The Works of Lord Byron Volume VI Part 57

{250}[fk] _The very women half forgave her face_.--[MS, Erased.]

[fl] _Had his instructions--where and how to deal_.--[MS.]

[fm] _And husbands now and then are mystified_.--[MS.]

{251}[306] [Narrow javelins, once known as archegays--the a.s.segais of Zulu warfare.]

{252}[fn]

_But nature teaches what power cannot spoil_ _And, though it was a new and strange sensation_, _Young female hearts are such a genial soil_ _For kinder feelings, she forgot her station_.--[MS.]

[fo] _War with your heart_--.--[MS.]

{254}[307] [See _Fielding's History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews_, bk. i. chap. v.]

[308]

["'But if my boy with virtue be endued, What harm will beauty do him?' Nay, what good?

Say, what avail'd, of old, to Theseus' son, The stern resolve? what to Bellerophon?-- O, then did Phaedra redden, then her pride Took fire to be so steadfastly denied!

Then, too, did Sthen.o.baea glow with shame, And both burst forth with unextinguish'd flame!"

Gifford, _Juvenal_, Sat. x. 473-480.

The adventures of Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, and Bellerophon are well known. They were accused of incontinence, by the women whose inordinate pa.s.sions they had refused to gratify at the expense of their duty, and sacrificed to the fatal credulity of the husbands of the disappointed fair ones. It is very probable that both the stories are founded on the Scripture account of Joseph and Potiphar's wife.--Footnote, ibid., ed. 1817, ii. pp. 49, 50.]

[fp] _The poets and romances_----.--[MS.]

[fq]

_And this strong second cause (to tire no longer_ _Your patience) shows the first must still be stronger_.

--[MS. Alternative reading.]

{256}[309]

["By Heaven! methinks, it were an easy leap, To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon."

_Henry IV_., act i. sc. 3, lines 201, 202.]

[fr] _Like natural Shakespeare on the immortal page_.--[MS.]

[310]

["And when I have stol'n upon these sons-in law, Then kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill."

_King Lear_, act iv. sc. 6, lines 185, 186.]

[311]

["A woman scorn'd is pitiless as fate, For, there, the dread of shame adds stings to hate."

Gifford's _Juvenal, Sat_. x. lines 481, 482, ed. 1817, ii. p. 50.]

{258}[312] ["Yes--my valour is certainly going! it is sneaking off! I feel it _oozing_ out, as it were, at the palms of my hands!"--Sheridan's _Rivals_, act v. sc. 3.]

[fs] _Or all the stuff which uttered by the "Blues" is_.--[MS.]

{259}[ft]

_But prithee--get my women in the way_, _That all the stars may gleam with due adorning_.--[MS.]

[fu] _Of Cantemir or Knolles_-----.--[MS.]

[313] It may not be unworthy of remark, that Bacon, in his essay on "Empire" (Essays, No. xx.), hints that Solyman was the last of his line; on what authority, I know not. These are his words: "The destruction of Mustapha was so fatal to Solyman's line; as the succession of the Turks from Solyman until this day is suspected to be untrue, and of strange blood; for that Selymus the second was thought to be supposit.i.tious."

But Bacon, in his historical authorities, is often inaccurate. I could give half a dozen instances from his Apophthegms only.

[Selim II. (1524-1574) succeeded his father as Sultan in 1566. Hofmann (_Lexicon Univ_.) describes him as "meticulosus, effeminatus, ebriosus,"

but neither Demetrius Cantemir, in his _History of the Growth and Decay of the Othman Empire_ (translated by N. Tyndal, 1734); nor _The Turkish History_ (written by Mr. Knolles, 1701), cast any doubts on his legitimacy. Byron complained of the omission from the notes to the first edition of Don Juan, of his corrections of Bacon's "Apophthegms" (see _Letters_, 1901, v. Appendix VI. pp. 597-600), in a letter to Murray, dated January 21, 1821,--_vide ibid_., p. 220.]

{260}[314] [Gibbon.]

[fv]

_Because he kept them wrapt up in his closet, he_ _Ruled fair wives and twelve hundred wh.o.r.es, unseen,_ _More easily than Christian kings one queen_.--[MS.]

[fw]

_Then ended many a fair Sultana's trip_: _The Public knew no more than does this rhyme_; _No printed scandals flew,--the fish, of course,_ _Were better--while the morals were no worse_.--[MS.]

[fx] _No sign of its depression anywhere_.--[MS.]

[315] ["We attempted to visit the Seven Towers, but were stopped at the entrance, and informed that without a firman it was inaccessible to strangers.... It was supposed that Count Bulukof, the Russian minister, would be the last of the _Moussafirs_, or imperial hostages, confined in this fortress; but since the year 1784 M. Ruffin and many of the French have been imprisoned in the same place; and the dungeons.... were gaping, it seems, for the sacred persons of the gentlemen composing his Britannic Majesty's mission, previous to the rupture between Great Britain and the Porte in 1809."--Hobhouse, _Travels in Albania_, 1858, ii. 311, 312.]

{261}[316] ["The princess" (Asma Sultana, daughter of Achmet III.) "complained of the barbarity which, at thirteen years of age, united her to a decrepit old man, who, by treating her like a child, had inspired her with nothing but disgust."--_Memoirs of Baron de Toil_, 1786, i. 74.

See, too, _Memoires_, etc., 1784, i. 84, 85.]

{262}[317] [The connection between "horns" and Heaven, to which Byron twice alludes, is not very obvious. The reference may be to the Biblical "horn of salvation," or to the symbolical horns of Divine glory as depicted in the Moses of Michel Angelo. Compare _Mazeppa_, lines 177, 178, _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 213.]

[fy]---- _with solemn air and wise_.--[MS.]

[fz] _Virginity in these unhappy climes_.--[MS.]

{263}[318] [This stanza, which Byron composed in bed, February 27, 1821 (see _Extracts from a Diary, Letters_, 1901, v. 209), is not in the first edition. On discovering the omission, he wrote to Murray: "Upon what principle have you omitted ... one of the concluding stanzas sent as an addition?--because it ended, I suppose, with--

'And do not link two virtuous souls for life Into that moral centaur, man and wife?'

Now, I must say, once for all, that I will not permit any human being to take such liberties with my writings because I am absent. I desire the omissions to be replaced (except the stanza on Semiramis)--particularly the stanza upon the Turkish marriages."--Letter to Murray, August 31, 1821, ibid., p. 351.]

[ga]

_Meanwhile as Homer sometimes sleeps, much more_ _The modern muse may be allowed to snore_.--[MS.]