86, 1 carpe them These two words, that have become an opportunistic slogan, are part of a typical Horatian proverb: ‘Carpe them quam minimum credula postero’ (‘Reap the harvest of today, putting as little trust as may be in the morrow’, Ode I II, 8, trans. C. E. Bennett (1919), 32–3).
86, 4 ‘Life’s a poor player. ’Then ‘play out the play Byron combined quotations from two Shakespearean plays: Macbeth V v 24; Henry IV Part I II iv 539.
86, 8]
87, 5 I disdain to write an Atalantis Mrs Manley was frankly disrespectful in her comments on many distinguished people of her day in The New Atalantis, or Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons of Quality (1709).
87, 8 too sincere a poet ]
CANTO XII
Byron finished the first draft (S) Of Canto XII at Genoa on 7 December 1822. Two stanzas were added after this date: 88 and 89. Canto XII was published with XIII and XIV by John Hunt on 17 December 1823. All variants are taken from S.
1, 8 ]
3, 1 Why call we misers miserable? BOSWELL: ‘I have heard old Mr sheridan maintain… that a complete miser is a happy man.…’ JOHNSON: ‘That is flying in the face of all the world, who have called an avaricious man a miser, because he is miserable. No, sir; a man who both spends and saves money is the happiest man, because he has both enjoyments’ (Boswell, entry for 25 April 1778, III 322).
3, 3 best bower-anchor OED cites Byron’s use here of ‘best bower’ as the name of one of the two anchors and cables carried at the bow of a vessel. The principal or sheet anchor was at midship.
3, 4 Which holds 1833 and later editions ] Which hold S, 1823
4, 4–5 through each cross / (Which will come over things) Each cross is here each frustration, obstacle or financial loss.
4, 6 statesman’s dross See note to Canto VII 77, 3.
4, 7–8 ]
paper
Which makes Bank Credit like a Bark of Vapour
The publisher misread the MS as ‘bank of vapour’, but Byron wrote to him about the phrase (24 April 1823). Though correctly printed in 1823 and 1833, the 1903 and some other editions erroneously print ‘bank of vapour’.
5, 3 the shirtless patriots of Spin The ‘descamisados’ of the Spanish Revolution, 1820–23.
5, 4 squeak and gibber Hamlet I i 115–16.
5, 8 Rothschild and… Baring Nathan Mayer Rothschild (1777–1836) was the London member of the European banking family which had branches in Germany, Austria, France and Italy. Alexander Baring, first Baron Ashburton (1774–1848), was chief representative of the banking firm of Baring Brothers and Company, founded by his father, Sir Francis Baring (1740–1810). Later, in December 1822, Byron returned with acerbity in The Age of Bronze, section 15, to the Rothschilds and the political power of financiers.
6, 1 Lafitte Jacques Lafitte (1767–1844), governor of the Bank of France, upheld liberal measures as a deputy in the French Chamber in 1817.
6, 6–8 Columbia’s stock…/… thy silver soil, Peru, /… by a Jew This was the period of the successful revolutions of the South American colonies against Spain and the setting up of Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, Brazil, etc., as independent nations. Britain’s commercial interests aided these revolutions; thus Byron’s reference to the interest in Colombian and Peruvian silver stock on the London Stock Exchange.
8, 6–7 ]The Diamond
9, 2 Cathay An old name in Europe for China.
9, 4–5 cars of Ceres… /… Nadus like Aurora’s tip For Ceres see note to Canto II 169, 7–8; for Aurora see note to Canto II 142, 3–4.
10, 2 To build a college or to found a race ‘Die, and endow a college, or a cat’ (Pope, Moral Essays, Epistle 3 96).
11, 6 each ‘vulgar fraction’ A play on ‘vulgar fraction’, used to distinguish common fractions in arithmetic from decimal fractions.
12, 1 rouleaus gold coins rolled up in a cylindrical packet. OED cites Byron’s use here.
12, 3–4 ] Not of old Victors–whose
12, 5 fine unclipt gold Coins in mint condition, that have not been mutilated. Paring the edge of coins had long been a profitable fraud, for the metal thus accumulated could be sold at a good price. OED cites Byron’s use of ‘unclipt’ here.
