His

The

Line 102. Let their mouths be gagg'd. torical fact. Page 542, line 308. Conscript fathers. Venetian senate took the same title as the Roman, of conscript fathers.'

Page 544, lines 450, 451. Like to the courtesan Who fired Persepolis. [At the instigation of Thais, Alexander set fire to Persepolis after a revel in 331 B. C.]

Page 548, line 704. 'Tis with age, then. This was the actual reply of Bailli [Jean Bailly, who was guillotined November 10, 1793], maire of Paris, to a Frenchman who made him the same reproach on his way to execution, in the earliest part of their revolution. I find in reading over (since the completion of this tragedy), for the first time these six years, Venice Preserved, a similar reply on a different occasion by Renault, and other coincidences arising from the subject. I need hardly remind the gentlest reader, that such coincidences must be accidental, from the very facility of their detection by reference to so popular a play on the stage and in the closet as Otway's chef-d'œuvre.

Line 754. When the Hebrew 's in thy palaces. The chief palaces on the Brenta now belong to the Jews.

Page 549, line 794. Thou den of drunkards with the blood of princes! Of the first fifty Doges, five abdicated-five were banished with their eyes put out-five were MASSACRED and nine deposed.

Page 550. SARDANAPALUS. [Byron based his drama on a passage in Diodorus Siculus ii., which reads as follows: This prince surpassed all his predecessors in effeminacy, luxury, and cowardice. He never went out of his palace, but spent all his time among a company of women, dressed and painted like them, and employed like them at the distaff. He placed all his happiness and glory in the possession of immense treasures, in feasting and rioting, and indulging himself in all the most infamous and criminal pleasures. He ordered two verses to be put upon his tomb, signifying that he carried away with him all he had eaten, and all the pleasures he had enjoyed, but left everything else behind him- an epitaph, says Aristotle, fit for a hog. Arbaces, governor of Media, having found means to get into the palace, and having with his own eyes seen Sardanapalus in the midst of his infamous seraglio, enraged at such a spectacle, and not able to endure that so many brave men should be subject to a prince more soft and effeminate than the women themselves, immediately formed a conspiracy against him. Beleses, governor of Babylon, and several others, entered into it. On the first rumour of this revolt, the king hid himself in the inmost part of his palace. Being afterwards obliged to take the field with some forces which he had assembled, he at first gained three successive victories over the enemy, but was afterwards overcome, and pursued to the gates of Nineveh; wherein he shut himself, in hopes the rebels would never be able to take a city so well fortified, and stored with provisions

for a considerable time. The siege proved, indeed, of very great length. It had been de clared by an ancient oracle that Nineveh could never be taken, unless the river became an enemy to the city. These words buoyed up Sardanapalus, because he looked upon the thing as impossible. But when he saw that the Tigris, by a violent inundation, had thrown down twenty stadia (two miles and a half) of the city wall, and by that means opened a passage to the enemy, he understood the meaning of the oracle, and thought himself lost. He resolved, however, to die in such a manner as, according to his opinion, should cover the infamy of his scandalous and effeminate life. He ordered a pile of wood to be made in his palace, and setting fire to it, burnt himself, his eunuchs, his women, and his treasures.']

Page 555, line 299. Eat, drink, and love; the rest's not worth a fillip.' A monument representing Sardanapalus was found there [at Anchialus], warranted by an inscription in Assyrian characters, of course in the old Assyrian language, which the Greeks, whether well or ill, interpreted thus: "Sardanapalus, son of Anacyndaraxes, in one day founded Anchialus and Tarsus. Eat, drink, play: all other human joys are not worth a fillip." Supposing this version nearly exact (for Arrian says it was not quite so), whether the purpose has not been to invite to civil order a people disposed to turbulence, rather than to recommend immoderate luxury, may perhaps reasonably be questioned.' MITFORD'S Greece, ix. 311.

