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456. 703. The Niobe of nations. Niobe, all of whose children were slain by Apollo and Diana because of her pride, stands as a symbol of grief and suffering.

457. 732. When Brutus, etc. The reference 1S to the murder of Julius Cæsar by Brutus and the other conspirators. See North's translation of Plutarch, p. 91, this volume.

734. Tully. Marcus Tullius Cicero.

1252. I see before me the gladiator lie. Byron seems to have had in mind the statue of the " Dying Gaul," now known to have no connection with gladiatorial combats.

459. 1648. I have loved thee, Ocean. Byron was a swimmer of extraordinary ability.

DON JUAN: DEDICATION

460. 1. Bob Southey! You're a Poet. The satiric dedication to Robert Southey was only one shot in the war between the two men. See the Introduction to Byron's Vision of Judgment.

3. You turned out a Tory. Southey, like Coleridge, was an enthusiastic republican in his young manhood; later he became strongly conservative.

5. My Epic Renegade. Byron probably has in mind Southey's early work, Wat Tyler, which was strongly republican, and was published contrary to Southey's wishes after he had given up his republicanism.

...

13. Coleridge explaining metaphysics to the nation. During the latter part of his life Coleridge all but abandoned poetry in favor of philosophy. The Biographia Literaria was published in 1817.

25. Wordsworth, in a rather long "Excursion." Wordsworth's philosophical poem, The Excursion, was published in 1814.

132. Buff and blue. Here used, as often, as symbolic of republicanism.

CANTO III

690. Sappho. The only woman among the world's great poets. She lived approximately 600 B. C.

692. Delos. A Greek island, the birthplace of Phoebus Apollo.

695. The Scian and the Teian muse. Homer and Anacreon, so called from their birthplaces, real or supposed, Scio and Teos, respectively.

701. Marathon. The battle of Marathon, fought in 490 B. C. between the Persians and the Greeks, resulted in an overwhelming victory for the latter. It took place on the plains of Marathon, overlooking the sea.

708. Salamis. In 480 B. C. the Greek fleet under Themistocles defeated the Persian fleet. The battle was fought in the strait between the island of Salamis and the mainland of Attica.

461. 730. Thermopylæ. The most famous battle at the pass of Thermopyle was the contest in 480 B. C. between Leonidas and three hundred Spartans, and the Persian army of Xerxes.

743. Pyrrhic dance. A martial dance. 744. Pyrrhic phalanx. Pyrrhus (318272 B. C.), King of Epirus, achieved several military successes through his use of the closely massed phalanx.

747. You have the letters Cadmus gave. Cadmus, one of the world's "culture heroes," was supposed to have given the alphabet to men.

751. Anacreon's song... Polycrates. Anacreon, Greek eulogist of love and wine, lived at the court of Polycrates, Tyrant of Samos.

755. Tyrant of the Chersonese. Mil-
tiades, who, as leader of the Greeks at
Marathon, was "freedom's best and
bravest friend."

762. Suli's rock and Parga's shore. The
first a mountain district, the second a
seaport, in Albania. Both were famous
for their warlike inhabitants.
764. Doric. Spartan.

766. Heracleidan. Of Hercules.

779. Sunium's marbled steep. A ruined temple at Sunium, or Cape Colonna, served as a landmark for vessels approaching the southern extremity of Attica. 462. 813. Troy owes to Homer what whist owes to Hoyle. Edmund Hoyle (16721769), whose Short Treatise on Whist was published in 1742, was long the unquestioned authority on the game. 815. The great Marlborough. . . . Life by Archdeacon Coxe. William Coxe (1747-1828), archdeacon of Wiltshire, published his Memoirs of John, Duke of Marlborough in the years 1818 and 1819. Marlborough is, of course, Queen Anne's great general.

819. An independent being. Probably a pun; during the latter part of his life Milton was a member of the religious sect known as "Independents."

821. His life falling into Johnson's way. Dr. Johnson's life of Milton, in his Lives of the Poets, is unsympathetic.

826. Lord Bacon's bribes. These are
facts; the stories concerning Cæsar,
Shakespeare, etc., may be apocryphal.
828. Burns (whom Doctor Currie well
describes). Dr. James Currie (1756-
1805) published an edition of Burns's
works, with a memoir, in 1800.

833. Southey. ... Pantisocracy. Southey
and Coleridge were the two leaders in
an attempt, which came to naught, to
found an ideal commonwealth on the
banks of the Susquehanna River.
835. Wordsworth unexcised, unhired. In
the year 1812 Wordsworth was appointed
Distributor of Stamps for the county of
Westmoreland. The office was worth
£400 per year.

