67, 3 He cannot live like woodcocks upon suction Woodcocks feed by probing with long bills in the turf. The upper mandible is flexible, and the bird seems to be sucking as it feeds.
70, 5 (I wish they had had a pair) The verse may be read: I wish they’d had a pair.
71, 6 As a great favour one of the forepaws ‘One day, when I was at home in my hut with my Indian dog, a party came to my door, and told me their necessities were such that they must eat the creature or starve.… They took him away by force and killed him.… Three weeks after that I was glad to make a meal of his paws and skin which, upon recollecting the spot where they had killed him, I found thrown aside and rotten’ (The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron… (1768), 47–8; see note to Canto II 137, 8).
72, 6–8 and you might see The longings of the cannibal arise … in their wolfish eyes ‘That dreadful and last resource of men,… of consigning one man to death for the support of the rest, began to be mentioned in whispers.…’ However, the narrator continues, they ‘found some pieces of rotten beef cast up on the shore from the wreck’, and ‘were saved from this last extremity of hungry men’ (The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron… (1768), 87).
74, 6 much shock M, 1819 ] much shocks PM ] much shook 1833 ] must shock Poetry and some other twentieth–century editions
75, 4 the Promethean vulture To punish the Titan Prometheus, the benefactor of mankind, who stole fire from heaven and taught mortals all useful arts, Zeus had him chained to a rock on Mount Caucasus, where by day an eagle devoured his liver, which grew again every night. See Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, and Byron’s own short poem Prometheus . Byron alludes to the Promethean myth many times in his verse. See Canto I 127, 8.
79, 3–4 ] For they who had been gainers by the Act
Went
81, 7–8 ] Was
82, 7 two boobies and a noddy The booby is a sea bird, smaller than a gannet A noddy (fool) is another name for a stout–bodied tern, supposed to be a stupid bird. OED cites Byron’s use of both words.
83, 2 Ugolino Count Ugolino deserted the Ghibelline party, joined the Guelfs, and gained control of Pisa. In 1285 the Archbishop Ruggieri led a revolt, summoned Ugolino to a parley and there treacherously had him seized and imprisoned with two sons and two grandsons. The prison door was nailed shut, and all five starved. Dante sees Ugolino among the traitors in Hell chewing on a skull, and listens to Ugolino tell his story of betrayal and death. ‘When he had said this, with eyes awry, he seized again the wretched head [of Ruggieri] with his teeth which gnawed upon the bone, like a dog’s’ (Inferno XXXII–XXXIII, trans. H. R. Huse (1954).
86, 1 And their baked lips, with many a bloody crack ‘With throats unslaked, with black lips baked’ (S. T. Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner III 157).
86, 3 swoll’n ] swoln PM, M, 1819 and later editions
86, 4–5 As the rich man’s in hell, mho vainly screamed To beg the beggar For Lazarus and the rich man, see Luke xvi 19–26.
86, 8 ]
87–90 Byron’s description of the death of two sons and of the emotions of two fathers may have been suggested by Canto XXXIII of Dante’s Inferno . Here Ugolino told Dante of his grief as he looked at the faces of his four sons and grandsons. Since he did not weep nor speak, his sons asked him about his silence and offered him their flesh, thinking that hunger had rendered him mute. Later one boy pleaded for help. Only after all four had died, did Ugolino call to them for two days.
90, 3 burden ] burthen M, 1819 . This common spelling will not be noted hereafter.
91, 7 Then changed like to a bow ]
92, 8 box without the muffle without the boxing glove. Prizefighters boxed barefisted for several generations after Byron’s time. OED cites his use of ‘muffle’ here.
93, 8 celestial kaleidoscope An instance of Byron’s use of contemporary gadgets. The kaleidoscope was invented in 1817 by Sir David Brewster. Hanson, on his trip to Venice, brought the novelty from Murray in November 1818, a month before Byron began to write Canto II.
95, 3 ] < Within> the
95, 8 They would have eat her Byron probably pronounced the verb ‘ett’; his form of the past tense and past participle (instead of ‘ate’ and ‘eaten’) was a colloquialism.
