The Works of Lord Byron Volume VI Part 125

[nk] _Old Skeleton with ages for your booty_.--[MS. erased.]

{547}[735] ["He turned himself into all manner of forms with more ease than the chameleon changes his colour.... Thus at Sparta he was all for exercise, frugal in his diet, and severe in his manners. In Asia he was as much for mirth and pleasure, luxury and ease."--Plutarch, _Alcibiades_, Langhorne's translation, 1838, p. 150.]

[736] [For the phrase "Cupidon Dechaine," applied to Count D'Orsay, _vide ante_, p. 526, note 4.]

[737] [Plautus, _Truculentus_, act ii. sc. 8, line 14.]

[738] [Raphael's "Transfiguration" is in the Vatican.]

[739] As it is necessary in these times to avoid ambiguity, I say that I mean, by "Diviner still," CHRIST. If ever G.o.d was man--or man G.o.d--he was _both_. I never arraigned his creed, but the use--or abuse made of it. Mr. Canning one day quoted Christianity to sanction negro slavery, and Mr. Wilberforce had little to say in reply. And was Christ crucified, that black men might be scourged? If so, He had better been born a Mulatto, to give both colours an equal chance of freedom, or at least salvation.

[In a debate in the House of Commons, May 15, 1823 (_Parl. Deb._, N.S.

vol. ix. pp. 278, 279), Canning, replying to Fowell Buxton's motion for the Abolition of Slavery, said, "G.o.d forbid that I should contend that the Christian religion is favourable to slavery ... but if it be meant that in the Christian religion there is a special denunciation against slavery, that slavery and Christianity cannot exist together,--I think that the honourable gentleman himself must admit that the proposition is historically false."]

{549}[nl]

---- _and One Name Greater still_ _Whose lot it was to be the most mistaken_.--[MS, erased.]

[nm] _To leave the world by bigot fas.h.i.+ons shaken_.--[MS. erased.]

[nn] _Which never flatters either Whig or Tory_.--[MS. erased.]

{550}[740] [Martial, _Epig._, x. 46.]

[741] ["Feeble" for "foible" is found in the writings of Mrs. Behn and Sir R. L'Estrange (_N. Engl. Dict._).]

[no] _But now I can't tell when it will be done_.--[MS. erased.]

[742] [The _N. Engl. Dict._ quotes W. Hooper's _Rational Recreations_ (1794) as an earlier authority for the use of "concision" in the sense of conciseness.]

[np] _Who now are weltering_----.--[MS. erased.]

[743] ["The cat will mew and dog will have his day." _Hamlet_, act v.

sc. 1, line 280.]

[nq]

_I should not be the foremost to deride_ _Their fault--but quickly take a sword the other way,_ _And wax an Ultra-royalist, where Royalty_ _Had nothing left it but a desperate Loyalty_.--[MS. erased.]

{551}[744]

["And hold no sin so deeply red As that of breaking Priscian's head."

Butler's _Hudibras_, Part II. Canto II. lines 223, 224.]

[745] [Brougham, in the famous critique of _Hours of Idleness_ (_Edinburgh Review_, January, 1808, vol. xi. pp. 285-289), was pleased "to counsel him that he do forthwith abandon poetry and turn his talents, which are considerable, and his opportunities, which are great, to better account." Others, however, gave him encouragement. See, for instance, a review by J.H. Markland, who afterwards made his name as editor of the Roxburgh Club issue of the Chester Mysteries (whence, perhaps, Byron derived his knowledge of "Mysteries and Moralities"), which concludes thus: "Heartily hoping that the 'illness and depression of spirits,' which evidently pervade the greater part of these effusions, are entirely dispelled; confident that 'George Gordon, Lord Byron' will have a conspicuous niche in the future editions of 'Royal and n.o.ble Authors,' etc."--_Gent. Mag._, 1807, vol. lxxvii. p. 1217.]

[nr] _To marshal onwards to the Delphian Height._--[MS.]

{552}[746] ["Three small vessels were apparently all that Columbus had requested. Two of them were light barques, called caravels, not superior to river and coasting craft of more modern days.... That such long and perilous expeditions into unknown seas, should be undertaken in vessels without decks, and that they should live through the violent tempests by which they were frequently a.s.sailed, remain among the singular circ.u.mstances of those daring voyages."--_History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus_, by Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, 1831, i. 78.]

