Читать книгу Don Juan (With Byron's Biography) - Lord Byron - Страница 249
CCXXII.
Оглавление"Go, little Book, from this my solitude!
I cast thee on the waters—go thy ways!
And if, as I believe, thy vein be good,
The World will find thee after many days."95
When Southey's read, and Wordsworth understood,
I can't help putting in my claim to praise—
The four first rhymes are Southey's every line:
For God's sake, reader! take them not for mine.
Nov. 1, 1818.
FOOTNOTES:
14 [Begun at Venice, September 6; finished November 1, 1818.]
15 [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 snuff-box." 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.]
16 [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.]
17 [Compare Macbeth, act iv. sc. i, line 65.]
18 ["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 Buonaparte 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 Buonaparte 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 Buonaparte, 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 Buonaparte 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.]
19 [Charles François Duperier Dumouriez (1739-1823) defeated the Austrians at Jemappes, November 6, 1792, etc. He published his Mémoires (Hamburg et Leipsic), 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.]
20 [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.]
21 [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 cannon-ball at the battle of Dresden, August 27, and died September 2, 1813.]
22 [Hor., Od., iv. c. ix. 1. 25—
"Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona," etc.]
23 [Hor., Epist. Ad Pisones, lines 148, 149—
"Semper ad eventum festinat, et in medias res,
Non secus ac notas, auditorem rapit—"]
24 ["Quien no ha visto Sevilla, no ha visto maravilla."]
25 [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.]
26 [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).]
Little she spoke—but what she spoke was Attic all,
With words and deeds in perfect unanimity.—[MS.]
27 [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 cross-road, 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.]
28 [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).]
29 [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.]
30 [Hannah More (1745-1833) published Coelebs in Search of a Wife in 1809.]
31 [Pope, Rape of the Lock, Canto II, line 17.]
32 [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.]
33 "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."]
B Where all was innocence and quiet bliss.—[MS.]
C And so she seemed, in all outside formalities.—[MS.]
34 ["'Zounds, an I were now by this rascal, I could brain him with his lady's fan."—I Henry IV., act ii, sc 3, lines 19, 20.]
D Wishing each other damned, divorced, or dead.—[MS.]
35 [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, p. 412, note 2), 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."]
36 ["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.]
37 ["This is so very pointed."—[?Hobhouse.] "If people make application, it is their own fault."—[B.].—[Revise.]
38 ["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 some one, perhaps Fletcher's wife, had told him that his papers had been overhauled.]
E First their friends tried at reconciliation.—[MS.]
F 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.] |
39 ["I could have forgiven the dagger or the bowl,—any thing 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
Sate grinning Ribaldry and sneering Scorn."
Marino Faliero, act iii. sc. II, lines 361-364.]
| Save death or | { | litigation— banishment— | } | so he died.—[MS.] |
40 [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.]
J Defending still their Iliads and Odysseys.—[MS.]
41 See Longinus, Section 10, "Ίνα μὴ ἕν τι περὶ αὐτὴν πάθος φαίνηται, παθων 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 κηνος ἵσος θεισιν, 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.]]
42 [Bucol., Ecl. ii. "Alexis."]
| Too much their | { | antique modest downright | } | bard by the | { | elision omission | } | —[MS.] |
43 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."]
44 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.
45 [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).]
46 ["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 for ever.... 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.]
| 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.] |
47 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 snow-balls, 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.]
48 [The sorceress in Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata. The story of Armida and Rinaldo forms the plot of operas by Glück and Rossini.]
49 Thinking God might not understand the case.—[MS. M., Revise.]
"Quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante." Dante, Inferno, canto v. line 138.]
"Conscienzia m'assicura,
La buona compagnia che l'uom francheggia
Sotto l'osbergo del sentirsi pura."
Inferno, canto xxviii, lines 115-117.]
N Deemed that her thoughts no more required control.—[MS.]
52 [See Ovid, Metamorph., vii. 9, sq.]
53 Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming—(I think)—the opening of Canto Second [Part III. stanza i. lines 1-4]—but quote from memory.
54 [See Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, chap. i. (ed. 1847, i. 14, 15); and Dejection: An Ode, lines 86-93.]
I say this by the way—so don't look stern.
But if you're angry, reader, pass it by.—[MS.]
55 [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.]
56 [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.]
A real wittol always is suspicious,
But always also hunts in the wrong place.—[MS.]
Q Change horses every hour from night till noon.—[MS.]
R 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.]
She stood on Guilt's steep brink, in all the sense
And full security of Innocence.—[MS.]