100, 7 Etna ] Aetna PM, M, 1819 and later editions
100, 8 Candia the island of Crete.
101, 3 Charon’s bark of spectres Charon, the grim, testy son of Erebos, ferried the ghosts of the dead across the Acheron (the river of woe) and the black Cocytus (the river of wailing). He was usually represented as old but strong, with a dirty beard, and in squalid garb.
101, 7–8 ] … followed them &
The surface with tails as on they dashed>
102, 5–6 ] Chilled by the Night – & blackened by the Sun
They died away till thus reduced to few
103, 8 salt, dread, eternal deep ] dull – dread –
105, 2 Juan to love his youthful limbs was wont Jump (NQ, 302) pointed out a parallel in Smollett’s Ode to Leven Water: ‘Pure stream! in whose transparent wave / My youthful limbs I wont to lave’. This ode occurs in Humphry Clinker after a letter from Matthew Bramble to Dr Lewis, dated Cameron, 28 August (ed. L. M. Knapp (1966), 249–50).
105, 8 Leander, Mr Ekenhead, and I did ‘Mr Ekenhead – Lieutenant of Marines on board of the Salsette (then commanded by Capt Bathurst)
110, 3 Swam ] Swum PM, M
110, 5 ]
jury mast See note to Canto II 40, 6.
111, 1 How long in his damp trance young Juan lay
‘How long in that same fit I lay / I have not to declare’ (S. T. Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner V 393–4).
112, 8 ] And Death
112, 2 He thought 1833 and later editions ] methought PM, M, 1819, 1822
114, 3 Raised higher the faint head ]
114, 6 curls, long drenched by every storm ] curls long
116, 1 overhung with coins ]
117, 3] And that length
118, 1–2 ] Her brow was white and
118, 6 (A race of mere impostors ] (A Set of humbug rascals
118, 8 their stone ideal)] their d—d Ideal
119, 3–5 There was an Irish lady, to whose bust … A frequent model Probably Lady Adelaide Forbes (1789–1858), whom Byron once compared to the Belvedere Apollo.
120, 7 The basquina An outer skirt of dark material put on over the indoor dress when going out.
121, 2] Her dress was many coloured –
121, 4 gems profusely shone ] gems profusely
121, 5 Her girdle sparkled] Her Girldle [sic ]
121, 7 ]
123, 5 most superior mess ] most delicious mess
123, 8 Achilles ordered dinner ‘Patroclus carried out his comrade’s orders. He put down a big bench in the firelight, and laid on it the backs of a sheep and a fat goat and the chine of a great hog rich in lard. Automedon held these for him, while Achilles jointed them, and then carved up the joints and spitted the slices.… When he had roasted it and heaped it up on platters, Patroclus fetched some bread and set it out on the table in handsome baskets; and Achilles divided the meat into portions’ (Iliad, trans. E. V. Rieu (1950), IX 166�
�7).
124, 8 an old man, who lived upon the water See note to Canto III 26, I.
125, 8 ] Of almost half a million of piastres
piastres A piastre is a small Turkish nickel coin called kurus and valued at one–hundredth a Turkish pound, or less than a fifth of an English penny. Since in modern currency Lambro’s ‘half a million of piastres’ would amount to less than £1,000, which Byron would not have considered a fortune, we may assume that a piastre was a higher monetary unit in 1800 than it is today, or at least that Byron did not equate it to less than a halfpenny.
127, 2 Cyclades A group of Greek islands in the Aegean Sea between the Peloponnesus and the Dodecanese.
127, 6 sad old fellow ‘Sad’ here means deplorably bad and is a term of censure used in a jocular vein. OED quotes Byron’s verse.
128, 1 Haidée Elizabeth F. Boyd says that Byron drew the name Haidée from Greek popular songs; it means ‘a caress’, or ‘the caressed one’ (Byron’s Don Juan (1945), 122). Byron’s Translation of the Romaic Song starts: ‘I enter thy garden of roses, / Beloved and fair Haidée’ (Poetry III 222).
