[Wordsworth obtained his appointment as Distributor of Stamps for the county of Westmoreland in March, 1813, through Lord Lonsdale's "patronage" (see his letter, March 6, 1813). _The Excursion_ was dedicated to Lord Lonsdale in a sonnet dated July 29, 1814-- "Oft through thy fair domains, illustrious Peer, In youth I roamed ... Now, by thy care befriended, I appear Before thee, Lonsdale, and this Work present." ] {6}[6] [_Paradise Lost_, vii. 25, 26.] {7}[7] "Pale, but not cadaverous:"--Milton's two elder daughters are said to have robbed him of his books, besides cheating and plaguing him in the economy of his house, etc., etc. His feelings on such an outrage, both as a parent and a scholar, must have been singularly painful. Hayley compares him to Lear. See part third, _Life of Milton_, by W. Hayley (or Hailey, as spelt in the edition before me). [_The Life of Milton_, by William Hailey (_sic_), Esq., Basil, 1799, p. 186.] [8] Or-- "Would _he_ subside into a hackney Laureate-- A scribbling, self-sold, soul-hired, scorned Iscariot?" I doubt if "Laureate" and "Iscariot" be good rhymes, but must say, as Ben Jonson did to Sylvester, who challenged him to rhyme with-- "I, John Sylvester, Lay with your sister." Jonson answered--"I, Ben Jonson, lay with your wife." Sylvester answered,--"That is not rhyme."--"No," said Ben Jonson; "but it is _true_." [For Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, see _The Age of Bronze_, line 538, _Poetical Works_, 1901, v. 568, note 2; and _Letters_, 1900, iv. 108, note 1.] {8}[9] For the character of Eutropius, the eunuch and minister at the court of Arcadius, see Gibbon, [_Decline and Fall_, 1825, ii. 307, 308]. [10] ["Mr. John Murray,--As publisher to the Admiralty and of various Government works, if the five stanzas concerning Castlereagh should risk your ears or the Navy List, you may omit them in the publication--in that case the two last lines of stanza 10 [_i.e_. 11] must end with the couplet (lines 7, 8) inscribed in the margin. The stanzas on Castlerighi (as the Italians call him) are 11, 12, 13, 14, 15."--_MS. M_.] [11] [Commenting on a "pathetic sentiment" of Leoni, the author of the Italian translation of _Childe Harold_ ("Sciagurata condizione di questa mia patria!"), Byron affirms that the Italians execrated Castlereagh "as the cause, by the conduct of the English at Genoa." "Surely," he exclaims, "that man will not die in his bed: there is no spot of the earth where his name is not a hissing and a curse. Imagine what must be the man's talent for Odium, who has contrived to spread his infamy like a pestilence from Ireland to Italy, and to make his name an execration in all languages."--Letter to Murray, May 8, 1820, _Letters_, 1901, v. 22, note 1.] {9}[12] [Charles James Fox and the Whig Club of his time adopted a uniform of blue and buff. Hence the livery of the _Edinburgh Review_.]