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 18: Harvey, the 'circulator' of the 'circulation' of the
blood, used to fling away Virgil in his ecstasy of admiration and say,
"the book had a devil." Now such a character as I am copying would
probably fling it away also, but rather wish that "the devil had the
book;" not from dislike to the poet, but a well-founded horror of
hexameters. Indeed, the public school penance of "Long and Short" is
enough to beget an antipathy to poetry for the residue of a man's life,
and, perhaps, so far may be an advantage.]
[Footnote 19:
"'Infandum, regina, jubes renovare dolorem'."
I dare say Mr. Tavell (to whom I mean no affront) will understand me;
and it is no matter whether any one else does or no.--To the above
events, "'quæque ipse miserrima vidi, et quorum pars magna fui'," all
'times' and 'terms' bear testimony. [The Rev. G.F. Tavell was a fellow
and tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge, during Byron's residence, and
owed this notice to the "zeal with which he protested against his
juvenile vagaries." During a part of his residence at Trinity, Byron
kept a tame bear in his rooms in Neville's Court. (See 'English Bards',
l. 973, 'note', and postscript to the Second Edition, 'ante', p. 383. See
also letter to Miss Pigot, October 26, 1807.)
The following copy of a bill (no date) tells its own story:--
The Honble. Lord Byron.
To John Clarke.
To Bread & Milk for the Bear deliv'd.} £ 1 9 7
to Haladay ... ... ... }
Cambridge Reve. A Clarke.]]
[Footnote 20: "Hell," a gaming-house so called, where you risk little,
and are cheated a good deal. "Club," a pleasant purgatory, where you
lose more, and are not supposed to be cheated at all.]
[Footnote 21:
"Irene had to speak two lines with the bowstring round her neck; but
the audience cried out ['Murder!'] 'Murder!' and she was obliged to go
off the stage alive."
'Boswell's Johnson' [1876, p. 60].
[Irene (first played February 6, 1749) for the future was put to death
behind the scenes. The strangling her, contrary to Horace's rule, 'coram
populo', was suggested by Garrick. (See Davies' 'Life of Garrick'
(1808), i. 157.)]]
[Footnote 22: Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818). ('Vide English Bards,
etc'., l. 265, n. 8.) The character of Hassan, "my misanthropic negro,"
as Lewis called him, was said by the critics of the day to have been
borrowed from Zanga in Young's 'Revenge'. Lewis, in his "Address to the
Reader," quoted by Byron (in 'note' 3), defends the originality of the
conception.]
[Footnote 23: In the postscript to _The Castle Spectre_, Mr. Lewis tells
us, that though blacks were unknown in England at the period of his
action, yet he has made the anachronism to set off the scene: and if he
could have produced the effect "by making his heroine blue,"--I quote
him--"blue he would have made her!" [_The Castle Spectre_, by M.G.
Lewis, Esq., M.P., London, 1798, page 102.]]
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