The Works of Lord Byron Volume VI Part 99

{445}[589] [Stanza lviii. was first published in 1837. The reference is to Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868). Byron was under the impression that Milman had influenced Murray against continuing the publication of _Don Juan_. Added to this surmise, was the mistaken belief that it was Milman who had written the article in the _Quarterly_, which "killed John Keats." Hence the virulence of the attack.

"Dull Dorus" is obscure, but compare Propertius, _Eleg._ III. vii. 44, where Callimachus is addressed as "Dore poeta." He is the "ox of verse,"

because he had been recently appointed to the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford. The "roaring Romans" are "The soldiery" who shout "All, All," in Croly's _Catiline_, act v. sc. 2.]

[la] _Then there's my gentle Barry--who they say._--[MS.]

[590] [Jeffrey, in his review of _A Sicilian Story, etc._, Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall), 1787-1874 (_Edinburgh Review_, January, 1820, vol. 33, pp. 144-155), compares _Diego de Montilla_, a poem in _ottava rima_, with _Don Juan_, favourably and unfavourably: "There is no profligacy and no horror ... no mocking of virtue and honour, and no strong mixtures of buffoonery and grandeur." But it may fairly match with Byron and his Italian models "as to the better qualities of elegance, delicacy, and tenderness." See, too, _Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_, March, 1820, vol. vi. pp. 153, 647.]

[591] [See Preface to the _Vision of Judgment, Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 484, note 3.]

[592] [Croker's article in the _Quarterly_ (April, 1818 [pub, September], vol. xix. pp. 204-208) did not "kill John Keats." See letter to George and Georgiana Keats, October, 1818 (_Letters, etc._, 1895, p.

215). Byron adopts Sh.e.l.ley's belief that the Reviewer, "miserable man,"

"one of the meanest," had "wantonly defaced one of the n.o.blest specimens of the workmanship of G.o.d." See Preface to _Adonais_, and stanzas x.x.xvi., x.x.xvii.]

{446}[lb]

_And weakly mind, to let that all celestial Particle_.--[MS. erased.]

or, _'T is strange the mind should let such phrases quell its_ Chief Impulse with a few, frail, paper pellets_.--[MS. erased.]

[593] "Divinae particulam aurae" [Hor., _Sat._ ii. 2. 79]

[594] [For "the crowd of usurpers" who started up in the reign of Gallienus, and were dignified with the honoured appellation of "the thirty tyrants," see Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_, 1825, i. 164.]

[595] [_King Lear_, act iv. sc. 6, line 15.]

{447}[596] ["Illita Nesseo misi tibi texta veneno."

Ovid., _Heroid. Epist_. ix. 163.]

[597] [A "bower," in Moore's phrase, signifies a solitude _a deux_; e.g.

"Here's the Bower she lov'd so much."

"Come to me, love, the twilight star Shall guide thee to my bower."

Moore.]

{448}[598] [Compare _The Waltz_, lines 220-229, _et pa.s.sim_, _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 501.]

{449}[599] Scotch for goblin.

[lc] _Handsome but_ blase----[MS.]

{450}[600] [The sentiment is reiterated in _The Night Thoughts_, and is the theme of _Resignation_, which was written and published when Young was more than eighty years old. ]

[ld] _And fresher, since without a breath of air_.--[MS.]

[le] _Where are the thousand lovely innocents?_--[MS.]

[601] ["I have ... written ... to express my willingness to accept the, or almost any mortgage, any thing to get out of the tremulous Funds of these oscillating times. There will be a war somewhere, no doubt--and whatever it may be, the Funds will be affected more or less; so pray get us out of them with all proper expedition. It has been the burthen of my song to you three years and better, and about as useful as better counsels."--Letter of Byron to Kinnaird, January 18, 1823, _Letters_, 1901, vi. 162, 163.]

{451}[602] [For William Pole Tylney Long Wellesley (1788-1857), see _The Waltz_, line 21, _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 484, note 1. He was only on the way to being "diddled" in 1822, but the prophecy (suggested, no doubt, by the announcement of the sale of furniture, etc., at Wanstead House, in the _Morning Chronicle_, July 8, 1822) was ultimately fulfilled. Samuel Whitbread, born 1758, committed suicide July 6, 1815.

Sir Samuel Romilly, born 1758, committed suicide November 2, 1818.]

[603] [According to Charles Greville, George the Third made two wills--the first in 1770, the second, which he never signed, in 1810. By the first will he left "all he had to the Queen for her life, Buckingham House to the Duke of Clarence," etc., and as Buckingham House had been twice sold, and the other legatees were dead, a question arose between the King and the Duke of York as to the right of inheritance of their father's personal property. George IV. conceived that it devolved upon him personally, and not on the Crown, and "consequently appropriated to himself the whole of the money and the jewels." It is possible that this difference between the brothers was noised abroad, and that old stories of the destruction of royal wills were revived to the new king's discredit. (See _The Greville Memoirs_, 1875, i. 64, 65.)]

[604] [See Moore's _Fum and Hum, the Two Birds of Royalty_, appended to his _Fudge Family_.]

[605] [Lady Caroline Lamb and Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster.]

{452}[lf] ---- _their caps and curls at Dukes._--[MS.]

{453}[606] [The Congress at Verona, in 1822. See the Introduction to _The Age of Bronze, Poetical Works_, 1891, v. 537-540.]

[607] [_2 Henry IV._, act iv. sc. 3, line 117.]

[608] [Hor., _Od._ I. xi. line 8.]

[609] [_Macbeth_, act v. sc. 5, line 24.]

[610] [_1 Henry IV._, act ii. sc. 4, line 463.]

[611] [See the _Secret Memoirs and Manners of several Persons of Quality, of Both s.e.xes, from the New Atalantis_, 1709, a work in which the auth.o.r.ess, Mrs. Manley, satirizes the distinguished characters of her day. Warburton (_Works of Pope_, ed. 1751, i. 244) calls it "a famous book.... full of court and party scandal, and in a loose effeminacy of style and sentiment, which well suited the debauched taste of the better vulgar." Pope also alludes to it in the _Rape of the Lock_, iii. 165, 166--

"As long as _Atalantis_ shall be read.

Or the small pillow grace a lady's bed."

And Swift, in his ballad on "Corinna" (stanza 8)--

"Her common-place book all gallant is, Of scandal now a cornucopia, She pours it out in _Atalantis_, Or memoirs of the New Utopia."

_Works_, 1824, xii. 302.]

{454}[612] [Oct. 17, 1822.--MS.]

CANTO THE TWELFTH.

I.

Of all the barbarous middle ages, that Which is most barbarous is the middle age Of man! it is--I really scarce know what; But when we hover between fool and sage, And don't know justly what we would be at-- A period something like a printed page, Black letter upon foolscap, while our hair Grows grizzled, and we are not what we were;--

II.

Too old for Youth,--too young, at thirty-five, To herd with boys, or h.o.a.rd with good threescore,-- I wonder people should be left alive; But since they are, that epoch is a bore: Love lingers still, although 't were late to wive: And as for other love, the illusion's o'er; And Money, that most pure imagination, Gleams only through the dawn of its creation.[613]