de la terre.”
—⁠Oeuvres Complètes, 1837, V 727

—⁠Editor ↩
To the then unploughed stars⁠—.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Compare “Churchill’s Grave,” line 23, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 47, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
Shelley entitles him “The Pilgrim of Eternity,” in his Adonais (stanza XXX line 3), which was written and published at Pisa in 1821. —⁠Editor ↩
Byron left Pisa (Palazzo Lanfranchi on the Arno) for the Villa Saluzzo at Genoa, in the autumn of 1822. —⁠Editor ↩
Malicious people⁠—.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“We think the abuse of Mr. Southey⁠ ⁠… by far too savage and intemperate. It is of ill example, we think, in the literary world, and does no honour either to the taste or the temper of the noble author.”
—⁠Edinburgh Review, February, 1822, vol. XXXVI p. 445

“I have read the recent article of Jeffrey⁠ ⁠… I suppose the long and the short of it is, that he wishes to provoke me to reply. But I won’t, for I owe him a good turn still for his kindness bygone. Indeed, I presume that the present opportunity of attacking me again was irresistible; and I can’t blame him, knowing what human nature is.”
—⁠Letter to Moore, June 8, 1822, Letters, 1901, VI 80

—⁠Editor ↩
—that essence of all Lie.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“Reformers,” or rather “Reformed.” The Baron Bradwardine in Waverley is authority for the word. [The word is certainly in Butler’s Hudibras, Part II Canto 2⁠—

“Although your Church be opposite
To mine as Black Fryars are to White,
In Rule and Order, yet I grant
You are a Reformado Saint.”]

↩
Stanza XV is not in the MS. The “legal broom,” sc. Brougham, was an afterthought. —⁠Editor ↩
Query, suit?⁠—Printer’s Devil. ↩
It has been argued that when “great Caesar fell” he wore his “robe” to muffle up his face, and that, in like manner, Jeffrey sank the critic in the lawyer. A “deal likelier” interpretation is that Jeffrey wore “his gown” right royally, as Caesar wore his “triumphal robe.” (See Plutarch’s Julius Caesar, Langhorne’s translation, 1838, p. 515.) —⁠Editor ↩
“I don’t like to bore you about the Scotch novels (as they call them, though two of them are English, and the rest half so); but nothing can or could ever persuade me, since I was the first ten minutes in your company, that you are not the man. To me these novels have so much of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ (I was bred a canny Scot till ten years old), that I never move without them.”
—⁠Letter to Sir W. Scott, January 12, 1822, Letters, 1901, VI 4, 5

—⁠Editor ↩
Compare The Island, Canto II lines 280⁠–⁠297. —⁠Editor ↩
The brig of Don, near the “auld toun” of Aberdeen, with its one arch, and its black deep salmon stream below, is in my memory as yesterday. I still remember, though perhaps I may misquote, the awful proverb which made me pause to cross it, and yet lean over it with a childish delight, being an only son, at least by the mother’s side. The saying as recollected by me was this, but I have never heard or seen it since I was nine years of age:⁠—

“Brig of Balgounie, black’s your wa’,
Wi’ a wife’s ae son, and a mear’s ae foal,
Doun ye shall fa’!”

[See for illustration of the Brig o’ Balgownie, with its single Gothic arch, Letters, 1901 [L.P.], V 406. ] ↩
“Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,” etc.
Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto VI stanza II

—⁠Editor ↩
Some thirty years before at fair eighteen.
—⁠[MS.]

or,

Seven and twenty⁠—which, it does not matter⁠—
Wrinkles, those damnedst democrats, won’t flatter.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Tiberius Gracchus, being tribune of the people, demanded in their name the execution of the Agrarian law; by which all persons possessing above a certain number of acres were to be deprived of the surplus for the benefit of the poor citizens. ↩
“Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura.”
Inferno, Canto I line 2

↩
Hut where we travellers bait with dim reflection.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Is when he learns to limit his expenses.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
—till the ice
Cracked, she would ne’er believe in thaws for vice.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
A metaphor taken from the “forty-horse power” of a steam-engine. That mad wag, the Reverend Sydney Smith, sitting by a brother clergyman at dinner, observed afterwards that his dull neighbour had a “twelve-parson power” of conversation. ↩
In a letter to his sister, October 25, 1804 (Letters, 1898, I 40), Byron mentions an aunt⁠—“the amiable antiquated Sophia,” and asks, “Is she yet in the land of the living, or does she sing psalms with the Blessed in the other world?” This was his father’s sister, Sophia Maria, daughter of Admiral the Hon. John Byron. But his “good old aunt” is, more probably, the Hon. Mrs. Frances Byron, widow of George (born April 22, 1730) son of the fourth, and brother of the “Wicked” lord. She was the daughter and co-heiress of Ellis Levett, Esq., and lived “at Nottingham in her own house.” She died, aged 86, June 13, 1822, not long before this Canto was written. She is described in the obituary notice of the Gentleman’s Magazine, June, 1822, vol. 92, p. 573, as “Daughter of Vice-Admiral the Hon. John Byron (who sailed round the world with Lord Anson), grandfather of the present Lord Byron.” But that is, chronologically, impossible. Byron must have retained a pleasing recollection of the ear-trumpet and the spectacles, and it gratified his kindlier humour to embalm their owner in his verse. —⁠Editor ↩
See Collins’s Peerage, 1779, VII 120. It is probable that Byron was lineally descended from Ralph de Burun, of Horestan, who is mentioned in Doomsday Book (sect. XI) as holding eight lordships in Notts and five in Derbyshire, but with regard to Ernysius or Erneis the pedigree is silent. (See Pedigree of George Gordon, Sixth Lord Byron, by Edward Bernard, 1870.) —⁠Editor ↩
“Hide.”⁠—I believe a hide of land to be a legitimate word, and, as such, subject to the tax of a quibble. ↩
And humbly hope that the same God which hath given
Us land on earth, will do no less in Heaven.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Perhaps⁠—but d⁠⸺⁠n perhaps⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
For the illness (“a scarlet fever, complicated by angina, both aggravated by premature exhaustion”) and death of Lanskoi, see The Story of a Throne, by K. Waliszewsky, 1895, II 131, 133. For the rumour that he was poisoned by Potemkin, see Mémoires Secrets, etc. [by C. F. P. Masson], 1800, I 170. —⁠Editor ↩
Matthew Baillie (1761⁠–⁠1823), the nephew of William Hunter, the brother of Agnes and Joanna Baillie, was a celebrated anatomist. He attended Byron (1799⁠–⁠1802), when an endeavour was made to effect a cure of the muscular contraction of his right leg and foot. He was consulted by Lady Byron, in 1816, with regard to her husband’s supposed derangement, but was not admitted when he called at the house in Piccadilly. He is said to have “avoided technical and learned phrases; to have affected no sentimental tenderness, but expressed what he had to say in the simplest and plainest terms” (Annual Biography, 1824, p. 319). Jekyll (Letters, 1894, p. 110) repeats or invents an anecdote that “the old king, in his mad fits, used to say he could bring any dead people to converse with him, except those who had died under Baillie’s care, for that the doctor always dissected them into so many morsels, that they had not a leg to walk to Windsor with.” It is hardly necessary to say that John Abernethy (1764⁠–⁠1831) “expressed what he had to say” in the bluntest and rudest terms at his disposal. —⁠Editor ↩
The empress went to the Crimea, accompanied by the Emperor Joseph, in the year⁠—I forget which.

The Prince de Ligne, who accompanied Catherine in her progress through her southern provinces, in 1787, gives the following particulars:

“We have crossed during many days vast, solitary regions, from which her Majesty has driven Zaporogua, Budjak, and Nogais Tartars, who, ten years ago, threatened to ravage her empire. All these places were furnished with magnificent tents for breakfasts, lunches, dinners, suppers, and sleeping-rooms⁠ ⁠… deserted regions were at once transformed into fields, groves, villages:⁠ ⁠… The Empress has left in each chief town gifts to the value of a hundred thousand roubles. Every day that we remained stationary was marked with diamonds, balls, fireworks, and illuminations throughout a circuit of ten leagues.”
—⁠The Prince de Ligne, His Memoirs, etc., translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley, 1899, II 31

—⁠Editor ↩
Man, midst thy mouldy mammoths, Cuvier.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Who like sour fruit to sharpen up the tides
Of their salt veins, and stir their stagnancy.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
In the Empress Anne’s time, Biren, her favourite, assumed the name and arms of the “Birons” of France; which families are yet extant with that of England. There are still the daughters of Courland of that name; one of them I remember seeing in England in the blessed year of the Allies (1814)⁠—the Duchess of S.⁠—to whom the English Duchess of Somerset presented me as a namesake.

[“Ernest John Biren was born in Courland [in 1690]. His grandfather had been head groom to James, the third Duke of Courland, and obtained from his master the present of a small estate in land.⁠ ⁠… In 1714 he made his appearance at St. Petersburg, and solicited the place of page to the Princess Charlotte, wife of the Tzarovitch Alexey; but being contemptuously rejected as a person of mean extraction, retired to Mittau, where he chanced to ingratiate himself with Count Bestuchef, Master of the Household to Anne, widow of Frederic William, Duke of Courland, who resided at Mittau. Being of a handsome figure and polite address, he soon gained the good will of the duchess, and became her secretary and chief favourite. On her being declared sovereign of Russia, Anne called Biren to Petersburg, and the secretary soon became Duke of Courland, and first minister or rather despot of Russia. On the death of Anne, which happened in 1740, Biren, being declared regent, continued daily increasing his vexations and cruelties, till he was arrested, on the 18th of December, only twenty days after he had been appointed to the regency; and at the revolution that ensued he was exiled to the frozen shores of the Oby.”
Catherine II, by W. Tooke, 1800, I 160, footnote

He was recalled in 1763, and died in 1772.

In a letter to his sister, dated June 18, 1814, Byron gives a slightly different version of the incident, recorded in his note (vide supra):

“The Duchess of Somerset also, to mend matters, insisted on presenting me to a Princess Biron, Duchess of Hohen-God-knows-what, and another person to her two sisters, Birons too. But I flew off, and would not, saying I had had enough of introductions for that night at least.”
—⁠Letters, 1899, III 98

The “daughters of Courland” must have been descendants of “Pierre, dernier Duc de Courlande, De la Maison de Biron,” viz. Jeanne Cathérine, born June 24, 1783, who married, in 1801, François Pignatelli de Belmonte, Duc d’Acerenza, and Dorothée, born August 21, 1793, who married, in 1809, Edmond de Talleyrand Périgord, Duc de Talleyrand, nephew to the Bishop of Autun. (See Almanach de Gotha, 1848, pp. 109, 110.)] ↩
Napoleon’s exclamation at the Élysée Bourbon, June 23, 1815.

“When his civil counsellors talked of defence, the word wrung from him the bitter ejaculation, ‘Ah! my old guard! could they but defend themselves like you!’ ”
—⁠Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, by Sir Walter Scott, Prose Works, 1846, II 760

—⁠Editor ↩
Who now that he is dead has not a foe;
The last expired in cut-throat Castlereagh.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Immanuel Kant, born at Königsberg, in 1729, became Professor and Rector of the University, and died at Königsberg in 1804. —⁠Editor ↩
“The castled crag of Drachenfels
Frowns o’er the wide and winding Rhine,” etc.
Childe Harold, Canto III

—⁠Editor ↩
St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins were still extant in 1816, and may be so yet, as much as ever. ↩
“We left Ratzeburg at 7 o’clock Wednesday evening, and arrived at Lüneburg⁠—i.e. 35 English miles⁠—at 3 o’clock on Thursday afternoon. This is a fair specimen! In England I used to laugh at the ‘flying waggons;’ but compared with a German Post-Coach, the metaphor is perfectly justifiable, and for the future I shall never meet a flying waggon without thinking respectfully of its speed.”
—⁠S. T. Coleridge, March 12, 1799, Letters of S. T. C., 1895, I 278

—⁠Editor ↩
See for German oaths, “Extracts from a Diary,” January 12, 1821, Letters, 1901, V 172. —⁠Editor ↩
With “Schnapps”⁠—Democritus would cease to smile,
By German, post-boys driven a mile.
—⁠[MS.]

With “Schnapps”⁠—and spite of “Dam’em,” “dog” and “log”
Launched at their heads jog-jog-jog-jog-jog-jog.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
The French Inscription (see Memorial Inscriptions, etc., by Joseph Meadows Cowper, 1897, p. 134) on the Black Prince’s monument is thus translated in the History of Kent (John Weevers’ Funerall Monuments, 1636, pp. 205, 206)⁠—

“Who so thou be that passeth by
Where this corps entombed lie,
Understand what I shall say,
As at this time, speake I may.
Such as thou art, sometime was I.
Such as I am, shalt thou be.
I little thought on th’ oure of death,
So long as I enjoyèd breath.
Great riches here did I possess,
Whereof I made great nobleness;
I had gold, silver, wardrobes, and
Great treasure, horses, houses, land.
But now a caitife poore am I,
Deepe in the ground, lo! here I lie;
My beautie great is all quite gone,
My flesh is wasted to the bone.
My house is narrow now and throng,
Nothing but Truth comes from my tongue.
And if ye should see me this day,
I do not think but ye would say,
That I had never beene a man,
So much altered now I am.”

