The Works of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 93

[hi] _Which looked as 'twere a phantom even on earth_.--[MS. erased.]

[hj] _Now it seemed little, now a little bigger_.--[MS. erased.]

[539] {513}[The Letters of Junius have been attributed to more than fifty authors. Among the more famous are the Duke of Portland, Lord George Sackville, Sir Philip Francis, Edmund Burke, John Dunning, Lord Ashburton, John Home Tooke, Hugh Boyd, George Chalmers, etc. Of Junius, Byron wrote, in his _Journal_ of November 23, 1813, "I don't know what to think. Why should Junius be yet dead?.... the man must be alive, and will never die without the disclosure" (_Letters_, 1893, ii. 334); but an article (by Brougham) in the _Edinburgh Review_, vol. xxix. p. 94, on _The Ident.i.ty of Junius with a Distinguished Living Character established_ (see _Letters_, 1900, iv. 210), seems to have almost persuaded him that "Francis is Junius." (For a _resume_ of the arguments in favour of the ident.i.ty of Junius with Francis, see Mr. Leslie Stephen's article in the _Dict. of Nat. Biography_, art. "Francis." See, too, _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, by W. E. H. Lecky, 1887, iii. 233-255. For a series of articles (by W. Fraser Rae) against this theory, see _Athenaeum_, 1888, ii. 192, 258, 319. The question is still being debated. See _The Francis Letters_, with a note on the Junius Controversy, by C. F. Keary, 1901.)]

[hk] _A doctor, a man-midwife_----.--[MS. erased.]

[hl] {514}_Till curiosity became a task_.--[MS. erased.]

[540] [The "Man in the Iron Mask," or, more correctly, the "Man in the Black Velvet Mask," has been identified with Count Ercole Antonio Mattioli, Secretary of State at the Court of Ferdinando Carlo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua. Mattioli was convicted of high treason, and at the instance of Louis XIV. was seized by the Marechal Catinat, May 2, 1679, and confined at Pinerolo. He was deported to the Iles Sainte-Marguerite, March 19, 1694, and afterwards transferred to the Bastille, September 18, 1698. He died November 19, 1703. Baron Heiss was the first to solve the mystery. Chambrier, Roux-Fazillac, Delort, G. A. Ellis (see a notice in the _Quart. Rev_., June, 1826, vol. x.x.xiv. p. 19), and others take the same view. (See, for confirmation of this theory, an article _L'Homme au Masque de Velours Noir_, in the _Revue Historique_, by M.

Frantz Funck-Brentano, November, December, 1894, tom. 56, pp. 253-303.)]

[541] [See _The Rivals_, act iv. sc. II]

[hm] _It is that he_----.--[MS. erased.]

[542] {515}[The Delta of the Niger is a vast alluvial mora.s.s, covered with dense forests of mangrove. "Along the whole coast ... there opens into the Atlantic its successive estuaries, which navigators have scarcely been able to number."]

[543] [The t.i.tle-page runs thus: "_Letters of Junius, Stat Nominis Umbra_." _That_, and nothing more! On the t.i.tle-page of his copy, across the motto, S. T. Coleridge wrote this sentence, "As he never dropped the mask, so he too often used the poisoned dagger of the a.s.sa.s.sin."--_Miscellanies_, etc., by S. T. Coleridge, ed. T. Asle, 1885, p. 341.]

[hn]

_My charge is upon record and will last_ _Longer than will his lamentation_.--[MS. erased.]

[544] {516}[John Horne Tooke (1736-1812), as an opponent of the American War, and as a promoter of the Corresponding Society, etc.; and Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), as the champion of American Independence, would have been cited as witnesses against George III.]

[545] [In the _Diable Boiteux_ (1707) of Le Sage, Don Cleofas, clinging to the cloak of Asmodeus, is carried through the air to the summit of San Salvador. Compare--

"Oh! could Le Sage's demon's gift Be realiz'd at my desire, This night my trembling form he'd lift, To place it on St. Mary's spire."

_Granta, a Medley_, stanza 1., _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 56, note 2.]

[546] ["But what he most detested, what most filled him with disgust, was the settled, determined malignity of a renegado."--_Speech of William Smith, M.P., in the House of Commons_, March 14, 1817. (See, too, for the use of the word "renegado," _Poetical Works_, 1900, iii.

488, note i.)]

[547] [For the "weight" of Southey's quartos, compare Byron's note (1) to _Hints from Horace_, line 657, and a variant of lines 753-756. "Thus let thy ponderous quarto steep and stink" (_Poetical Works_, 1898, i.

435, 443).]

[ho] {517}_And drawing nigh I caught him at a libel_.--[MS. erased.]

[548] [Compare--

"But for the children of the 'Mighty Mother's,'

The would-be wits, and can't-be gentlemen, I leave them to their daily 'tea is ready,'

Smug coterie, and literary lady."

_Beppo_, stanza lxxvi. lines 5-8, _vide ante_, p. 183.]

