She saith my riot bringeth shame I had a sister once I ween, Whose tears perhaps will flow; 12.-Page 9, line 9. "Come hither, hither, my staunch yeoman, [William Fletcher, his faithful valet. Notwithstanding that he is made in this stanza to disclaim being timid, Lord Byron says in his letters that he was the reverse of valiant, and that he sighed for home comforts,-beef, beer, and tea,-as well as for his wife.] 13. Page 9, line 24. Will laugh to flee away." ["Enough, enough, my yeoman good, But if I in thy sandals stood, 14.-Page 10, line 4. We late saw streaming o'er. ["For who would trust a paramour, Or e'en a wedded freere, Though her blue eyes were streaming o'er, 15.-Page 10, line 8. No thing that claims a tear. ["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."-Lord Byron to Mr. Hodgson.] 16.-Page 10, line 13. Perchance my dog will whine in vain, ["I do not mean," Lord Byron wrote to Mr. Dallas, "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." In Don Juan, also, one of the felicities that are said to await "an honest gentleman" on his return, after a lengthened absence, "Is that his Argus bites him by-the breeches." Byron had reason for his rhyme, for he had experienced the treatment in his own person. In the original MS. the ninth stanza was succeeded by what follows: "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 Except sometimes in Lady's bower, Or when the bowl I drain."] 17.-Page 10, line 24. My native Land-Good Night!" [In the original draught these two stanzas stood in the place of the lyric" Adieu, adieu! my native shore:". "And of his train there was a henchman page, A peasant boy, who served his master well; And pleased for a glimpse appeared the woeful Childe. Him and one yeoman only did he take To travel eastward to a far countrie; And, though the boy was grieved to leave the lake Eftsoons his little heart beat merrily With hope of foreign nations to behold, Of which our vaunting voyagers oft have told, In many a tome as true as Mandeville's of old."" After the twenty-fourth stanza was a passage which the poet omitted at the entreaty of his friends: "In golden characters right well design'd, Convention is the dwarfish demon styled In Courier, Chronicle, and eke in Morning Post: But when Convention sent his handy-work, Stern Cobbett, who for one whole week forbore To question aught, once more with transport leapt, And bit his devilish quill agen, and swore Then burst the blatant beast, and roar'd, and raged, and Thus unto Heaven appeal'd the people: Heaven, The Canto, in the MS., concludes with another satiric passage, which there follows stanza eighty-six. "Ye, who would more of Spain and Spaniards know Are they not written in the Book of Carr, • "Blatant beast"-a figure for the mob, I think first used by Smollett in his "Adventures of an Atom." Horace has the "bellua multorum capitum:" in England, fortunately enough, the illustrious mobility have not even one. By this query it is not meant that our foolish generals should have been shot, but that Byng might have been spared, though the one suffered, and the others escaped, probably for Candide's reason, "pour encourager les autres." Porphyry said, that the prophecies of Daniel were written after their completion, and such may be my fate here; but it requires no second sight to foretel a tome; the first glimpse of the knight was enough. [In a letter written August 6, 1809, Lord Byron says, "I have seen Sir John Green Erin's Knight and Europe's wandering star! Then listen, readers, to the Man of Ink, Hear what he did, and sought, and wrote afar; This borrow, steal,-don't buy-and tell us what you think. There may you read, with spectacles on eyes, How many troops y-cross'd the laughing main And where Giralda stands on her gigantic base. There may you read (Oh, Phoebus, save Sir John! All that was said, or sung, or lost, or won, By vaunting Wellesley or by blundering Frere, Thus poesy the way to grandeur paves Who would not such diplomatists prefer? But cease, my Muse, thy speed some respite craves, Leave Legates to their house, and armies to their graves. Yet here of Vulpes mention may be made, His soul Socratic no Xantippe awes; Blest with a dame in Virtue's bosom nurst,- True to her second husband and her first: On such unshaken fame let Satire do its worst." The melancholy song to Inez, at the eighty-fourth stanza, replaced one in a gayer and far inferior strain : Carr at Seville and Cadiz; and, like Swift's barber, have been down on my knees to beg he would not put me into black and white."] [The "Needy Knife-grinder," in the Anti-Jacobin, was a joint production of Messrs. Frere and Canning.] 2. Prometheus-like, from heaven she stole From eyes that cannot hide their flashes: And as along her bosom steal In lengthen'd flow her raven tresses, You'd swear each clustering lock could feel, And curl'd to give her neck caresses. 3. Our English maids are long to woo, For love ordain'd the Spanish maid is, 4. The Spanish maid is no coquette, Alike she knows not to dissemble. 5. The Spanish girl that meets your love Her passion in the hour of trial. When thronging foemen menace Spain, She dares the deed and shares the danger; And should her lover press the plain, She hurls the spear, her love's avenger. 6. And when, beneath the evening star, Or sings to her attuned guitar Of Christian knight or Moorish hero, Or counts her beads with fairy hand Beneath the twinkling rays of Hesper, Or joins devotion's choral band, To chaunt the sweet and hallow'd vesper; 7. In each her charms the heart must move Of all who venture to behold her; |