Page 573, line 145. Bring the mirror. ['In the third act, when Sardanapalus calls for a mirror to look at himself in his armour, recollect to quote the Latin passage from Juvenal upon Otho (a similar character, who did the same thing).' BYRON, Letter to Murray, May 30, 1821. The lines in the Second Satire are thus translated by Gifford :

This grasps a mirror-pathic Otho's boast
(Auruncan Actor's spoil), where, while his host,
With shouts, the signal of the fight required,
He view'd his mailed form; view'd, and admired!
Lo, a new subject for the historic page,

A MIRROR, 'midst the arms of civil rage! ']

Page 590, line 200. Some twenty stadia. About two miles and a half.

Page 595. THE TWO FOSCARI. [A paragraph from W. R. Thayer's Short History of Venice will throw some light on the state of affairs and on the particular events which underlie this play: We feel that the old Venice is passing away. Instead of the sureness with which she had held aloof from foreign complications, there is now indecision. The old-time statesman was a helmsman, who knew every headland by day and the pilot stars by night. But the new statesmen were jugglers, each trying to keep a dozen balls in the air - so many were the interests and so swift the changes. The spirit of the Renaissance also, that solvent of mediævalism, is working, and at Venice as elsewhere its first effect is to liberate the intellect without strengthening the morals. Political

corruption, for which Foscari's election had set an ominous precedent, has grown common. In 1433 a ring, numbering more than fifty patricians, bent on securing offices for themselves and their friends, is discovered and smashed. Ten years later (1444), the Doge's own son, Jacopo, is convicted of taking bribes. The Council of Ten banishes him to Nauplia, but he has already fled to Trieste. In 1447 the Doge implores that his son may be permitted to return, and the Ten consent, adding that the old man cannot properly attend to public affairs so long as his mind is distracted by worry for his son. Jacopo returns, but he falls under suspicion of abetting the assassination of one of the chiefs of the Ten, and although no direct evidence is recorded against him, he is banished to Candia. There he intrigues with the Sultan to free him, is found out, and brought back to Venice for trial. He offers no defence, and the Ten, unwilling to execute the sentence of death which some of the court suggest, condemn him to perpetual banishment. In bidding farewell to his son, the Doge breaks down in agony, and this separation, which proved to be final (Jacopo died in 1457), leaves the aged Foscari a wreck. Enfeebled with years and stricken with grief, he neglects his ducal duties, and the Ten compel him, in spite of his protest, to abdicate. As he quits the Palace, they would screen him from the bitterness of facing the populace; but with unabated pride he replies: No, no! I will go down by the stair by which I came up to my dogeship." Seven days later he died (November 1, 1457).']

Page 598, line 204. High-born dame! [She was Lucrezia Contarini

A daughter of the house that now among Its ancestors in monumental brass Numbers eight Doges.' - ROGERS.]

Page 602, line 54. The Bridge of Sighs.' [An anachronism; the bridge was not built at this time.]

Page 610, lines 172, 173. That malady Which calls up green and native fields. The calenture. [A distemper peculiar to sailors in hot climates.] Line 177. That melody, which out of tones and tunes. [The Ranz des Vaches.]

Page 619, line 297. There often has been question about you.' An historical fact.

Page 625. [The DOGE drops down and dies. [The death of the elder Foscari took place not at the Palace, but in his own house; not immediately on his descent from the Giants' Stairs, but five days afterwards.]

Page 626, line 368. That he has paid me! 'L' ha pagata.' An historical fact. [Here the original MS. ends. The two lines which follow were added by Gifford.]

Page 640, line 293. Let He. [Byron apparently had a genius for bad grammar. The curious thing is that Gifford and Murray should have let such solecisms slip through the press.]

Page 653. Enter the ANGEL of the Lord. ['If Cain be blasphemous," Paradise Lost is blasphemous. . . Cain is nothing more than

a drama, not a piece of argument. have even avoided introducing the Deity, as in Scripture (though Milton does, and not very wisely either); but have adopted his Angel as sent to Cain instead, on purpose to avoid shocking any feelings on the subject by falling short of what all uninspired men must fall short in, viz., giving an adequate notion of the effect of the presence of Jehovah.' - BYRON, Letter to Murray, February 8, 1822. —A curious specimen of Byron's reverence for sacred things.]

