AWAKE my Muse  Cf. Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, I,1: "Awake, my ST. JOHN!" (M.C.) and Byron, Hints from Horace, 194-195: "Beware—for God’s sake don’t begin like Bowles! / ‘Awake a louder and a loftier strain. . . .’" As Cullen notes, Adam Hood Burwell’s Talbot Road: A Poem, which was published in The Niagara Spectator in 1818, also begins "Awake my muse!"

mould  Nature, form, or character.

deign’st  Condescends; sees fit.

minstrel’s  Poet-servant’s.

those well known of old . . . Thalïa’s face  Tooke, Pantheon, pp. 187-192, describes the nine Muses of ancient Greek mythology in detail, noting that they were the daughters of Jupiter and Mnemosyne (Memory) and "the mistresses of all the sciences, the presidents of the musicians and poets, and the governors of the feasts and solemnities of the gods." Of the fourth Muse, Thalia, Tooke writes: "[her name derives] from her gaiety, briskness, and pleasantry; because she sings pleasantly and wantonly. Some describe to her the invention of comedy, others of geometry." Elsewhere he notes that one of the three graces is called Thalia "from her perpetual verdure; because kindness ought never to die, but to remain fresh always in the receiver’s memory" (p. 125). See also Byron, Hints from Horace, 125-126 ("But so Thalia pleases to appear, / Poor Virgin!") and 130 ("And brisk Thalia takes a serious tone . . .").

the moderns  People of the present or recent past, as distinct from those of remote or ancient times.

Urging  Inspiring.

inky race  Cf. Byron, Hints from Horace, 383-385: ". . . every dunce . . . thinks to do the same at once; / But after inky thumbs and bitten nails, / . . . he coxcomb fails." See also the quotation from Lambert’s Travels at 693-694, below.

rhyming pack  Cf. Byron, Hints from Horace, 39-41: "The greater portion of the rhyming tribe . . . Are led astray by some peculiar lure."

old Pegasus, thy jaded hack  The winged "horse of the Muses" in Greek mythology, Pegasus was supposed to have struck the "mountain Helicon . . . with his hoof, and opened a fountain . . . called . . . Hippocrene" (Tooke, Pantheon, pp. 383, 315) whose waters were themselves sacred to the Muses and a source of poetic inspiration. See also, in conjunction with the "scribbling plan" of line 52, Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 143-145: "Behold! in various throngs the scribbling crew . . . ass in long review: / Each spurs his jaded Pegasus apace . . . " (M.C.). A "jaded hack" is an ordinary horse that has become dull and exhausted through over work.

hackney’d  Made trite or commonplace (with a pun on "hack": see previous note).

sonnetteers now straddle  See Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 330 ("The maudlin prince of mournful sonnetteers") and 969-970 ("Ye . . . Must mount . . . Pegasus, a full-grown ass . . .").

Gall’d  Sore and irritated.

crupper  A strap of leather fastened to the saddle and passing under the horse’s tail to prevent the saddle from slipping forwards (M.C.); the hind part of a horse. Cf. Byron, Don Juan, XI, 565-566: "The ghost of vanish’d pleasures once in vogue" "sits for ever upon memory’s crupper. . . ."

per force  Perforce: by force; of necessity.

least  Lest: that . . . not.

blythe votaries  Blithe (cheerful, unthinking) devotees or followers.

"fiddle-faddle!"  Nonsense.

bards of ballad-verse fruition  Cf., in conjunction with the preceding line, Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 201-202: "With eagle-pinion soaring to the skies, / Behold the ballad-monger Southey rise!" ballad-verse: verse that narrates a popular story. fruition: enjoyment.

The rhyme of "chime" and "rhyme" in this stanza (and in stanza 7) recalls Byron, Don Juan, VI, 137-144, a self-reflexive discussion of a "rhyme" used to complete "an octave’s chime." See also Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 918: "Let simple Wordsworth chime his childish verse . . ." (M.C.).

suiting cadence to thy rider’s rhyme  Cf. Byron, Hints from Horace, 59 ("Dear Authors! suit your topics to your strength. . .") and 429 (". . . jokes and numbers suited to their taste . . .").

"hey nony-no!"  See, in conjunction with "tale of woe" (18), Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, II, iii, 69-71: "be you blithe and bonny, / Converting all your sounds of woe, / Into Hey nonny, nonny" (an expression of indifference or happiness).

Truly pathetic  Genuinely moving or stirring in an emotional way. Longmore is, of course, being ironical. See the quotation from Byron in the next entry.

ultra wrought sublime  Excessively worked renditions of supposedly elevated ideas and feelings. In Don Juan and elsewhere, Byron tirelessly attacks post-Romantic pretensions to emotional, intellectual, and spiritual elevation. See, for example, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 245-246: "Christmas stories tortured into rhyme / Contain the essence of the true sublime. . . ." Byron then attacks Wordsworth’s "The Idiot Boy": "So close on each pathetic part he dwells, / And each adventure so sublimely tells, / That all . . . / Conceive the bard the hero of the story . . ."

fancy  Inspiration; imagination.

ship-board  Being on board a ship.

invention  Power of mental creation. Cf., in conjunction with the surrounding lines, Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 849-851: "There be those who say, in these enlightened days . . . That strained invention, ever on the wing, / Alone impels the modern bard to sing."

thy mountain’s vast ascension  In Greek mythology, several mountains—Helicon (see the note to 8, above), Parnassus, Citheron, and Pierus—were associated with the Muses; see Tooke, Pantheon, pp. 190-191.

suspension  Cessation or deprivation of a privilege or power.

sphere  Place; society; hemisphere.

scribblers  "[P]etty author[s]; . . . writer[s] without worth" (Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language). The word "scribbler" and its cognates appears repeatedly in Byron’s English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (4, 44, 54, and ff.) and Hints from Horace (393, 482, 725, and ff.); and see also Don Juan, V, 334-335: ". . . of late your scribblers think it worth / Their while to rear whole hotbeds in their works. . . ." Between June, 1821 and March, 1827, The Scribbler, a satirical magazine edited by Samuel Hull Wilcocke, was printed in Montreal; see Introduction, pp. xxxiii-xxxiv.

profan’d  Treated with irreverence; put to unworthy uses.

satire’s dart  Cf. Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 38 (" . . . the arrows of satiric song . . .") and 823 ("Are there no sins for satire’s bard to greet?").

a motley group of bards  Cf. Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 560: "Now to the Drama turn—Oh! motley sight!"; motley: variously coloured; jester-like; foolish.

murky  Dark; gloomy.

garret  "A traditional—and clichéd—place for a writer to live and work" (M.C.).

rueful countenance  Piteous, sorrowful, mournful appearance.

palid cheek—grey eyes—and locks of carrot  Cf. Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, I, 93: ". . . large blue eyes, fair locks, and snowy hands . . ."; pallid: pale; sickly. Longmore may be referring to a particular woman, but, if so, her identity has yet to be discovered.

Hecate  See Tooke, Pantheon, pp. 213-214 for the association of Hecate with, among other things, the Greek underworld, human sacrifice, and magic spells. "[H]er head was covered with frightful snakes instead of hair," writes Tooke, "and her feet were like serpents. She was represented encompassed with dogs. . . ."

Harpies  Tooke, Pantheon, p. 271 quotes a translation of Virgil’s "horrid description of these three sisters" in the third book of the Aeneid: "Monsters . . . fierce . . . From hell’s abyss, they have virgin faces, but with breasts obscene; / Foul paunches, and with ordure still unclean; / With claws for hands, and looks forever lean."

Furies Tooke, Pantheon, p. 259 describes the Furies—avengers of crime in Greek mythology—as "monsters . . . that have the faces of women. [T]heir looks are full of terror; they hold lighted torches in their hands; snakes and serpents lash their necks and shoulders."

Fates  Tooke, Pantheon, pp. 257-258 describes the Fates of Greek mythology as "three old ladies" who "distribute good and bad things to persons at their birth," "order the past, present, and future time," and have in their care "the fatal thread of life."

cast a libel  Defame or discredit.

Would fain that  Would be delighted or glad if.

shew  Show.

gentle reader  For an example of this conventional phrase, and the stanza that surrounds it, see Byron, Beppo, 392-397: "But to my tale of Laura,—for I find / Digression is a sin . . . [that] the reader . . . [may] displease— / The gentle reader. . . ."

scribbling plan  See the note to 31, above and Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 452: "His scribbling toils. . . ."

lays  Poems.

I’ve begun in rhyme. . . . To tumble into verse, and write in metre. Cf. Byron, Beppo, 409-416: "But I am but a nameless sort of person . . . And take for rhyme, to hook my rambling verse on . . . I’ve half a mind to tumble down to prose, / But verse is more in fashion—so here goes." Cullen also cites Don Juan, I, 1605: "Prose poets like blank-verse, I’m fond of rhyme. . . ."

Words, when in verse, a silvery smoothness have  Cf. Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 26: "Smooth be the verse, and easy be the strain."

glidance  This word is not listed in the OED. If an elaboration of "glide," it suggests the smooth and continuous movement of the waves. If a misprinting of "glitterance," it suggests the sparkling appearance of a "summer wave."

ambient  Surrounding.

jocund  Cheerful; merry.

damsels to devotion  Byronic: see, for example, Don Juan, VI, 25: "The damsels, who had thoughts of some great harm . . ."; damsels: young, unmarried women.

clime  Region.

no matter where . . .  Cf. Byron, Beppo, 72-78 ("Of all the places where the Carnival / Was most facetious in the days of yore . . . Venice the bell from every city bore . . .") and 665-666 ("The name of the Aurora I’ll not mention, / Although I might.  . .").

fetter  Chain; constraint.

Phoebus  Tooke, Pantheon, p. 39: Apollo, the god of the sun in Greek mythology, "is called Phoebus from the swiftness of his motion, or from his method of healing by purging. . . ."

See the Introduction, pp. xix-xxiii for the possible identities of Longmore’s "old Bachelor and Widow fair"—Baptisto (185) and Annette (77)—as Jean-Baptiste Toussaint Pothier (1771-1825) and Anne- Françoise Bruyères.

We call them fair  Cf. Byron, Beppo, 129-132: "Shakespeare described the sex in Desdemona / As very fair, but yet suspect in fame, / And to this day . . . / Such matters may be probably the same. . . ."

en masse French: as a group.

