107.-Page 97, line 19.

Or when my first harangue received applause,

["My qualities were much more oratorical than poetical, and Dr Drury, my grand patron, had a great notion that I should turn out an orator from my fluency, my turbulence, my voice, my copiousness of declamation, and my action. I remember that my first declamation astonished Dr. Drury into some unwonted (for he was economical of such) and sudden compliments, before the declaimers at our first rehearsal."Byron Diary. I certainly was much pleased with Lord Byron's attitude, gesture, and delivery, as well as with his composition. To my surprise, he suddenly diverged from the written composition, with a boldness and rapidity sufficient to alarm me, lest he should fail in memory as to the conclusion. I questioned him, why he had altered his declamation? He declared he had made no alteration, and did not know, in speaking, that he had deviated from it one letter. I believed him, and from a knowledge of his temperament, am convinced that he was hurried on to expressions and colourings more striking than what his pen had expressed.-DR. DRURY.]

108.-Page 97, line 24.

The praise is due, who made that fame my own.
[In the private volume the poem concludes thus:
"When, yet a novice in the mimic art,
I feign'd the transports of a vengeful heart-
When as the Royal Slave I trod the stage,
To vent in Zanga more than mortal rage-
The praise of Probus made me feel more proud
Than all the plaudits of the list'ning crowd.

"Ah; vain endeavour in this childish strain
To soothe the woes of which I thus complain!
What can avail this fruitless loss of time,
To measure sorrow in a jingling rhyme!
No social solace from a friend is near,
And heartless strangers drop no feeling tear.
I seek not joy in woman's sparkling eye:
The smiles of beauty cannot check the sigh.
Adien, thou world! thy pleasure's still a dream,
Thy virtue but a visionary theme;
Thy years of vice on years of folly roll,
Till grinning death assigns the destined goal,
Where all are hastening to the dread abode,
To meet the judgment of a righteous God;
Mix'd in the concourse of a thoughtless throng,
A mourner midst of mirth, I glide along;
A wretched, isolated, gloomy thing,
Curst by reflection's deep corroding sting;
But not that mental sting which stabs within,
The dark avenger of unpunish'd sin;

The silent shaft which goads the guilty wretch
Extended on a rack's untiring stretch:

Conscience that sting, that shaft to him supplies--
His mind the rack from which he ne'er can rise.

For me, whate'er my folly, or my fear,
One cheerful comfort still is cherish'd here
No dread internal haunts my hours of rest,
No dreams of injured innocence infest;
Of hope, of peace, of almost all bereft,
Conscience, my last but welcome guest, is left.
Slander's empoison'd breath may blast my name,
Envy delights to blight the buds of fame;
Deceit may chill the current of my blood,
And freeze affection's warm impassion'd flood;
Presaging horror darken every sense;

Even here will conscience be my best defence.
My bosom feeds no worm which ne'er can die:'
Not crimes I mourn, but happiness gone by.
Thus crawling on with many a reptile vile,
My heart is bitter, though my cheek may smile;
No more with former bliss my heart is glad;
Hope yields to anguish and my soul is sad:
From fond regret no future joy can save;
Remembrance slumbers only in the grave."]

109.-Page 98, line 38.

And Love, without his pinion, smiled on Youth. "L'Amitié est l'Amour sans ailes," is a French proverb.

110.-Page 99, line 2.

ENTITLED "THE COMMON LOT."

Written by James Montgomery, author of the "Wanderer in Switzer. land," &c.

111.-Page 99, line 8.

The hero rolls the tide of war;

No particular hero is here alluded to. The exploits of Bayard, Nemours, Edward the Black Prince, and, in more more modern times, the fame of Marlborough, Frederick the Great, Count Saxe, Charles of Sweden, &c., are familiar to every historical reader, but the exact places of their birth are known to a very small proportion of their admirers.

112.-Page 103, line 2.

AN IMITATION OF MACPHERSON'S OSSIAN.

It may be necessary to observe, that the story, though considerably varied in the catastrophe, is taken from "Nisus and Euryalus," of which episode a translation is already given in the present volume.

113.-Page 106, line 27.

tears of the storm."

I fear Laing's late edition has completely overthrown every hope that Macpherson's Ossian might prove the translation of a series of poems complete in themselves; but, while the imposture is discovered, the

merit of the work remains undisputed, though not without faultsparticularly, in some parts, turgid and bombastic diction.-The present humble imitation will be pardoned by the admirers of the original as an attempt, however inferior, which evinces an attachment to their favourite author.

114.-Page 106, line 28.

L'AMITIÉ EST L'AMOUR SANS AILES.

[This poem was not included in the publication of 1807.]

Harrow.

115.-Page 107, line 31.

Seat of my youth! thy distant spire

116.-Page 108, line 1.

My Lycus! wherefore dost thou weep?

[The Earl of Clare.]

117.-Page 109, line 1.

THE PRAYER OF NATURE.

[It is difficult to conjecture for what reason these stanzas, which surpass anything that Lord Byron had written up to that date, were not included in the "Hours of Idleness." They were never published till they appeared in Moore's life of the poet.]

118.-Page 111, line 1.

TO EDWARD NOEL LONG, ESQ.