12, 6]
12, 8 ]
13, 1–2 Love rules the camp… /… So sings the hard
Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
And men below and saints above;
For love is heaven, and heaven is love.
(Walter Scott, Lay of the Last Minstrel III 2, 5–7)
13, 5–6 ]
At least in a cold country may reward>
14, 4 Without cash, Malthus tells you, ‘take no brides’ See XV 37–8 and note to Canto XI 30, 7.
15, 7 love sans banns is both a sin and shame Love without benefit of clergy, that is without having public announcements made in church of a forthcoming marriage.
16, 7–8 ] My
Jeffrey see note to Canto X II and 16.
17^18 Following stanza 17 on S is a cancelled stanza. The punctuation and capitalization have been modernized in the present transcription, and the first verb contracted.
In right good earnest; also an appeal
Before the Lords, whose Chancellor’s more acute
In law than equity, as I can feel,
Because my cases put his Lordship to’t.
And though no doubt ‘tis for the public weal,
His Lordship’s justice seems not that of Solomon,
Not that I deem our chief judge is a hollow man.)>
<17^18, 3–4) Chancellor’s more acute / In law than equity Lord Eldon (see note to XV 92, 4) was a skilful but dilatory jurist, disliked by Byron and Shelley because he opposed reform and supported anti-democratic and oppressive measures, and because he had deprived Shelley of the custody of his children by Harriet Westbrook.
18, 1 That suit in Chancery The suit for the disposition of property underthe will of Lady Noel. In a letter to Hanson, 21 September 1822, Byron advised a consultation of lawyers before throwing the case into Chancery.
19, 7 Mitford ‘See [William] Mitford’s [ History of] Greece [(1829), V 314–15]. “Greciae Verax.” His great pleasure consists in praising tyrants, abusing Plutarch, spelling oddly, and writing quaintly; and what is strange after all, his is the best Modern History of Greece in any language, and he is perhaps the best of all modern historians whatsoever. Having named his sins, it is but fair to state his virtues–learning, labour, research, wrath, and partiality. I call the latter virtues in a writer, because they make him write in earnest’ (Byron, 1823).
20, 8 And Malthus does the thing ’gainst which he writes see note to Canto XI 30, 7. Malthus was married and had three children. Byron may be referring to an apocryphal story that Malthus had eleven daughters.
21, 3 And hold up to the sun my little taper Moore compares Edward Young: ‘Thus commentators each dark passage shun, / And hold their farthing candles to the sun’ (Love of Fame, the Universal Passion. In Seven Characteristical Satires VII 97–8).
22, 2–3 philo-genitiveness Medwin quotes Byron: ‘The phrenologists tell me that other li
nes besides that of thought… are strongly developed in the hinder part of my cranium; particularly that called philo-progenitiveness’ (58). Medwin notes: ‘He appears to have mistaken the meaning of this word in the vocabulary of the craniologists, as in Don Juan.’ The phrenological meaning is love for one’s offspring.
25, 2 Paulo majora Let us turn to matters a ‘little weightier’.
25, 5 ]
25, 6–7 ]… fair creatures who
Themselves
26, 5–6 as if a new ass spake / To Balaam Balaam disobeyed the Lord and set out to join the King of the Moabites. When God’s angel barred the way, Balaam’s ass turned aside. After Balaam had thrice beaten the animal, God gave it the ability to reproach its master, and then the angel reminded Balaam, that the ass had saved his life by turning off the road (Numbers xxii 1–34).
27, 7 romantic history ]
28, 4 I have always liked Contraction is feasible here (I’ve) and in an unusual number of lines where Byron in haste did not mark it: he’s enough without (35, 2); he’d found (42, 1); he’d seen too many (49, 7); I’ve also known (61, 2); they ne’er dreamed (61, 4); you’ve not prevented (80, 7); those who’d else repented (80, 8); He’d also stood (82, 7). In 18, 1, ‘chancery’ and in 80, 8, ‘rendering’ and ‘desperate’ are dissyllabic, as such words often are.