Cf. Byron, Beppo, 402-403: ". . . could I scale Parnassus, where the Muses sit inditing / Those pretty poems. . . ."

eyes of sparkling light  Such eyes are a frequent attribute of women in the Petrarchan tradition, but see Byron, Beppo, 355: ". . . large black eyes that flash on you a volley. . . ."

cheek of rose  See the previous entry and Byron, Beppo, 672: " . . . her cheek, out-blooming all."

lips vermilion  See previous entries; vermilion: "A brilliant scarlet, or a cosmetic used to produce such a colour" (M.C.).

indite  Compose; write. See the quotation at 73-77, above and Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 713: " . . . their harmless lays indite. . . ."

Fancy  Imagination, particularly of a lower or more trivial kind.

metamorphose  Transform; change.

votary of Apollo  See the entries at 13 and 68, above. Tooke, Pantheon, p. 31 states that, as the inventor of "music, poetry, and rhetoric," the Greek god Apollo "is supposed to preside over the muses."

How to describe the sex   See the quotation from Byron’s Beppo at 72, above.

hallow  Reverence.

Peris  In Persian mythology, a class of superhuman beings, originally represented as of malevolent character, but subsequently as good faeries. Longmore probably had in mind Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh (1817), one of the tales of which is entitled "Paradise and the Peris" (M.C.). See Byron, The Bride of Abydos, I, 151 and II, 85.

prosy  Prosaic; unpoetical; matter-of-fact.

fain  Necessarily.

personage  Person; exalted person; character in a story or play.

Cf. Byron, Beppo, 175-185 ("Laura was blooming still. . . . She was a married woman . . .") and 432 ("But they were young . . ."), and the quotation from the same poem at 1427, below.

Aurora harnessing her stud  In Greek mythology, the goddess of dawn, Aurora is depicted by Tooke, Pantheon, p. 133 in a chariot drawn by "white horses."

I like thee Canada; I like thy . . . Cf. Byron, Beppo, 321-353: "Italy’s a pleasant place to be. . . . I like on Autumn evenings to ride out. . . . I like the women too. . . ."

Cf. Lambert, Travels, I, 400: "Few natural curiosities are to be found in Lower Canada, except rapids, cascades and falls." Lambert describes in detail the effects of the great earthquake of 1663 ("Chaos in Titanic glee"?) on the landscape of Canada (I, 391-400), and offers the following description of the "bellowing and foaming" Chaudière Falls on the Ottawa River: "the disordered masses of rock . . . appear to have been rent from their bed by some violent convulsion of nature. . . . The dark green foliage [of the forest], joined with the brown and sombre tint of the rocky fragments over which the water precipitates itself, forms a striking contrast to the snowy whiteness of the foaming surge . . ." (I, 409-410). Of course, Longmore would have had first-hand knowledge of such "natural curiosities" of Lower Canada as the Chaudière and Montmorency Falls (outside Quebec City).

floods  Rivers.

old Chaos in Titanic glee . . . rude revelry  Cf. John Milton, Paradise Lost, II, 894-897: "where eldest Night / And Chaos, Ancestors of Nature, hold / Eternal Anarchy, amidst the noise of endless wars" among the four elements (water, earth, air, and fire: Milton’s "Sea, . . . Shore, . . . Air, . . . [and] Fire [II, 912]). According to the Theogeny of the ancient Greek poet Hesiod, Chaos was the first ancestor of the gods, followed by Uranus and Ge and their children, the Titans and other giants.

rack their voices in rude revelry  Torture or strain their voices in coarse and ungenteel merry-making.

the deuce take  Euphemism: the devil take.

malady  Illness.

blustering people  People who utter their words in an angry, bullying, or stormy manner.

Fortune’s ladder  In Tooke, Pantheon, p. 356, Fortune, the ancient Roman goddess who brings people good or bad fortune (destiny), appears with her traditional emblems, a cornucopia and a ship’s rudder. In Christian iconography, she is more often depicted with a wheel which, like Longmore’s "ladder," carries people up and down. See also the note to 724, below.

we, its riddle and its jest  See, in conjunction with the preceding lines, Pope, Essay on Man, II, 15-18: "Created half to rise, and half to fall . . . [Man is] The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!"

The emphasis in these lines on the "agreeable surprise" and "Delight" occasioned by "variety" and the unexpected has an Addisonian ring; see, for example, The Spectator, No. 357 ("Circumstances that give a delightful Surprize . . .") and No. 412 (Joseph Addison’s famous essay on "Pleasures of the Imagination, including the "delightful stillness and Amazement of the Soul" that arises from contemplating a "Variety of Objects" in a landscape). By Longmore’s day, the picturesque aesthetic to which Addison’s essays were a seminal contribution was ubiquitous on both sides of the Atlantic.

See the quotation from Lambert’s Travels at 567-574, below.

Thor In Scandinavian mythology, the god of the weather, thunder, agriculture, and the home, Thor is usually represented with a hammer signifying his might. Cf. Byron, Beppo, 481-483: "Crush’d was Napoleon by the northern Thor, / Who knock’d his army down with icy hammer.  . ." (M.C.).

As Cullen notes, the "association of ‘warmer climes’ with passion is commonplace," and made repeatedly by Byron; see particularly Don Juan, I, 498-507, for the observation, that, owing to the effects of the "indecent sun" on our "helpless clay," "adultery / Is more common where the climate’s sultry." "Happy the nations of the moral North!," continues Byron, "Where all is virtue, and the winter season / Sends sin, without a rag on, shivering forth. . . ."

rout  Fight; disturbance.

Boreas  In Greek mythology, the northern wind.

imperious  Commanding; domineering.

In palace or in hovel . . . Cf. Byron, Don Juan, I, 1607 ("From the dull palace to the dirty hovel  . .") and XIII, 55 ("where’er the palace or the hovel is . . . ")

night’s its loveliest hour  Cf., in conjunction with: the "prude" of line 136 Byron, Beppo, 9-12: ". . . night . . . The time less liked by husbands than by lovers / Begins, and prudery flings aside her fetter. . . ."

that prude in love, a Platonist  Since the Renaissance, the love popularly associated with the Greek philosopher Plato has been a love between soul and soul, a love without sensual desire or fulfilment. In Don Juan, Byron makes frequent reference to such "Platonic" or "Platonical love," for example in I, 629; I, 885; II, 1629; V, 8; IX, 601; and X, 431.

Oh Love  See Byron, Don Juan, II, 1633 and 1639: "Oh, Love! . . . Oh, Love!"

Cupid  Tooke, Pantheon, pp. 123- 124: "Cupid is the god of love [in Roman mythology]. . . . Although . . . [he] be the youngest of all the gods . . . yet his power is so great that he is esteemed the strongest of them. . . . Without his assistance his mother Venus is weak, and can do nothing. . . ."

minion  Favourite; dependent.

pinion  Part of a wing or, poetically, a wing. Cupid is traditionally represented as a winged (and blind) boy with a bow and arrows.

Snar’d in the nets, thou spread’st in thy dominion  Cf. Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, II, 292: "And spread its snares licentious, far and wide. . . ."

frolic  Merry-making.

spleen and cholic  Perhaps deriving his knowledge from the plays of Shakespeare and Jonson (as well as from his doctor father), Longmore alludes here and elsewhere in The Charivari to the old theory of the humours whereby different fluids (or humours) in the body and the organs that produce them are associated with different psychological traits. A balance among the four humours—blood, phlegm, choler (or yellow bile) and melancholy (or black bile), which also correspond to the four elements (see the note to 100-101, above)—produces a balanced personality; an imbalance in favour of one humour produces a particular temperament or character. Thus an excess of choler or "cholic" produces a choleric personality—a person characterized by such traits as irascibility, anger, and passion— and an excess of melancholy, which was held to derive from the spleen, results in a melancholic disposition—a tendency towards depression, moroseness, irritability, and other signs of ill-humour.

purse-proud  Proud of their wealth.

dart  Arrows. See the note to 140, above.

sanguiferous  Technically, bearing or conveying blood; bloody.

Alexander . . . Thaïs . . . Persepolis  Alexander the Great (356- 323 B.C.), a pupil of Aristotle and probably the greatest general in antiquity, was the King of Macedonia from 336 to 323 B.C. According to legend, it was at the instigation of a Greek courtesan, Thaïs, that in 330 B.C. Alexander looted and destroyed the ancient Persian city of Persepolis. Cf. Byron, Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice, V, 450-451: "like to the courtesan / Who fired Persepolis. . . ."

Hero . . . Leander  In Greek legend, Hero was a beautiful priestess of Aphrodite at Sestos on the European side of the Hellespont (the strait that divides Europe from Asia) whose lover Leander nightly swam across to her from Abydos on the opposite shore. After Leander was drowned on a stormy night, Hero threw herself in grief into the sea. In May, 1810, Byron swam the Hellespont and self-mockingly told the tale in "Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos."

pander  Go-between in a love affair; procurer; pimp.

Petrarch  The love of the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) for Laura was clandestine because she was a married woman.

Iris wing  In Greek mythology, Iris was the messenger of Juno. "Because of her swiftness," writes Tooke, Pantheon, p. 87, "she is painted with wings, and she rides on a rainbow. . . ." By association, "iris" means rainbow or rainbow-coloured.

Venus  In Roman religion, Venus was the goddess of love. Identified with the Greek Aphrodite, she may originally have been a goddess of gardens. Tooke, Pantheon, pp. 107-122 describes her at length.

bowers  Arbours: shady shelters made with branches or vines.

balmy  Fragrant; soothing.

numbers  Groups of notes.

zephyrs  Breezes.

Chaste as Diana’s orb  Virginal as the moon. Tooke, Pantheon, pp. 209-210 discusses at length the chastity and lunar associations of the Greek goddess Diana. In conjunction with "azure bound," cf. Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, 242-243: ". . . meek Dian’s crest / Floats through the azure air. . . ."

azure  Blue; the sky.

vestal  Virgin.

essence  Spirit; soul.

See the quotation from Byron’s Beppo at 49, above.

stright  Straight.

amatory  See Lambert, Travels, I, 324-328 for a lengthy discussion of the "mischievous effects which the amatory novels and poetry of the present day have upon the minds of the young and inexperienced. . . ."

lopp’d  Lopped: shortened.

