The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 1. PoetryByron, George Gordon Byron, Baron
General
The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 1. Poetry
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron
Poetry
[Footnote 103: I knew the late Lord Falkland well. On Sunday night I
beheld him presiding at his own table, in all the honest pride of
hospitality; on Wednesday morning, at three o'clock, I saw stretched
before me all that remained of courage, feeling, and a host of passions.
He was a gallant and successful officer: his faults were the faults of a
sailor--as such, Britons will forgive them. ["His behaviour on the field
was worthy of a better fate, and his conduct on the bed of death evinced
all the firmness of a man without the farce of repentance--I say the
farce of repentance, for death-bed repentance is a farce, and as little
serviceable to the soul at such a moment as the surgeon to the body,
though both may be useful if taken in time. Some hireling in the papers
forged a tale about an agonized voice, etc. On mentioning the
circumstance to Mr. Heaviside, he exclaimed, 'Good God! what absurdity
to talk in this manner of one who died like a lion!'--he did
more."--'MS'] He died like a brave man in a better cause; for had he
fallen in like manner on the deck of the frigate to which he was just
appointed, his last moments would have been held up by his countrymen as
an example to succeeding heroes.
[Charles John Carey, ninth Viscount Falkland, died from a wound received
in a duel with Mr. A. Powell on Feb. 28, 1809. (See Byron's letter to
his mother, March 6, 1809.) The story of "the agonized voice" may be
traced to a paragraph in the 'Morning Post,' March 2, 1809: "Lord
Falkland, after hearing the surgeon's opinion, said with a faltering
voice and as intelligibly as the agonized state of his body and mind
permitted, "I acquit Mr. Powell of all blame; in this transaction I
alone am culpable.'"]]
[Footnote 104: "Yes: and a precious chase they led me."--B., 1816.]
[Footnote 105: "'Fool' enough, certainly, then, and no wiser
since."--B., 1816.]
[Footnote 106: What would be the sentiments of the Persian Anacreon,
HAFIZ, could he rise from his splendid sepulchre at Sheeraz (where he
reposes with FERDOUSI and SADI, the Oriental Homer and Catullus), and
behold his name assumed by one STOTT of DROMORE, the most impudent and
execrable of literary poachers for the Daily Prints?]
[Footnote 107: Miles Peter Andrews (d. 1824) was the owner of large
powder-mills at Dartford. He was M.P. for Bewdley. He held a good social
position, but his intimate friends were actors and playwrights. His
'Better Late than Never' (which Reynolds and Topham helped him to write)
was played for the first time at Drury Lane, October 17, 1790, with
Kemble as Saville, and Mrs. Jordan as Augusta. He is mentioned in 'The
Baviad', l. 10; and in a note Gifford satirizes his prologue to
'Lorenzo', and describes him as an "industrious paragraph-monger."]]
[Footnote 108: In a manuscript fragment, bound in the same volume as
'British Bards', we find these lines:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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