Don Juan
Page 56
Who grow up children only, since the old saw
Pronounces that an ‘only’ ’s a spoilt child.
But not to go too far, I hold it law
That where their education, harsh or mild,
Transgresses the great bounds of love or awe,
The sufferers, be’t in heart or intellect,
Whate’er the cause are orphans in effect.
3
But to return unto the stricter rule
(As far as words make rules), our common notion
Of orphans paints at once a parish school,
A half-starved babe, a wreck upon life’s ocean,
A human (what the Italians nickname) ‘mule’,
A theme for pity or some worse emotion;
Yet, if examined, it might be admitted
The wealthiest orphans are to be more pitied.
4
Too soon they are parents to themselves; for what
Are tutors, guardians, and so forth, compared
With Nature’s genial genitors, so that
A child of Chancery, that Star Chamber ward
(I’ll take the likeness I can first come at),
Is like a duckling by Dame Partlett reared
And frights, especially if ’tis a daughter,
The old hen by running headlong to the water.
5
There is a commonplace book argument,
Which glibly glides from every vulgar tongue
When any dare a new light to present:
‘If you are right, then everybody’s wrong.’
Suppose the converse of this precedent
So often urged, so loudly and so long:
‘If you are wrong, then everybody’s right.’
Was ever everybody yet so quite?
6
Therefore I would solicit free discussion
Upon all points, no matter what or whose,
Because as ages upon ages push on,
The last is apt the former to accuse
Of pillowing its head on a pincushion,
Heedless of pricks because it was obtuse.
What was a paradox becomes a truth or
A something like it, as bear witness Luther.
7
The sacraments have been reduced to two
And witches unto none, though somewhat late
Since burning agéd women (save a few,
Not witches, only bitches, who create
Mischief in families, as some know or knew,
Should still be singed, but slightly let me state)
Has been declared an act of inurbanity,
Malgré Sir Matthew Hale’s great humanity.
8
Great Galileo was debarred the sun,
Because he fixed it, and to stop his talking
How earth could round the solar orbit run,
Found his own legs embargoed from mere walking.
The man was well nigh dead, ere men begun
To think his skull had not some need of caulking,
But now it seems he’s right, his notion just,
No doubt a consolation to his dust.
9
Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates – but pages
Might be filled up, as vainly as before,
With the sad usage of all sorts of sages,
Who in his lifetime each was deemed a bore.
The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages;
This they must bear with and perhaps much more.
The wise man’s sure when he no more can share it, he
Will have a firm post-obit on posterity.
10
If such doom waits each intellectual giant,
We little people in our lesser way
To life’s small rubs should surely be more pliant,
And so for one will I, as well I may.
Would that I were less bilious – but oh fie on’t!
Just as I make my mind up everyday
To be a totus teres stoic, sage,
The wind shifts and I fly into a rage.
11
Temperate I am, yet never had a temper;
Modest I am, yet with some slight assurance;
Changeable too, yet somehow idem semper;
Patient, but not enamoured of endurance;
Cheerful, but sometimes rather apt to whimper;
Mild, but at times a sort of Hercules furens;
So that I almost think that the same skin
For one without has two or three within.
12
Our hero was in canto the sixteenth
Left in a tender moonlight situation,
Such as enables man to show his strength
Moral or physical. On this occasion
Whether his virtue triumphed, or at length
His vice – for he was of a kindling nation –
Is more than I shall venture to describe,
Unless some beauty with a kiss should bribe.
13
I leave the thing a problem, like all things.
The morning came, and breakfast, tea and toast,
Of which most men partake, but no one sings.
The company, whose birth, wealth, worth have cost
My trembling lyre already several strings,
Assembled with our hostess and mine host.
The guests dropped in, the last but one, Her Grace,
The latest, Juan with his virgin face.
14
Which best is to encounter, ghost or none,
’Twere difficult to say, but Juan looked
As if he had combated with more than one,
Being wan and worn, with eyes that hardly brooked
The light that through the Gothic windows shone.
Her Grace too had a sort of air rebuked,
Seemed pale and shivered, as if she had kept
A vigil or dreamt rather more than slept.
NOTES
The Variorum editions for the first time presented the complete variants in their order of composition with an analysis of their significance. Because of spatial limitation, the order of Byron’s composition could not be fully given in the Penguin edition. When variants are assembled for one stanza, these are usually a selection arranged in an approximate and relative order of composition. Included are all the rejected stanzas, most of the completely revised octave couplets, portions of many long passages that were intensively altered during composition, numerous single verses that were rewritten, and a generous sampling of Byron’s substitution of words and short phrases. Thus ample manuscript cancellations have been provided to enable the reader to deduce the principles that motivated Byron’s revision and to comprehend nuances of meaning and art in the poem that elude us without a knowledge of the manuscripts. For a more extensive record of manuscript composition in any stanza, consult the Variorum.
