And one was innocent, but both too young.
189, 5–7 ]
They had no further feeling, hope, nor care –
Save one & that was Love – first love – that all
191, 7–8 ]
193, 3 ] So innocent & beautiful a pair
193, 6 the Stygian river The river Styx encircled the lower world.
196, 3 the Host The bread or wafer consecrated at a mass or eucharist (the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper).
196, 5 the prize has struck in fight The ship that has been attacked has
lowered a topsail or flag to signify surrender. It then became a ‘prize’, a captured vessel. Profit from the sale was distributed among the captors.
197, 4–5 ]
201, 1 some take drams Originally a solid or liquid unit of measure, a dram in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries denoted a small drink of cordial, whisky or other alcoholic stimulant.
201, 7 ] Some
Some drown themselves and some in vices grovel
201, 8 Some…write a novel Lady Caroline Lamb in 1816 published her incoherent and confused Glenarvon about Byron and included Lady Oxford, the Duchess of Devonshire and Lady Holland under fictitious names. In the book Caroline allegedly printed a version of Byron’s farewell letter to her (LJ II 135–7 n.; IV 79, 94).
202, 1 Haidée… knew not this ‘This’ refers to the unhappy vicissitudes of the worldly woman, surveyed in stanzas 199–201.
202, 3 ]
Showers down his rays
203, 5 Joy of its alchemy ] Joy of it’s glittering treasure
203, 8 ] Castleieagh
Castlereagh See note to Dedication II, 8.
204, 1–8 And now ‘twas done…/…Each was an angel Byron’s cave-union of his hero and heroine is a brief parody of an episode in Book IV of the Aeneli : Juno stirred up a thunderstorm and scattered the hunting party that Dido and Aeneas had planned. The lovers sought shelter in a cave, and there consummated the union that the goddess had carefully arranged.
205, 4–6 Sappho…/… the wave) A triple allusion to Sappho: her poetry, the tradition of her sexual inversion, and the legend that she hurled herself into the sea from the Leucadian rocks because of her unrequited love for Phaon, the boatman of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos.
206, 2–8 jestest with the brows…/…heroes, conquerors, and cuckolds The wives of the four worthies of this stanza made cuckolds of them (line 2, put horns on their brows). The advances that a young patrician, Publius Clodius, made to the ‘not unwilling’ Pompeia, Julius Caesar’s third wife, were thwarted by the watchful eye of Aurelia, Caesar’s mother. When she caught Clodius disguised as a woman in Caesar’s house during a religious festival, she had him prosecuted for sacrilege. Caesar promptly divorced Rompeia, though according to Plutarch, he did not charge her with adultery (Caesar, sections 9–10, Lives, trans. B. Perrin (1918), VII 462–7). During Pompey’s absence from Italy, his wife Mucia ‘played the wanton’ with Julius Caesar, and Pompey divorced her (Plutarch, Pompey, section 43, Lives, trans. B. Perrin (1917), V 224–7; Suetonius, The Lives of the Caesars, The Deified Julius, section 50, trans. J. C Rolfe (1928), I 69). Before Antonina married Belisarius, the illustrious general of the Emperor Justinian, she had many lovers. Thereafter she ‘disdained the merit of conjugal fidelity’, and even seduced their adopted son (Gibbon, II, ch. 16, 1303, 1351–2). When Ayesha, the favourite young wife of Mahomet, was seen in the company of a youth early one morning, the political foes of the prophet spread such a scandal that he had to refute the story by means of a divine revelation, which appeared in the Koran (xxiv and n.), along with a stern edict requiring four witnesses to support an accusation of whoredom. When Mahomet continued to dote on Ayesha, his opponents complained that she became the source of too many of his revelations.
207, 1–2 Epicurus I And Aristippus The latter (c. 370 BC) was the founder of a hedonistic philosophy that made pleasure the goal of life. Though he was a disciple of Socrates, his manner of living was luxurious. The later Epicurus (342–270 BC) taught that the greatest good was happiness, attained not by carnal pleasure, but by virtuous living that brought peace of mind. Byron here adopts a popular misconception of Epicurus, caused by some of his professed followers who debased the moral teaching of Epicurus and valued sensual pleasure.