—⁠Editor ↩
—of higher stations,
And for their pains get smarter puncturations.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
See Childe Harold, Canto I stanza XXXII line 2, Poetical Works, 1899, II 93, note 16. —⁠Editor ↩
See The Prince (Il Principe), chap. XVII, by Niccolò Machiavelli, translated by Ninian Hill Thomson, 1897, p. 121:

“But above all [a Prince] must abstain from the property of others. For men will sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony.”

—⁠Editor ↩
India; America. —⁠Editor ↩
Elizabeth Fry (1780⁠–⁠1845) began her visits to Newgate in 1813. In 1820 she corresponded with the Princess Sophie of Russia, and at a later period she was entertained by Louis Philippe, and by the King of Prussia at Kaiserwerth. She might have, she may have, admonished George IV “with regard to all good things.” —⁠Editor ↩
See The Age of Bronze, line 768, Poetical Works, 1901, V 578, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
“O for a blast of that dread horn,
On Fontarabian echoes borne,
That to King Charles did come,
When Rowland brave, and Olivier,
And every paladin and peer,
On Roncesvalles died.”
Marmion, Canto VI stanza XXXIII lines 7⁠–⁠12

—⁠Editor ↩
Like an old Roman trumpet ere a battle.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
B. Genoa, Oct. 6th, 1822. End of Canto 10th. ↩
Berkeley did not deny the reality of existence, but the reality of matter as an abstract conception.

“It is plain,” he says (On the Principles of Human Knowledge, sect. IX), “that the very notion of what is called matter or corporeal substance, involves a contradiction in it.” Again, “It were a mistake to think that what is here said derogates in the least from the reality of things.”

His contention was that this reality depended, not on an abstraction called matter, “an inert, extended unperceiving substance,” but on “those unextended, indivisible substances or spirits, which act, and think, and perceive them [unthinking beings].”⁠—On the Principles of Human Knowledge, sect. XCI, The Works of George Berkeley, D.D., 1820, I 27, 69, 70. —⁠Editor ↩
Tempest, act V sc. I, line 95. —⁠Editor ↩
“I have been very unwell⁠—four days confined to my bed in ‘the worst inn’s worst room’ at Lerici, with a violent rheumatic and bilious attack, constipation, and the devil knows what.”
—⁠Letter to Murray, October 9, 1822, Letters, 1901, VI 121

The same letter contains an announcement that he had “a fifth [Canto of Don Juan] (the 10th) finished, but not transcribed yet; and the eleventh begun.” —⁠Editor ↩
Or Rome, or Tiber⁠—Naples or the sea.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Vide ante, Canto I stanza XIV lines 7, 8. —⁠Editor ↩

Falstaff Let us be Diana’s foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon: and let men say, we be men of good government; being governed, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we⁠—steal.

—⁠1 Henry IV, act I sc. 2, lines 24⁠–⁠28

—⁠Editor ↩

Gin. Hence the antithesis of “All Max” in the East to Almack’s in the West. (See Life in London, by Pierce Egan, 1823, pp. 284⁠–⁠290.) —⁠Editor ↩
According to the Vocabulary of the Flash Language, compiled by James Hardy Vaux, in 1812, and published at the end of his Memoirs, 1819, II 149⁠–⁠227, a kiddy, or “flash-kiddy,” is a thief of the lower orders, who, when he is breeched by a course of successful depredation dresses in the extreme of vulgar gentility, and affects a knowingness in his air and conversation. A “swell” or “rank swell” (“real swell” appears in Egan’s Life in London) is the more recent “toff;” and “flash” is “fly,” “down,” or “awake,” i.e. knowing, not easily imposed upon. —⁠Editor ↩
Hamlet, act V sc. 1, line 21. —⁠Editor ↩
Ken is a house, s.c. a thieves’ lodging-house; spellken, a playhouse; high toby-spice is robbery on horseback, as distinguished from spice, i.e. footpad robbery; to flash the muzzle is to show off the face, to swagger openly; blowing or blowen is a doxy or trull; and nutty is, conjointly, amorous and fascinating. —⁠Editor ↩
Poor Tom was once a knowing one in town.
Not a mere kiddy, but a real one.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
The advance of science and of language has rendered it unnecessary to translate the above good and true English, spoken in its original purity by the select mobility and their patrons. The following is a stanza of a song which was very popular at least in my early days:⁠—

“On the high toby-spice flash the muzzle,
In spite of each gallows old scout;
If you at the spellken can’t hustle,
You’ll be hobbled in making a clout.
Then your blowing will wax gallows haughty,
When she hears of your scaly mistake,
She’ll surely turn snitch for the forty⁠—
That her Jack may be regular weight.”

If there be any gemman so ignorant as to require a traduction, I refer him to my old friend and corporeal pastor and master, John Jackson, Esq., Professor of Pugilism; who, I trust, still retains the strength and symmetry of his model of a form, together with his good humour, and athletic as well as mental accomplishments.

[Gentleman Jackson was of good renown.

“Servility,” says Egan (Life in London, 1823, p. 217), “is not known to him. Flattery he detests. Integrity, impartiality, good-nature, and manliness, are the cornerstones of his understanding.”

Byron once said of him that “his manners were infinitely superior to those of the Fellows of the College whom I meet at the high table” (J. W. Clark, Cambridge, 1890, p. 140). (See, too, letter to John Jackson, September 18, 1808, Letters, 1898, I 189, note 2; “Hints from Horace,” line 638, Poetical Works, 1898, I 433, note 3.) As to the stanza quoted by Egan (Anecdotes of the Turf, 1827, p. 44), but not traduced or interpreted, “To be hobbled for making a clout” is to be taken into custody for stealing a handkerchief, to “turn snitch” is to inform, and the “forty” is the £40 offered for the detection of a capital crime, and shared by the police or Bow Street runners. Dangerous characters were let alone and tacitly encouraged to continue their career of crime, until the measure of their iniquity was full, and they “weighed forty.” If Jack was clumsy enough to be detected in a trifling theft, his “blowen” would go over to the enemy, and betray him for the sake of the Government reward (see Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, by Francis Grose, 1823, art. “Weigh forty”).] ↩
Don Juan must have driven by Pleasant Row, and passed within hail of Paradise Row, on the way from Kennington to Westminster Bridge. (See Cary’s New Pocket Plan of London, Westminster, and Southwark, 1819.) But, perhaps, there is more in the names of streets and places than meets the eye. Here, as elsewhere, there is, or there may be, “a paltering with us in a double sense.” —⁠Editor ↩
Through rows called “Paradise,” by way of showing
Good Christians that to which they all are going.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Compare Childe Harold, Canto I stanza LXIX line 8, var. II, Poetical Works, 1899, II 66, note 2. —⁠Editor ↩
—distilling into the re-kindling glass.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
The streets of London were first regularly lighted with gas in 1812. —⁠Editor ↩
Thomas Pennant, in Some Account of London, 1793, p. 444, writes down the Mansion House (1739⁠–⁠1752) as “damned⁠ ⁠… to everlasting fame.” —⁠Editor ↩
Fifty years ago “the lights of Piccadilly” were still regarded as one of the “sights” of London. Byron must often have looked at them from his house in Piccadilly Terrace. —⁠Editor ↩
Joseph François Foulon, army commissioner, provoked the penalty of the “lantern” (i.e. an improvised gallows on the yard of a lamppost at the corner of the Rue de la Vannerie) by his heartless sneer, “Eh bien! si cette canaille n’a pas de pain, elle mangera du foin.” He was hanged, July 22, 1789. See The Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, cap. XXII; see, too, Carlyle’s French Revolution, 1839, I 253:

“With wild yells, Sansculottism clutches him, in its hundred hands: he is whirled⁠ ⁠… to the ‘Lanterne,’⁠ ⁠… pleading bitterly for life⁠—to the deaf winds. Only with the third rope (for two ropes broke, and the quavering voice still pleaded), can he be so much as got hanged! His Body is dragged through the streets; his Head goes aloft on a pike, the mouth filled with grass: amid sounds as of Tophet, from a grass-eating people.”

—⁠Editor ↩
Hells, gaming-houses. What their number may now be in this life, I know not. Before I was of age I knew them pretty accurately, both “gold” and “silver.” I was once nearly called out by an acquaintance, because when he asked me where I thought that his soul would be found hereafter, I answered, “In Silver Hell.” ↩
At length the boys drew up before a door,
From whence poured forth a tribe of well-clad waiters;
(While on the pavement many a hungry w⁠—re
With which the moralest of cities caters
For gentlemen whose passions may boil o’er,
Stood as the unpacking gathered more spectators,)
And Juan found himself in an extensive
Apartment;⁠—fashionable but expensive.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
’Twas one of the delightfullest hotels.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Perhaps Grillion’s Hotel (afterwards Grillion’s Club) in Albemarle Street. In 1822 diplomats patronized more than one hotel in and near St. James’s Street, but among the “Departures from Grillion’s Hotel,” recorded in the Morning Chronicle of September, 17, 1822, appositely enough, is that of H. E. Don Juan Garcia, del Rio. —⁠Editor ↩
—of his loves and wars;
And as romantic heads are pretty painters,
And ladies like a little spice of Mars.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
The false attempt at Truth⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Compare⁠—

“Lo! Erin, thy Lord!
Kiss his foot with thy blessing”⁠—
“The Irish Avatar,” stanza 14, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 558

—⁠Editor ↩
Kiss hands⁠—or feet⁠—or what Man by and by
Will kiss, not in sad metaphor⁠—but earnest,
Unless on Tyrants’ sterns⁠—we turn the sternest.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Anent was a Scotch phrase meaning “concerning”⁠—“with regard to:” it has been made English by the Scotch novels; and, as the Frenchman said, “If it be not, ought to be English.” [See, for instance, The Abbot, chap. XVII 132.] ↩
But “Damme’s” simple⁠—dashing⁠—free and daring
The purest blasphemy⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
About such general matters⁠—but particular
A poem’s progress should be perpendicular.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Macbeth, act III sc. 4, line 63. —⁠Editor ↩
Blushed, too, but it was hidden by their rouge.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
The natural and the prepared ceruse.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Drapery Misses.⁠—This term is probably anything now but a mystery. It was, however, almost so to me when I first returned from the East in 1811⁠–⁠1812. It means a pretty, a highborn, a fashionable young female, well instructed by her friends, and furnished by her milliner with a wardrobe upon credit, to be repaid, when married, by the husband. The riddle was first read to me by a young and pretty heiress, on my praising the “drapery” of the “untochered” but “pretty virginities” (like Mrs. Anne Page) of the then day, which has now been some years yesterday: she assured me that the thing was common in London; and as her own thousands, and blooming looks, and rich simplicity of array, put any suspicion in her own case out of the question, I confess I gave some credit to the allegation. If necessary, authorities might be cited; in which case I could quote both “drapery” and the wearers. Let us hope, however, that it is now obsolete. ↩
Compare “Hints from Horace,” line 173, Poetical Works, 1898, I 401, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
In his so-called “Dedication” of Marino Faliero to Goethe, Byron makes fun of the “nineteen hundred and eighty-seven poets,” whose names were to be found in A Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors, etc. (See Introduction to Marino Faliero, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 340, 341, note 1.) —⁠Editor ↩
A paper potentate⁠—.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
See “Introduction to Cain,” Poetical Works, 1901, V 204. —⁠Editor ↩
With turnkey Southey for my Hudson Lowe.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Beneath the reverend Cambyses Croly.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
The Reverend George Croly, D.D. (1780⁠–⁠1860), began his literary career as dramatic critic of the Times. “Croly,” says H. C. Robinson (Diary, 1869, I 412), “is a fierce-looking Irishman, very lively in conversation, and certainly has considerable talents as a writer; his eloquence, like his person, is rather energetic than eloquent” (hence the epithet “Cambyses,” i.e. “King Cambyses’ vein” in var. III). “He wrote tragedies, comedies, and novels; and, at last, settled down as a preacher, with the rank of doctor, but of what faculty I do not know” (Diary, footnote, H. C. R., 1847). He wrote, inter alia, Paris in 1815, a poem; Catiline, a Tragedy, 1822; and Salathiel, a novel, 1827. In lines 7, 8, Byron seems to refer to The Angel of the World, an Arabian Poem, published in 1820. —⁠Editor ↩
1 Henry IV, act II sc. 4, line 197. —⁠Editor ↩
Stanza LVIII was first published in 1837. The reference is to Henry Hart Milman (1791⁠–⁠1868). Byron was under the impression that Milman had influenced Murray against continuing the publication of Don Juan. Added to this surmise, was the mistaken belief that it was Milman who had written the article in the Quarterly, which “killed John Keats.” Hence the virulence of the attack.