Frequently to relate a variant or ah annotation to the text of Don Juan, a quotation from the text (a word, phrase or verse) follows the stanza and line numbers. All words in these textual quotations are italicized. A variant is preceded by a square bracket. Byron’s cancellations are enclosed in angle brackets. For example, see stanza i, line 5 of the Dedication: ‘my epic renegade’ is the present text Following the square bracket and enclosed within angle brackets is a variant, Byron’s first attempt that he crossed out on his manuscript: ‘most tuneful Brother’. The next two phrases, each preceded by a square bracket, are successive attempts, both of which he cancelled.
The present text is usually not repeated in the notes for more extensive variants (a full verse, or two or more lines): see stanza 4, line 5 of the Dedication. The square bracket follows the stanza and line number and precedes the cancelled single verse. The same method applies to successive variants of whole lines. In I 32, 6, the reader should consult the Penguin text to compare Byron’s final version with the earlier line that follows the square bracket. Then at the end of this variant another square bracket shows that the following
line is a second and later variant.
If any manuscript variant is not enclosed in angle brackets, the reader may assume that Byron allowed this version to stand on the manuscript and rejected or changed it at a later stage of composition: on a fair copy or proof sheet or in a letter to the publisher.
Verbal differences between the Penguin text and that of the manuscripts or of other editions have also been recorded as variants. The other editions consulted are those specified in the Editors’ Note: the Wright-Moore edition (1832–3), the Variorum Don Juan (1957, 1971), and the editions by E. H. Coleridge (1903), P. E. More (1905), and L. I. Bredvold (1935).
All editorial annotation has been set in roman type except for titles, for manuscript and edition labels, and for italicized words within quotations from published works.
Though foreign words were italicized in the text, they are enclosed in quotation marks in the notes and not italicized.
Verse quotations of less than three lines are run on and separated by an oblique stroke.
Byron’s own notes from the manuscripts and from the first editions (e.g. (Byron, 1833)) have usually been reprinted and occasionally condensed. Most of the extensive literary annotations compiled by Professor Pratt in Volume IV of the Variorum have also been retained and compressed. Much information has been introduced in this Penguin volume that has not appeared in any preceding edition. In identifying Byron’s allusions, sources and analogues, the aim has been to minimize for the reader the task of exploring reference books and to keep in mind that what may be obvious to some readers may be wholly unfamiliar to others. People in Bristol or Glasgow, whose education has acquainted them with Biblical, Greek, Roman and English history and literature and whose residence in the British Isles has given them a store of environmental data, will at once recognize Doctors’ Commons, Shooter’s Hill, Becket’s bloody stone, the philosopher of Malmsbury, the devil who looks over Lincoln, verbum sat, the wooden spoons of the Cantabs, ‘kicks’ as monetary slang, that delicacy ‘bubble and squeak’, and the funny innuendo of petits puits d’amour . But can we be so confident that educated people in Seattle, Brisbane, Ottawa and New Orleans will not be halted by some of these morsels? And will they and the island subjects of Queen Elizabeth II remember post-obits, Romaic (which a bright young Texan did not), Thersites, buff and blue, Candia, Chrysostom in the desert, Eutropius, Semiramis (her courier, courser and jury), Septembrizers, the Congress of Laibach, the bisexuality of Tiresias, the Trecentisti, poor Dolon, Ferdinand VII, tracasserie, ‘The very powerful Parson Peter Pith/The loudest wit I e’er was deafened with’, and Cleopatra’s melted pearls, that baffled two learned men, who together had been medieval and Renaissance scholars for eighty years, and that turned up, after the usual devious search, in the very place one might expect those pearls to be – unmelted? It may be a comfort to find that Byron, who had an extraordinary memory, and who in Canto X knew that Hecla was a volcano scattering fire through ice, forgot by the time he came to Canto XV and there called it a boiling spring, and that he confused Augustine with Tertullian, and St Anthony with St Francis. We have therefore preferred to provide information that some will find unnecessary rather than to leave other readers without the assistance they may need for an understanding of Byron’s intentions and implications.
To avoid repetition Byron’s numerous borrowings from the Bible (King James Version) and Shakespeare are identified briefly, and the reader may assume that Byron’s quotation is either identical to the original, or that the difference is immaterial. Full quotation from these two sources is given whenever Byron’s alterations seem significant.
With a few exceptions, translated quotations from Greek and Latin authors are taken from the Loeb Classical Library edition.
ABBREVIATIONS
Boswell
Boswell’s Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill and L. F. Powell, 6 vols., Clarendon Press, 1934.
CH
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
E. H. Coleridge
Vol. VI of Poetry, ed. E. H. Coleridge, in The Works of Lord Byron, 7 vols., John Murray, 1898–1904.
Correspondence
Lord Byron’s Correspondence, ed. John Murray, 2 vols., John Murray, 1922.
DJ
Don Juan
EB & SR
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
ER
Edinburgh Review
Gibbon
E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. J. B. Bury, 3 vols., The Heritage Press, 1946.
