53, 4 He was not yet quite old enough to prove / Parental feelings Here ‘prove’ means ‘experience’, as it also does in XII 50, 6 (‘He who hath proved war, storm, or woman’s rage’); in XIV 9, 4 (‘Of passions too I have proved enough’); XIV 73, 2 (Tiresias proved, that is, experienced, the difference between the sexes); and in XV 24, 2 (‘proved the soft condition’ – marriage).
54, 3–5 ]
Of their salt veins and stir their stagnancy) ]
Although (twill happen as
58, 3–4 Through Courland also, which that famous farce saw / Which gave her dukes the graceless name of Birun Ernest John Biren (b. 1690), an ambitious schemer of common birth in Courland (or Kurland, a Polish duchy along the Baltic), won the favouritism of Anne, widow of the Duke of Courland. When she became Empress of Russia (1730) she brought him to St Petersburg, named him Duke of Courland and prime minister. Anne’s reign, marked by famine, disorder and cruelty, has been called the most incompetent and oppressive between the death of Peter the Great and the arrival of Catherine
II. When Anne died in 1740, Biren was appointed regent but was quickly exiled to Siberia. He had no political ability and no interest except filling his purse. See B. Pares, A History of Russia (1944), 221–5. Byron’s own note here said that Biren ‘assumed the name and arms of the Birons of France’ and that descendants of the Courland Biren had visited England (1814).
58, 7 some twenty years]
59, 2 My Guard! my Old Guard!’ Napoleon’s exclamation at the Elysée Bourbon, 23 June 1815.
59, 3–4 ]
The last expired in cut throat> Castlereagh
59, 7 Kosciusko’s name The Polish patriot, Kosciusko, was a favourite hero among the English Romanticists.
59, 8]
Hecla a volcano in Iceland.
60, 4 the great Professor Kant It is doubtful that Byron had read Kant. He was apparently familiar with a short résumé of Kant’s philosophy which appeared in a review of Madame de Staël’s De l’ Allemagne (ER, II (October 1813), 198–238).
62, 6 presents to the inspector ] presents to
62, 7 Eleven thousand maidenheads of bone Visitors to Cologne are still shown the bones of the martyred virgins, which were taken from a Roman cemetery found in the twelfth century.
63, 1 Helvoetsluys A port city in Holland, near Rotterdam.
63, 3–8 juniper expresses its best juice, |… seems but cruel From 1700 to 1720 Parliament encouraged distillers to make gin because they used grain and profited the landlords. Its cheapness made it popular with the urban lower classes. Shops advertised that one could get dead drunk on gin for two pence. From 1720 to 1750 drunkenness became epidemic, and diseases, especially dropsy, increased. Business men, bishops and statesmen wrote agitated pamphlets. Parliament passed laws in 1736 and 1743 trying to reduce drunkenness by taxing gin and raising the licence fee to 50s, but these efforts caused riots and encouraged illegal clandestine sales. In 1750 there were 17, 000 gin-shops, and 11 million gallons were drunk. After a new set of legal regulations in 1751, the excesses seemed to decline in the second half of the century, but by 1830 gin had again become a grave social hazard. Two hundred thousand people entered the fourteen largest London gin-shops in one week. Parliamentary committees issued dire reports and advocated drastic measures, but little was achieved for many years. See W. E. H. Lecky, A History of England in the Eighteenth Century (1909) II 100–105; G. M. Trevelyan, English Social History (1942), 341–3, 569–70; Social England, ed. H. D. Traill (1899), V 50, 136; VI 634–8; J. B. Botsford, English Society in the Eighteenth Century (1965), 250–54.
65, 6 Those haughty shopkeepers Napoleon’s contemptuous phrase comes from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, which the Emperor knew: ‘To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers.’
66, 1 I’ve no 1833 and later editions ] I have no S, 1823
69, 4 waiters running mucks The waiters were dashing about in wild disorder. O ED maintains that Byron erroneously used ‘mucks’ for ‘amuck’.
71, 2 through ] thro’ 1823
71, 6–7 fuddle / With schnapps Tipple or get drunk on strong Holland gin or other hard liquor.
71, 7–8 ] With Schnapps – Democritus would cease to smile
By German postboys driven a German Mile.
