[1] "Swan Green" should be "Swine Green." It lay about a quarter of a mile to the east of St. James's Lane, where Byron lodged in 1799, at the house of a Mr. Gill. The name appears in a directory of 1799, but by 1815 it had been expunged or changed euphoniæ gratiâ. (See A New Plan of the Town of Nottingham, ... 1744.)

Moore took down "these rhymes" from the lips of Byron's nurse, May Gray, who regarded them as a first essay in the direction of poetry. He questioned their originality.

[2] [I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. Pierre De La Rose for sending me a copy of the foregoing Version of Ossian's Address to the Sun, which was "Privately printed at the Press of Oliver B. Graves, Cambridge, Massachusetts, June the Tenth, MDCCCXCVIII.," and was reprinted in the Atlantic Monthly in December, 1898. A prefatory note entitled, "From Lord Byron's Notes," is prefixed to the Version: "In Lord Byron's copy of The Poems of Ossian (printed by Dewick and Clarke, London, 1806), which, since 1874, has been in the possession of the Library of Harvard University as part of the Sumner Bequest. The notes which follow appear in Byron's hand." (For the Notes, see the Atlantic Monthly, 1898, vol. lxxxii. pp. 810-814.)

It is strange that Byron should have made two versions (for another "version" from the Newstead MSS., see Poetical Works, 1898, i. 229-231) of the "Address to the Sun," which forms the conclusion of "Carthon;" but the Harvard version appears to be genuine. It is to be noted that Byron appended to the earlier version eighteen lines of his own composition, by way of moral or application.]

[3] [For Francis Hodgson (1781-1852), see Letters, 1898, i. 195, note 1.]

[4] [Compare Peter Pindar's Ode to a Margate Hoy—

[5] [Murray was "Joe" Murray, an ancient retainer of the "Wicked Lord." Bob was Robert Rushton, the "little page" of "Childe Harold's Good Night." (See Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 26, note 1.)]

[6] [For "the stanza," addressed to the "Princely offspring of Braganza," published in the Morning Post, December 30, 1807, see English Bards, etc., line 142, note 1, Poetical Works, 1898, i. 308, 309.]

[7] [Dives was William Beckford. See Childe Harold, Canto I. stanza xxii. line 6, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 37, note 1.]

[8] [For John Cam Hobhouse (1786-1869), afterwards Lord Broughton de Gyfford, see Letters, 1898, i. 163, note i.]

[9] [Fletcher was an indifferent traveller, and sighed for "a' the comforts of the saut-market." See Byron's letters to his mother, November 12, 1809, June 28, 1810.—Letters, 1898, i. 256, 281.]

[10] [Hobhouse's Miscellany (otherwise known as the Miss-sell-any) was published in 1809, under the title of Imitations and Translations from The Ancient and Modern Classics. Byron contributed nine original poems. The volume was not a success. "It foundered ... in the Gulph of Lethe."—Letter to H. Drury, July 17, 1811, Letters, 1898, i. 319.]

[11] [The word "Sale" may have a double meaning. There may be an allusion to George Sale, the Orientalist, and translator of the Koran.]

[12] ["In Matthews I have lost my 'guide, philosopher, and friend.'"—Letter to R. C. Dallas, September 7, 1811, Letters, 1898, ii. 25. (For Charles Skinner Matthews, see Letters, 1898, i. 150, note 3.)]

[13] [Compare—

Don Juan, Canto V. stanza xvii. lines 8, 9. The "doctrine" is Horatian, but the words occur in Ovid, Metam., lib. ii. line 137.—Poetical Works, 1902, vi. 273, note 2.]

[14] [Hobhouse's Journey through Albania and other Provinces of Turkey, 4^to, was published by James Cawthorn, in 1813.]

[15] ["I am just come from an expedition through the Bosphorus to the Black Sea and the Cyanean Symplegades, up which last I scrambled with as great risk as ever the Argonauts escaped in their hoy. You remember the beginning of the nurse's dole in the Medea [lines 1-7], of which I beg you to take the following translation, done on the summit;—[A 'damned business'] it very nearly was to me; for, had not this sublime passage been in my head, I should never have dreamed of ascending the said rocks, and bruising my carcass in honour of the ancients."—Letter to Henry Drury, June 17, 1810, Letters, 1898, i. 276.

Euripides, Medea, lines 1-7—
Εἴθ' ὤφελ' Ἀργοῦς μὴ διαπτάσθαι σκάφος κ.τ.λ. ]

[16] ["The English Consul ... forced a physician upon me, and in three days vomited and glystered me to the last gasp. In this state I made my epitaph—take it."—Letter to Hodgson, October 3, 1810, Letters, 1898, i. 298.]

[17] [For Joseph Blacket (1786-1810), see Letters, 1898, i. 314, note 2; see, too, Poetical Works, 1898, i. 359, note 1, and 441-443, note 2. The Epitaph is of doubtful authenticity.]

[i] Is fame like his so brittle?—[MS.]

[18] ["On a leaf of one of his paper books I find an epigram, written at this time, which, though not perhaps particularly good, I consider myself bound to insert."—Moore, Life, p. 137, note 1. The reference is to Moore's M.P.; or, The Blue Stocking, which was played for the first time at the Lyceum Theatre, September 9, 1811. For Moore's nom de plume, "The late Thomas Little, Esq.," compare Praed's The Belle of the Ball-Room—

[19] ["A person observing that Mr. Dallas looked very wise on a certain occasion, his Lordship is said to have broke out into the following impromptu."—Life, Writings, Times, and Opinions of Lord Byron, 1825, ii. 191.]

[20] ["Lord Byron to Editor of the Morning Chronicle.

