FOOTNOTES:
[JT] {400}In a most natural whirling of rotation.—[MS. erased.]
[JU] Since Adam—gloriously against an apple.—[MS. erased.]
[525] ["Neither Pemberton nor Whiston, who received from Newton himself the history of his first Ideas of Gravity, records the story of the falling apple. It was mentioned, however, to Voltaire by Catherine Barton (afterwards Mrs. Conduit), Newton's niece. We saw the apple tree in 1814.... The tree was so much decayed that it was taken down in 1820" (Memoirs, etc., of Sir Isaac Newton, by Sir David Brewster, 1855, i. 27, note 1). Voltaire tells the story thus (Éléments de la Philosophie de Newton, Partie III. chap, iii.): "Un jour, en l'année 1666 [1665], Newton, retiré à la campagne, et voyant tomber des fruits d'un arbre, à ce que m'a conté sa nièce (Madame Conduit), se laissa aller à une méditation profonde sur la cause qui entraîne ainsi tous les corps dans une ligne qui, si elle était prolongée, passerait à peu près par le centre de la terre."—Oeuvres Complètes, 1837, v. 727.]
[JV] To the then unploughed stars——.—[MS. erased.]
[526] {401}[Compare Churchill's Grave, line 23, Poetical Works, 1901, iv. 47, note 1.]
[527] [Shelley entitles him "The Pilgrim of Eternity," in his Adonais (stanza xxx. line 3), which was written and published at Pisa in 1821.]
[JX]—that essence of all Lie.—[MS. erased.]
[530] {404}"Reformers," or rather "Reformed." The Baron Bradwardine in Waverley is authority for the word. [The word is certainly in Butler's Hudibras, Part II. Canto 2—
"Although your Church be opposite
To mine as Black Fryars are to White,
In Rule and Order, yet I grant
You are a Reformado Saint."]
[531] [Stanza XV. is not in the MS. The "legal broom," sc. Brougham, was an afterthought.]
[532] Query, suit?—Printer's Devil.
[533] [It has been argued that when "great Cæsar fell" he wore his "robe" to muffle up his face, and that, in like manner, Jeffrey sank the critic in the lawyer. A "deal likelier" interpretation is that Jeffrey wore "his gown" right royally, as Cæsar wore his "triumphal robe." (See Plutarch's Julius Cæsar, Langhorne's translation, 1838, p. 515.)]
[534] {405}["I don't like to bore you about the Scotch novels (as they call them, though two of them are English, and the rest half so); but nothing can or could ever persuade me, since I was the first ten minutes in your company, that you are not the man. To me these novels have so much of 'Auld Lang Syne' (I was bred a canny Scot till ten years old), that I never move without them."—Letter to Sir W. Scott, January 12, 1822, Letters, 1901, vi. 4, 5.]
[535] [Compare The Island, Canto II. lines 280-297.]
[536] The brig of Don, near the "auld toun" of Aberdeen, with its one arch, and its black deep salmon stream below, is in my memory as yesterday. I still remember, though perhaps I may misquote, the awful proverb which made me pause to cross it, and yet lean over it with a childish delight, being an only son, at least by the mother's side. The saying as recollected by me was this, but I have never heard or seen it since I was nine years of age:—
"Brig of Balgounie, black's your wa',
Wi' a wife's ae son, and a mear's ae foal,
Doun ye shall fa'!"
[See for illustration of the Brig o' Balgownie, with its single Gothic arch, Letters, 1901 [L.P.], v. 406. ]
[537] {406}
["Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood," etc.
Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto VI. stanza ii.]
[JY] {407}
Some thirty years before at fair eighteen.—[MS.]
or, Seven and twenty—which, it does not matter,—
Wrinkles, those damnedst democrats, won't flatter.—[MS. erased.]
[538] Tiberius Gracchus, being tribune of the people, demanded in their name the execution of the Agrarian law; by which all persons possessing above a certain number of acres were to be deprived of the surplus for the benefit of the poor citizens.
[539] {408}
"Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura."
Inferno, Canto I. line 2.
[JZ] Hut where we travellers bait with dim reflection.—[MS. erased.]
[KA] {409}Is when he learns to limit his expenses.—[MS. erased.]
———- till the ice
Cracked, she would ne'er believe in thaws for vice.—[MS. erased.]
[540] {410}A metaphor taken from the "forty-horse power" of a steam-engine. That mad wag, the Reverend Sydney Smith, sitting by a brother clergyman at dinner, observed afterwards that his dull neighbour had a "twelve-parson power" of conversation.