Page 655, line 40. Albeit thou watchest with 'the seven. The archangels, said to be seven in number, and to occupy the eighth rank in the celestial hierarchy.

Page 662, line 541. The scroll of Enoch. The book of Enoch, preserved by the Ethiopians, is said by them to be anterior to the flood.

Page 671. WERNER. [The Canterbury Tales, in five volumes (1797-1805), were by Harriet and Sophia Lee. The German's Tale appeared in the fourth volume, by Harriet.]

Page 685, line 124. The black bands. [Bands of brigands made up of the remnants of the Swedish army after the evacuation of Bohemia, in 1649.]

Line 139. Your Wallenstein, your Tilly, etc. [Commanders of the Imperial and Swedish Armies during the Thirty Years' War.]

Page 691, line 514. The Ravenstone. The Ravenstone, Rabenstein,' is the stone gibbet of Germany, and so called from the ravens perching on it.

Page 699, line 259. Like Theban brethren. [For the quarrel of Eteocles and Polynices, see Eschylus's Seven against Thebes.]

Page 705, line 46. Ask that at Magdebourg. [Soldiers and citizens of Magdeburg were ruthlessly slain by Tilly's men at the siege in 1631.]

Page 708, line 236. In Prague for peace restored. [The Treaty of Prague, May 30, 1635.]

Page 722, line 1. OUT, hunchback! [Byron evidently has in mind the taunts cast at him by his mother for his own deformity.]

Line 23. The nipple next day sore and udder dry. [A vulgar error. For a very amusing controversy on the subject, see Gent. Mag. vols. lxx. and lxxxi.]

Page 726, line 267. The unshorn boy of Peleus. [Achilles. For the allusion to the river Sperchius (the accent should be on the penult), see Iliad, xxiii. 141.]

Page 730, line 526. And blooming aspect, Hnon. [Compare Sotheby's Oberon; or, Huon de Bor deaux.]

Line 573. Bourbon. [Charles of Bourbon was cousin to Francis I., and Constable of France. Being bitterly persecuted by the queen-mother for having declined the honor of her hand, and also by the king, he transferred his services to the Emperor Charles V. In 1527 he was at the head of the mixed army of Italians, Spaniards, and Germans which besieged and took Rome. He himself was killed by a shot, as told in the play.]

Page 735, line 55. Ye who weep o'er Carthage burning. Scipio, the second Africanus, is said to

have repeated a verse of Homer, and wept over the burning of Carthage. He had better have granted it a capitulation.

Page 745. DEDICATION. [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.' BYRON'S Revise.]

Page 745, line 16. I wish he would explain his Explanation. [Coleridge's Biographia Literaria appeared in 1817.]

Line 46. And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise. 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 alac-· rity; the converted Jacobin having long subsided into the clownish sycophant of the worst prejudices of the aristocracy.

worn

Page 746, line 86) And heartless daughters — and pale and poor. '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).

Line 88. The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh. Or,

Would he subside into a hackney Laureate

A scribbling, self-sold, soul-hired, scorn'd Iscariot ? I doubt if Laureate' and 'Iscariot' be good rhymes, but must say, as Ben Jonson did to Sylvester, who challenged him to rhyme withI, 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.' [Viscount Castlereagh, Marquis of Londonderry, for a number of years leader of the ultra-tory party, and pursued by Byron with inveterate hatred as being the bitter and unscrupulous opponent of the revolutionary spirit. See Preface to Canto vi.]

Page 747, line 117 Eutropius of its many masters. For the character of Eutropius, the eunuch and minister at the court of Arcadius, see Gibbon. [Chap. xxxii.]

Line 132. 'Tis that I still retain my buff and blue.' Mr. Fox and the Whig Club of his time adopted a uniform of blue and buff: hence the coverings of the Edinburgh Review, etc.]

