Sir John Ross (1777–1856) published A Voyage of Discovery … for the purpose of Exploring Baffin’s Bay, etc., in 1819; Sir W. E. Parry (1790–1855) published his Journal of a Voyage of Discovery to the Arctic Regions Between 4th April and 18th November, 1818, in 1820. —Editor ↩
Not only pleasure’s sin, but sin’s a pleasure.
—[MS.]
And lose in shining snow their summits blue.
—[MS.]
’Twas midnight—dark and sombre was the night, etc.
—[MS.]
And supper, punch, ghost-stories, and such chat.
—[MS.]
“ ‘All that, Egad,’ as Bayes says” [in the Duke of Buckingham’s play The Rehearsal].—Letter to Murray, September 28, 1820, Letters, 1901, V 80. —Editor ↩
“Lobster-sallad, not a lobster-salad. Have you been at a London ball, and not known a Lobster-sallad?”
—[H.]—[Revise]
—Editor ↩
“Tonight, as Countess Guiccioli observed me poring over Don Juan, she stumbled by mere chance on the 137th stanza of the First Canto, and asked me what it meant. I told her, ‘Nothing—but your husband is coming.’ As I said this in Italian with some emphasis, she started up in a fright, and said, ‘Oh, my God, is he coming?’ thinking it was her own. … You may suppose we laughed when she found out the mistake. You will be amused, as I was;—it happened not three hours ago.”
—Letter to Murray, November 8, 1819, Letters, 1900, IV 374
It should be borne in mind that the loves of Juan and Julia, the irruption of Don Alfonso, etc., were rather of the nature of prophecy than of reminiscence. The First Canto had been completed before the Countess Guiccioli appeared on the scene. —Editor ↩
And thus as ’twere herself from out them crept.
—[MS. M]
Ere I the wife of such a man had been!
—[MS.]
But while this search was making, Julia’s tongue.
—[MS.]
The Spanish “Cortejo” is much the same as the Italian “Cavalier Servente.” ↩
Donna Julia here made a mistake. Count O’Reilly did not take Algiers—but Algiers very nearly took him: he and his army and fleet retreated with great loss, and not much credit, from before that city, in the year 1775.
[Alexander O’Reilly, born 1722, a Spanish general of Irish extraction, failed in an expedition against Algiers in 1775, in which the Spaniards lost four thousand men. In 1794 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the forces equipped against the army of the French National Convention. He died March 23, 1794.] ↩
The Italian names have an obvious signification. —Editor ↩
The chimney—fit retreat for any lover!
—[MS.]
—may deplore.
—[Alternative reading. MS. M]
“Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh.”
(Job 2:10)
—Editor ↩
“Don’t be read aloud.”
—[H.]—[Revise]
—Editor ↩
—than be put
—[MS.]
To drown with Clarence in his Malmsey butt.
And reckon up our balance with the devil.
—[MS.]
“Carissimo, do review the whole scene, and think what you would say of it, if written by another.”
—[H.]
“I would say, read ‘The Miracle’ [‘A Tale from Boccace’] in Hobhouse’s poems, and ‘January and May,’ and ‘Paulo Purganti,’ and ‘Hans Carvel,’ and ‘Joconde.’ These are laughable: it is the serious—Little’s poems and Lalla Rookh—that affect seriously. Now Lust is a serious passion, and cannot be excited by the ludicrous.”
—[B.]—Marginal Notes in Revise]
For the “Miracle,” see Imitations and Translations, 1809, pp. 111–128. “January and May” is Pope’s version of Chaucer’s “Merchant’s Tale.” “Paulo Purganti” and “Hans Carvel” are by Matthew Prior; and for “Joconde” (Nouvelle Tirée de L’Ariosto, canto XXVIII) see Contes et Nouvelles en Vers, de Mr. de la Fontaine, 1691, I 1–19. —Editor ↩
Compare
“The use made in the French tongue of the word tact, to denote that delicate sense of propriety, which enables a man to feel his way in the difficult intercourse of polished society, seems to have been suggested by similar considerations (i.e. similar to those which suggested the use of the word taste).”
—Outlines of Moral Philosophy, by Dugald Stewart, Part I sect. X ed. 1855, p. 48
For D’Alembert’s use of tact, to denote “that peculiar delicacy of perception (which, like the nice touch of a blind man) arises from habits of close attention to those slighter feelings which escape general notice,” see Philosophical Essays, by Dugald Stewart, 1818, p. 603. —Editor ↩
With base suspicion now no longer haunted.
—[MS.]
For the incident of the shoes, Lord Byron was probably indebted to the Scottish ballad—
“Our goodman came hame at e’en, and hame came he;
He spy’d a pair of jack-boots, where nae boots should be,
What’s this now, goodwife? What’s this I see?
How came these boots there, without the leave o’ me!
Boots! quo’ she:
Ay, boots, quo’ he.
Shame fa’ your cuckold face, and ill mat ye see,
It’s but a pair of water stoups the cooper sent to me,” etc.
See James Johnson’s Musical Museum, 1787, etc., V 466. —Editor ↩
Found—heaven knows how—his solitary way.
—[MS.]
William Brodie Gurney (1777–1855), the son and grandson of eminent shorthand writers, “reported the proceedings against the Duke of York in 1809, the trials of Lord Cochrane in 1814, and of Thistlewood in 1820, and the proceedings against Queen Caroline.”—Dict. of Nat. Biog., art. “Gurney.” —Editor ↩
[“Venice, December 7, 1818.
“After that stanza in the first canto of Don Juan (sent by Lord Lauderdale) towards the conclusion of the canto—I speak of the stanza whose two last lines are—
“ ‘The best is that in short-hand ta’en by Gurney,
Who to Madrid