[hp]

_And scrawls as though he were head clerk to the "Fates,"_ _And this I think is quite enough for one_.--[Erased.]

[549] {518}[Compare--

"One leaf from Southey's laurels may explode All his combustibles, 'An a.s.s, by G.o.d!'"

_A Satire on Satirists, etc._, by W. S. Landor, 1836, p. 22.]

[550] ["There is a chaunt in the recitation both of Coleridge and Wordsworth, which acts as a spell upon the hearers."--Hazlitt's _My First Acquaintance with Poets_; _The Liberal_, 1823, ii. 23, 46.]

[551] [Compare the att.i.tude of Minos to the "poet" in Fielding's _Journey from This World to the Next_: "The poet answered, he believed if Minos had read his works he would set a higher value on them. [The poet had begged for admittance to Elysium on the score of his 'dramatic works.' Minos dismissed the plea, but relented on being informed that he had once lent the whole profits of a benefit-night to a friend.] He was then beginning to repeat, but Minos pushed him forward, and turning his back to him, applied himself to the next pa.s.sengers."--_Novelist's Magazine_, 1783, vol. xii. cap. vii. p. 17.]

[552]

[" ... Mediocribus esse poetis Non homines, non di, non concessere columnae."

Horace, _Ars Poetica_, lines 372, 373.]

[553] {519}[For the King's habit of duplicating his phrases, compare--

"Whitbread, is't true? I hear, I hear You're of an ancient family renowned.

What? what? I'm told that you're a limb Of Pym, the famous fellow Pym: What, Whitbread, is it true what people say?

Son of a Roundhead are you? hae? hae? hae?

Thirtieth of January don't you _feed_?

Yes, yes, you eat Calf's head, you eat Calf's head."

_Instructions to a Celebrated Laureat_, Peter Pindar's _Works_, 1812, i. 493.]

[554] [For Henry James Pye (1745-1813), see _English Bards, etc._, line 102, _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 305, note 1.]

[hq] {520} ----_an ill-looking knave_.--[MS. erased.]

[555] ["Yesterday, at Holland House, I was introduced to Southey--the best-looking bard I have seen for some time. To have that poet's head and shoulders, I would almost have written his Sapphics. He is certainly a prepossessing person to look on, and a man of talent, and all that, and--_there_ is his eulogy."--Letter to Moore, September 27, 1813, _Letters_, 1898, ii. 266.

"I have not seen the _Liberal_," wrote Southey to Wynn, October 26, 1822, "but a Leeds paper has been sent me ... including among its extracts the description and behaviour of a certain 'varlet.' He has not offended me in the way that the pious painter exasperated the Devil"

(i.e. by painting him "more ugly than ever:" see Southey's Ballad of the _Pious Painter_, _Works_, 1838, vi. 64).]

[hr] {521}_He therefore was content to cite a few_.--[MS. erased.]

[556] [Southey's "Battle of Blenheim" was published in the _Annual Anthology_ of 1800, pp. 34-37. It is quoted at length, as a republican and seditious poem, in the _Preface_ to an edition of _Wat Tyler_, published by W. Hone in 1817; and it is also included in an "Appendix"

ent.i.tled _The Stripling Bard, or the Apostate Laureate_, affixed to another edition issued in the same year by John Fairburn. The purport and _motif_ of these excellent rhymes is non-patriotic if not Jacobinical, but, for some reason, the poem has been considered improving for the young, and is included in many "Poetry Books" for schools. _The Poet's Pilgrimage to Waterloo_ was published in 1816, not long before the resuscitation of _Wat Tyler_.]

[557] [_Vide ante_, p. 482.]

[558] ["He has written _Wat Tyler_, and taken the office of poet laureate--he has, in the _Life of Henry Kirke White_ (see Byron's note _infra_), denominated reviewing 'the ungentle craft,' and has become a reviewer--he was one of the projectors of a scheme called 'pantisocracy,' for having all things, including women, in common (_query_ common women?)."--_Some Observations upon an Article in Blackwood's Magazine_ (No. xxix., August, 1819), _Letters_, 1900 [Appendix IX.], iv. 483. The invention or, possibly, disinterment of this calumny was no doubt a counterblast on Byron's part to the supposed charge of a "league of incest" (at Diodati, in 1816), which he maintained had been disseminated by Coleridge on the authority of Southey (_vide ante_, p. 475). It is, perhaps, unnecessary to state that before Pantisocracy was imagined or devised, one of the future pantisocrats, Robert Lovell, was married to Mary Fricker; that Robert Southey was engaged to be married to her sister Edith; and that, as a result of the birth and evolution of the scheme, Coleridge became engaged to be married to a third sister, Sarah, hitherto loverless, in order that "every Jack should have his Jill," and the world begin anew in a second Eden across the seas. All things were to be held in common, in order that each man might hold his wife in particular.]

[559] {522}_Remains of Henry Kirke White_ [1808, i. 23]