[541] [In a letter to his sister, October 25, 1804 (Letters, 1898, i. 40), Byron mentions an aunt—"the amiable antiquated Sophia," and asks, "Is she yet in the land of the living, or does she sing psalms with the Blessed in the other world?" This was his father's sister, Sophia Maria, daughter of Admiral the Hon. John Byron. But his "good old aunt" is, more probably, the Hon. Mrs. Frances Byron, widow of George (born April 22, 1730) son of the fourth, and brother of the "Wicked" lord. She was the daughter and co-heiress of Ellis Levett, Esq., and lived "at Nottingham in her own house." She died, aged 86, June 13, 1822, not long before this Canto was written. She is described in the obituary notice of the Gentleman's Magazine, June, 1822, vol. 92, p. 573, as "Daughter of Vice-Admiral the Hon. John Byron (who sailed round the world with Lord Anson), grandfather of the present Lord Byron." But that is, chronologically, impossible. Byron must have retained a pleasing recollection of the ear-trumpet and the spectacles, and it gratified his kindlier humour to embalm their owner in his verse.]
[542] [See Collins's Peerage, 1779, vii. 120. It is probable that Byron was lineally descended from Ralph de Burun, of Horestan, who is mentioned in Doomsday Book (sect. xi.) as holding eight lordships in Notts and five in Derbyshire, but with regard to Ernysius or Erneis the pedigree is silent. (See Pedigree of George Gordon, Sixth Lord Byron, by Edward Bernard, 1870.)]
[543] {411}"Hyde."—I believe a hyde of land to be a legitimate word, and, as such, subject to the tax of a quibble.
And humbly hope that the same God which hath given
Us land on earth, will do no less in Heaven.—[MS. erased.]
[KD] Perhaps—but d—n perhaps——.—[MS.]
[544] {412}[For the illness ("a scarlet fever, complicated by angina, both aggravated by premature exhaustion") and death of Lanskoï, see The Story of a Throne, by K. Waliszewsky, 1895, ii. 131, 133. For the rumour that he was poisoned by Potemkin, see Mémoires Secrets, etc. [by C.F.P. Masson], 1800, i. 170.]
[545] [Matthew Baillie (1761-1823), the nephew of William Hunter, the brother of Agnes and Joanna Baillie, was a celebrated anatomist. He attended Byron (1799-1802), when an endeavour was made to effect a cure of the muscular contraction of his right leg and foot. He was consulted by Lady Byron, in 1816, with regard to her husband's supposed derangement, but was not admitted when he called at the house in Piccadilly. He is said to have "avoided technical and learned phrases; to have affected no sentimental tenderness, but expressed what he had to say in the simplest and plainest terms" (Annual Biography, 1824, p. 319). Jekyll (Letters, 1894, p. 110) repeats or invents an anecdote that "the old king, in his mad fits, used to say he could bring any dead people to converse with him, except those who had died under Baillie's care, for that the doctor always dissected them into so many morsels, that they had not a leg to walk to Windsor with." It is hardly necessary to say that John Abernethy (1764-1831) "expressed what he had to say" in the bluntest and rudest terms at his disposal.]
[546] The empress went to the Crimea, accompanied by the Emperor Joseph, in the year—I forget which.
[The Prince de Ligne, who accompanied Catherine in her progress through her southern provinces, in 1787, gives the following particulars: "We have crossed during many days vast, solitary regions, from which her Majesty has driven Zaporogua, Budjak, and Nogais Tartars, who, ten years ago, threatened to ravage her empire. All these places were furnished with magnificent tents for breakfasts, lunches, dinners, suppers, and sleeping-rooms ... deserted regions were at once transformed into fields, groves, villages: ... The Empress has left in each chief town gifts to the value of a hundred thousand roubles. Every day that we remained stationary was marked with diamonds, balls, fireworks, and illuminations throughout a circuit of ten leagues." —The Prince de Ligne, His Memoirs, etc., translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley, 1899, ii. 31.]
[KE] {415}Man, midst thy mouldy mammoths, Cuvier.—[MS.]
[KF] {416}
Who like sour fruit to sharpen up the tides
Of their salt veins, and stir their stagnancy.—[MS. erased.]
[547] {417}In the Empress Anne's time, Biren, her favourite, assumed the name and arms of the "Birons" of France; which families are yet extant with that of England. There are still the daughters of Courland of that name; one of them I remember seeing in England in the blessed year of the Allies (1814)—the Duchess of S.—to whom the English Duchess of Somerset presented me as a namesake.
["Ernest John Biren was born in Courland [in 1690]. His grandfather had been head groom to James, the third Duke of Courland, and obtained from his master the present of a small estate in land.... In 1714 he made his appearance at St. Petersburg, and solicited the place of page to the Princess Charlotte, wife of the Tzarovitch Alexey; but being contemptuously rejected as a person of mean extraction, retired to Mittau, where he chanced to ingratiate himself with Count Bestuchef, Master of the Household to Anne, widow of Frederic William, Duke of Courland, who resided at Mittau. Being of a handsome figure and polite address, he soon gained the good will of the duchess, and became her secretary and chief favourite. On her being declared sovereign of Russia, Anne called Biren to Petersburg, and the secretary soon became Duke of Courland, and first minister or rather despot of Russia. On the death of Anne, which happened in 1740, Biren, being declared regent, continued daily increasing his vexations and cruelties, till he was arrested, on the 18th of December, only twenty days after he had been appointed to the regency; and at the revolution that ensued he was exiled to the frozen shores of the Oby." Catherine II., by W. Tooke, 1800, i. 160, footnote. He was recalled in 1763, and died in 1772.