Sir,—I take the liberty of sending an alteration of the two last lines of stanza 2^d, which I wish to run as follows:—

I wish you could insert it tomorrow for a particular reason; but I feel much obliged by your inserting it at all. Of course do not put my name to the thing—believe me,

Your obliged
and very obedient servant,
BYRON.

8, St. James's Street,
Sunday, March 1, 1812."]

[21] [For Byron's maiden speech in the House of Lords, February 27, 1812, see Letters, 1898, ii. 424-430.]

[22] [Richard Ryder (1766-1832), second son of the first Baron Harrowby, was Home Secretary, 1809-12.]

[23] Lord E., on Thursday night, said the riots at Nottingham arose from a "mistake."

[24] [Caroline Rosalie Adelaide St. Jules (1786-1862) married, in 1809, the Hon. George Lamb (see English Bards, etc., line 55, Poetical Works, 1898, i. 300, note 1), fourth son of the first Viscount Melbourne.]

[25] [Moore's "Intercepted Letters; or, The Twopenny Post-Bag, By Thomas Brown, the Younger," was published in 1813.]

[26] [James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) was imprisoned February, 1813, to February, 1815, for a libel on the Prince Regent, published in the Examiner, March 12, 1812.—Letters, 1898, ii. 205-208, note 1.]

[27] [For "Sotheby's Blues," see Introduction to The Blues, Poetical Works, 1901, iv. 570, et ibid., 579, 580.]

[28] [Katherine Sophia Manners was married in 1793 to Sir Gilbert Heathcote. See Letters, 1898, ii. 402, 406.]

[29] [See Catullus, xxix. 1-4—

[30] [One evening, in the late spring or early summer of 1813, Byron and Moore supped on bread and cheese with Rogers. Their host had just received from Lord Thurlow [Edward Hovell Thurlow, 1781-1829] a copy of his Poems on Several Occasions (1813), and Byron lighted upon some lines to Rogers, "On the Poem of Mr. Rogers, entitled 'An Epistle to a Friend.'" The first stanza ran thus—

"Byron," says Moore, "undertook to read it aloud;—but he found it impossible to get beyond the first two words. Our laughter had now increased to such a pitch that nothing could restrain it. Two or three times he began; but no sooner had the words 'When Rogers' passed his lips, than our fit burst forth afresh,—till even Mr. Rogers himself ... found it impossible not to join us. A day or two after, Lord Byron sent me the following:—'My dear Moore, "When Rogers" must not see the enclosed, which I send for your perusal.'"—Life, p. 181; Letters, 1898, ii. 211-213, note 1.]

Thurlow's poems are by no means contemptible. A sonnet, "To a Bird, that haunted the Water of Lacken, in the Winter," which Charles Lamb transcribed in one of Coleridge's note-books, should be set over against the absurd lines, "On the Poems of Mr. Rogers."

Select Poems, 1821, p. 90.
[See "Fragments of Criticism," Works of Charles Lamb, 1903, iii. 284.]

[31] [Hermilda in Palestine was published in 1812, in quarto, and twice reissued in 1813, as part of Poems on Various Occasions (8vo). The Lines upon Rogers' Epistle to a Friend appeared first in the Gentleman's Magazine for April, 1813, vol. 83, p. 357, and were reprinted in the second edition of Poems, etc., 1813, pp. 162, 163. The lines in italics, which precede each stanza, are taken from the last stanza of Lord Thurlow's poem.]

[32] ["On the same day I received from him the following additional scraps ['To Lord Thurlow']. The lines in Italics are from the eulogy that provoked his waggish comments."—Life, p. 181. The last stanza of Thurlow's poem supplied the text—

[33] [Lord Thurlow affected an archaic style in his Sonnets and other verses. In the Preface to the second edition of Poems, etc., he writes, "I think that our Poetry has been continually declining since the days of Milton and Cowley ... and that the golden age of our language is in the reign of Queen Elizabeth."]

[ii] The Devil's Drive. A Sequel to Porson's Devil's Walk.—[MS. H.]

[34] ["I have lately written a wild, rambling, unfinished rhapsody, called 'The Devil's Drive,' the notion of which I took from Porson's Devil's Walk."—Journal, December 17, 18, 1813, Letters, 1898, ii. 378. "Though with a good deal of vigour and imagination, it is," says Moore, "for the most part rather clumsily executed, wanting the point and condensation of those clever verses of Coleridge and Southey, which Lord Byron, adopting a notion long prevalent, has attributed to Porson." The Devil's Walk was published in the Morning Post, September 6, 1799. It has been published under Porson's name (1830, ed. H. Montague, illustrated by Cruikshank). (See Poetical Works, 1898, i. 30, note 1.)]

[35] [Lord Yarmouth, nicknamed "Red Herrings," the eldest son of the Regent's elderly favourite, the Marchioness of Hertford (the "Marchesa" of the Twopenny Post-Bag), lived at No. 7, Seamore Place, Mayfair. Compare Moore's "Epigram:" "'I want the Court Guide,' said my lady, 'to look If the House, Seymour Place, be at 30 or 20,'" etc.—Poetical Works, 1850, p. 165.]

[36] [The allusion may be to a case which was before the courts, the Attorney-General v. William Carver and Brownlow Bishop of Winchester (see Morning Chronicle, November 17, 1813). Carver held certain premises under the Bishop of Winchester, at the entrance of Portsmouth Harbour, which obstructed the efflux and reflux of the tide. "The fact," said Mr. Serjeant Lens, in opening the case for the Crown, "was of great magnitude to the entire nation, since it effected the security, and even the existence of one of the principal harbours of Great Britain."]

[37] [The Russian and Austrian troops at the battle of Leipsic, October 16, 1813, were, for the most part, veterans, while the Prussian contingent included a large body of militia.]