129, 6–8 Yet deemed herself in common pity bound, /… ‘to take him in, / A stranger’ dying… ‘For I was ahungered, and ye gave me meat:… I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick and ye visited me…’ Byron probably had in mind Matthew xxv 34–40 while he described the attentions that Haidée and Zoe gave the naked, exhausted and famished Juan in stanzas 129, 131–3, 145, 153, 158, 160.
130, 5 νO υζ Sense, native wit (so pronounced as to rhyme with ‘mouse’).
131, 5–8 Their charity… / St Paul says… ‘And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness’ (Colossians iii 14; see also I Corinthians xiii). St Paul did not, however, specify, as Byron does in his jocular and mercenary metaphor, that charity was the price of admission to Heaven.
132, 8 to have furnished twenty ] to have
133, 1 pelisse A long cloak reaching the ankles, having sleeves or arm holes. Originally a pelisse was fur–lined or made of fur.
134, 7–8 ]
And leave like opening Hell upon the Mind
No “baseless fabric” but “a wreck behind”.
‘Phantasmagoria’ was coined in 1802 to name a London exhibition of optical illusions produced by use of a magic lantern.
The MS variants also borrow from a speech by Prospero in The Tempest:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision…
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.
(IV 151–6)
137, 2 nothing clashed upon ] nothing
137, 7–8 ] Had eer escaped more dangers on the deep;
And those who are not drowned at least may sleep.
137, 8 my grand-dad’s narrative The British Museum catalogue lists eleven editions of this popular book before 1825, and others in 1842, 1844, 1896 and 1925: A Narrative of the Honourable John Byron (Commodore in a late expedition round the world), containing an account of the great distress suffered by himself and his companions on the coast of Patagonia, from the year 1740, till their arrival in England, 1746;written by Himself (1768).
139, 7–8 ]
And Night is backward like a mantle roll>
Byron probably intended to write ‘rolled’.
140, 3 ] I’ve changed for some few years the day to Night
141, 8 Or the Red Sea – but the sea is not red The Geography of Strabo assigned the supposed redness to the refraction of the rays of the sun at its zenith, or to the shadow of the scorched and reddened mountain-sides which form its shores, or to the flow of hematite (red iron oxide) from a spring (Book 16, ch. 4, section 20, trans. H. L. Jones (1930), VII 348–51). Another theory was that coral plants at the bottom tinted the water (Poetry V 122 n.).
142, 3 ] While the Sun
142, 3–4 the sun… with his first flame, I… Aurora kissed her lips with dew Aurora (in Greece called Eos) was the goddess of the dawn. At the end of every night she drove her chariot from the ocean up to the sky to announce the approaching sunlight. Swiftness and brilliant colour were her usual attributes.
142, 6–8 ] As at this moment I should like to do,
But I have done with kisses – having kissed
All those that would – regretting those I missed.
145, 8 Scio The Italian name of Chios, a Greek island off the west coast of Turkey in the Aegean Sea.
148, 6 callow cygnet ]
149, 7 from grisly saints ] from
150, 5 pose maintain, urge.
151, 8 ] Whose accents are the steps of Music’s throne
155, 2–7 fable of the Minotaur – /… Pasiphae Minos of Crete boasted that he could obtain by prayer whatever he wanted. Neptune granted his plea for a sacrificial bull but Minos so admired its beauty he refused to kill it The angry god then caused the bull and Pasiphae, wife of Minos, to be insanely infatuated. She gave birth to the Minotaur, half bull and half man. It became a scourge to Crete and devoured its inhabitants until Daedalus built a labyrinth to contain the monster. After Minos defeated Athens he levied upon that city an annual tribute of seven youths and seven maidens to feed the Minotaur. Byron (‘sinking the allegory’) set aside the traditional interpretations of the myth that pointed to ingratitude, betrayal, retribution, the nature of love, the dangers of darkness (the Minotaur), and the early political dominance of Crete over Athens.
156, 8 her Pasiphae.
157, 8 A priest, a shark ] A
alderman Byron’s allusions to aldermen are typical of his day. As justices of the peace, they levied fines and were often unpopular. Byron may have had some dealings with them at the time of his financial difficulties in London, in 1816.