Baptisto . .  .was a.  . . man  Cf. Byron, Beppo, 199-201: "He was a merchant trading to Aleppo, / His name Giuseppe, call’d more briefly, Beppo. / He was a man. . . ."

goodly . . . / As the more common meaning of the word / Admits   Baptisto is a good-looking or handsome man, not necessarily a man of good character.

weal  Wealth.

id est  Latin: that is. Cf. Byron, Beppo, 584: ". . . in short, a fool,— "

caprices  Whims, fancies.

verified "the poor man and his ass,"/ A Fable . . . When Baptisto is placed on the "horse, or poney, mule, or ass" (1026) during the charivari (1369f.) he gives substance to Aesop’s fable of "The Old Man, his Son, and the Ass" (as it is usually called). In this fable, the comments of various passers-by produce several combinations of the old man, his son, and the ass: first the boy rides the ass, then his father takes his place, and later the two ride the animal is tandem; finally—in response to a charge of cruelty—they suspend the ass from a pole and carry it to town, where "their appearance causes so much laughter, that the old Man, mad with vexation at the result of his endeavours to give satisfaction to everybody, thr[o]ws the Ass into the river. . . ." The moral of the story is "Please All and You Will Please None."

folly  Silliness; weakness of mind; sin.

bigot  Someone blindly and obstinately devoted to a particular creed or party; particularly, someone whose zeal in religious matters is regarded as excessive.

rake  Debauched or dissolute person, especially a man of fashion.

phlegmatic  See the note to 144, above. According to the theory of humours, an excess of phlegm disposes a character to be calm, cold, dull, sluggish, and indifferent.

rue  Regret; contemplate.

imbue  Fill; moisten; tinge.

foibles  Weaknesses; failings.

deem  Judge; believe.

disparage  Dishonour by comparison with what is inferior; talk slightingly of; undervalue.

The silken chain, which binds two hearts in marriage  Cf. Sir Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, V, 217-226: "True love’s . . . The silver link, the silken tie, / Which heart to heart, and mind to mind / In body and in soul can bind."

connubial  Matrimonial. In conjunction with the ensuing lines, cf. Don Juan , II, 1641: "Thou [Love] mak’st the chaste connubial state precarious. . . ."

protestations  Declarations.

the dress of Hymen’s masquerade  Wedding dress. Tooke, Pantheon, p. 123 writes of Venus’s companion Hymenæus that he "presided over marriage, and was the protector of virgins."

shew  Show.

electrical  Charged with electricity—that is, the capacity to attract other bodies. Cf., in conjunction with the ensuing lines, Byron, "Monody on the Death of the Right Hon. R.B. Sheriden," 89-92: "Breasts . . . / Bear hearts electric—charged with fire from Heaven . . . By clouds surrounded, and on whirlwinds borne, / Driven o’er the lowering atmosphere. . . ."

Vapours  Mists and, according to the theory of humours (see the note to 144, above), exhalations that were supposed to arise from the humours, with consequent physiological and psychological effects.

Socrates . . . Xantippe  The Greek philosopher Socrates (469-399 B.C.) was married to Xanthippe, whose ill-tempered behaviour towards him has made her name synonymous with shrewishness.

sweet chubby brats so squalling  Cf. Richard Steele, The Spectator, No. 479: "The noise of those . . . squalling brats. . . ."

comfits  Sugar-coated nuts or other delicacies; sugar plums.

malady  An unusual usage: sickness, affliction.

caterwalling  Sounds similar to those made by a cat in heat.

uxorious  Excessively or submissively fond of his wife.

Shakespeare liken’d man unto a god / . . . in apprehension  See Hamlet, II, ii, 315-318: "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god!" apprehension: ability to understand; understanding.

marriage . . . miscarriage   This rhyme occurs in Byron, Beppo, 490 and 494 and Don Juan, III, 67-70 (the passage that begins with the famous statement, "All tragedies are finish’d by a death, / All comedies are ended by a marriage . . ."); miscarriage: a failure of any kind, and, more specifically, a premature birth.

infusion  Pouring in, or something poured in; liquor; potion; medicine; inspiration.

table-talk  Talk at table; gossip; a subject for such conversation.

cloaths  Clothes.

novel  New; new and strange.

dandiest Schneider  Most fashionable tailor; "Schneider is German for tailor" (M.C.). Thomas Doige, An Alphabetical List of Merchants, Traders, and Housekeepers, Residing in Montreal (1819) contains a William Sneid, tailor, at 83, St. Paul Street (and see the notes to 803-804 and 829-880, below).

small cloaths  Breeches; trousers that come to just below the knee.

rout  large and fashionable party. See Lambert, Travels, I, 299: "During [the] . . . residence [of the governor lieutenant-governor] at Quebec, routs, levees, and assemblies enliven the town once or twice a week."

forsook  Denied himself.

prim perruque  Formal wig. The French "perruque" is usually anglicized as "peruke".

Cf. Byron, Beppo, 441-443 and 449-451: "It was the carnival, as I have said / Some six and thirty stanzas back, and so / Laura the usual preparations made. . . . Laura, when dress’d, was (as I sang before) / A pretty woman as was ever seen, / Fresh as the Angel o’er a new inn door. . . ."

Cf. Byron, Beppo, 497-498: "To turn,—and to return;—the devil take it! / The story slips for ever through my fingers. . . ."

the mother of boy-Cupid  See the note to 138, above; Tooke, Pantheon, p. 123 gives "Venus Urania" as Cupid’s mother.

Pshaw  "An exclamation expressing contempt, impatience, or disgust" (M.C.), that is used on various occasions by Byron, as, for example, in The Blues, II, 162: "Pshaw—never mind that. . . ."

sobriety  Conduct; calmness; seriousness; state of being sober.

who rules the tides  Diana, the goddess of the moon (see the note to 172, above).

form’d  Created; made; shaped.

those above  Presumably angels.

fraught with incense  Laden with perfume.

heav’nly zone  Paradise; Eden.

our first parents  Adam and Eve.

imparidis’d the Earth  Made the earth a paradise—a place of supreme and perfect happiness like Eden.

enamours  Charms; inflames with love.

mein  Look; bearing; manner; facial expression; physical attributes.

beatified  Made blessed or happy; sanctified.

Several countries are given their traditional poetic names in these lines: England ("Albion"), Scotland ("Scotia"), Ireland ("the emerald Isle"), Italy ("Italia"), Spain ("Castille"), Greece ("Greecia"). Cf. the catalogue of countries in Byron, Don Juan, III, 665-688.

beguile  Divert attention.

Greecia’s shore / Where Sappho sung, and Helen charm’d of yore  Cf. Byron, Don Juan, III, 689-690 (following the catalogue noted at 321-327, above): "The isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece! / Where burning Sappho loved and sung. . .  ." Sappho: a female poet who flourished on the Greek island of Lesbos in the seventh century B.C.. Helen: in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the beautiful woman whose abduction by Paris (to whom she had been promised as a bribe from Aphrodite) led to the Trojan War and the wanderings of Ulysses.

Hochelaga—noted city  According to Jacques Cartier, Hochelaga was the name of the Indian village that he found in 1535 on the site of what became Montreal. "On May 18, 1642, the name of the village was formally changed to Montreal" (M.C.). "Lower Canada cannot boast of much superlative beauty among its females," writes Lambert in his Travels, "but there are many who possess very pleasing and interesting countenances. Montreal is allowed to have the advantage over the other towns for female beauty . . ." (I, 276).

commingled  Mixed together.

female wit  Cf. Byron, Beppo, 583- 584: "usher of the school of female wits, boy bards . . ." (M.C.).

Cf. the well-known comparison between the spheres of men ("‘court, camp, church, the vessel, and the mart’") and women ("‘love’") in Julia’s letter to Juan in Byron, Don Juan, I, 1545-1552.

succour  Aid in distress.

woman, should be tenderness alone  Cf. Lambert, Travels, I, 280: "the women [of the French régime in Quebec] . . . possessed every attraction except those gentle graces, those soft emotions of the soul, which alone constitute the chief merit and the ineffable charm of beauty."

Longmore’s conjuring with similes in these and the three previous lines is reminiscent of several passages in the plays and poems of Shakespeare and Byron; see, for example, the former’s Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?") and, as Cullen suggests, the latter’s Beppo, 672 ("You still may mark her cheek, out-blooming all . . .").

Aurora See the note to 94, above. In conjunction with the surrounding lines, cf. Byron, Don Juan, XII, 69: "the vine blushes like Aurora’s lip. . . ."

At the time of his marriage in January, 1820, Jean-Baptiste Toussaint Pothier was actually 49 years old (see Introduction, p. xxi). Cullen points out the parallel between Baptisto’s age of "fifty" and Don Alfonso’s "fifty years" in Don Juan, I, 851-864, a passage which includes financial references.

throe  Pang.

funning,—feasting,—revels,—dice,—and dresses.   Cf. Byron, Beppo, 7: "fiddling, feasting, dancing, drinking, masquing. . . ."

"Experience makes us wiser"  Proverbial, but cf. John Gay, "The Shepherd and the Philosopher," Fables: "long experience made him sage."

magnetic qualities  Powers of attraction.

schism   Split; division; gap.

desperate  Dangerous.

animal magnetism  Longmore’s reference is to the strange force which, according to the eighteenth century physician Friedrich Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), enabled one person to exercise power over another. According to Mesmer’s followers, this force emanated from a universal fluid present in all things, especially humans, some of whom possess so much "animal magnetism" that they can actually attract material objects. A split between "Reason and Love" is dangerous to "our animal magnetism" because it prevents us from exercising the control over our will and nervous system that in Mesmer’s system the doctor exercised over the patient.

alchymist  Alchemist: a man dedicated to the task of transmuting base metals such as lead into gold, a process believed by many during the Renaissance and Middle Ages to be analogous to the removal of evil from matter and the achievement of resurrection and immortality. In playing on the dual nature of gold as the product of purification and, in the form of money, as a source of corruption, Longmore echoes Jonson, whose Volpone and The Alchemist both contain characters intent on exploiting alchemical science for material gain.