[38] [For the incident of the "broken bridge" Byron was indebted to the pages of the Morning Chronicle of November 8, 1813, "Paris Papers, October 30"—

"The Emperor had ordered the engineers to form fougades under the grand bridge which is between Leipsic and Lindenau, in order to blow it up at the latest moment, and thus to retard the march of the enemy and give time to our baggage to file off. General Dulauloy had entrusted the operation to Colonel Montford. The Colonel, instead of remaining on the spot to direct it, and to give the signal, ordered a corporal and four sappers to blow up the bridge the instant the enemy should appear. The corporal, an ignorant fellow, and ill comprehending the nature of the duty with which he was charged, upon hearing the first shot discharged from the ramparts of the city, set fire to the fougades and blew up the bridge. A part of the army was still on the other side, with a park of 80 pieces of artillery and some hundreds of waggons. The advance of this part of the army, who were approaching the bridge, seeing it blow up, conceived it was in the power of the enemy. A cry of dismay spread from rank to rank. 'The enemy are close upon our rear, and the bridges are destroyed!' The unfortunate soldiers dispersed, and endeavoured to effect their escape as well as they could. The Duke of Tarentum swam across the river. Prince Poniatowsky, mounted on a spirited horse, darted into the water and appeared no more. The Emperor was not informed of this disaster until it was too late to remedy it.... Colonel Montfort and the corporal of the sappers have been handed over to a court- martial."]

[39] [Compare Don Juan, Canto VIII. stanza cxxxii. line 4. Sir Walter Scott (Journal, October 30, 1826 [1890, i. 288]), tells the same story of "an old woman who, when Carlisle was taken by the Highlanders in 1745, chose to be particularly apprehensive of personal violence, and shut herself up in a closet, in order that she might escape ravishment. But no one came to disturb her solitude, and ... by and by she popped her head out of her place of refuge with the pretty question, 'Good folks, can you tell me when the ravishing is going to begin?'" In 1813 Byron did not know Scott, and must have stolen the jest from some older writer. It is, probably, of untold antiquity.]

[40] [The "Four-Horse" Club, founded in 1808, was incorrectly styled the Four-in-Hand Club, and the Barouche Club. According to the Club rules, the barouches were "yellow-bodied, with 'dickies,' the horses bay, with rosettes at their heads, and the harness silver-mounted. The members wore a drab coat reaching to the ankles, with three tiers of pockets, and mother-o'-pearl buttons as large as five-shilling pieces. The waistcoat was blue, with yellow stripes an inch wide; breeches of plush, with strings and rosettes to each knee; and it was de rigueur that the hat should be 3-1/2 inches deep in the crown." (See Driving, by the Duke of Beaufort, K.G., 1894, pp. 251-258.)

The "ancient peer" may possibly be intended for the President of the Club, Philip Henry, fifth Earl of Chesterfield (1755-1815), who was a member of the Privy Council, and had been Postmaster-General and Master of the Horse.]

[41] [Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt (circ. 1762-1833) was the son of the Rev. Edmund Tyrwhitt, Rector of Wickham Bishops, etc., and nephew of Thomas Tyrwhitt, the editor of the Canterbury Tales. He was Private Secretary to the Prince of Wales, auditor of the Duchy of Cornwall (1796), and Lord Warden of the Stannaries (1805). He was knighted May 8, 1812. He was sent in the following year in charge of the Garter mission to the Czar, and on that occasion was made a Knight of the Imperial Order of St. Anne, First Class. He held the office of Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, 1812-1832. "Tommy Tyrwhitt" was an important personage at Carlton House, and shared with Colonel McMahon the doubtful privilege of being a confidential servant of the Prince Regent. Compare Letter III. of Moore's Twopenny Post-Bag, 1813, p. 12. "From G. R. to the E. of Y——th."

See Gentleman's Magazine, March, 1833, vol. 103, pt. i. pp. 275, 276.]

[42] ["Vetus" [Edward Sterling] contributed a series of letters to the Times, 1812, 1813. They were afterwards republished. Vetus was not a Little Englander, and his political sentiments recall the obiter dicta of contemporary patriots; e.g. "the only legitimate basis for a treaty, if not on the part of the Continental Allies, at least for England herself [is] that she should conquer all she can, and keep all she conquers. This is not by way of retaliation, however just, upon so obdurate and rapacious an enemy—but as an indispensable condition of her own safety and existence." The letters were reviewed under the heading of "Illustrations of Vetus," in the Morning Chronicle, December 2, 10, 16, 18; 1813. The reviewer and Byron did not take the patriotic view of the situation.]

[43] [Robert Banks Jenkinson (1770-1828), second Earl of Liverpool, on the assassination of Perceval, became Prime Minister, June 7, 1812; John Fane (1759-1841), tenth Earl of Westmoreland, was Lord Privy Seal, 1798-1827; Charles Howard (1746-1815), eleventh Duke of Norfolk, known as "Jockey of Norfolk," was a Protestant and a Liberal, and at one time a friend of the Prince of Wales. Wraxall, Posthumous Memoirs, 1836, i. 29, says that "he might have been mistaken for a grazier or a butcher by his dress and appearance." He figures largely in Gillray, see e.g. "Meeting of the Moneyed Interest," December, 1798. John Pitt (1756-1835), second Earl of Chatham, the hero of the abortive Walcheren expedition, had been made a general in the army January 1, 1812. He "inherited," says Wraxall, ibid., iii. 129, "his illustrious father's form and figure; but not his mind."]

[44] [Edward Law (1750-1818), first Baron Ellenborough, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, 1802-18, was given to the use of strong language. His temper (see Moore's "Sale of the Tools") was "none of the best." On one occasion, speaking in the House of Lords (March 22, 1813) with regard to the "delicate investigation," he asserted that the accusation ["that the persons intrusted had thought fit to fabricate an unauthorized document"] "was as false as hell;" and by way of protest against the tedious harangues of old Lord Darnley, "I am answerable to God for my time, and what account can I give at the day of judgment if I stay here longer?"]

