[609] {573}[Benjamin Stillingfleet is said to have attended evening parties at Mrs. Montague's in grey or blue worsted stockings, in lieu of full dress. The ladies who excused and tolerated this defiance of the conventions were nicknamed "blues," or "blue-stockings." Hannah More describes such a club or coterie in her Bas Bleu, which was circulated in MS. in 1784 (Boswell's Life of Johnson, 1848, p. 689). A farce by Moore, entitled The M. P., or The Blue-Stocking, was played for the first time at the Lyceum, September 30, 1811. The heroine, "Lady Bab Blue, is a pretender to poetry, chemistry, etc."—Genest's Hist. of the Stage, 1832, viii. 270.]

[610] {574}[Compare the dialogue between Mr. Paperstamp, Mr. Feathernest, Mr. Vamp, etc., in Peacock's Melincourt, cap. xxxii., Works, 1875, i. 272.]

[611] [Compare—

"The last edition see by Long. and Co.,

Rees, Hurst, and Orme, our fathers of the Row."

The Search after Happiness, by Sir Walter Scott.]

[612] [This phrase is said to have been first used in the Edinburgh Review—probably by Jeffrey. (See review of Rogers's Human Life, 1818, Edin. Rev., vol. 31, p. 325.)]

[613] {575}[It is possible that the description of Hazlitt's Lectures of 1818 is coloured by recollections of Coleridge's Lectures of 1811-1812, which Byron attended (see letter to Harness, December 6, 1811, Letters, 1898, ii. 76, note 1); but the substance of the attack is probably derived from Gifford's review of Lectures on the English Poets, delivered at the Surrey Institution (Quarterly Review, December, 1818, vol. xix. pp. 424-434.)]

[614] {576}["Yesterday, a very pretty letter from Annabella.... She is ... very little spoiled, which is strange in an heiress.... She is a poetess—a mathematician—a metaphysician."—Journal, November 30, 1813, Letters, 1898, ii. 357]

[615] {578}[The term "renegade" was applied to Southey by William Smith, M.P., in the House of Commons, March 14, 1817 (vide ante, p. 482). Sotheby's plays, Ivan, The Death of Darnley, Zamorin and Zama, were published under the title of Five Tragedies, in 1814.]

[616] [Compare—

"I've bribed my Grandmother's Review the British."

Don Juan, Canto I. stanza ccix. line 9.

And see "Letter to the Editor of 'My Grandmother's Review,'" Letters, 1900, iv. Appendix VII. pp. 465-470. The reference may be to a review of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold, which appeared in the British Review, January, 1818, or to a more recent and, naturally, most hostile notice of Don Juan (No. xviii. 1819).]

[617] [The Journal de Trévoux, published under the title of Mémoires de Trévoux (1701-1775, 265 vols. 12°), edited by members of the Society of Jesus, was an imitation of the Journal des Savants. The original matter, the Mémoires, contain a mine of information for the student of the history of French Literature; but the reviews, critical notices, etc., to which Byron refers, were of a highly polemical and partisan character, and were the subject of attack on the part of Protestant and free-thinking antagonists. In a letter to Moore, dated Ravenna, June 22, 1821, Byron says, "Now, if we were but together a little to combine our Journal of Trevoux!" (Letters, 1901, v. 309). The use of the same illustration in letter and poem is curious and noteworthy.]

[618] {579}[The publication of the British Review was discontinued in 1825.]

[619] [For "Botherby," vide ante, Beppo, stanza lxxii. line 7, p. 182, note 1; and with the "ex-cathedrâ tone" compare "that awful note of woe," Vision of Judgment, stanza xc. line 4, ante, p. 518.]

[620] {580}["Sotheby is a good man, rhymes well (if not wisely), but is a bore. He seizes you by the button. One night of a rout at Mrs. Hope's, he had fastened upon me (something about Agamemnon, or Orestes, or some of his plays), notwithstanding my symptoms of manifest distress (for I was in love, and just nicked a minute, when neither mothers, nor husbands, nor rivals, nor gossips, were near my then idol, who was beautiful as the Statues of the Gallery where we stood at the time)—Sotheby I say had seized upon me by the button and the heart-strings, and spared neither. William Spencer, who likes fun, and don't dislike mischief, saw my case, and coming up to us both, took me by the hand, and pathetically bade me farewell; 'for,' said he, 'I see it is all over with you.' Sotheby then went way. 'Sic me servavit Apollo.'"—Detached Thoughts, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 433.]

