The Works of Lord Byron Volume VI Part 45

But for the destiny of this young troop, How some were bought by Pachas, some by Jews, How some to burdens were obliged to stoop, And others rose to the command of crews As renegadoes; while in hapless group, Hoping no very old Vizier might choose, The females stood, as one by one they picked 'em, To make a mistress, or fourth wife, or victim:[er]

CXVII.

All this must be reserved for further song; Also our Hero's lot, howe'er unpleasant (Because this Canto has become too long),[es]

Must be postponed discreetly for the present; I'm sensible redundancy is wrong, But could not for the Muse of me put less in 't: And now delay the progress of Don Juan, Till what is called in Ossian the fifth Duan.

Written Nov. 1819. Copied January, 1820.

FOOTNOTES:

{183}[230]

["Till Pride and worse Ambition threw me down, Warring in Heaven against Heaven's matchless King."

_Paradise Lost_, iv. 40, 41.]

[231]

["Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy, And shuts up all the pa.s.sages of joy: In vain their gifts the bounteous seasons pour, The fruit autumnal, and the vernal flow'r; With listless eyes the dotard views the store, He views, and wonders that they please no more."

Johnson's _Vanity of Human Wishes._]

{184}[232]

[" ... my May of Life Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf."

_Macbeth_, act v. sc. 3, lines 22, 23.]

[dh] _Itself to that fit apathy whose deed._--[MS.]

[di] _First in the icy depths of Lethe's spring._--[MS.]

[233] [See "Introduction to the _Morgante Maggiore_," _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 280.]

[dj] _Pulci being Father_--.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

{185}[234] ["c.u.m canerem reges et praelia, Cynthius aurem Vellit, et admonuit." Virgil, _Ecl._ vi. lines 3, 4.]

{186}[dk]

---- _from its mother's knee_ _When its last weaning draught is drained for ever_, _The child divided--it were less to see_, _Than these two from each other torn apart_.--[MS.]

[235] [See Herodotus (_Cleobis and Biton_), i. 31. The sentiment is in a fragment of Menander.

?? ?? ?e?? f????s?? ?p????s?e? ????

[Greek: O)/n oi( theoi philou~sin a)pothne)skei ne/os]

or ?? ??? f??e? ?e?? ?p????s?e? ????.

[Greek: O)/n gar philei~ theos a)pothne)skei ne/os.]

_Menandri at Philomenis reliquiae_, edidit Augustus Meineke, p. 48.

See _Letters_, 1898, ii. 22, note 1. Byron applied the saying to Allegra in a letter to Sir Walter Scott, dated May 4, 1822, _Letters_, 1901, vi. 57.]

[236] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza xcvi. line 7. Compare, too, Young's _Night Thoughts_ ("The Complaint," Night I. ed. 1825, p.

5)]

{187}[237] [Compare Swift's "little language" in his letter to Stella: _Podefar_, for instance, which is supposed to stand for "Poor dear foolish rogue," and Ppt., which meant "Poor pretty thing."--See _The Journal of Stella_, edited by G.A. Aitken, 1901, x.x.xv. note 1, and "Journal: March, 1710-11," 165, note 2.]

[dl]

_For theirs were buoyant spirits, which would bound_ '_Gainst common failings, etc_.--[MS.]

{188}[238] [The reference may be to Coleridge's _Kubla Khan_, which, to Medwin's wonderment, "delighted" Byron (_Conversations_, 1824, p. 264).

De Quincy's _Confessions of an English Opium Eater_ appeared in the _London Magazine_, October, November, 1821, after Cantos III., IV., V., of _Don Juan_ were published. But, perhaps, he was contrasting the "simpler blisses" of Juan and Haidee with Sh.e.l.ley's mystical affinities and divagations.]

[dm] _---- had set their hearts a bleeding._--[MS.]

{190}[239]

["The shadowy desert, unfrequented woods, I better brook than flourishing peopled towns: There can I sit alone, unseen of any, And to the nightingale's complaining notes Tune my distresses, and record, my woes."

_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, act v. sc. 4, lines 2-6.]

{191}[dn] _Called social, where all Vice and Hatred are._--[MS.]

[do] _Moved with her dream----._--[MS.]

[dp]

_Strange state of being!--for 't is still to be--_ _And who can know all false what then we see?_--[MS.]

{192}[240] [Compare the description of the "s.p.a.cious cave," in _The Island_, Canto IV. lines 121, _sq., Poetical Works_, 1901, v. 629, note 1.]

[dq]---- _methought_.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

{195}[241] [The reader will observe a curious mark of propinquity which the poet notices, with respect to the hands of the father and daughter.

Lord Byron, we suspect, is indebted for the first hint of this to Ali Pacha, who, by the bye, is the original of Lambro; for, when his lordship was introduced, with his friend Hobhouse, to that agreeable mannered tyrant, the Vizier said that he knew he was the _Megalos Anthropos_ (i.e. the great Man), by the smallness of his ears and hands.--Galt. See Byron's letter to his mother, November 12, 1809, _Letters_, 1898, i. 251.]

[dr]

_And if_ I _did my duty as_ thou _hast_, _This hour were thine, and thy young minions last_.--[MS.]

{196}[ds] _Till further orders should his doom a.s.sign_.--[MS.]

[dt] _Loving and loved_--.--[MS.]

{197}[du]

_But thou, sweet fury of the fiery rill,_ _Makest on the liver a still worse attack;_ _Besides, thy price is something dearer still_.--[MS.]

[242] ["As squire Sullen says, 'My head aches consumedly,' 'Scrub, bring me a dram!' Drank some Imola wine, and some punch!"--_Extracts from a Diary_, February 25, 1821, _Letters_, 1901, v. 209. For rack or "arrack" punch, see Thackeray's _Vanity Fair, A Novel without a Hero_, chap. vi. ed. 1892, p. 44.]

{198}[243] ["At Fas [Fez] the houses of the great and wealthy have, within-side, s.p.a.cious courts, adorned with sumptuous galleries, fountains, basons of fine marble, and fish-ponds, shaded with orange, lemon, pomegranate, and fig trees, abounding with fruit, and ornamented with roses, hyacinths, jasmine, violets, and orange flowers, emitting a delectable fragrance."--_Account of the Empire of Marocco and Suez_, by James Grey Jackson, 1811, pp. 69, 70.]