82, 6 single scudo of salario ] single paolo of Salario
scudo An Italian silver coin, worth about forty pence. For ‘paolo’ see note to 84, 6.
82, 8 We mill revive our fortunes ]
83, 2–3 ] And having led a rather Ioosish life
And
84, 3 that laughing slut the Pelegrini While Byron was in Bologna, he put up at the Pellegrino Inn, which may account for his selection of this name.
84, 5 And made at least five hundred good zecchini ]
zecchini A zecchino, or sequin, an obsolete gold coin of Italy and Turkey, was worth about a pound.
84, 6 paul A paul or ‘paolo’, an obsolete Italian silver coin, was worth about two pence.
85, 1 the figuranti The corps de ballet.
85, 6 ] Yet has a kind of
86, 2 The Musico is but a cracked old basin OED, denning ‘Musico’ as a’musician’ and quoting Byron’s verse as its only illustration, ignored the context of stanza 86. Detailed Italian dictionaries record the meaning Byron intended here: a eunuch, who had been castrated in boyhood so that he would have a soprano or alto voice. This practice began when women were not allowed to sing in church choirs (see line 7) or on the stage. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries male sopranos and contraltos were popular because the power and flexibility of their voices were suited to complex, florid roles. Purcell, Gluck, as well as many Italian composers, wrote music for ‘castrati’.
Though slang dictionaries give ‘ruined’ as one of the several colloquial meanings of ‘cracked’, none of them include ‘basin’, which may here be read figuratively.
86, 5–6 ] And
86, 7 the pope ‘It is strange that it should be the Pope and the Sultan who are the chief encouragers of this branch of trade – women being prohibited as singers at St Peter’s, and not deemed trustworthy as guardians of the haram’ (Byron, 1821).
86, 8 To find three perfect pipes ] To find three
87, 6 ]
88, 5 Raucocanti ] Cacacanti
Raucocanti This means hoarse singing; the MS name ‘Cacacanti’ means bad or disagreeable singing.
88, 7 You was not last year at the fair of Lugo According to OED (see ‘be’, past indicative), the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries ‘almost universally’ used ‘was’ with the singular ‘you’. OED cites Walpole (1735), Fielding (1749) and Jane Austen in Sense and Sensibility (1811): ‘I felt sure you was angry with me’, and also Dickens in Pickwick Papers (1837).
89, 8 ] As he can’t show his heart, he shows his teeth PM ]
He never shows his feelings, but his teeth S
90, 6–7 ]
91, 2 firmān a passport.
92, 3 ]
93, 5 ]
93, 8 ]
93, 1–2 ]
And as they loathed each other with a hate>
93.6–8 ]
That each pulled different ways –
Had cuffed each other – only for their cuffs> ]
‘Arcades Ambo’ that is – ‘Blackguards both’
Virgil in Eclogue 7 4 describes Corydon and Thyrsis: ‘ambo florentes aetatibus, Arcades ambo’ (‘both in the bloom of life, Arcadians both’ [shepherds]. (Trans. H. R. Fairclough (1920), 48–9).
id est that is.
94, 1 Romagnole A citizen of Romagna, an Italian state, of which Ravenna was the capital In Byron’s day it was ruled by the papacy.
94, 2 Ancana A seaport on the Adriatic below Ravenna.
94, 4 bella donna fair lady (Italian).
96, 5–6 ’Tis said no one in hand ‘can hold afire By thought of frosty Caucasus’ ‘O! Who can hold a fire in his hand By thinking on the frosty Caucasus’ Richard II I iii 294–5.
97, 7–8 Through needles’ eyes it easier for the camel is / To pass Matthew xix 24.
98, 3 Smollett, Prior, Ariosto, Fielding In his letters Byron assembled a long list of writers who he insisted had been more indelicate than he: in addition to the four in this verse he included Chaucer, Shakespeare, Pulci, Berni, Boiardo, Voltaire, La Fontaine, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, Ford, ‘all the Charles Second writers’, Pope, Swift and Thomas Moore. He maintained that DJ was not ‘an eulogy of vice’ but social satire (LJ IV 260, 276, 278, 295–6, 369–70. 380–84; VI 155–6; Correspondence II 90, 97, 131–2).