462. 838. The Morning Post. Coleridge first became a regular contributor to the Post in December, 1799.

839. He and Southey . . . espoused two partners. Coleridge and Southey married Sarah and Edith Fricker, of Bristol.

842. Botany Bay. An English penal settlement was established in 1787 at Botany Bay, New South Wales.

847. The Excursion. See note on the dedication to Don Juan, line 25, above. 864. Ariosto. An Italian poet (14741533), author of the Orlando Furioso. 871. The épopée. The epic poem. 463. 876. His dear "Waggoners."

Words

worth's poem The Waggoner, written in 1805, was published in 1819. The poem is minutely descriptive of the lake country that Wordsworth knew so well.

877. He wishes for "a boat." See the Prelude to Wordsworth's Peter Bell. 883. Charles's Wain. Charles's Wagon; the constellation usually known as the Great Bear.

945. O Hesperus! thou bringest all good things. The stanza is an adaptation of one of the Sapphic fragments.

961. When Nero perished. Nero committed suicide in 68 A. D., to save himself from execution following the Senate's proclamation of Galba as emperor. 975. We Cantabs. Students or graduates of Cambridge University.

984. Aristotle. Aristotle's Poetics is one of the world's most famous discussions of the principles of poetry.

CANTO IV

This canto, of which the greater part is here reprinted, recounts the culmination of the romance between Juan, hero of the epic, and Haidée, daughter of a wealthy pirate and slavedealer on the shores of whose island the sea had cast Juan, sole survivor of a shipwreck. Haidée finds him, loves him, and nurses him back to health. The episode of Haidée and Juan occupies cantos ii, iii, and iv. 464. 43. Pulci was sire. Luigi Pulci (14321487), Italian poet, author of a burlesque epic entitled Il Morgante Maggiore. 469. 456. The Simoom. A hot wind from the desert.

484-6. Venus. . . Laocoön... Gladiator. It is impossible to decide what statue of Venus Byron had in mind. The Laocoon group is a well-known piece of Roman statuary; the so-called Dying Gladiator," equally famous, is not a representation of a gladiator, but of a dying Gaul.

SHELLEY OZYMANDIAS

472. 8. The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. The passions survive the

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Shelley's elegy, reminiscent of Milton's
Lycidas, was written in memory of John
Keats, who died at Rome, Febru-
ary 22, 1821.

12. Urania. The heavenly Muse, properly the patroness of Astronomy. 480. 30. The Sire of an immortal strain. John Milton.

55. That high Capital. Keats was buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome. 481. 133. She pined away. Narcissus disdained the love of the nymph Echo; Echo died of grief.

482. 140. To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear. The youth Hyacinth, greatly beloved by Apollo, was turned into the flower that bears his name.

141. Nor to himself Narcissus. Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection in a pool, and was turned into a flower. 151, 2. The curse of Cain Light on his head. On the head of the critic who, according to the belief of the times, killed Keats with his brutal reviews. 483. 238. The unpastured dragon. The world. 244 ff. The herded wolves, ravens, vultures. Critics to the conqueror's banner true," i. e., subservient to the political party in power. Keats's friendship with Leigh Hunt, a very advanced Liberal, brought many attacks upon him.

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250. The Pythian of the age one arrow

sped. Byron, and his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

484. 264. The Pilgrim of Eternity. Byron. Shelley is thinking of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.

268, 9. Ierne sent the sweetest lyrist, etc. Ireland sent Tom Moore. As a matter of fact, neither Byron nor Moore was particularly affected by the death of Keats.

271. One frail Form. Shelley himself.

276. Actæon-like. Actæon, in punishment for having seen Diana in the bath, was turned into a stag and torn by his own dogs.

307. What softer voice. Leigh Hunt. 485. 325. Live thou! The author of an exceptionally brutal attack on Keats in the Quarterly Review. Compare Byron's two stanzas beginning " Who killed John Keats?"

343. Peace, peace! he is not dead. With the conception of immortality set forth in the remaining stanzas one should compare Lycidas, ll. 165-185.

486. 399. Chatterton. Cf. note to Wordsworth's Resolution and Independence, 1. 43, p. 407.

