26, 8 patent blacking Some advertisements for shoe polish were imitations of popular poems. Byron was accused of accepting £500 for writing a doggerel puff of Day and Martin’s blacking. ‘This is the highest compliment to my literary powers which I ever received,’ Byron wrote in an appendix to The Two Foscari (1st edn), p. 325. He exclaimed to Murray, ‘What is all this about…. “Day and Mania’s patent blacking.”… Are the people mad, or merely drunken?’ (LJV 322). See the journal of Edward Williams in Maria Gisbome and Edward E. Williams, Shelley’s Friends: Their Journals and Letters, ed. F. L. Jones (1951), 110.
27, 3 Horne Tooke Byron admired John Home Tooke (1736–1812), who supported parliamentary reforms with Pitt in 1788.
33, 3 ]
However
36, 7–8 ]
So often – though the thing is half believed>
38, 5–8 ]
Or Antelope> – or
Slips from the Mountain in the month of June
And opening her Piano gan to play
Forthwith – “it was a Friar of orders Gray>
38, 5 [variant] Roe A small, nimble and graceful European deer; also a synonym of doe.
39, 5 ] Three talents (in a single she) no less
Lyric 6, 5–6 gramercy for the Black Friar! / Heaven sain him
‘Thanks be (or good luck) to the Black Friar! Heaven bless him.’ Both ‘gramercy’ and ‘sain’ are obsolete. The primary sense of the former was ‘may God reward you greatly’. Though some nineteenth-century writers adopted Samuel Johnson’s definition of ‘gramercy’ as an exclamation of surprise or sudden feeling (which OED questions), its earlier use as an expression of good will (especially with ‘for’) seems apt here. OED gives this meaning to ‘gramercy’ in a phrase from Scott’s Jvanhoe (1820). ‘To sain’ was literally to make the sign of the cross, either to bless a person or object, or to exorcise a demon or ward off supernatural evil. OED quotes Byron’s use of ‘sain’ here.
gramercy ] grammercy P, 1824 and later editions
43, 1–7 New this… Was… Trampling on Plato’s pride… For a spoilt carpet Diogenes the Cynic trampled on Plato’s carpets and said, ‘I trample upon Plato’s pride.’ Plato replied, ‘Yes, Diogenes, with pride of another sort’ – the pride of one who proclaimed he was not proud (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. R. D. Hicks (1925), II 26–9). see note to Canto VII 4, 6–7; XI 28; XV 73.
43, 1 whisper it aside ] (scribble) this aside ] (write down) this aside
43, 4 like occasion ] (smart) occasion ] fit occasion
43, 7 Attic Bee ‘… while Plato was an infant, asleep in his cradle, bees settled on his lips…. Hence in his infancy, his future eloquence was foreseen’ (Cicero, De divimtione, section 36, trans. W. A. Falconer (1959), 308). For Byron’s political use of this epithet, see Canto IX 28, 7–8.
44, 2–4 ]
At least a> half-profession – for
45, 4–5 The ‘tantipalpiti’s’ on such occasions, / ‘The lasciami’s’ and quavering ‘addio’s’ The ‘heart throbs’, the ‘allow me’s’ and ‘farewells’ – phrases common in sentimental Italian songs of the past century and a half. ‘The present favourite air “which carmen whistle,” is the “Di tanti palpiti” in Tancredi; which is warbled with as much passion as the most tolderollol tunes are bawled about in England’ (W. S. Rose, Letters from the North of Italy (1819), II 123).
45, 7 ‘tu mi chamas’s’ from Portingale Byron made two translations of this song – From the Portuguese, ‘Tu Mi Chamas’ – one of which was published with CH in 1814.
