LXXXIX.

_That_ is your present theme for popularity: Now that the public hedge hath scarce a stake, It grows an act of patriotic charity, To show the people the best way to break. _My plan_ (but I, if but for singularity, Reserve it) will be very sure to take. Meantime, read all the National-Debt sinkers, And tell me what you think of our great thinkers.[652]

FOOTNOTES:

{455}[613] [See letter to Douglas Kinnaird, dated Genoa, January 18, 1823.]

[614] [Johnson would not believe that "a complete miser is a happy man." "That," he said, "is flying in the face of all the world, who have called an avaricious man a _miser_, because he is miserable. No, sir; a man who both spends and saves money is the happiest man, because he has both enjoyments."--Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, 1876, p. 605.]

{456}[615] [The _Descamisados_, or Sansculottes of the Spanish Revolution of 1820-1823. For Spanish "Liberals," see _Quarterly Review_, April, 1823, vol. xxix. pp. 270-276.]

[616] [_Hamlet_, act i. sc. 1, line 116.]

[617] [See _The Age of Bronze_, line 678, sq., _Poetical Works_, 1901, v. 573, note 3.]

[618] [Jacques Laffitte (1767-1844), as Governor of the Bank of France, advanced sums to Parisians to meet their enforced contributions to the allies, and, in 1817, advocated liberal measures as a Deputy.]

{458}[lg] _Were not worth one whereon their profile shines_.--[MS. erased.]

[619] ["They say that 'Knowledge is Power';--I used to think so; but I now know that they meant Money ... every guinea is a philosopher's stone, or at least his _touch_-stone. You will doubt me the less, when I pronounce my pious belief--that _Cash is Virtue_."--Letter to Kinnaird, February 6, 1822, _Letters_, 1901, vi. 11.]

[620] [_Lay of the Last Minstrel_, Canto III. stanza ii. lines 4-6.]

{459}[621] [See Godwin's Essay _Of Population_, 1820 (pp. 18, 19, _et passim_), in which he renews his attack on Malthus's _Essay on the Principles of Population_.]

[622] ["We have no notion that Lord B[yron] had any mischievous intention in these publications--and readily acquit him of any wish to corrupt the morals, or impair the happiness of his readers ... but it is our duty ... to say, that much of what he has published appears to us to have this tendency.... How opposite to this is the system, or the temper, of the great author of Waverley!"--_Edinburgh Review_, February, 1822, vol. 36, p. 451.]

[lh] ---- _for his moral pen_ _Held up to me by Jeffrey as example_. _Of which with profit--as you'll soon see by a sample_.--[MS. erased.]

{460}[623] [In the case of Murray v. Benbow (February 9, 1822), the Lord Chancellor (Lord Eldon) refused the motion for an injunction to restrain the defendant from publishing a pirated edition of Lord Byron's poem of Cain (Jacob's _Reports_, p. 474, note). Hence (see _var._ i.) the allusion to "Law" and "Equity." The "suit" and the "appeal" (_vide ibid._) refer to legal proceedings taken, or intended to be taken, with regard to certain questions arising out of the disposition of property under Lady Noel's will. (See letters to Charles Hanson, September 21, November 30, 1822, _Letters_, 1901, vi. 115, 146.)]

[li] _That suit in Chancery--have a Chancery suit-- In right good earnest--also an appeal Before the Lords, whose Chancellor's more acute In Law than Equity--as I can feel Because my Cases put his Lordship to 't And--though no doubt 't is for the Public weal, His Lordship's Justice is not that of Solomon-- Not that I deem our Chief Judge is a hollow man_.--[MS. erased.]

[624] See [William] Mitford's Greece (1829, v. 314, 315), _"Græcia Verax."_ His great pleasure consists in praising tyrants, abusing Plutarch, spelling oddly, and writing quaintly; and what is strange, after all, _his_ is the best modern history of Greece in any language, and he is perhaps the best of all modern historians whatsoever. Having named his sins, it is but fair to state his virtues--learning, labour, research, wrath, and partiality. I call the latter virtues in a writer, because they make him write in earnest.