28, 6–7 ] Of being apt
Before the Wind> fragment
29, 7–8 ] Would be much better
Some Countess> whose Follies had run dry
30, 8 Hallam’s Middle Ages Henry Hallam, View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages (1818).
32, 5 ‘’tis gold that glisters’ ‘All that glisters is not gold’ (The Merchant of Venice II vii 65).
33, 5 ‘Tantaene!’ Byron often selected a single word from a Latin sentence that he evidently expected readers to remember: ‘Tantaene animis coelestibus irae?’ (‘Can resentment so fierce dwell in heavenly breasts?’) Virgil, Aeneid III, trans. H. R. Fairclough (1920), I 240–41.
35, 6 Aurea The Latin adjective ‘aurea’ means golden or gilded, hence beautiful.
37, 5–8]
5 sure
6
6
6
7 To draw the < very best of these fair prizes>
8
8
A hazy widower turned of forty’s sure … To draw a high prize In 1814 Lord Portsmouth, a simple-minded man in his forties, was rushed into marriage by John Hanson to his daughter, Mary Ann. Byron gave the bride in marriage. In 1822 the Hansons sued for annulment, which was granted in February 1823 on the ground that Lord Portsmouth had been a lunatic since 1809. There was no mention of drunkenness. See Canto XV 92, 4 and n.; LJI 393; VI 170; and Marchand I 439–42.
38, 1–2 (one ‘modern instance’ more, / ‘True ’tis a pity, pity ’tis, ’tis true’) ‘Full of wise saws and modern instances’ (As You Like It II vii 156). The second quotation, slightly varied, is from one of the speeches of Polonius (Hamlet II ii 97–8).
42, 7–8 the society for vice / Suppression The Society for the Suppression of Vice was instituted in London in 1802. See Sydney Smith’s review of its Proceedings (1804) in ER, XIII (January 1809), 333; H. M. Fairchild, Religious Trends in English Poetry (1949) III 400 and n.; EB & SR 319–26, 633–7.
43, 8 eschewed In two 1811 letters where he mentions chewing tobacco, Byron used both the standard verb and also the one that fits the metre here. See LJ II 31 n., 85.
44, 2 slight observer ]
45, 1 harsh prude ]
46, 6 the Smithfield Show The celebrated market for cattle and horses. A ‘Smithfield bargain’ is an old saying for a marriage for money.
47, 1 Lady Pinchbeck The sketch in stanzas 43–9 endows her with some ofthe experience, tolerance and sophistication of Byron’s ‘valuable and mostagreeable friend’ of his London days, Lady Melbourne. This ‘kinder veteran’,like Lady Pinchbeck, had been a ‘little gay’ in her youth, and her intimacy withthe Prince of Wales and Lord Egremont ‘had been talked about’. From 1812to 1815 Byron’s letters confided in her about his agitated affair with CarolineLamb, Lady Melbourne’s daughter-in-law, and also about his guilty relationship with his half-sister Augusta. Though Lady Melbourne hoped thatmarriage would stabilize his life, and helped him with the first proposal toher niece Annabella Milbanke, she doubted that they would be compatible. See also the note to Canto XIV 96, 1–3.
47, 5 bons mots ] bon mots S, 1823
50, 6 proved war, storm, or woman’s rage experienced war, etc.
51, 6 Lord Mayor’s barge From the eighteenth century on, London maintained a barge for the Lord Mayor, to be used on state occasions.
51, 7 ]
Painted and Gilded–or as it will tell
51, 8 like Cytherea’s shell Cytherea (Venus) sprang from the foam of the seanear the island Cythera (now called Kithira or Cerigo), located a few milessouth of the peninsula of southeast Peloponnesus and north-west of Crete. She is often represented as being wafted to shore on a sea shell, as in thepainting by Botticelli.
52, 2 A floating balance ] A
53, 2 fine arts, or finer stays A possible pun. The girls’ baits for men may be (1) the bodices (or corsets) stiffened with stays–strips of bone, metal or wood–that made their figure attractive (‘finer’); or (2) their capacity for endurance, for continuing their siege.
