Don Juan
Page 83
96, 1–3 ] I’
Or if the oath seem strong – I swear by Jove!
They
some female friends… / That faithful were Among the loyal women during the troubled months of the separation (1816) were Lady Holland, Lady Jersey, Lady Melbourne, Mercer Elphinstone and Augusta Leigh.
96, 5] Who did not quit me when
97, 6 keeps the atrocious reader in suspense In 154, 7–8, ‘atrocious’ meant ‘wicked, execrable’. Here the reader is atrocious in the original Latin sense of ‘atrox’ – ‘savage’: he cruelly enjoys the suspense of not knowing how Adelineand Juan will be involved, and of anticipating that they ‘will fall’ and meet ‘their ruin’ (stanza 99). Such a reader likes to be kept on tenterhooks (lines 7–8).
97, 8 To bait their tender or their tenterhooks The bantering sound of this image may count more than the sense. It might be hard for authors and women, however crafty, to bait tenterhooks – sharp, hooked nails, used for fastening cloth to a frame, on which the cloth is stretched and dried. If we transfer to Byron’s phrase the connotation of the idiom ‘on tenterhooks’, then writers and girls bait (entice, torment) their victims with suspense and nervous strain (see lines 5–6).
99, 6 in this epic satire ] in
100, 7 milliards A thousand million or a billion. OED quotes A. Young’s (1793) use of it as a French word and then gives its DJ occurrence as if it had been anglicized by 1823, which seems doubtful. It has remained rare.
100, 8 a harmless game at billiards ‘I have made love… the place of declaration, however, a billiard room…. I also observed that we went on with our game (of billiards) without counting the hazards; and supposed that, as mine certainly were not, the thoughts of the other party also were not exactly occupied by what was our ostensible pursuit… I took a very imprudent step with pen and paper…. Here were risks…. It was received, however, and deposited not very far from the heart which I wished it to reach when, who should enter the room but the person who ought at that moment to have been in the Red Sea, if Satan had any civility. But she kept her countenance, and the paper; and I my composure as well as I could’ (Byron, letter to Lady Melbourne, 8 October 1813, Correspondence 1, 190–92). This was written from Aston Hall, the home of Sir James and Lady Frances Wedderbun Webster, the woman Byron courted. see note to Canto IX 2, 6.
102, 1 ]
‘antres vast and deserts idle’ Othello I iii 140 Antres are caves. ‘Idle’ here means ‘serving no useful purpose’.
102, 5 anthropophagi cannibals. Shakespeare used this word in Othello I iii 144.
in nine often B]is nine often 1823 ] are nine often 1833 and later editions
CANTO XV
Byron began his first draft (B) at Genoa on 8 March 1823 and completed it on 25 March. Stanzas 92–3 were written somewhat later than the others. Canto XV was published with XVI by John Hunt on 26 March 1824. All variants are taken from B.
2, 1–8 the whole’s a syncope… / … out of sight The coherence of the metaphors is fragmented: a ‘syncope’ (a swoon) and a ‘singultus’ (a sob) are emblems of emotion, the opposite of that boredom which frustrates us (breaks our bubbles, a favourite image of trivial futility). Human bubbles suggest another favourite contrast that Byron had used at the end of CH IV – the ocean, a grand emblem or miniature of the eternity beyond man’s life and out of sight, which the soul enjoys contemplating.
3, 3–4 ]
4, 3–4 even the sot, / Hath got blue devils The alcoholic sees in his mirror the apparitions of delirium tremens. The context implies a mental aberration, more severe than that of X 38, 8, and XIV 79, 7.
5, 8 earth is but an echo of the spheres see note to Canto III 28, 3.
7, 3 napoleon A French gold coin worth about twenty francs.
7, 4–7 ]
A
7, 5–8 A page where Time…/… finding everybody solvent Time should hesitate to mar Adeline’s beauty, and Nature might forego the debt – life itself – that Adeline owes to Nature. Nature, the universal creditor, is lucky, for when Death summons, man always has a life with which to settle his account.
8, 4 take by sap Sap (a military term) is a trench dug from the attacker’s lines to a point beneath the enemy’s works. Thus, ‘to take by sap’ is to undermine, destroy by stealth.
