enough teetotal 'poem') and The Waes of War. He was a vulgarly popular (Scots) poet in his day, but is chiefly remembered as the author of such songs as Kelvin Grove and My Boy Tammie.

LETTER xlvi. p. 55.

After the couplets concerning Naldi and Catalani :—See English Bards: Then let Ausonia, skilled in every art,' etc. Naldi (1765-1810), a Neapolitan buffo, sang at the King's Theatre for some fifteen years, and was especially delightful in Cost Fan Tutti and Il Fanatico per la Musica. Angelica Catalani (17791849), the illustrious soprano, came out at Venice in 1795; sang all over the Continent; and crossed to London, where she became the rage, so that as much as £2000 was paid her for a single musical fête, in 1806.

LETTER xlvii. p. 55.

Poor Falkland's death:-Charles John, the Eighth Viscount (17681809), Captain, R. N., was mortally wounded in a duel by a Mr. Powell, and died the same day. The quarrel appears to have taken place in the Argyle Institution (or some such place), which was part hell and part assembly rooms. Hence the lines in English Bards :—

The jovial caster 's set, and seven's the nick,
Or-done-a thousand on the coming trick!
If, mad with loss, existence 'gins to tire,
And all your hope or wish is to expire,
Here's Powell's pistol ready for your life,
And, kinder still, two Pagets for your wife.

In a note to this passage Byron writes:-'I knew the late Lord Falkland well. On Sunday night I beheld him presiding at his own table, in all the honest pride of hospitality; on Wednesday morning, at three o'clock, I saw stretched before me all that remained of courage, feeling, and a host of passions. He was a gallant and successful officer: his faults were the faults of a sailor [those of dissipation]-as such, Britons will forgive them. He died like a brave man in a better cause; for had he fallen in like manner on the deck of the frigate to which he was just appointed, his last moments would have been held up by his countrymen as an example to succeeding heroes.' In a letter to Hanson (8th February 1809), Byron, after remarking that he is 'dunned from noon till twilight,' and that he must have money or 'quit the country,' adds this: If I do not get my seat immediately, I shall sail with Lord Falkland in the Désirée frigate for Sicily.' Yet, soon after the duel, says Moore, he 'reminded the unfortunate widow that he was to

be godfather to her infant; the child was christened Byron-CharlesFerdinand-Plantagenet Cary, and after the ceremony the poet inserted a five hundred pound note in a breakfast cup . . . not discovered till he had left the house.'

The affidavits from Carhais, Cornwall:-To take his seat in the Lords, Byron had to produce evidence of the marriage at Cacrhayes of his grandfather, Admiral Byron, with Miss Trevanion. This was not easily done; for the ceremony had been performed in a private chapel. In the meantime Lord Carlisle (see ante, p. 330, Note to Letter xxxix.) was asked for certain relevant information, which information he declined to give.

LETTER xlviii. p. 57.

London is full of the Duke's business:-The investigation into Colonel Wardle's charges against the Duke of York and his mistress, Mary Anne Clarke.

Carry you to the 'limner':-This was George L. Sanders (17741846), a Kinghorn (Fife) man, who began as a coach-painter; for some time painted miniatures and portraits, and gave drawinglessons in Edinburgh; came to London in 1807; had sittings from the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cumberland, and others; and became in some sort fashionable.

LETTER xlix. p. 58.

Full of printing resolution:-That is, as regards the Miss-sellany, for which see ante, p. 322, Note to Letter xxxv.

LETTER 1. p. 59.

Strongly recommended to me by Dr. Butler:-The Pomposus of Recollections of Childhood.' The two, as we have seen, were reconciled ere Byron left England.

Robert and William :-Robert Rushton, son of one of Byron's tenants, the 'little page,' and William Fletcher, the 'staunch yeoman' of the 'Good Night' in the First Harold.

There is a picture in oil of me:-The full-length painted by Sanders. (See above, Note to Letter xlviii.)

Ask them to copy the others:-I.e. those of his friends.

LETTER li. p. 61.

The Cock is crowing, etc. :-This quotation is from Henry Carey's burletta (1734) of Fielding's Tom Thumb the Great (1730).

NOTE:-Certain sentences in this and the following letter are here restored from the originals in Mr. Alfred Morrison's Collection of Autographs.

LETTER lii. p. 62.

And all that,' as Orator Henley said:- Henley, in one of his publications entitled Oratory Transactions, engaged to execute singly what would sprain a dozen of modern doctors of the tribe of Issachar-to write, read, and study twelve hours a day, and yet appear as untouched by the yoke as if he never wore it-to teach in one year what schools or universities teach in five; and he furthermore pledged himself to persevere in his bold scheme, until he had put the Church, and all that, in danger.'-MOORE.