Purges  Purifies; frees from uncleanliness or evil.

inference  Infer: deduce; conclude.

a clown in England, at a fair  Longmore may have had in mind Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair (see the note to the first epigraph, above).

bear  Bear off: win.

rabble  Crowd or mob composed of the lower classes of people.

visage  Face.

diffidence  Lack of self-confidence.

forsooth  In truth (M.C.).

fifty . . . purse hangs rich and heavy . . . Cf. Byron , Don Juan, I, 862-864: "At fifty love is rare . . . / But then . . . / A good deal may be bought for fifty Louis [coins]" (M.C.).

levy  Assemblage; party (from levy in mass [French: levée en masse]: a gathering of able-bodied men). See the quotation from Lambert’s Travels at 278, above.

Pa . . . And Ma’  See the Introduction, pp. xxii-xxiii for the possible identities of these characters as George Selby (c.1760-1835) and his daughter-in-law Marguerite Baby (1791-1861).

cotemporary  Contemporary.

mammon  Covetousness, greed, or devotion to money-getting personified. In Aramaic the word "mammon" means riches; see Matthew 6.24 and Luke 16.9-13.

Mrs. Thingum  Thingummy: a term used to indicate a thing or, as here, a person whose name the speaker cannot at the moment recall. See Lord Chesterfield, Letters . . . to his Son . . . , August 6, 1741: "to speak of . . . Mrs. Thingum . . . is excessively awkward and ordinary."

beguil’d  Seduced into a certain course.

ilk  Kind; species.

bilk  Trick. cheat.

. . . alone   Byronic; see, for one example from dozens in Byron’s work, Don Juan, VII, 936: "And felt—though done with life—he was alone."

gingham  Cotton cloth woven from coloured yarns into stripes or checks.

the queen of pie-crusts, Mrs. Glasse  Mrs. Hannah Glasse was the author of The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, which was first published anonymously in 1747 and several times reprinted in subsequent decades. In the Preface to the New Edition of The Art of Cookery that was published in 1796 (and reprinted in 1971), the editor writes: "Notwithstanding the vast number of books on the subject of Cookery . . . Mrs. GLASSE’S WORK has continued to maintain a decided preference . . . [because] in point of quantity, her Book exceeds every one in print, by at least one half, and in point of usefulness, beyond all comparison. . . ." Mrs. Glasse’s recipes for "pie-crusts" appear in The Art of Cooking (1796; rpt 1971), pp. 201-202.

Epicure  Person of refined tastes in food and drink; a lover of sensuous and luxurious pleasures.

Ragouts, and curries  Cf. Byron, Beppo, 50: "And solid meats, and highly spiced ragouts. . . ." ragouts: strongly seasoned stews of meat and vegetables. Several recipes for "ragoo" appear in Mrs. Glasse’s The Art of Cookery, and include such items as "force-meat balls, truffles and morels, pickled or fresh mushrooms stewed in gravy . . . pepper . . . salt . . . lemon or beet-root" (p. 41). Mrs. Glasse also provides two recipes for making "a curry the Indian way" with such ingredients as "ginger, pepper, and turmeric" (p. 129). Her recipes for "soups, and sauces" (426) occupy many pages.

made dishes Dishes composed of several ingredients. In The Art of Cookery, Mrs. Glasse provides a list of possible ingredients for "made-dishes" that includes "mushrooms pickled . . . truffles, morels, cock’s-combs stewed, ox palates cut in small bits, artichoke bottoms . . . asparagus tops, the yolks of hard eggs, [and] force-meat balls . . ." (p. 37).

sinecure  Office without work; easy job.

This stanza combines a scientific explanation of the function of the liver (which does indeed excrete bile or choler into the stomach to aid the digestive process) with the moralistic view that bile promotes good health by militating against the excessive consumption of food; presumably, over-eating causes the release of an excessive amount of bile which, in turn (and by a pun on "bilious") makes the "glutton" feel ill and ill-tempered. See also the note at 144, above.

grosser  Excessive to the point of vice (gluttony).

glance of blue  "Annette’s eyes are blue. See line 346, where her eyes are considered with ‘the sapphire’s blaze’ . . ." (M.C.).

elastic  Buoyant; outgoing. Cf. Byron, The Blues, II, 129-131: "I / Now feel such a rapture, I’m ready to fly, / I feel so elastic—‘so buoyant—so buoyant!’"

Actæon-Diana  In an address to Diana, Tooke, Pantheon, p. 210 recounts the Greek myth to which Longmore refers: "Actæon, the son of Aristæus . . . imprudently looked upon you when you were naked in the fountain. You deferred not the punishment of his impurity for a moment; for, sprinkling him with the water, you changed him into a deer, to be afterwards torn in pieces by his own dogs."

For looking at Annette, Baptisto will not be turned into a deer and torn in pieces unless his wife commits adultery, thus placing the (deer) horns of the cuckold on his head and provoking legal or divorce proceedings.

ministry  Service.

Doctors’ Commons  Before the establishment of the Divorce Court and Probate Court in 1857, the functions of these courts were carried out by the College of Doctors of Civil Law in London in buildings known as the Doctors’ Commons. Byron refers to Doctors’ Commons in the context of "The history of divorces" in Don Juan, IX, 422-423, and see also Lambert, Travels, I, 328: "the absurd ideas and impure sentiments which are continually broached in works of that description [amatory novels and poetry; see the note to 181, above] have often been the means of carrying some of their fair readers to the Magdalen or Doctors’ Commons."

frolic or vagary  Merry-making or devious diversion.

cavil  Raise false issues; find fault unfairly.

Virgin Mary  Cf. Byron, Don Juan, I, 599: "She pray’d the Virgin Mary for her grace . . ." (and also I, 1518, II, 1192, and elsewhere).

inheritance of evil . . . mother Eve  The reference is to original sin, the innate depravity and corruption held to be transmitted to all the descendants of Adam and Eve as a result of their sin. Cf. Byron, Don Juan, I, 143 ("Don José, like a lineal son of Eve . . .") and II, 1511-1512 ("first love,—that all / Which Eve has left her daughters since her fall").

Longmore clearly has in mind the breakfast of fried eggs produced by Zoe for Juan and Haidée in Byron, Don Juan, II, 1149 f. ("But Zoe the meantime some eggs was frying . . ."). As Cullen notes, Byron attributes aphrodisiacal powers to eggs in Don Juan, II, 1358: "Eggs, oysters, too, are amatory food. . . ." The "reason" is probably a combination of the shape, potential fertility, and nourishing qualities of eggs.

Didst ever . . .  Cf. Byron, Beppo, 145: "Didst ever see a Gondola?" Didst: did you.

Don Juan . . . that terrible Lord Byron . . .  George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), was one of the most famous and controversial English poets of his—or any—generation. His first volume of poetry, Hours of Idleness (1807) aroused a storm of hostile criticism, as did the first five cantos of his mock-epic satire, Don Juan, when they were published anonymously in July, 1819 (Cantos I and II) and August, 1821 (Cantos III, IV, and V). Byron’s reputation was not improved either by his private life (his marriage to Isabella Milbanke broke up in 1816 amid rumours of his incestuous affair with his half-sister Augusta Leigh) or by the publication of the remaining cantos of Don Juan (VI, VII, and VIII in July, 1823; IX, X, and XI in August, 1823; XII, XIII, and XIV in December, 1823; and XV and XVI in March, 1824). So great was the moral indignation over Byron’s life and work that after his death on April 19, 1824 in Greece (where he was assisting the Greeks in their fight for independence from the Ottoman Empire), his body was denied burial in both Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral. In his essay entitled "Lord Byron" in Tales of Chivalry and Romance (1826), Longmore is unstinting in his praise of the poet. "There never was mind," he writes, "that, during its existence, enchained so many by the power of its talents, and captivated so much by the grandeur and loftiness of its muse . . ." (p. 291). See also the quotation at 503- 512, below.

molten . . . polish’d iron  Iron that has been hardened and fused through melting and then shined to a gloss: the steel of a knife, sword, gun, or other dangerous instrument.

pourtrayed  Portrayed. Cf., in conjunction with the ensuing lines, "Lord Byron," Tales of Chivalry and Romance, pp. 294-295: "LORD BYRON . . . has . . . pourtrayed man as he is, and not as he ought to be. . . .[I]f ever there was a poet, who . . . expressed in over-powering brilliancy of language, the most beautiful descriptions of inanimate nature; who embodied himself with the very essence of what he pourtrayed,—who converted his soul into the breathing eloquence of words, in those sublime paintings of his imagination, and gave nature its true colouring of beauty and grace,—it is BYRON."

environ  Surround; encircle.

Iris  Rainbow (and see the note to 163, above). Cf., in conjunction with the surrounding lines, Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, 640-646: "Horribly beautiful! but . . . beneath the glittering morn, / An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge [of a cataract], / Like Hope upon a death-bed . . . [and] bears serene / Its brilliant hues. . . ."

woo the soul . . .  Cf. "Lord Byron," Tales of Chivalry and Romance, p. 292: "there is something irresistibly captivating in the ideas he impresses us with. . . . His, is the art, to hold communion alone with the most alluring, most affecting, and most awful associations of sense and feeling".

lover . . . imperfect  See the opening sentence of the quotation from "Lord Byron" at 494, above, and its continuation: "He has chosen for his heroes,—beings imperfect and inclined to err, and he has depicted them, neither all goodness nor all evil, nor has he ever tried to extenuate their faults. . . . It would almost appear,—that by speaking stern truths, and moralizing on things as they are, that man looking on the mirror which reflected him as he is, drew back, affrighted with his own shadow, and vented his reproach upon the thing which displayed so correct an image of himself . . ." (Tales of Chivalry and Romance, p. 294).

blue stocking  An intellectual woman, especially one inclined to be pedantic or ‘schoolmarmish.’ See Byron, The Blues, passim, and Beppo, 574. Don Juan contains several pejorative references to "Blues" and blue-stockings (for example, I, 1643, XI, 393, and XIV, 631).

Nor of the sex  Not a female. Cf. the quotation from Byron at 72 above.

insatiate  Insatiable; never satisfied.

satyrize  Satirize.

Admits Allows as valid.

"tù quoque" Latin: you too.

All are imperfect  See the quotation at 503-512, above.

durst  Dares.

hero . . . down at zero . . . Nero  Byron uses these three rhymes, and the phrase "down at zero" (the lowest point; nothing) in Don Juan, III, 969-973. The Roman Emperor from 54 to 68 A.D., Nero Claudius Caesar (15-68 A.D.) was reputed to have recited a poem about the destruction of Troy during the great fire that destroyed half of Rome in the year 64 A.D.. The notion that he "fiddled as Rome blazed" probably derives from the likelihood that he accompanied himself during his recitation on a stringed instrument such as a lyre. In any case, ‘to fiddle while Rome is burning’ is proverbial and synonymous with being occupied with trifles in the face of serious matters.