“Dull Dorus” is obscure, but compare Propertius, Eleg. III vii 44, where Callimachus is addressed as “Dore poeta.” He is the “ox of verse,” because he had been recently appointed to the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford. The “roaring Romans” are “The soldiery” who shout “All, All,” in Croly’s Catiline, act V sc. 2. —⁠Editor ↩
Then there’s my gentle Barry⁠—who they say.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Jeffrey, in his review of A Sicilian Story, etc., Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall), 1787⁠–⁠1874 (Edinburgh Review, January, 1820, vol. 33, pp. 144⁠–⁠155), compares “Diego de Montilla,” a poem in ottava rima, with Don Juan, favourably and unfavourably:

“There is no profligacy and no horror⁠ ⁠… no mocking of virtue and honour, and no strong mixtures of buffoonery and grandeur.” But it may fairly match with Byron and his Italian models “as to the better qualities of elegance, delicacy, and tenderness.”

See, too, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, March, 1820, vol. VI pp. 153, 647. —⁠Editor ↩
See Preface to the Vision of Judgment, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 484, note 3. —⁠Editor ↩
Croker’s article in the Quarterly (April, 1818 [pub. September], vol. XIX pp. 204⁠–⁠208) did not “kill John Keats.” See letter to George and Georgiana Keats, October, 1818 (Letters, etc., 1895, p. 215). Byron adopts Shelley’s belief that the Reviewer, “miserable man,” “one of the meanest,” had “wantonly defaced one of the noblest specimens of the workmanship of God.” See Preface to Adonais, and stanzas XXXVI, XXXVII. —⁠Editor ↩
And weakly mind, to let that all celestial Particle.
—⁠[MS. erased]

or,

’Tis strange the mind should let such phrases quell its
Chief Impulse with a few, frail, paper pellets.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“Divinae particulam aurae.”
[Hor., Sat. II 2. 79]

↩
For “the crowd of usurpers” who started up in the reign of Gallienus, and were dignified with the honoured appellation of “the thirty tyrants,” see Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, 1825, I 164. —⁠Editor ↩
King Lear, act IV sc. 6, line 15. —⁠Editor ↩
“Illita Nesseo misi tibi texta veneno.”
Ovid., Heroid. Epist. IX 163

—⁠Editor ↩
A “bower,” in Moore’s phrase, signifies a solitude à deux; e.g. “Here’s the Bower she lov’d so much.”

“Come to me, love, the twilight star
Shall guide thee to my bower.”
Moore

—⁠Editor ↩
Compare “The Waltz,” lines 220⁠–⁠229, et passim, Poetical Works, 1898, I 501. —⁠Editor ↩
Scotch for goblin. ↩
Handsome but blasé⁠—
—⁠[MS.]

↩
The sentiment is reiterated in The Night Thoughts, and is the theme of “Resignation,” which was written and published when Young was more than eighty years old. —⁠Editor ↩
And fresher, since without a breath of air.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Where are the thousand lovely innocents?
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“I have⁠ ⁠… written⁠ ⁠… to express my willingness to accept the, or almost any mortgage, anything to get out of the tremulous Funds of these oscillating times. There will be a war somewhere, no doubt⁠—and whatever it may be, the Funds will be affected more or less; so pray get us out of them with all proper expedition. It has been the burden of my song to you three years and better, and about as useful as better counsels.”
—⁠Letter of Byron to Kinnaird, January 18, 1823, Letters, 1901, VI 162, 163

—⁠Editor ↩
For William Pole Tylney Long Wellesley (1788⁠–⁠1857), see “The Waltz,” line 21, Poetical Works, 1898, I 484, note 1. He was only on the way to being “diddled” in 1822, but the prophecy (suggested, no doubt, by the announcement of the sale of furniture, etc., at Wanstead House, in the Morning Chronicle, July 8, 1822) was ultimately fulfilled. Samuel Whitbread, born 1758, committed suicide July 6, 1815. Sir Samuel Romilly, born 1758, committed suicide November 2, 1818. —⁠Editor ↩
According to Charles Greville, George the Third made two wills⁠—the first in 1770, the second, which he never signed, in 1810. By the first will he left “all he had to the Queen for her life, Buckingham House to the Duke of Clarence,” etc., and as Buckingham House had been twice sold, and the other legatees were dead, a question arose between the King and the Duke of York as to the right of inheritance of their father’s personal property. George IV conceived that it devolved upon him personally, and not on the Crown, and “consequently appropriated to himself the whole of the money and the jewels.” It is possible that this difference between the brothers was noised abroad, and that old stories of the destruction of royal wills were revived to the new king’s discredit. (See The Greville Memoirs, 1875, I 64, 65.) —⁠Editor ↩
See Moore’s “Fum and Hum, the Two Birds of Royalty,” appended to his Fudge Family. —⁠Editor ↩
Lady Caroline Lamb and Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster. —⁠Editor ↩
—their caps and curls at Dukes.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
The Congress at Verona, in 1822. See the Introduction to The Age of Bronze, Poetical Works, 1891, V 537⁠–⁠540. —⁠Editor ↩
2 Henry IV, act IV sc. 3, line 117. —⁠Editor ↩
Hor., Od. I xi line 8. —⁠Editor ↩
Macbeth, act V sc. 5, line 24. —⁠Editor ↩
1 Henry IV, act II sc. 4, line 463. —⁠Editor ↩
See the Secret Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons of Quality, of Both Sexes, from the New Atalantis, 1709, a work in which the authoress, Mrs. Manley, satirizes the distinguished characters of her day. Warburton (Works of Pope, ed. 1751, I 244) calls it “a famous book⁠ ⁠… full of court and party scandal, and in a loose effeminacy of style and sentiment, which well suited the debauched taste of the better vulgar.” Pope also alludes to it in the Rape of the Lock, III 165, 166⁠—

“As long as Atalantis shall be read,
Or the small pillow grace a lady’s bed.”

And Swift, in his ballad on “Corinna” (stanza 8)⁠—

“Her common-place book all gallant is,
Of scandal now a cornucopia,
She pours it out in Atalantis,
Or memoirs of the New Utopia.”
Works, 1824, XII 302

—⁠Editor ↩
Oct. 17, 1822. [⁠—MS.] —⁠Editor ↩
See letter to Douglas Kinnaird, dated Genoa, January 18, 1823. —⁠Editor ↩
Johnson would not believe that “a complete miser is a happy man.”

“That,” he said, “is flying in the face of all the world, who have called an avaricious man a miser, because he is miserable. No, sir; a man who both spends and saves money is the happiest man, because he has both enjoyments.”
—⁠Boswell’s Life of Johnson, 1876, p. 605

—⁠Editor ↩
The Descamisados, or Sansculottes of the Spanish Revolution of 1820⁠–⁠1823. For Spanish “Liberals,” see Quarterly Review, April, 1823, vol. XXIX pp. 270⁠–⁠276. —⁠Editor ↩
Hamlet, act I sc. 1, line 116. —⁠Editor ↩
See The Age of Bronze, line 678, sq., Poetical Works, 1901, V 573, note 3. —⁠Editor ↩
Jacques Laffitte (1767⁠–⁠1844), as Governor of the Bank of France, advanced sums to Parisians to meet their enforced contributions to the allies, and, in 1817, advocated liberal measures as a Deputy. —⁠Editor ↩
Were not worth one whereon their profile shines.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“They say that ‘Knowledge is Power’;⁠—I used to think so; but I now know that they meant Money⁠ ⁠… every guinea is a philosopher’s stone, or at least his touch-stone. You will doubt me the less, when I pronounce my pious belief⁠—that Cash is Virtue.”
—⁠Letter to Kinnaird, February 6, 1822, Letters, 1901, VI 11

—⁠Editor ↩
Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto III stanza II lines 4⁠–⁠6. —⁠Editor ↩
See Godwin’s Essay Of Population, 1820 (pp. 18, 19, et passim), in which he renews his attack on Malthus’s Essay on the Principles of Population. —⁠Editor ↩
“We have no notion that Lord B[yron] had any mischievous intention in these publications⁠—and readily acquit him of any wish to corrupt the morals, or impair the happiness of his readers⁠ ⁠… but it is our duty⁠ ⁠… to say, that much of what he has published appears to us to have this tendency.⁠ ⁠… How opposite to this is the system, or the temper, of the great author of Waverley!”
—⁠Edinburgh Review, February, 1822, vol. 36, p. 451

—⁠Editor ↩
—for his moral pen
Held up to me by Jeffrey as example.
Of which with profit⁠—as you’ll soon see by a sample.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
In the case of Murray V Benbow (February 9, 1822), the Lord Chancellor (Lord Eldon) refused the motion for an injunction to restrain the defendant from publishing a pirated edition of Lord Byron’s poem of Cain (Jacob’s Reports, p. 474, note). Hence (see var. I) the allusion to “Law” and “Equity.” The “suit” and the “appeal” (vide Reports) refer to legal proceedings taken, or intended to be taken, with regard to certain questions arising out of the disposition of property under Lady Noel’s will. (See letters to Charles Hanson, September 21, November 30, 1822, Letters, 1901, VI 115, 146.) —⁠Editor ↩
That suit in Chancery⁠—have a Chancery suit⁠—
In right good earnest⁠—also an appeal
Before the Lords, whose Chancellor’s more acute
In Law than Equity⁠—as I can feel
Because my Cases put his Lordship to ’t
And⁠—though no doubt ’tis for the Public weal,
His Lordship’s Justice is not that of Solomon⁠—
Not that I deem our Chief Judge is a hollow man.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
See [William] Mitford’s Greece (1829, V 314, 315), “Graecia Verax.” His great pleasure consists in praising tyrants, abusing Plutarch, spelling oddly, and writing quaintly; and what is strange, after all, his is the best modern history of Greece in any language, and he is perhaps the best of all modern historians whatsoever. Having named his sins, it is but fair to state his virtues⁠—learning, labour, research, wrath, and partiality. I call the latter virtues in a writer, because they make him write in earnest.

[Byron consulted Mitford when he was at work on Sardanapalus. (See Extracts from a Diary, January 5, 1821, Letters, 1901, V 152, note 1.)] ↩
Thomas Robert Malthus (1766⁠–⁠1834) married, in 1804, Harriet, daughter of John Eckersall of Claverton House, near Bath. There were three children of the marriage, of whom two survived him. Byron may be alluding to the apocryphal story of “his eleven daughters,” related by J. L. A. Cherbuliez, in the Journal des Économistes (1850, vol. XXV p. 135):

“Un soir⁠ ⁠… il y avait cercle chez M. de Sismondi, à sa maison de campagne près de Genève.⁠ ⁠… Enfin, on annonce le révérend Malthus et sa famille. Sa famille!⁠ ⁠… Alors on voit entrer une charmante jeune fille, puis une seconde, puis une troisième, puis une quatrième, puis⁠ ⁠… Il n’y en avait, ma fois, pas moins de onze!”

See Malthus and His Work, by James Bonar, 1885, pp. 412, 413. See, too, Nouveau Dictionnaire de L’Économie Politique, 1892, art. “Malthus.” —⁠Editor ↩
Compare⁠—

“How commentators each dark passage shun,
And hold their farthing candle to the sun.”
Love of Fame, the Universal Passion, by Edward Young, Sat. VII lines 97, 98

—⁠Editor ↩
Philo-progenitiveness. Spurzheim and Gall discover the organ of this name in a bump behind the ears, and say it is remarkably developed in the bull. —⁠Editor ↩
He played and paid, made love without much sin.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Themselves on seldom yielding to temptation.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Henry Hallam (1778⁠–⁠1859) published his View of the State of Europe in the Middle Ages in 1818. —⁠Editor ↩
A drunken Gentleman of forty’s sure.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
This line may puzzle the commentators more than the present generation. ↩
If he can hiccup nonsense at a ball.

or,

If he goes after dinner to a ball.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
As You Like It, act II sc. 7, line 156; and Hamlet, act II sc. 2, lines, 97, 98. —⁠Editor ↩
But first of little Leilah⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
For the allusion to “unsunned snows,” vide ante, note 540. —⁠Editor ↩
The reference may be to Hobhouse and the “Zoili of Albemarle Street,” who did their best to “tutor” him with regard to “blazing indiscretions” in Don Juan. —⁠Editor ↩
That⁠—but I will not listen, by your leave,
Unto a single syllable⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
For another instance of this curious mistake, see letter to Hodgson, December 8, 1811, Letters, 1898, II 85; et Letters, p. 31, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
Painted and gilded⁠—or, as it will tell
More Muse-like⁠—say⁠—like Cytherea’s shell.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Vide ante, Preface to Cantos VI, VII, and VIII, paragraph. —⁠Editor ↩
“Enfin partout la bonne société régle tout.”
—⁠Voltaire

—⁠Editor ↩
“This game originated, I believe, in Germany.⁠ ⁠… It is called the game of the goose, because at every fourth and fifth compartment of the table in succession a goose is depicted; and if the cast thrown by the player falls upon a goose, he moves forward double the number of his throw.”
(Sports and Pastimes, etc., by Joseph Strutt, 1801, p. 250)