‘hundsfot’ or ‘verftucter’ ‘I can swear in German potently, when I like – “Sacrament – Verfluchter – Hunds – fott” – and so forth; but I have little else of their energetic conversation’ (Byron, Diary, 12 January 1821, LF V 172). ‘Hundsfott’: scoundrel; ‘verfluct’: confound it, from ‘verfluchen’, to curse.
verflucter 1833 and later editions] Ferflucter S, 1823
73, 2 Black Edward’s helm Edward, Prince of Wales (1330–76), son of Edward III, enjoyed a triumphant military career in the French wars for a quarter of a century, beginning with the battle of Crécy (see note to 74, 2). The last decade of his life was marred by illness, need of funds, and the French revolt against his dominion. In later times he was known as the Black Prince because of the colour of his armour. A statue in armour reclines on his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral.
Becket’s bloody stone Thomas Becket, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1162, waged a contest for power with Henry II for eight years. He was murdered in the cathedral in 1170 by zealous courtiers.
74, 2 a thousand Cressys In 1346 at Crécy in northern France, Edward III and his outnumbered army won an overwhelming victory over King Philip of France by means of superior tactics and the skill of the longbow archers. The sixteen-year-old Prince of Wales commanded the hard-pressed English right wing.
75, 7 ]
76, 6 that more sublime construction ] that
77, 7–8 ] Who
‘kick against the pricks’ A colloquialism referring to oxen kicking against the goad. See Acts ix 5.
78, 5 Phaeton’s time Phaeton, son of Apollo or of Helios, an ancient Greek sun god, begged his father to prove his parenthood by allowing him to drive the sun chariot. In spite of dire warnings about the peril, the boy persisted. Unable to control the horses and keep them on the diurnal route, he panicked, scorched several constellations, and so severely damaged the earth that Zeus killed him. The story was told at length by Ovid in Metamorphoses I 750–78; II 1–380 (trans. F. J. Miller (1944), I 54–87).
78, 7 ]
78, 8 Surgit amari aliquid Byron selected three words from a sentence by Lucretius that more than ten years earlier he had used in CH: ‘medio de fonte leporum / surgit amari aliquid quod in ipsis floribus angat’ (‘from the very fountain of enchantment rises a drop of bitterness to torment even in the flowers’). De Rerum Natura IV 1133–4, trans. W. H. D. Rouse (1947), 328–9. In CH I 82, 9, Byron had freely translated the Latin: ‘Some bitter o’er the flowers its bubbling venom flings.’
79, 3–4 As Machiavel shows… /… general curses ‘… above all he [the prince] should keep his hands off another’s property, for men forget more readily the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony’ (The Prince, trans. T. G. Bergin (1947), ch. 17).
80, 2 ]
80, 8 Shooter’s Hill In the eighteenth century this hill was in Kent, eight miles east of London south of the Thames on the road to Dover. It is conspicuous on Plate 2 of Jean Rocque’s An Exact Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster… and the Country near Ten Mile
s Round… (1746).
81, 1–3 smoke rose up, as from / A… volcano… |… the ‘devil’s drawing room’ According to popular tradition, the craters of volcanoes lead directly to the pit of hell, hence to the devil’s drawing room.
Byron may have recalled two lines from Washington Allston’s The Paint King: ‘Like the drawing-room grim of the Scotch Sawney Beane, / By the Devil dressed out for a ball,’ published in The Sylphs of the Seasons with Other Poems (1813).
Byron possibly thought of the atrocities in Allston’s ballad as parallel to crimes in London, that smoky den of bullies and butchers (line 8). In The Paint King, Sawney Beane and his family of brigands first robbed and slaughtered their victims and then in their cave dried or pickled the flesh for food. See Charles Johnston, History of the Lives and Actions of the Most famous Highwaymen (1814), 33–6.
81, 8 Who butchered half the earth and bullied t’other ‘India. America’ (Byron, 1823).
83, 4 (a wealth of tax and paper) ]
84, 6 Mrs Fry Elizabeth Fry (1780–1845), a Quaker, formed an association in 1817 for the improvement of the condition of female prisoners in Newgate and achieved an international reputation for her reforms.
84, 7 a soft besom This word for broom, common in Scotland, has practically vanished in American usage.
