Don Juan

Canto the Fifteenth

{544}[733] [It is impossible to persuade the metaphor to march "on

all-fours," but, to drag it home, by a kind of "frog's march," the

unfulfilled wants of the soul, the "lurking thoughts" are as it were

bubbles, which we would fain "break on the invisible Ocean" of Passion

or Emotion the begetter of bubbles--Passion which, like the visible

Ocean, images Eternity and portrays, but not to the sensual eye, the

beatific vision of the things which are not seen, and, even so,

"ministers to the Soul's delight"! But "who can tell"?]

{545}[ni] _While all without's indicative of rest_.--[MS. erased.]

{546}[nj]

_A thing on which dull Time should never print age_,

_For whom stern Nature should forego her debt_.--[MS.]

[734] [Ransom and Morland were Byron's bankers. Douglas Kinnaird Was a

partner in the firm. (See _Letters_, 1898, ii. 85, note 2.)]

[nk] _Old Skeleton with ages for your booty_.--[MS. erased.]

{547}[735] ["He turned himself into all manner of forms with more ease

than the chameleon changes his colour.... Thus at Sparta he was all for

exercise, frugal in his diet, and severe in his manners. In Asia he was

as much for mirth and pleasure, luxury and ease."--Plutarch,

_Alcibiades_, Langhorne's translation, 1838, p. 150.]

[736] [For the phrase "Cupidon Dchan," applied to Count D'Orsay,

_vide ante_, p. 526, note 4.]

[737] [Plautus, _Truculentus_, act ii. sc. 8, line 14.]

[738] [Raphael's "Transfiguration" is in the Vatican.]

[739] 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 n***o 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.

[In a debate in the House of Commons, May 15, 1823 (_Parl. Deb._, N.S.

vol. ix. pp. 278, 279), Canning, replying to Fowell Buxton's motion for

the Abolition of Slavery, said, "God forbid that I should contend that

the Christian religion is favourable to slavery ... but if it be meant

that in the Christian religion there is a special denunciation against

slavery, that slavery and Christianity cannot exist together,--I think

that the honourable gentleman himself must admit that the proposition is

historically false."]

{549}[nl]

---- _and One Name Greater still_

_Whose lot it was to be the most mistaken_.--[MS, erased.]

[nm] _To leave the world by bigot fashions shaken_.--[MS. erased.]

[nn] _Which never flatters either Whig or Tory_.--[MS. erased.]

{550}[740] [Martial, _Epig._, x. 46.]

[741] ["Feeble" for "foible" is found in the writings of Mrs. Behn and

Sir R. L'Estrange (_N. Engl. Dict._).]

[no] _But now I can't tell when it will be done_.--[MS. erased.]

[742] [The _N. Engl. Dict._ quotes W. Hooper's _Rational Recreations_

(1794) as an earlier authority for the use of "concision" in the sense

of conciseness.]

[np] _Who now are weltering_----.--[MS. erased.]

[743] ["The cat will mew and dog will have his day." _Hamlet_, act v.

sc. 1, line 280.]

[nq]

_I should not be the foremost to deride_

_Their fault--but quickly take a sword the other way,_

_And wax an Ultra-royalist, where Royalty_

_Had nothing left it but a desperate Loyalty_.--[MS. erased.]

{551}[744]

["And hold no sin so deeply red

As that of breaking Priscian's head."

Butler's _Hudibras_, Part II. Canto II. lines 223, 224.]

[745] [Brougham, in the famous critique of _Hours of Idleness_

(_Edinburgh Review_, January, 1808, vol. xi. pp. 285-289), was pleased

"to counsel him that he do forthwith abandon poetry and turn his

talents, which are considerable, and his opportunities, which are great,

to better account." Others, however, gave him encouragement. See, for

instance, a review by J.H. Markland, who afterwards made his name as

editor of the Roxburgh Club issue of the Chester Mysteries (whence,

perhaps, Byron derived his knowledge of "Mysteries and Moralities"),

which concludes thus: "Heartily hoping that the 'illness and depression

of spirits,' which evidently pervade the greater part of these

effusions, are entirely dispelled; confident that 'George Gordon, Lord

Byron' will have a conspicuous niche in the future editions of 'Royal

and Noble Authors,' etc."--_Gent. Mag._, 1807, vol. lxxvii. p. 1217.]

