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CXI.
ОглавлениеI feel this tediousness will never do—
T' is being too epic, and I must cut down
(In copying) this long canto into two;
They'll never find it out, unless I own
The fact, excepting some experienced few;
And then as an improvement 't will be shown:
I'll prove that such the opinion of the critic is
From Aristotle passim.—See ΠΟΙΗΤΙΚΗΣ.229
FOOTNOTES:
169 [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.]
CH And fits her like a stocking or a glove.—[MS. D.]
170 ["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.]
171 [Merchant of Venice, act iv. sc. 1, line 254.]
Had Petrarch's passion led to Petrarch's wedding,
How many sonnets had ensued the bedding?—[MS.]
172 [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.]
173 [See The Prophecy of Dante, Canto I. lines 172-174, Poetical Works, 1901, iv. 253, note 1.]
174 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.]
175 ["Yesterday a very pretty letter from Annabella.... She is a poetess—a mathematician—a metaphysician."—Journal November 30, 1813, Letters, 1898, ii. 357.]
Displayed much more of nerve, perhaps, of wit,
Than any of the parodies of Pitt.—[MS.]
CK —— 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."
176 [For Byron's menagerie, see Werner, act i. sc. 1, line 216, Poetical Works, 1902, v. 348, note 1.]
177 ["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.]
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.]
178 [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.]
179 ["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.]
CM That would have set Tom Moore, though married, raving.—[MS.]
180 ["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.]
181 [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.)]
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.]
CO 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.]
183 ["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 ribband 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 shewed 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 chrystal 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."]
184 ["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.]
CR For that's the name they like to cant beneath.—[MS.]
CS The upholsterer's "fiat lux" had bade to issue.—[MS.]
185 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, p. 160, note 1.]
186 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 ibid.]
187 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.
188 [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.]
" ... 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.]
190 [King John, act iv. sc. 2, line 11.]
191 ["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:—
'T is surer much they brought thee there, and They,
And Thou, their charge, went singing all the way."
The Works, etc., 1668, pp. 29, 30.]
CT Believed like Southey—and perused like Crashaw.—[MS.]
192 [The second chapter of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria is on the "supposed irritability of men of genius." Ed. 1847, i. 29.]
CU Their poet a sad Southey.—[MS. D.]
CV Of rogues—.—[MS. D.]
CW Of which the causers never know the cause.—[MS. D.]
193 [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 Patrologiæ Cursus, 1845, xxxiii. 151.]
CX From the high lyrical to the low rational.—[MS.D.]
194 [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.]
195 ["Goethe pourroit représenter la littérature allemande toute entière."—De L'Allemagne, par Mme. la Baronne de Staël-Holstein, 1818, i. 227.]
196 [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 cadi, 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.)]
197 The Μακάρων νησοι [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.]
198 [See Æschylus, Persæ, 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 Ægaleos.]
CZ The Heroic heart awakes no more.—[MS. D.]
199 [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 ibid., p. 593.]
200 [After his birthplace Teos was taken by the Persians, B.C. 510, Anacreon migrated to Abdera, but afterwards lived at Samos, under the protection of Polycrates.]
DA Which Hercules might deem his own.—[MS.]
201 [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.]
Γενοίμαν, ἵν' ὑλαεν ἔπεστι πόν-
του πρόβλημ' ἁλικυστον, ἄ-
κραν ὑπὸ πλάκα Σουνίου, κ.τ.λ.
Sophocles, Ajax, lines 1190-1192.]
203 [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. Fly-leaf).]
204 [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.]
DB In digging drains for a new water-closet.—[MS.]
205 [For Edmund Hoyle (1672-1769), see English Bards, etc., lines 966-968, Poetical Works, 1898, i. 372, note 4.]
206 [William Coxe (1747-1828), Archdeacon of Wilts, a voluminous historian and biographer, published Memoirs of John, Duke of Marlborough, in 1817-1819.]
207 [See Life of Milton, Works of Samuel Johnson, 1825, vii. pp. 67, 68, 80, et vide ante, p. 146, note 2.]
208 [According to Suetonius, the youthful Titus amused himself by copying handwriting, and boasted that he could have made a first-rate falsarius. One of Cæsar'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.]
209 [James Currie, M.D. (1756-1805), published, anonymously, the Works of Robert Burns, with an account of his Life, etc., in 1800.]
210 ["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 Inclosures, 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.]
211 [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."]
212 [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.]
DC Confined his pedlar poems to democracy.—[MS.]
213 [Coleridge began his poetical contributions to the Morning Post in January, 1798; his poetical articles in 1800.]
DD Flourished its sophistry for aristocracy.—[MS.]
214 [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."]
215 [For Joanna Southcott (1750-1814), see Letters, 1899, iii. 128-130, note 2.]
216 [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."]
217 ["Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus."—Hor., Epist. Ad Pisones, line 359.]
218 [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.]
"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.]
220 [For Medea's escape from the wrath of Jason, "Titaniacis ablata draconibus," see Ovid., Met., vii. 398.]
221 [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.]
DE While swung the signal from the sacred tower.—[MS.]
Are not these pretty stanzas?—some folks say—
Downright in print—.—[MS.]
222 [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."]
223 ["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.]
224 ["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.]
225 [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).]
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.
228 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. Cæs., lib. vi. cap. lvii.]
But I'm digressing—what on earth have Nero
And Wordsworth—both poetical buffoons, etc.—[MS.]
229 [See De Poeticâ, cap. xxiv. See, too, the Preface to Dryden's "Dedication" of the Æneis (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.]