Rochefoucault . . .   A French writer and politician of the period of Louis XIV, François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) is remembered primarily for his Réflexions, ou sentences et maximes morales (1665-1678), more colloquially known as his Maxims. The maxim that Longmore quotes—"Dans l’adversité de nos meilleurs amis nous trouvons quelque chose, qui ni nous deplaist pas" (No. 99 in the 1665 edition)—serves as an epigraph to Jonathan Swift’s "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, D.S.P.D.," and is there translated by Swift as "In the adversity of our best friends, we find something that doth not quite displease us." Swift’s poem begins "As Rochefoucauld his maxims drew from nature, I believe ’em true . . ." and includes a looser translation of the same maxim, as does Swift’s "The Life and Character of Dean Swift." Byron refers to both "Swift . . . [and] Rochefoucault" in Don Juan, VII, 25.

though not fair to tax him  Cf., in conjunction with the preceding lines, Byron, Don Juan, III, 1622-1624: "even Conscience, too, has a tough job / To make us understand each good old maxim, / So good—I wonder Castlereagh don’t tax ’em." (M.C.). See also the note at 606, below. Both Byron and Longmore are punning on the fiscal and accusatory meanings of "to tax" (to lay a tax on, to blame or censure).

throng  Crowd.

The turn from moralising to narration in these lines is reminiscent of Byron, Don Juan, I, 1062-1073: "But whether glory, power, or love, or treasure, / The path is through perplexing ways. . . . Return we to our story: / ’Twas in November, when fine days are few, / And the far mountains wax a little hoary . . . And sober suns must set at five o’clock. / ’Twas . . . a cloudy night." See also Beppo, 161: "But to my story.—’Twas some years ago. . . ."

will of power / Or wish of avarice  In addition to the quotation at 545-560, above, see Byron, Don Juan, III, 425 ("The love of power, and rapid gain of gold . . .") and VII, 317 ("mere lust of power . . .").

dower  Dowry; accompanying ‘gift’.

alms  Relief given out of pity to the poor.

vanity  Cf. Byron, Don Juan, I, 119 ("One sad example more that ‘All is vanity’"), VII, 41 ("Ecclesiates said [1.1], ‘that all is vanity’"), and VIII, 1116 (". . . ferocities produced by vanity").

A sparkling, frosty, and unclouded day . . . in December  See the quotation from Byron at 545-560, above and, in conjunction with 561 ("It might be fine, perchance . . ."), Lambert, Travels, I, 107-108 and 114: "This weather continued till about the middle of December, when the clouds dispersed and the rough boisterous snow storms were succeeded by a fine, clear, frosty air. The sky became serene, and assumed a bright azure hue, which, with little alteration, lasted till the month of March. . . . The winter from Christmas to Lady-day is almost always remarkable for a fine, clear, azure sky seldom obscured by fogs or clouds; and the dry frosty weather is rarely interrupted by falls of snow, sleet or rain. These advantages render a Canadian winter so agreeable and pleasant. . . ." Jean-Baptiste Toussaint Pothier and Anne-Françoise Bruyères were married on January 10, 1820.

Sol  "This glorious sun, which illustrates all things with his light, is called Sol . . ." (Tooke, Pantheon, p. 47).

phlegmatic  See the note to 211, above.

hoary  Frosty; grey-white with frost or age.

Hyems  Hiems (Latin): Winter. Cf. Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream , II, i, 107-111: "Hoary-headed frosts / Fall . . . / And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown / An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds / Is, as in mockery, set."

perchance  By chance; perhaps.

healthy weather  Many writers have connected winter to health; see, for example, James Thomson, "Winter," 694-713 and Isaac Weld, Travels through the States of North America and the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, During the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797, 4th. ed. (1807; rpt. 1968), I, 389-390. See also the quotation at 566, below.

I can’t say it’s suited to my taste  Cf., in conjunction with 579 ("I like days rainy"), Byron Beppo, 381: "I like the weather, when it is not rainy. . . ."

In robe of fur . . .  Cf. Lambert Travels, I, 112, 114, and 305: "The cold at certain periods is excessive, and would be often dangerous if the people were not so well guarded against its effect by warm clothing. When travelling, they wrap themselves in buffalo robes, exclusive of the great coats, fur caps, mittens, and Shetland hose, which they wear whenever they go out of doors. . . . [W]hen sitting in and open cariole . . . a thick great coat with a lining of shamois leather was not sufficient to keep warmth within me, without the aid of a large buffalo robe. These robes as they are called by the Canadians, are merely the hides of buffaloes, which are dressed, and lined with green baize; they are very thick, and with the hair on them. . . . At this season of the year the men wrap themselves up in thick Bath great coats, with several large capes that cover their shoulders, above which is a collar of fur. . . . When riding in a cariole they are wrapped up in a buffalo robe, which, with a bear-skin apron in front, effectively prevents the intrusion of the cold."

raiment  Clothing.

airy fancy  Atmospheric or meteorological taste; sprightly and light-hearted disposition.

nerves brac’d  Cf. Cornwall Bayley, Canada, 301-304: "with a keener air the biting North, / Parent of health and pleasure rushes forth; / His powers the frame invigorated speak, / Brace every nerve and flush in every cheek!"

See, in conjunction with lines 119-120, Lambert, Travels, I, 113: "The greatest degree of cold experienced during the winter I remained at Quebec was . . . when the thermometer fell 30 degrees below 0. . . . On the coldest days . . . I found, as the keen air blew on my face, that my cheeks became numbed and insensible. . . . It is not uncommon on these severe days for people to have their cheeks, nose, or ears, frost-bitten. . . ."

muffled drum  A drum whose sound has been dulled or deadened, as during a funeral march or service (with a possible pun on the French "mouffle": mitten). Cf. Byron, Don Juan, V, 836: "‘And now nought left him but the muffled drum.’"

As stiffly frozen as a tommy cod  See Lambert, Travels, I, 77: "In speaking of . . . fish I must not omit a curious species, about the size and appearance of large smelts, but far inferior to them in quality. They are called by the inhabitants tommy cods, and are caught in the St. Lawrence, during the winter season. . . . Great quantities are brought to market, and are very serviceable during Lent." In his review of The Charivari in The Scribbler, V (June 10, 1824), 171, Samuel Wilcocke explains that "a tommy-cod is . . . a small fish, caught . . . in the lower part of the St. Lawrence, from 5 to 8 inches in length, shaped exactly like a cod, but being like a whiting or a sperling in flavour, tho’ in my opinion superior to either. They are always brought to market in Montreal in a frozen state."

Lambert, Travels, I, 75-79 writes at length about the preservation of food by freezing in Lower Canada, and with an eye to some of the comical results: "It is curious in winter time to see the stiff carcases of the sheep stuck upon their hind legs in different parts of the market-place" (I,79).

ultra  Extreme; furthermost.

mummy-fying  Cf. Byron, The Age of Bronze, 196: ". . . frozen mummies on the Polar plains."

the "véritable"  French: the real thing (M.C.).

sorry  Poor; miserable; worthless.

powers, . . . deities  Pagan gods.

mortal effigy  Death-like appearance. An effigy is a representation or likeness of a person.

Tooke’s Pantheon . . . Jove . . . Hercules . . . Venus  A translation of the Pantheum Mithicum, a treatise on the gods and heroes of classical religion and mythology by the Jesuit priest François Antoine Pomey, The Pantheon: Representing the Fabulous Histories of the Heathen Gods and the Most Illustrious Heroes of Antiquity by the English mathematician and clergyman Andrew Tooke (1673-1732) was first published in 1698 and went through several editons thereafter, many of them illustrated. The three figures mentioned by Longmore figure prominently in Tooke’s Pantheon, Jove (Jupiter) as "the father of gods" (p. 10), Hercules as a paragon of "strength" (p. 297), and Venus as "the goddess of love" (p. 108). (In her manifestation as Venus Verticordia, Venus did indeed turn women’s hearts to "chastity," but this is not mentioned by Tooke, who does, nevertheless, describe one of her companions, Hymen, as "the protector of virgins" [p. 123].) "Olympus," notes Tooke, is "the name . . . of the heaven wherein [Jupiter] resides; or of a city that stood near the mountain Olympus, and was anciently celebrated far and near, because there a temple was dedicated to Jupiter . . ." (p. 23).

"De gustibus non disputandum est"  Latin: ‘there is no arguing about matters of taste.’

tax  Blame.

worsted drawers  Undergarments for the legs and lower body made of fine wool

flannel  Soft woolen cloth for undergarments, etc.; the garments themselves.

Irish Channel  Irish Sea: the body of water between Ireland and England. Most vessels bound for Canada from England or Scotland passed through the Irish Sea.

schism  "Longmore is using the word jocularly . . . to mean a rent or tear in a garment and [he] thereby . . . bridges the discussion on clothes with a digression on rheumatism" (M.C.). In the ensuing lines Longmore also plays on the meaning of schism as a breach of unity, especially in a church.

syllogism  Logical argument in three propositions—two propositions and a conclusion that follows necessarily from them.

scold  Rude, clamorous woman.

on the fret  Eating into someone; corroding; vexing.

See Lambert, Travels, I, 304: "The diversion of carioling [sleighing] at this season of the year [winter] is the greatest pleasure the inhabitants enjoy, and it is certainly a delightful amusement, as well as a healthy exercise. The fashionable youths of Quebec generally drive in the tandem style. Some of their carioles are extremely neat. . . . [T]hese savans of the whip, and the gentry . . . often . . . render the Rue St. Jean a sort of Canadian Bond-street. The diversion of skaiting is very little enjoyed in Lower Canada, in consequence of the abundance of snow . . . but the pleasures of carioling fully compensate for the loss."  See also the quotation from Lambert at 634 and n., below.

recreate / The frame  Reinvigorate or refresh the body; to amuse by sport or pastime.

pate  Head; crown of head.

tits  Small horses, with a pun on the slang term for women’s breasts (M.C.).

and n. cahots See Lambert, Travels, I, 304: "The rapidity with which the carioles glide along good roads is uncommonly agreeable; but over roads that are indifferent, or have been much worn by the carters’ sleighs, the motion resembles the pitching of a vessel at sea, and is occasioned by what are called cahots, or ridges of snow in a transverse position across the roads. These cahots are formed after a heavy fall of snow by the sleighs, which gather up and deposit the snow in furrows." "[S]ojour’d" is a shortened form of "sojourned" (stayed temporarily in a place). A "cariole or a traineau" is a sleigh drawn by one or two horses (or, sometimes, dogs). Cf, Byron, Don Juan, IX, 232-240: "And there in a kibitka he roll’d on / (A cursed sort of carriage . . . , / Which on rough roads leaves scarcely a whole bone) . . . At every jolt. . . ."