46, 1–3 In Babylon’s bravuras -as the home / Heart ballads of green Erin or grey Highlands / That brings Lochaber back Adeline’s versatility encompassed elaborate arias as well as simple ballads like those of Ramsay, Scott and Moore. Byron had called London Babylon in Canto XI 23, 6–8, and had said in Canto XII 75, 5 that he was still trying to like Italian bravuras. Rossini’s Semiramide (1822), a coloratura opera about the Babylonian queen, Byron had probably never heard. Lochaber is a mountainous district of South Inverness-shire, Scotland, celebrated in Ramsay’s Farewell to Lochabar.
46, 5–6 The calentures of music which o’ercome / All mountaineers with dreams A tropical fever (Spanish ‘calentura’) afflicting sailors, who in their delirium, it is said, fancied the sea to be green fields and desired to leap into it (OED).
47, 1 tinge of blue see note to Canto I 22, 1–7.
49, 1 The full grown Hebe Hebe, the goddess of youth, filled the cups of the gods.
50, 2–3 the Bath Cuide / And Hayley’s Triumphs In 1766 Christopher Anstey published The New Bath Guide, a piece of fashionable verse describing the adventures of the Blunderhead Family at Bath. The Triumphs of Temper (1781), by William Hayley, was sentimental in subject matter and artificial in style. In EB & SR 309–18, Byron said that Hayley damned the dead ‘with purgatorial praise’ and that in youth and age he was ‘for ever feeble and for ever tame’.
50, 8 bouts-rimés Rhymed endings, an exercise in verse in which rhyming words are given, to be filled out into lines at the will of the writer.
52, 8 gynocracy see note to Canto XII 66, 4.
54, 3 held more in dread P ] had more in dread 1824 and later editions
54, 4 theme ]
54, 8 ] Had (caused his nerves – made answers rather clouded)
55, 8 Matched for the spring Entered for the spring races in a match book, in which a list of the dates of the races was kept.
56, 6–8 The Civil List… /… low taxation The Civil List contained the names of all those who received appropriations from Parliament and included the sum granted to the King for his living expenses.
57, 7 the capo ¿Popera masterpiece.
57, 8 ] But
58, 1–8 There was a modern Goth… I… called restoration Colonel Wild-man, who purchased Newstead Abbey from Byron, made an extensive restoration, costing £100, 000. Though the alterations were generally made with good taste, we may infer from stanzas 58–9 that Byron would have regretted the changes.
58, 2 ]
58, 7 ] New buildings of the best delineation.
59, 1 a trifle, an old song See Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1796): ‘It was bought for an old song, i.e., very cheap.’ To Shakespeare, Swift and others in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ‘an old song’ meant ‘of little value’. See G. L. Apperson’s English Proverbs.
59, 8 For Gothic daring shown in English money According to Byron’s 1824 note, the source of this phrase scorning Lord Henry’s renovation of Norman Abbey was an inscription on a sea wall in Venice: ‘Ausu Romano, Aere Veneto ‘(’built by Roman daring and Venetian money’). Though the wall was built when Venice was a republic, Byron thought the inscription ‘imperial’ – written by Napoleon – and thus scornful of Venetian commercialism. Byron, however, did not offer historical support for his belief. Napoleon’s two Italian campaigns occurred before he was crowned Emperor in 1804. He forced Austria to cede Venice to his Kingdom of Italy in 1805. Typical of his imperial gestures was the edict in 1811 that his infant son was King of Rome.
60, 3 tenures hurgage property held directly by the king or overlord, to whom yearly rent is paid by the inhabitants. Lord Henry was such an overlord.
60, 5] (Firing the Counties till they impious war wage)
60, 6 ‘Untying’ squires ‘to fight against the churches’ ‘Though you untie the winds and let them fight / Against the churches’ (Macbeth IV i 52–3).
60, 8 Sabine showman gentleman farmer. see note to Canto IX 7, 7.
; 61, 3–8 There was a country girl…/… a double figure In 1809 a servant of Byron at Newstead named Lucy bore him a child. Byron directed his lawyer to provide for both the mother and the baby (see Marchand, 1165–6). The poem To My Son (Poetry I 260–61), which may have sentimentalized the episode, was possibly written in 1809, which Moore misread as 1807.
