The Works of Lord Byron Volume VI Part 133

{577}[780] [Compare Mariner's description of the cave in Hoonga Island (_Poetical Works_, 1901, v. 629, note 1).]

{578}[781] ["The place," wrote Byron to Moore, August 13, 1814, "is worth seeing as a ruin, and I can a.s.sure you there _was_ some fun there, even in my time; but that is past. The ghosts, however, and the Gothics, and the waters, and the desolation, make it very lively still." "It was," comments Moore (_Life_, p. 262, note 1), "if I mistake not, during his recent visit to Newstead, that he himself actually fancied he saw the ghost of the Black Friar, which was supposed to have haunted the Abbey from the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, and which he thus describes from the recollection, perhaps, of his own fantasy, in _Don Juan_.... It is said that the Newstead ghost appeared, also, to Lord Byron's cousin, Miss f.a.n.n.y Parkins, and that she made a sketch of him from memory." The legend of the Black Friar may, it is believed at Newstead (_et vide post_, "Song," stanza ii. line 5, p. 583), be traced to the alarm and suspicion of the country-folk, who, on visiting the Abbey, would now and then catch sight of an aged lay-brother, or monkish domestic, who had been retained in the service of the Byrons long after the Canons had been "turned adrift." He would naturally keep out of sight of a generation who knew not monks, and, when surprised in the cloisters or ruins of the church, would glide back to his own quarters in the dormitories.]

[782]

["Shew his eyes, and grieve his heart; Come like shadows, so depart."

_Macbeth_, act iv. sc. 1, lines 110, 111.]

{582}[nz]

_With that she rose as graceful as a Roe_ _Slips from the mountain in the month of June,_ _And opening her Piano 'gan to play_ _Forthwith--"It was a Friar of Orders Gray."_--[MS. erased.]

{584}[oa] _By their bed of death he receives their_ [_breath_].--[MS.

erased.]

{585}[783] I think that it was a carpet on which Diogenes trod, with--"Thus I trample on the pride of Plato!"--"With greater pride," as the other replied. But as carpets are meant to be trodden upon, my memory probably misgives me, and it might be a robe, or tapestry, or a table-cloth, or some other expensive and uncynical piece of furniture.

[It was Plato's couch or lounge which Diogenes stamped upon. "So much for Plato's pride!" "And how much for yours, Diogenes?" "Calco Platonis fastum!" "Ast fastu alio?" (_Vide_ Diogenis Laertii _De Vita et Sententiis_, lib. vi. ed. 1595, p. 321.)

For "Attic Bee," _vide_ Cic. I. _De Div._, x.x.xvi. - 78, "At Platoni c.u.m in cunis parvulo dormienti apes in labellis consedissent, responsum est, singulari illum suavitate orationis fore."]

{586}[784] [For two translations of this Portuguese song, see _Poetical Works_, 1900, iii. 71.]

[785] I remember that the mayoress of a provincial town, somewhat surfeited with a similar display from foreign parts, did rather indecorously break through the applauses of an intelligent audience--intelligent, I mean, as to music--for the words, besides being in recondite languages (it was some years before the peace, ere all the world had travelled, and while I was a collegian), were sorely disguised by the performers:--this mayoress, I say, broke out with, "Rot your Italianos! for my part, I loves a simple ballat!" Rossini will go a good way to bring most people to the same opinion some day. Who would imagine that he was to be the successor of Mozart? However, I state this with diffidence, as a liege and loyal admirer of Italian music in general, and of much of Rossini's; but we may say, as the connoisseur did of painting in _The Vicar of Wakefield_, that "the picture would be better painted if the painter had taken more pains."

[A little while, and Rossini is being lauded at the expense of a degenerate modern rival. Compare Browning's _Bishop Blougram's Apology_.

"Where sits Rossini patient in his stall."--_Poetical Works_, ed. 1868, v. 276.]

[786] [Compare _The Two Foscari_, act iii. sc. 1, line 172, _Poetical Works_, 1901, v. 159, note 1.]

{587}[787] [Of Lady Beaumont, who was "weak enough" to admire Wordsworth, see _The Blues_, Ecl. II. line 47, _sq._, _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 582.]

[788] [Christopher Anstey (1724-1802) published his _New Bath Guide_ in 1766.]

[789] [Compare _English Bards, etc._, lines 309-318, _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 321, note 1.]

{588}[790] [For "Gynocracy," _vide ante_, p. 473, note 1.]

{589}[ob] _Thrower down of buildings_----.--[MS. erased.]

[791] [Byron had, no doubt, inspected the plan of Colonel Wildman's elaborate restoration of the Abbey, which was carried out at a cost of one hundred thousand pounds (see stanza lix. lines 1, 2). The kitchen and domestic offices, which extended at right angles to the west front of the Abbey (see "Newstead from a Picture by Peter Tilleman, _circ._ 1720" _Letters_, 1898, i. (to face p.) 216), were pulled down and rebuilt, the ma.s.sive Suss.e.x Tower (so named in honour of H.R.H. the Duke of Suss.e.x) was erected at the south-west corner of the Abbey, and the south front was, in part, rebuilt and redecorated. Byron had been ready to "leave everything" with regard to his beloved Newstead to Wildman's "own feelings, present or future" (see his letter, November 18, 1818, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 270); but when the time came, the necessary and, on the whole, judicious alterations of his successor, must have cost the "banished Lord" many a pang.]

