For such all women are just then, no doubt.
—[MS.]
Of such sensations, in the drowsy drear
—[MS.]
After—which shadows the, say—second year.
Of that sad heavy, drowsy, doubly drear
—[MS. erased]
After, which shadows the first—say, year.
Stanza LXXVI is not in the MS. —Editor ↩
A Russian estate is always valued by the number of the slaves upon it. ↩
The “Protassova” (born 1744) was a cousin of the Orlofs. She survived Catherine by many years, and was, writes M. Waliszewski (The Story of a Throne, 1895, II 193), “present at the Congress of Vienna, covered with diamonds like a reliquary, and claiming precedence of every one.” She is named l’éprouveuse in a note to the Mémoires Secrets, 1800, I 148. —Editor ↩
And not be dazzled by its early glare.
—[MS. erased]
End of Canto 9th, Augt. Sept., 1822. B. ↩
In a most natural whirling of rotation.
—[MS. erased]
Since Adam—gloriously against an apple.
—[MS. erased]
“Neither Pemberton nor Whiston, who received from Newton himself the history of his first Ideas of Gravity, records the story of the falling apple. It was mentioned, however, to Voltaire by Catherine Barton (afterwards Mrs. Conduit), Newton’s niece. We saw the apple tree in 1814. … The tree was so much decayed that it was taken down in 1820.”
(Memoirs, etc., of Sir Isaac Newton, by Sir David Brewster, 1855, I 27, note 1)
Voltaire tells the story thus (Éléments de la Philosophie de Newton, Partie III chap. III):
“Un jour, en l’année 1666 [1665], Newton, retiré à la campagne, et voyant tomber des fruits d’un arbre, à ce que m’a conté sa nièce (Madame Conduit), se laissa aller à une méditation profonde sur la cause qui entraîne ainsi tous les corps dans une ligne qui, si elle était prolongée, passerait à peu près par le centre de la terre.”
—Oeuvres Complètes, 1837, V 727
—Editor ↩
To the then unploughed stars—.
—[MS. erased]
Compare “Churchill’s Grave,” line 23, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 47, note 1. —Editor ↩
Shelley entitles him “The Pilgrim of Eternity,” in his Adonais (stanza XXX line 3), which was written and published at Pisa in 1821. —Editor ↩
Byron left Pisa (Palazzo Lanfranchi on the Arno) for the Villa Saluzzo at Genoa, in the autumn of 1822. —Editor ↩
Malicious people—.
—[MS. erased]
“We think the abuse of Mr. Southey … by far too savage and intemperate. It is of ill example, we think, in the literary world, and does no honour either to the taste or the temper of the noble author.”
—Edinburgh Review, February, 1822, vol. XXXVI p. 445
“I have read the recent article of Jeffrey … I suppose the long and the short of it is, that he wishes to provoke me to reply. But I won’t, for I owe him a good turn still for his kindness bygone. Indeed, I presume that the present opportunity of attacking me again was irresistible; and I can’t blame him, knowing what human nature is.”
—Letter to Moore, June 8, 1822, Letters, 1901, VI 80
—Editor ↩
—that essence of all Lie.
—[MS. erased]
“Reformers,” or rather “Reformed.” The Baron Bradwardine in Waverley is authority for the word. [The word is certainly in Butler’s Hudibras, Part II Canto 2—
“Although your Church be opposite
To mine as Black Fryars are to White,
In Rule and Order, yet I grant
You are a Reformado Saint.”]
Stanza XV is not in the MS. The “legal broom,” sc. Brougham, was an afterthought. —Editor ↩
Query, suit?—Printer’s Devil. ↩
It has been argued that when “great Caesar fell” he wore his “robe” to muffle up his face, and that, in like manner, Jeffrey sank the critic in the lawyer. A “deal likelier” interpretation is that Jeffrey wore “his gown” right royally, as Caesar wore his “triumphal robe.” (See Plutarch’s Julius Caesar, Langhorne’s translation, 1838, p. 515.) —Editor ↩
“I don’t like to bore you about the Scotch novels (as they call them, though two of them are English, and the rest half so); but nothing can or could ever persuade me, since I was the first ten minutes in your company, that you are not the man. To me these novels have so much of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ (I was bred a canny Scot till ten years old), that I never move without them.”
—Letter to Sir W. Scott, January 12, 1822, Letters, 1901, VI 4, 5
—Editor ↩
Compare The Island, Canto II lines 280–297. —Editor ↩
The brig of Don, near the “auld toun” of Aberdeen, with its one arch, and its black deep salmon stream below, is in my memory as yesterday. I still remember, though perhaps I may misquote, the awful proverb which made me pause to cross it, and yet lean over it with a childish delight, being an only son, at least by the mother’s side. The saying as recollected by me was this, but I have never heard or seen it since I was nine years of age:—
“Brig of Balgounie, black’s your wa’,
Wi’ a wife’s ae son, and a mear’s ae foal,
Doun ye shall fa’!”
[See for illustration of the Brig o’ Balgownie, with its single Gothic arch, Letters, 1901 [L.P.], V 406. ] ↩
“Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,” etc.
