LITMIR.BIZ

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deign to cast A look along my page, that name enshrined Shalt thou be first beheld, forgotten last.—[MS.]

j Though more than Hope can claim—Ah! less could I require?—[MS.]

19 [The MS. does not open with stanza i., which was written after Byron returned to England, and appears first in the Dallas Transcript (see letter to Murray, September 5, 1811). Byron and Hobhouse visited Delphi, December 16, 1809, when the First Canto (see stanza lx.) was approaching completion (Travels in Albania, by Lord Broughton, 1858, i. 199).]

k Oh, thou of yore esteemed——.—[D.]

l Since later lyres are only strung on earth.—[D.]

20 [For the substitution of the text for vars. ii., iii., see letter to Dallas, September 21, 1811 (Letters, 1898, ii. 43).]

m ——thy glorious rill.—[D.] or, —wooed thee, drank the vaunted rill.—[D.]

n Sore given to revel and to Pageantry.—[MS. erased.]

o He chused the bad, and did the good affright With concubines——.—[MS.] No earthly things——.—[D.]

21 ["We [i.e. Byron and C.S. Matthews] went down [April, 1809] to Newstead together, where I had got a famous cellar, and Monks' dresses from a masquerade warehouse. We were a company of some seven or eight, ... and used to sit up late in our friars' dresses, drinking burgundy, claret, champagne, and what not, out of the skull-cup, and all sorts of glasses, and buffooning all round the house, in our conventual garments" (letter to Murray, November 19, 1820. See, too, the account of this visit which Matthews wrote to his sister in a letter dated May 22, 1809 [Letters, 1898, i. 150-160, and 153, note]). Moore (Life, p. 86) and other apologists are anxious to point out that the Newstead "wassailers" were, on the whole, a harmless crew of rollicking schoolboys "—were, indeed, of habits and tastes too intellectual for mere vulgar debauchery." And as to the "alleged 'harems,'" the "Paphian girls," there were only one or two, says Moore, "among the ordinary menials." But, even so, the "wassailers" were not impeccable, and it is best to leave the story, fact or fable, to speak for itself.

22 ["Hight" is the preterite of the passive "hote," and means "was called." "Childe Harold he hight" would be more correct. Compare Spenser's Faërie Queene, bk. i. c. ix. 14. 9, "She Queene of Faeries hight." But "hight" was occasionally used with the common verbs "is," "was." Compare The Ordinary, 1651, act iii. sc. 1—

      " ... the goblin

       That is hight Good-fellow Robin."

      Dodsley (ed. Hazlitt), xii. 253.]

p Childe Burun———.—[MS.]

23 [William, fifth Lord Byron (the poet's grand-uncle), mortally wounded his kinsman, Mr. Chaworth, in a duel which was fought, without seconds or witnesses, at the Star and Garter Tavern, Pall Mall, January 29, 1765. He was convicted of wilful murder by the coroner's jury, and of manslaughter by the House of Lords; but, pleading his privilege as a peer, he was set at liberty. He was known to the country-side as the "wicked Lord," and many tales, true and apocryphal, were told to his discredit (Life of Lord Byron, by Karl Elze, 1872, pp. 5, 6).]

q ———nor honied glose of rhyme.—[D. pencil.]

r Childe Burun———.—[MS.]

s For he had on the course too swiftly run.—[MS. erased.]

t Had courted many——.—[MS. erased.]

24 [Mary Chaworth. (Compare "Stanzas to a Lady, on leaving England," passim: Poetical Works, 1898, i. 285.)]

u ——Childe Burun——.—[MS.]

25 [Compare The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto I, stanza ix. 9— "And burning pride and high disdain Forbade the rising tears to flow."]

v And strait he fell into a reverie.—[MS.] ——sullen reverie.—[D.]

26 [Vide post, stanza xi. line 9, note.]

w Strange fate directed still to uses vile.—[MS. erased.]

x Now Paphian jades were heard to sing and smile.—[MS. erased.] Now Paphian nymphs——.—[D. pencil.]

27 [The brass eagle which was fished out of the lake at Newstead in the time of Byron's predecessor contained, among other documents, "a grant of full pardon from Henry V. of every possible crime ... which the monks might have committed previous to the 8th of December preceding (Murdris, per ipsos post decimum nonum Diem Novembris, ultimo præteritum perpetratis, si quæ fuerint, exceptis)" (Life, p. 2, note). The monks were a constant source of delight to the Newstead "revellers." Francis Hodgson, in his "Lines on a Ruined Abbey in a Romantic Country" (Poems, 1809), does not spare them—

      "'Hail, venerable pile!' whose ivied walls

       Proclaim the desolating lapse of years:

       And hail, ye hills, and murmuring waterfalls,

       Where yet her head the ruin'd Abbey rears.

       No longer now the matin tolling bell,

       Re-echoing loud among the woody glade,

       Calls the fat abbot from his drowsy cell,

       And warns the maid to flee, if yet a maid.

       No longer now the festive bowl goes round,

       Nor monks get drunk in honour of their God."]

y The original MS. inserts two stanzas which were rejected during the composition of the poem:—

      Of all his train there

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