The Works of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 34

His wife received, the Patriarch re-baptised him, (He made the Church a present, by the way;) He then threw off the garments which disguised him, And borrowed the Count's smallclothes for a day: His friends the more for his long absence prized him, Finding he'd wherewithal to make them gay, With dinners, where he oft became the laugh of them, For stories--but _I_ don't believe the half of them.

XCIX.

Whate'er his youth had suffered, his old age With wealth and talking made him some amends; Though Laura sometimes put him in a rage, I've heard the Count and he were always friends.

My pen is at the bottom of a page, Which being finished, here the story ends: 'Tis to be wished it had been sooner done, But stories somehow lengthen when begun.

FOOTNOTES:

[191] {153}["Although I was in Italie only ix. days, I saw, in that little tyme, more liberty to sin than ever I heard tell of in our n.o.ble citie of London in ix. yeares."--_Schoolmaster_, bk. i. _ad fin_. By Roger Ascham.]

[192] {155}

["I've often wish'd that I could write a book, Such as all English people might peruse; I never shall regret the pains it took, That's just the sort of fame that I should choose: To sail about the world like Captain Cook, I'd sling a cot up for my favourite Muse, And we'd take verses out to Demerara, To New South Wales, and up to Niagara.

"Poets consume exciseable commodities, They raise the nation's spirit when victorious, They drive an export trade in whims and oddities, Making our commerce and revenue glorious; As an industrious and pains-taking body 'tis That Poets should be reckoned meritorious: And therefore I submissively propose To erect one Board for Verse and one for Prose.

"Princes protecting Sciences and Art I've often seen in copper-plate and print; I never saw them elsewhere, for my part, And therefore I conclude there's nothing in't: But every body knows the Regent's heart; I trust he won't reject a well-meant hint; Each Board to have twelve members, with a seat To bring them in per ann. five hundred neat:--

"From Princes I descend to the n.o.bility: In former times all persons of high stations, Lords, Baronets, and Persons of gentility, Paid twenty guineas for the dedications; This practice was attended with utility; The patrons lived to future generations, The poets lived by their industrious earning,-- So men alive and dead could live by Learning.

"Then twenty guineas was a little fortune; Now, we must starve unless the times should mend: Our poets now-a-days are deemed importune If their addresses are diffusely penned; Most fashionable authors make a short one To their own wife, or child, or private friend, To show their independence, I suppose; And that may do for Gentlemen like those.

"Lastly, the common people I beseech-- Dear People! if you think my verses clever, Preserve with care your n.o.ble parts of speech, And take it as a maxim to endeavour To talk as your good mothers used to teach, And then these lines of mine may last for ever; And don't confound the language of the nation With long-tailed words in _osity_ and _ation_."

Canto I. stanzas i.-vi.]

[193] {156}[For some admirable stanzas in the metre and style of _Beppo_, by W.S. Rose, who pa.s.sed the winter of 1817-18 in Venice, and who sent them to Byron from Albaro in the spring of 1818, see _Letters_, 1900 iv. 211-214, note 1.]

[194] {159}[The MS. of _Beppo_, in Byron's handwriting, is now in the possession of Captain the Hon. F. L. King Noel. It is dated October 10, 1817.]

[195] [The use of "persuasion" as a synonime for "religion," is, perhaps, of American descent. Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address as President of U.S.A., speaks "of whatever state or persuasion, political or religious." At the beginning of the nineteenth century theological niceties were not regarded, and the great gulph between a religion and a sect or party was imperfectly discerned. Hence the solecism.]

[196] [Compare the lines which Byron enclosed in a letter to Moore, dated December 24, 1816 (_Letters_, 1900, iv. 30)--

"But the Carnival's coming, Oh Thomas Moore, * * * * *

Masking and humming, Fifing and drumming, Guitarring and strumming, Oh Thomas Moore."]

[197] {160}[Monmouth Street, now absorbed in Shaftesbury Avenue (west side), was noted throughout the eighteenth century for the sale of second-hand clothes. Compare--

"Thames Street gives cheeses, Covent Garden fruits, Moorfields old books, and Monmouth Street old suits."

Gay's _Trivia_, ii. 547, 548.

Rag Fair or Rosemary Lane, now Royal Mint Street, was the Monmouth Street of the City. Compare--

"Where wave the tattered ensigns of Rag Fair."

Pope's _Dunciad_, i. 29, _var_.

The Arcade, or "Piazza," so called, which was built by Inigo Jones in 1652, ran along the whole of the north and east sides of the _Piazza_ or Square of Covent Garden. The Arcade on the north side is still described as the "Piazzas."--_London Past and Present_, by H. B. Wheatley, 1891, i. 461, ii. 554, iii. 145.]

[198] {162}["At Florence I remained but a day.... What struck me most was ... the mistress of t.i.tian, a portrait; a Venus of t.i.tian in the Medici Gallery ..."--Letter to Murray, April 27, 1817, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 113. Compare, too, _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza xlix. line i, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 365, note 2.]

