The Works of Lord Byron Volume VI Part 92

[See for ill.u.s.tration of the Brig o' Balgownie, with its single Gothic arch, _Letters_, 1901 [L.P.], v. 406. ]

{406}[537]

["Land of brown heath and s.h.a.ggy wood, Land of the mountain and the flood," etc.

_Lay of the Last Minstrel_, Canto VI. stanza ii.]

{407}[jy]

_Some thirty years before at fair eighteen_.--[MS.]

or, _Seven and twenty_--which, _it does not matter_,-- _Wrinkles, those d.a.m.nedst democrats, won't flatter_.--[MS. erased.]

[538] Tiberius Gracchus, being tribune of the people, demanded in their name the execution of the Agrarian law; by which all persons possessing above a certain number of acres were to be deprived of the surplus for the benefit of the poor citizens.

{408}[539]

"Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura."

_Inferno_, Canto I. line 2.

[jz] _Hut where we travellers bait with dim reflection_.--[MS. erased.]

{409}[ka] _Is when he learns to limit his expenses_.--[MS. erased.]

[kb]

---- _till the ice_ _Cracked, she would ne'er believe in thaws for vice_.--[MS. erased.]

{410}[540] A metaphor taken from the "forty-horse power" of a steam-engine. That mad wag, the Reverend Sydney Smith, sitting by a brother clergyman at dinner, observed afterwards that his dull neighbour had a _"twelve-parson power"_ of conversation.

[541] [In a letter to his sister, October 25, 1804 (_Letters_, 1898, i.

40), Byron mentions an aunt--"the amiable antiquated Sophia," and asks, "Is she yet in the land of the living, or does she sing psalms with the Blessed in the other world?" This was his father's sister, Sophia Maria, daughter of Admiral the Hon. John Byron. But his "good old aunt" is, more probably, the Hon. Mrs. Frances Byron, widow of George (born April 22, 1730) son of the fourth, and brother of the "Wicked" lord. She was the daughter and co-heiress of Ellis Levett, Esq., and lived "at Nottingham in her own house." She died, aged 86, June 13, 1822, not long before this Canto was written. She is described in the obituary notice of the _Gentleman's Magazine_, June, 1822, vol. 92, p. 573, as "Daughter of Vice-Admiral the Hon. John Byron (who sailed round the world with Lord Anson), grandfather of the present Lord Byron." But that is, chronologically, impossible. Byron must have retained a pleasing recollection of the ear-trumpet and the spectacles, and it gratified his kindlier humour to embalm their owner in his verse.]

[542] [See Collins's _Peerage_, 1779, vii. 120. It is probable that Byron was lineally descended from Ralph de Burun, of h.o.r.estan, who is mentioned in Doomsday Book (sect. xi.) as holding eight lordships in Notts and five in Derbyshire, but with regard to Ernysius or Erneis the pedigree is silent. (See _Pedigree of George Gordon, Sixth Lord Byron_, by Edward Bernard, 1870.)]

{411}[543] "Hyde."--I believe a hyde of land to be a legitimate word, and, as such, subject to the tax of a quibble.

[kc]

_And humbly hope that the same G.o.d which hath given_ _Us land on earth, will do no less in Heaven_.--[MS. erased.]

[kd] _Perhaps--but d--n perhaps_----.--[MS.]

{412}[544] [For the illness ("a scarlet fever, complicated by angina, both aggravated by premature exhaustion") and death of Lansko, see _The Story of a Throne_, by K. Waliszewsky, 1895, ii. 131, 133. For the rumour that he was poisoned by Potemkin, see _Memoires Secrets, etc._ [by C.F.P. Ma.s.son], 1800, i. 170.]

[545] [Matthew Baillie (1761-1823), the nephew of William Hunter, the brother of Agnes and Joanna Baillie, was a celebrated anatomist. He attended Byron (1799-1802), when an endeavour was made to effect a cure of the muscular contraction of his right leg and foot. He was consulted by Lady Byron, in 1816, with regard to her husband's supposed derangement, but was not admitted when he called at the house in Piccadilly. He is said to have "avoided technical and learned phrases; to have affected no sentimental tenderness, but expressed what he had to say in the simplest and plainest terms" (_Annual Biography_, 1824, p.

319). Jekyll (_Letters_, 1894, p. 110) repeats or invents an anecdote that "the old king, in his mad fits, used to say he could bring any dead people to converse with him, except those who had died under Baillie's care, for that the doctor always dissected them into so many morsels, that they had not a leg to walk to Windsor with." It is hardly necessary to say that John Abernethy (1764-1831) "expressed what _he_ had to say"

in the bluntest and rudest terms at his disposal.]

[546] The empress went to the Crimea, accompanied by the Emperor Joseph, in the year--I forget which.

[The Prince de Ligne, who accompanied Catherine in her progress through her southern provinces, in 1787, gives the following particulars: "We have crossed during many days vast, solitary regions, from which her Majesty has driven Zaporogua, Budjak, and Nogais Tartars, who, ten years ago, threatened to ravage her empire. All these places were furnished with magnificent tents for breakfasts, lunches, dinners, suppers, and sleeping-rooms ... deserted regions were at once transformed into fields, groves, villages: ... The Empress has left in each chief town gifts to the value of a hundred thousand roubles. Every day that we remained stationary was marked with diamonds, b.a.l.l.s, fireworks, and illuminations throughout a circuit of ten leagues." --_The Prince de Ligne, His Memoirs, etc._, translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley, 1899, ii. 31.]

{415}[ke] _Man, midst thy mouldy mammoths, Cuvier._--[MS.]