Goldsmith, in his “Deserted Village,” among other “parlour splendours,” mentions “the twelve good rules, the royal game of goose.” —⁠Editor ↩
Most young beginners may be taken so,
But those who have been a little used to roughing
Know how to end this half-and-half flirtation.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“I’ll grow a talker for this gear.”
Merchant of Venice, act I sc. 1, line 110

—⁠Editor ↩
Country where warm young people⁠—.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Pope and Scott use the quasi-contracted “gynocracy” for “gynaecocracy.” (See N. Engl. Dict.) —⁠Editor ↩
Of white cliffs⁠—and white bosoms⁠—and blue eyes⁠—
And stockings⁠—virtues, loves and Chastities.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Hor., Epist., lib. 1, ep. XIV line 43. The meaning is that Europe makes but little progress in the discovery and settlement of Africa, and, as it were, “ploughs the sands.” —⁠Editor ↩
Though many thousands both of birth and pluck too,
Have ventured past the jaws of Moor and Tiger.1222

↩
“Though many degrees nearer our own fair and blue-eyed beauties in complexion⁠ ⁠… yet no people ever lost more by comparison than did the white ladies of Moorzuk [capital of Fezzan] with the black ones of Bornou and Sudan.”
—⁠Narrative of Travels⁠ ⁠… in Northern and Central Africa, 1822⁠–⁠24, by Denham, Clapperton, and Oudney, 1828, II 133

—⁠Editor ↩
Above, all sunshine, and, below, all ice.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Compare “Prisoner of Chillon,” lines 82⁠–⁠85, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 17. —⁠Editor ↩
The Russians, as is well known, run out from their hot baths to plunge into the Neva; a pleasant practical antithesis, which it seems does them no harm. ↩
But once there (few have felt this more than I).
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Compare Childe Harold, Canto II stanza LVIII line 9, Poetical Works, 1899, II 59, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
See Plutarch’s Caius Marius, Langhorne’s translation, 1838, pp. 304, 305. —⁠Editor ↩
That Lady who is not at home to all.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
For a description and print of this inhabitant of the polar region and native country of the Aurorae Boreales, see Sir E. Parry’s Voyage in Search of a Northwest Passage, [1821, p. 257. The print of the Musk-Bull is drawn and engraved by W. Westall, A.R.A., from a sketch by Lieut. Beechy. He is a “fearful wildfowl!”] ↩
Charles, second Earl Grey, born March 13, 1764, succeeded to the peerage in 1807, died July 17, 1847. —⁠Editor ↩
William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham, born November 15, 1708, died May 11, 1778. —⁠Editor ↩
“His person was undoubtedly cast by Nature in an elegant and pleasing mould, of a just height, well-proportioned, and with due regard to symmetry.⁠ ⁠… His countenance was handsome and prepossessing.⁠ ⁠… His manners were captivating, noble, and dignified, yet unaffectedly condescending.⁠ ⁠… Homer, as well as Virgil, was familiar to the Prince of Wales; and his memory, which was very tenacious, enabled him to cite with graceful readiness the favourite passages of either poet.”
—⁠The Historical⁠ ⁠… Memoirs of Sir N. W. Wraxall, 1884, V 353, 354

—⁠Editor ↩
“Waving myself, let me talk to you of the Prince Regent. He ordered me to be presented to him at a ball; and after some sayings peculiarly pleasing from royal lips, as to my own attempts, he talked to me of you and your immortalities; he preferred you to every other bard past and present.⁠ ⁠… He spoke alternately of Homer and yourself, and seemed well acquainted with both.⁠ ⁠… [All] this was conveyed in language which would only suffer by my attempting to transcribe it, and with a tone and taste which gave me a very high idea of his abilities and accomplishments, which I had hitherto considered as confined to manners certainly superior to those of any living gentleman.”
—⁠Letter to Sir Walter Scott, July 6, 1812, Letters, 1898, II 134

—⁠Editor ↩
B. 10bre 7th 1822.⁠—[MS.]

A sculptor projected to hew Mount Athos into a statue of Alexander, with a city in one hand, and, I believe, a river in his pocket, with various other similar devices. But Alexander’s gone, and Athos remains, I trust ere long to look over a nation of freemen.

[It was an architect named Stasicrates who proposed to execute this imperial monument. But Alexander bade him leave Mount Athos alone. As it was, it might be christened “Xerxes, his Folly,” and, for his part, he preferred to regard Mount Caucasus, and the Himalayas, and the river Don as the symbolic memorials of his acts and deeds. —⁠Plutarch’s Moralia. “De Alexandri Fortuna et Virtute,” Orat. II cap. II] ↩
The “Political Economy” Club was founded in April, 1821. James Mill, Thomas Tooke, and David Ricardo were among the original members, See Political Economy Club, Revised Report, 1876, p. 60. —⁠Editor ↩
Stanzas LXXXVIII and LXXXIX are not in the MS. —⁠Editor ↩
Fy. 12th 1823. ↩
The allusion is to the refrain of Canning’s verses on Pitt, “The Pilot that weathered the storm.” Compare, too, “The daring pilot in extremity” (i.e. the Earl of Shaftesbury), who “sought the storms” (Dryden’s “Absalom and Achitophel,” lines 159⁠–⁠161). —⁠Editor ↩
Johnson loved “dear, dear Bathurst,” because he was “a very good hater.”⁠—See Boswell’s Johnson, 1876, p. 78 (Croker’s footnote). —⁠Editor ↩
So, too, Charles Kingsley, in Westward Ho! II 299, 300, calls Don Quixote “the saddest of books in spite of all its wit.”⁠—Notes and Queries, Second Series, III 124. —⁠Editor ↩
By that great Epic⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“Your husband is in his old lunes again.”
Merry Wives of Windsor, act IV sc. 2, lines 16, 17

—⁠Editor ↩
“Davus sum, non Oedipus.”
Terence, Andria, act I sc. 2, line 23

—⁠Editor ↩
“ ’Tis not in mortals to command success,
But we’ll do more, Sempronius⁠—we’ll deserve it.”
Addison’s Cato, act I sc. 2, ed. 1777, II 77

—⁠Editor ↩
Compare⁠—

“The colt that’s backed and burdened being young.”
Venus and Adonis, LXX line 5

—⁠Editor ↩
To “break square,” or “squares,” is to interrupt the regular order, as in the proverbial phrase, “It breaks no squares,” i.e. does no harm⁠—does not matter. Compare Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1802), II v 152, “This fault in Trim broke no squares with them” (N. Engl. Dict., art. “Break,” No. 46). The origin of the phrase is uncertain, but it may, perhaps, refer to military tactics. Shakespeare (Henry V, act IV sc. 2, line 28) speaks of “squares of battle.” —⁠Editor ↩
“With every thing that pretty bin,
My lady sweet, arise.”
Cymbeline, act II sc. 3, lines, 25, 26

[So Warburton and Hanmer. The folio reads “that pretty is.” See Knight’s Shakespeare, Pictorial Edition, Tragedies, I 203.] ↩
The house which Byron occupied, 1815⁠–⁠1816, No. 13, Piccadilly Terrace, was the property of Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire. —⁠Editor ↩
The slightest obstacle which may encumber
The path downhill is something grand.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Not even in fools who howsoever blind.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
That anything is new to a Chinese;
And such is Europe’s fashionable ease.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
A hidden wine beneath an icy presence.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Though this we hope has been reserved for this age.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“For the creed of Zoroaster,” see Sir Walter Scott, Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, 1830, pp. 87, 88. (See, too, Cain, act II sc. 2, line 404, Poetical Works, 1901, V 254, note 2.) —⁠Editor ↩
“Arcades ambo.”
[Virgil, Bucol., Ecl. VII 4]

↩
So travel the rich. —⁠Editor ↩
—the noble host intends.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“Judicious drank, and greatly-daring dined.”
Pope, Dunciad, IV 318

—⁠Editor ↩
Byron’s description of the place of his inheritance, which was to know him no more, is sketched from memory, but it unites the charm of a picture with the accuracy of a ground-plan. Eight years had gone by since he had looked his last on “venerable arch” and “lucid lake” (see “Epistle to Augusta,” stanza VIII lines 7, 8), but he had not forgotten, he could not forget, that enchanted and enchanting scene.

Newstead Abbey or Priory was founded by Henry II, by way of deodand or expiation for the murder of Thomas Becket. Lands which bordered the valley of the Leen, and which had formed part of Sherwood Forest, were assigned for the use and endowment of a chapter of “black canons regular of the order of St. Augustine,” and on a site, by the riverside to the south of the forest uplands (stanza LV lines 5⁠–⁠8) the new stede, or place, or station, arose. It was a “Norman Abbey” (stanza LV line 1) which the Black Canons dedicated to Our Lady, and, here and there, in the cloisters, traces of Norman architecture remain, but the enlargement and completion of the monastery was carried out in successive stages and “transition periods,” in a style or styles which, perhaps, more by hap than by cunning, Byron rightly named “mixed Gothic” (stanza LV line 4). To work their mills, and perhaps to drain the marshy valley, the monks dammed the Leen and excavated a chain of lakes⁠—the largest to the northwest, Byron’s “lucid lake;” a second to the south of the Abbey; and a third, now surrounded with woods, and overlooked by the “wicked lord’s” “ragged rock” below the Abbey, half a mile to the southeast. The “cascade,” which flows over and through a stonework sluice, and forms a rocky waterfall, issues from the upper lake, and is in full view of the west front of the Abbey. Almost at right angles to these lakes are three ponds: the Forest Pond to the north of the stone wall, which divides the garden from the forest; the square “Eagle” Pond in the Monks’ Garden; and the narrow stew-pond, bordered on either side with overhanging yews, which drains into the second or Garden Lake. Byron does not enlarge on this double chain of lakes and ponds, and, perhaps for the sake of pictorial unity, converts the second (if a second then existed) and third lakes into a river.

The Abbey, which, at the dissolution of monasteries in 1539, was handed over by Henry VIII to Sir John Byron, “steward and warden of the forest of Shirewood,” was converted, here and there, more or less, into a baronial “mansion” (stanza LXVI). It is, roughly speaking, a square block of buildings, flanking the sides of a grassy quadrangle. Surrounding the quadrangle are two-storied cloisters, and in the centre a “Gothic fountain” (stanza LXV line 1) of composite workmanship. The upper portion of the stonework is hexagonal, and is ornamented with a double row of gargoyles (all “monsters” and no “saints,” recalling, perhaps identical with, the “seven deadly sins” gargoyles, still in situ in the quadrangle of Magdalen College, Oxford); the lower half, which belongs to the seventeenth or eighteenth century, is hollowed into niches of a Roman or classical design. (In Byron’s time the fountain stood in a courtyard in front of the Abbey, but before he composed this canto it had been restored by Colonel Wildman to its original place within the quadrangle. Byron was acquainted with the change, and writes accordingly.) When the Byrons took possession of the Abbey the upper stories of the cloisters were converted, on three sides of the quadrangle, into galleries, and on the fourth, the north side, into a library. Abutting on the cloisters are the monastic buildings proper, in part transformed, but with “much of the monastic” preserved. On the west, the front of the Abbey, the ground floor consists of the entrance hall and Monks’ Parlour, and, above, the Guests’ Refectory or Banqueting-hall, and the Prior’s Parlour. On the south, the Xenodochium or Guesten Hall, and, above, the Monks’ Refectory, or Grand Drawing-room; on the south and east, on the ground floor, the Prior’s Lodgings, the Chapter House (“the exquisite small chapel,” stanza LXVI line 5), the “slype” or passage between church and Chapter House; and in the upper story, the state bedrooms, named after the kings, Edward III, Henry VII, etc., who, by the terms of the grant of land to the Prior and Canons, were entitled to free quarters in the Abbey. During Byron’s brief tenure of Newstead, and for long years before, these “huge halls, long galleries, and spacious chambers” (stanza LXXVII line 1) were half dismantled, and in a more or less ruinous condition. A few pictures remained on the walls of the Great Drawing-room, of the Prior’s Parlour, and in the apartments of the southeast wing or annex, which dates from the seventeenth century (see the account of a visit to Newstead in 1812, in Beauties of England and Wales, 1813, XII 401⁠–⁠405). There are and were portraits, by Lely (stanza LXVIII line 7), of a Lady Byron, of Fanny Jennings, Duchess of Tyrconnel, “loveliness personified,” of Mrs. Hughes, and of Nell Gwynne; by Sir Godfrey Kneller, of William and Mary; by unnamed artists, of George I and George II; and by Ramsay, of George III. There are portraits of a fat Prior, William Sandall, with a jewelled reliquary; of “Sir John the Little with the Great Beard,” who ruled in the Prior’s stead; and there is the portrait, a votive tablet of penitence and remorse, “of that Lord Arundel Who struck in heat the child he loved so well” (see “A Picture at Newstead,” by Matthew Arnold, Poetical Works, 1890, p. 177); but of portraits of judges or bishops, or of pictures by old masters, there is neither trace nor record.

