“O for a blast of that dread horn,
Marmion, Canto VI stanza XXXIII lines 7–12
On Fontarabian echoes borne,
That to King Charles did come,
When Rowland brave, and Olivier,
And every paladin and peer,
On Roncesvalles died.”
—Editor ↩
Like an old Roman trumpet ere a battle.
—[MS. erased]
B. Genoa, Oct. 6th, 1822. End of Canto 10th. ↩
Berkeley did not deny the reality of existence, but the reality of matter as an abstract conception.
“It is plain,” he says (On the Principles of Human Knowledge, sect. IX), “that the very notion of what is called matter or corporeal substance, involves a contradiction in it.” Again, “It were a mistake to think that what is here said derogates in the least from the reality of things.”
His contention was that this reality depended, not on an abstraction called matter, “an inert, extended unperceiving substance,” but on “those unextended, indivisible substances or spirits, which act, and think, and perceive them [unthinking beings].”—On the Principles of Human Knowledge, sect. XCI, The Works of George Berkeley, D.D., 1820, I 27, 69, 70. —Editor ↩
Tempest, act V sc. I, line 95. —Editor ↩
“I have been very unwell—four days confined to my bed in ‘the worst inn’s worst room’ at Lerici, with a violent rheumatic and bilious attack, constipation, and the devil knows what.”
—Letter to Murray, October 9, 1822, Letters, 1901, VI 121
The same letter contains an announcement that he had “a fifth [Canto of Don Juan] (the 10th) finished, but not transcribed yet; and the eleventh begun.” —Editor ↩
Or Rome, or Tiber—Naples or the sea.
—[MS. erased]
Vide ante, Canto I stanza XIV lines 7, 8. —Editor ↩
—1 Henry IV, act I sc. 2, lines 24–28
Falstaff Let us be Diana’s foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon: and let men say, we be men of good government; being governed, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we—steal.
—Editor ↩
Gin. Hence the antithesis of “All Max” in the East to Almack’s in the West. (See Life in London, by Pierce Egan, 1823, pp. 284–290.) —Editor ↩
According to the Vocabulary of the Flash Language, compiled by James Hardy Vaux, in 1812, and published at the end of his Memoirs, 1819, II 149–227, a kiddy, or “flash-kiddy,” is a thief of the lower orders, who, when he is breeched by a course of successful depredation dresses in the extreme of vulgar gentility, and affects a knowingness in his air and conversation. A “swell” or “rank swell” (“real swell” appears in Egan’s Life in London) is the more recent “toff;” and “flash” is “fly,” “down,” or “awake,” i.e. knowing, not easily imposed upon. —Editor ↩
Hamlet, act V sc. 1, line 21. —Editor ↩
Ken is a house, s.c. a thieves’ lodging-house; spellken, a playhouse; high toby-spice is robbery on horseback, as distinguished from spice, i.e. footpad robbery; to flash the muzzle is to show off the face, to swagger openly; blowing or blowen is a doxy or trull; and nutty is, conjointly, amorous and fascinating. —Editor ↩
Poor Tom was once a knowing one in town.
—[MS. erased]
Not a mere kiddy, but a real one.
The advance of science and of language has rendered it unnecessary to translate the above good and true English, spoken in its original purity by the select mobility and their patrons. The following is a stanza of a song which was very popular at least in my early days:—
“On the high toby-spice flash the muzzle,
In spite of each gallows old scout;
If you at the spellken can’t hustle,
You’ll be hobbled in making a clout.
Then your blowing will wax gallows haughty,
When she hears of your scaly mistake,
She’ll surely turn snitch for the forty—
That her Jack may be regular weight.”
If there be any gemman so ignorant as to require a traduction, I refer him to my old friend and corporeal pastor and master, John Jackson, Esq., Professor of Pugilism; who, I trust, still retains the strength and symmetry of his model of a form, together with his good humour, and athletic as well as mental accomplishments.
[Gentleman Jackson was of good renown.
“Servility,” says Egan (Life in London, 1823, p. 217), “is not known to him. Flattery he detests. Integrity, impartiality, good-nature, and manliness, are the cornerstones of his understanding.”
Byron once said of him that “his manners were infinitely superior to those of the Fellows of the College whom I meet at the high table” (J. W. Clark, Cambridge, 1890, p. 140). (See, too, letter to John Jackson, September 18, 1808, Letters, 1898, I 189, note 2; “Hints from Horace,” line 638, Poetical Works, 1898, I 433, note 3.) As to the stanza quoted by Egan (Anecdotes of the Turf, 1827, p. 44), but not traduced or interpreted, “To be hobbled for making a clout” is to be taken into custody for stealing a handkerchief, to “turn snitch” is to inform, and the “forty” is the £40 offered for the detection of a capital crime, and shared by the police or Bow Street runners. Dangerous characters were let alone and tacitly encouraged to continue their career of crime, until the measure of their iniquity was full, and they “weighed forty.” If Jack was clumsy enough to be detected in a trifling theft, his “blowen” would go over to the enemy, and betray him for the sake of the Government reward