61, 3 close cap ]
61, 7–8 ] That Scarlet Cloak –
62, 5–6 And merely state, though not for the consistory, / Lord Henry was a justice He would not swear before the diocesan council of the Church of England that Lord Henry was more than a justice in name.
62, 6–7 Scout I The constable In Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (1742), Mr Scout was a lawyer to Lady Booby. He had Joseph and Fanny put in jail on false charges.
63, 4 ] Of
65, 1 espiègle roguish. OED cites Byron’s use of it here.
66 2 ladies gent ‘ “Well worthy impe,” said then the lady gent’ (Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene I ix 6).
66, 8 ]
67, 3 he hated beer yclept the ‘small’ Small beer was of very low alcoholic content; hence watery and of inferior quality. During the era of prohibition in America it was called ‘near beer’ and detested as vigorously as Scout did the English brew.
67, 7–8 ] To name –
68, 6 ] Those who
Those who in County Interest try their forces
[variants] (have Borough) Interest… ] County Interest In both variants ‘Interest’ is used with the meaning given by definition 4 in OED: political faction or party.
69, 4 without cards and take their station ] without Cards
invitations. OED quotes 69, 3–4 to illustrate this definition of card (III 6b).
70, 1 Lord Henry was a great electioneerer Since he was not a peer of the realm and did not sit in the House of Lords, he was campaigning for a seat in the House of Commons. For Lord Henry’s rank, see note to Canto XIII 20, 1. The Commons had long been controlled by wealthy landowners and noblemen, who either appointed or bought members from the ‘rotten boroughs’. County elections, in which Lord Henry was now involved, were more expensive (80), because they had more voting freeholders. For more information about the election of the Commons, see W. E. H. Lecky, A History of England in the Eighteenth Century (1909), II 45–68; III 119–20, 185–96; VI 50–52.
Lord Henry’s political career was typical of his era: he had been a ‘placeman’, a minister, was now a member of the Privy Council, interfered in the King’s business, and was a great debater (’few members kept the House up later’). At Norman Abbey he served as justice of peace, and held dinners and receptions for the county electorate. Here his wife carefully helped her lord safely through ‘the rocks of re-elections ‘, and Juan’s distraction and ignorance cost his host three votes. See XIII 20–21; XIV 66, 68; XVI 62–3, 68–89, 95, 101–2.
74, 3–8 in times of strife, /… When demagogues A possible reference to the agitation in 1820 over the trial of Queen Caroline, whom King George IV tried to have convicted of adultery so that he could divorce her. See note on Canto XII 84, 1–4.
74, 6–8 ] Cut
The glorious – free – and happy Constitution) ]
75, 1–2 Sooner ‘come place into the Civil List / And champion him to the utmost’ ‘Rather than so, come, Fate, into the list, / And champion me to the utterance’ (Macbeth III i 70–71). Byron’s substitution of ‘utmost’ for ‘utterance’ conveys the meaning of the Shakespearean word: to the last extremity. For the Civil List see note to XVI 56, 6–8.
76, 3–5 ]
Have in their
As common soldiers or a common – Shore Byron’s shift from a MS deletion ‘w—re’ to a punning allusion fits his comment on the superiority of professionals, but treats Jane Shore less kindly than history and other writers did. The daughter of a merchant, she left her husband, a goldsmith, about 1470 and became the favourite mistress of King Edward IV. After his death, she bedded with the Marquess of Dorset and William Hastings. Though apparently generous and amiable, her political influence incurred the enmity of the Duke of Gloucester (later Richard III), who accused her of sorcery. She was imprisoned and died in poverty and disgrace in 1527. Sir Thomas More wrote favourably about her, and she was the subject of a tragedy by Nicholas Rowe. She had also been used by Thomas Heywood in Edward IV.
76, 7 ]
77, 5 ]
78, 3 ] Was won’t to
78, 6 Quite full, right dull ]
80, 3 Septembrizers Byron, consistent in his scorn of hunters, compares the partridge shooters with the ‘septembriseurs’ who took part in the massacre of political prisoners in Paris, 2–5 September 1792.