But the characteristic feature of Newstead Abbey, so familiar that description seems unnecessary, and, yet, never quite accurately described, is the west front of the Priory Church, which is in line with the west front of the Abbey. “Half apart,” the southern portion of this front, which abuts on the windows of the Prior’s Parlour, and the room above, where Byron slept, flanks and conceals the west end of the north cloisters and library; but, with this exception, it is a screen, and nothing more. In the centre is the “mighty window” (stanza LXII line 1), shorn of glass and tracery; above are six lancet windows (which Byron seems to have regarded as niches), and, above again, in a “higher niche” (stanza LXI line 1), is the crowned Virgin with the Babe in her arms, which escaped, as by a miracle, the “fiery darts”⁠—the shot and cannonballs of the Cromwellian troopers. On either side of the central window are “two blank windows containing tracery [‘geometrical decorated’]⁠ ⁠… carved [in relief] on the solid ashlar;” on either side of the window, and at the northern and southern extremities of the front, are buttresses with canopied niches, in each of which a saint or apostle must once have stood. Over the west door there is the mutilated figure of (?) the Saviour, but of twelve saints or twelve niches there is no trace. The “grand arch” is an ivy-clad screen, and nothing more. Behind and beyond, in place of vanished nave, of aisle and transept, is the smooth green turf; and at the east end, on the site of the high altar, stands the urn-crowned masonry of Boatswain’s tomb.

Newstead Abbey was sold by Lord Byron to his old schoolfellow, Colonel Thomas Wildman, in November, 1817. The house and property were resold in 1861, by his widow, to William Frederick Webb, Esq., a traveller in many lands, the friend and host of David Livingstone. At his death the estate was inherited by his daughter, Miss Geraldine Webb, who was married to General Sir Herbert Charles Chermside, G.C.M.G., etc., Governor of Queensland, in 1899.

For Newstead Abbey, see Beauties of England and Wales, 1813, XII Part I 401⁠–⁠405 (often reprinted without acknowledgment); Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey, by Washington Irving, 1835; Journal of the Archaeological Association (papers by T. J. Pettigrew, F.R.S., and Arthur Ashpitel, F.S.A.), 1854, vol. IX pp. 14⁠–⁠39; and A Souvenir of Newstead Abbey (illustrated by a series of admirable photographs), by Richard Allen, Nottingham, 1874, etc., etc. —⁠Editor ↩
The woodlands were sacrificed to the needs or fancies of Byron’s great-uncle, the “wicked Lord.” One splendid oak, known as the “Pilgrim’s Oak,” which stood and stands near the north lodge of the park, near the “Hut,” was bought in by the neighbouring gentry, and made over to the estate. Perhaps by the Druid oak Byron meant to celebrate this “last of the clan,” which, in his day, before the woods were replanted, must have stood out in solitary grandeur. —⁠Editor ↩
Compare “Epistle to Augusta,” stanza X line 1, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 68. —⁠Editor ↩
The little wood which Byron planted at the southeast corner of the upper or “Stable” Lake, known as “Poet’s Corner,” still slopes to the water’s brink. Nor have the wildfowl diminished. The lower of the three lakes is specially reserved as a breeding-place. —⁠Editor ↩
Its shriller echo⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Which sympathized with Time’s and Tempest’s march,
In gazing on that high and haughty Arch.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
See lines “On Leaving Newstead Abbey,” stanza 5, Poetical Works, 1898, I 3, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
But in the stillness of the moon⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Vide ante, The Deformed Transformed, Part I line 532, Poetical Works, 1901, V 497. —⁠Editor ↩
This is not a frolic invention: it is useless to specify the spot, or in what county, but I have heard it both alone and in company with those who will never hear it more. It can, of course, be accounted for by some natural or accidental cause, but it was a strange sound, and unlike any other I have ever heard (and I have heard many above and below the surface of the earth produced in ruins, etc., etc., or caverns).⁠—[MS.]

[“The unearthly sound” may still be heard at rare intervals, but it is difficult to believe that the “huge arch” can act as an Aeolian harp. Perhaps the smaller lancet windows may vocalize the wind.] ↩
Prouder of such a toy than of their breed.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Salvator Rosa. The wicked necessity of rhyming obliges me to adapt the name to the verse.⁠—[MS.]

[Compare⁠—

“Whate’er Lorraine light touch’d with softening hue,
Or savage Rosa dash’d, or learned Poussin drew.”
Thomson’s Castle of Indolence, Canto I stanza XXXVIII lines 8, 9]

↩
If I err not, “your Dane” is one of Iago’s catalogue of nations “exquisite in their drinking.”

[“Your Dane, your German, and your swag-bellied Hollander⁠—drink hoa! are nothing to your English.” “Is your Englishman so exquisite in his drinking?”

(So Collier and Knight. The Quarto reads “expert”). —⁠Othello, act II sc. 3, lines 71⁠–⁠74] ↩
His bell-mouthed goblet⁠—and his laughing group
Provoke my thirst⁠—what ho! a flask of Rhenish.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Hath yet at night the very best of wines.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“Sea-coal” (i.e. Newcastle coal), as distinguished from “charcoal” and “earth-coal.” But the qualification must have been unusual and old-fashioned in 1822. “Earth-coal” is found in large quantities on the Newstead estate, and the Abbey, far below its foundations, is tunnelled by a coal-drift. —⁠Editor ↩
See Gray’s omitted stanza⁠—

“ ‘Here scatter’d oft, the earliest of the year,
By hands unseen, are showers of violets found;
The red-breast loves to build and warble here,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground.’

As fine⁠ ⁠… as any in his Elegy. I wonder that he could have the heart to omit it.” —⁠“Extracts from a Diary,” February 27, 1821, Letters, 1901, V 210

The stanza originally preceded the Epitaph. —⁠Editor ↩
In Assyria. [See Daniel 3:1.] ↩
—she hath the tame
Preserved within doors⁠—why not make them Game?
—⁠[MS.]

↩
It is difficult, if not impossible, to furnish a clue to the names of all the guests at Norman Abbey. Some who are included in this ghostly “house-party” seem to be, and, perhaps, were meant to be, nomina umbrarum; and others are, undoubtedly, contemporary celebrities, under a more or less transparent disguise. A few of these shadows have been substantiated (vide infra, et post), but the greater part decline to be materialized or verified. —⁠Editor ↩
—the Countess Squabby.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Perhaps Mary, widow of the eighth Earl of Cork and Orrery: “Dowager Cork,” “Old Corky,” of Joseph Jekyll’s Correspondence, 1894, pp. 83, 275. —⁠Editor ↩
Mrs. Rabbi may be Mrs. Coutts, the Mrs. Million of Vivian Grey (1826, I 183), who arrived at “Château Desir in a crimson silk pelisse, hat and feathers, with diamond earrings, and a rope of gold round her neck.” —⁠Editor ↩
Lie, lye, or ley, is a solution of potassium salts obtained by bleaching wood-ashes. Byron seems to have confused “lie” with “lee,” i.e. dregs, sediment. —⁠Editor ↩
“Aroint thee, witch! the rump-fed ronyon cries.”
Macbeth, act II sc. 3, line 6

—⁠Editor ↩
Or (to come to the point, like my friend Pulci).
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Hor., Epist. Ad Pisones, line 343. —⁠Editor ↩
—by fear or flattery.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Siria, i.e. bitch-star. ↩
I have seen⁠—no matter what⁠—we now shall see.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Parolles [see All’s Well That Ends Well, passim] is Brougham (vide ante, the suppressed stanzas, Canto I note 128). It is possible that this stanza was written after the Canto as a whole was finished. But, if not, an incident which took place in the House of Commons, April 17, 1823, during a debate on Catholic Emancipation, may be quoted in corroboration of Brougham’s unreadiness with regard to the point of honour. In the course of his speech he accused Canning of “monstrous truckling for the purpose of obtaining office,” and Canning, without waiting for Brougham to finish, gave him the lie:

“I rise to say that that is false.”
(Parl. Deb., N.S. vol. 8, p. 1091)

There was a “scene,” which ended in an exchange of explanations and quasi-apologies, and henceforth, as a rule, parliamentary insults were given and received without recourse to duelling. Byron was not aware that the “old order” had passed or was passing. Compare Hazlitt, in The Spirit of the Age, 1825, pp. 302, 303:

“He [Brougham] is adventurous, but easily panic-struck, and sacrifices the vanity of self-opinion to the necessity of self-preservation⁠ ⁠… himself the first to get out of harm’s way and escape from the danger;”

and Mr. Parthenopex Puff (W. Stewart Rose), in Vivian Grey (1826, I 186, 187),

“Oh! he’s a prodigious fellow! What do you think Booby says? he says, that Foaming Fudge [Brougham] can do more than any man in Great Britain; that he had one day to plead in the King’s Bench, spout at a tavern, speak in the House, and fight a duel⁠—and that he found time for everything but the last.”

—⁠Editor ↩
There was, too, Henry B⁠⸺.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
In his Journal for December 5, 1813, Byron writes:

“The Duke of ⸻ called.⁠ ⁠… His Grace is a good, noble, ducal person.”
(Letters, 1898, II 361)

Possibly the earlier “Duke of Dash” was William Spencer, sixth Duke of Devonshire, an old schoolfellow of Byron’s, who was eager to renew the acquaintance (Letters, 1899, III 98, note 2); and, if so, he may be reckoned as one of the guests of “Norman Abbey.” —⁠Editor ↩
Gronow (Reminiscences, 1889, I 234⁠–⁠240) identifies the Chevalier de la Ruse with Casimir Comte de Montrond (1768⁠–⁠1843), backstairs diplomatist, wit, gambler, and man of fashion. He was the lifelong companion, if not friend, of Talleyrand, who pleaded for him:

“Qui est-ce qui ne l’aimerait pas, il est si vicieux!”

At one time in the pay of Napoleon, he fell under his displeasure, and, to avoid arrest, spent two years of exile (1812⁠–⁠14) in England.

“He was not,” says Gronow, “a great talker, nor did he swagger⁠ ⁠… or laugh at his own bons-mots. He was demure, sleek, sly, and dangerous.⁠ ⁠… In the London clubs he went by the name of Old French.”

He was a constant guest of the Duke of York’s at Oatlands, “and won much at his whist-table” (English Whist, by W. P. Courtney, 1894, p. 181). For his second residence in England, and for a sketch by D’Orsay, see A Portion of the Journal, etc., by Thomas Raikes, 1857, frontispiece to vol. IV, et vols. I⁠–⁠IV passim. See, for biographical notice, L’Ami de M. de Talleyrand, par Henri Welschinger, La Revue de Paris, 1895, Fev., tom. I pp. 640⁠–⁠654. —⁠Editor ↩
Perhaps Sir James Mackintosh⁠—a frequent guest at Holland House. —⁠Editor ↩
Possibly Colonel (afterwards Sir James) Macdonell [d. 1857], “a man of colossal stature,” who occupied and defended the Château of Hougoumont on the night before the battle of Waterloo. (See Gronow, Reminiscences, 1889, I 76, 77.) —⁠Editor ↩
Sir George Prevost (1767⁠–⁠1816), the Governor-General of British North America, and nominally Commander-in-chief of the Army in the second American War, contributed, by his excess of caution, supineness, and delay, to the humiliation of the British forces. The particular allusion is to his alleged inaction at a critical moment in the engagement of September 11, 1814, between Commodore Macdonough and Captain Downie in Plattsburg Bay.

“A letter was sent to Capt. Downie, strongly urging him to come on, as the army had long been waiting for his cooperation.⁠ ⁠… The brave Downie replied that he required no urging to do his duty.⁠ ⁠… He was as good as his word. The guns were scaled when he got under way, upon hearing which Sir George issued an order for the troops to cook, instead of that of instant cooperation.”
—⁠To Editor of the Montreal Herald, May 23, 1815, Letters of Veritas, 1815, pp. 116, 117

See, too, The Quarterly Review, July, 1822, vol. XXVII p. 446. —⁠Editor ↩
George Hardinge (1744⁠–⁠1816), who was returned M.P. for Old Sarum in 1784, was appointed, in 1787, Senior Justice of the Counties of Brecon, Glamorgan, and Radnor. According to the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1816 (vol. LXXXVI. p. 563),

“In conversation he had few equals.⁠ ⁠… He delighted in pleasantries, and always afforded to his auditors abundance of mirth and entertainment as well as information.”

Byron seems to have supposed that these “pleasantries” found their way into his addresses to condemned prisoners, but if the charges printed in his Miscellaneous Works, edited by John Nichols in 1818, are reported in full, he was entirely mistaken. They are tedious, but the “waggery” is conspicuous by its absence. —⁠Editor ↩
With all his laurels growing upon one tree.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
John Philpot Curran (1750⁠–⁠1817).

“Did you know Curran?” asked Byron of Lady Blessington (Conversations, 1834, p. 176); “he was the most wonderful person I ever saw. In him was combined an imagination the most brilliant and profound, with a flexibility and wit that would have justified the observation applied to⁠—that his heart was in his head.”

