"In Babylon, where first her queen, for state, Raised walls of brick magnificently great, Lived Pyramus and Thisbe, lovely pair! He found no Eastern youth his equal there, And she beyond the fairest nymph was fair." Garth.] {236}[292] Babylon was enlarged by Nimrod, strengthened and beautified by Nabuchadonosor, and rebuilt by Semiramis. [Pliny (_Nat. Hist._, lib. viii. cap. xlii. ed. 1593, i. 392) cites Juba, King of Mauretania, died A.D. 19, as his authority for the calumny.] [fd] _In an Erratum of her Horse for Courier_.--[MS.] [293] [Queen Caroline--whose trial (August--November, 1820) was proceeding whilst this canto was being written--was charged with having committed adultery with Bartolommeo Bergami, who had been her courier, and was, afterwards, her chamberlain.] [294] ["_Memoir on the Ruins of Babylon_, by Claudius James Rich, Esq., Resident for the Honourable East India Company at the Court of the Pasha of Bagdad, 1815," pp. 61-64: _Second Memoir on Babylon,_ ... 1818, by Claudius James Rich. See the plates at the end of the volume.] [fe] _If they shall not as soon cut off my head._--[MS.] {240}[ff] _A pair of drawers_----.--[MS.] [295] [Compare "Extracts from a Diary," January 24, 1821, _Letters_, 1901, v. 184.] [fg] _Kings are not more imperative than rhymes_.--[MS.] {241}[fh] _He looked almost in modesty a maid_.--[MS.] {242}[296] _Features_ of a gate--a ministerial metaphor: "the _feature_ upon which this question _hinges_." See the "Fudge Family," or hear Castlereagh. [Phil. Fudge, in his letter to Lord Castlereagh, says-- "As _thou_ would'st say, my guide and teacher In these gay metaphoric fringes, I must _embark_ into the _feature_ On which this letter chiefly _hinges_." Moore's note adds, "Verbatim from one of the noble Viscount's speeches:--'_And now, sir, I must embark into the_ feature _on which this question chiefly hinges_.'"--_Fudge Family in Paris_, Letter II. See, too, _post_, the Preface to Cantos VI., VII., and VIII., p. 264, note 3.] {243}[297] [Compare-- "A snake's small eye blinks dull and sly, And the lady's eyes they shrunk in her head, Each shrunk up to a serpent's eye." _Christabel_, Part II. lines 583-585.] {244}[298] A few years ago the wile of Muchtar Pacha complained to his father of his son's supposed infidelity: he asked with whom, and she had the barbarity to give in a list of the twelve handsomest women in Yanina. They were seized, fastened up in sacks, and drowned in the lake the same night. One of the guards who was present informed me, that not one of the victims uttered a cry, or showed a symptom of terror at so sudden a "wrench from all we know, from all we love." [See _The Giaour_, line _1328, Poetical Works, 1900_, iii. 144, note 1.] {245}[fi] _As Venus rose from Ocean--bent on them_ _With a far-reaching glance, a Paphian pair_.--[MS.]