The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 7 | Page 8

the _Biographia Literaria_, in 1817 (chap, xxiii.), he gives a detailed analysis of "the old Spanish play, entitled _Atheista Fulminato [vide ante_, the 'Introduction to _Don Juan_'] ... which under various names (_Don Juan_, the _Libertine_, etc.) has had its day of favour in every country throughout Europe ... Rank, fortune, wit, talent, acquired knowledge, and liberal accomplishments, with beauty of person, vigorous health, and constitutional hardihood,--all these advantages, elevated by the habits and sympathies of noble birth and national character, are supposed to have combined in Don Juan, so as to give him the means of carrying into all its practical consequences the doctrine of a godless nature, as the sole ground and efficient cause not only of all things, events, and appearances, but likewise of all our thoughts, sensations, impulses, and actions. Obedience to nature is the only virtue." It is possible that Byron traced his own lineaments in this too life-like portraiture, and at the same time conceived the possibility of a new Don Juan, "made up" after his own likeness. His extreme resentment at Coleridge's just, though unwise and uncalled-for, attack on Maturin stands in need of some explanation. See letter to Murray, September 17, 1817 (_Letters_, 1900, iv. 172).]
[3] ["Have you heard that _Don Juan_ came over with a dedication to me, in which Lord Castlereagh and I (being hand in glove intimates) were coupled together for abuse as 'the two Roberts'? A fear of persecution (_sic_) from the _one_ Robert is supposed to be the reason why it has been suppressed" (Southey to Rev. H. Hill, August 13, 1819, _Selections from the Letters, etc._, 1856, iii. 142). For "Quarrel between Byron and Southey," see Introduction to _The Vision of Judgment_, _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 475-480; and _Letters_, 1901, vi. 377-399 (Appendix I.).]
[4] [The reference must be to the detailed enumeration of "the powers requisite for the production of poetry," and the subsequent antithesis of Imagination and Fancy contained in the Preface to the collected _Poems of William Wordsworth_, published in 1815. In the Preface to the _Excursion_ (1814) it is expressly stated that "it is not the author's intention formally to announce a system."]
{5}[5] Wordsworth's place may be in the Customs--it is, I think, in that or the Excise--besides another at Lord Lonsdale's table, where this poetical charlatan and political parasite licks up the crumbs with a hardened alacrity; the converted Jacobin having long subsided into the clownish sycophant [_despised retainer_,--_MS. erased_] of the worst prejudices of the aristocracy.
[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