54, 6–7 ] Preludios – trying
Upon
Upon my kit;
[variant] kit A rare word for a small fiddle, formerly used by dancing masters (OED).
55, 1 My Muses do not care a pinch of rosin Byron continues the musical image of the preceding stanza. Rosin (resin) was rubbed on the pegs of a lyre and of other string instruments to make the tuning pegs stick tightly at an exact place in the holes.
58, 4 The royal game of goose This game was imported from the Continent early in the eighteenth century. A 1725 engraving shows the game board, at the top of which is inscribed: ‘The Royal and Most Pleasant Game of the Goose’. In the upper corners are pictures of two notorious criminals, who were hanged in 1724 and 1725–Jack Shepherd and Jonathan Wild. A double row of sixty-three compartments is marked around the board; at four or five intervals a goose is pictured. In the centre of the board are the twelve rules of the game. Dice were thrown to determine the number of places each player was to move his counter. Awards and penalties were assessed if a player landed in certain compartments (jail, tavern, well, goose, maze, death). Rule 4 states: ‘He that throws a goose must double his cast forward from his last place’ (R. C. Bell, Board and Travel Games from Many Countries (1960), 14–16).
59, 6 ‘Fishers for men’ Matthew iv 19; Mark i 17.
60, 2 daughter’s feelings are trepanned Her feelings are snared or beguiled, with the intention of deceiving her.
60, 3 Perhaps you’ll have a visit from the brother Byron had such an experience at Southwell in 1807, when Captain Leacroft demanded that he explain his intentions towards the Captain’s sister Julia. See W. W. Pratt, Byron at Southwell (1948), 44.
60, 4 All strut and stays Some fashionable men wore jackets stiffened with bone or other inflexible material, and these might make their ‘strut’ more formidable.
63, 3 On a lee shore An idiom: in difficulties. If a strong wind is blowing against a shore line, a ship might be wrecked on it. see note to Canto II 45, 8.
63, 5–7 ]
&n
bsp; But those who have been a little used to roughing
Know how to end this half and half> Flirtation
new Werters See note to Preface to Cantos VI–VIII 49–50.
64, 1 ‘Ye gods, I grow a talker!’ ‘Farewell: I’ll grow a talker for this gear [purpose]’ (The Merchant of Venice I i 110).
66, 4 gynocracy A quasi contraction of ‘gynaecocracy’ or ‘gyneocracy’: government by women, ‘petticoat government’.
67, 7–8 ] Of white cliffs –
And stockings; virtues, loves, and chastities>
doors with double knockings A special knock that could be used by a surreptitious visitor.
69, 3–4 more glowing dames… / Beneath the influence of the Eastern star Women of the Near East, such as Haidée or Gulbeyaz. Charmian calls Cleopatra ‘O eastern star! ’ (Antony and Cleopatra V ii 310).
70, 5–6 ]
Have ventured past of Jaws of Moor and Tiger>
In a cancelled MS note Byron specified that ‘tiger’ be pronounced ‘ty¯dger’, ‘by particular license positively.…’
Europe ploughs in Afric like bos piger European knowledge of Africa progresses as slowly as the slothful ox (‘bos piger’). See Horace, Epistle I 14, 43.
70, 8 No doubt I should be told that black is fair ‘In the old age black was not counted fair’ (Shakespeare, Sonnet 127).
71, 4 ]
72, 8 ]
75, 1 an Arab barb see note to Canto 116, 1.
75, 4 Ausonia’s Ausonia is a classical name for Italy, from the Ausones, an ancient (probably Latin) tribe.
78, 1 if there’s an éclat, / They lose their caste If there is a scandal, they are disgraced.
78, 6–7 like Marias / To sit amidst the ruins of their guilt When Caius Marius came from Rome in exile to Africa, the governor sent an officer to forbid him refuge. Marius replied to the order, ‘Tell him that you have seen Caius Marius a fugitive sitting among the ruins of Carthage ’, thus comparing the desolation of that city to his own downfall (Plutarch, Caius Marius, section 40, Lives; the translation is a modified version of that by B. Perrin (1959), IX 376–7).
Don Juan Page 79