See [William] Mitford’s Greece (1829, V 314, 315), “Graecia Verax.” His great pleasure consists in praising tyrants, abusing Plutarch, spelling oddly, and writing quaintly; and what is strange, after all, his is the best modern history of Greece in any language, and he is perhaps the best of all modern historians whatsoever. Having named his sins, it is but fair to state his virtues—learning, labour, research, wrath, and partiality. I call the latter virtues in a writer, because they make him write in earnest.
[Byron consulted Mitford when he was at work on Sardanapalus. (See Extracts from a Diary, January 5, 1821, Letters, 1901, V 152, note 1.)] ↩
Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) married, in 1804, Harriet, daughter of John Eckersall of Claverton House, near Bath. There were three children of the marriage, of whom two survived him. Byron may be alluding to the apocryphal story of “his eleven daughters,” related by J. L. A. Cherbuliez, in the Journal des Économistes (1850, vol. XXV p. 135):
“Un soir … il y avait cercle chez M. de Sismondi, à sa maison de campagne près de Genève. … Enfin, on annonce le révérend Malthus et sa famille. Sa famille! … Alors on voit entrer une charmante jeune fille, puis une seconde, puis une troisième, puis une quatrième, puis … Il n’y en avait, ma fois, pas moins de onze!”
See Malthus and His Work, by James Bonar, 1885, pp. 412, 413. See, too, Nouveau Dictionnaire de L’Économie Politique, 1892, art. “Malthus.” —Editor ↩
Compare—
“How commentators each dark passage shun,
Love of Fame, the Universal Passion, by Edward Young, Sat. VII lines 97, 98
And hold their farthing candle to the sun.”
—Editor ↩
Philo-progenitiveness. Spurzheim and Gall discover the organ of this name in a bump behind the ears, and say it is remarkably developed in the bull. —Editor ↩
He played and paid, made love without much sin.
—[MS. erased]
Themselves on seldom yielding to temptation.
—[MS. erased]
Henry Hallam (1778–1859) published his View of the State of Europe in the Middle Ages in 1818. —Editor ↩
A drunken Gentleman of forty’s sure.
—[MS.]
This line may puzzle the commentators more than the present generation. ↩
If he can hiccup nonsense at a ball.
or,
If he goes after dinner to a ball.
—[MS. erased]
As You Like It, act II sc. 7, line 156; and Hamlet, act II sc. 2, lines, 97, 98. —Editor ↩
But first of little Leilah—.
—[MS.]
For the allusion to “unsunned snows,” vide ante, note 540. —Editor ↩
The reference may be to Hobhouse and the “Zoili of Albemarle Street,” who did their best to “tutor” him with regard to “blazing indiscretions” in Don Juan. —Editor ↩
That—but I will not listen, by your leave,
—[MS.]
Unto a single syllable—.
For another instance of this curious mistake, see letter to Hodgson, December 8, 1811, Letters, 1898, II 85; et Letters, p. 31, note 1. —Editor ↩
Painted and gilded—or, as it will tell
—[MS.]
More Muse-like—say—like Cytherea’s shell.
Vide ante, Preface to Cantos VI, VII, and VIII, paragraph. —Editor ↩
“Enfin partout la bonne société régle tout.”
—Voltaire
—Editor ↩
“This game originated, I believe, in Germany. … It is called the game of the goose, because at every fourth and fifth compartment of the table in succession a goose is depicted; and if the cast thrown by the player falls upon a goose, he moves forward double the number of his throw.”
(Sports and Pastimes, etc., by Joseph Strutt, 1801, p. 250)
Goldsmith, in his “Deserted Village,” among other “parlour splendours,” mentions “the twelve good rules, the royal game of goose.” —Editor ↩
Most young beginners may be taken so,
—[MS. erased]
But those who have been a little used to roughing
Know how to end this half-and-half flirtation.
“I’ll grow a talker for this gear.”
Merchant of Venice, act I sc. 1, line 110
—Editor ↩
Country where warm young people—.
—[MS. erased]
Pope and Scott use the quasi-contracted “gynocracy” for “gynaecocracy.” (See N. Engl. Dict.) —Editor ↩
Of white cliffs—and white bosoms—and blue eyes—
—[MS. erased]
And stockings—virtues, loves and Chastities.
Hor., Epist., lib. 1, ep. XIV line 43. The meaning is that Europe makes but little progress in the discovery and settlement of Africa, and, as it were, “ploughs the sands.” —Editor ↩
Though many thousands both of birth and pluck too,
Have ventured past the jaws of Moor and Tiger.1222
“Though many degrees nearer our own fair and blue-eyed beauties in complexion … yet no people ever lost more by comparison than did the white ladies of Moorzuk [capital of Fezzan] with the black ones of Bornou and Sudan.”
—Narrative of Travels … in Northern and Central Africa, 1822–24, by Denham, Clapperton, and Oudney, 1828, II 133
—Editor ↩
Above, all sunshine, and, below, all ice.
—[MS. erased]
Compare “Prisoner of Chillon,” lines 82–85, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 17. —Editor ↩
The Russians, as is well known, run out from their hot baths to plunge into the Neva; a pleasant practical antithesis, which it seems does them no harm. ↩
But once there (few have felt this more than I).
—[MS. erased]