JEGP
Journal of English and Germanic Philology
Jump
J. D. Jump, ‘Literary Echoes in Byron’s Don Juan’, NQ XIV (1967), 302.
LJ
Letters and Journals, ed. R. E. Prothero, in The Works of Lord Byron, 6 vols., John Murray, 1891–1901.
Marchand
L. A. Marchand, Byron: A Biography, 3 vols., John Murray, 1958. (Used for Table of Dates.)
Maxwell
J. C. Maxwell, ‘More Literary Echoes in Don Juan,’ NQ XIV (1967), 302–3.
Medwin
T. Medwin, Conversations of Lord Byron, ed. E. J. Lovell, Jr., Princeton University Press, 1966.
MLN
Modern Language Notes
Montaigne
Montaigne: The Complete Essays, trans. D. M. Frame, Stanford University Press, 1958.
Moore
Vols. XV–XVII of The Works of Lord Byron with his Letters and Journals and his Life by Thomas Moore, 17 vols., John Murray, 1832–3.
NQ
Notes and Queries
OED
Oxford English Dictionary
Poetry
Vols. I–VII, ed. E. H. Coleridge (as above)
Var .
Byron’s Don Juan: A Variorum Edition, ed. T. G. Steffan and W. W. Pratt, 4 vols., University of Texas Press, 1957; 2nd edn, 1971.
The following abbreviations have been used for the Don Juan manuscripts:
B
MSS in the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, New York Public Library
BM
MSS in the British Museum
M
MSS in the possession of John G. Murray
P
MS in the Carl H. Pforzheimer Library, New York
PM
MSS in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York
S
MSS in the University of London Library, the Sterling Library
Tn-PM
MS donated in 1976 to the Pierpont Morgan Library by Edwin Thorne in memory of his mother Mrs Landon K. Thorne, who had the MS for many years.
Tx
MSS in the Humanities Research Center, the University of Texas at Austin
Y
MS in the Yale University Library, New Haven, Connecticut
MOTTO TO CANTOS I–V
Difficile est proprie communia dicere ‘It is hard to treat in your own way what is common’ (Horace, Epistola ad Pisones, Ars Poetica 128, trans. H. R. Fairclough (1926), 460–61). This motto appeared on the title pages of Cantos I and II (1819) and III–V (1821). On the Lovelace MS of Hints from Horace Byron had expanded the Latin verse: ‘Whate’er the critic says or poet sings / ‘Tis no slight task to write on common things’ (Poetry 1402 n.). The motto is only one evidence that Byron was aware of the artistic challenge inherent in the subjects and style of Don Juan .
PREFACE TO CANTOS I AND II
the MS M of the Preface to Cantos I and II was probably written at Venice in the autumn of 1818. It has so many deletions and insertions that Byron could not have submitted it to a printer. It was published by Prothero in 1901 (LJ VI 381–3). The present text supplies punctuation and paragraphing, revises the spelling, and reduces the capitalization. The syntax of the final sentence remains loose and confused. All but two variants for this incomplete piece have been omitted here, as well as a shorter and earlier fragmentary draft.
1–2 In a note or preface… to a poem ‘The character which I have here introdu
ced speaking is sufficiently common. The Reader will perhaps have a general notion of it, if he has ever known a man, a captain of a small trading vessel, for example, who being past the middle age of life, had retired upon an annuity or small independent income to some village or country town of which he was not a native, or in which he had not been accustomed to live’ (Wordsworth’s note (1800–1805) to The Thorn, in The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, ed. E. de Selincourt (2nd edn, 1952), II 512).
12 ‘There is a thorn – it is so old’
In truth, you’d find it hard to say
How it could ever have been young,
It looks so old and grey.…
And to the left, three yards beyond,
You see a little muddy pond.
(The Thorn 1–3, 28–9)
24–5 this man… Joanna Southcote See Byron’s letter to Hunt, 30 October 1815: ‘Who can understand him? Let those who do, make him intelligible. Jacob Behmen, Swedenborg, and Joanna Southcote, are mere types of this arch-apostle of mystery and mysticism’ (LJ III 239).
Joanna Southcott (1750–1814), a Devonshire farmer’s daughter, began in 1792 to write doggerel prophecies and broke with Methodism to set up her own sect in 1801. Later she declared that she was the pregnant woman described in Revelation xii and that she would become the mother of Shiloh on 19 October 1814. A cradle of expensive materials was prepared for the expected prodigy. Dr Reece and another medical man attested her dropsy; and many were her dupes down to the moment of her death of a brain disease on 29 October 1814.
28–9 Emanuel Swedenborg or Richard Brothers or Parson Tozer Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), Swedish philosopher and mystic, regarded himself as a divinely appointed interpreter of the Scriptures. Richard Brothers (1757–1824), an enthusiast, declared that he was a descendant of David and that King George must deliver up his crown to him. The Reverend Mr Tozer, a follower of Joanna Southcott, predicted from the pulpit the birth of Shiloh.