In a letter to his sister, dated June 18, 1814, Byron gives a slightly different version of the incident, recorded in his note (vide supra): "The Duchess of Somerset also, to mend matters, insisted on presenting me to a Princess Biron, Duchess of Hohen-God-knows-what, and another person to her two sisters, Birons too. But I flew off, and would not, saying I had had enough of introductions for that night at least."—Letters, 1899, iii. 98. The "daughters of Courland" must have been descendants of "Pierre, dernier Duc de Courlande, De la Maison de Biron," viz. Jeanne Cathérine, born June 24, 1783, who married, in 1801, François Pignatelli de Belmonte, Duc d'Acerenza, and Dorothée, born August 21, 1793, who married, in 1809, Edmond de Talleyrand Périgord, Duc de Talleyrand, nephew to the Bishop of Autun. (See Almanach de Gotha, 1848, pp. 109, 110.)]
[548] {418}[Napoleon's exclamation at the Elysée Bourbon, June 23, 1815. "When his civil counsellors talked of defence, the word wrung from him the bitter ejaculation, 'Ah! my old guard! could they but defend themselves like you!'"—Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, by Sir Walter Scott, Prose Works, 1846, ii. 760.]
Who now that he is dead has not a foe;
The last expired in cut-throat Castlereagh.—[MS. erased.]
[549] [Immanuel Kant, born at Königsberg, in 1729, became Professor and Rector of the University, and died at Königsberg in 1804.]
[550] {419}
["The castled crag of Drachenfels
Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine," etc.
Childe Harold, Canto III.]
[551] St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins were still extant in 1816, and may be so yet, as much as ever.
[552] {421}["We left Ratzeburg at 7 o'clock Wednesday evening, and arrived at Lüneburg—i.e. 35 English miles—at 3 o'clock on Thursday afternoon. This is a fair specimen! In England I used to laugh at the 'flying waggons;' but compared with a German Post-Coach, the metaphor is perfectly justifiable, and for the future I shall never meet a flying waggon without thinking respectfully of its speed."—S.T. Coleridge, March 12, 1799, Letters of S.T.C., 1895, i. 278.]
[553] [See for German oaths, "Extracts from a Diary," January 12, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 172.]
With "Schnapps"—Democritus would cease to smile,
By German, post-boys driven a mile.—[MS.]
With "Schnapps"—and spite of "Dam'em," "dog" and "log"
Launched at their heads jog-jog-jog-jog-jog-jog.—[MS. erased.]
[554] {422}[The French Inscription (see Memorial Inscriptions, etc., by Joseph Meadows Cowper, 1897, p. 134) on the Black Prince's monument is thus translated in the History of Kent (John Weevers' Funerall Monuments, 1636, pp. 205, 206)—
"Who so thou be that passeth by
Where this corps entombed lie,
Understand what I shall say,
As at this time, speake I may.
Such as thou art, sometime was I.
Such as I am, shalt thou be.
I little thought on th' oure of death,
So long as I enjoyéd breath.
Great riches here did I possess,
Whereof I made great nobleness;
I had gold, silver, wardrobes, and
Great treasure, horses, houses, land.
But now a caitife poore am I,
Deepe in the ground, lo! here I lie;
My beautie great is all quite gone,
My flesh is wasted to the bone.
My house is narrow now and throng,
Nothing but Truth comes from my tongue.
And if ye should see me this day,
I do not think but ye would say,
That I had never beene a man,
So much altered now I am."]
[KI] {423}
—— of higher stations,
And for their pains get smarter puncturations.—[MS. erased.]
[555] {424}[See Childe Harold, Canto I. stanza xxxii. line 2, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 93, note 16.]
[556] [See The Prince (Il Principe), chap. xvii., by Niccolò Machiavelli, translated by Ninian Hill Thomson, 1897, p. 121: "But above all [a Prince] must abstain from the property of others. For men will sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony."]
[557] [India; America.]
[558] {425}[Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845) began her visits to Newgate in 1813. In 1820 she corresponded with the Princess Sophie of Russia, and at a later period she was entertained by Louis Philippe, and by the King of Prussia at Kaiserwerth. She might have, she may have, admonished George IV. "with regard to all good things."]
[559] {426}[See The Age of Bronze, line 768, Poetical Works, 1901, v. 578, note 1.]
["O for a blast of that dread horn,
On Fontarabian echoes borne,
That to King Charles did come,
When Rowland brave, and Olivier,
And every paladin and peer,
On Roncesvalles died."
Marmion, Canto VI. stanza xxxiii. lines 7-12.]
[KJ] Like an old Roman trumpet ere a battle.—[MS. erased.]
[561] B. Genoa, Oct. 6th, 1822. End of Canto 10th.