8, 8 a draft on Ransom Ransom and Morland were Byron’s London bankers.
9 A possible recollection of Propertius, Elegy 28, Book II. Pleading with the underground deities to spare his beautiful girl, the poet complains that there are already many thousand beauties among the dead, including those of Troy, Achaea and Rome, for death eventually destroys everyone (trans. G. E. Butler (1962), 147–9).
9, 1 ]
9, 5 ]
11, 2 scattered to disfigure ] scattered (here and there)
11, 3 She had heard The verb should be contracted here: She’d heard; and also: They’re wrong (13, 1); I’ve got (35, 8); you’ve heard (95, 2).
11, 7 Alcibiades ‘The multitude… was actually be witched by his assumption of the Spartan mode of life. He had… [the] power… of assimilating and adapting himself to the pursuits and lives of others…. Alcibiades could associate with good and bad alike…. In Sparta he was all for bodily training, simplicity of life, and severity of countenance; in Ionia, for luxurious ease and pleasure; in Thrace for drinking deep; in Thessaly for riding hard; and when he was thrown with Tissaphernes the satrap, he outdid even Persian magnificence in his pomp and lavishness.’ He could counterfeit any exterior that was suitable to his associates (Plutarch, Alcibiades, section 23, Lives, trans. B. Perrin (1916), IV 62–5).
12, 6 Cupidon This French word means a beau, a cupid. OED cites Byron’s use of it.
13, 7–8 ]
16, 5 verbum sat see note to Canto I 53, 4.
16, 8 They can transfigure brighter than a Raphael Raphael’s masterpiece in the Vatican is called The Transfiguration.
18, 2 Thou diviner still ‘As it is necessary in these times to avoid ambiguity, I say, that I mean, by “Diviner still,” CHRIST. If ever God was Man-or Man God – he was both. I never arraigned his creed, but the use – or abuse - made of it. Mr Canning one day quoted Christianity to sanction Negro Slavery, and Mr Wilberforce had little to say in reply. And was Christ crucified, that black men might be scourged ? If so, he had better been born a Mulatto, to give both colours an equal chance of freedom, or at least salvation’ (Byron, 1824).
19, 2 life’s infinite variety Antony and Cleopatra II ii 243–4.
20, 7]
20, 8 improvvisatore Byron admired the extraordinary ability of the ‘improwisatori’ to extemporize rhymes, especially Sgricci (1788–1836), whom he knew at Venice.
21, 1–2 Omnia vult belle Matho dicere…/… aliqnaudo male ‘You want all you say to be smart [elegant], Matho. Say sometimes what also is good; say what is middling; say sometimes what is bad’ (Martial, Epigrams, trans. W. C. A. Ker (1927) II 188–9). Byron substituted ‘vult’ for ‘vis’ in his Latin quotation.
22, 1–2 modesty’s my forte / And pride my feeble Both forte and feeble are derived from French words; the latter here means foible. Hence pride is his weakness or failing. In a letter A. J. Bowen explains that Byron here used a fencing metaphor: the thick part of the blade, where it leaves the guard, is called the forte;
the thin, flexible part of the blade, which ends in the button, is the feeble.
22, 7 my concision Although the word is not in Johnson or Todd, OED cites its use in the sense of conciseness in the latter part of the eighteenth century. See also stanza 51, 4.
23, 3 basking in ]
23, 4 ‘dogs had had their day see note to Canto II 166, 3.
23, 5–8 ] deride
Their
And wax an Ultraroyalist
24, 2 ] If I had never
proved the soft condition experienced, tried or tested marriage.
24, 4 ]
24, 6 Priscian Author of the most complete extant ancient grammar. ‘And hold no sin so deeply red / As that of breaking Priscian’s head’ (Samuel Butler, Hudibras II 2, 223–4).
24, 8 If someone had not told me to forego it Brougham’s review of Hours of Idleness advised Byron to ‘forthwith abandon poetry’ (ER XI (January 1808), 285–9).
25, 1 knights and dames I sing The Aeneid begins ‘Arma virumque cano’.
25, 4 Longinus or the Stagyrite For Longinus see note to Canto I 42, 5–6. The Stagyrite is Aristotle, a native of Stagira in Macedonia.
