—Editor ↩
“Nil admirari prope res est una, Numici,
Solaque quae possit facere et servare beatum.”
Hor., Epist., lib. 1, ep. VI lines 1, 2
—Editor ↩
“Not to admire, is all the Art I know
“To Mr. Murray” (Lord Mansfield), Pope’s Imitations of Horace, Book I epist. VI lines 1–4
To make men happy, and to keep them so,
(Plain Truth, dear Murray, needs no flow’rs of speech,
So take it in the very words of Creech).”
Thomas Creech (1659–1701) published his Translation of Horace in 1684. In the second edition, 1688, p. 487, the lines run—
“Not to admire, as most are wont to do,
It is the only method that I know,
To make Men happy and to keep ’em so.”
—Editor ↩
Johnson placed judgment and friendship above admiration and love.
“Admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne; judgment and friendship like being enlivened.”
See Boswell’s Life of Johnson, 1876, p. 450. —Editor ↩
There is nothing, perhaps, more distinctive of birth than the hand. It is almost the only sign of blood which aristocracy can generate. ↩
In old pictures of the Fall, it is a cherub who whispers into the ear of Eve. The serpent’s coils are hidden in the foliage of the tree. —Editor ↩
The very women half forgave her face.
—[MS. Erased]
Had his instructions—where and how to deal.
—[MS.]
And husbands now and then are mystified.
—[MS.]
Narrow javelins, once known as archegays—the assegais of Zulu warfare. —Editor ↩
But nature teaches what power cannot spoil
—[MS.]
And, though it was a new and strange sensation,
Young female hearts are such a genial soil
For kinder feelings, she forgot her station.
War with your heart—.
—[MS.]
See Fielding’s History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, Bk. I chap. V. —Editor ↩
“ ‘But if my boy with virtue be endued,
Gifford, Juvenal, Sat. X 473–480
What harm will beauty do him?’ Nay, what good?
Say, what avail’d, of old, to Theseus’ son,
The stern resolve? what to Bellerophon?—
O, then did Phaedra redden, then her pride
Took fire to be so steadfastly denied!
Then, too, did Sthenobaea glow with shame,
And both burst forth with unextinguish’d flame!”
The adventures of Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, and Bellerophon are well known. They were accused of incontinence, by the women whose inordinate passions they had refused to gratify at the expense of their duty, and sacrificed to the fatal credulity of the husbands of the disappointed fair ones. It is very probable that both the stories are founded on the Scripture account of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife.—Footnote, Juvenal, ed. 1817, II pp. 49, 50. —Editor ↩
The poets and romances—.
—[MS.]
And this strong second cause (to tire no longer
—[MS. Alternative reading]
Your patience) shows the first must still be stronger.
“By Heaven! methinks, it were an easy leap,
Henry IV, act I sc. 3, lines 201, 202
To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon.”
—Editor ↩
Like natural Shakespeare on the immortal page.
—[MS.]
“And when I have stol’n upon these sons-in law,
King Lear, act IV sc. 6, lines 185, 186
Then kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.”
—Editor ↩
“A woman scorn’d is pitiless as fate,
Gifford’s Juvenal, Sat. X lines 481, 482, ed. 1817, II p. 50
For, there, the dread of shame adds stings to hate.”
—Editor ↩
“Yes—my valour is certainly going! it is sneaking off! I feel it oozing out, as it were, at the palms of my hands!”
—Sheridan’s Rivals, act V sc. 3
Or all the stuff which uttered by the “Blues” is.
—[MS.]
But prithee—get my women in the way,
—[MS.]
That all the stars may gleam with due adorning.
Of Cantemir or Knollēs—.
—[MS.]
It may not be unworthy of remark, that Bacon, in his essay on “Empire” (Essays, No. XX), hints that Solyman was the last of his line; on what authority, I know not. These are his words:
“The destruction of Mustapha was so fatal to Solyman’s line; as the succession of the Turks from Solyman until this day is suspected to be untrue, and of strange blood; for that Selymus the second was thought to be supposititious.”
But Bacon, in his historical authorities, is often inaccurate. I could give half a dozen instances from his Apophthegms only.
[Selim II (1524–1574) succeeded his father as Sultan in 1566. Hofmann (Lexicon Univ.) describes him as “meticulosus, effeminatus, ebriosus,” but neither Demetrius Cantemir, in his History of the Growth and Decay of the Othman Empire (translated by N. Tyndal, 1734); nor The Turkish History (written by Mr. Knolles, 1701), cast any doubts on his legitimacy. Byron complained of the omission from the notes to the first edition of Don Juan, of his corrections of Bacon’s “Apophthegms” (see Letters, 1901, V Appendix VI pp. 597–600), in a letter to Murray, dated January 21, 1821—vide Letters, p. 220.] ↩
Gibbon. —Editor ↩
Because he kept them wrapt up in his closet, he
—[MS.]
Ruled fair wives and twelve hundred whores, unseen,
More easily than Christian kings one queen.
Then ended many a fair Sultana’s trip:
—[MS.]
The Public knew no more than does this rhyme;
No printed scandals flew—the fish, of course,
Were better—while the morals were no worse.
No sign of its depression anywhere.
—[MS.]
“We attempted to visit the Seven Towers,
