Compare English Bards, etc., lines 309–318, Poetical Works, 1898, I 321, note 1. —Editor ↩
Thrower down of buildings—.
—[MS. erased]
Byron had, no doubt, inspected the plan of Colonel Wildman’s elaborate restoration of the Abbey, which was carried out at a cost of one hundred thousand pounds (see stanza LIX lines 1, 2). The kitchen and domestic offices, which extended at right angles to the west front of the Abbey (see “Newstead from a Picture by Peter Tilleman, circ. 1720” Letters, 1898, I (to face p.) 216), were pulled down and rebuilt, the massive Sussex Tower (so named in honour of H. R. H. the Duke of Sussex) was erected at the southwest corner of the Abbey, and the south front was, in part, rebuilt and redecorated. Byron had been ready to “leave everything” with regard to his beloved Newstead to Wildman’s “own feelings, present or future” (see his letter, November 18, 1818, Letters, 1900, IV 270); but when the time came, the necessary and, on the whole, judicious alterations of his successor, must have cost the “banished Lord” many a pang. —Editor ↩
“Ausu Romano, sere Veneto” is the inscription (and well inscribed in this instance) on the sea walls between the Adriatic and Venice. The walls were a republican work of the Venetians; the inscription, I believe, Imperial; and inscribed by Napoleon the First. It is time to continue to him that title—there will be a second by and by, “Spes altera mundi,” if he live; let him not defeat it like his father. But in any case, he will be preferable to “Imbéciles.” There is a glorious field for him, if he know how to cultivate it.
[Francis Charles Joseph Napoleon, Duke of Reichstadt, died at Vienna, July 22, 1832. But, none the less, Byron’s prophecy was fulfilled.] ↩
Burgage, or tenure in burgage, is where the king or some other person is lord of an ancient borough, in which the tenements are held by a yearly rent certain. —Editor ↩
“I conjure you, by that which you profess,
Macbeth, act IV sc. 1, lines 50–53
(Howe’er you come to know it) answer me:
Though you untie the winds, and let them fight
Against the churches.”
—Editor ↩
See the lines “To my Son,” Poetical Works, 1898, I 260, note 1. —Editor ↩
See Spenser’s Faëry Queen, Book I Canto IX stanza 6, line 1. —Editor ↩
To name what passes for a puzzle rather,
—[MS. erased]
Although there must be such a thing—a father.
“Rather than so, come, Fate, into the list,
Macbeth, act III sc. 1, lines 70, 71
And champion me to the utterance.”
—Editor ↩
For “Septemberers (Septembriseurs),” see Carlyle’s French Revolution, 1839, III 50. —Editor ↩
“Query, Sydney Smith, author of Peter Plymley’s Letters?—Printer’s Devil.”—Ed. 1833. Byron must have met Sydney Smith (1771–1845) at Holland House. The “fat fen vicarage” (vide infra, stanza LXXXII line 8) was Foston-le-Clay (Foston, All Saints), near Barton Hill, Yorkshire, which Lord Chancellor Erskine presented to Sydney Smith in 1806. The “living” consisted of “three hundred acres of glebe-land of the stiffest clay,” and there was no parsonage house.—See A Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith, by Lady Holland, 1855, I 100–107. —Editor ↩
“Observe, also, three grotesque figures in the blank arches of the gable which forms the eastern end of St. Hugh’s Chapel,” and of these, “one is popularly said to represent the ‘Devil looking over Lincoln.’ ”
—Handbook to the Cathedrals of England, by R. J. King, Eastern Division, p. 394, note X
The devil looked over Lincoln because the unexampled height of the central tower of the cathedral excited his envy and alarm; or, as Fuller (Worthies: Lincolnshire) has it, “overlooked this church, when first finished, with a torve and tetrick countenance, as maligning men’s costly devotions.” So, at least, the vanity of later ages interpreted the saying; but a time was when the devil “looked over” Lincoln to some purpose, for in AD 1185 an earthquake clave the Church of Remigius in twain, and in 1235 a great part of the central tower, which had been erected by Bishop Hugh de Wells, fell and injured the rest of the building. —Editor ↩
For laughter rarely shakes these aguish folks.
—[MS. erased]
Took down the gay bon-mot.—
—[MS. erased]
To hammer half a laugh—.
—[MS. erased]
“There’s a difference to be seen between a beggar and a Queen;
And I’ll tell you the reason why;
A Queen does not swagger, nor get drunk like a beggar,
Nor be half so merry as I,” etc.“There’s a difference to be seen, ’twixt a Bishop and a Dean,
And I’ll tell you the reason why;
A Dean can not dish up a dinner like a Bishop,
And that’s the reason why!”
—Editor ↩
“Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus.”
Terentius, Eun., act IV sc. 5, line 6
—Editor ↩
In French “mobilité.” I am not sure that mobility is English; but it is expressive of a quality which rather belongs to other climates, though it is sometimes seen to a great extent in our own. It may be defined as an excessive susceptibility of immediate impressions—at the same time without losing the past: and is, though sometimes apparently useful to the possessor, a most painful and unhappy attribute.
[“That he was