(See, too, Detached Thoughts, No. 24, Letters, 1901, V 421.) —⁠Editor ↩
For Thomas Lord Erskine (1750⁠–⁠1823), see Letters, 1898, II 390, note 5. See, too, Detached Thoughts, No. 93, Letters, 1901, V 455, 456. In his Spirit of the Age, 1825, pp. 297, 298, Hazlitt contrasts “the impassioned appeals and flashes of wit of a Curran⁠ ⁠… the golden tide of wisdom, eloquence, and fancy of a Burke,” with the “dashing and graceful manner” which concealed the poverty and “deadness” of the matter of Erskine’s speeches. —⁠Editor ↩
—all classes mostly pull
At the same oar⁠—.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“Mrs. Adams answered Mr. Adams, that it was blasphemous to talk of Scripture out of church.”

This dogma was broached to her husband⁠—the best Christian in any book.⁠—See The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, Bk. IV chap. XI ed. 1876, p. 324. —⁠Editor ↩
—in the ripe age.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Probably Richard Sharp (1759⁠–⁠1835), known as “Conversation Sharp.” Byron frequently met him in society in 1813⁠–⁠14, and in “Extracts from a Diary,” January 9, 1821, Letters, 1901, V 161, describes him as “the Conversationist.” He visited Byron at the Villa Diodati in the autumn of 1816 (Life, p. 323). —⁠Editor ↩
Hamlet, act I sc. 5, line 22. —⁠Editor ↩
Nor bate (read bait)⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
See letters to the Earl of Blessington, April 5, 1823, Letters, 1891, VI 187. —⁠Editor ↩
But full of wisdom⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

A sort of rose entwining with a thistle.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Iliad, X 341, sq. —⁠Editor ↩
It would have taught him humanity at least. This sentimental savage, whom it is a mode to quote (amongst the novelists) to show their sympathy for innocent sports and old songs, teaches how to sew up frogs, and break their legs by way of experiment, in addition to the art of angling⁠—the cruelest, the coldest, and the stupidest of pretended sports. They may talk about the beauties of nature, but the angler merely thinks of his dish of fish; he has no leisure to take his eyes from off the streams, and a single bite is worth to him more than all the scenery around. Besides, some fish bite best on a rainy day. The whale, the shark, and the tunny fishery have somewhat of noble and perilous in them; even net fishing, trawling, etc., are more humane and useful. But angling!⁠—no angler can be a good man.

“One of the best men I ever knew⁠—as humane, delicate-minded, generous, and excellent a creature as any in the world⁠—was an angler: true, he angled with painted flies, and would have been incapable of the extravagancies of I. Walton.”

The above addition was made by a friend in reading over the MS.⁠—“Audi alteram partem.”⁠—I leave it to counterbalance my own observation. ↩
B. Fy. 19th 1823. —⁠[MS.] ↩
Fry. 23, 1814 (sic). —⁠[MS.] ↩
Compare⁠—

“Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be.”
Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”

—⁠Editor ↩
With this open mind with regard to the future, compare Charles Kingsley’s “reverent curiosity” (Letters and Memoirs, etc., 1883, p. 349). —⁠Editor ↩
“We usually try which way the wind bloweth, by casting up grass or chaff, or such light things into the air.”
—⁠Bacon’s Natural History, No. 820, Works, 1740, III 168

—⁠Editor ↩
“The World was all before them.”
Paradise Lost, bk. XII line 646

—⁠Editor ↩
“But why then publish?⁠—Granville, the polite,
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write.”
Pope, “Prologue to Satires,” lines 135, 136

—⁠Editor ↩
Virg., Aen., II 91 “(Haud ignota);” et Aen., line 6. —⁠Editor ↩
Hor., Od. III 2. 26. —⁠Editor ↩
And though by no means overpowered with riches,
Would gladly place beneath it my last rag of breeches.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Craning.⁠—“To crane” is, or was, an expression used to denote a gentleman’s stretching out his neck over a hedge, “to look before he leaped;”⁠—a pause in his “vaulting ambition,” which in the field doth occasion some delay and execration in those who may be immediately behind the equestrian sceptic. “Sir, if you don’t choose to take the leap, let me!”⁠—was a phrase which generally sent the aspirant on again; and to good purpose: for though “the horse and rider” might fall, they made a gap through which, and over him and his steed, the field might follow. ↩
The sulky Huntsman grimly said “The Frenchman
Was almost worthy to become his henchman.”
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
And what not⁠—though he had ridden like a Centaur
When called next day declined the same adventure.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Mr. W. Ernst, in his Memoirs of the Life of Lord Chesterfield, 1893 (p. 425, note 2), quotes these lines in connection with a comparison between French and English sport, contained in a letter from Lord Chesterfield to his son, dated June 30, 1751:

“The French manner of hunting is gentlemanlike; ours is only for bumpkins and boobies.”

Elsewhere, however (The World, No. 92, October 3, 1754), commenting on a remark of Pascal’s, he admits “that the jolly sportsman⁠ ⁠… improves his health, at least, by his exercise.” —⁠Editor ↩
“… as she skimm’d along,
Her flying feet unbath’d on billows hung.”
Dryden’s Virgil (Aen., VII 1101, 1102)

—⁠Editor ↩
See Poetical Works, 1898, I 492, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
Guido’s fresco of the Aurora, “scattering flowers before the chariot of the sun” is on a ceiling of the Casino in the Palazzo Rospigliosi, in Rome. —⁠Editor ↩
Byron described Count Alfred D’Orsay as having “all the airs of a Cupidon déchaîné.” See letters to Moore and the Earl of Blessington, April 2, 1823, Letters, 1901, VI 180, 185. —⁠Editor ↩
In Swift’s or Horace Walpole’s letters I think it is mentioned that somebody, regretting the loss of a friend, was answered by an universal Pylades: “When I lose one, I go to the Saint James’s Coffeehouse, and take another.” I recollect having heard an anecdote of the same kind.⁠—Sir W. D. was a great gamester. Coming in one day to the Club of which he was a member, he was observed to look melancholy.⁠—“What is the matter, Sir William?” cried Hare, of facetious memory.⁠—“Ah!” replied Sir W., “I have just lost poor Lady D.”⁠—“Lost! What at? Quinze or Hazard?” was the consolatory rejoinder of the querist.

[The dramatis personae are probably Sir William Drummond (1770⁠–⁠1828), author of the Academical Questions, etc., and Francis Hare, the wit, known as the “ ‘Silent Hare,’ from his extreme loquacity.” —⁠Gronow’s Reminiscences, 1889, II 98⁠–⁠101] ↩
They own that you are fairly dished at last.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
The famous Chancellor [Axel Oxenstiern (1583⁠–⁠1654)] said to his son, on the latter expressing his surprise upon the great effects arising from petty causes in the presumed mystery of politics:

“You see by this, my son, with how little wisdom the kingdoms of the world are governed.”

[The story is that his son John, who had been sent to represent him at the Congress of Westphalia, 1648, wrote home to complain that the task was beyond him, and that he could not cope with the difficulties which he was encountering, and that the Chancellor replied,

“Nescis, mi fili, quantillâ prudentiâ homines regantur.”
—⁠Biographie Universelle, art. “Oxenstierna”]

↩
Who are our sureties that our moral pure is.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
And not to encourage whispering in the house.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Once upon a time, Tiresias, who was shepherding on Mount Cyllene, wantonly stamped with his heel on a pair of snakes, and was straightway turned into a woman. Seven years later he was led to treat another pair of snakes in like fashion, and, happily or otherwise, was turned back into a man. Hence, when Jupiter and Juno fell to wrangling on the comparative enjoyments of men and women, the question was referred to Tiresias, as a person of unusual experience and authority. He gave it in favour of the woman, and Juno, who was displeased at his answer, struck him with blindness. But Jupiter, to make amends, gave him the “liberty of prophesying” for seven, some say nine, generations. (See Ovid, Metam., III 320; and Thomas Muncker’s notes on the Fabulae of Hyginus, No. LXXV ed. 1681, pp. 126⁠–⁠128.) —⁠Editor ↩
Midsummer Night’s Dream, act II sc. I, line 168. —⁠Editor ↩
See La Nouvelle Héloïse. ↩
Hor., Epod., II line 1. ↩
The Latin proverb, Noscitur ex sociis, is not an Horatian maxim. —⁠Editor ↩
I, therefore, deal in generals⁠—which is wise.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
See Sheridan’s Critic (“Tilburina” loq.), act III s.f. —⁠Editor ↩
For “the coxcomb Czar⁠ ⁠… the somewhat agèd youth,” see The Age of Bronze, lines 434⁠–⁠483, Poetical Works, 1901, V 563, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
Compare Sardanapalus, act I sc. 2, line 1, ibid., p. 15, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
Compare Childe Harold, Canto III stanza LXXI line 3, Poetical Works, 1899, II 261, 300, note 17. —⁠Editor ↩
Or Germany⁠—she knew nought of all this
Impracticable, novel-reading trance.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Even there⁠—as in relationship will hold,
And make the feeling of a finer mood.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“These violent delights have violent ends,
And in their triumph die.”
Romeo and Juliet, act II sc. 6, lines 9, 10

—⁠Editor ↩
Alas! I quote experience⁠—seldom yet
I had a paramour⁠—and I’ve had many⁠—
Whom I had not some reason to regret⁠—
For whom I did not make myself a Zany.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
I also had a wife⁠—not to forget
The marriage state⁠—the best or worst of any,
Who was the very paragon of wives
Yet mad the misery of many
both our
several lives.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Lady Holland, Lady Jersey, Madame de Staël, and before and above all, his sister, Mrs. Leigh. —⁠Editor ↩
I also had some female friends⁠—by G‑d!
Or if the oath seem strong⁠—I swear by Jove!
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Who stuck to me⁠—.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Byron must have been among the first to naturalize the French milliard (a thousand millions), which was used by Voltaire. —⁠Editor ↩
Othello, act I sc. 3, line 140. —⁠Editor ↩
B. March 4th 1823. —⁠[MS.] ↩
It is impossible to persuade the metaphor to march “on all-fours,” but, to drag it home, by a kind of “frog’s march,” the unfulfilled wants of the soul, the “lurking thoughts” are as it were bubbles, which we would fain “break on the invisible Ocean” of Passion or Emotion the begetter of bubbles⁠—Passion which, like the visible Ocean, images Eternity and portrays, but not to the sensual eye, the beatific vision of the things which are not seen, and, even so, “ministers to the Soul’s delight”! But “who can tell”? —⁠Editor ↩
While all without’s indicative of rest.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
A thing on which dull Time should never print age,
For whom stern Nature should forego her debt.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Ransom and Morland were Byron’s bankers. Douglas Kinnaird was a partner in the firm. (See Letters, 1898, II 85, note 2.) —⁠Editor ↩
Old Skeleton with ages for your booty.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“He turned himself into all manner of forms with more ease than the chameleon changes his colour.⁠ ⁠… Thus at Sparta he was all for exercise, frugal in his diet, and severe in his manners. In Asia he was as much for mirth and pleasure, luxury and ease.”
—⁠Plutarch, Alcibiades, Langhorne’s translation, 1838, p. 150

—⁠Editor ↩
For the phrase “Cupidon Déchaîné,” applied to Count D’Orsay, vide ante, note 1078. —⁠Editor ↩
Plautus, Truculentus, act II sc. 8, line 14. —⁠Editor ↩
Raphael’s Transfiguration is in the Vatican. —⁠Editor ↩
As it is necessary in these times to avoid ambiguity, I say that I mean, by “Diviner still,” Christ. If ever God was man⁠—or man God⁠—he was both. I never arraigned his creed, but the use⁠—or abuse made of it. Mr. Canning one day quoted Christianity to sanction negro slavery, and Mr. Wilberforce had little to say in reply. And was Christ crucified, that black men might be scourged? If so, He had better been born a Mulatto, to give both colours an equal chance of freedom, or at least salvation.

[In a debate in the House of Commons, May 15, 1823 (Parl. Deb., N.S. vol. IX pp. 278, 279), Canning, replying to Fowell Buxton’s motion for the Abolition of Slavery, said,

“God forbid that I should contend that the Christian religion is favourable to slavery⁠ ⁠… but if it be meant that in the Christian religion there is a special denunciation against slavery, that slavery and Christianity cannot exist together⁠—I think that the honourable gentleman himself must admit that the proposition is historically false.”]