Hymen . . .  Marriage. The notion of "Hymen come to tickle with his sneeze" may refer to orgasm, or (and) to the activities of Queen Mab (see the note to 941-942, below).

gall  Bitterness; sourness; bile.

Savours  Gives forth a scent or odour.

apples . . . Round the Asphaltes Lake  According to myth, the apples on the shore of the Dead Sea look attractive but contain dust inside. Cf. Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, III, 303-304 ("Like to the apples on the Dead Sea’s shore, / All ashes to the taste") and Milton, Paradise Lost, X, 561-566 ("The Fruitage fair to sight, like that which grew / Near that bituminous Lake . . . instead of Fruit / . . . bitter Ashes . . .").

luxuriancy  Superabundant growth. See Addison, Spectator, No. 414: "A Tree in all its luxuriancy . . . of boughs and branches. . . ."

shew  Show.

wholly  Thoroughly.

rife  Prevalent.

captious  Fault-finding; carping (M.C.).

scandalizing  Uttering malicious and false reports.

turn’d  Diverted, deflected: turned aside.

hippish  Somewhat hypocondriacal; low-spirited; depressed. Cf. Byron, Beppo, 508-509: "I’m rather hippish, and may borrow / Some spirits. . . ."

skippish  Bouncy.

sheepish  Embarrassed; bashful; shy.

ap’d  Aped: imitated.

jaundic’d o’er / With spleen and care  See the note to 144, above; jaundic’d o’er: yellow in appearance: coloured by diseases and attitudes associated with bile.

schismatically driven / As a vile wanderer on the Stygian shore  Divided within himself and thus motivated by conflicting desires like someone in Hades (the hellish region beyond the Styx in Greek mythology). Perhaps Longmore had in mind Milton’s Satan, who suffers from "the hateful siege / Of contraries . . ." (Paradise Lost, IX, 121-122). See also Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, II, 125: ". . . he wander’d on the Stygian shore. . . ."

suffic’d  Made sufficient provision for; satisfied.

dissipations  Distractions or dispersals of mental energy from serious subjects. See, in conjunction with the "mask" of line 678, Byron, Beppo, 507-510: ". . . to divert my thoughts a little space . . . guessing what kind of face / May lurk between each mask [at a masquerade]. . . ."

abortion  Product of arrested development; misshapen being or monster.

ennui  French: feeling of weariness, listlessness, and boredom. Byron, Don Juan, XIII, 805-810: ". . . ennui . . . That awful yawn which sleep can not abate."

cupidity  Covetousness.

sober habits . . . to bed a ten o’clock  Cf. Byron, Don Juan, XIII, 864: ". . . then retreated soberly—at ten."

Tracts . . . strictures  Pamphlets . . . (restrictive) comments.

Georgium Sidus  The planet Uranus, so named in 1783 by its discoverer, Sir William Herschel, in honour of King George III. Uranus is several times larger than the earth.

satellites  Small or secondary planets that revolve around larger ones.

warfare . . . / With pen, and ink  Lambert, Travels, I, 324 observes that "writers in . . . Canadian papers" are engaged in a constant "scribbling warfare," and describes the weapons used in similar skirmishes in England as "inky arms".

betide  Befall; become of.

on the fret  In a state of distress or vexation (and see the note to 616, above).

alloying  Impairing or qualifying.

choicest  Most desirable and valuable.

so real / A connoisseur is Love of the "ideal" Cf. Byron, Beppo, 96-99: ". . . but such a woman! love in life! . . . not love ideal, / No, nor ideal beauty, . . . / But something better still, so very real. . . ."

Annette’s eye . . . like Dian’s  See the note to 172, above and Tooke, Pantheon, p. 212: "She [Diana] is named Luna, from shining, either because she only in the night-time sends forth her glorious light, or else because she shines by borrowed light. . . ."

Chasten’d, and crystaliz’d  Purified (or made modest), and given form (or shape).

leagued  Allied (or, perhaps, engaged).

straiten’d  Inadequate.

duns  Creditors; debt collectors.

that fickle jade . . .  Fortune; see the note to 108, above. A "jade" here is an untrustworthy woman.

escalade  Climb; specifically, the military action of scaling the walls of a fortified place through the use of ladders.

Nap  Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), Emperor of France from 1804 to 1814. After rising to power during the French Revolution, Napoleon became Emperor and, by means of a series of brilliant military victories, extended the French empire throughout most of western Europe. Defeats at sea (Trafalgar) and on land (Borodino, for example) reversed his fortunes, however, and he was forced into exile in 1814. He returned briefly to power in 1815, but after his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, he was imprisoned on the island of St. Helena, where he died in 1821. Longmore fought in the Napoleonic Wars; cf. his The War of the Isles (1826).

gall  See the note to 144 and 644, above.

bar  Enclosure.

single blessedness  See Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I, 76-78 (". . . earthlier happy is the rose distilled [i.e., shared], / Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn, / Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness") and Byron, Don Juan, VIII, 1043-1044 (". . . those who had felt the inconvenient state / Of ‘single blessedness,’ and thought it good . . .")

Hymen  Marriage.

vale  Valley.

mien  A literary term for the appearance of a person as expressive of their mood or character.

one face . . . Probably Longmore’s mother; see the Introduction, pp. xii and 1 n. 110.

sympathize  Harmonize.

Calumny may dart  Slander (false accusation) may throw a dart (or other hurtful missile).

burthens  Burdens (sorrows, responsibilities, etc.).

But to my tale  Byron, Beppo, 393: "But to my tale. . . ."

raillery  Good-humoured ridicule.

Suffus’d  Overspread or covered with colour or light (M.C.).

Grand Turk  The Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.

The day arriv’d . . . "Seven"  Cf. Byron Don Juan, I, 817, 826: "Twas on a summer’s day. . . . [At] half-past six—perhaps still nearer seven. . . ."

even  Evening.

wont  Accustomed.

Bespangled  Adorned with spangles (i.e., glittering plates of metal) or anything sparkling or shining.

fretted  Adorned with carvings in elaborate and decorative patterns.

canopy Overhanging covering.

Annette’s papa, and ma’—her sister,—and brother  For the possible identities of the first two (Dr. George Selby and Janet Dunbar Bruyères), see the Introduction, pp. xxii-xxiii and the notes to 401-405 and 803-804. Annette’s sister is probably Jean-Marie Catherine Bruyères (1797-1849) and her brother one of the other as yet unidentified children of Ralph Henry Bruyères (d. 1814) and Janet Dunbar (again, see the Introduction, p. xxii).

a surgeon,—but he treated / Cases of physic too  In Doige, An Alphabetical List, George Selby is listed as a "physician and surgeon," as he is in Renald Lessard’s entry on him in DCB, VI. "Armed with his diploma as a medical doctor from the University of Edinburgh," writes Lessard, "Selby emigrated to the province of Quebec around 1782 and settled in Montreal. Despite his youth, in August of that year he obtained the post of chief surgeon at the Hôpital Général. . . ." After the turn of the century, Selby held various important offices, including doctor of the Hôtel-Dieu in Montreal and surgeon to Montreal’s 1st Militia Battalion. Lessard describes him as "a respected citizen and one of the most eminent doctors in Montreal," and notes that in 1789 he acquired for himself and his son (his wife, Marie-Josèphe Dunbar, had died in 1788) the stone house at 153 Rue Saint-Paul in Montreal which probably provided the setting for the "wedding party" described in The Charivari.

pother  Trouble, fuss.

before-hand with  In advance of; earlier than.

then his son . . . Billy   Doige, An Alphabetical List, also lists George Selby’s only child William (1787-1829) as a "physician and surgeon" at 153 St. Paul Street in Montreal. According to Jean-Jacques Lefebre and Édouard Desjardins in "Le Docteur George Selby, Médecin de l’Hôtel-Dieu de 1807 à 1829, et sa Famille," L’Union Médicale du Canada, 100 (Août, 1971), 1592-1594, William Selby was also a doctor at the Hôtel-Dieu. Also according to Lefebre and Desjardins, he was married in 1815 at Quebec to Marguerite Baby (see the note to 815-816, below), and the couple had five children, born between 1818 and 1828.

counterpart  A person so resembling another as to appear a complete duplicate of him or her; one of two people who complement one another.

Bolus  Medical term: a larger than ordinary pill (often used contemptuously).

Physic  the art or practice of medicine, with a pun on "physic" as a term for a purgative.

the sister like a lily / All white appeared  See the note to 802, above and the Introduction, pp. xxii-xxiii.

Ma’ whose orange gown / For twenty years, at least,—had graced the town  Marguerite Selby (see the Introduction, p. xxiii and the notes to 401-405 and 809-810, above) was the daughter of François Baby (1733-1820) a prominent member of the Lower-Canadian élite whose home was in the town of Quebec, where at the age of twenty-four or thereabouts she married William Selby in 1815. Longmore’s suggestion that "‘Ma’" has been wearing the same dress in town for "twenty years, at least" may merely be an exaggeration, or it may suggest that "‘Ma’" refers to someone other than Marguerite Baby Selby. A third possibility is that Marguerite Baby spent time in Montreal before her marriage to William Selby. Marguerite Selby died in New York in 1861 (Lefebre and Desjardins).