207, 2–3 ] And Aristippus,
Besides that would a happy lot insure us>
207, 5–6 ]
Antients and moderns also not a few>
207, 7–8 ‘Eat, drink…/… Sardanapalus Sardanapalus, the subject of one of Byron’s tragedies in 1821, appears in an account by Diodorus Siculus, with which the poet was familiar. He was an Assyrian of uncertain historical origin and character. Byron’s use of ‘sage’ is ironic. In the drama, he varied the epigram: ‘Eat, drink, and love; the rest’s not worth a fillip’ (I ii 252).
209, 1 – 213, 8 I hate inconstancy;…/… as well as liver This passage is Byron’s version of a rationalization common in the theatrical treatment of the Don Juan legend. Earlier writers put the defence of infidelity into the mouth of Don Juan himself. Since such sophistry was unsuitable to Byron’s young hero, the author here presents it as one of his own reflections.
209, 6 masquerade As F. L. Beaty has noted, the masquerade is associated with Byron’s recollection of the Capulet ball in Romeo and Juliet (‘The Placement of Two Rejected Stanzas in Don Juan’, NQ_, CCII (1962), 422–3). There are echoes of Shakespeare’s play in stanza 209 in the allusion to Milan, which Tybalt used in abusing Romeo, and in stanza 210, 5–6 (Romeo and Juliet I v 136–7).
209, 8 ] And really longed to kiss her – like a villain
210, 1 – 211, 1 But soon Philosophy…/ ‘stop!’ So I stopped These lines are a parody of the appearance of Philosophy in Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, Book I. There Philosophy was described as a grave and elderly, but vigorous matron, whose eye was clear and penetrating. Her garments, though artfully woven, were darkened by age. She sternly dismissed the harlot Muses from the bedside of the sick man.
210, 6 ] <’Tis but my Curiosity that cries>
210, 8 ]
Though
210^211 Byron at one time intended to insert the following two stanzas that he rejected before publication. Spelling, punctuation and capitalization have been changed in the following transcription of the MS.
1
Shakespeare exclaims, ‘Hang up Philosophy,
Unless Philosophy can make a Juliet.’
But this is not the death that it should die,
For when the turbid passions are unruly, it
No doubt can soothe them with a lullaby.
Last night I had another proof how truly it
Can calm, for what it ‘made’ me on that same
Night was a Juliet to the very name.
2
Juliet or Giuletta, which last was
The real name of the fair Veronese,
O’er whose sad tale Love echoes still, alas!
And youth still weeps the tender tears that please.
Another Juliet, whom I would not pass –
Her tale is told with so much simple ease –
Is Rousseau’s Julietta. I ne’er knew
One of the name but that I loved her too.
NOTES TO REJECTED STANZAS
1, 1 Hang up Philosophy Romeo and Juliet III iii 56–7.
2, 1–8 Juliet or Giuletta…/… I
loved her too This may have been the Giulietta referred to in Byron’s letter, 19 January 1819, where she is mentioned with other lights of love he has known ‘since last year’ (Byron: A Self-Portrait, ed. P. Quennell (1950), II 440). ‘Rousseau’s Julietta’ (line 7) is Julie, the heroine of Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761).
211, 8 beau ideal Byron anglicized ‘idéal’ and rhymed it with ‘real’. The meter, which requires a dissyllable, would not allow the French pronunciation of ‘ideal’.
214, 7–8 ] Pours forth at last
215, 1 lazaret A nautical term for a storeroom or a space between decks in merchant vessels. Though this meaning seems to fit Byron’s figurative use of ‘lazaret’, OED quotes the line to illustrate it as referring to a hospital or a building set apart for the performance of quarantine.
215, 8 Like earthquakes from the hidden fire called ‘central’ The central-fire theory of earthquakes is as old as the classical writers. Byron is probably recalling a contemporary source, such as the writing of A. L. Thomas (Mémoire sur les Causes de Tremblements de Terre 1757) or the early work of Sir Humphry Davy and Alexander von Humboldt, who studied volcanoes and other earth phenomena.
