38.-Page 194, line 33. And 'pilots who have weather'd every storm'— ["The Pilot that weathered the storm" is the burthen of a song, in honour of Pitt, by Canning.] 39.-Page 195, line 5. Our last, our best, our only orator, [Lord Byron always wrote and spoke of Canning with the highest admiration. In his Diary of 1821 the poet states that he had never heard any one who fulfilled his ideal of an orator; but adds that Canning was sometimes very like one. On another occasion he enumerated among.Canning's brilliant gifts-"the most effective eloquence."] 40.-Page 195, line 16. Nor royal stallion's feet extremely sure; [On the suicide of Lord Londonderry, in August, 1822, Mr. Canning, who was about to go to India, as Governor-General, became Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs,-not much to the satisfaction of George the Fourth, or of the high Tories in the Cabinet. Ile lived to verify some of the predictions of the poet-to abandon the foreign policy of his predecessor-to break up the Tory party by a coalition with the Whigsand to prepare the way for Reform in Parliament.] 41.-Page 198, line 9. The banker, broker, baron, brethren, speed [Baron Rothschild.] 42.-Page 199, line 5. There Chateaubriand forms new books of martyrs; Monsieur Chateaubriand, who has not forgotten the author in the minister, received a handsome compliment at Verona from a literary sovereign: "Ah! Monsieur C., are you related to that Chateaubriand who-who-who has written something?" (écrit quelque chose!) It is said that the author of Atala repented him for a moment of his legitimacy. 43.-Page 199, line 6. And subtle Greeks intrigue for stupid Tartars; [Count Capo d'Istrias-afterwards President of Greece. The count was murdered, in September, 1831, by the brother and son of a Mainote chief whom he had imprisoned.] 44.-Page 199, line 7. There Montmorenci, the sworn foe to charters, [The Duke de Montmorenci-Laval.] 45.-Page 199, line 15. "Almost as quickly as he conquer'd Spain." [From Pope's verses on Lord Peterborough.] 46.-Page 193, line 21. The young Astyanax of Modern Troy; [Napoleon François Charles Joseph, Duke of Reichstadt, died at the palace of Schönbrunn, July 22, 1832, having just attained his twentyfirst year.] 47.-Page 199, line 33. Must watch her through these paltry pageantries. [Count Neipperg, chamberlain and second husband to Maria-Louisa, had but one eye. The count died in 1831.] 48.-Page 200, line 20. She caught Sir William Curtis in a kill! [George the Fourth is said to have been annoyed on entering the levee-room at Holyrood (Aug. 1822), in full Stuart tartan, to see only one figure similarly attired (and of similar bulk)-that of Sir William Curtis. The city knight had every thing complete-even the knife stuck in the garter. He asked the King, if he did not think him well dressed. "Yes!" replied his Majesty, "only you have no spoon in your hose." The devourer of turtle had a fine engraving executed of himself in his Celtic attire.] INTRODUCTION TO OCCASIONAL PIECES. THE "Hours of Idleness" contain the whole of the poems comprised in the different editions the author prepared of that work, together with several pieces which were written at the same period, and remained in MS. till after his death. All his subsequent miscellaneous productions, which extend beyond a page or two, are arranged in the order of their composition, and there now remain over a number of minor poems, which we have grouped together under the title of "Occasional Pieces." They embrace specimens of almost every date, commencing from the publication of "Hours of Idleness," and concluding with the latest verses which came from his pen-of almost every variety of style, from the terrible gloom of the poem on "Darkness," down to his gayest effusions, and of almost every grade of quality, from the inspirations of genius to the designed doggerel interspersed among his letters. Of these numerous poems "Darkness" is the grandest and the most original. Campbell's "Last Man" is sublime from his lofty faith in the midst of ruin,-proudly defying a perishing world to shake his trust in God. Lord Byron, after the manner of his genius, can discover in the situation only horror and despair, but he paints his picture with such power that we are transferred for the moment from the world about us to the world he has conjured up. There are several pungent pieces in the collection, which must not be literally understood. Satirists rarely feel half the indignation they express, and Lord Byron was especially prone to dip his pen in gall when he had little bitterness in his heart. His "Windsor Foetics," and "Irish Avatar," are signal examples of this dissembled invective. He meant, no doubt, to irritate George IV. and his minister, but the real animosity was very slight. Those who shoot arrows in sport are apt to forget that the wound is proportioned to the strength with which the bow is drawn, and is none the less because the malice of the marksman was rather playful than deadly. In the tender portion of the occasional strains there is an unmistakeable sincerity of sorrow. A poet's grief finds a voice in verse, and Lord Byron seldom spoke with deeper and simpler pathos than in the address to Mrs. Musters, "Well! thou art happy;" in some of the stanzas to Thyrza; in the Lines" There's not a joy the world can give," and in the dying dirge which he composed upon his birth-day. Each poem expresses a different phase of that distress which darkened a life full of triumphs and full of anguish,-the pangs produced by unsuccessful love, by the early death of some fair friend whose name is unknown, by the sense that his heart was withering at the core, and by the regrets for past unworthy deeds, with a speedy grave his brightest hope for the future. It is impossible to read these melancholy musings without something of wonder mingling with our pity, that a being who could feel so justly and strongly should have sought elief from the sorrows of his better nature in the delirious dictates of the worser part. |