Baptisto’s friend . . .  Possibly (though see the note to 882, below), Dominique Rousseau (1755-1825), a business partner of Jean-Baptiste Toussaint Pothier at various times between 1796 and his (Rousseau’s) death in Montreal in 1825. In his entry on Rousseau in DCB, VI, Robert Derome writes: "A biographical account of Rousseau would be incomplete without mention of his unusual marital situation. . . . He did not live with [his wife] over a long period because he had a regular female companion . . . with whom in the years 1796-1811 he had five children, all unacknowledged publicly for a while. From 1803, Rousseau recognized them, gave them his name, and made them his heirs. . . . Rousseau was alleged to have fathered two other children baptized at Michilimackinac in 1821, who were born of different mothers. In fact, it was his son, also called Dominique, who was the father of one mixed-blood girl and later the godfather of another."

by mishap  Unfortunately (and see previous entry).

zest  Piquancy: flavour; excitement.

Dibs, the merchant and his spouse, / And daughter . . .   Possibly Benaiah Gibb (1755-1826), his second wife Eleanor (née Pastorius)—whom he married in 1808—and one of his two daughters by his previous marriage to Catherine Campbell (who died in 1804). According to Joanne Burgess (DCB, VI), Gibb was a "merchant tailor" who ran a large shop and storeroom in Montreal, importing from Britain "an immense variety of fabrics and supplies for making men’s clothes." Among his clients were many members of the "Montreal élite," including Pothier (Baptisto). Dibs : slang: money.

a great North-Wester, Sammy Grouse . . .  Possibly Samuel Gerrard (1767-1857), a "prominent Montreal businessman" (Pierre Poulin, DCB, VIII) whose firm of Parker, Gerrard, Ogilvy and Company once "held the fourth largest interest" in the North West Company, the fur-trading syndicate that was organized in 1775-1783 and absorbed into the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821. (A "North-Wester" was an employee or partner of the N.W.C. , specifically one who represented the Company year-round at a trading-post in the fur country.) In varying degrees between 1785, when he established himself in Montreal as "a merchant, specializing in the fur trade of the Timiskaming region," and 1821, when his "major interest shifted from trade to business," Gerrard was involved in the fur trade "around the Great Lakes" and "south and west of Michilimackinac" (in northern Michigan), as well as in the Timiskaming area (DCB, VIII). In the years between 1821 and the publication of The Charivari in 1824, he was indeed "rich" (880) and, among other things, president of the newly-formed Bank of Montreal. When Pothier (Baptisto) declared bankruptcy in 1841, Gerrard became the "administrator of . . . [his] estate" (DCB, VIII). He lived at 125 Rue Saint-Paul, a few houses down the street from the Selby house (see The Montreal Star, May 24, 1920, p. 8 and the note to 803-804, above). But even if, as this circumstantial evidence and their shared initials (S.G.) suggest, Sammy Grouse can be identified with Samuel Gerrard, the evidence of the ensuing notes indicates that Longmore’s "great North-Wester" is a compound of various historical figures, not least Alexander Henry (1739-1824). From 1781 until his death at the age of 85 in 1824, Henry lived in Montreal, where he founded and eventually became the "senior member" of the Beaver Club, a society composed of "traders who had been active in the northwest." Between 1792 and 1796, Henry held a very small share in the N.W.C. and, although financial setbacks in the final decades of his life placed him outside the category of "rich," "he maintained a secure place in Montreal’s mercantile society . . . entertained leading merchants in his home, . . . and attended parties" (David A. Armour, DCB, VI). Henry’s Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories, Between the Years 1760 and 1776 was published in New York in 1809 and could easily be described as a book of "wonderful relations / Of all, he’d seen, amongst the Indian Nations" (831-832). It is, of course, possible that "Sammy Grouse" is a satirical portrait of Henry. It is also possible that the name Sammy Grouse is a play on the name of the explorer Samuel Hearne, grouse and hern being species of birds. As Cullen points out, a "grouse" is also a grumbler.

"Buffalo"  Sammy Grouse’s nickname is the popular term for the North American bison. John Long, whose Voyages and Travels of an Indian Interpreter and Trader (1791) may have furnished Longmore with part of the inspiration for Sammy Grouse, was "alloted . . . [the name] Amik, or Beaver" on being adopted by the Chippewa (p. 49) and, according to the anonymous "Biographical Sketch of the Late Alexander Henry, Esq." in the Canadian Magazine and Literary Repository (January-June, 1824), p. 396, Henry "went by the epithet of ‘the handsome Englishman’" among the Indians.

terrified / His hearers, with . . . wonderful relations / Of all, he’d seen  Cf. "Biographical Sketch of the Late Alexander Henry, Esq.," p. 397: "His manners bespoke a candid open disposition. . . . [C]ombined with his social habits, extensive information, and the agreeable method in which he could convey a description of whatever he had seen, from the possession of colloquial talents of the first rate, drew around him a number of friends."

liv’d for days upon . . . bark, stew’d down . . . And grass soup  See Long, Voyages and Travels, p. 20: "We were out six days and nights, with very little provision, living chiefly on the scrapings of the inner bark of trees and wild roots . . ."; and Henry, Travels and Adventures, p. 221: "The woman was well acquainted with the mode of preparing . . . lichen for the stomach, which is done by boiling it down into a muselage. . . . In short time, we obtained a hearty meal. . . ." Henry also writes of drinking soup made of a square of chocolate to ward off starvation (pp. 269-271).

make you stare  Excite astonishment: make you open your eyes with amazement.

wrestling with a buffalo  Both Long and Henry describe buffalo hunts in the northwest (see Voyages and Travels, pp. 95-96 and Travels and Adventures, pp. 293-296), but neither claims to have "wrestl[ed] with a buffalo," a tall-tale reminiscent of the Paul Bunyan legends and the exploits of such characters as Davey Crockett.

prate  Talk at length to little purpose.

intellectual  The pejorative context suggests that Longmore is using this word in the old sense of non-material.

Crees  "the Cree, or Cristinaux . . ." (Henry, Travels and Adventures, p. 325) Indians inhabited the areas to the south and west of Hudson Bay in what are now the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec (mainly the Mistassini Cree).

Castors  The Beaver (Latin: castor) Indians inhabited the Peace River country of what is now Alberta and British Columbia. Henry, Travels and Adventures, p. 261 refers to the "River aux Castors."

Chicasaws  The Chickasaw Indians did not inhabit the Canadian northwest (defined by Henry, Travels and Adventures, p. 236 as "the country north-west of Lake Superior") but lived along and to the east of the Mississippi River in what became the United States. Longmore probably needed a rhyme for "squaws" and "laws."

squaws . . .  Henry has praise for the "exterior beauties" of both the Cree women ("They omit nothing to make themselves lovely" [p. 247] and the Assiniboine women ("tolerably handsome" [p. 306], and he comments in some detail on the attitudes to sex and marriage in both tribes. Of the "female Cristinaux," for example, he writes: "not content with the power belonging to [their] attractions, they condescend to beguile, with gentle looks, the hearts of passing strangers. The men, too, . . . eagerly encourage them in this design. . . . The Cristinaux have usually two wives each, and often three; and make no difficulty in lending one of them, for a length of time, to a friend. Some of my men entered into agreements with the respective husbands . . ." (p. 249).

jurisprudence  Legal system.

exstatic  Ecstatic.

Dervise  Dervish: a Mohammedan monk, who has taken vows of poverty and austere life. Byron uses the word several times in The Corsair, II, and see Don Juan, III, 229-230 ("dancing / Like dervises . . .")

cold . . . fifty below zero’s point  Cf. Henry, Travels and Adventures, p. 263: "On the twenty-fifth, the frost was so excessive that we had nearly perished. Fahrenheit’s thermometer was at 32×° below zero in the shade; the mercury contracted one eighth, and for four days did not rise into the tube."

bed of feather  See Byron, Beppo, 137-140: " . . . jealousy . . . smothers women in a bed of feather . . ."

radical heat  The heat or energy that is fundamental to life.

lawyer Shark  Possibly Samuel Gale (1783-1865), a prominent Montreal lawyer and, later (1834f.), judge. Gale "served as lawyer for Lord Selkirk [see the note to 868, below], founder of the Red River colony, when the latter had difficulties with the North West Company, and in 1815 he went west to defend his client’s interests. In 1817 he published Notices on the Claims of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Conduct of its Adversaries (Montreal)" (Jean-Charles Bonenfant, DCB, IX). Gale was also the author of Nerva (Montreal, 1814), a Collection of Papers which had appeared the previous year in The Montreal Star, and perhaps also of some poems (see D.M. R. Bentley "An Early ‘Specimen of Canadian Poetry’," Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews, 26 [Spring7z/Summer, 1990], pp. 70-74). He was unmarried. A "shark" is a person whose predatory and greedy habits, especially towards money, resemble those of the fish.

quibble, quirk  Two terms associated with the verbal niceties and subtle distinctions employed by clever lawyers; a "quibble" is an argument based on the meaning of words or some other matter that skirts the important issue, and a "quirk" is similarly a clever and evasive verbal trick in a legal argument.

eloquential  Rhetorical.

like a pendulum  By hanging.

Selkirk  Thomas Douglas, Baron Daer and Shortcleuch, 5th. Earl of Selkirk (1771-1820) was the initiator of several schemes to settle Scottish highlanders in Canada, the most famous being the Red River colony in what is now Manitoba. This scheme was proposed by Selkirk as early as 1802, but it was not until 1811 that he obtained a grant of some 116,000 square miles from the Hudson’s Bay Company. From the outset the North West Company opposed the agricultural settlement of the fur-rich Red River area, and in 1815 they succeeded with the help of poor weather and food shortages in driving away the settlers who had begun to arrive in Selkirk’s colony in 1812. After a party of North-Westers killed several colonists at Seven Oaks (Winnipeg) in 1816, Selkirk arrested nine of the N.W.C. partners, an act that complicated his problems and helped to precipitate the legal proceedings in which Samuel Gale (see the note to 857-880, above) served as his lawyer. "In these proceedings [in 1818 at what is now Windsor, Ontario] and in all that followed," writes John Morgan Gray, "[Selkirk] felt himself hopelessly entangled in a web of perjury, postponements, and manipulation of justice that was both maddeningly frustrating and deeply shocking" (DCB, V). In 1817, he left his wife in Montreal to look after his Canadian interests and returned to Britain, where in 1819 he was reported to be suffering from advanced tuberculosis, news of which was greeted with "grief and dismay by his supporters and . . . undisguised glee [by] the Nor’ Westers." Although the misdoings of the N.W.C. were exposed in the British Parliament in 1819, this was of little comfort to Selkirk, who died in April, 1820 in the south of France.