[45] [Compare Moore's "Insurrection of the Papers"—

[46] [George Rose (1744-1818) was at this time Treasurer of the Navy. Wraxall, who quotes the "Probationary Odes" with regard to his alleged duplicity, testifies that he "knew him well in his official capacity, during at least twelve years, and never found him deficient in honour or sincerity" (Posthumous Memoirs, 1836, i. 148). Moore ("Parody of a Celebrated Letter") makes the Regent conceive how shocked the king would be to wake up sane and find "that R—se was grown honest, or W—stm—rel—nd wiser."]

[47] [Ernest Augustus (1771-1851), Duke of Cumberland and King of Hanover, fifth son of George III., was gazetted as Field-Marshal November 27, 1813. His "wounds," which, according to the Duke's sworn testimony, were seventeen in number, were inflicted during an encounter with his valet, Joseph Sellis (? Sélis), a Piedmontese, who had attempted to assassinate the Prince (June 1, 1810), and, shortly afterwards, was found with his throat cut. A jury of Westminster tradesmen brought in a verdict of felo de se against Sellis. The event itself and the trial before the coroner provoked controversy and the grossest scandal. The question is discussed and the Duke exonerated of the charges brought against him, by J. H. Jesse, Memoirs, etc., of George III., 1864, iii. 545, 546, and by George Rose, Diaries, etc., 1860, ii. 437-446. The scandal was revived in 1832 by the publication of a work entitled The Authentic Memoirs of the Court of England for the last Seventy Years. The printer and publisher of the work was found guilty. (See The Trial of Josiah Phillips for a Libel on the Duke of Cumberland, 1833.)]

[48] ["At half-past nine [Wednesday, December 8, 1813] there was a grand dress party at Carlton House, at which her Majesty and the Prince Regent most graciously received the following distinguished characters from the Russian Court, viz. the Count and Countess Leiven, Mad. La Barrone (sic) de Staël, Monsieur de Staël," etc.—Morning Chronicle, December 10, 1813.]

[49] [In the review of Madame de Staël's De L'Allemagne (Edinburgh Review, October, 1813, vol. 22, pp. 198-238), Sir James Mackintosh enlarged upon and upheld the "opinions of Kant" as creative and seminal in the world of thought. In the same article he passes in review the systems of Hobbes, Paley, Bentham, Reid, etc., and finds words of praise and admiration for each in turn. See, too, a passage (p. 226) in which he alludes to Coleridge as a living writer, whose "singular character and unintelligible style" might, in any other country but England, have won for him attention if not approval. His own "conversion" from the extreme liberalism of the Vindiciæ Gallicæ of 1791 to the philosophic conservatism of the Introductory Discourse (1798) to his lecture on The Law of Nature and Nations, was regarded with suspicion by Wordsworth and Coleridge, who, afterwards, were still more effectually "converted" themselves.]

[50] [See Introduction to The Waltz, Poetical Works, 1898, i. 475.]

[51] [Illusion, or the Trances of Nourjahad, a melodrama founded on The History of Nourjahad, By the Editor of Sidney Bidulph (Mrs. Frances Sheridan, née Chamberlaine, 1724-1766), was played for the first time at Drury Lane Theatre, November 25, 1813. Byron was exceedingly indignant at being credited with the authorship or adaptation. (See Letter to Murray, November 27, 1813, Letters, 1898, ii. 288, note 1.) Miss Sophia Lee, who wrote some of the Canterbury Tales, "made a very elegant musical drama of it" (Memoirs of Mrs. F. Sheridan, by Alicia Lefanu, 1824, p. 296); but this was not the Nourjahad of Drury Lane.]

[52] [Millbank Penitentiary, which was built in the form of a pentagon, was finally taken in hand in the spring of 1813. Solitary confinement in the "cells" was, at first, reserved as a punishment for misconduct.—Memorials of Millbank, by Arthur Griffiths, 1875, i. 57.]

[53] ["I cannot conceive how the Vault has got about; but so it is. It is too farouche; but truth to say, my satires are not very playful."—Letter to Moore, March 12, 1814, Letters, 1899, iii. 57-58. Moore had written to him, "Your lines about the bodies of Charles and Henry are, I find, circulated with wonderful avidity; even some clods in this neighbourhood have had a copy sent to them by some 'young ladies in town.'"—Ibid., p. 57, note 3.

The discovery "that King Charles I. was buried in the vault of King Henry VIII.," was made on completing the mausoleum which George III. caused to be built in the tomb-house. The Prince Regent was informed of the circumstance, and on April 1, 1813, the day after the funeral of his mother-in-law, the Duchess of Brunswick, he superintended in person the opening of the leaden coffin, which bore the inscription, "King Charles, 1648" (sic). See An Account of what appeared on Opening the Coffin of King Charles the First, by Sir H. Halford, Bart., 1813, pp. 6, 7. Cornelia Knight, in her Autobiography (1861, i. 227), notes that the frolic prince, the "Adonis of fifty," who was in a good humour, and "had given to Princess Charlotte the centre sapphire of Charles's crown," acted "the manner of decapitation on my shoulders." He had "forgotten" Cromwell, who, as Lord Auchinleck reminded Dr. Johnson, had "gart kings ken that they had a lith in their neck!"]

[54] [From an autograph MS. in the possession of the Hon. Mrs. Norbury.

The first wrapper has written upon it, "The original Impromptu within is in the handwriting of the noble author Lord Byron, given to Mr. Norbury [private secretary to Lord Granville] by Mr. Dallas, his Lordship's valued relative."