25, 5] To marshall onwards to the Delphian Height
Byron here made one of his infrequent rhyming errors; he later (not on B) corrected it before publication.
25, 8 And rendering ] And render B ] And rend’ring 1824 and later editions Another of Byron’s or the publisher’s rare indications of common elision.
27, 6–7 Columbus found a new world in a cutter / Or brigantine or pink of no great tonnage All three were small sailing vessels, though probably none of these names could be accurately applied to the ships used by Columbus. For a cutter, see note to Canto II46, 8–48, 1. A brigantine, also equipped for sailing or rowing, though larger than a cutter, was swift and easily manoeuvered and hence often used for piracy and reconnoitering. A pink, originally flat-bottomed and having bulging sides, became in the eighteenth century a larger vessel with a narrow stern, often a warship, which Byron might have seen.
32, 8 melodrames A melodrame (an obsolete spelling of melodrama) was a semi-operatic production, in which actors spoke words at intervals to a musical accompaniment and in which the dialogue was occasionally interspersed with songs and instrumental interludes. In the 1680s, Furcell composed such music for the theatre. Part of Mozart’s Zaïde was a mélodrame, and likewise some of Beethoven’s music for Goethe’s Egmont. See also XVI 104.
34, 7 A second for ]
35, 1 Rapp the Harmonist embargoed marriage The Harmonists were a communistic religious body founded by George Rapp of Wiirttemberg in 1803. They settled in Pennsylvania and founded a town called Harmony, and another called Economy. Byron observed in his 1824 note that this ‘flourishing, pious, and quiet’ German colony did not ‘embargo’ wedlock, but practised birth control to restrict the population (line 4).
35, 8 I have got the preacher at a deadlock The earliest use recorded in OED of this idiom, usually two words in Byron’s day, is in Sheridan’s The Critic, Act III: ‘I have them all at a dead lock! for every one of them is afraid to let go first’ The idiom originates from a lock with one large bolt that opens and shuts only with a key, as opposed to a spring lock; hence, to bring to a deadlock, or a standstill.
36, 8 ]
37, 2 Malthus see note to Canto XI 30, 7.
37, 6–8 emigration, / That sad result of passions and potatoes; /… pose our economic Catos The great emigrations from the British Isles began in 1819, when the government appropriated £50, 000 ‘to send a few hundred labourers to Cape Town’. The Irish peasantry, who subsisted mainly on a meagre diet of potatoes, suffered periodically from famine.
Marcus Cato the Elder (234–149 BC) had always been thrifty to the point of austere parsimony. When he became Censor, he increased property assessments, taxed luxuries and excessive wealth, curtailed public works, and generally combated extravagance and fiscal corruption (Plutarch, Marcus Cato, sections 18–19, Lives, trans. B. Perrin (1914), II 354–7). F. L. Beaty believes that Byron recalled Plutarch’s condemnation of Cato’s heartless sale of his slaves after he had worn them out and they became too old to work. Cato considered it wasteful to feed them when they were no longer useful to him. His personal business investments and practices in moneylending were also shrewd and grasping (sections 4, 21, III 314–19, 366–9). See Keats–Shelley Journal XVIII (1969), 25.
‘Pose’ as usual means ‘baffle’. see note to Canto 1175.
38, 2–3 his book’s the eleventh commandment / Which says, ‘thou shalt not marry’, unless well Malthus maintained that marriage without adequate income was ‘clearly an immoral act’ (cited by F. L. Beaty in Keats-Shelley Journal XVIII (1969), 26).
38, 6 ‘so eminent a hand’ ‘Jacob Tonson, according to Mr Pope, was accustomed to call his writers, “able pens” – “persons of honour,” and especially “eminent hands”’ (Byron, 1824). See Pope’s letter to Steele, 29 November 1712, The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. G. Sherburn (1956), I 159.
39, 2 enough of maintenance ] enough of < worldly Goods>
39, 7–8 ] Of Marriage which might
Than Holbein> fragment
Holbein’s Dance of Death Professor John Clubbe suggested that Byron may have seen The English Dance of Death (1815), 2 vols., by Dr Syntax (William Combe), illustrated by Thomas Rowlandson.
