62, 8 Boon lived hunting up to ninety An exaggeration. Boone did go on a hunting expedition to the Kansas River in his eighty-second year.
63, 8 man of Ross John Kyrle (1637–1724) inherited a wealthy estate at Ross, Herefordshire, to which he retired early in life. He lived simply and gave his surplus income to charitable works and to improvements in the town and its environs. He was eulogized by Pope in Epistle 3, Moral Essays (1732), 249–84.
65, 1–67, 8 He was not all alone… /… people of the woods ‘He said a great deal more in praise of savage manners, and affirmed that men had deteriorated in consequence of the improvements, so called, of artificial life, which had created new diseases, new wants, and new sufferings’ (‘Conversations of an American with Lord Byron’, New Monthly Magazine, XLV (October 1835), 201).
69, 7 ]
71, 7 Mussulmen ] Moslem Men 1823 and latter editions; both MSS have ‘Mussulmen’.
73, 2 cavalier See note to Canto VII 12, 8.
73, 3 Koutousow’s most ‘forlorn of hopes’ ‘Forlorn hopes’ were a body of skirmishers, detached to the front to begin an attack. O E D quotes Wellington’s Dispatches (1799): ‘The forlorn hope of each attack consisted of a sergeant and twelve Europeans.’
74, 2 I don’t much pique myself upon orthography When Thomas Moore was collecting materials for the biography that Murray was to publish, he visited the Pigots and other early friends of the poet. The boyhood letters they showed him, with their ‘scrambling handwriting’ and bad spelling, amused Moore: ‘… spelling, indeed, was a very late accomplishment with him…’ (Memoirs, Journal and Correspondence of Thomas Moore, ed. Lord John Russell (1854), entry for 22 January 1828, V 249).
76, 1–2 being taken by the tail – a taking / Fatal to bishops as to soldiers ‘Taken by the tail’ is a pun on two meanings: (1) the rear (or tail end) of the advancing Cossacks was taken by surprise and wiped out; (2) the Bishop of Clogher was caught (‘taken’) by witnesses in an act of sodomy (here ‘tail’ is slang for the genitals or buttocks). The Hon Percy Jocelyn (1764–1843) was made Bishop of Clogher in 1820 and deposed in 1822 ‘on account of a scandalous crime’. For the facts and rumours about his arrest, voluntary exile and trial, and the libellous onslaught in the press against him and the Church, see F.H.A. Micklewright, ‘The Bishop of Clogher’s Case’, NQ, n.s. XVI (1969), 421–30.
On MS Tx Byron’s carnal and alliterative innuendo – ‘taken by the tail – a taking / Fatal to warriors as to women’ – apparently offended Mary Shelley. Though lines 1 and 2 were legible, she did not copy them on MS M, and Byron filled in the blank space with the present text.
76, 7–8 Lieutenant Colonel Yesouskoi /… battalion of Polouzki Castelnau in his account used different spelling – ‘Yesouskoi… regiment de Polozk’ (Poland) – which Byron changed to get his rhymes.
77, 1–2 killed all the Turks he met, / But could not eat them ‘ I think he will eat all he kills ’ (Henry V III vii 95). ‘I pray you, how many hath he killed and eaten in these wars? But how many hath he killed? for, indeed, I promised to eat all of his killing’ (Much Ado About Nothing I i 40–43). See DJ XIII 88.
79, 3 badly seconded not supported by adequate troops.
79, 7 Seraskier Title of the Turkish minister of war who was also commander-in-chief of the army.
80, 7–8 An English naval officer… /… dished The officer was completely done for, killed.
82, 7 the Nile’s sun-sodden slime Shelley, Hunt and Keats wrote their sonnets on the Nile in February 1818. ‘This was the period when Egypt was even more in the fashion in London than during the raid on Tutankhamen’ (E. Blunden, Leigh Hunt (1930), 119).
83, 6 ] And
And
83, 8 snakes described of old M ] snake’s denounced of old Tx
84, 3 ] The very tendon
86, 1–4 ]… tis the
Of a
Wheneer he can – for
Of lying> fragment
86, 8 ] Which most of all doth Man characterize. ]
The twigs which Satan limes for human flies.
[variant] For the use of limed twigs see note to Canto V 22, 7–8.
88, 2–4 ] And human
As
89, 2 ] My Cue for
89, 3 checkered ] checquered Tx and 1823; Byron’s usual spelling.
89, 4–5 ]
90, 2 ‘quile refreshing’, in the affected phrase Byron may have remembered a review praising Samuel Rogers’ Human Life. The word ‘refreshing’ occurred in the review: his ‘sweet verses… soothe the troubled spirits with a refreshing sense of truth, purity and elegance’ (ER, XXXI (March 1819), 325).
90, 3 ] Of these
90, 4 ]
93, 6 ‘ears polite’ ‘Who never mentions Hell to ears polite’ (Pope, Moral Essays, Epistle 4 150).
96, 5 hers ] her’s Tx, M, 1823
96, 7 yet radiant face ]
96, 8 Like to a lighted alabaster vase Because of his pale skin and finely chiselled features, Byron’s beauty was often compared to a carving in alabaster.
97, 8 That you and I will win St George’s collar Though Byron identified this as ‘a Russian military order’, he and Johnson were inexact and too ambitious. The only Russian honour with a collar was that of St Andrew First Called, the highest imperial order, founded by Peter the Great in 1698 and bestowed by sole decision of a tsar on the most distinguished military leaders, rarely to foreigners. The Collar consisted of seventeen medallions, alternating (1) a double-headed eagle with a centre showing St George slaying a dragon (probably the cause of Byron’s confusion), (2) the St Andrew Cross, and (3) an arms trophy with Peter’s crowned monogram. A more likely possibility for Johnson and Juan was the badge of the Order of St George the Martyr, established in 1769 by the Empress Catherine and awarded ‘for extreme bravery in the face of the enemy to officers of the Russian Army and Navy’. It came in four classes and was as highly regarded then as are the British Victoria Cross and the American Congressional Medal of Honor today. This badge was a white enamelled cross with a centre medallion showing St George killing the dragon (R. Werlich, Orders and Decorations of All Nations(1965), 265–9).
104, 6–7 the author (to whose nod / In prose I bend my humble verse) The author is Castelnau. See Preface to Cantos VI–VIII 3, and note.
105, 6 Priam’s, Peleus’, or Jove’s son Hector, the son of Priam; Achilles, the son of Peleus; and Hercules, the son of Jupiter and Alcmene.
107, 4 Swedish Charles at Bender When Charles XII reached Bender, on I August 1709, he at first refused to cross the River Dniester, and on yielding to the representations of the Turks, he declined to enter the town, but decided on remaining encamped on an island, in spite of the assurances of the inhabitants that it was occasionally flooded.
108, 2 ] Expended all their
110, 7 ] Because
all game and bottom ‘Bottom’, a term for staying power, endurance, was used to describe pugilists, wrestlers and racehorses.
111, 4 the black-eyed girls in green In the Koran houris are beautiful girls of the Mohammedan paradise. They are variously described: large-eyed, black-eyed, never-dying, ever-virginal, eating fruits, and reclining on green cushions. Most of the comments about them in stanzas 111–14 that Byron did not invent, he borrowed from Thomas Moore’s Lal
la Rookh, William Beckford’s Vathek,and travel books about Moslem countries.
112, 4 ]
112, 6 ] A Field of
113, 7–8 And thus your houri (it may be) disputes / Of these brief blossoms the immediate fruits The ‘brief blossoms’ are the bridal hours. The ‘immediate fruits’ are presumably the first flush of married happiness, before the ‘sad second moon grows dim’, and the bridegroom longs for bachelorhood again.
117, 3 ‘aroint’ stand off, begone. See Macbeth I iii 6; King Lear III iv 127.
118, 2–3 ]
120, 6 ] If
120, 7 bey A governor of a district in Turkey; also until recently a title of courtesy.
121, 8 three lives as well as tails Either one, two or three horsetails were borne before a pasha as insignia of rank, Byron’s pasha being of the highest rank.
122, 7–8] Of burning
Of burning Cities, those full Moons of Slaughter
Was imaged back in blood instead of Water
124, 7–8 ]
Muscadins of Paris Muscadin was a Parisian dandy. During the French Revolution, it was a term of contempt for members of a party composed of young men of the upper middle class.
[variant] ‘pro focis et pro arts’ On behalf of the fires and altars; for hearth and home – a Latin cliché.
125, 5 taxes, Castlereagh, and debt Owing to the cost of the Napoleonic Wars, the national debt had climbed to £860 million, and paper money was issued in considerable quantities, thus causing temporary inflation.
125, 8 Then feed her famine fat with Wellesley’s glory The failure of the potato crop in Ireland in 1822 reduced the population to starvation. They ate their seed potatoes; hay became scarce and cattle died; and then typhus struck. The English government and the people, by subscription, poured in money for relief.
Richard Colley, Marquis of Wellesley (1760–1842), brother of the Duke of Wellington, organized an effective system of relief and contributed £500 out of his private purse. Byron chose to ignore his charity and accused the British of aggravating the Irish famine by feeding it only with Wellesley’s military reputation.
126, 1–3 ] Yet still there is a patriot
For those who love their> Country and
A Subject of
126, 8 great George weighs twenty stone A stone is fourteen pounds. George was stout as a youthful prince in 1781. By 1812 when Byron saw him, George had become obese. Ten years later dropsy made his corpulence so repellent that he took precaution not to be seen when he drove in Windsor Park.
128, 4 worthy of commemoration ] worthy of
129, 6 ] commiseration
129, 8 ]
131, 3–4 the inconvenient state / Of ‘single blessedness’
But earthlier happy is the rose distill’d,
Than that which withered on the virgin thorn
Grows, lives, and dies, in single blessedness.
(A Midsummer Night’s Dream I i 78)
131, 6 ]
131, 7 a Roman sort of Sabine wedding An allusion to the rape of the Sabine women by the Roman soldiers, c. 290 BC.
132, 4 ‘Wherefore the ravishing did not begin?’ In 1813, Byron had rhymed this jest in The Devil’s Drive (77–82): after a town was captured, a forsaken old maid left her spinning, looked in a mirror, and asked a passer-by, ‘Are the rapes beginning?’ Sir Walter Scott related that in 1745 when Carlisle was taken by the Highlanders: a fearful old woman hid in a closet but soon popped her head out to ask, ‘Can you tell me when the ravishing is going to begin’ (The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, 1825–1826, ed. J. G. Tait (1939), 260).
133, 2 Tirnour… Zinghis Zinghis or Genghis Khan (1162–1227) extended the Mongol empire by conquest from the Pacific to the Black Sea. Timour the Lame (?1336–1405), a descendant of Genghis Khan, ruled by terror and desolation over vast territories in central Asia and over parts of Persia and India. He is the protagonist in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great.
133, 7–8 ‘Glory to God…|… ‘Ismail’s ours’ ‘In the original Russian – “Slava bogu! slava vaml! / Krepost Vzala, y ïä tam.” – A kind of couplet; for he was a poet’ (Byron, 1823).
134, 2–7 Menè, Menè, Tekel, and Upharsin … The fate of nations While Belshazzar and his court were feasting and drinking, a hand appeared and wrote a cryptic phrase on the wall. Since none of the wise men of Babylon could translate the message for the terrified King, his Queen urged him to summon Daniel, who had explained the dreams of the preceding King, Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel rebuked Belshazzar for pride and irreverence and then interpreted the words that had been inscribed on the wall: ‘MANE: God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. TEKEL: Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. PERES: Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.’ Belshazzar was slain that night (Daniel v 1–30).
134, 6 Severe, sublime ]
134, 8 Could rhyme like Nero o’er a burning city ‘Viewing the conflagration from the tower of Maecenas and exulting as he said, in “the beauty of the flames,” he sang the whole of the “Sack of Ilium” in his regular stage costume’ (Suetonius, Nero, section 38, The Lives of the Caesars, trans. J. C. Rolfe(1924), II 154–7). The ‘Sack of Ilium’ seems to have been Nero’s own composition. See also A. Weigall, Nero, the Singing Emperor of Rome (1930), 285, 290–91.
135, 6 we still truckle ] we still
136, 3 You hardly will believe such things were true In IX 39–40 Byron returned to the incredulity of the future at present outrages.
136, 7–8 the savages of yore, / Who painted their bare limbs, but not with gore Byron is probably thinking of the Picts and Scots, who painted (and sometimes tattooed) themselves blue as a means of camouflage when they expected to engage in combat; this practice earned for them the name ‘the painted men’ (‘pictis’) among earlier historians.
137, 3 As we now gaze upon the mammoth’s bones Considerable international interest was created with the discovery in 1799 of mammoth’s carcasses frozen in the icy cliffs along the Arctic coasts of Siberia. An important discovery occurred in 1801, when remains were found not only with complete skeletons but with flesh so well preserved that it was still palatable to the pack dogs.
137, 5 Or hieroglyphics on Egyptian stones The Rosetta stone was discovered in 1799 in the Nile delta. Its inscriptions provided scholars with the key for deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.
137, 7 ] Guessing
138, 1 I have kept Byron probably read the verb as a contraction: I’ve kept.
138, 6–7 For I have drawn much less with a long bow / Than my forerunners ‘To draw with the long bow’ is a colloquialism for making exaggerated statements. Professor Carl Woodring in his review of the Variorum Don Juan suggested that Byron may be contrasting his factual account of events at Ismail with the heroic exaggeration of military feats in the epics of Homer, Virgil and the Italian Renaissance (JEGP, L. VII (1958), 353). According to Professor John Clubbe, the words ‘Carelessly I sing’ may be a recollection of the first line of Book I of the Aeneid: ‘Arma virumque cano’, ‘I sing of soldiers and battles’.
139, 1–5 fiddle.|… break off in the middle Samuel Butler in Hudibras wrote: ‘Th’ Adventure of the Bear and Fiddle / Is sung, but breaks off in the middle’ (The First Part, Canto I, The Argument, ed. J. Wilders (1967), 1). Hudibras and the episodic Don Juan (especially
Canto VI) both break off in the middle (H. T. Kennan, NQ, n.s. XIV (1967), 301–2).
140, 8 new order of St Vladimir This was founded by Catherine II in 1782 on the twentieth anniversary of her reign and in honour of Prince Vladimir, who had introduced Christianity into Russia. The badge was a red enamel cross with two rims of gold and black. The black enamel centre medallion portrayed the imperial mantle topped by a crown. When awarded for military service, crossed swords were placed between the arms of the cross. Even more ornate was the St Vladimir Star with eight silver rays. In its Mack enamel centre was a gold cross and the letters CPKB within a red enamel circular band, on which were inscribed the Russian words for usefulness, honour, and glory (R. Werlich, Orders and Decorations of All Nations (1965), 269).
Since the Russian love of decoration became a joke in the eighteenth century, Byron’s line may be satirical. When Francis II (1766–1835), the last Holy Roman Emperor, was in Paris, he ordered the Russian generals to be admitted to his presence with the words, ‘Now let the sun, moon and stars enter!’
CANTO IX
Byron began the first draft (Y) of Canto IX at Pisa soon after 8 August 1822 and finished it by 6 September. Stanzas 1–10 and 76 were additions. Canto IX was published with X and XI by John Hunt on 29 August 1823. All variants are taken from Y except those noted as Tx, a first draft fragment of stanzas 1–8 earlier detached from Canto III. Mary Shelley’s fair copies of Cantos IX–XVI seem to have been lost.
1, 1–10, 8 Oh Wellington… /… and mankind Byron’s early dislike of Wellington arose from his disapproval of the Spanish campaign in 1809; he regarded Wellington’s victory at Talavera, July 1809, as a Pyrrhic one. Wellington’s defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo did little to raise the British general in Byron’s esteem. See VIII 48–9 and note. Byron was further antagonized by Wellington’s association with Castlereagh, with whom the Duke was friendly, and whose foreign policy he approved and continued after the latter’s suicide in 1822. See note to Dedication 11, 8.
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