401. Sidney. Died at the age of thirty

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496. The twenty-first of January is St. Agnes's Day; the evening of the twentieth is " the Eve of St. Agnes." The superstition around which the poem centers is made sufficiently clear in the course of the story. 498. 115. The holy loom, etc. On St. Agnes's day, during the celebration of the mass, two lambs might be offered to the church (cf. 1. 71). The nuns afterwards spun and wove the wool.

499. 171. Since Merlin paid his Demon, etc. Merlin, the famous wizard and prophet of Arthurian romance, was the son of a demon, and became himself the victim of magic. See Tennyson's Merlin and Vivien.

174. Tambour frame. An embroidery frame shaped like a tambour, or drum. 500. 241. Clasped like a missal, etc. Clasped probably modifies soul; in the two following lines her soul is likened to a rose that is shut. The line means, then, that her soul was clasped as tightly in sleep as a prayer-book would be by a Christian in a land of Pagans.

HYPERION

502. Keats planned to write an epic dealing with the overthrow of Saturn by Jupiter. When the poem was published in 1820, however, only two books and a fragment of a third had been written.

503. 23. There came one. Thea, sister of Hyperion.

30. Ixion's wheel. Ixion was chained for all eternity to a revolving wheel. 504. 147. The rebel three. Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto.

166. Hyperion. When the action of the poem commences, the victory of Jupiter is incomplete. Hyperion is still god of the

sun.

506. 246. Tellus. Goddess of the earth. 307. Cælus. God of the heavens.

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER 507. George Chapman (1559?-1634) published his translation of Homer in 1598 and 1609. Keats first read it in 1816.

II. Stout Cortez. Historical accuracy would compel the substitution of Balboa for Cortez.

BRIGHT STAR

508. Usually known as Keats's "last sonnet," written while he was en route to Italy.

CAMPBELL

YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND

15. Blake. Oliver Cromwell's most successful admiral. He died at sea in 1657. Nelson. The victor of Trafalgar.

MOORE

THE HARP THAT ONCE THROUGH TARA'S HALLS

509. Tara was formerly an Irish capital city.

OH, BREATHE NOT HIS NAME

The famous Irish rebel was executed in 1803 because of treasonable correspondence with Napoleon, and armed rebellion against the crown.

WOLFE

THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE Sir John Moore, an English general in charge of an army in the Peninsular War, was shot at Corunna, Spain, in January, 1809. At his own request he was buried within the ramparts of the town.

LAMB

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL

512. The essay purports to be written by a student of Christ's Hospital who feels that Lamb's earlier essay, Recollections, etc., is too flattering an account of life at the institution.

37. Banyan... days. Days on which no meat was served.

39. Double-refined. Sugar. 44. Caro equina. Horseflesh. 513. 54. Griskin. Lean loin of pork.

62. The Tishbite. Elijah.

73. I was a poor friendless boy. True of
Coleridge, for whom Lamb is speaking in
the two paragraphs beginning here.
94. Sweet Calne in Wiltshire.
ridge's house was really at Ottery St.
Mary, Devonshire.

Cole

514. 187. Upon the leads. On the lead-covered roof.

A horse which

191. Caligula's minion. Caligula named first consul.

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395. San Benito. A special robe worn by the condemned at the auto da fe. 419. An accidence. A primer containing the rudiments of grammar.

446. Insolent Greece, etc. From Ben Jonson's lines to Shakespeare.

461. Rousseau. Both Rousseau and Locke believed in letting a child follow his own natural impulses.

ents

517. 487. Helot . . . Spartans. Spartan par-
were accustomed to teach their
children sobriety by calling their atten-
tion to drunken Helots, who were slaves.
496. The Samite. The Greek philosopher
Pythagoras, whose pupils were obliged
to listen in silence to his lectures for five
years before they could ask questions.
497. Goshen. That rich and fertile part
of Egypt inhabited by the Israelites be-
fore the captivity.

503. Gideon's miracle. The method by
which Gideon tested God's promise to
Ideliver the Midianites into his hand: a
fleece left on the ground over night was
drenched by the dew, while the ground
about it was dry. See Judges, vi.
518. Ululantes. The howlers; e. g., in
Tartarus, hell.

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526. Tristis severitas in vultu. Gloomy sternness in his face; applied to a rascal in Terence's Andria.

527. Inspicere in patinas.

Look into

your saucepans; the advice of a slave to scullions, parodying some serious counsel given by a father to his son, in Terence's Adelphi.

535. Caxon. Slang term for wig. 559. Rabidus furor. Rabid rage. 518. 585. Literary life. Coleridge's Biographia Literaria.