The great apostle, etc. :-This is England's wealthiest son,' the William Beckford (1759-1844) of Vathek (1787), that masterpiece of wit, imagination, and narrative, written at twenty-two, and in a single sitting of three days and two nights,' during which time 'I never took off my clothes,' so that 'the severe application made me very ill.' At the time of Byron's writing he was still the Beckford of Fonthill and its Tower, which he did not sell till 1822. But the Beckford of Cintra (1794-96) was already so completely of the past, that Byron, not long after this very Letter, could address him in these terms:

Here didst thou dwell, here schemes of pleasure plan,
Beneath yon mountain's ever beauteous brow:

But now, as if a thing unblest by Man,

Thy fairy dwelling is as lone as thou!
Here giant weeds a passage scarce allow
To halls deserted, portals gaping wide:
Fresh lessons to the thinking bosom, how
Vain are the pleasaunces on earth supplied;

Swept into wrecks anon by Time's ungentle tide!

In 1822 he became the Beckford of Bath, where he built him another Tower, and shut himself up with his books, his pictures and statues, his moods and humours and caprices; and then in 1834 he published his third book, the excellent series of letters entitled Italy: with Sketches of Spain and Portugal. In that year, too, he reprinted his Biographical Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters, written at seventeen, and still amusing reading of a kind; and in 1835 he published his Recollections of an Excursion to the Monasteries of Alobaça and Batalha. This is all his literary baggage; and from the Recollections onward till his death he was a resolute, invisible recluse. But at eleven he had succeeded to the worth of a million of money; and he had sat in Parliament (once for Eccles and once for Hindon), known the greatest grief that can befall a man, lived as he would with none to say him nay, pro

duced such a master-story as must live as long as the French in which it was written and the English into which it was translated, and thereby approved himself the best Voltairean bred in England before the coming of Benjamin Disraeli. As to Byron's description of him, this from Moore (Diary: 18th October 1818) may serve to eke it out:- Beckford wishes me to go to Fonthill with R[ogers]; anxious that I should look over his Travels . . . and prepare them for the press. Rogers supposes he would give me something magnificent for it,—a thousand pounds, perhaps. But if he were to give me a hundred times that sum, I would not have my name coupled with his. To be Beckford's sub, not very desirable.'

Ld. Courtney:-William, Eleventh Earl of Courtenay (17771839), High Steward of the University of Oxford, Patentee of the Subpoena Office, Court of Chancery, and Governor of the Charter House School.

NOTE:-With this letter was enclosed that foretaste of the true Byron, the Lines to Mr. Hodgson :

The women of Cadiz :-Cf. the song in the first draft of the First Harold, for which were substituted the quatrains 'To Inez' :

Oh never talk again to me

Of northern climes and British ladies,

It has not been your lot to see,

Like me,

the lovely Girl of Cadiz.

Although her eye be not of blue,

Nor fair her locks, like English lasses,

How far its own expressive hue

The languid azure eye surpasses!

Prometheus-like, from heaven she stole

The fire, that through those silken lashes

In darkest glances seems to roll,

From eyes that cannot hide their flashes:
And as along her bosom steal

In lengthen'd flow her raven tresses,

You'd swear each clustering lock could feel,
And curl'd to give her neck caresses.

Our English maids are long to woo,

And frigid even in possession;

And if their charms be fair to view,

Their lips are slow at Love's confession.

But, born beneath a brighter sun,

For love ordain'd the Spanish maid is,
And who, when fondly, fairly won,-
Enchants you like the Girl of Cadiz?
The Spanish maid is no coquette,

Nor joys to see a lover tremble;
And if she love, or if she hate,

Alike she knows not to dissemble.
Her heart can ne'er be bought or sold-
Howe'er it beats, it beats sincerely;
And though it will not bend to gold,

'Twill love you long and love you dearly.

The Spanish girl that meets your love

Ne'er taunts you with a mock denial,

For every thought is bent to prove

Her passion in the hour of trial.

When thronging foemen menace Spain.

She dares the deed and shares the danger;

And should her lover press the plain,

She hurls the spear, her love's avenger.

And when, beneath the evening star,
She mingles in the gay Bolero,

Or sings to her attuned guitar

Of Christian knight or Moorish hero,

Or counts her beads with fairy hand

Beneath the twinkling rays of Hesper,

Or joins devotion's choral band,

To chaunt the sweet and hallow'd vesper;

In each her charms the heart must move
Of all who venture to behold her;
Then let not maids less fair reprove

Because her bosom is not colder:

Through many a clime 'tis mine to roam
Where many a soft and melting maid is,
But none abroad, and few at home,

May match the dark-eyed Girl of Cadiz.

I have seen Sir John Carr at Seville and Cadiz:-John Carr (1772-1832) was an English attorney, who, having to travel for health, wrote books about his travels, and won the nickname of 'the Jaunting Carr' thereby. He published The Fury of Discord, a Poem (1803); The Stranger in France (1803); a three-act play, The Sea-side Hero (1804); A Northern Summer (1804); The Stranger in Ireland (1806); Caledonian Sketches (1807); and Descriptive Travels in the Southern and Eastern Parts of Spain (1811).