The Works of Lord Byron Volume VI Part 38

{168}[193] [_Vide St. August. Epist._, x.x.xvi., cap. xiv., "Ille [Ambrosius, Mediolanensis Episcopus] adjecit; Quando hic sum, non jejuno sabbato; quando Romae sum, jejuno sabbato."--Migne's _Patrologiae Cursus_, 1845, x.x.xiii. 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 representer la litterature allemande toute entiere."--_De L'Allemagne_, par Mme. la Baronne de Stael-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 pa.s.sed in the company of Londos [a Morean landowner, who took part in the first and second Greek Civil Wars], at Vost.i.tza (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, pa.s.sing 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.)]

{169}[197] The ?a????? ??s?? [Greek: Maka/ron nesoi] [Hesiod, _Works and Days_, line 169] of the Greek poets were supposed to have been the Cape de Verd Islands, or the Canaries.

[cy]

_Euboea looks on Marathon, And Marathon looks on the sea, etc._--[MS.]

[198] [See aeschylus, _Persae_, 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 aegaleos.]

{170}[cz] _The Heroic heart awakes no more_.--[MS. D.]

{171}[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.]

{172}[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.]

[202]

Ge???a?, ??' ??ae? ?pest? p??- [Greek: Genoi/man, i(/n' y(laen e)/pesti po/n-]

t?? p????' ?????st??, ?- [Greek: tou pro/blem' a(likyston, a)/-]

??a? ?p? p???a S??????, ?.t.?. [Greek: kran y(po pla/ka Souni/ou, k.t.l.]

Sophocles, _Ajax_, lines 1190-1192.]

{173}[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.]

{174}[206] [William c.o.xe (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 t.i.tus amused himself by copying handwriting, and boasted that he could have made a first-rate _falsarius_. One of Caesar'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.]

{175}[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 pa.s.sion 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 dest.i.tute. 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."]

{176}[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 b.u.mpers, they Are somewhat sick and sorry the next day."]

{177}[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.]

[219]

["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, "t.i.taniacis ablata draconibus," see Ovid., _Met._, vii. 398.]