T To leave these two young people then and there.—[MS.]
58 ["Age Xerxes.. eo usque luxuria gaudens, ut edicto præmium ei proponeret, qui novum voluptatis genus reperisset."—Val. Max, De Dictis, etc., lib. ix. cap. 1, ext. 3.]
59 ["You certainly will be damned for all this scene."—[H.]]
60 [Compare Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanza iii. line 2, Poetical Works, ii. 329, note 3.]
U Our coming, nor look brightly till we come.—[MS.]
V Sweet is a lawsuit to the attorney—sweet, etc.—[MS.]
61 [So, too, Falstaff, Henry IV., act ii. sc. 2, lines 79, 80.]
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—
'T is strange old people don't like to be buried.—[MS.]
62 [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.]
63 [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.]
64 [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.]
65 ["Mon cher ne touchez pas à la petite Vérole."—[H.]—[Revise.]]
66 [Experiments in galvanism were made on the body of Forster the murderer, by Galvani's nephew, Professor Aldini, January and February, 1803.]
67 ["Put out these lines, and keep the others."—[H.]—[Revise.]]
68 [Sir Humphry Davy, P.R.S. (1778-1829), invented the safety-lamp in 1815.]
69 [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 Timbuctoo for Tombuctoo, but Marocco for Morocco is a little too much."—Edinburgh Review, July, 1809 vol. xiv. p. 307.]
70 [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.]
X Not only pleasure's sin, but sin's a pleasure.—[MS.]
Y And lose in shining snow their summits blue.—[MS.]
Z 'Twas midnight—dark and sombre was the night, etc.—[MS.]
AA And supper, punch, ghost-stories, and such chat.—[MS.]
71 ["'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.]
72 ["Lobster-sallad, not a lobster-salad. Have you been at a London ball, and not known a Lobster-sallad?"—[H.]—[Revise.] ]
73 ["To-night, 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.]
AB And thus as 'twere herself from out them crept.—[MS. M.]
AC Ere I the wife of such a man had been!—[MS.]
AD But while this search was making, Julia's tongue.—[MS.]
74 The Spanish "Cortejo" is much the same as the Italian "Cavalier Servente."
75 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.]
76 [The Italian names have an obvious signification.]
AE The chimney—fit retreat for any lover!—[MS.]
AF —— may deplore.—[Alternative reading. MS. M.]
77 ["Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh" (Job ii. 10).]
78 ["Don't be read aloud."—[H.]—[Revise.]]
—— than be put
To drown with Clarence in his Malmsey butt.—[MS.]
AH And reckon up our balance with the devil.—[MS.]
79 ["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.]
80 [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.]
AI With base suspicion now no longer haunted.—[MS.]
81 [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.]
AJ Found—heaven knows how—his solitary way.—[MS.]
82 [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."]
83 ["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,A
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. ParollesB of Law,
The double BobadillC 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 courtisanD 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."
A For Brougham's Fabian tactics with regard to duelling, vide post, Canto XIII. stanza lxxxiv. line 1, p. 506, note 1.]
B Vide post, Canto XIII. stanza lxxxiv. line 1, p. 506, note 1.]
C For "Captain Bobadill, a Paul's man," see Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour, act iv. sc. 5, et passim.]
D The N. Eng. Dict., quotes a passage in Phil. Trans., iv. 286 (1669), as the latest instance of "courtisan" for "courtier."]
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,E 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 every thing 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),F 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."
E [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."]
F [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.]
Julia was sent into a nunnery,
And there, perhaps, her feelings may be better.—[MS. M.]
AL Man's love is of his life——.—[MS. M.]
84 ["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.]
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.] |
AP 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.]
AR With a neat crow-quill, rather hard, but new.—[MS.]
85 [Byron had a seal bearing this motto.]
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.]
AU I'll call the work "Reflections o'er a Bottle."—[MS.]
86 [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.)]
87 [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, ibid., 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 off-hand, 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.]
88 [Hor., Od. III. C. xiv. lines 27, 28.]
AV I thought of dyeing it the other day.—[MS.]
89 [Compare Childe Harold, Canto III. stanza cvii. line 2.]
"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.]]
91 [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.]
"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.]
AW A book—a damned bad picture—and worse bust.—[MS.]
"Don't swear again—the third 'damn.'"—[H.]—[Revise.]]
93 [Byron sat for his bust to Thorwaldsen, in May, 1817.]
94 [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.]
AX Must bid you both farewell in accents bland.—[MS.]
95 [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.)]