80, 6 massy members ]
80, 8 sung fewer psalms than catches A catch was a continuous melody for three or more voices, sung as a round.
81, 7 Peter Pith In 1807–8 Sydney Smith, under the pseudonym of Peter Plymley, published a series of nine letters in London in defence of Catholic emancipation. Many editions were issued in succeeding decades. Byron had met Smith at the Holland House dinners. See Canto X 34, 1. In 1806 he had been given a Yorkshire vicarage, 300 acres of clay, that certainly did not provide a ‘fat’ living (82, 7). In 1831 he became Canon of St Paul’s.
82, 7 to lay ] to (soothe)
the devil who looks o’er Lincoln The gargoyle on St Hugh’s Chapel of Lincoln Cathedral for generations has been called the ‘devil looking over Lincoln’. A. B. England (’An Echo of Prior in Don Juan’, NQ, n.s. XIII (1966), 179) pointed out a rhyming parallel with the devil’s speech in Matthew Prior’s Hans Carvel (1700): ‘As sure as I look over Lincoln, / That ne’er shall happen which You think on.’
83, 3] For
84, 1, 2, 5 There is a difference, says the song, ‘between A beggar and a queen… A difference ‘’twixt a bishop and a dean’ See the old song The Beggar and the Queen (c. 1750):
There’s a difference between a beggar and a queen;
And I’ll tell you the reason why;
A queen does not swagger, nor get drunk like a beggar,
Nor be half so merry as I.
Another stanza says that the difference between the two churchmen is that ‘a Dean cannot dish up a dinner like a Bishop’.
86, 3–8 A slight repast makes people love much more /… long fasting ruffles see note to Canto II 169, 7–8.
86, 6 vivifying Venus See Canto XVI 109, 8, and note.
87, 4 nailed upon his chair ]
91, 6 county circle’s P ] country circle’s 1824 and later editions
92, 5 ] A
94, 3 still, not stem ]
94, 8 sunny atmosphere ]
95, 6 the sixth year is ending The maximum life of a Parliament was formerly seven years; thus Lord Henry would be mending his political fences for the coming election.
97, 4 mobility ‘In French, “mobilité.” I am not sure that mobility is English, but it is expressive of a quality which rather belongs to other climates, though it is sometimes seen to a great extent in our own. It may be defined as an excessive suscep
tibility of immediate impressions – at the same time without losing the past; and is, though sometimes apparently useful to the possessor, a most painful and unhappy attribute’ (Byron, 1824).
98, 5 financiers Byron accented the second syllable and rhymed it with ‘dancers’ and ‘romancers’. OED cites his use, though not his pronunciation here.
98, 7 Cocker’s rigours Cocker’s Arithmetic, published in 1677, went through many editions and was apparently still available in Byron’s time.
99, 5–8 ]
Of> The Sinking Fund’s unfathomable sea
Is sunk – Except the unliquidat> fragment
The Sinking Fund’s unfathomable sea The unhappy history of the Sinking Fund, a scheme devised by Walpole in 1717–18 to reduce the national debt, reached a climax at the time Byron was writing this canto. It was estimated that before the Sinking Fund was done away with, in 1823, it had cost the country about £20 million (or well above £200 million in today’s currency).
101, 4 ] And
102, 8 Draperied her form ]
curious felicity ‘“Curiosa felicitas” – Petronius Arbiter’ [ Satyricon, ch. 118] (Byron, 1824).
103, 8 ] And
104, 2 ] Forth into
104, 4 Like Addison’s ‘faint praise’, so wont to damn In the Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot 201–2, Pope wrote that Addison would ‘Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, / And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer.’
104, 5 to set off ] to
104, 6 ] As music
music chimes in with a mélodrame See note to XV 32, 8.
106, 4–5 ] But seldom pay the absent
This pleasing penalty> fragment
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