Second wrapper, "Autograph of Lord Byron—tres précieux."

Third (outside) wrapper, "Autographe célèbre de Lord Byron."]

[55]

Suetonius, in Tiberium, cap. 57.

[56] ["The gentlemen of the Champion, and Perry, have got hold (I know not how) of the condolatory Address to Lady Jersey on the picture-abduction by our Regent, and have published them— with my name, too, smack—without even asking leave, or inquiring whether or no! Damn their impudence, and damn every thing. It has put me out of patience, and so, I shall say no more about it."— Letter to Moore, August 3, 1814, Letters, 1899, iii. 118. For Byron's letter to Lady Jersey, of May 29, 1814, and a note from her with reference to a lost(?) copy of the verses, vide ibid., p. 85. Mrs. Anne Mee (1775?-1851) was a miniature-painter, who was employed by the Prince Regent to take the portraits of fashionable beauties.]

[57] [Compare Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanza lix. line 3, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 374, note 2.]

[58] [See Conversations ...with the Countess of Blessington, 1834, p. 50.]

[59] [The two first stanzas of Southey's "Carmen Triumphale, for the Commencement of the Year 1814," end with the line—

[60] ["The newspapers will tell you all that is to be told of emperors, etc. They have dined, and supped, and shown their flat faces in all thoroughfares and several saloons."—Letter to Moore, June 14, 1814, Letters, 1899, iii. 93, 94.

From June 6 to June 27, 1814, the Emperor of Russia, and the King of Prussia were in England. Huge crowds watched all day and night outside the Pulteney Hotel (105, Piccadilly), where the Emperor of Russia stayed. Among the foreigners in London were Nesselrode, Metternich, Blücher, and Platoff, Hetman of the Cossacks. The two latter were the heroes of the mob. Ibid., p. 93, note 1.]

[61] ["The Emperor," says Lady Vernon (Journal of Mary Frampton, pp. 225, 226), "is fond of dancing.... He waltzed with Lady Jersey, whom he admires, to the great discomposure of the Regent, who has quarrelled with her."]

[62] [The phrase, "rotten borough," was used by Sir F. Burdett, Examiner, October 12, 1812.]

[63] [It may be taken for granted that the "source" of this epigram was a paragraph in the Morning Chronicle of March 27, 1815: "In the Moniteur of Thursday we find the Emperor's own account of his jaunt from the Island of Elba to the palace of the Thuilleries. It seems certainly more like a jaunt of pleasure than the progress of an invader through a country to be gained."]

[64] ["A short time before Lord Byron quitted England, in 1816, he addressed these lines to an individual by whom he deemed himself injured; they are but little known."—Nicnac, March 25, 1823.]

[65] [The term "Luddites" dates from 1811, and was applied first to frame-breakers, and then to the disaffected in general. It was derived from a half-witted lad named Ned Lud, who entered a house in a fit of passion, and destroyed a couple of stocking-frames. The song was an impromptu, enclosed in a letter to Moore of December 24, 1816. "I have written it principally," he says, "to shock your neighbour [Hodgson?] who is all clergy and loyalty—mirth and innocence—milk and water." See Letters, 1900, iv. 30; and for General Lud and "Luddites," see Letters, 1898, ii. 97, note 1.]

[66] [Margaret of Anjou, by Margaret Holford, 1816.]

[67] [Ilderim, a Syrian Tale, by H. Gaily Knight, 1816.]

[68] [Christabel, etc., by S. T. Coleridge, 1816.]

[69] [The Missionary of the Andes, a Poem, by W. L. Bowles, 1815.]

[70] [Waterloo and other Poems, by J. Wedderburn Webster, 1816.]

[71] [The White Doe of Rylstone, or the Fate of the Nortons, a Poem, by W. Wordsworth, 1815.]

[72] [Glenarvon, a Novel [by Lady Caroline Lamb], 1816.]

[73] [À propos of Maturin's tragedy, Manuel (vide post, p. 48, note 1), Byron "does into English" the Latin proverb by way of contrast to the text, "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth; blessed be the Name of the Lord" (Letter to Murray, April 2, 1817).]

[74] ["This should have been written fifteen months ago; the first stanza was."—Letter to Moore, July 10, 1817.]

[75] ["By the way," writes Murray, Aug. 5, 1817 (Memoir, etc., i. 386), "Polidori has sent me his tragedy! Do me the kindness to send by return of post a delicate declension of it, which I engage faithfully to copy."

"I never," said Byron, "was much more disgusted with any human production than with the eternal nonsense, and tracasseries, and emptiness, and ill-humour, and vanity of this young person; but he has some talent, and is a man of honour, and has dispositions of amendment. Therefore use your interest for him, for he is improved and improvable;" and, in a letter to Murray, Aug. 21, 1817, "You want a 'civil and delicate declension' for the medical tragedy? Take it."—For J. W. Polidori (1795-1821), see Letters, 1899, iii, 284 note I.]

[76] [Maturin's second tragedy, Manuel, produced at Drury Lane, March 8, 1817, with Kean as "Manuel Count Valdis, failed, and after five nights was withdrawn." It was published in 1817. "It is," says Byron (letter to Murray, June 14, 1817), "the absurd work of a clever man."—Letters, 1900, iv. 134, and note I.]

[77] [Sotheby published, in 1814, Five Tragedies, viz. "The Confession," "Orestes," "Ivan," "The Death of Darnley," and "Zamorin and Zama."]

[78] [Ina, A Tragedy, by Mrs. Wilmot [Barberina Ogle (1768-1854), daughter of Sir Chaloner Ogle], afterwards Lady Dacre, was produced at Drury Lane, April 22, 1815. Her "tragedy," writes Byron to Moore, April 23, 1815, "was last night damned." See Letters, 1898, ii. 332, note 3, etc.; ibid., 1899, iii. 195, note I.]