↩
—and One Name Greater still
Whose lot it was to be the most mistaken.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
To leave the world by bigot fashions shaken.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Which never flatters either Whig or Tory.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Martial, Epig., X 46. —⁠Editor ↩
“Feeble” for “foible” is found in the writings of Mrs. Behn and Sir R. L’Estrange (N. Engl. Dict.). —⁠Editor ↩
But now I can’t tell when it will be done.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
The N. Engl. Dict. quotes W. Hooper’s Rational Recreations (1794) as an earlier authority for the use of “concision” in the sense of conciseness. —⁠Editor ↩
Who now are weltering⁠—.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“The cat will mew and dog will have his day.”
Hamlet, act V sc. 1, line 280

—⁠Editor ↩
I should not be the foremost to deride
Their fault⁠—but quickly take a sword the other way,
And wax an Ultra-royalist, where Royalty
Had nothing left it but a desperate Loyalty.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“And hold no sin so deeply red
As that of breaking Priscian’s head.”
Butler’s Hudibras, Part II Canto II lines 223, 224

—⁠Editor ↩
Brougham, in the famous critique of Hours of Idleness (Edinburgh Review, January, 1808, vol. XI pp. 285⁠–⁠289), was pleased “to counsel him that he do forthwith abandon poetry and turn his talents, which are considerable, and his opportunities, which are great, to better account.” Others, however, gave him encouragement. See, for instance, a review by J. H. Markland, who afterwards made his name as editor of the Roxburgh Club issue of the Chester Mysteries (whence, perhaps, Byron derived his knowledge of “Mysteries and Moralities”), which concludes thus:

“Heartily hoping that the ‘illness and depression of spirits,’ which evidently pervade the greater part of these effusions, are entirely dispelled; confident that ‘George Gordon, Lord Byron’ will have a conspicuous niche in the future editions of ‘Royal and Noble Authors,’ etc.”
—⁠Gent. Mag., 1807, vol. LXXVII p. 1217

—⁠Editor ↩
To marshal onwards to the Delphian Height.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“Three small vessels were apparently all that Columbus had requested. Two of them were light barques, called caravels, not superior to river and coasting craft of more modern days.⁠ ⁠… That such long and perilous expeditions into unknown seas, should be undertaken in vessels without decks, and that they should live through the violent tempests by which they were frequently assailed, remain among the singular circumstances of those daring voyages.”
—⁠History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, by Washington Irving, 1831, I 78

—⁠Editor ↩
As Women seldom think by halves⁠—.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
This extraordinary and flourishing German colony in America does not entirely exclude matrimony, as the “Shakers” do; but lays such restrictions upon it as prevents more than a certain quantum of births within a certain number of years; which births (as Mr. Hulme [perhaps Thomas Hulme, whose Journal is quoted in Hints to Emigrants, 1817, pp. 5⁠–⁠18] observes) generally arrive “in a little flock like those of a farmer’s lambs, all within the same month perhaps.” These Harmonists (so called from the name of their settlement) are represented as a remarkably flourishing, pious, and quiet people. See the various recent writers on America.

[The Harmonists were emigrants from Würtemburg, who settled (1803⁠–⁠1805) under the auspices of George Rapp, in a township 120 miles north of Philadelphia. This they sold, and “trekked” westwards to Indiana. One of their customs was to keep watch by nights and to cry the hours to this tune:

“Again a day is past and a step made nearer to our end. Our time runs away, and the joys of Heaven are our reward.”
(See The Philanthropist, No. XX, 1815, vol. V, pp. 277⁠–⁠288)]

↩
Which test I leave unto the Lords spiritual.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Jacob Tonson, according to Mr. Pope, was accustomed to call his writers “able pens,” “persons of honour,” and, especially, “eminent hands.” Vide Correspondence, etc., etc.

[“Perhaps I should myself be much better pleased, if I were told you called me your little friend, than if you complimented me with the title of a ‘great genius,’ or an eminent hand, as Jacob does all his authors.”
—⁠Pope to Steele, November 29, 1712, Works of Alexander Pope, 1871, VI 396]

↩
See D’Israeli’s Curiosities of Literature, 1841, pp. 450⁠–⁠452, and the Dissertation prefixed to Francis Douce’s edition of Holbein’s Dance of Death, 1858, pp. 1⁠–⁠218. —⁠Editor ↩
—Miss Allman and Miss Noman.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
—that smooth placid sea
Which did not show and yet concealed a storm.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Compare Childe Harold, Canto IV stanza LIX line 3, Poetical Works, 1899, II 374, note 2. —⁠Editor ↩
“… And, under him,
My Genius is rebuked; as it is said
Mark Antony’s was by Caesar.”
Macbeth, act III, sc. 1, lines 54⁠–⁠56

—⁠Editor ↩
Warison⁠—cri-de-guerre⁠—note of assault:⁠—

“Either receive within these towers
Two hundred of my master’s powers,
Or straight they sound their warrison,
And storm and spoil this garrison.”
Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto IV stanza XXIV, lines 17⁠–⁠20

—⁠Editor ↩
And adds a third to what was late a pair.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Compare:

“Life’s a jest, and all things show it;
I thought so once, and now I know it.”
Gay’s Epitaph

—⁠Editor ↩
For “Potage à la bonne femme,” “Dindon à la Périgueux,” “Soupe à la Beauveau,” “Le dorey garni d’éperlans frits,” “Le cuisseau de pore à demi sel, garni de choux,” “Le salmi de perdreaux à l’Espagnole,” “Les bécasses,” see “Bill of Fare for November,” The French Cook, by Louis Eustache Ude, 1813, p. VIII. For “Les poulardes à la Condé,” “Le jambon de Westphalie à l’Espagnole,” “Les petites timballes d’un salpicon à la Monglas” (?Montglat), “Les filets de perdreaux sautés à la Lucullus,” vide ibid., p. IX, and for “Petits puits d’amour garnis de confitures,” vide Plate of Second Course (to face) p. VI. —⁠Editor ↩
Alexander the Great. —⁠Editor ↩
A dish “à la Lucullus.” This hero, who conquered the East, has left his more extended celebrity to the transplantation of cherries (which he first brought into Europe), and the nomenclature of some very good dishes;⁠—and I am not sure that (barring indigestion) he has not done more service to mankind by his cookery than by his conquests. A cherry tree may weigh against a bloody laurel; besides, he has contrived to earn celebrity from both.

[According to Pliny (Nat. Hist., lib. XV cap. XXV ed. 1593, II 131), there were no cherry trees in Italy until L. Lucullus brought them home with him from Pontus after the Mithridatic War (BC 74), and it was not for another hundred and twenty years that the cherry tree crossed the Channel and was introduced into Britain.] ↩
“Petits puits d’amour garnis de confitures,”⁠—a classical and well-known dish for part of the flank of a second course [vide ante, stanza LXIII]. ↩
“Today in a palace, tomorrow in a cow-house⁠—this day with a Pacha, the next with a shepherd.”⁠—Letter to his mother, July 30, 1810, Letters, 1898, I 295. —⁠Editor ↩
No lady but a dish⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
“This construction (‘commence’ with the infinitive) has been objected to by stylists,” says the New English Dictionary (see art. “Commence”). Its use is sanctioned by the authority of Pope, Landor, Helps, and Lytton; but even so, it is questionable, if not objectionable. —⁠Editor ↩
Sweet Lord! she was so sagely innocent.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
Subauditur “non;” omitted for the sake of euphony. ↩
John Scott, Earl of Eldon, Lord Chancellor, 1801 to 1827, sat as judge (November 7, 1822) to hear the petition of Henry Wallop Fellowes, that a commission of inquiry should be issued to ascertain whether his uncle, Lord Portsmouth (who married Mary Anne Hanson, the daughter of Byron’s solicitor), was of sound mind, “and capable of managing his own person and property.” The Chancellor gave judgment that a commission be issued, and the jury, February, 1823, returned a verdict that Lord Portsmouth had been a lunatic since 1809. (See Letters, 1898, II 393, note 3, et Letters, 1901, VI 170, note I.) —⁠Editor ↩
Hecla is a famous hot-spring in Iceland. [Byron seems to mistake the volcano for the Geysers.] ↩
Hamlet, act III sc. 2, line 367. —⁠Editor ↩
“By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard
Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers,” etc.
Richard III, act V sc. 3, lines 216⁠–⁠218

—⁠Editor ↩
Hobbes: who, doubting of his own soul, paid that compliment to the souls of other people as to decline their visits, of which he had some apprehension.

[Bayle (see art. “Hobbes” [Dict. Crit. and Hist., 1736, III 471, note N.]) quotes from Vita Hobb., p. 106: “He was as falsely accused by some of being unwilling to be alone, because he was afraid of spectres and apparitions, vain bugbears of fools, which he had chased away by the light of his Philosophy,” and proceeds to argue that, perhaps, after all, Hobbes was afraid of the dark. “He was timorous to the last degree, and consequently he had reason to distrust his imagination when he was alone in a chamber in the night; for in spite of him the memory of what he had read and heard concerning apparitions would revive, though he was not persuaded of the reality of these things.” See, however, for his own testimony that he was “not afrayd of sprights,” Letters and Lives of Eminent Persons, by John Aubrey, 1813, vol. II pt. II p. 624.] ↩
Hamlet, act IV sc. 5, lines 41, 42. —⁠Editor ↩
End of Canto 15th. Mch. 25, 1823. B. —⁠[MS.] ↩
March 29, 1823. ↩
Herodotus, Hist., I 136. —⁠Editor ↩
Hamlet, act II sc. 2, line 103. —⁠Editor ↩
The story is told of St. Thomas Aquinas, that he wrote a work De Omnibus Rebus, which was followed by a second treatise, De Quibusdam Aliis. —⁠Editor ↩
Not St. Augustine, but Tertullian. See his treatise, De Carne Christi, cap. V c. (Opera, 1744, p. 310): “Crucifixus est Dei filius: non pudet, quia pudendum est: et mortuus est Dei filius: prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est: et sepultus resurrexit: certum est quia impossibile est.” —⁠Editor ↩
“That the dead are seen no more,” said Imlac, “I will not undertake to maintain, against the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages, and of all nations. There is no people, rude or unlearned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion, which perhaps prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth; those that never heard of one another would not have agreed in a tale which nothing but experience can make credible. That it is doubted by single cavillers, can very little weaken the general evidence; and some, who deny it with their tongues, confess it with their fears.”
—⁠Rasselas, chap. XXX, Works, ed. 1806, III 372, 373

—⁠Editor ↩
The composition of the old Tyrian purple, whether from a shellfish, or from cochineal, or from kermes, is still an article of dispute; and even its colour⁠—some say purple, others scarlet: I say nothing.

[Kermes is cochineal, the Greek κόκκινον. The shellfish (murex) is the Purpura patula. Both substances were used as dyes.] ↩
See Ovid, Heroid, Epist. IX line 161. —⁠Editor ↩
Titus used to promise to “bear in mind,” “to keep on his list,” the petitions of all his supplicants, and once, at dinnertime, his conscience smote him, that he had let a day go by without a single grant, or pardon, or promotion. Hence his confession. “Amici, diem perdidi!” Vide Suetonius, De XII Caes., “Titus,” lib. VIII cap. 8. —⁠Editor ↩
Tuism is not in Johnson’s Dictionary. Coleridge has a note dated 1800 (Literary Remains, I 292), on “egotizing in tuism” but it was not included in Southey’s Omniana of 1812, and must have been unknown to Byron. —⁠Editor ↩
Sc. toilette, a Gallicism. —⁠Editor ↩
Byron loved to make fact and fancy walk together, but, here, his memory played him false, or his art kept him true. The Black Friar walked and walks in the Guests’ Refectory (or Banqueting Hall, or “Gallery” of this stanza), which adjoins the Prior’s Parlour, but the room where Byron slept (in a four-post bed⁠—a coronet, at each corner, atop) is on the floor above the Prior’s Parlour, and can only be approached by a spiral staircase. Both rooms look west, and command a view of the “lake’s billow” and the “cascade.” Moreover, the Guests’ Refectory was never hung with “old pictures.” It would seem that Don Juan (perhaps Byron on an emergency) slept in the Prior’s Parlour, and that in the visionary Newstead the pictures forsook the Grand Drawing-Room for the Hall. Hence the scene! El Libertado steps out of the Gothic Chamber “forth” into the “gallery,” and lo! “a monk in cowl and beads.” But, Quien sabe? The Psalmist’s caution with regard to princes is not inapplicable to poets. —⁠Editor ↩
Compare Mariner’s description of the cave in Hoonga Island (Poetical Works, 1901, V 629, note 1). —⁠Editor ↩
“The place,” wrote Byron to Moore, August 13, 1814, “is worth seeing as a ruin, and I can assure you there was some fun there, even in my time; but that is past. The ghosts, however, and the Gothics, and the waters, and the desolation, make it very lively still.”

“It was,” comments Moore (Life, p. 262, note 1), “if I mistake not, during his recent visit to Newstead, that he himself actually fancied he saw the ghost of the Black Friar, which was supposed to have haunted the Abbey from the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, and which he thus describes from the recollection, perhaps, of his own fantasy, in Don Juan.⁠ ⁠… It is said that the Newstead ghost appeared, also, to Lord Byron’s cousin, Miss Fanny Parkins, and that she made a sketch of him from memory.”

