The Works of Lord Byron Volume VI Part 111

Then there were billiards; cards, too, but _no_ dice;-- Save in the clubs no man of honour plays;-- Boats when 't was water, skating when 't was ice, And the hard frost destroyed the scenting days: And angling, too, that solitary vice, Whatever Izaak Walton sings or says: The quaint, old, cruel c.o.xcomb, in his gullet Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it.[701]

CVII.

With evening came the banquet and the wine; The conversazione--the duet Attuned by voices more or less divine (My heart or head aches with the memory yet).

The four Miss Rawbolds in a glee would shine; But the two youngest loved more to be set Down to the harp--because to Music's charms They added graceful necks, white hands and arms.

CVIII.

Sometimes a dance (though rarely on field days, For then the gentlemen were rather tired) Displayed some sylph-like figures in its maze; Then there was small-talk ready when required; Flirtation--but decorous; the mere praise Of charms that should or should not be admired.

The hunters fought their fox-hunt o'er again, And then retreated soberly--at ten.

CIX.

The politicians, in a nook apart, Discussed the World, and settled all the spheres: The wits watched every loophole for their art, To introduce a _bon-mot_ head and ears; Small is the rest of those who would be smart, A moment's good thing may have cost them years Before they find an hour to introduce it; And then, even _then_, some bore may make them lose it.

CX.

But all was gentle and aristocratic In this our party; polished, smooth, and cold, As Phidian forms cut out of marble Attic.

There now are no Squire Westerns, as of old; And our Sophias are not so emphatic, But fair as then, or fairer to behold: We have no accomplished blackguards, like Tom Jones, But gentlemen in stays, as stiff as stones.

CXI.

They separated at an early hour; That is, ere midnight--which is London's noon: But in the country ladies seek their bower A little earlier than the waning moon.

Peace to the slumbers of each folded flower-- May the rose call back its true colour soon!

Good hours of fair cheeks are the fairest tinters, And lower the price of rouge--at least some winters.[702]

FOOTNOTES:

[653] Fy. 12^th^ 1823.

{482}[654] [The allusion is to the refrain of Canning's verses on Pitt, "The Pilot that weathered the storm." Compare, too, "The daring pilot in extremity" (i.e. the Earl of Shaftesbury), who "sought the storms"

(Dryden's _Absalom and Achitophel_, lines 159-161).]

[655] [Johnson loved "dear, dear Bathurst," because he was "a very good hater."--See Boswell's _Johnson_, 1876, p. 78 (Croker's _footnote_).]

{483}[656] [So, too, Charles Kingsley, in _Westward Ho!_ ii. 299, 300, calls _Don Quixote_ "the saddest of books in spite of all its wit."--_Notes and Queries_, Second Series, iii. 124.]

[lx] _By that great Epic_----.--[MS.]

{484}[657] ["Your husband is in his old lunes again." _Merry Wives of Windsor_, act iv. sc. 2, lines 16, 17.]

[658] ["Davus sum, non Oedipus." Terence, _Andria,_ act i. sc. 2, line 23.]

{485}[659]

["'T is not in mortals to command success, But we'll do more, Semp.r.o.nius--we'll deserve it."

Addison's _Cato_, act i. sc. 2, ed. 1777, ii. 77.]

{487}[660] [Compare--"The colt that's backed and burthened being young."

_Venus and Adonis_, lxx. line 5.]

[661] [To "break square," or "squares," is to interrupt the regular order, as in the proverbial phrase, "It breaks no squares," i.e. does no harm--does not matter. Compare Sterne, _Tristram Shandy_ (1802), ii. v.

152, "This fault in Trim _broke no squares_ with them" (_N. Engl.

Dict._, art. "Break," No. 46). The origin of the phrase is uncertain, but it may, perhaps, refer to military tactics. Shakespeare (_Henry V._, act iv. sc. 2, line 28) speaks of "squares of battle."]