[Byron consulted Mitford when he was at work on _Sardanapalus_. (See Extracts from a Diary, January 5, 1821, _Letters_, 1901, v. 152, note 1.)]

{461}[625] [Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) married, in 1804, Harriet, daughter of John Eckersall of Claverton House, near Bath. There were three children of the marriage, of whom two survived him. Byron may be alluding to the apocryphal story of "his eleven daughters," related by J.L.A. Cherbuliez, in the _Journal des Économistes_ (1850, vol. xxv. p. 135): "Un soir ... il y avait cercle chez M. de Sismondi, à sa maison de campagne près de Genève.... Enfin, on annonce le _révérend Malthus et sa famille_. Sa famille!... Alors on voit entrer une charmante jeune fille, puis une seconde, puis une troisième, puis une quatrième, puis ... Il n'y en avait, ma fois, pas moins de onze!" See _Malthus and his Work_, by James Bonar, 1885, pp. 412, 413. See, too, _Nouveau Dictionnaire de L'Économie Politique_, 1892, art. "Malthus."]

[626] [Compare--

"How commentators each dark passage shun, And hold their farthing candle to the sun."

_Love of Fame, the Universal Passion_, by Edward Young, _Sat_. vii. lines 97, 98.]

{462}[627] [Philo-_pro_genitiveness. Spurzheim and Gall discover the organ of this name in a bump behind the ears, and say it is remarkably developed in the bull.]

[lj] _He played and paid, made love without much sin_.--[MS. erased.]

{463}[lk] _Themselves on seldom yielding to temptation_.--[MS. erased.]

{464}[628] [Henry Hallam (1778-1859) published his _View of the State of Europe in the Middle Ages_ in 1818.]

{465}[ll] _A drunken Gentleman of forty's sure._--[MS.]

[629] This line may puzzle the commentators more than the present generation.

[lm] _If he can hiccup nonsense at a ball._ or, _If he goes after dinner to a ball_.-[MS. erased.]

{466}[630] [_As You Like It_, act ii. sc. 7, line 156; and _Hamlet_, act ii. sc. 2, lines, 97, 98.]

[ln] _But first of little Leilah----._--[MS.]

[631] [For the allusion to "unsunned snows," _vide ante_, p. 275, note 1.]

{467}[632] [The reference may be to Hobhouse and the "Zoili of Albemarle Street," who did their best to "tutor" him with regard to "blazing indiscretions" in _Don Juan_.]

[lo] _That--but I will not listen, by your leave, Unto a single syllable_----.--[MS.]

[633] [For another instance of this curious mistake, see letter to Hodgson, December 8, 1811, _Letters_, 1898, ii. 85; et ibid., p. 31, note 1.]

{469}[lp] _Painted and gilded--or, as it will tell More Muse-like--say--like Cytherea's shell_.--[MS.]

{470}[634] [_Vide ante_, Preface to Cantos VI., VII., and VIII., p. 266.]

[635] ["Enfin partout la bonne société régle tout."--Voltaire.]

{471}[636] ["This game originated, I believe, in Germany.... It is called the game of the _goose_, because at every fourth and fifth compartment of the table in succession a _goose_ is depicted; and if the cast thrown by the player falls upon a _goose_, he moves forward double the number of his throw" (_Sports and Pastimes, etc._, by Joseph Strutt, 1801, p. 250).

Goldsmith, in his _Deserted Village_, among other "parlour splendours," mentions "the twelve good rules, the royal game of goose."]

{472}[lq] _Most young beginners may be taken so, But those who have been a little used to roughing Know how to end this half-and-half flirtation_.--[MS. erased.]

[637] ["I'll grow a talker for this gear."

_Merchant of Venice_, act i. sc. 1, line 110.]

{473}[lr] _Country where warm young people_----.--[MS. erased.]

[638] [Pope and Scott use the quasi-contracted "gynocracy" for "gynæcocracy." (See _N. Engl. Dict._)]

[ls] _Of white cliffs--and white bosoms--and blue eyes-- And stockings--virtues, loves and Chastities_.--[MS. erased.]

{474}[639] [Hor., _Epist._, lib. 1, ep. xiv. line 43. The meaning is that Europe makes but little progress in the discovery and settlement of Africa, and, as it were, "ploughs the sands."]