98, 6 ] My pen – & easily flew in a rage PM ]
My pen when put in a poetic rage S
101, 6 ‘… the coming of the just’ Acts vii 52.
101, 7–8 I’ve stood upon Achilles’ tomb / And heard Troy doubted ‘I have stood upon that plain of Troy daily for more than a month, in 1810; and if any thing diminished my pleasure, it was that the blackguard Bryant had impugned its veracity’ (Byron, Diary, 11 January 1821, LJ V 165–6).
102, 5–8 Where are the epitaphs our fathers read? … in universal death Moore compares Spenser: ‘Look back who list unto the former ages, And call to count what is of them become.’ Where are the wits, the ancient sages who knew everything, and the world conquerors? (The Ruines of Time 57–63).
103, 4 For human vanity ] For
De Foix ‘The pillar which records the battle of Ravenna is about two miles from the city, on the opposite side of the river to the road towards Forli. Gaston de Foix, who gained the battle, was killed in it; there fell on both sides twenty thousand men. The present state of the pillar and its site is described in the text’ (Byron, 1821).
104, 1 where Dante’s bones are laid Stanzas 102–6 were written after Byron moved to Ravenna (23 December 1819), where he often passed Dante’s sepulchre.
104, 3–4 ] Protects his
To the Bard’s
104, 8 Pelides Achilles, the son of Peleus.
105, 3 ]
105, 8 ] Those
Those sufferings
106, 2–5 ] It’s fumes are frankincense; and were there nought
Of this
Of Silence would not long be borne by> Thought –
106, 6–7 ] Thus to their last sands are the Passions brought
And poured in Poetry, which is but Passion
107, 3–4 ]
In this our world – and have the>
I have drunk deep of passions as they pass
And dearly bought the bitter power to give
107, 8 ] But spoil by G–d a very pretty poem
108, 2 Benign ceruleans The bluestockings. See note to Canto I 22, 1–7.
108, 4 imprimatur Sanction or approval. Its legal usage is the licence to print a book, including the official approval of the censor.
108, 5–6 ] What must I go with
Read – were it but your Grandmothers to vex.
the oblivious cooks, / Those Cornish plunderers of Parnassian wrecks See note to Canto II 16, 8. Just as the Cornish pillaged ships that foundered on the rocky coast, so cooks plundered those metrical ruins that had been inspired by the Muses of Mount Parnassus, by lining their pie plates with the paper on which the poems were printed.
108, 7–8 ] And
let me not the only minstrel be
Cut off from tasting your Castalian tea.
Castalian tea Castalia was the spring on Parnassus sacred to the Muses, and hence the source of poetic inspiration.
Byron jeered at the bluestockings as the tea-table tyrants and dilettantes of literature. ‘I leave them to their daily “tea is ready, ” / Smug coterie and literary lady’ (Beppo, stanza 76).
109, 2 foolscap, hot-press darling Foolscap was folio printing paper of variable size, though Byron may also be punning with a dunce’s cap. A hot-press was a device for pressing paper between hot metal plates to make the surface smooth and glossy. OED here cites Byron’s figurative use, that connotes scorn of authors who were acclaimed by the Blues.
109, 4 And sigh, ‘I can’t get out’, like Yorick’s starling This episode occupies three sections of Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey, beginning with ‘The Passport. The Hotel at Paris’ and ending with ‘The Starling. Road to Versailles’ (ed. G. D. Stout, Jr (1967), 192–205). Yorick had said he would arrange to be jailed and maintained comfortably for a few months at the King’s expense. He convinced himself that the terror aroused by the Bastille was imaginary. But when he heard a caged starling cry, ‘I can’t get out –I can’t get out’, these words and Yorick’s inability to release the bird ‘overthrew’ his sentiments. Grateful for liberty, he now meditated on the ‘miseries of confinement’, and brought the starling to London, where it passed from one indifferent person to another. Yorick enshrined the bird as the crest to his arms.