85, 1–87, 6 Oh Mrs Fry, why go to Newgate?… /… but you won’t Thomas Hood repeated Byron’s exhortation in A Friendly Address to Mrs Fry in Newgate, and urged her to reform the wicked folk who were not in the prison (stanzas 9–12, 14–19). She did preach at various aristocratic mansions. See P. G. Trueblood, The Flowering of Byron’s Genius (1945), 8.
85, 3 Carlton The residence of the dissolute Prince Regent, who became George IV in 1820.
86, 5 Sir William Curtis A wealthy owner of a sea-biscuit factory, he was lord mayor of London in 1795 and Member of Parliament for the City from 1790 to 1818. Badly educated and ostentatious, he was for years the most ridiculed man in England. Since he was fat as well as foolish, and long a companion of the middle-aged Prince of Wales, who liked to sail on Sir William’s sumptuous yacht, Byron called him ‘the witless Falstaff of a hoary Hal’ (line 7). In August 1822 he went with King George IV to Scotland, and there at the age of seventy paraded in a kilt. Hence Byron’s reproof in lines 1–4, and the allusion to tours, hussars, Highland dresses and hired huzzas. The hussars (light cavalry of Hungary and other countries) were brilliantly uniformed. See Byron’s laughter at the same episode at the end of The Age of Bronze 767–76.
87, 8 ]
Like Roland’s horn in Roncesvalles’ battle In 778 at Roncesvalles, a village in the Spanish Pyrenees, the young Charlemagne suffered a minor defeat, but Roland was killed. In the Chanson de Roland, even after the fictitious Saracens had killed most of Roland’s men, and his friend Olivier had urged him to blow his ivory horn as a signal for help, the epic hero refused. When he finally consented, the sound was heard by Charlemagne thirty leagues away. Roland blew so hard he ruptured his temples and died. Among other places, Byron read about the horn in Scott’s Marmion VI 33, 7–12.
CANTO XI
Byron began the first draft (S) of Canto XI at Genoa on 6 October 1822 and completed it on 17 October. The following stanzas were added at various times: 2, 30, 56, 58, 81, 83–5. Canto XI was published along with Cantos IX and X by John Hunt on 29 August 1823. All variants are taken from S.
1, 1 When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter Denial of the existence of all matter was a simple popular view of Berkeley’s theory of knowledge. A more precise statement is one basis of the subjectivity of the Romantic poets: that the reality of matter depended on the mind’s perception and conception of it. Berkeley wrote that it was a mistake to conclude that he ‘derogated from the reality of things’. See Poetry VI 427 n. Byron in his scoffing comes close to the core of subjectivity in stanza 2.
1, 6–8 ] Most willingly all matters seen or read –
To know myself and all besides mere Spirit –
3, 1–2 indigestion / Not the most ‘dainty Ariel’ The human stomach is gross and vulnerable, unlike the delicacy of Prospero’s ethereal servant Ariel, who, obedient to the will of his wise master, apparently had no appetite of his own – except for freedom. The Tempest I ii 242–5; III iii 60–66; IV i 49; V i 88, 95–6.
3, 7 ]
4, 5 ]
5, 5 I’ve grown lately rather phthisical See letter to Murray, 9 October 1822, sent soon after Byron began to write Canto XI: ‘The eleventh begun.… I have been very unwell – four days confined to my bed in “the worst inn’s worst room,” at Lerici, with a violent rheumatic and bilious attack, constipation, and the devil knows what’ (LJ VI 120–21).
7, 4 Timbuctoo 1833 and later editions ] Tombuctu S ] Tombuctoo 1823
7, 6 ]
11, 1–2 four pads / In ambush laid ] four
13, 4 one assailant’s pudding O ED designates ‘pudding’ as Scottish and dialectal for bowels or guts.
13, 8 I’m floored by that ’ere bloody ] I’m
14, 5 the moon’s late minion One of Falstaff’s witty metaphors for a thief: ‘let us be Diana’s foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions [favourites] of the moon’ (Henry IV Part I ii 25–6).
14, 8 he had been The verb may be read as a contraction: he’d been.
16, 3 ]
max rogues’ slang for gin.
