“Le brigadier Markow, insistant pour qu’on emportât le prince blessé, reçut un coup de fusil qui lui fracassa le pied.”
—Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 210
—Editor ↩
“Trois cents bouches à feu vomissaient sans interruption, et trente mille fusils alimentaient sans reláche une grêle de balles.”
—Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 210
—Editor ↩
“Les troupes, déja débarquées, se portèrent á droite pour s’emparer d’une batterie; et celles débarquées plus bas, principalement composées des grenadiers de Fanagorie, escaladaient le retranchement et la palissade.”
—Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 210
—Editor ↩
A fact: see the Waterloo Gazettes. I recollect remarking at the time to a friend:—
“There is fame! a man is killed, his name is Grose, and they print it Grove.” I was at college with the deceased, who was a very amiable and clever man, and his society in great request for his wit, gaiety, and “Chansons à boire.”
In the London Gazette Extraordinary of June 22, 1815, Captain Grove, 1st Guards, is among the list of killed. In the supplement to the London Gazette, published July 3, 1815, the mistake was corrected, and the entry runs, “1st Guards, 3rd Batt. Lieut. Edward Grose, (Captain).” I am indebted to the courtesy of the Registrar of the University of Cambridge for the information that Edward Grose matriculated at St. John’s College as a pensioner, December 7, 1805. Thanks to the “misprint” in the Gazette, and to Byron, he is “a name forever.”—Vir nullâ non donatus lauru! —Editor ↩
At the Battle of Mollwitz, April 10, 1741,
“the king vanishes for sixteen hours into the regions of Myth ‘into Fairyland,’ … of the king’s flight … the king himself, who alone could have told us fully, maintained always rigorous silence, and nowhere drops the least hint. So that the small fact has come down to us involved in a great bulk of fabulous cobwebs, mostly of an ill-natured character, set a-going by Voltaire, Valori, and others.”
—Carlyle’s Frederick the Great, 1862, III 314, 322, sq.
—Editor ↩
See General Valancey and Sir Lawrence Parsons.
Charles Vallancey (1721–1812), general in the Royal Engineers, published an “Essay on the Celtic Language,” etc., in 1782.
“The language [the Iberno-Celtic],” he writes (p. 4), “we are now going to explain, had such an affinity with the Punic, that it may be said to have been, in a great degree, the language of Hanibal (sic), Hamilcar, and of Asdrubal.”
Sir Laurence Parsons (1758–1841), second Earl of Rosse, represented the University of Dublin 1782–90, and afterwards King’s County, in the Irish House of Commons. He was an opponent of the Union. In a pamphlet entitled Defence of the Ancient History of Ireland, published in 1795, he maintains (p. 158) “that the Carthaginian and the Irish language being originally the same, either the Carthaginians must have been descended from the Irish, or the Irish from the Carthaginians.” —Editor ↩
The Portuguese proverb says that “hell is paved with good intentions.” —[See Vision of Judgment, stanza XXXVII line 8, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 499, note 2] ↩
At least the sharp faints of that “burning marle.”
—[MS. erased]
“The Nervii marched to the number of sixty thousand, and fell upon Caesar, as he was fortifying his camp, and had not the least notion of so sudden an attack. They first routed his cavalry, and then surrounded the twelfth and the seventh legions, and killed all the officers. Had not Caesar snatched a buckler from one of his own men, forced his way through the combatants before him, and rushed upon the barbarians; or had not the tenth legion, seeing his danger, ran from the heights where they were posted, and mowed down the enemy’s ranks, not one Roman would have survived the battle.”
—Plutarch, Caesar, Langhorne’s translation, 1838, p. 502
—Editor ↩
“As near a field of corn, a stubborn ass …
The Iliad, Lord Derby’s translation, bk. XI lines 639, 645
E’en so great Ajax son of Telamon.”
—Editor ↩
Nor care a single damn about his corps.
—[MS. erased]
“N’apercevant plus le commandant du corps dont je faisais partie, et ignorant où je devais porter mes pas, je crus reconnaître le lieu où le rempart était situé; on y faisait un feu assez vif, que je jugeai être celui … du général-major de Lascy.”
—Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, II 210
The speaker is the Duc de Richelieu. See, for original, his Journal de mon Voyage, etc., Soc. Imp. d’Hist. de Russie, tom. LIV p. 179. —Editor ↩
For he was dizzy, busy, and his blood
Lightening along his veins, and where he heard
The liveliest fire, and saw the fiercest flood
Of Friar Bacon’s mild discovery, shared
