The Works of Lord Byron Volume VI Part 15

[57]

["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.]

{44}[s]

_She stood on Guilt's steep brink, in all the sense_ _And full security of Innocence_.--[MS.]

{45}[t] _To leave these two young people then and there.--[MS.]_

{46}[58] ["Age Xerxes.. eo usque luxuria gaudens, ut edicto praemium ei proponeret, qui novum voluptatis genus reperisset."--Val. Max, _De Dictis, etc._, lib. ix. cap. 1, ext. 3.]

[59] ["You certainly will be d.a.m.ned for all this scene."--[H.]]

{48}[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.]

{49}[w]

_Who've made us wait--G.o.d knows how long already,_ _For an entailed estate, or country-seat,_ _Wishing them not exactly d.a.m.ned, 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.]

{50}[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 pa.s.s!

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 sh.e.l.ls in 1804. They were used with great effect at the battle of Leipzig, in 1813.]

[65] ["Mon cher ne touchez pas a la pet.i.te Verole."--[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._]]

{51}[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 G.o.d, 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.]

{54}[ac] _Ere I the wife of such a man had been!_--[MS.]

{55}[ad] _But while this search was making, Julia's tongue_.--[MS.]

[74] The Spanish "Cortejo" is much the same as the Italian "Cavalier Servente."

{56}[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.]

{58}[af] ---- _may deplore_.--[Alternative reading. MS. M.]

{59}[77] ["Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh" (_Job_ ii. 10).]

[78] ["Don't be read aloud."--[H.]--[_Revise._]]

{60}[ag]

---- _than be put_ _To drown with Clarence in his Malmsey b.u.t.t_.--[MS.]