159, 8 he had gorged The verse may be read: he’d gorged.
161, 8 Romaic Modern Greek vernacular, some of which Byron learned during his stay in Athens in 1810–11.
163, 7 ]
164, 1 – 165, 2 ’Tis pleasing to be schooled in a strange tongue / By female lips…/…having no teachers According to Moore, Byron learned Spanish in Seville in the manner described in this stanza, Greek similarly from Teresa Macri in Athens, and Italian from Marianna Segati and others in Venice. In view of his Venetian amours, the variant for 165, 2 (see below), is more accurate than the ironic text he published.
164, 7 ] Squeezes of hands – et cetera – or a kiss
165, 2 ] Italian rather more – having more teachers.
165, 5–6 Barrow, South, Tillotson,… /… Blair Some of England’s greatest preachers.
165, 8 I hate your poets, so read none of those Byron maintained this fiction to make clear his attitude towards the sentimental romanticism of the day, and his appreciation of Dryden and Pope.
166, 3 I, like other ‘dogs, have had my day’ ‘The cat will mew and dog will have his day’ (Hamlet V i 299).
168, 8 sweet south the warm and gentle south wind.
169, 7–8 learnt from Ceres…/… Venus will not long attack us Maxwell (NQ, 302–3) cited Terence, Eunuchus IV 5, 6: ‘sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus’ (‘without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus is frigid’, a modified version of the translation by J. Sargeaunt (1920), I 310–11). Byron used this quotation again in XVI 86, 3–8.
Ceres (in Greece Demeter, a sister of Zeus) was the Roman goddess of agriculture and of all the fruits of the earth. She was one of Byron’s favourites. See VII 45; IX 32; and XII 9, as well as XVI 86.
Bacchus (also called Dionysius in Greece) was not one of the early great deities, but as grapevines were more widely cultivated, his festivals became more important and were often dissolute and frenzied. Bacchus was regarded as
both the productive and the intoxicating power of nature.
170, 3–6 ] Ceres
And> Love
While Bacchus will
Oysters & Eggs are also loving food.>
173, 8 her First love and her last See Byron’s letter to the Countess Guiccioli, 22 April 1819: ‘You who are my only and last love, who are my only joy’ (quoted by Iris Origo, The Last Attachment (1949), 45).
174, 7 IO Sea nymph, beloved of Jupiter, who wandered over the earth and sea. The Ionian Sea was named for her.
174, 8 Ragusan vessels Ragusa in Byron’s time was the name of Dubrovnik, now a Yugoslav seaport on the Adriatic. For Scio see note to Canto II 145, 8.
177, 6 ]
177, 8 The outstretched ocean ] The lazy Ocean M
179, 5 how branchless were the trunk ‘better I were not yours / Than yours so branchless’ (Antony and Cleopatra III iv 23–4).
180, 2 hock A white German (Rhenish) wine (Hockheimer).
180, 3 ] A pleasure nought but drunkenness can bring A pleasure worthy Xerxes See note to Canto I 118, 1–2.
180, 4 sublimed with snow ] chilled with snow
180, 6 ] Nor Wine in all the purple of it’s glow
182, 7 ]
183, 1 It was the cooling hour E. Kölbing saw a similarity between stanzas 183–5 and C H IV 27–9, and related the two sunset passages to Byron’s Venetian rides (‘Bemerkungen zu Byron’s Childe Harold’, Englische Studien, XXI (1895), 176–86). S. C Chew in ‘Notes on Byron’ (MLN, XXIX (1914), 106; also thought that the passages derived from an experience reported by Hobhouse: ‘Remarked the moon reigning on the right of us, and the Alps still blushing with the blaze of the sunset. The Brenta came down upon us, all purple – a delightful scene which B. has put into 3 stanzas of his Childe Harold’ (Recollections of a Long Life (1909), II 7).
185, 2 a rosy ocean ] an Ocean – varied PM ] M
186, 5 ] Where
187, 8 ] And mixed until the very Pleasure stung. ]
With sometimes more within them than one tongue. ]
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