[621] [For Byron's misapprehension concerning "kibes," see Childe Harold, Canto I. stanza lxvii. line 5, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 64, note 3.]

[622] ["Where can the animals who write this trash have been bred, to fancy that ladies drink bumpers of Madeira at luncheon?"—Literary Register, May 3, 1823.]

[623] {582}[Wordsworth's Resolution and Independence, originally entitled The Leech-gatherer, was written in 1802, and published in 1807.]

[624] [Wordsworth was appointed Distributor of Stamps for the County of Westmoreland, in March, 1813. Lord Lonsdale and Sir George Beaumont were "suretys for the due execution of the trust."—Life of William Wordsworth, by William Knight, 1889, ii. 210.]

[625]{583} Grange is or was a famous pastry-cook and fruiterer in Piccadilly. ["Grange's" (James Grange, confectioner, No. 178, Piccadilly, see Kent's London Directory of 1820), moved farther west some fifteen years ago.]

[626] {584}["When I belonged to the Drury Lane Committee ... the number of plays upon the shelves were about five hundred.... Mr. Sotheby obligingly offered us all his tragedies, and I pledged myself; and, notwithstanding many squabbles with my Committe[e]d Brethren, did get 'Ivan' accepted, read, and the parts distributed. But lo! in the very heart of the matter, upon some tepid-ness on the part of Kean, or warmth on that of the author, Sotheby withdrew his play."—Detached Thoughts, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 442.]

[627] [Fugitive Pieces is the title of the suppressed quarto edition of Byron's juvenile poems.]

[628] {585}[Sir George Beaumont, Bart., of Coleorton, Leicestershire (1753-1827), landscape-painter, art critic, and picture-collector, one of the founders of the National Gallery, married, in 1778, Margaret Willis, granddaughter of Chief Justice Willis. She corresponded with Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, and with Coleridge (see Memorials of Coleorton, 1888). Coleridge visited the Beaumonts for the first time at Dunmore, in 1804. "I was not received here," he tells Wordsworth, "with mere kindness; I was welcomed almost as you welcomed me when first I visited you at Racedown" (Letters of S. T. Coleridge, 1895, ii. 459). Scott (Memoirs of the life, etc., 1838, ii, II) describes Sir George Beaumont as "by far the most sensible and pleasing man I ever knew, kind, too, in his nature, and generous and gentle in society.... He was the great friend of Wordsworth, and understood his poetry."]

[629] [It was not Wordsworth's patron, William Lord Lonsdale, but his kinsman James, the first earl, who, towards the close of the American war, offered to build and man a ship of seventy-four guns.]

[630] {586}[For this harping on "schools" of poetry, see Hazlitt's Lectures "On the Living Poets" Lectures on the English Poets (No. viii.), 1818, p. 318.]

[631] Fact from life, with the words.

[632] [Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829), President of the Royal Society, received the honour of knighthood April 8, 1812. He was created a baronet January 18, 1819.]

[633] {587}[Compare "We have been for many years at a great distance from each other; we are now separated. You have combined arsenic with your gold, Sir Humphry! You are brittle, and I will rather dine with Duke Humphry than with you."—Anima Poetæ, by S. T. Coleridge, 1895, p. 218.]

[634] ["Lydia White," writes Lady Morgan (Memoirs, 1862, ii. 236), "was a personage of much social celebrity in her day. She was an Irish lady of large fortune and considerable talent, noted for her hospitality and dinners in all the capitals of Europe." She is mentioned by Moore (Memoirs, 1853, in. 21), Miss Berry (Journal, 1866, ii. 484), Ticknor (Life, Letters, and Journal, 1876, i. 176), etc., etc.

Byron saw her for the last time in Venice, when she borrowed a copy of Lalla Rookh (Letter to Moore, June 1, 1818, Letters, 1900, iv. 237). Sir Walter Scott, who knew her well, records her death: "January 28, [1827]. Heard of Miss White's death—she was a woman of wit, and had a feeling and kind heart. Poor Lydia! I saw the Duke of York and her in London, when Death, it seems, was brandishing his dart over them.

'The view o't gave them little fright.'"

(Memoirs of the Life, etc., 1838, iv. 110.)]

[635] [Moore, following the example of Pope, who thought his "delicious lobster-nights" worth commemorating, gives details of a supper at Watier's, May 19, 1814, at which Kean was present, when Byron "confined himself to lobsters, and of these finished two or three, to his own share," etc.—an Ambrosian night, indeed!—Life, p. 254.]

END OF VOL. IV.