CANTO III
Byron originally wrote Cantos III and IV as a single canto. He began his first draft (PM) in Venice on 17 September 1819, and finished it on 30 November. Earlier (10 July) he had written eight stanzas on Wellington, which he soon detached, gave to Thomas Moore, and later used in Canto IX. (This MS fragment, Tx, also contains stanzas 1–2 of Canto III.) When he made his fair copy (S) of Cantos III and IV (completed on 17 January 1820), he divided his first draft, added stanza 111 at the end of Canto III and stanzas 1–7 at the beginning of Canto IV. Other additions to Canto III were stanzas 4, 9–11, 14, 25, 97–100, 107. At this time he thought the third and fourth cantos ‘very decent, but dull – damned dull’. They were published with Canto V by John Murray on 8 August 1821, with an unusual number of misprints that incensed Byron. He made corrections on at least three copies and sent them at various times to his publisher. The corrected 1822 edition has been used as the basis of the present text of Cantos III–V.
1, 1 ] Now to my Epic – We left Juan sleeping Tx
1, 2 fair and happy breast ]
1, 7–8 ] Had
And
2.3 cypress branches Since it is ‘fatal to be loved’, the bowers of love are wreathed with cypress, a symbol of death and sorrow.
3, 1–2 In her first passion woman loves her lover, / In all the others all she loves is love Byron’s verse is a translation, slightly altered, of the following epigram: ‘Dans les premières passions, les femmes aiment l’amant; et dans les autres, elles aiment l’amour’ (’ In their first passions, women love the lover; in the others they love love’). Réflexions … du Duc de la Rochefoucauld, no. 471.
3, 4 ] And fits her like a stocking or a glove
3, 5 whene’er you like to prove her whenever you wish to test or try her.
3, 7 She then prefers him in ] She then
4, 2 planted abandoned (from the French ‘planter là’). Byron also knew the Italian ‘piantare’, which has the same meaning. Byron’s anglicizing of the word is the earliest use given in the O E D .
4, 7–8 Yet there are some, they say, who have had none, / But those who have ne’er end with only one ‘On peut trouver des femmes qui n’ont jamais eu de galanterie; mais il est rare d’en trouver qui n’en aient jamais eu qu’une’ (‘You can find women who have never had a single love affair, but you can rarely find a woman who has had only one’). Réflexions… du Duc de la Rochefoucauld, no. 73.
5, 4–6 ]
Makes Vinegar> fragment
6, 3 A kind of flattery ] A kind of
7, 4]
7, 5 ‘so nominated in the bond’ The Merchant of Venice IV i 254.
7, 7 ] fragment ]
]
fragment
8, 7–8 ] Had Petrarch’s passion led to Petrarch’s wedding
How many sonnets had ensued the bedding?
Not on PM or S, but cited in 1833 as a rejected couplet.
9 The following variants are arranged in the probable order of composition.
1a
b All tragedies are finished by a death
2 All Comedies are ended by a marriage
3a
b
4a
5a
6a
3c
d
e
4b
c
5b
c
6b
7a
b < Veiling>
c
8a
b
c
5d The worlds to come of both – <&> fall beneath
6c And
7d So leaving both with priest & prayerbook ready
8d They say no more of death or of the Lady
9, 2 All comedies are ended by a marriage In Goethe’s Elective Affinities, the Count, citing as evidence that dramas are unrealistic, says that in comedy ‘we see that a marriage [is] the last aim… and at the instant where it is reached the curtain falls…’ The Count says nothing about the end of tragedy (I, ch. 10, trans. R. D. Bbylan, 1854). Byron apparently read a translation of Elective Affinities, in which he found some parts bordering on the unintelligible. See the letter of George Finlay to Colonel Stanhope, quoted in Karl Elze’s Lord Byron (1872), 481.