[lt] _Though many thousands both of birth and pluck too, Have ventured past the jaws of Moor and Tiger_.[*]

[*]_Note. By particular licence, "positively for the last time, by desire," etc., to be pronounced "tydger." Such is what Gifford calls "the necessity of rhyming."_--[MS. erased.]

[640] ["Though many degrees nearer our own fair and blue-eyed beauties in complexion ... yet no people ever lost more by comparison than did the white ladies of Moorzuk [capital of Fezzan] with the black ones of Bornou and Soudan."--_Narrative of Travels ... in Northern and Central Africa_, 1822-24, by Denham, Clapperton, and Oudney, 1828, ii. 133.]

{475}[lu] _Above, all sunshine, and, below, all ice_.--[MS. erased.]

[641] [Compare _Prisoner of Chillon_, lines 82-85, _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 17.]

[642] The Russians, as is well known, run out from their hot baths to plunge into the Neva; a pleasant practical antithesis, which it seems does them no harm.

{476}[lv] _But once there (few have felt this more than I)_.--[MS. erased.]

[643] [Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto II. stanza lviii. line 9, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 59, note 1.]

{477}[644] [See Plutarch's _Caius Marius_, Langhorne's translation, 1838, pp. 304, 305.]

[lw] _That Lady who is not at home to all_.--[MS. erased.]

{478}[645] For a description and print of this inhabitant of the polar region and native country of the Aurorae Boreales, see Sir E. Parry's _Voyage In Search of a North-West Passage_, [1821, p. 257. The print of the Musk-Bull is drawn and engraved by W. Westall, A.R.A., from a sketch by Lieut. Beechy. He is a "fearful wild-fowl!"]

[646] [Charles, second Earl Grey, born March 13, 1764, succeeded to the peerage in 1807, died July 17, 1847.]

[647] [William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham, born November 15, 1708, died May 11, 1778.]

[648] ["His person was undoubtedly cast by Nature in an elegant and pleasing mould, of a just height, well-proportioned, and with due regard to symmetry.... His countenance was handsome and prepossessing.... His manners were captivating, noble, and dignified, yet unaffectedly condescending.... Homer, as well as Virgil, was familiar to the Prince of Wales; and his memory, which was very tenacious, enabled him to cite with graceful readiness the favourite passages of either poet."--_The Historical ... Memoirs_ of Sir N.W. Wraxall, 1884, v. 353, 354.]

[649] ["Waving myself, let me talk to you of the Prince Regent. He ordered me to be presented to him at a ball; and after some sayings peculiarly pleasing from royal lips, as to my own attempts, he talked to me of you and your immortalities; he preferred you to every other bard past and present.... He spoke alternately of Homer and yourself, and seemed well acquainted with both.... [All] this was conveyed in language which would only suffer by my attempting to transcribe it, and with a tone and taste which gave me a very high idea of his abilities and accomplishments, which I had hitherto considered as confined to _manners_ certainly superior to those of any living _gentleman_."--Letter to Sir Walter Scott, July 6, 1812, _Letters_, 1898, ii. 134.]

{479}[650] B. 10^bre^ 7^th^ 1822.--[MS.]

A sculptor projected to hew Mount Athos into a statue of Alexander, with a city in one hand, and, I believe, a river in his pocket, with various other similar devices. But Alexander's gone, and Athos remains, I trust ere long to look over a nation of freemen.

[It was an architect named Stasicrates who proposed to execute this imperial monument. But Alexander bade him leave Mount Athos alone. As it was, it might be christened "Xerxes, his Folly," and, for his part, he preferred to regard Mount Caucasus, and the Himalayas, and the river Don as the symbolic memorials of his acts and deeds.--Plutarch's _Moralia_. "De Alexandri Fortuna et Virtute," Orat. II. cap. ii.]

{480}[651] [The "Political Economy" Club was founded in April, 1821. James Mill, Thomas Tooke, and David Ricardo were among the original members, See _Political Economy Club_, Revised Report, 1876, p. 60.]

[652] [Stanzas lxxxviii. and lxxxix. are not in the MS.]

CANTO THE THIRTEENTH.[653]