109, 5 ] I’ll swear – as Mother Wordsworth swore
109, 5–8 Why then… /… misses of a coterie These lines are Byron’s retort to what he felt was a thrust at his popularity in Wordsworth’s ‘Essay, Supplementary to the Preface’ (Poems by William Wordsworth, 1815 and 1820 edns).
110, 1 Oh ‘darkly, deeply, beautifully blue’ Quoted from Southey’s Madoc in Wales Part I, Canto V 97–104, where the colour is that of dolphins and of the ocean, not of the sky as Byron supposed.
110, 2 ] As
110, 5–8 ]
I
Blue as the Garters which
Round the Patrician legs that walk about
The ornaments of Levees and a rout. PM ]
The
[variant] ‘Honi soit’ Byron alludes to the motto of the Order of the Garter, the highest Order of British Knighthood, established in 1348 by Edward III: Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense (evil is he who thinks evil). Legend – not history – attributes the origin of this motto to Edward III. When at a court reception the Countess of Salisbury’s gaiter broke and dropped to the floor, the King picked it up and silenced the babble with a rebuke that he later had inscribed on the decoration worn by the Knights of the Garter – a ribbon of dark-blue velvet, embroidered in gold and worn below the left knee (R. Werlich, Orders and Decorations of All Nations (1955), 144–5).
110, 8 the levee morn An official reception of men only, held by the sovereign or his representative directly after the king had risen from bed while he made his toilet.
111, 6–7 ] For sometimes these
111, 6 such a world of virtues cover The inversion and the antecedent of the pronoun may not be at once clear: such learned natures (line 5) cover a world of virtues, which, Byron ironically says, is the reason he does not dislike them.
111, 7–8 I know one woman of that purple school, / The loveliest, chastest, best Byron’s Journal for 22 November 1813 enumerates the Bluestockings, ‘with Lady Charlemont at their head – but I say nothing of her – “look in her face and you forget them all, ” and every thing else. Oh that face! – by te, Diva potent Cypri [’you, the goddess that reigns over Cyprus’], I would, to be beloved by that woman, build and burn another Troy’ (LJ II 332–3). Byron’s first quotation is from Pope’s Rape of the Lock ii 18; his second is the beginning of Horace’s Ode 1 3. Cyprus was one of the ancient centres of the worship of Aphrodite.
111, 8 best, – but – quite a fool ]
112, 1–7 Humboldt…/ Invented…/ An airy instrument…/ To ascertain the atmospheric state, / By measuring the intensity of blue The cyanometer was ‘an instrument invented for ascertaining the intensity of the blue colour of the sky’ by Horace Benedict de Saussure (1740–99). Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) used it on his voyages and apparently expected it to displace the marine barometer, but it did not.
112, 8 ]
I’ll back a London ‘Bas’ against Peru ]
A London ‘bos’ will beat thy Sky Peru ]
I’ll bet some pair of Stockings beat Peru
115, 3 Wilberforce William Wilberforce (1759–1833) became parliamentary leader of the cause to abolish slavery in 1787, and after twenty years of opposition and delay finally achieved passage of a bill to abolish the slave trade in 1807. The abolition of slavery in the colonies was not achieved until a bill for gradual emancipation was passed in 1833, the year of his death.
116, 7–8 ]
The females stood till chosen each as Victim –
To the soft oath of ‘Ana-seing Siktum’
The Turkish oath may be an imprecation on ‘your mother’s chastity’.
117, 5–7 ]
I’ll not be bullied decent or indecent –>
We’ll keep the future progress of Don Juan
117, 8 in Ossian the fifth duan James Macpherson (1736–96> in 1762–3 published two epics, Fiugal and Temara, which he claimed were translations of the ancient Gaelic poet Ossian. It was later proved that Macpherson had freely edited traditional poems and inserted his own passages. ‘Duan’ was the name he gave to his cantos or epic divisions.
