Line 609. Beatus ille procul!' from 'negotiis.' Horace, Epod. ii. 1. ['Noscitur à sociis is not in Horace.] Line 657. Shut up the bald-coot bully Alexander! [The bald-coot is a small bird of prey in marshes. The Emperor Alexander was baldish.] Page 969, line 64. A draft on Ransom.' [Ransom, Kinnaird, and Co. were Lord Byron's bankers.] Page 970, line 138. Great Socrates? thou, Diviner still. As it is necessary in these And 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. Line 161. Omnia vult belle Matho diceredic aliquando.' [Martial, x. 46. - Vult should be vis; Byron as usual quotes loosely. - Elphinstone thus translates: • Thou finely wouldst say all? Say something well: Say something ill, if thou wouldst bear the bell.'] Page 972, line 273. When Rapp the Harmonist embargo'd marriage. 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 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. Page 974, line 386. Of Brutus at the pageant of Tiberius. See Tacitus, b. vi. [From this sage is derived the common saying, conspicupasous by his absence.] Page 976, line 515. Wines too, which might again have slain young Ammon. [Referring to the death of Alexander, reputed to be the son of Zeus Ammon.] Line 527. While great Lucullus' Robe_triumphal muffles. 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. Line 544. There's pretty picking in those 'petits puits.' 'Petits puits d'amour garnis des 1041 confitures,' a classical and well-known dish for part of the flank of a second course. Page 979, line 732. As Eldon on a lunatic commission. [John Scott, Earl of Eldon, Chancellor of England (with the intermission of fourteen months) from 1801 to 1830.] Page 980, line 768. The philosopher of Malmsbury. 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. Line 2. To draw the bow, to ride, and speak the truth. [Xenophon gives an elaborate account of the education of the Persian youth, but the particular fact to which Byron here refers is from Herodotus, i. 136.] Line 10. For this effect defective comes by cause.' Hamlet, Act II. sc. ii. Page 981, line 40. Quiets at once with quia impossible. [The phrase is from Tertullian's De Carne Christi.] Line 49. I merely mean to say what Johnson said. [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 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.] Line 85. Titus exclaim'd, [Remembering once at dinner that during the 've lost a day!' whole day he had granted a favour to no one, he uttered the memorable and deservedly praised words: " Friends, I have lost a day.""" SUETONIUS, Titus, viii.] Page 985, line 281. Oh! have you never heard of the Black Friar?' [ During a visit to Newstead, in 1814, Lord Byron 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.' MOORE.] Page 986, line 391. For a spoil'd carpet. I think 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 table-cloth, or some other expensive and uncynical piece of furni ture. Page 987, line 442. The Bath Guide.' [The famous New Bath Guide of Christopher Anstey.] 6 Line 448. Bouts rimés.' [The last words or rhymes of a number of verses given to a poet to be filled up.] Page 988, line 520. For Gothic daring shown in English money. Ausu Romano, ære Ve 6 neto' 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 Imbeciles. There is a glorious field for him, if he know how to cultivate it. Line 526. Untying' squires to fight against the churches.' 'I conjure you, by that which you profess, Page 990, line 642. And champion him to the utmost.' 'Rather than so, come, fate, into the list, Macbeth, III. ii. Page 991, line 695. The very powerful parson, Peter Pith. Query, Sidney Smith, author of Peter Plimley's Letters? PRINTER'S DEVIL. Page 993, line 820. What is call'd mobility. In Frenchmobilité.' 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 the same time without losing the past; and is, though sometimes apparently useful to the possessor, a most painful and unhappy attribute. Page 994, line 913. Who would not sigh A at Tav Kubepelar. [Alas, Cytherea !] at Page 995, line 920. Alma Venus Genetrix!' [From the famous opening of the De Rerum Natura.] Line 970. Like that of hell. Lasciate ogni speranza.' ['Leave all hope behind, ye who enter here,' the inscription over the gate of hell in Dante.] Page 997, line 21. Mule.' 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. [Here may be added three poems recently discovered and attributed to Byron with some show of reason. The first was published by H. Buxton Forman in a letter to the Athenæum of June 11, 1904. It is addressed to Mary Chaworth (afterwards Mrs. Musters), and was written by Byron with a pencil on the last endpaper and paste-down of a book belonging to Miss Chaworth - the first volume of an English translation, in two volumes, of the Letters of Madame de Maintenon, published in London in 1772. It consists of three stanzas, as follows:Ah memory torture me no more, The present's all o'ercast ideas, and a small quarto copy-book (6 inches by 7 inches) in which a fair transcription has been made of the finished stanzas, with gaps of one or more pages left between the stanzas, or groups of two or more stanzas, to be filled up as the poem progressed. The theme was evidently suggested by the Coronation of George IV., and the stanzas must have been written just before the proposed date of the ceremony, August 1, 1820, or the actual date, July 19, 1821. The completed stanzas with the comment in Good Words are as follows: I leave the ceremonies in the Abbey Who sold their Choir at so much every stall, I never could, in spite of all the talk, Here there occurs a hiatus in the finished copy, Byron evidently being unable to get the next stanza to his liking. In the draft, however, there are a series of incomplete stanzas and half-worked-out ideas. He seems first to have contemplated describing the procession of Humbugs. Then, breaking off for a time, he turns to the consideration of the question, who is most fit to be King of the Humbugs! The prosecution of this theme being probably for the time not congenial, Byron leaves it, to turn to the discussion of another point in his satire the place where the coronation, or the election, of the Humbug Monarch was to be held. In this direction he was for a brief period more successful, the next three stanzas having apparently been written at once into the copybook, without any previous drafting, the sequence of the rough copy going to prove that no part of it has been lost, and such alternative readings as have occurred to Byron being inserted in the fair copy. Both civil, military, and religious, Some there had patents, others stars and pensions, Half those who print, and with their thoughts oblige us, The authors of all manners of inventions. Oxford and Cambridge severally sent Messrs.... With very good degrees... and some professors. X There must be room to swagger and to bluster, are Enough perhaps to lodge them in detail, And by instalments - But a general muster! Another break. That he endeavored to follow up his temporary success is evident from the rough draft, mainly composed of suggestions of various places where the ceremony should be held. At last he gets the idea of holding it in the now vacated booths of Smithfield fair, and goes ahead again : XI We all I think must own a happy hit owes With Bears and Sloths with two toes and with three toes. The Booths might now be entered with impunity, And there they stood so handy and inviting For all the Humbugs both to speak and write in. It is interesting to trace the train of Byron's thought here. His first idea was to write 'Pidcock's or Polito's,' but it then occurred to him that the satire would be more complete, if he coupled 'Brooks's' with the menagerie, treating the occupants of both as so many varieties of wild beasts. For suits and services, long, hard at work A Court of Claims has sat in solemn séance' Holland provides the King a knife and fork, Burgess of sauces has the sole purveyance. To find him his first dish of tea Dow Cork And the Miss Berrys have it in abeyance, Hunt gives an ounce of imitative (?) coffee Worthy, he says, the Sultan or the Sophy. XVII Soaps (aye, if any he should chance to use) Waterproof coats, impenetrable shoes, Or, if he prove a sailing King, air jackets Much worn by those blown up in the steam packets.] |