[Long, who was with Lord Byron both at Harrow and Cambridge, entered the Guards and served in the expedition to Copenhagen. He was drowned early in 1809, when on his way to join the army in the Peninsula; the transport in which he sailed being run down in the night by another of the convoy. "Long's father," says Lord Byron," wrote to me to write his son's epitaph. I promised-but I had not the heart to complete it. He was such a good, amiable being as rarely remains long in this world; with talent and accomplishments, too, to make him the more regretted."-Byron Diary, 1821.]

119.-Page 113, line 22.

Which once contain'd our youth's retreat;

[The two friends were both passionately attached to Harrow; and sometimes made excursions thither together, to revive their school-boy recollections.]

120.-Page 114, line 4.

Bestow'd by thee upon another.

[Though these verses, which are addressed to Mrs. Musters, intimate that she had first returned and then renounced the poet's love, he

VOL. I.

L

uniformly, in later life, absolved her from the charge. "The ardour,” he said, in 1822, "was all on my side. I was serious; she was volatile: she liked me as a younger brother, and treated and laughed at me as a boy; she, however, gave me her picture, and that was something to make verses upon."]

121.-Page 115, line 6.

The cumbrous pomp of Saxon pride.

Sassenach, or Saxon, a Gaelic word, signifying either Lowland or English.

122.-Page 116, line 20.

To flee away and be at rest.

"And I said, Oh! that I had wings like a dove; for then would I fly away and be at rest."-Psalm lv. 6. This verse also constitutes a part of the most beautiful anthem in our language.

123.- Page 116, line 23.

And climb'd thy steep summit, oh Morven of snow!

Morven, a lofty mountain in Aberdeenshire. "Gormal of snow," is an expression frequently to be found in Ossian.

124.-Page 116, line 25.

Or the mist of the tempest that gather'd below.

This will not appear extraordinary to those who have been accustomed to the mountains. It is by no means uncommon, on attaining the top of Ben-e-vis, Ben-y-bourd, &c., to perceive, between the summit and the valley, clouds pouring down rain, and occasionally accompanied by lightning, while the spectator literally looks down upon the storm, perfectly secure from its effects.

125.-Page 116, line 29.

Need I say, my sweet Mary, 'twas centred in you?

[In Lord Byron's Diary for 1813, he says, "I have been thinking lately a good deal of Mary Duff. How very odd that I should have been so utterly, devotedly fond of that girl, at an age when I could neither feel passion, nor know the meaning of the word. And the effect! My mother used always to rally me about this childish amour; and, at last, many years after, when I was sixteen, she told me one day; 'Oh, Byron, I have had a letter from Edinburgh, from Miss Abercrombie, and your old sweetheart, Mary Duff, is married to a Mr. Cockburn. And what was my answer? I really cannot explain or account for my feelings at that moment; but they nearly threw me into convulsions-to the horror of my mother and astonishment of every body. And it is a phenomenon in my existence (for I was not eight years old), which has puzzled and will puzzle me to the latest hour of it." In January, 1815, a few days after his marriage, in a letter to his friend Captain Hay, the poet reverts with fondness to his childish attachment:-"Fray tell me more-or as much as you like, of your cousin Mary. I was twenty-seven a few days ago,

and I have never seen her since we were children, and young children too; but I never forget her, nor ever can. You will oblige me by presenting her with my best respects, and all good wishes. It may seem ridiculous-but it is at any rate, I hope, not offensive to her nor hers-in me to pretend to recollect anything about her, at so early a period of both our lives, almost, if not quite, in our nurseries;-but it was a pleasant dream, which she must pardon me for remembering. Is she pretty still? I have the most perfect idea of her person, as a child."]

126.-Page 117, line 7.

I breasted the billows of Dee's rushing tide,

The Dee is a beautiful river, which rises near Mar Lodge, and falls into the sea at New Aberdeen.

127.-Page 117, line 22.

I think of the rocks that o'ershadow Colbleen;

Colbleen is a mountain near the verge of the Highlands, not far from the ruins of Dee Castle.

128.-Page 120, line 24.

As void of wit and moral.

These stanzas were written soon after the appearance of a severe critique in a northern review, on a new publication of the British Anacreon. [Lord Byron refers to the article in the Edinburgh Review, of July, 1807, on "Epistles, Odes, and other Poems, by Thomas Little Esq."]

129.-Page 120, line 36.

I really will not fight them

A bard [Moore] (horresco referens) defied his reviewer [Jeffrey] to mortal combat. If this example becomes prevalent, our periodical censors must be dipped in the river Styx: for what else can secure them from the numerous host of their enraged assailants?

130.-Page 121, line 36.

Be still as you are now.

["Of all I have ever known, Clare has always been the least altered in every thing from the excellent qualities and kind affections which attached me to him so strongly at school. I should hardly have thought it possible for society (or the world, as it is called), to leave a being with so little of the leaven of bad passions. I do not speak from personal experience only, but from all I have ever heard of him from others, during absence and distance."-Byron Diary, 1821.]

131.-Page 122, line 7.

LINES WRITTEN BENEATH AN ELM IN THE CHURCHYARD OF HARROW.

[On losing his natural daughter, Allegra, in April, 1822, Lord Byron sent her remains to be buried at Harrow, "where," he says, "in a letter