9, 8 of death or of the lady In the ballad Death and the Lady, printed in AGuide to Heaven (1736), Death demands the life of the Lady, despite her pleathat her sun should not ‘go down before its noon’. The conclusion states that the only hope is to have lived a moral life supported by faith. In Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield (ch. 17) it is suggested that this ballad be sung to cheer up the family.
10, 3–4 Dante and Milton…/…hapless in their nuptials ‘and certainly my fierce wife troubles me more than anything else’ (Dante, Inferno XVI44–5, trans. H. R. Huse, 1954).
‘Milton’s first wife ran away from him within the first month. If she had not, what would John Milton have done?’ (Byron, 1819).
Mary Powell did not run away, but went home to her parents six weeks after her marriage (1642) with the promise to return by Michaelmas. She did not do so, however, for reasons that are unclear. She rejoined Milton in 1645.
11, 8 Meant to personify the mathematics See note to Canto 112, 1.
14, 7–8 ] Displayed much more of nerve, perhaps of wit,
Than any of the parodies of Pitt
Not on P M or S, but cited in 183
3 as a rejected couplet.
15, 5 He had chained The verb may be contracted: He’d chained.
15, 7 ]
16, 1–2 Cape Matapan / Among his friends the Mainots This cape, the modern Greek Tainaron, at the southern point of the Peloponnesus was probably a haunt of the Mainots, as the Greek island pirates were called. Byron in a note to CH II 86, 3–4 wrote that he barely escaped the Mainots on a voyage to Cape Colonna (Sunium), at the south tip of Attica.
16, 8 Dey of Tripoli In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, he was the ruler of this city and nearby territory.
17, 5 toothpicks, teapot, tray ] toothpicks, a bidet S
In the MS margin Byron wrote: ‘Dr Murray as you are squeamish you may put “teapot, tray”, in case the other piece of feminine furniture frightens you – Bn.’
17, 6 Alicant The port city of a province with the same name in southeast Spain, on the Mediterranean.
18, 1–8 A monkey… / Two parrots… A terrier… He caged in one huge hamper altogether J. C. Collins, in Studies in Poetry and Criticism (1905), 105, found a source in a letter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to the Countess of Bute, 20 January 1758: ‘a friend of mine… had a large family of favourite animals, and not knowing how to convey them to his country house in separate equipages; he ordered a Dutch mastiff, a cat and her kittens, a monkey, and a parrot, all to be packed up together in one hamper and sent them by a waggon’
(The Works (1803), V 36–7). Robert Halsband has declared this letter spurious and did not print it in his third volume of the Montagu letters. James Dall-away, Lady Mary’s 1803 editor, combined part of a letter of Wilhemina Tichborne to Lady Mary with a letter by Lady Mary. Moy Thomas, editor of the 1861 edition of Lady Mary’s letters, did not recognize the forgery and accused Lady Mary of plagiarism (The Complete Letters, ed. R. Halsband (1967), III 204, n. 4). Miss Tichbome’s letter with the sentence about travelling with animals may be found in George Paston, Lady Mary Wort ley Montagu and Her Times (1907), 500–501. Byron of course in 1819 did not realize that his source was fraudulent. But why did he borrow when his own life gave him more than he needed? At Trinity College he kept a bear, and when his dog Boatswain went mad and died at Newstead, he wrote an epitaph and had a tomb erected for him. In London (1814) he ‘bought a macaw and a parrot’. In 1818 on the bottom floor of the Palazzo Mocenigb in Venice, he kept two monkeys, a fox and three mastiffs, and asked Murray to send him ‘a bulldog, a terrier and two Newfoundland dogs’. In 1820 and 1821 his Ravenna menagerie at various times included ‘ten horses, eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats’, a goat, a badger, a civet, an eagle, a crow, a falcon, ‘five peacocks, two guinea hens, and an Egyptian crane’ (Correspondence II 106; LJ III 79, 170–71 n.; IV 306, 401, 405–6; The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. F. L. Jones (1964), II 330–31). Juan and Leila travelled across Europe with a bulldog, a bullfinch and an ermine (X 50).
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