{590}[792] "Ausu Romano, sere Veneto" is the inscription (and well inscribed in this instance) on the sea walls between the Adriatic and Venice. The walls were a republican work of the Venetians; the inscription, I believe, Imperial; and inscribed by Napoleon the _First_.

It is time to continue to him that t.i.tle--there will be a second by and by, "Spes altera mundi," _if he live_; let him not defeat it like his father. But in any case, he will be preferable to "_Imbeciles_." There is a glorious field for him, if he know how to cultivate it.

[Francis Charles Joseph Napoleon, Duke of Reichstadt, died at Vienna, July 22, 1832. But, none the less, Byron's prophecy was fulfilled.]

[793] [Burgage, or tenure in burgage, is where the king or some other person is lord of an ancient borough, in which the tenements are held by a yearly rent certain.]

[794]

["I conjure you, by that which you profess, (Howe'er you come to know it) answer me: Though you _untie_ the winds, and let them fight Against the _churches_."

_Macbeth_, act iv. sc. 1, lines 50-53.]

{591}[795] [See the lines "To my Son," _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 260, note 1.]

{592}[796] [See Spenser's _Faery Queen_, Book I. Canto IX. stanza 6, line 1.]

[oc]

_To name what pa.s.ses for a puzzle rather,_ _Although there must be such a thing--a father_.--[MS. erased.]

{594}[797]

["Rather than so, come, Fate, into the list, And champion me to the utterance."

_Macbeth_, act iii. sc. 1, lines 70, 71.]

{595}[798] [For "Septemberers (_Septembriseurs_)," see Carlyle's _French Revolution_, 1839, iii. 50.]

{596}[799] ["Query, _Sydney Smith_, author of Peter Plymley's Letters?--Printer's Devil."--Ed. 1833. Byron must have met Sydney Smith (1771-1845) at Holland House. The "fat fen vicarage" (_vide infra_, stanza lx.x.xii. line 8) was Foston-le-Clay (Foston, All Saints), near Barton Hill, Yorks.h.i.+re, which Lord Chancellor Erskine presented to Sydney Smith in 1806. The "living" consisted of "three hundred acres of glebe-land of the stiffest clay," and there was no parsonage house.--See _A Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith_, by Lady Holland, 1855, i. 100-107.]

[800] ["Observe, also, three grotesque figures in the blank arches of the gable which forms the eastern end of St. Hugh's Chapel," and of these, "one is popularly said to represent the 'Devil looking over Lincoln.'"--_Handbook to the Cathedrals of England_, by R.J. King, _Eastern Division_, p. 394, note x.

The devil looked over Lincoln because the unexampled height of the central tower of the cathedral excited his envy and alarm; or, as Fuller (_Worthies: Lincolns.h.i.+re_) has it, "overlooked this church, when first finished, with a torve and tetrick countenance, as maligning men's costly devotions." So, at least, the vanity of later ages interpreted the saying; but a time was when the devil "looked over" Lincoln to some purpose, for in A.D. 1185 an earthquake clave the Church of Remigius in twain, and in 1235 a great part of the central tower, which had been erected by Bishop Hugh de Wells, fell and injured the rest of the building.]

{597}[od] _For laughter rarely shakes these aguish folks_.--[MS, erased.]

[oe] _Took down the gay_ bon-mot----.--[MS. erased.]

[of] _To hammer half a laugh_----.--[MS. erased.]

[801]

["There's a difference to be seen 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," etc.

"There's a difference to be seen,'twixt a Bishop and a Dean, And I'll tell you the reason why; A Dean can not dish up a dinner like a Bishop, And that's the reason why!"]

{598}[802] ["Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus." Terentius, _Eun._, act iv. sc. 5, line 6.]

{601}[803] In French "_mobilite_." 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 susceptibility 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.

["That he was fully aware not only of the abundance of this quality in his own nature, but of the danger in which it placed consistency and singleness of character, did not require the note on this pa.s.sage to a.s.sure us. The consciousness, indeed, of his own natural tendency to yield thus to every chance impression, and change with every pa.s.sing impulse, was not only for ever present in his mind, but ... had the effect of keeping him in that general line of consistency, on certain great subjects, which ... he continued to preserve throughout life."--_Life_, p. 646. "Mobility" is not the tendency to yield to _every_ impression, to change with _every_ impulse, but the capability of being moved by many and various impressions, of responding to an ever-renewed succession of impulses. Byron is defending the enthusiastic temperament from the charge of inconstancy and insincerity.]

[804] [The first edition of c.o.c.ker's _Arithmetic_ was published in 1677.

There are many allusions to c.o.c.ker in Arthur Murphy's _Apprentice_ (1756), whence, perhaps, the saying, "according to c.o.c.ker."]

{602}[805] "[Et Horatii] Curiosa felicitas."--Petronius Arbiter, _Salyricon_, cap. cxviii.