17, 5 a kiddy upon town ] a
kiddy ‘A thief of the lower order, who, when he is breeched by a course of successful depredation, dresses in the extreme of vulgar gentility, and affects a knowingness in his air and conversation, which renders him in reality an object of ridicule’ (‘Vocabulary of the Flash Language’, in James Hardy Vaux, Memoirs, ed. B. Field (1819), II 149–227). Flash language was the slang of eighteenth-century sportsmen, thieves and harlots.
17, 6 real swell A stylishly dressed person; anything remarkable for its elegance.
17, 7 Full flash This expression has three related slang meanings: (a) knowing, smart; (b) connected with sportsmen, especially those interested in prize fighting; (c) ostentatious about one’s appearance or a trivial accomplishment O ED cites Byron’s use here in sense (b), but (a) and (c) seem more suitable for Tom and his class.
18, 3 ‘crowner’s ‘quest’ coroner’s inquest.
SECOND CLOWN: But is this law?
FIRST CLOWN: Ay, marry, is’t; crowner’s quest law.
(Hamlet V i 21)
19, 4–8 Booze in the ken… /… and so knowing? This flash language is elucidated by Moore (XVII 10) from Vaux: ken, a house that harbours thieves; spellken, the playhouse; queer a flat, to puzzle or confound a gull, or silly fellow; high toby spice, robbery on horseback; flash the muzzle, to swagger openly; lark, fun or sport of any kind; his blowing, a pickpocket’s trull; so swell, so gentlemanly; so nutty, so strongly inclined.
19, 5 Bow Street’s ban In Byron’s time, among the nine police-magistrate offices in London, the oldest, the one with the most extensive, even national, jurisdiction in the pursuit and arrest of criminals, was located in Bow Street, east of Covent Garden. It was established in 1749 after Henry Fielding was appointed justice of the peace for Westminster ([John Wade,] A Treatise on the Police and Crimes of the Metropolis (1829), 39–41, 55–62).
20, 7 Kennington and all the other ‘tons’ Kennington was a district of Lambeth and south of another ‘ton’, Newington Butts. Juan’s carriage left the Kent Road and turned west to pass through Kennington and Lambeth and then across the Thames on Westminster Bridge. See Plate 7 of Jean Rocque’s An Exact Survey… of London… and the Country near
Ten Miles Round (1746); Plate 14 of R. Horwood’s Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster (1799); and John Cary’s New and Accurate Plan of London (1812).
21, 1 groves, so called as being void of trees Cary’s map shows a Poplar Grove south of Kennington Green.
21, 2 (Like lucus from no light) A pun on ‘lucus’ meaning light, and ‘lucus’ meaning a dense wood. See note to Canto VI 55, 5.
21, 3–4 Mount Pleasant, as containing nought to please / Nor much to climb On Plate IC of Rocque’s A Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster (1746) and on Horwood’s Plate 2, this site was east of Gray’s Inn Lane, far to the north of Juan’s route. There may have been little to please on Mount Pleasant because it was directly south of the House of Correction. To the north-west was a Foundling Hospital. To the south of Mount Pleasant was Liquorpond Street and a brewery. To the east was a Cold Bath, and a Workhouse and further east two burial grounds.
21, 7–8 ]
Through
Good Christians that to which they all are going.>
Through ‘Rows’ most modestly called ‘Paradise’ In 1747 Henry Fielding praised the beauty of the ‘walk called Paradise Row, from the delightful situation, and the magnificent buildings with which it is adorned’ (‘Familiar Letter No. 41’, The Works of Henry Fielding, ed. G. H. Maynadier (1903), XII 277).
Though Rocque’s index and map show four streets with this name, the one praised by Fielding and the one Juan approached was near the Thames, south of Lambeth Palace, running from High Street to Lambeth Walk (Horwood, Plate 14). Near by were a cemetery, a potter’s field and to the south a starch factory.
22, 3 a pint of ‘purl’ A medicated malt liquor, in which wormwood and aromatics are infused (R. B. Todd, The Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology, 1836–59).
22, 7 ]
22, 8 we had not got to gas The streets of London were first regularly, but not abundantly, lit with gas in 1812.
24, 5–6 yon shrine where Fame is / A spectral resident The Poets’ Corner in the south transept of Westminster Abbey has many monuments of British authors; in the north transept are memorials to statesmen. Kings and queens up to the time of George II are buried in the Abbey.
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