588. The Country Spectator. A magazine
edited by T. F. Middleton in 1792-3;
see below, 1. 629.

600. Grecian. The two best scholars
among the senior boys of Christ's Hospi-
tal were called Grecians, and received
scholarships at Cambridge University.
617. Fasces. Bundles of rods, with axes
in their centers, symbolic of the authority
of Roman magistrates; here, the birch
rod.

518. 636. Regni novitas. The newness of the kingdom.

639. Jewel or Hooker. English bishops and writers of the sixteenth century; Hooker was author of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.

664. Mirandula. Pico della Mirandola,
Italian philosopher of the fifteenth cen-
tury, one of the leading scholars of the
Renaissance.

666. Jamblichus, Plotinus. Neo-Pla-
tonic philosophers of the fourth and third
centuries A. D.
674. Fuller.

Thomas Fuller, author of The Worthies of England, 1662. Lamb adapts Fuller's description of the trials of wit between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, substituting Coleridge for Jonson, and C. V. LeG. for Shakespeare.

519. 695. Nireus formosus. Handsome Nireus; Homer called Nireus the handsomest of all the Greek host before Troy. 709. Sizars. University students who received free board; formerly they performed certain menial duties in return for the financial assistance.

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28. Fauces Averni. The jaws of hell.

522. 53. Kibed. Chilblained.

56. Tester. Sixpence.

59. 'Yclept. Called.

71. The only Salopian house. The only shop devoted to the sale of saloop, or sassafras tea.

88. Fuliginous. Sooty.

137. Covent Garden. The fruit and vegetable market of London.

523. 165. Westward. I. e., homeward from

work, for Lamb lived in the Temple, west from Cheapside.

181. Hogarth. William Hogarth (16971764), the famous eighteenth century painter of London life. The March to Finchley, one of his most animated pieces of work, depicts a company of soldiers marching through a crowd in the utmost confusion; one of the figures in the foreground is that of a sweep, with just such a grin as Lamb describes, except that he is grinning not at the pie-man, but at a soldier who is stealing milk from a milkmaid.

208. A sable cloud, etc. Adapted from Comus, 1. 221 f.

229. The young Montagu. Edward Wortley Montagu (1713-1776), son of the

famous Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who twice ran away from school, once turning chimney sweep.

523. 232. Defiliations. Instances of parents being deprived of their children.

242. Ascanius. Son of Æneas; in the first book of the Eneid (1. 695 ff.) we are told how on one occasion Venus lulled him to sleep.

524. 283. Incunabula. Cradle.

290. Jem White. A schoolfellow of Lamb's at Christ's Hospital.

299. The fair of St. Bartholomew. Held in Smithfield, one of the poorer districts of London, originally on St. Bartholomew's Day, August 24; later, when the calendar was revised, on September 3. It became the occasion of great disorder and scandal, and was abolished in 1855. Ben Jonson wrote a comedy of this title, dealing with the humors of the Fair, and severely satirizing the Puritans.

312. Quoited. Thrown, as a quoit would be.

335. Rochester. The Earl of Rochester
(1647-1680), one of the courtiers of
Charles II, noted for his riotous excesses.
341. Old dame Ursula. Lamb so names
the woman after one of the characters in
Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, mentioned
above, a fat pig-woman,-i. e., woman
who sold roast pig,-indescribably coarse
of behavior.

345. Whereat the universal host...
brightness. A paraphrase of Paradise
Lost, I. 541-543; see p. 161.
360. Kissing-crust. The soft part of the
crust of a loaf where it has touched an-
other in baking.

525. 388. Golden lads, etc. From Cymbeline, IV. ii.

DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG

The Chinese manuscript, and the volume ascribed to Confucius, are inventions of Lamb, who, however, obtained the suggestion for the essay from his friend Thomas Manning, who had travelled in China.

527. 188. Locke. John Locke (1632-1704), author of the Essay concerning Human Understanding.

209. Mundus edibilis. World of edibles. 211. Princeps obsoniorum. Chief of tidbits.

217. Amor immunditiæ. Love of filth. 253. Radiant jellies . . . shooting stars. There was a popular superstition that if a shooting star could be found fallen on the ground it would turn out to be nothing but a mass of jelly.

262. Conversation. Behavior.

264. Ere sin, etc. One of Lamb's most exquisite touches of humor; the quotation is from Coleridge's Epitaph on an Infant.

273. Sapors. Flavors.

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