[nr] _To marshal onwards to the Delphian Height._--[MS.]

{552}[746] ["Three small vessels were apparently all that Columbus had

requested. Two of them were light barques, called caravels, not superior

to river and coasting craft of more modern days.... That such long and

perilous expeditions into unknown seas, should be undertaken in vessels

without decks, and that they should live through the violent tempests by

which they were frequently assailed, remain among the singular

circumstances of those daring voyages."--_History of the Life and

Voyages of Christopher Columbus_, by Washington Irving, 1831, i. 78.]

[ns] _As Women seldom think by halves_----.--[MS. erased.]

{554}[747] This extraordinary and flourishing German colony in America

does not entirely exclude matrimony, as the "Shakers" do; but lays such

restrictions upon it as prevents more than a certain quantum of births

within a certain number of years; which births (as Mr. Hulme [perhaps

Thomas Hulme, whose _Journal_ is quoted in _Hints to Emigrants_, 1817,

pp. 5-18] observes) generally arrive "in a little flock like those of a

farmer's lambs, all within the same month perhaps." These Harmonists (so

called from the name of their settlement) are represented as a

remarkably flourishing, pious, and quiet people. See the various recent

writers on America.

[The Harmonists were emigrants from Wrtemburg, who settled (1803-1805)

under the auspices of George Rapp, in a township 120 miles north of

Philadelphia. This they sold, and "trekked" westwards to Indiana. One of

their customs was to keep watch by nights and to cry the hours to this

tune: "Again a day is past and a step made nearer to our end. Our time

runs away, and the joys of Heaven are our reward." (See _The

Philanthropist_, No. xx., 1815, vol. v, pp. 277-288.)]

[nt] _Which test I leave unto the Lords spiritual_.--[MS. erased.]

{555}[748] Jacob Tonson, according to Mr. Pope, was accustomed to call

his writers "able pens," "persons of honour," and, especially, "eminent

hands." Vide Correspondence, etc., etc.

["Perhaps I should myself be much better pleased, if I were told you

called me your little friend, than if you complimented me with the title

of a 'great genius,' or an eminent hand, as Jacob does all his

authors."--_Pope to Steele_, November 29, 1712, _Works of Alexander

Pope, 1871_, vi. 396.]

[749] [See D'Israeli's _Curiosities of Literature_, 1841, pp. 450-452,

and the Dissertation prefixed to Francis Douce's edition of Holbein's

_Dance of Death_, 1858, pp. 1-218.]

{556}[nu] ---- _Miss Allman and Miss Noman_.--[MS. erased.]

[nv]

---- _that smooth placid sea_

_Which did not show and yet concealed a storm_.--[MS. erased.]

{558}[750] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza lix. line 3,

_Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 374, note 2.]

{559}[751]

[" ... And, under him,

My Genius is rebuked; as it is said

Mark Antony's was by Csar."

_Macbeth_, act iii, sc. 1, lines 54-56.]

{560}[752] [_Warison_--cri-de-guerre--note of assault:--

"Either receive within these towers

Two hundred of my master's powers,

Or straight they sound their _warrison_,

And storm and spoil this garrison."

_Lay of the Last Minstrel_, Canto IV. stanza xxiv, lines 17-20.]

{561}[nw] _And adds a third to what was late a pair_.--[MS. erased.]

[753] [Compare:

"Life's a jest, and all things show it;

I thought so once, and _now I know it_."

Gay's Epitaph.]

[754] [For "Potage la bonne femme," "Dindon la Prigueux," "Soupe

la Beauveau," "Le dorey garni d'perlans frits," "Le cuisseau de pore

demi sel, garni de choux," "Le salmi de perdreaux l'Espagnole," "Les

bcasses," see "Bill of Fare for November," _The French Cook_, by Louis

Eustache Ude, 1813, p. viii. For "Les poulardes la Cond." "Le jambon

de Westphalie l'Espagnole," "Les petites timballes d'un salpicon la

Monglas" (?Montglat), "Les filets de perdreaux sauts la Lucullus,"

vide ibid., p. ix., and for "Petits puits d'amour garnis de confitures,"

vide Plate of Second Course (to face) p. vi.]

