Sc. toilette, a Gallicism. —Editor ↩
Byron loved to make fact and fancy walk together, but, here, his memory played him false, or his art kept him true. The Black Friar walked and walks in the Guests’ Refectory (or Banqueting Hall, or “Gallery” of this stanza), which adjoins the Prior’s Parlour, but the room where Byron slept (in a four-post bed—a coronet, at each corner, atop) is on the floor above the Prior’s Parlour, and can only be approached by a spiral staircase. Both rooms look west, and command a view of the “lake’s billow” and the “cascade.” Moreover, the Guests’ Refectory was never hung with “old pictures.” It would seem that Don Juan (perhaps Byron on an emergency) slept in the Prior’s Parlour, and that in the visionary Newstead the pictures forsook the Grand Drawing-Room for the Hall. Hence the scene! El Libertado steps out of the Gothic Chamber “forth” into the “gallery,” and lo! “a monk in cowl and beads.” But, Quien sabe? The Psalmist’s caution with regard to princes is not inapplicable to poets. —Editor ↩
Compare Mariner’s description of the cave in Hoonga Island (Poetical Works, 1901, V 629, note 1). —Editor ↩
“The place,” wrote Byron to Moore, August 13, 1814, “is worth seeing as a ruin, and I can assure you there was some fun there, even in my time; but that is past. The ghosts, however, and the Gothics, and the waters, and the desolation, make it very lively still.”
“It was,” comments Moore (Life, p. 262, note 1), “if I mistake not, during his recent visit to Newstead, that he himself actually fancied he saw the ghost of the Black Friar, which was supposed to have haunted the Abbey from the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, and which he thus describes from the recollection, perhaps, of his own fantasy, in Don Juan. … It is said that the Newstead ghost appeared, also, to Lord Byron’s cousin, Miss Fanny Parkins, and that she made a sketch of him from memory.”
The legend of the Black Friar may, it is believed at Newstead (et vide post, “Song,” stanza II line 5, p. 583), be traced to the alarm and suspicion of the country-folk, who, on visiting the Abbey, would now and then catch sight of an aged lay-brother, or monkish domestic, who had been retained in the service of the Byrons long after the Canons had been “turned adrift.” He would naturally keep out of sight of a generation who knew not monks, and, when surprised in the cloisters or ruins of the church, would glide back to his own quarters in the dormitories. —Editor ↩
“Show his eyes, and grieve his heart;
Macbeth, act IV sc. 1, lines 110, 111
Come like shadows, so depart.”
—Editor ↩
With that she rose as graceful as a Roe
—[MS. erased]
Slips from the mountain in the month of June,
And opening her Piano ’gan to play
Forthwith—“It was a Friar of Orders Gray.”
By their bed of death he receives their [breath].
—[MS. erased]
I think that it was a carpet on which Diogenes trod, with—“Thus I trample on the pride of Plato!”—“With greater pride,” as the other replied. But as carpets are meant to be trodden upon, my memory probably misgives me, and it might be a robe, or tapestry, or a tablecloth, or some other expensive and uncynical piece of furniture.
[It was Plato’s couch or lounge which Diogenes stamped upon. “So much for Plato’s pride!” “And how much for yours, Diogenes?” “Calco Platonis fastum!” “Ast fastu alio?” (Vide Diogenis Laertii De Vita et Sententiis, lib. VI ed. 1595, p. 321.)
For “Attic Bee,” vide Cic. I De Div., XXXVI § 78,
“At Platoni cum in cunis parvulo dormienti apes in labellis consedissent, responsum est, singulari illum suavitate orationis fore.”]
For two translations of this Portuguese song, see Poetical Works, 1900, III 71. —Editor ↩
I remember that the mayoress of a provincial town, somewhat surfeited with a similar display from foreign parts, did rather indecorously break through the applauses of an intelligent audience—intelligent, I mean, as to music—for the words, besides being in recondite languages (it was some years before the peace, ere all the world had travelled, and while I was a collegian), were sorely disguised by the performers:—this mayoress, I say, broke out with, “Rot your Italianos! for my part, I loves a simple ballat!” Rossini will go a good way to bring most people to the same opinion some day. Who would imagine that he was to be the successor of Mozart? However, I state this with diffidence, as a liege and loyal admirer of Italian music in general, and of much of Rossini’s; but we may say, as the connoisseur did of painting in The Vicar of Wakefield, that “the picture would be better painted if the painter had taken more pains.”
[A little while, and Rossini is being lauded at the expense of a degenerate modern rival. Compare Browning’s Bishop Blougram’s Apology. “Where sits Rossini patient in his stall.” —Poetical Works, ed. 1868, V 276] ↩
Compare The Two Foscari, act III sc. 1, line 172, Poetical Works, 1901, V 159, note 1. —Editor ↩
Of Lady Beaumont, who was “weak enough” to admire Wordsworth, see “The Blues,” Ecl. II line 47, sq., Poetical Works, 1901, IV 582. —Editor ↩
Christopher Anstey (1724–1802) published his
