224).]
[aj] {27}
_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] {28} [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] {29} _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 _bona fide_, he leaves England heart-whole, but for the bitter memory of Mary Chaworth.]
[ao] {30} 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 pa.s.s"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] {31} [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 quant.i.ty is, and perhaps always was, inconsiderable.]
[ap] ----_where thronging rustics reap_.--[MS. erased.]
[aq] {32} _What G.o.d 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 _h.e.l.las_ 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, p.r.o.ne to lie, have paved with gold_.--[MS.]
_Which poets sprinkle o"er with sands of gold_.--[MS. pencil.]
_Which fabling poets_--[D. pencil.]
[44] {33} [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 subst.i.tution 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] {34} [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.]
[az]
----_by tottering convent crowned_.--[MS. erased.]
_Alcornoque_.--[Note (pencil).]
[46] "The sky-worn robes of tenderest blue." Collins" _Ode to Pity_ [MS.
and D.].
[ba] _The murmur that the sparkling torrents keep_.--[MS. erased.]
[47] {35} [The convent of Nossa Senora (now the Palazio) da Pena, and the Cork Convent, were visited by Beckford (circ. 1780), and are described in his _Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal_ (8vo, 1834), the reissue of his _Letters Picturesque and Poetical_ (4to, 1783).
"Our first object was the convent of Nossa Senhora da Penha, the little romantic pile of white building I had seen glittering from afar when I first sailed by the coast of Lisbon. From this pyramidical elevation the view is boundless; you look immediately down upon an immense expanse of sea.
... A long series of detached clouds of a dazzling whiteness suspended low over the waves had a magic effect, and in pagan times might have appeared, without any great stretch of fancy, the cars of marine divinities, just risen from the bosom of their element."--_Italy, etc._, p. 249.
"Before the entrance, formed by two ledges of ponderous rock, extends a smooth level of greensward.... The Hermitage, its cell, chapel, and refectory, are all scooped out of the native marble, and lined with the bark of the cork tree. Several of the pa.s.sages are not only roofed, but floored with the same material ... The shrubberies and garden-plots dispersed amongst the mossy rocks ... are delightful, and I took great pleasure in ... following the course of a transparent rill, which was conducted through a rustic water-shoot, between bushes of lavender and roses, many of the tenderest green."--_Ibid._, p. 250.
The inscription to the memory of Honorius (d. 159, aet. 95) is on a stone in front of the cave--
"Hic Honorius vitam finivit; Et ideo c.u.m Deo in coelis revivit."]