Line 136. Is it not so, my Tory, ultra-Julian. I allude not to our friend Landor's hero, the traitor Count Julian, but to Gibbon's hero, vulgarly yelept The Apostate.'

Line 7. We all have seen him, in the pantomime. Byron alludes to the pantomime called Don Juan, or The Libertine Destroyed, adapted from Shadwell's Libertine.]

Page 748, line 85. For her Feinagle's were an

useless art. [Professor Feinagle, of Baden, who, in 1812, under the especial patronage of the Blues,' delivered a course of lectures at the Royal Institution, on Mnemonics.]

Line 89. Her favourite science was the mathematical. Byron said of Lady Byron that she had good ideas but could never express them; wrote poetry also, but it was only good by accident. Her letters were always enigmatical, often unintelligible. She was governed by what she called fixed rules and principles squared mathematically,

Page 749, line 116. Sir Samuel Romilly. [This eminent Chancery lawyer lost his lady on the 29th of October, and committed suicide on the 2d 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 my assassins. When that man was doing his worst to uproot my whole family, tree, branch, and blossoms-when, after taking my retainer, he went over to them 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 expected and common calamity - would lay his carcass in a cross-road, or stamp his name in a verdict of lunacy!'- BYRON, Letter to Murray, June 7, 1819.]

Line 23. Mrs. Trimmer's books. ['My Royal Mistress was all condescension to me. She gave me Mrs. Trimmer's excellent book of the Economy of Charity.' - FANNY BURNEY'S Diary, October, 1787.] Line 124. More.]

Calebs' Wife.' [By Hannah

Page 752, line 333. Although Longinus tells us there is no hymn. See Longinus, Section 10, · ἵνα μὴ ἔν τι περὶ αὐτὴν πάθος φαίνηται, παθῶν δὲ úvodos.' [The first stanza of the hymn is thus translated by Gladstone:

'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.']

Line 351. They only add them all in an appendix. Fact! There is, or was, such an edition, with all the obnoxious epigrams of Martial placed by themselves at the end.

Page 753, line 375. As Saint Augustine in his fine Confessions. See his Confessions, 1. i. c. ix. By the representation which St. 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.

Page 755, line 508. ('Twas snow that brought St. Anthony to reason.) For the particulars of St. Anthony's recipe for hot blood in cold weather, see Mr. Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints.

Line 567. Armida's fairy art. [See the episode

of Armida and Rinaldo in Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata.]

Page 757, line 701. The bard I quote from does not sing_amiss. Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming (I think) the opening of Canto Second-but quote from memory. [iii. 1-4.] Page 762, line 1030. Congreve's rockets. [A kind of explosive shell invented by Sir William Congreve.]

Page 763, line (1089) For God's sake, Madam Madam here's my master.' [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 muistake. You will be amused, as I was;-it happened not three hours ago.'- BYRON, Letter to Murray, November 8, 1819.]

Page 765, line 1177 Was it for this that no Cortejo e'er.' The Spanish Cortejo' is much the same as the Italian Cavalier Servente.'

Line 1184. Who took Algiers, declares I used him vilely? 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.

Page 767, line 1328. With maudlin Clarence in his Malmsey butt (See Richard III. I. iv.] Page 770, line 1512. Who to Madrid on purpose made a journey. Murray's edition of 1903 here gives from the MS. the following seven stanzas as first written by Byron: -

I

'T was 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,

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

Me nec femina, nec puer

Jam, nec spes animi credula mutui, Nec certare juvat mero;

Nec vincire novis tempora floribus.

[HOR. Odes, IV. i. 29.] Page 774, line 1772. The world will find thee after many daysSouthey, The Lay of the Laureate, L'Envoy

Page 775, line 56 Excepting the Venetian Fazzioli. Fazzioti-literally, little handker chiefs the veils most availing of St. Mark.