[79] [George Hammond (1763-1853) was a distinguished diplomatist, who twice (1795-1806 and 1807-1809) held the office of Under-secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. He is associated with the foundation of the Anti-Jacobin and the Quarterly Review. In the drawing-room of Albemarle Street, he was Murray's "chief 4-o'clock man," until his official duties compelled him to settle at Paris.—Letters, 1900, iv. 160, note 1.

John Dent, M.P., a banker, was nicknamed "Dog Dent" because he was concerned in the introduction of the Dog-tax Bill in 1796. In 1802 he introduced a Bill to abolish bull-baiting.—Ibid]

[80] [Sir John Malcolm (1769-1833), soldier, administrator, and diplomatist, published (January, 1815) his History of Persia.—Letters, 1899, iii. 113, note 1.]

[81] [For "Dark Hamilton," W. R. Hamilton (1777-1859), see Childe Harold, Canto II. stanza xiii. var. I, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 108, note 1. Lines 61, 62 were added October 12, 1817.]

[82] [Madame de Staël's Considérations sur la Révolution Française was offered to Murray in June, 1816 (Memoir, etc., 1891, i. 316), and the sum of £4000 asked for the work. During the negotiations, Madame de Staël died (July 14, 1817), and the book was eventually published by Messrs. Baldwin and Cradock.—Letters, 1900, iv. 94, note.]

[83] [Byron and the elder Schlegel met at Copet, in 1816, but they did not take to each other. Byron "would not flatter him," perhaps because he did not appreciate or flatter Byron.]

[84] [The Fourth Canto of Childe Harold.]

[85] [Murray bought a half-share in Blackwood's Edinburgh Monthly Magazine in August, 1818, and remained its joint proprietor till December, 1819, when it became the property of William Blackwood. But perhaps the reference is to Byron's Swiss Journal of September, 1816.]

[86] [Henry Gaily Knight (1786-1846), who was a contemporary of Byron at Trinity College, Cambridge, was a poetaster, and, afterwards, a writer of works on architecture. His Oriental verses supplied Byron with a subject for more than one indifferent jeu d'esprit.]

[87] [Phrosyne, a Grecian tale, and Alashtar, an Arabian tale, were published in 1817. In a letter to Murray, September 4, 1817, Byron writes, "I have received safely, though tardily, the magnesia and tooth-powder, Phrosine and Alashtar. I shall clean my teeth with one, and wipe my shoes with the other."—Letters, 1901, iv.]

[88] [Sotheby's Farewell to Italy and Occasional Poems were published in 1818, as the record of a tour which he had taken in 1816-17 with his family, Professor Elmsley, and Dr. Playfair. For Byron's unfinished skit on Sotheby's Tour, see Letters, 1900, iv. Appendix V. pp. 452, 453.]

[89] [Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters of Books and Men, by the Rev. Joseph Spence, arranged, with notes, by the late Edmund Malone, Esq., 1 vol. 8vo, 1820.]

[90] [The Life of Mary Queen of Scots, by George Chalmers, 2 vols. 4to, 1819.]

[91] [Thomas Gordon (1788-1841) entered the Scots Greys in 1808. Two years later he visited Ali Pasha (see Letters, 1898, i. 246, note 1) in Albania, and travelled in Persia and Turkey in the East. From 1813 to 1815 he served in the Russian Army. He wrote a History of the Greek Revolution, 1832, 2 vols., but it does not appear that he was negotiating with Murray for the publication of any work at this period.]

[92] Vide your letter.

[93] [Probably Sir Robert John Wilmot (1784-1841) (afterwards Wilmot Horton), Byron's first cousin, who took a prominent part in the destruction of the "Memoirs," May 17, 1824. (For Lady Wilmot Horton, the original of "She walks in beauty," see Poetical Works, 1900, iii. 381, note 1.)]

[94] [Stanzas 12, 13, 14 cannot be published.]

[95] [Richard Belgrave Hoppner (1786-1872), second son of John Hoppner, R.A., was appointed English Consul at Venice, October, 1814. (See Letters, 1900, iv. 83, note 1.) The quatrain was translated (see the following poem) into eleven different languages—Greek, Latin, Italian (also the Venetian dialect), German, French, Spanish, Illyrian, Hebrew, Armenian, and Samaritan, and printed "in a small neat volume in the seminary of Padua." For nine of these translations see Works, 1832, xi. pp. 324-326, and 1891, p. 571. Rizzo was a Venetian surname. See W. Stewart Rose's verses to Byron, "Grinanis, Mocenijas, Baltis, Rizzi, Compassionate our cruel case," etc., Letters, iv. 212.]

[96] [Byron must have added the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold to the complete edition of the Poetical Works in six volumes. See Murray's list, dated "Albemarle Street, London, January, 1818." The seventh volume of the Collected Works was not issued till 1819.]

[97] [A French translation of the Bride of Abydos appeared in 1816, an Italian translation of the Lament of Tasso in 1817. Goethe (see Letters, 1901, v. 503-521) translated fragments of Manfred in 1817, 1818, but the earliest German translation of the entire text of Manfred was issued in 1819.]

[98] [See the last line of the Italian translation of the quatrain.]

[99] [William Strahan (1715-1785) published Johnson's Dictionary, Gibbon's Decline and Fall, Cook's Voyages, etc. He was great-grandfather of the mathematician William Spottiswoode (1825-1883).

Jacob Tonson (1656?-1736) published for Otway, Dryden, Addison, etc. He was secretary of the Kit-Cat Club, 1700. He was the publisher (1712, etc.) of the Spectator.