{562}[755] [Alexander the Great.]

{563}[756] A dish " la Lucullus." This hero, who conquered the East,

has left his more extended celebrity to the transplantation of cherries

(which he first brought into Europe), and the nomenclature of some very

good dishes;--and I am not sure that (barring indigestion) he has not

done more service to mankind by his cookery than by his conquests. A

cherry tree may weigh against a bloody laurel; besides, he has contrived

to earn celebrity from both.

[According to Pliny (_Nat, Hist._, lib. xv. cap. xxv. ed. 1593, ii.

131), there were no cherry trees in Italy until L. Lucullus brought them

home with him from Pontus after the Mithridatic War (B.C. 74), and it

was not for another hundred and twenty years that the cherry tree

crossed the Channel and was introduced into Britain.]

[757] "Petits puits d'amour garnis de confitures,"--a classical and

well-known dish for part of the flank of a second course [_vide ante_,

p. 562].

{564}[758] ["To-day in a palace, to-morrow in a cow-house--this day with

a Pacha, the next with a shepherd."--Letter to his mother, July 30,

1810, _Letters_, 1898, i. 295.]

[nx] _No lady but a dish_----.--[MS.]

{567}[759] ["This construction ('commence' with the infinitive) has been

objected to by stylists," says the _New English Dictionary_ (see art.

"Commence"). Its use is sanctioned by the authority of Pope, Landor,

Helps, and Lytton; but even so, it is questionable, if not

objectionable.]

[ny] _Sweet Lord! she was so sagely innocent_.--[MS.]

{568}[760] Subauditur "_non_;" omitted for the sake of euphony.

{569}[761] [John Scott, Earl of Eldon, Lord Chancellor, 1801 to 1827,

sat as judge (November 7, 1822) to hear the petition of Henry Wallop

Fellowes, that a commission of inquiry should be issued to ascertain

whether his uncle, Lord Portsmouth (who married Mary Anne Hanson, the

daughter of Byron's solicitor), was of sound mind, "and capable of

managing his own person and property." The Chancellor gave judgment that

a commission be issued, and the jury, February, 1823, returned a verdict

that Lord Portsmouth had been a lunatic since 1809. (See _Letters_,

1898, ii. 393, note 3, _et ibid._, 1901, vi. 170, note i.)]

[762] Hecla is a famous hot-spring in Iceland. [Byron seems to mistake

the volcano for the Geysers.]

{570}[763] [_Hamlet_, act iii. sc. 2, line 367.]

[764]

["By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night

Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard

Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers," etc.

_Richard III._, act v. sc. 3, lines 216-218.]

[765] Hobbes: who, doubting of his own soul, paid that compliment to the

souls of other people as to decline their visits, of which he had some

apprehension.

[Bayle (see art. "Hobbes" [_Dict. Crit. and Hist._, 1736, iii. 471,

note N.]) quotes from _Vita Hobb._, p. 106: "He was as falsely accused

by some of being unwilling to be alone, because he was afraid of

spectres and apparitions, vain bugbears of fools, which he had chased

away by the light of his Philosophy," and proceeds to argue that,

perhaps, after all, Hobbes was afraid of the dark. "He was timorous to

the last degree, and consequently he had reason to distrust his

imagination when he was alone in a chamber in the night; for in spite of

him the memory of what he had read and heard concerning apparitions

would revive, though he was not persuaded of the reality of these

things." See, however, for his own testimony that he was "not afrayd of

sprights," _Letters and Lives of Eminent Persons_, by John Aubrey, 1813,

vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 624.]

{571}[766] [_Hamlet_, act iv. sc. 5, lines 41, 42.]

[767] End of Canto 15^th^. M^ch^. 25, 1823. B.--[MS.]