[662]

"With every thing that pretty _bin_, My lady sweet, arise."

_Cymbeline_, act ii. sc. 3, lines, 25, 26.

[So Warburton and Hanmer. The folio reads "that pretty is." See Knight's _Shakespeare_, Pictorial Edition, _Tragedies_, i. 203.]

{488}[663] [The house which Byron occupied, 1815-1816, No. 13, Piccadilly Terrace, was the property of Elizabeth, d.u.c.h.ess of Devonshire.]

{489}[ly]

_The slightest obstacle which may enc.u.mber The path downhill is something grand_.--[MS. erased.]

[lz] _Not even in fools who howsoever blind_.--[MS. erased.]

{490}[ma]

_That anything is new to a Chinese; And such is Europe's fashionable ease_.--[MS. erased.]

{491}[mb] _A hidden wine beneath an icy presence_.--[MS. erased.]

[mc] _Though this we hope has been reserved for this age_.--[MS.

erased.]

[664] ["For the creed of Zoroaster," see Sir Walter Scott, _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft_, 1830, pp. 87, 88. (See, too, _Cain_, act ii.

sc. 2, line 404, _Poetical Works_, 1901, v. 254, note 2.)]

{492}[665] "Arcades ambo." [Virgil, _Bucol._, Ecl. vii. 4.]

{493}[666] [So travel the rich.]

{494}[md] _--the n.o.ble host intends_.--[MS. erased.]

[667] ["Judicious drank, and greatly-daring dined." Pope, _Dunciad_, iv.

318.]

{495}[668] [Byron's description of the place of his inheritance, which was to know him no more, is sketched from memory, but it unites the charm of a picture with the accuracy of a ground-plan. Eight years had gone by since he had looked his last on "venerable arch" and "lucid lake" (see "Epistle to Augusta," stanza viii. lines 7, 8), but he had not forgotten, he could not forget, that enchanted and enchanting scene.

Newstead Abbey or Priory was founded by Henry II., by way of deodand or expiation for the murder of Thomas Becket. Lands which bordered the valley of the Leen, and which had formed part of Sherwood Forest, were a.s.signed for the use and endowment of a chapter of "black canons regular of the order of St. Augustine," and on a site, by the river-side to the south of the forest uplands (stanza lv. lines 5-8) the new stede, or place, or station, arose. It was a "Norman Abbey" (stanza lv. line 1) which the Black Canons dedicated to Our Lady, and, here and there, in the cloisters, traces of Norman architecture remain, but the enlargement and completion of the monastery was carried out in successive stages and "transition periods," in a style or styles which, perhaps, more by hap than by cunning, Byron rightly named "mixed Gothic" (stanza lv. line 4).

To work their mills, and perhaps to drain the marshy valley, the monks dammed the Leen and excavated a chain of lakes--the largest to the north-west, Byron's "lucid lake;" a second to the south of the Abbey; and a third, now surrounded with woods, and overlooked by the "wicked lord's" "ragged rock" below the Abbey, half a mile to the south-east.

The "cascade," which flows over and through a stone-work sluice, and forms a rocky water-fall, issues from the upper lake, and is in full view of the west front of the Abbey. Almost at right angles to these lakes are three ponds: the Forest Pond to the north of the stone wall, which divides the garden from the forest; the square "Eagle" Pond in the Monks' Garden; and the narrow stew-pond, bordered on either side with overhanging yews, which drains into the second or Garden Lake. Byron does not enlarge on this double chain of lakes and ponds, and, perhaps for the sake of pictorial unity, converts the second (if a second then existed) and third lakes into a river.

The Abbey, which, at the dissolution of monasteries in 1539, was handed over by Henry VIII. to Sir John Byron, "steward and warden of the forest of Shirewood," was converted, here and there, more or less, into a baronial "mansion" (stanza lxvi.). It is, roughly speaking, a square block of buildings, flanking the sides of a gra.s.sy quadrangle.