LITMIR.BIZ

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Good night, and joy be with you all."]

36 [Robert Rushton, the son of one of the Newstead tenants. "Robert I take with me; I like him, because, like myself, he seems a friendless animal. Tell Mr. Rushton his son is well, and doing well" (letter to Mrs. Byron, Falmouth, June 22, 1809: Letters, 1898, i. 224).]

aj Our best gos-hawk can hardly fly So merrily along.—[MS.] Our best greyhound can hardly fly.—[D. erased.]

ak Here follows in the MS. the following erased stanza:—

      My mother is a high-born dame, And much misliketh me; She saith my riot bringeth shame On all my ancestry. I had a sister once I ween, Whose tears perhaps will flow; But her fair face I have not seen For three long years and moe.

al Oh master dear I do not cry From fear of wave or wind.—[MS.]

37 [Robert was sent back from Gibraltar under the care of Joe Murray (see letter to Mr. Rushton, August 15, 1809: Letters, 1898, i. 242).]

38 [William Fletcher, Byron's valet. He was anything but "staunch" in the sense of the song (see Byron's letters of November 12, 1809, and June 28, 1810) (Letters, 1898, i. 246, 279); but for twenty years he remained a loyal and faithful servant, helped to nurse his master in his last illness, and brought his remains back to England.]

am Enough, enough, my yeoman good. All this is well to say; But if I in thy sandals stood I'd laugh to get away.—[MS. erased, D.]

an For who would trust a paramour Or e'en a wedded feere— Though her blue eyes were streaming o'er, And torn her yellow hair?—[MS.]

39 ["I leave England without regret—I shall return to it without pleasure. I am like Adam, the first convict sentenced to transportation, but I have no Eve, and have eaten no apple but what was sour as a crab" (letter to F. Hodgson, Falmouth, June 25, 1809, Letters, 1898, i. 230). If this Confessio Amantis, with which compare the "Stanzas to a Lady, on leaving England," is to be accepted as bonâ fide, he leaves England heart-whole, but for the bitter memory of Mary Chaworth.]

ao Here follows in the MS., erased:—

      Methinks it would my bosom glad, To change my proud estate, And be again a laughing lad With one beloved playmate. Since youth I scarce have pass'd an hour Without disgust or pain, Except sometimes in Lady's bower, Or when the bowl I drain.

40 ["I do not mean to exchange the ninth verse of the 'Good Night.' I have no reason to suppose my dog better than his brother brutes, mankind; and Argus we know to be a fable" (letter to Dallas, September 23, 1811: Letters, 1898, ii. 44).

      Byron was recalling an incident which had befallen him some time previously (see letter to Moore, January 19, 1815): "When I thought he was going to enact Argus, he bit away the backside of my breeches, and never would consent to any kind of recognition, in despite of all kinds of bones which I offered him." See, too, for another thrust at Argus, Don Juan, Canto III. stanza xxiii. But he should have remembered that this particular Argus "was half a wolf by the she side." His portrait is preserved at Newstead (see Poetical Works, 1898, i. 280, Edition de Luxe).

      For the expression of a different sentiment, compare The Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog (first published in Hobhouse's Imit. and Transl., 1809), and the prefatory inscription on Boatswain's grave in the gardens of Newstead, dated November 16, 1808 (Life, p. 73).]

41 [Cintra's "needle-like peaks," to the north-west of Lisbon, are visible from the mouth of the Tagus.]

42 [Compare Ovid, Amores, i. 15, and Pliny, Hist. Nat., iv. 22. Small particles of gold are still to be found in the sands of the Tagus, but the quantity is, and perhaps always was, inconsiderable.]

ap ——where thronging rustics reap.—[MS. erased.]

aq What God hath done—[MS. D.]

ar Those Lusian brutes and earth from worst of wretches purge.—[MS.]

43 ["Lisboa is the Portuguese word, consequently the very best. Ulissipont is pedantic; and as I have Hellas and Eros not very long before, there would be something like an affectation of Greek terms, which I wish to avoid" (letter to Dallas, September 23, 1811: Letters, 1898, ii. 44. See, too, Poetical Works, 1883, p. 5).]

as Ulissipont, or Lisbona.—[MS. pencil.]

at Which poets, prone to lie, have paved with gold.—[MS.] Which poets sprinkle o'er with sands of gold.—[MS. pencil.] Which fabling poets—[D. pencil.]

44 [For Byron's estimate of the Portuguese, see The Curse of Minerva, lines 233, 234, and note to line 231 (Poetical Works, 1898, i. 469, 470). In the last line of the preceding stanza, the substitution of the text for var. i. was no doubt suggested by Dallas in the interests of prudence.]

au Who hate the very hand that waves the sword To shield them, etc.—[MS. D.] To guard them, etc.—[MS. pencil.]

av Mid many things that grieve both nose and ee.—[MS.] Midst many——.—[MS. D.]

aw ——smelleth filthily.—[MS. D.]

ax ——dammed with dirt.—[MS. erased.]

45 [For a fuller description of Cintra, see letter to Mrs. Byron, dated August 11, 1808 (Life, p. 92; Letters, 1898, i. 237). Southey, not often in accord with Byron, on his return from Spain (1801) testified that "for beauty all English, perhaps all existing, scenery must yield to Cintra" (Life and Corr. of R. Southey, ii. 161).]

ay ——views too sweet and vast——.—[MS. erased.]

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