The legend of the Black Friar may, it is believed at Newstead (et vide post, “Song,” stanza II line 5, p. 583), be traced to the alarm and suspicion of the country-folk, who, on visiting the Abbey, would now and then catch sight of an aged lay-brother, or monkish domestic, who had been retained in the service of the Byrons long after the Canons had been “turned adrift.” He would naturally keep out of sight of a generation who knew not monks, and, when surprised in the cloisters or ruins of the church, would glide back to his own quarters in the dormitories. —⁠Editor ↩
“Show his eyes, and grieve his heart;
Come like shadows, so depart.”
Macbeth, act IV sc. 1, lines 110, 111

—⁠Editor ↩
With that she rose as graceful as a Roe
Slips from the mountain in the month of June,
And opening her Piano ’gan to play
Forthwith⁠—“It was a Friar of Orders Gray.”
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
By their bed of death he receives their [breath].
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
I think that it was a carpet on which Diogenes trod, with⁠—“Thus I trample on the pride of Plato!”⁠—“With greater pride,” as the other replied. But as carpets are meant to be trodden upon, my memory probably misgives me, and it might be a robe, or tapestry, or a tablecloth, or some other expensive and uncynical piece of furniture.

[It was Plato’s couch or lounge which Diogenes stamped upon. “So much for Plato’s pride!” “And how much for yours, Diogenes?” “Calco Platonis fastum!” “Ast fastu alio?” (Vide Diogenis Laertii De Vita et Sententiis, lib. VI ed. 1595, p. 321.)

For “Attic Bee,” vide Cic. I De Div., XXXVI § 78,

“At Platoni cum in cunis parvulo dormienti apes in labellis consedissent, responsum est, singulari illum suavitate orationis fore.”]

↩
For two translations of this Portuguese song, see Poetical Works, 1900, III 71. —⁠Editor ↩
I remember that the mayoress of a provincial town, somewhat surfeited with a similar display from foreign parts, did rather indecorously break through the applauses of an intelligent audience⁠—intelligent, I mean, as to music⁠—for the words, besides being in recondite languages (it was some years before the peace, ere all the world had travelled, and while I was a collegian), were sorely disguised by the performers:⁠—this mayoress, I say, broke out with, “Rot your Italianos! for my part, I loves a simple ballat!” Rossini will go a good way to bring most people to the same opinion some day. Who would imagine that he was to be the successor of Mozart? However, I state this with diffidence, as a liege and loyal admirer of Italian music in general, and of much of Rossini’s; but we may say, as the connoisseur did of painting in The Vicar of Wakefield, that “the picture would be better painted if the painter had taken more pains.”

[A little while, and Rossini is being lauded at the expense of a degenerate modern rival. Compare Browning’s Bishop Blougram’s Apology. “Where sits Rossini patient in his stall.” —⁠Poetical Works, ed. 1868, V 276] ↩
Compare The Two Foscari, act III sc. 1, line 172, Poetical Works, 1901, V 159, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
Of Lady Beaumont, who was “weak enough” to admire Wordsworth, see “The Blues,” Ecl. II line 47, sq., Poetical Works, 1901, IV 582. —⁠Editor ↩
Christopher Anstey (1724⁠–⁠1802) published his New Bath Guide in 1766. —⁠Editor ↩
Compare English Bards, etc., lines 309⁠–⁠318, Poetical Works, 1898, I 321, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
For “Gynocracy,” vide ante, note 968. —⁠Editor ↩
Thrower down of buildings⁠—.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Byron had, no doubt, inspected the plan of Colonel Wildman’s elaborate restoration of the Abbey, which was carried out at a cost of one hundred thousand pounds (see stanza LIX lines 1, 2). The kitchen and domestic offices, which extended at right angles to the west front of the Abbey (see “Newstead from a Picture by Peter Tilleman, circ. 1720” Letters, 1898, I (to face p.) 216), were pulled down and rebuilt, the massive Sussex Tower (so named in honour of H. R. H. the Duke of Sussex) was erected at the southwest corner of the Abbey, and the south front was, in part, rebuilt and redecorated. Byron had been ready to “leave everything” with regard to his beloved Newstead to Wildman’s “own feelings, present or future” (see his letter, November 18, 1818, Letters, 1900, IV 270); but when the time came, the necessary and, on the whole, judicious alterations of his successor, must have cost the “banished Lord” many a pang. —⁠Editor ↩
“Ausu Romano, sere Veneto” is the inscription (and well inscribed in this instance) on the sea walls between the Adriatic and Venice. The walls were a republican work of the Venetians; the inscription, I believe, Imperial; and inscribed by Napoleon the First. It is time to continue to him that title⁠—there will be a second by and by, “Spes altera mundi,” if he live; let him not defeat it like his father. But in any case, he will be preferable to “Imbéciles.” There is a glorious field for him, if he know how to cultivate it.

[Francis Charles Joseph Napoleon, Duke of Reichstadt, died at Vienna, July 22, 1832. But, none the less, Byron’s prophecy was fulfilled.] ↩
Burgage, or tenure in burgage, is where the king or some other person is lord of an ancient borough, in which the tenements are held by a yearly rent certain. —⁠Editor ↩
“I conjure you, by that which you profess,
(Howe’er you come to know it) answer me:
Though you untie the winds, and let them fight
Against the churches.”
Macbeth, act IV sc. 1, lines 50⁠–⁠53

—⁠Editor ↩
See the lines “To my Son,” Poetical Works, 1898, I 260, note 1. —⁠Editor ↩
See Spenser’s Faëry Queen, Book I Canto IX stanza 6, line 1. —⁠Editor ↩
To name what passes for a puzzle rather,
Although there must be such a thing⁠—a father.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“Rather than so, come, Fate, into the list,
And champion me to the utterance.”
Macbeth, act III sc. 1, lines 70, 71

—⁠Editor ↩
For “Septemberers (Septembriseurs),” see Carlyle’s French Revolution, 1839, III 50. —⁠Editor ↩
“Query, Sydney Smith, author of Peter Plymley’s Letters?⁠—Printer’s Devil.”⁠—Ed. 1833. Byron must have met Sydney Smith (1771⁠–⁠1845) at Holland House. The “fat fen vicarage” (vide infra, stanza LXXXII line 8) was Foston-le-Clay (Foston, All Saints), near Barton Hill, Yorkshire, which Lord Chancellor Erskine presented to Sydney Smith in 1806. The “living” consisted of “three hundred acres of glebe-land of the stiffest clay,” and there was no parsonage house.⁠—See A Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith, by Lady Holland, 1855, I 100⁠–⁠107. —⁠Editor ↩
“Observe, also, three grotesque figures in the blank arches of the gable which forms the eastern end of St. Hugh’s Chapel,” and of these, “one is popularly said to represent the ‘Devil looking over Lincoln.’ ”
—⁠Handbook to the Cathedrals of England, by R. J. King, Eastern Division, p. 394, note X

The devil looked over Lincoln because the unexampled height of the central tower of the cathedral excited his envy and alarm; or, as Fuller (Worthies: Lincolnshire) has it, “overlooked this church, when first finished, with a torve and tetrick countenance, as maligning men’s costly devotions.” So, at least, the vanity of later ages interpreted the saying; but a time was when the devil “looked over” Lincoln to some purpose, for in AD 1185 an earthquake clave the Church of Remigius in twain, and in 1235 a great part of the central tower, which had been erected by Bishop Hugh de Wells, fell and injured the rest of the building. —⁠Editor ↩
For laughter rarely shakes these aguish folks.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
Took down the gay bon-mot.⁠—
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
To hammer half a laugh⁠—.
—⁠[MS. erased]

↩
“There’s a difference to be seen between a beggar and a Queen;
And I’ll tell you the reason why;
A Queen does not swagger, nor get drunk like a beggar,
Nor be half so merry as I,” etc.

“There’s a difference to be seen, ’twixt a Bishop and a Dean,
And I’ll tell you the reason why;
A Dean can not dish up a dinner like a Bishop,
And that’s the reason why!”

—⁠Editor ↩
“Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus.”
Terentius, Eun., act IV sc. 5, line 6

—⁠Editor ↩
In French “mobilité.” I am not sure that mobility is English; but it is expressive of a quality which rather belongs to other climates, though it is sometimes seen to a great extent in our own. It may be defined as an excessive susceptibility of immediate impressions⁠—at the same time without losing the past: and is, though sometimes apparently useful to the possessor, a most painful and unhappy attribute.

[“That he was fully aware not only of the abundance of this quality in his own nature, but of the danger in which it placed consistency and singleness of character, did not require the note on this passage to assure us. The consciousness, indeed, of his own natural tendency to yield thus to every chance impression, and change with every passing impulse, was not only forever present in his mind, but⁠ ⁠… had the effect of keeping him in that general line of consistency, on certain great subjects, which⁠ ⁠… he continued to preserve throughout life.”
—⁠Life, p. 646

“Mobility” is not the tendency to yield to every impression, to change with every impulse, but the capability of being moved by many and various impressions, of responding to an ever-renewed succession of impulses. Byron is defending the enthusiastic temperament from the charge of inconstancy and insincerity.] ↩
The first edition of Cocker’s Arithmetic was published in 1677. There are many allusions to Cocker in Arthur Murphy’s Apprentice (1756), whence, perhaps, the saying, “according to Cocker.” —⁠Editor ↩
“[Et Horatii] Curiosa felicitas.”
—⁠Petronius Arbiter, Salyricôn, cap. CXVIII

↩
“Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer.”
Pope on Addison, “Prologue to the Satires,” lines 201, 202

—⁠Editor ↩
Bion, “Epitaphium Adonidis,” line 28. —⁠Editor ↩
“… genetrix hominum, divômque voluptas, Alma Venus!”
Lucret., De Rerum Nat., lib. I lines 1, 2

—⁠Editor ↩
Job 4:13. —⁠Editor ↩
See the account of the ghost of the uncle of Prince Charles of Saxony, raised by Schroepfer⁠—

“Karl⁠—Karl⁠—was willst du mit mir?”

[For Johann Georg Schrepfer (1730(?)⁠–⁠1774), see J. S. B. Schlegel’s Tagebuch, etc., 1806, and Schwärmer und Schwindler, von Dr. Eugen Sierke, 1874, pp. 298⁠–⁠332.] ↩
Inferno, Canto III line 9. —⁠Editor ↩
When once discovered it don’t like to come near it.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
A beardless chin⁠—.
—⁠[MS.]

↩
End of Canto 16. B. My. 6, 1823. [⁠—MS.] —⁠Editor ↩
May 8, 1823.⁠—MS. More than one “Seventeenth Canto,” or so-called continuation of Don Juan, has been published. Some of these “Sequels” pretend to be genuine, while others are undisguisedly imitations or parodies. For an account of these spurious and altogether worthless continuations, see “Bibliography,” vol. VII. There was, however, a foundation for the myth. Before Byron left Italy he had begun (May 8, 1823) a seventeenth canto, and when he sailed for Greece he took the new stanzas with him. Trelawny found “fifteen stanzas of the seventeenth canto of Don Juan” in Byron’s room at Missolonghi (Recollections, etc., 1858, p. 237). The MS., together with other papers, was handed over to John Cam Hobhouse, and is now in the possession of his daughter, the Lady Dorchester. The copyright was purchased by the late John Murray. The fourteen (not fifteen) stanzas are now printed and published for the first time. —⁠Editor ↩
The Italians, at least in some parts of Italy, call bastards and foundlings the mules⁠—why, I cannot see, unless they mean to infer that the offspring of matrimony are asses. ↩
For Brougham’s Fabian tactics with regard to duelling, vide post, Canto XIII stanza LXXXIV line 1, note 1040. —⁠Editor ↩
Vide post, Canto XIII stanza LXXXIV line 1, note 1040. —⁠Editor ↩
For “Captain Bobadill, a Paul’s man,” see Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour, act IV sc. 5, et passim. —⁠Editor ↩
The N. Eng. Dict., quotes a passage in Phil. Trans., IV 286 (1669), as the latest instance of “courtisan” for “courtier.” —⁠Editor ↩
Possibly George Manners (1778⁠–⁠1853), editor of The Satirist, whose appointment to a foreign consulate Brougham sharply criticized in the House of Commons, July 9, 1817 (Parl. Deb., vol. XXXVI pp. 1320, 1321); and Daniel Mackinnon (1791⁠–⁠1836), the nephew of Henry Mackinnon, who fell at Ciudad Rodrigo. Byron met “Dan” Mackinnon at Lisbon in 1809, and (Gronow, Reminiscences, 1889, II 259, 260) was amused by his “various funny stories.” —⁠Editor ↩
Byron’s town-house, in 1815⁠–⁠1816, No. 13, Piccadilly, belonged to the Duchess of Devonshire. When he went abroad in April, 1816, the rent was still unpaid. The duchess, through her agent, distrained, but was unable to recover the debt. See Byron’s “Letter to Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire,” November 3, 1817, Letters, 1900, IV 178. ↩
“To the Publisher. Take of these varieties which is thought best. I have no choice.”

—⁠Editor ↩
If the Turkish words are correctly given, “the oath” may be an imprecation on “your mother’s” chastity. —⁠Editor ↩
To wit, the Deity’s: this is perhaps as pretty a pedigree for murder as ever was found out by Garter King at Arms.⁠—What would have been said, had any free-spoken people discovered such a lineage? ↩
Note. By particular licence, “positively for the last time, by desire,” etc., to be pronounced “tydger.” Such is what Gifford calls “the necessity of rhyming.” —⁠[MS. erased] ↩

Rosalind	Is the fool sick?
Biron	Sick at heart.
Ros	Alack, let it blood.