For “Lycanthropy,” see “The Soldier’s Story” in the Satyricôn of Petronius Arbiter, cap. 62; see, too, Letters on Demonology, etc., by Sir W. Scott, 1830, pp. 211, 212. —Editor ↩
In respect of suavity and forbearance Melancthon was the counterpart of Luther. John Arrowsmith (1602–1657), in his Tractica Sacra, describes him as
“Vir in quo cum pietate doctrina, et cum utrâque candor certavit.”
—Editor ↩
Like Moses or like Cobbett who have ne’er.
Moses and Cobbet proclaim themselves the “meekest of men.” See their writings. —[MS.]
Like Moses who was “very meek” had ne’er.
—[MS. erased]
See his “Correspondance avec L’Impératrice de Russie,” Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire, 1836, X 393–477. M. Waliszewski, in his Story of a Throne, 1895, I 224, has gathered a handful of these flowers of speech:
“She is the chief person in the world. … She is the fire and life of nations. … She is a saint. … She is above all saints. … She is equal to the mother of God. … She is the divinity of the North.—Te Catherinam laudamus, te Dominam confitemur, etc., etc.”
—Editor ↩
Of everything that ever cursed a nation.
—[MS. erased]
“It is still more difficult to say which form of government is the worst—all are so bad. As for democracy, it is the worst of the whole; for what is (in fact) democracy?—an Aristocracy of Blackguards.”
—See “My Dictionary” (May 1, 1821), Letters, 1901, V 405, 406. —Editor ↩
Though priests and slaves may join the servile cry.
—[MS. erased]
In Greece I never saw or heard these animals; but among the ruins of Ephesus I have heard them by hundreds.
[See Childe Harold, Canto IV stanza CLIII line 6, Poetical Works, 1899, II 441; and Siege of Corinth, line 329, ibid., 1900, III 462, note 1.] ↩
Whereas the others hunt for rascal spiders.
—[MS. erased]
Which still are strongly fluttering to be free.
—[MS. erased]
Compare The Age of Bronze, line 576, sq., Poetical Works, 1901, V 570. —Editor ↩
Nadir Shah, or Thamas Kouli Khan, born November, 1688, invaded India, 1739–40, was assassinated June 19, 1747. —Editor ↩
—went mad and was
—[MS. erased]
Killed because what he swallowed would not pass.
He was killed in a conspiracy, after his temper had been exasperated by his extreme costivity to a degree of insanity.
[To such a height had his madness (attributed to melancholia produced by dropsy) attained, that he actually ordered the Afghan chiefs to rise suddenly upon the Persian guard, and seize the … chief nobles; but the project being discovered, the intended victims conspired in turn, and a body of them, including Nadir’s guard, and the chief of his own tribe of Afshar, entered his tent at midnight, and, after a moment’s involuntary pause—when challenged by the deep voice at which they had so often trembled—rushed upon the king, who being brought to the ground by a sabre-stroke, begged for life, and attempted to rise, but soon expired beneath the repeated blows of the conspirators. —The Indian Empire, by R. Montgomery Martin (1857), I 172] ↩
Compare Childe Harold, Canto I stanza LXVII line 5, Poetical Works, 1899, II 64, note 3. —Editor ↩
Or the substrata—.
—[MS.]
Compare Preface to Cain, Poetical Works, 1901, V 210, note 1. —Editor ↩
Vide ante, Canto VIII stanza CXXVI. —Editor ↩
Hamlet, act I sc. 5, line 189. —Editor ↩
I never know what’s next to come—.
—[MS. erased]
It is possible that the phrase “painted snows” was suggested by Tooke’s description of the winter-garden of the Taurida Palace:
“The genial warmth, … the voluptuous silence that reigns in this enchanting garden, lull the fancy into sweet romantic dreams: we think ourselves in the groves of Italy, while torpid nature, through the windows of this pavilion, announces the severity of a northern winter.”
(The Life, etc., 1800, III 48)
—Editor ↩
O’er limits which mightily—
—[MS. erased]
—in Youth and Glory’s pillory.
—[MS. erased]
In his Notes sur le Don Juanisme (Mercure de France, 1898, XXVI 66), M. Bruchard says that this phrase defines and summarizes the Byronic Don Juan. —Editor ↩
The Empress smiled while all the Orloff frowned—
—[MS. erased]
A numerous family, to whose heart or hand
Mild Catherine owed the chance of being crowned.
C. F. P. Masson, in his Mémoires Secrets, etc., 1880, I 150–178, gives a list of twelve favourites, and in this Canto, Don Juan takes upon himself the characteristics of at least three, Lanskoi, Zoritch (or Zovitch), and Plato Zoubof. For example (p. 167),
“Zoritch … est le seul étranger qu’elle ait osé créer son favori pendant son regne. C’étoit un Servien échappé du bagne de Constantinople où il étoit prisonnier: il parut, pour la première fois, en habit de hussard à la cour. Il éblouit tout le monde par sa beauté, et les vielles dames en parlent encore comme d’un Adonis.”
M. Waliszewski, in his Romance of an Empress (1894), devotes a chapter to “Private Life and Favouritism” (II 234–286), in which he graphically describes the election and inauguration of the Vremienchtchik, “the man of the moment,” paramour regnant, and consort of the Empress pro hac vice:
“ ‘We may observe in Russia a sort of interregnum in