[ns] _As Women seldom think by halves_----.--[MS. erased.]

{554}[747] This extraordinary and flouris.h.i.+ng German colony in America does not entirely exclude matrimony, as the "Shakers" do; but lays such restrictions upon it as prevents more than a certain quantum of births within a certain number of years; which births (as Mr. Hulme [perhaps Thomas Hulme, whose _Journal_ is quoted in _Hints to Emigrants_, 1817, pp. 5-18] observes) generally arrive "in a little flock like those of a farmer's lambs, all within the same month perhaps." These Harmonists (so called from the name of their settlement) are represented as a remarkably flouris.h.i.+ng, pious, and quiet people. See the various recent writers on America.

[The Harmonists were emigrants from Wurtemburg, who settled (1803-1805) under the auspices of George Rapp, in a towns.h.i.+p 120 miles north of Philadelphia. This they sold, and "trekked" westwards to Indiana. One of their customs was to keep watch by nights and to cry the hours to this tune: "Again a day is past and a step made nearer to our end. Our time runs away, and the joys of Heaven are our reward." (See _The Philanthropist_, No. xx., 1815, vol. v, pp. 277-288.)]

[nt] _Which test I leave unto the Lords spiritual_.--[MS. erased.]

{555}[748] Jacob Tonson, according to Mr. Pope, was accustomed to call his writers "able pens," "persons of honour," and, especially, "eminent hands." Vide Correspondence, etc., etc.

["Perhaps I should myself be much better pleased, if I were told you called me your little friend, than if you complimented me with the t.i.tle of a 'great genius,' or an eminent hand, as Jacob does all his authors."--_Pope to Steele_, November 29, 1712, _Works of Alexander Pope, 1871_, vi. 396.]

[749] [See D'Israeli's _Curiosities of Literature_, 1841, pp. 450-452, and the Dissertation prefixed to Francis Douce's edition of Holbein's _Dance of Death_, 1858, pp. 1-218.]

{556}[nu] ---- _Miss Allman and Miss Noman_.--[MS. erased.]

[nv]

---- _that smooth placid sea_ _Which did not show and yet concealed a storm_.--[MS. erased.]

{558}[750] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza lix. line 3, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 374, note 2.]

{559}[751]

[" ... And, under him, My Genius is rebuked; as it is said Mark Antony's was by Caesar."

_Macbeth_, act iii, sc. 1, lines 54-56.]

{560}[752] [_Warison_--cri-de-guerre--note of a.s.sault:--

"Either receive within these towers Two hundred of my master's powers, Or straight they sound their _warrison_, And storm and spoil this garrison."

_Lay of the Last Minstrel_, Canto IV. stanza xxiv, lines 17-20.]

{561}[nw] _And adds a third to what was late a pair_.--[MS. erased.]

[753] [Compare:

"Life's a jest, and all things show it; I thought so once, and _now I know it_."

Gay's Epitaph.]

[754] [For "Potage a la bonne femme," "Dindon a la Perigueux," "Soupe a la Beauveau," "Le dorey garni d'eperlans frits," "Le cuisseau de pore a demi sel, garni de choux," "Le salmi de perdreaux a l'Espagnole," "Les beca.s.ses," see "Bill of Fare for November," _The French Cook_, by Louis Eustache Ude, 1813, p. viii. For "Les poulardes a la Conde." "Le jambon de Westphalie a l'Espagnole," "Les pet.i.tes timballes d'un salpicon a la Monglas" (?Montglat), "Les filets de perdreaux sautes a la Lucullus,"

vide ibid., p. ix., and for "Pet.i.ts puits d'amour garnis de confitures,"

vide Plate of Second Course (to face) p. vi.]

{562}[755] [Alexander the Great.]

{563}[756] A dish "a la Lucullus." This hero, who conquered the East, has left his more extended celebrity to the transplantation of cherries (which he first brought into Europe), and the nomenclature of some very good dishes;--and I am not sure that (barring indigestion) he has not done more service to mankind by his cookery than by his conquests. A cherry tree may weigh against a b.l.o.o.d.y laurel; besides, he has contrived to earn celebrity from both.