{416}[kf]

_Who like sour fruit to sharpen up the tides_ _Of their salt veins, and stir their stagnancy._--[MS. erased.]

{417}[547] In the Empress Anne's time, Biren, her favourite, a.s.sumed the name and arms of the "Birons" of France; which families are yet extant with that of England. There are still the daughters of Courland of that name; one of them I remember seeing in England in the blessed year of the Allies (1814)--the d.u.c.h.ess of S.--to whom the English d.u.c.h.ess of Somerset presented me as a namesake.

["Ernest John Biren was born in Courland [in 1690]. His grandfather had been head groom to James, the third Duke of Courland, and obtained from his master the present of a small estate in land.... In 1714 he made his appearance at St. Petersburg, and solicited the place of page to the Princess Charlotte, wife of the Tzarovitch Alexey; but being contemptuously rejected as a person of mean extraction, retired to Mittau, where he chanced to ingratiate himself with Count Bestuchef, Master of the Household to Anne, widow of Frederic William, Duke of Courland, who resided at Mittau. Being of a handsome figure and polite address, he soon gained the good will of the d.u.c.h.ess, and became her secretary and chief favourite. On her being declared sovereign of Russia, Anne called Biren to Petersburg, and the secretary soon became Duke of Courland, and first minister or rather despot of Russia. On the death of Anne, which happened in 1740, Biren, being declared regent, continued daily increasing his vexations and cruelties, till he was arrested, on the 18th of December, only twenty days after he had been appointed to the regency; and at the revolution that ensued he was exiled to the frozen sh.o.r.es of the Oby." _Catherine II._, by W. Tooke, 1800, i. 160, _footnote_. He was recalled in 1763, and died in 1772.

In a letter to his sister, dated June 18, 1814, Byron gives a slightly different version of the incident, recorded in his note (_vide supra_): "The d.u.c.h.ess of Somerset also, to mend matters, insisted on presenting me to a Princess _Biron_, d.u.c.h.ess of Hohen-G.o.d-knows-what, and another person to her two sisters, Birons too. But I flew off, and _would_ not, saying I had had enough of introductions for that night at least."--_Letters_, 1899, iii. 98. The "daughters of Courland" must have been descendants of "Pierre, dernier Duc de Courlande, De la Maison de Biron," viz. Jeanne Catherine, born June 24, 1783, who married, in 1801, Francois Pignatelli de Belmonte, Duc d'Acerenza, and Dorothee, born August 21, 1793, who married, in 1809, Edmond de Talleyrand Perigord, Duc de Talleyrand, nephew to the Bishop of Autun. (See _Almanach de Gotha_, 1848, pp. 109, 110.)]

{418}[548] [Napoleon's exclamation at the Elysee Bourbon, June 23, 1815.

"When his civil counsellors talked of defence, the word wrung from him the bitter e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, 'Ah! my old guard! could they but defend themselves like you!'"--_Life of Napoleon Buonaparte_, by Sir Walter Scott, _Prose Works_, 1846, ii. 760.]

[kg]

_Who now that he is dead has not a foe_; _The last expired in cut-throat Castlereagh_.--[MS. erased.]

[549] [Immanuel Kant, born at Konigsberg, in 1729, became Professor and Rector of the University, and died at Konigsberg in 1804.]

{419}[550]

["The castled crag of Drachenfels Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine," etc.

_Childe Harold_, Canto III.]

[551] St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins were still extant in 1816, and may be so yet, as much as ever.

{421}[552] ["We left Ratzeburg at 7 o'clock Wednesday evening, and arrived at Luneburg--_i.e._ 35 English miles--at 3 o'clock on Thursday afternoon. This is a fair specimen! In England I used to laugh at the 'flying waggons;' but compared with a German Post-Coach, the metaphor is perfectly justifiable, and for the future I shall never meet a flying waggon without thinking respectfully of its speed."--S.T. Coleridge, March 12, 1799, _Letters of S.T.C._, 1895, i. 278.]

[553] [See for German oaths, "Extracts from a Diary," January 12, 1821, _Letters_, 1901, v. 172.]

[kh]

_With "Schnapps"--Democritus would cease to smile,_ _By German, post-boys driven a mile_.--[MS.]

_With "Schnapps"--and spite of "Dam'em," "dog" and "log"_ _Launched at their heads jog-jog-jog-jog-jog-jog_.--[MS. erased.]

{422}[554] [The French Inscription (see _Memorial Inscriptions_, etc., by Joseph Meadows Cowper, 1897, p. 134) on the Black Prince's monument is thus translated in the _History of Kent_ (John Weevers' _Funerall Monuments_, 1636, pp. 205, 206)--

"Who so thou be that pa.s.seth by Where this corps entombed lie, Understand what I shall say, As at this time, speake I may.

Such as thou art, sometime was I.

Such as I am, shalt thou be.

I little thought on th' oure of death, So long as I enjoyed breath.

Great riches here did I possess, Whereof I made great n.o.bleness; I had gold, silver, wardrobes, and Great treasure, horses, houses, land.

But now a caitife poore am I, Deepe in the ground, lo! here I lie; My beautie great is all quite gone, My flesh is wasted to the bone.

My house is narrow now and throng, Nothing but Truth comes from my tongue.

And if ye should see me this day, I do not think but ye would say, That I had never beene a man, So much altered now I am."]

{423}[ki]

---- _of higher stations_, _And for their pains get smarter puncturations_.--[MS. erased.]

{424}[555] [See _Childe Harold_, Canto I. stanza x.x.xii. line 2, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 93, note 16.]