41, 1–3 ] There was Miss Millpond –
Which did not show but yet concealed a storm)
41, 1–8 Miss Millpond…/… a milk diet The stanza is Byron’s last long comment in DJ on Lady Byron, née Annabella Milbanke.
41, 7 ]
42, 3 a star or bluestring See the notes to Canto IV 110, 5–8; Canto XI <76, 2>.
43, 5–6 ] Aurora Raby –
Aurora Raby The name may be a paradox that implies her role in English society. She brings the dawn’s fresh purity to the jaded, dissipated world of the Bores and Bored, arouses Juan’s interest, and begins to revive the finer feelings of his submerged innocence (XV 43–58, 77–85; XVI 92–4, 106–8). The dawn metaphor is one of several links with Haidée, who rose at dawn to care for Juan. The sunrise smiled on her and the goddess Aurora kissed her lips with dew, taking her for a sister (II 138–42). Later the island girl carried within her ‘A second principle of life which might / Have dawned a fair and sinless child of sin’ (IV 70, 2–3).
Aurora’s second name may suggest the corrupt world around her. Byron could have recalled the profligate Baron of Raby, better known as the Earl of Darlington, with whom Lady Byron’s family (the Milbankes) and the husband of Byron’s half-sister, Augusta Leigh, were well acquainted. See Thomas L. Ashton, ‘Naming Byron’s Aurora Raby’, MLN, VII (1969), 114–20.
48, 7 ] By
49, 1–2 the bust / Of Brutus at the pageant of Tiberius At the funeral of Junia, wife of Cassius and sister of Brutus, Tiberius Caesar did not allow the busts of her husband and brother to be carried in the procession because of their part in the assassination of Julius Caesar. But according to Tacitus, ‘Brutus and Cassius shone brighter than all by the very fact that their portraits were unseen’ (The Annals III, section 76, trans. John Jackson (1943), II 642–3).
49, 2 pageant ⌉ triumph
50, 4 thunder ]
53, 6–7 their genius stand rebuked, Like ‘Anthony’s by Caesar’ ‘… and under him [Banquo] My genius is rebuk’d, as it is said / Mark Antony’s was by Caesar’ (Macbeth III i 55–7).
54, 6 ignes fa
tui see note to Canto VIII 32, 5.
56, 7]
57, 3 heterogeneous… glorious Typical elision reduces this line to regular, if ponderous, iambic decasyllabic verse; ‘heterogeneous’ has four syllables, ‘glorious’, as always, two.
58, 3]
59, 3–8 my friend Scott…/… he seems the heir After the renunciation of his youthful attack on Scottish writers in EB & SR, Byron was consistent in his admiration for Scott, as a man and as a writer. Scott is linked with Shakespeare and Voltaire (line 7).
59, 3 ‘I sound my warison’ A note to The Lay of the Last Minstrel IV 24 defines ‘warison’ as a note of assault, but OED states that Scott misused this obsolete word, that meant ‘wealth’, ‘gift’ or ‘reward’. OED also cites DJ here.
59, 6 ]
59, 8 ]
60, 7 nom I know it ‘Life is a jest, and all things show it, / I thought so once, but now I know it’ (John Gay, My Own Epitaph, 1720).
61, 1–4 congress…/ As congresses of late do)…/… blended / Some acids with the sweets By the time Byron wrote this canto in March 1823, he knew about the acids and sweets (lines 3–4) of the Congress of Verona (October 1822). Wellington’s opposition to military intervention in Spain widened the breach between England and her continental allies. This might be one of Byron’s sweets. The persistent majority desire to rescue Ferdinand VII from the liberals was the acid. In Byron’s long satiric criticism of the notables who attended this congress, and of some who were not there (The Age of Bronze, sections 8–10, 13, 16–17), he alluded to the Spanish danger, but not to Wellington’s dissent. A few months after he completed Canto XV, stronger acid followed. With the mandate of the Grand Alliance, a French army under the Duke of Angoulême crossed the Pyrenees, took Madrid in May, and by October had subdued the weak revolutionary régime. Then Ferdinand, breaking his promise of clemency, took savage reprisals that the French were unable to prevent.
61, 8 ladies’ robes seem scant enough for less Women’s fashions during the Regency period were given to bare shoulders and low necklines.