Page 777, line 185 The ship, call'd the most holy 'Trinidada.' [In 1799, while Lord Byron was the pupil of Dr. Glennie, at Dulwich, among the books that lay accessible to the boys was a pamphlet, entitled, Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Juno on the Coast of Arracan, in the Year 1795. The pamphlet attracted but little public attention; but, among the young students of Dalwich Grove it was a favourite study; and the impression which it left on the retentive mind of Byron may have had some share, perhaps, in suggesting that curious research through all the various accounts of Shipwrecks upon record.

1035

By the way, much of the description of the

MOORE.

scends.

Quandò ebbe detto ciò, con gli occhi torti
Riprese il teschio misero co' denti,
Che furo all' osso, come d' un can forti.

[Thus translated by Wright:

This said aside his vengeful eyes were thrown, And with his teeth against the skull he tore, Fierce as a dog to gnaw the very bone.'

Inferno, xxx. 60.]

me,

Are all I now have left; for all the power
And all the happiness is gone forever.
This is the only prudent rule of life,

I never shall forget it, let who will

Hoard boundless treasures of uncounted gold."] Page 802, line 75. Dante and Milton. Dante calls his wife, in the Inferno, la fiera moglie.'

Milton's first wife ran away from him within the first month. If she had not, what would John Milton have done?

Page 803, line 88. Meant to personify the mathematics. [The mathematical disposition of his wife seems to have haunted Byron like the memory of a nightmare. Why?]

Page 807, line 360. For none likes more to hear himself converse

Rispone allor' Margutte, a dir tel tosto,

Io non credo piu al nero ch' all'azzurro ;
Ma nel cappone, o lesso, o vuogli arrosto,
E credo alcuna volto anco nel burro :
Nella cervigia, e quando io n' ho nel mosto,
E molto piu nel' espro che il mangurro;
Ma sopra tutto nel buon vino ho fede,
E credo che sia salvo chi gli crede.

PULOL, Morgante Maggiore, xviii. 151. Page 809, line 505 The hangings of the room were tapestry. Almost all Don Juan is real life, either my own, or from people I knew.

Tripoli (Narrative of a Ten Years' Residence in Tripoli in Africa).' BYRON, Letter to Murray, August 23, 1821.

Page 810, line 568. That e'er by precious metal was held in. 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.

Line 570. A like gold bar above her instep roll'd. 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.

Line 580. Her person if allow'd at large to run. This 18 no exaggeration: they 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.

Page 812, line 695. The Scian and the Teian muse. [Homer, the blind old bard of Scio's rocky isle and Anacreon of Teos.]

Line 700. Than your sires' Islands of the Blest The vσo μakáρwv of the Greek poets were supposed to have been the Cape de Verd Islands or the Canaries.

Page 814, line 840. Espoused two partners (milliners of Bath) Coleridge married Sarah Fricker, Southey married her sister Edith.]

Line 852. Joanna Southcote's Shiloh, and her sect. The followers of this fanatic are said to have amounted, at one time, to a hundred thousand. She announced herself as the mother of a second Shiloh, whose speedy advent she confidently predicted. A cradle of expensive materials was prepared for the expected prodigy. Dr. Reece and another medical man attested her dropsy; and many were her dupes down to the moment of her death, in 1814.] Line 880. And drivels seas to set it well afloat. '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,' etc.

WORDSWORTH, Peter Bell. Page 815, line 896. Can sneer at him who drew Achitophel! The verses of Dryden, once so highly celebrated, are forgotten.'-Mr. W. WORDSWORTH's Preface [1815].

Line 935 And Dryden's lay made haunted ground. Alluding to Dryden's Theodore and Honoria, which is based on Boccaccio.]

Line 945. Oh, Hesperus! thou bringest all good things. [Compare the fragment of Sappho, Γέσπερε, πάντα φέρων, κ. τ. λ.]

Page 816, line 960. Ah! surely nothing dies but something mourns.

Era gia l' ora che volge disio,

A' naviganti, e 'ntenerisce il cuore: