Don Juan
Page 75
Castlereagh’s suicide on 12 August 1822 occurred only two or three weeks before Byron wrote this note.
50, 5 ] That Monstrous
51, 5 cavalier servente See note to Canto I 148, 1.
51, 7 ] Beneath
53, 5 Parisian Like Paris, whose elopement with Helen started the Trojan War.
53, 6–7 ]
Stronger than Matrimony> fragment
Doctors’ Commons See note to Canto I 36, 8.
54, 3 dainty dames ]
55, 1 Oh thou teterrima causa of all belli Byron prudently quoted only three words from a sentence in the Satire I 3, 107–8, by Horace: ‘Nam fuit ante Helenam cunnus teterrima belli / causa’ (‘For, before Helen’s day, a wench [literally pudendum] was the most dreadful cause of war’), trans. H. R. Fairclough (1926), 40–41).
56, 7–8 ]
With – or without thee – all things at a Stand! ]
Are, or would be thou
Sea which lavest Life’s sand
57, 6–7 on whose plumage sat / Victory ‘Fortune and victory sit on thy helm’ (Richard III V iii 80).
58, 4–5 air which posed / The court For ’pose’ see note to Canto I 175.
63, 6–7 ‘to swell / A man’, as Giles says ‘ “His fortune swells him, it is rank, he’s married.” – Sir Giles Overreach; Massinger. – See A New Way to Pay Old Debts [V i 118–19]’ (Byron, 1823).
64, 1 What a strange thing is man ‘What a piece of work is a man!’ (Hamlet II ii 323).
66, 1–2 ‘the herald Mercury / New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill’ Hamlet III iv 58–9.
66, 6–7 skill / Smoothed even the Simplon’s steep Byron went to Italy by way of the Simplon in 1816 and was impressed with the road built through the pass by order of Napoleon (1800–1806).
67, 5 black drop A popular elixir, chiefly composed of opium, with vinegar and spices.
68, 2–3 Fell into that no less imperious passion, / Self-love Byron humorously adopted part of a traditional psychology that Pope, among many others, had explained: ‘Two Principles in human nature reign;/ Self-love, to urge, and Reason, to restrain.’ Pope’s view of self-love as the primary motive for action followed the ancient theory popular in the eighteenth century that a desire for self-fulfilment was the principal cause of all good and bad actions.
68, 5–6 ‘deigns to prove’ (’Tis Pope’s phrase) a great longing Byron’s ‘prove’ may mean to make manifest or demonstrate in action a great longing. In Eloisa to Abelard 87–8, Pope wrote: ‘Not Caesar’s empress would I deign to prove: No! make me mistress to the man I love.’ Since Pope’s ‘prove’seems to mean to try to have the experience of, Byron used the verb in a different sense.
69, 5–8 our native sun assuage … just as Sol’s heat is Quenched in the lap of the salt sea or Thetis Sol, an early Roman god of the sun (the equivalent of the Greek Helios), apparently shared no mythical adventure with Thetis, a nymph, who dwelt in the sea with her father Nereus. In lines 5–6, Byron used the sun as a metaphor of carnal passion which requires the next ocean (woman) that conveniently flows by to ‘make a twilight in’. The simile in lines 7–8 has a double meaning. The sun’s heat is quenched in the sea when it sets at evening. Byron parallels this act of nature with an invented myth of the union of the sun-god and a sea-goddess and thus repeats his carnal image of lines 5–6.
71, 1–2 her womanhood / In its meridian When Juan came to Russia in 1791, Catherine was sixty-two, hardly the prime of life in juicy vigour (72, 5). In X 24, 6, and variant, Byron thought his ‘not old’ Empress was forty-eight when Juan knew her.
71, 2 her blue eyes, or grey Several persons who lived at the court affirm that Catherine had very blue eyes and not grey (W. Tooke, Life of Catherine II (1798), III 382).
72, 1 ]
72, 4 Messalina’s self Messalina was the profligate wife of the Roman emperor Claudius. C F. P. Masson calls Catherine ‘une Messaline’ (Mémoires Secrets sur la Russie (1800), 183).
73, 7–8 some heathenish philosophers / Make love the mainspring Possibly a reference to the commonly distorted views about Platonic love. In Canto I 116, Byron in jest had charged that Plato’s ‘confounded fantasies’ had caused more ‘immoral conduct’ than had the ‘poets and romancers’, because of the ‘fancied sway [His] system feigns o’er the controlled core Of human hearts’. Since Shelley was a devoted Platonist and since Byron called his friend ‘a visionary’ and declared: ‘With his speculative opinions I have nothing in common, nor desire to have’, Byron may also have had Shelley in mind.
75, 3 sand-pits ]
75, 7–8 ] Of
Of such sensations in the drowsy drear
After, which shadows
the – Say – second year.
77, 1 analyze Y, 1823, and the preferred spelling in OED; ‘analyse’ is the spelling in some twentieth-century editions (More, Bredvoid).
78, 3 elder ladies’ wrinkles curled much crisper Byron’s tautology is noted by OED; crisper here means more wrinkled.
78, 5–6 ]
They gazed upon this rising Star but tears>
79, 6 roubles ] rubles Y, 1823 and later editions
79, 8 some thousand peasants ‘A Russian estate is always valued by the number of slaves upon it’ (Byron, MS Y).
80, 1 all such ladies are ] all
80, 7 Clytemnestra She committed adultery with Aegisthus and murdered her husband Agamemnon. Byron in letters after the separation and in Lines on Hearing that Lady Byron Was Ill called his wife his ‘moral Clytemnestra’.
81, 6 she put a favourite to death Elizabeth sent Essex to the scaffold in 1601. She was known for her lifelong parsimony (lines 3 and 8).
81, 8 ] And Avarice – disgust a polished Nation
82, 7 speculate on ]
84, 6 ]
84, 6–7 Miss Protasoff… / Named… l’Eprouveuse ‘The “Protassova” (born 1744) was a cousin of the Orlofs. She survived Catherine by many years, and was… “present at the Congress of Vienna, covered with diamonds like a reliquary, and claiming precedence of every one”. She is named “I’éprouveuse”, in a note to the Mémoires Secrets (1800), I 148’ (Poetry V 399 n.).
CANTO X
Byron began his first draft (S) of Canto X at Pisa in September 1822 and finished it at Genoa on 5 October. Stanzas 14 and 15 were additions. Canto X was published with IX and XI by John Hunt on 29 August 1823. All variants are taken from S.
1, 1 When Newton saw an apple fall This story, related to Voltaire by Catherine Conduitt, Newton’s niece, and retold in Voltaire’s Éléments de la Philosophie de Newton III, ch. 3, has no authority from Newton himself. See Sir David Brewster, Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton (1860), I 24 n.
1, 6 natural whirl called gravitation] natural
2, 4 ]
2, 8 Steam-engines will conduct him to the moon Medwin quotes Byron: ‘Who would not wish to have been born two or three centuries later?… I suppose we shall soon travel by air-vessels; make air instead of sea-voyages; and at length find our way to the moon, in spite of the want of atmosphere’ (Medwin, 187).
3, 3 ] I felt
4, 1 and 4, 3 I have sailed… /… I have shunned The verbs should be contracted: I’ve sailed; I’ve shunned.
6, 2–3 ‘Oh!’ saith the Psalmist… /… and be at rest!’ ‘Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest’ (Psalm
lv 6). Byron had used the Biblical line in one of the Hebrew Melodies, Oh! Weep for Those, 10.
6, 7–8 ] Beyond
Beyond
To sigh instead of Coughing – and crying – ‘pish!’>
7, 1–2 shrink, / Like Arno m the summer Byron’s palace, the Lanfranchi, overlooked the Arno in Pisa.
7, 4 ] Which
11, 3 Suspicious people ]
11, 6 As my friend Jeffrey writes Francis Jeffrey (1773–1858) wrote of DJ: ‘We think the abuse of Mr Southey… by far too savage and intemperate. It… does no honour either to the taste or the temper of the noble author’ (ER, XXXVI (February 1822), 445).
‘I have read the recent article of Jeffrey,’ Byron wrote to Moore, 8 June 1822. ‘I suppose… that he wishes to provoke me to reply. But I won’t, for I owe him a good turn still for his kindness by-gone. Indeed, I presume that the present opportunity of attacking me again was irresistible; and I can’t blame him, knowing what human nature is’ (LJ V1 80–81).
13, 3 reformados ‘Reformers’, or rather ‘Reformed’ (Byron, 1823). Though Byron said that the word occurred in Scott’s Waverley, he may have seen it in The Fortunes of Nigel (1822) II 123, published before he began Canto X. OED cites earlier uses as well as Byron’s here.
15, 1 A legal broom’s A pun on his enemy Brougham.
15, 3 The endless soot ‘Query, suit? – Printer’s Devil’ (Byron, 1823).
16, 2 Dear Jeffrey, once my most redoubted foe Byron believed that Jeffrey wrote the sneering review of Hours of Idleness (1807), and attacked him in EB & SR in 1809 (lines 438–507). Later, as editor of ER, Jeffrey wrote a friendly critique of The Giaour (1813) and won Byron’s favour.
Jeffrey also reviewed CH, The Corsair, The Bride of Abydos and Several dramas. His honesty and critical consistency earned the generosity of stanzas 11–12, 16–17.
18, 3 Balgounie’s Brig’s black wall ‘The brig of Don near the “auld toun” of Aberdeen, with its one arch and its black deep salmon stream below, is in my memory as yesterday’ (Byron, 1823).
18, 6 Like Banquo’s offspring Macbeth asked the Witches, ‘shall Banquo’s issue ever / Reign in this kingdom?’ They then showed him the ghosts of eight future kings, all ‘like the spirit of Banquo’ – all his descendants (Macbeth IV i 102–24).
19, 2 juvenile and curly Though Byron implies that his hair was curly in youth but is no longer so, his portraits, made at various times of his life, all show wavy hair. Neither OED nor several slang dictionaries record the colloquial sense that Byron’s context implies: hearty, energetic, belligerent. He used the adjective in the same way in his letters.
19, 7 ‘scotched, not killed’ ‘We have scotch’d [cut, wounded] the snake, not kill’d it’ (Macbeth III ii 13).
19, 8 And love the land of ‘mountain and of flood’ ‘Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, / Land of the mountain and the flood’ (Walter Scott, Lay of the Last Minstrel VI ii 19–20).
20, 4 mind can never sink The Platonism of this stanza, unusual in Byron, may be the effect upon him of Shelley’s recent death.
21, 7 ]
Damsels,
24, 6–8 ]
25, 2–3 Gracchus… /… his agrarian laws Tiberius Gracchus, tribune of the people, demanded the execution of a law that took property from large landowners for the benefit of the poor.
26, 3–4 ]
That modest bibliopole> fragment
26, 6–8 ‘purple and fine linen’, fitter / For Babylon’s… harlot, /… scarlet ‘There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day’ (Luke xvi 19). In Exodus xxv 3–4, part of the offering to the Lord was ‘purple, and scarlet, and fine linen’. The harlot of Babylon was arrayed in purple and scarlet in Revelation xvi 19, and xvii-xviii.
27, 3 Dante’s ‘obscure wood’ See note to Canto VI 75, 3–4.
27, 6 ] Hut, where we travellers bait with dim reflection [variant] ‘Bait’means to stop at an inn for rest and refreshment.
28, 7 Draint its first draught ]
34, 1 Oh for a forty-parson-power to chaunt ‘A metaphor taken from the “ forty-horse-power ” of a steam-engine. That mad wag, the Reverend S[ydney]S[mith] sitting by a brother Clergyman at dinner, observed afterwards that his dull neighbour had a “twelve-parson-power” of conversation’ (Byron, 1823).
35, 8 sixty thousand new knights’ fees Until recently, historians accepted the account of Ordericus, who wrote two generations after the Norman Conquest in 1066–70, that William was accompanied by sixty thousand knights. Modern scholars have shown that there were fewer than five thousand.
36, 1–4 whose ancestors are there-| Erneis, Radulphus. Eight-and-forty manors /… for following Billy’s banners Edward Bernard’s Pedigree of George Gordon, Sixth Lord Byron (1870) traces Byron’s lineage from Ralph (‘Radulphus’) de Burun of Horestan, who appears in the Doomsday Book as holding lordships in Notts and Derbyshire. Byron and others assumed Ralph came to England with William the Conqueror. Bernard’s Pedigree does not mention Erneis. J. C Jeaffreson wrote that the forty-eight manors probably existed only in Byron’s fancy (The Real Lord Byron (1884), 3–8).
36, 6 To strip the Saxons of their hydes, like tanners ‘I believe a hyde of land to be a legitimate word and as such subject to the tax of a quibble’ (Byron, 1823). A hyde was about 120 acres.
36, 7–8 ]
Us land on earth will do no less in heaven>
37, 2 plants called sensitive Byron may have read Shelley’s The Sensitive Plant, published in 1820.
37, 6 Neva’s ice The river Neva flows through Leningrad, connecting Lake Ladoga with the Gulf of Finland.
37, 8 ]
38, 8 blue devils hypochondriac despondency. O ED cites DJ here.
a dun Either a demand for payment of a debt or a professional debt collector.
39, 3 (The same who physicked Peter) Catherine II is said to have done away with her husband, Peter III, in 1763, less than a year after he came to the throne. For the rumour (40, 2) that he was poisoned by Potemkin, see C F. P. Masson, Mémoires Secrets sur la Russie (1800), I 170.
41, 1–8 But here is one prescription out of many: |… in die capiendus Byron tried to maintain a rhythmic pattern in this stanza. Professor C. C Albers of the University of Texas School of Pharmacy suggested that it might be read thus:
‘Sodae sulphat. six drams. Half-dram mannae optim.*
Aq. Fervent† ounce and a half. Two drams tinct. sennae
Haustus.’‡ (And here the surgeon came and cupped him.)
‘Take pulv. com. three grains ipecacuanhae’ §
(With more beside, if Juan had not stopped ’em).
‘Bolus potassae sulphuret. sumendus,
Et haustus ter in the capiendus.’||
The prescription seems to indicate a rigorous purge, a sweat, and an emetic to mend or end the patient; it does not appear to be a remedy for any specific disease. Frank Stiling and Bruno Meinecke, however, found two prescriptions here, both, they say, commonly used in treatment of respiratory infection: one consisting of sodium sulphate, manna and senna to be taken in boiling water; the other a pill of ipecac and sulphurated potash. Their transliteration and scansion also differ in a few places from the above in word order and the retention of Latin terms (Explicator, VII (March 1949), article 36).
42, 2 Secundum artem in accordance with medical science, or as a result of the skill of the doctors.
42, 5 that hiatus max
ime deflendus that great gap (the grave) lamented.
42, 8 mild Baillie or soft Abernethy Both Dr Baillie and John Abernethy, a surgeon, were noted for plainness of speech.
43, 6 but flickered ]
43, 7–8 seemed to gravel / The faculty Juan’s physical decline perplexed, baffled the medical profession. Byron is not thinking of the faculty of a medical university; ‘faculty’ was often used to designate members of any learned profession and according to OED in popular parlance physicians were called ‘The Faculty’.
44, 2 ] Meridian-born to
44, 4 ]
44, 5 ] But when She saw
45, 1 a kind of a discussion ] a
45, 7–8 the rights of Thetis, |… uti possidetis Thetis dwelt in the ocean with her father Nereus; Byron expands her power in his phrase. After Trafalgar, Britain was unrivalled mistress of the sea. The law of ‘uti possidetis’ recognizes control through actual possession.
46, 4 At once her royal splendour ]
47, 5 ]
Her Climacteric plagued her like her teens
climacteric teased her the menopause vexed and irritated her.
47, 8 ] She
48, 7 choosing with deliberation ]
49, 6 Tsarina’s ] Czarina’s S, 1823 and later editions
49, 7 a new Iphigene, she went to Tauris At the moment Agamemnon was going to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia, Artemis snatched her away to Tauris (modern Crimea), where she became a priestess. In 1787 Catherine II went to the Crimea with the Emperor Joseph.
50, 1–8 A bulldog… /… even a maid For Byron’s fondness of animals see note to Canto III 18, 1–5.
50, 1 ] A
51, 4 Leila Medwin suggests that Allegra was the Leila of Don Juan (101 n.).
52, 4 grand Cuvier See note to Canto IX 38, 1.
52, 5 was her ignorance S, 1833 and later editions ] with her ignorance 1823