[199] ["I know nothing of pictures myself, and care almost as little: but to me there are none like the Venetian--above all, Giorgione. I remember well his Judgment of Solomon in the Mareschalchi Gallery [in the Via Delle a.s.se, formerly celebrated for its pictures] in Bologna."--Letter to William Bankes, February 26, 1820, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 411.]

[200] ["I also went over the Manfrini Palace, famous for its pictures.

Among them, there is a portrait of Arios...o...b.. t.i.tian [now in the possession of the Earl of Rosebery], surpa.s.sing all my antic.i.p.ations of the power of painting or human expression: it is the poetry of portrait, and the portrait of poetry. There was also one of some learned lady, centuries old, whose name I forget, but whose features must always be remembered. I never saw greater beauty, or sweetness, or wisdom:--it is the kind of face to go mad for, because it cannot walk out of its frame.... What struck me most in the general collection was the extreme resemblance of the style of the female faces in the ma.s.s of pictures, so many centuries or generations old, to those you see and meet every day amongst the existing Italians. The Queen of Cyprus and Giorgione's wife, particularly the latter, are Venetians as it were of yesterday; the same eyes and expression, and, to my mind, there is none finer,"--Letter to Murray, April 14, 1817, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 105. The picture which caught Byron's fancy was the so-called _Famiglia di Giorgione_, which was removed from the Manfrini Palace in 1856, and is now in the Palazzo Giovanelli. It represents "an almost nude woman, probably a gipsy, seated with a child in her lap, and a standing warrior gazing upon her, a storm breaking over the landscape."--_Handbook of Painting_, by Austen H. Layard, 1891, part ii. p. 553.]

[201] {163}[According to Vasari and others, Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli, b. 1478) was never married. He died of the plague, A.D.

1511.]

[202] {164} "Quae septem dici, s.e.x tanien esse solent."--Ovid., [_Fastorum_, lib. iv. line 170.]

[202A] [Carlo Goldoni (1707-1793). His play, _Belisarius_, was first performed November 24, 1734; _Le Bourru Bienfaisant_, November 4, 1771. _La Bottega del Caffe_, _La Locandiera, etc_., still hold the stage. His _Memoires_ were published in 1787.]

[202B]

["Look to't: * * * * *

In Venice they do let heaven see the pranks They dare not show their husbands; their best conscience Is not to leave't undone, but keep't unknown."

_Oth.e.l.lo_, act iii. sc. 3, lines 206-208.]

[203] {165}[Compare--

"An English lady asked of an Italian, What were the actual and official duties Of the strange thing, some women set a value on, Which hovers oft about some married beauties, Called 'Cavalier Servente,' a Pygmalion Whose statues warm (I fear, alas! too true 't is) Beneath his art. The dame, pressed to disclose them, Said--'Lady, I beseech you to _suppose them_.'"

_Don Juan_, Canto IX. stanza li.

A critic, in the _Monthly Review_ (March, 1818, vol. lx.x.xv. p. 286), took Byron to task for omitting the _e_ in _Cavaliere_. In a letter to Murray, April 17, 1818, he shows that he is right, and takes his revenge on the editor (George Edward) Griffiths, and his "scribbler Mr.

Hodgson."--_Letters_, 1900, iv. 226.]

[204] ["An English abbreviation. Rialto is the name, not of the bridge, but of the island from which it is called; and the Venetians say, _Il ponti di Rialto_, as we say Westminster Bridge. In that island is the Exchange; and I have often walked there as on cla.s.sic ground.... 'I Sopportichi,' says Sansovino, writing in 1580 [_Venetia_, 1581, p. 134], 'sono ogni giorno frequentati da i mercatanti Fiorentini, Genovesi, Milanesi, Spagnuoli, Turchi, e d'altre nationi diverse del mondo, i quali vi concorrono in tanta copia, che questa piazza e annoverata fra le prime dell' universo.' It was there that the Christian held discourse with the Jew; and Shylock refers to it when he says--

"'Signer Antonio, many a time and oft, In the Rialto you have rated me.'

'Andiamo a Rialto,'--' L'ora di Rialto,' were on every tongue; and continue so to the present day, as we learn from the Comedies of Goldoni, and particularly from his _Mercanti_."--Note to the _Brides of Venice_, Poems, by Samuel Rogers, 1852, ii. 88, 89. See, too, _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza iv. line 6, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 331.]

[205] {166}[Compare "At the epoch called a certain age she found herself an old maid."--Jane Porter, _Thaddeus of Warsaw_ (1803), cap. x.x.xviii.

(See _N. Eng. Dict_., art. "Certain.")

Ugo Foscolo, in his article in the _Quarterly Review_, April, 1819, vol.

xxi. pp. 486-556, quotes these lines in ill.u.s.tration of a stanza from Forteguerri's _Ricciardetto_, iv. 2--

Quando si giugne ad una certa eta, Ch'io non voglio descrivervi qual e," etc.]

[206] {167}[A clean bill of health after quarantine. Howell spells the word "pratic," and Milton "pratticke."]

[207] Beppo is the "Joe" of the Italian Joseph.