Barnaby Bernard Lintot (1675-1736) was at one time (1718) in partnership with Tonson. He published Pope's Iliad in 1715, and the Odyssey, 1725-26.]

[100] [See note 2, p. 51.]

[101] [Mrs. Rundell's Domestic Cookery, published in 1806, was one of Murray's most successful books. In 1822 he purchased the copyright from Mrs. Rundell for £2000 (see Letters, 1898, ii. 375; and Memoir of John Murray, 1891, ii. 124).]

[102] [The sixth edition of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1813) was "printed by T. Davison, Whitefriars, for John Murray, Bookseller to the Admiralty, and the Board of Longitude." Medwin (Conversations, 1824, p. 259) attributes to Byron a statement that Murray had to choose between continuing to be his publisher and printing the "Navy Lists," and "that there was no hesitation which way he should decide: the Admiralty carried the day." In his "Notes" to the Conversations (November 2, 1824) Murray characterized "the passage about the Admiralty" as "unfounded in fact, and no otherwise deserving of notice than to mark its absurdity."]

[103] [For Fop's Alley, see Poetical Works, 1898, i. 410, note 2.]

[104] [H. Gally Knight (1786-1846) was at Cambridge with Byron.]

[105] [William Upton was the author of Poems on Several Occasions, 1788, and of the Words of the most Favourite Songs, Duets, etc., sung at the Royal Amphitheatre, Westminster Bridge, etc. In the dedication to Mrs. Astley he speaks of himself as the author of the Black Cattle, Fair Rosamond, etc. He has also been credited with the words of James Hook's famous song, A Lass of Richmond Hill, but this has been disputed. (See Notes and Queries, 1878, Series V. vol. ix. p. 495.)]

[106] [Compare—

Alashtar (by H. G. Knight), 1817, Canto I, stanza viii, lines 5, 6.]

[107] [From an autograph MS. in the possession of Mr. Murray, now for the first time printed. For stanzas 3, 4, 6, see Letters, 1900, iv. 219, 220. For stanzas 1, 2, 3 of "Another Simple Ballat. To the tune of Tally i.o. the Grinder" (probably a variant of Dibdin's song, "The Grinders, or more Grist to the Mill"), vide ibid., pp. 220, 221.]

[108] ["Would you like an epigram—a translation? It was written on some Frenchwoman, by Rulhières, I believe."—Letter to Murray, August 12, 1819, Letters, 1900, iv. 346.

Claude Carloman de Rulhière (1718-1791), historian, poet, and epigrammatist, was the author of Anecdotes sur la revolution de Russie en l'anneé 1762, Histoire de l'anarchie de Pologne (1807), etc. His epigrams are included in "Poésies Diverses," which are appended to Les jeux de Mains, a poem in three cantos, published in 1808, and were collected in his Oeuvres Posthumes, 1819; but there is no trace of the original of Byron's translation. Perhaps it is after de Rulhière, who more than once epigrammatizes "Une Vieille Femme."]

[109] [The MS. of the "Epilogue" is inscribed on the margin of a copy of Wordsworth's Peter Bell, inserted in a set of Byron's Works presented by George W. Childs to the Drexel Institute. (From information kindly supplied by Mr. John H. Bewley, of Buffalo, New York.)

The first edition of Peter Bell appeared early in 1819, and a second edition followed in May, 1819. In Byron's Dedication of Marino Faliero, "To Baron Goethe," dated October 20, 1820 (Poetical Works, 1891, iv. 341), the same allusions to Sir George Beaumont, to Wordsworth's "place in the Excise," and to his admission that Peter Bell had been withheld "for one and twenty years," occur in an omitted paragraph first published, Letters, 1891, v. 101. So close a correspondence of an unpublished fragment with a genuine document leaves little doubt as to the composition of the "Epilogue."]

[110] [The missing line may be, "To permanently fill a station," see Preface to Peter Bell.]

[111] [Medwin (Conversations, 1824, p. 156) prints an alternative—

[112] [Cobbett, by way of atonement for youthful vituperation (he called him "a ragamuffin deist") of Tom Paine, exhumed his bones from their first resting-place at New Rochelle, and brought them to Liverpool on his return to England in 1819. They were preserved by Cobbett at Normanby, Farnham, till his death in 1835, but were sold in consequence of his son's bankruptcy in 1836, and passed into the keeping of a Mr. Tilly, who was known to be their fortunate possessor as late as 1844. (See Notes and Queries, 1868, Series IV. vol. i. pp. 201-203.)]

[113] [John Cam Hobhouse (1786-1869) (see Letters, 1898, i. 163, note 1) was committed to Newgate in December, 1819, for certain passages in a pamphlet entitled, A Trifling Mistake in Thomas Lord Erskine's recent Preface, which were voted (December 10) a breach of privilege. He remained in prison till the dissolution on the king's death, February 20, 1820, when he stood and was returned for Westminster. Byron's Liberalism was intermittent, and he felt, or, as Hobhouse thought, pretended to feel, as a Whig and an aristocrat with regard to the free lances of the Radical party. The sole charge in this "filthy ballad," which annoyed Hobhouse, was that he had founded a Whig Club when he was an undergraduate at Cambridge. He assured Murray (see his letter, November, 1820, Letters, vol. iv. Appendix XI. pp. 498-500) that he was not the founder of the club, and that Byron himself was a member. "As for his Lordship's vulgar notions about the mob" he adds, "they are very fit for the Poet of the Morning Post, and for nobody else." There is no reason to suppose that Byron was in any way responsible for the version as sent to the Morning Post.]

"MY BOY HOBBY O.
[Another Version.]

To the Editor of the Morning Post.