CANTO V
Byron began the first draft (PM) in Ravenna on 16 October 1820 and completed it on 27 November. He finished the fair copy (M) 26 December. The following stanzas were added at different times: 1–4, 22, 33–9 (11 December), 58, 60, 61, 133, 140, 149, 157, 158 (27 February 1821). The canto was published in the same volume with the preceding two cantos on 8 August 1821.
1, 6–8 Ovid’s verse…/ Even Petrarch’s self… / Is the Platonic pimp The Ovid reference is to the Amores and the Ars amatoria, the Petrarch reference to the sonnets to Laura.
3, 2 the ocean stream Homer’s ‘streams of Okeanos’ refer to the waters flowing around the earth’s circumference. Byron’s own gloss includes the Hellespont, the Bosphorus, and ‘the Aegean, intersected with islands’.
3, 3 seventy-four A ship carrying seventy-four guns.
3, 4 Sophia’s cupola with golden gleam Byron admired the gilded roof of this mosque (formerly a Byzantine church). See CH IV 153, 7–8, and LJ I 281–2.
3, 6 The twelve isles, and the more than I could dream ‘You have no conception of the beauty of the twelve islands where the Turks have their country-houses, or of the blue Symplegades against which the Bosphorus beats with such restless violence’ (Medwin, 11). See Appendix.
3, 8 Which charmed the charming Mary Montagu ‘… for 20 miles together down the Bosphorus the most Beautifull variety of Prospects present themselves. The Asian Side is cover’d with fruit trees, villages and the most delightfull Landschapes in nature. On the European stands Constantinople, situate on Seven Hills.… Shewing an agreeable mixture of Gardens, Pine and Cypress trees, Palaces, Mosques and publick buildings, rais’d one above another…’ (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to the Countess of Bristol, 10 April 1718, The Complete Letters, ed. R. Halsband (1965), 139
7).
4, 1 I have a passion for the name of Mary There were several Marys in Byron’s youth: Mary Duff, his cousin; Mary Robertson, the ‘Highland Mary’ of his early poem When I Roved a Young Highlander; the Mary of To Mary, on Receiving her Picture and of other youthful verses; and Mary Chaworth.
4, 6 even yet I am not quite free Contraction provides a better metrical reading: ev’n yet I’m not quite free. Certain other pronouns and verbs should also be contracted in this canto: She’s served me (14, 7); I’ve answered (16, 3); I’ve no more time (74, 3); I’ve no authority (74, 8); Of which I’ve also seen (94, 4); who’ve done (107, 8); And all who’ve seen (133, 5); Because he’d journeyed (150, 3).
5 This was originally the first stanza of the canto.
5, 1 swept ] came
the Euxine The Black Sea.
5, 2 blue Symplegades In Greek mythology, these two islands near the entrance to the Black Sea would close together upon ships and crush them. After the Argo sailed through the channel safely, the rocks became fixed. See CH IV, stanzas 175–6: ‘… the dark Euxine rolled / Upon the blue Symplegades.’ A note on these lines states that Byron visited the twin rocks in June 1810.
In The Age of Bronze Byron adapted the old myth to a witty financial image: ‘Or turn to sail between those shifting rocks, / The new Symplegades – the crushing Stocks’ (658–9).
5.3 grand sight ]
the Giant’s Grave This name was given to ‘a height on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, much frequented by holiday parties: like Harrow and Highgate’ (Byron, 1821). According to Moslem legend, it was the grave of Joshua; according to the classical tradition, the tomb of Amycus, king of the Bebryces.
6, 3 ] For then the Parcae are most busy spinning
The Parcae the Fates. See note to Canto II 64, 6.
7, 8 ] And cared no more – than Eels for being flayed
8, 1 ] Juan was young – had courage and was full
9, 6 ]
12, 5–6 ] A
Lot of so young a
13, 3 All ragamuffins ‘I have led my ragamuffins where they are peppered’ (Henry IV Part I V iii 36).
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