Sir,—A copy of verses, to the tune of 'My boy Tammy,' are repeated in literary circles, and said to be written by a Noble Lord of the highest poetical fame, upon his quondam friend and annotator. My memory does not enable me to repeat more than the first two verses quite accurately, but the humourous spirit of the Song may be gathered from these:—

[114] ["I send you 'a Song of Triumph,' by W. Botherby, Esq^re price sixpence, on the election of J. C. H., Esqre., for Westminster (not for publication)."—Letter to Murray, April 9, 1820, Letters, 1901, v. 6.]

[115] [For Felicia Dorothea Browne (1793-1835), married in 1812 to Captain Hemans, see Letters, iii. 368, note 2. In the letter which contains these verses he writes, "I do not despise Mrs. Heman; but if she knit blue stockings instead of wearing them it would be better." Elsewhere he does despise her: "No more modern poesy, I pray, neither Mrs. Hewoman's nor any female or male Tadpole of poet Wordsworth's."—Ibid., v. 64.]

[116] [The lines were sent in a letter to Moore (November 5, 1820) by way of Autoepitaphium, "if 'honour should come unlooked for' to any of your acquaintance;" i.e. if Byron should fall in the cause of Italian revolution, and Moore should not think him worthy of commemoration, here was a threnody "ready at hand."]

[117] ["For the anniversary of January 2, 1821, I have a small grateful anticipation, which, in case of accident, I add."—Letter to Moore, November 5, 1820, Letters, 1891, v. 112.]

[118] [Written on seeing the following paragraph in a newspaper: "Lady Byron is this year the lady patroness at the annual Charity Ball, given at the Town Hall, at Hinckley, Leicestershire...."—Life, p. 535. Moore adds that "these verses [of which he only prints two stanzas] are full of strong and indignant feeling,—every stanza concluding pointedly with the words 'Charity Ball.'"]

[119] [The allusion is explained in Rivington's Annual Register, October 30, 1820 (vol. lxii. pp. 114, 115)—

"ADDRESSES TO THE QUEEN.

" ... The most splendid exhibition of the day was that of the brass-founders and braziers. The procession was headed by a man dressed in a suit of burnished plate armour of brass, and mounted on a handsome black horse, the reins being held by pages ... wearing brass helmets.... A man in a complete suite of brass armour ... was followed by two persons, bearing on a cushion a most magnificent imitation of the imperial Crown of England. A small number of the deputation of brass-founders were admitted to the presence of her Majesty, and one of the persons in armour advanced to the throne, and bending on one knee, presented the address, which was enclosed in a brass case of excellent workmanship."—See Letters, 1901, v. 219, 220, note 2.

In a postscript to a letter to Murray, dated January 19, 1821, he writes, "I sent you a line or two on the Braziers' Company last week, not for publication. The lines were even worthy

He adds, in a footnote, "Mestri and Fusina are the ferry trajects to Venice: I believe, however, that it was at Fusina that Moore and I embarked in 1819, when Thomas came to Venice, like Coleridge's Spring, 'slowly up this way.'"

Again, in a letter to Moore, dated January 22, 1821, he encloses slightly different versions of both epigrams, and it is worth noting that the first line of the pendant epigram has been bowdlerized, and runs thus—

—Letters, 1901, v. 226, 230.]

[120] ["To-morrow is my birthday—that is to say, at twelve o' the clock, midnight; i.e. in twelve minutes I shall have completed thirty and three years of age!!! and I go to my bed with a heaviness of heart at having lived so long, and to so little purpose. * * * It is three minutes past twelve—''Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,' and I am now thirty-three!—

but I don't regret them so much for what I have done, as for what I might have done."—Extracts from a Diary, January 21, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 182.

In a letter to Moore, dated January 22, 1821, he gives another version—

Ibid., p. 229.]

[121] [Compare the Beggar's Opera, act ii. sc. 2—

Bowles replied to Campbell's Introductory Essay to his Specimens of the English Poets, 7 vols., 1819, by The Invariable Principles of Poetry, in a letter addressed to Thomas Campbell. For Byron's two essays, the "Letter to.... [John Murray]" and "Observations upon Observations," see Letters, 1901, v. Appendix III. pp. 536-592.]

[122] [For Croker's "article" on Keats's Endymion (Quarterly Review, April, 1818, vol. xix. pp. 204-208), see Don Juan, Canto XI. stanza lx. line 1, Poetical Works, 1902, vi. 445, note 4.]

[123] [Horace Walpole's Memoirs of the Last Nine Years of the Reign of George II. ]

[124] [Memoirs by James Earl Waldegrave, Governor of George III. when Prince of Wales.]

[125] ["Can't accept your courteous offer [i.e. £2000 for three cantos of Don Juan, Sardanapalus, and The Two Foscari.] These matters must be arranged with Mr. Douglas Kinnaird. He is my trustee, and a man of honour. To him you can state all your mercantile reasons, which you might not like to state to me personally, such as 'heavy season'—'flat public'—'don't go off'—'lordship writes too much'—'won't take advice'—'declining popularity'—'deductions for the trade'—'make very little'—'generally lose by him'—'pirated edition'—'foreign edition'—'severe criticisms,' etc., with other hints and howls for an oration, which I leave Douglas, who is an orator, to answer."—Letter to Murray, August 23, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 348.]

[126] [Napoleon bequeathed to Lady Holland a snuff-box which had been given to him by the Pope for his clemency in sparing Rome. Lord Carlisle wrote eight (not seven) stanzas, urging her, as Byron told Medwin, to decline the gift, "for fear that horror and murder should jump out of the lid every time it is opened."—Conversations, 1824, p. 362. The first stanza of Lord Carlyle's verses, which teste Medwin, Byron parodied, runs thus—

The snuff-box is now in the jewel-room in the British Museum.]