"the Ratters"  (Musk-)rat catchers, with a pun on a term for traitors—presumably with reference to the North-Westers.

jackdaw  This is the common name for the daw, a small crow that is easily trained to imitate human speech. It is renowned, not only for its talkative qualities, but also for its thieving and secretive nature.

de facto, et de jure  Latin and legalese: in fact and by right: really and legally.

parson  Priest.

made their oratory clue / All canvass up  A nautical metaphor: caused the sail ("clue") of their argument ("oratory") to be drawn in.

on the itch  "On the lookout" (M.C.).

fain  See the note to 85, above.

Beau Beamish, and two sisters . . .  Possibly Dominique Rousseau (see the note to 817-824, above), whose father was known as "Beausoleil" (DCB, VI), but more likely Jacques-Philippe Saveuse de Beaujeu (1772-1832), a seigneur of noble family who, among other things, served as the member for Montreal East in the House of Assembly of Lower Canada from 1814 to 1816. In 1807 Saveuse de Beaujeu "came into a large inheritance" under which his "sole obligation . . . was to guarantee his two sisters, Élisabeth-Geneviève and Adèle, one fifth of the income from the seigneuries [that he inherited] for the rest of their lives" (Jean-Jacques Lefebvre, DCB, VI). Beau: French: beautiful or handsome; Beamish: shining, radiant. As Cullen notes, a "beau" is "a man who gives particular, or excessive, attention to dress . . . and social etiquette; a fop, a dandy."

declension  Decline; sinking; decay.

quell’d  Extinguished; crushed.

direly  Dreadfully (M.C.).

routs  See the note to 278, above.

entrée  French: introduction (M.C.).

belle  French: beautiful woman (M.C.).

bile . . . jaundice See the notes to 144, 433-440, and 668-669, above.

aunty Margaret . . . the Fronde . . . Lyons to La Hogue.  Anne- Françoise Bruyères (Annette; see Introduction, p. xxiii) had a great-aunt named Margaret who was the mistress, wife (c.1763), and widow (1768) of Ralph Burton, who held several important military posts in Lower Canada (including lieutenant-governor of the Montreal district) in the years following the conquest. At the time of his death Burton "appears to have been a good deal older than his wife" (Hilda Neatby, DCB, III), so it is possible that she was in attendance at the wedding of her great niece in 1820. Margaret (Bruyères) Burton was descended "from a family of French Huguenots [Protestants] . . . who had emigrated to England at the time of the revocation of the edict of Nantes [in 1685]" (Raymond Douville and others, "John Bruyères," DCB, IV), a fact that might explain Longmore’s reference to "the Fronde"—that is, the opposition to Mazarin and the court in France in the early years of the reign of Louis XIV (1638-1715). It was Louis XIV who revoked the edict of Nantes, and thus drove thousands of Huguenots into exile in England, Holland, America, and elsewhere. "Lyons" (Lyon to the French) and "La Hogue" are in, respectively, the northeast and south east of France. Lambert, Travels, I, 306 writes of women from the rural areas of French Canada during the eighteenth century that "[t]heir heads were dressed in the old-fashioned style with a long braid behind, and above that a large stiff muslin cap."

Captain Casey . . . who spoke the brogue  Possibly Michael O’Sullivan (c.1784-1839), the Irish-born lawyer, politician, and militia officer who in 1831 would marry Jeanne-Marie-Catherine Bruyères, the sister of Anne-Françoise Bruyères (Annette). An associate council with Samuel Gale to Lord Selkirk (see the notes to 857-880 and 868, above), O’Sullivan was a hero of the Battle of Châteauguay (1813) and he was "appointed a major of the Beauharnois militia in 1821 (Alan Dever, DCB, VII). He would thus have been a "Captain" at the time of the wedding of Baptisto and Annette in 1820. He would also have been a bachelor, for his first wife, Cécile Berthelet, had died in 1811.

connexions  Connections: spouses.

consummated  Completed, finished.

raillery  See the note to 786, above.

fret  See the notes to 616 and 798, above.

in a net  Pun or double entendre: in Annette.

Lambert, Travels, I, 288-289 endorses Peter Kalm’s perception of French-Canadian women as "‘cheerful and content,’" and observes that "[s]ome will . . . flirt, joke and laugh at doubles entendres with a very good grace. . . ."

tart  Sharp, biting.

onsets  Quarrels; battles of words (M.C.).

parry  Ward or keep off; turn aside.

doves of Venus  By tradition, doves are sacred to Venus (see the note to 165, above) and draw her chariot; see Tooke, Pantheon, p. 108 ("The chariot in which she rides is . . . drawn by swans and doves, or swallows, as Venus directs . . .") and Byron, Don Juan, V, 3 ("And pair their rhymes as Venus yokes her doves . . .").

languishing Pining and/or drooping.

Queen Mab sent / Her charioteer across the nose . . .  In these and the surrounding lines, Longmore refers to the long speech in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, I, iv, 53-94 in which Mercutio imagines for Romeo the various dreams provoked in different types of people when Queen Mab, the queen of the fairies, rides her "chariot" across "men’s noses while they sleep. . . ." Longmore also refers playfully to Joel 2.28: ". . . your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions."

luxuriance  Abundance, profuseness.

o’er balmy lips of maiden . . . kisses, and of aught besides  Cf. Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, I, iv, 74-76 and 92-94: "O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream, / Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues / Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are. . . . This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, / That presses them and learns them first to bear, / Making them women of good carriage." aught: much else.

voluptuous . . . elfin  Sensual, pleasure-loving little fairy. In Romeo and Juliet, I, iv, 90-91, Mercutio refers to the myth that knots and tangles in the hair of humans and horses ("elflocks") are caused by mischievous fairies.

purport  Bearing; substance; purpose in life.

fitted on  Moved quickly by.

Morpheus  In Greek mythology, Morpheus is the son of sleep (Hypnos) and the god of dreams. See Tooke, Pantheon, 262: "Morpheus, the servant of Somnus, who can put on any shape or figure, presents . . . dreams to those who sleep. . . ."

as nightingale or dove  Cf. Byron, Don Juan, IV, 152: ". . . nightingales or doves."

grievous  Painful; hurtful.

rude alarms  Harsh and discordant noises or disturbances.

droop’d  Grew weak; hung down (with, as Cullen suggests, a sexual innuendo).

But all at once, as if the house’t would shatter, / There rose a tintinnabulary clatter  Cf. Byron, Don Juan, I, 1081-1083: "’Twas midnight—Donna Julia was in bed, / Sleeping, most probably,—when at her door / Arose a clatter might awake the dead . . ." (M.C.). See also Clement Clarke Moore, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," The Troy Sentinal (New York), December 23, 1823: "’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house / Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. . . . When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, / I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter." tintinnabulary: of, or pertaining to, bells or bell-ringing (M.C.).

A noise of drum, and kettle, whistle, horn   Cf. Samuel Butler, Hudibras, II, 587-590: "They might distinguish diff’rent noyse / Of Horns, and Pans, and Dogs, and Boyes; / And Kettle-Drums, whose sullen Dub / Sounds like the hooping of a Tub" (M.C.). See the quotation from Long, Voyages and Travels in the note to Longmore’s Appendix to The Charivari, below.

King Oberon  In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Oberon is the King of the Faeries, and, as such, has the power to command Puck to undertake errands and commit mischief. Longmore may have had in mind the passage in which Oberon commands Puck to "Fetch . . . that flower . . . The juice of [which] on sleeping eyelids laid / Will make or man or woman madly dote / Upon the next live creature that it sees"—to which Puck replies, "I’ll put a girdle round the earth / In forty minutes" (II, i, 169-175). Later Oberon squeezes the flower on the eyelids of his own sleeping wife, Titania, Queen of the Fairies.

vagaries  Pranks; unkind tricks.

Æolus  Tooke, Pantheon, 164-165: "Æolus [was] the god of the winds  . . . [B]ecause . . . he foretold winds and tempests . . . it was generally believed that they were under his power, and that he could raise the winds, or still them, as he pleased. And from hence he was styled Emperor and King of the Winds. . . ."

airies  Aeries or eyries: homes high in the air.

antic  Fantastic figure, action, or trick.

rout / From out Root out; turn up; bring to light.

Kalendar  Calendar: record, list, directory.

cast  Form; arrangement.

sublime  See the note to 22, above.

concert  Harmony (M.C.).

thundering at the door  Cf. Byron, Don Juan, I, 1086-1087: "The door was fasten’d, but with voice and fist / First knocks were heard. . . ."

Palsied  Paralysed.

startled . . . Baptisto jump’d  Cf., in conjunction with the ensuing stanza, Byron, Don Juan, I, 1113-1115: "Poor Donna Julia, starting as from sleep . . . Began at once to scream, and yawn, and weep. . . ."

reta’en its sway  Retaken or regained control.

"Holo . . . away."  Baptisto responds as if shouting to hounds during a hunt: his instinctive response is to call or drive the noise-makers away with a loud shout.

hypocritic  Deceiving. In Latin, the word hypocrita refers to an actor on the stage.

libel  Misrepresents; distorts.

queer genus  Odd species.

the boy of Venus  Cupid (see the note to 138 and 289, above).

mimic’d all the dyes  Imitated all the colours.

Iris, with its varied hue  Rainbow (see the note to 163, above), with its various colours.

Bepatch’d, and harlequin’d  Decorated with patches, and presumably wearing the two-coloured tights of the traditional harlequin (a clown-like figure in early Italian comedy).

Sir Hudibras . . . Falstaff  Two literary characters who are renowned for their physical bulk. The former is the hero of Hudibras (1663- 1678), a metrical burlesque of the Puritans by Samuel Butler (1612-1680) and the latter appears in Shakespeare’s Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

visage  Face.

Caliban  The brutish and mis-shapen son of the witch Sycorax who becomes the servant of Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Antinöus, or Apollo  Two ideals of male beauty (M.C.). The former was a favourite of the Roman emperor Hadrian (76-138) and the latter, the Greek god of, among other things, medicine, music, and light, is described in Tooke, Pantheon, p. 29 as "comely and graceful."

wight  Person or creature.

array’d  Displayed (M.C.).

A pair of horns  The traditional sign of the cuckold, the "odd trade" (1044) to which Benedick also obliquely alludes in the first of the two epigraphs to The Charivari (see note, above).

pattern  Typical example; archetype.

wherefore deem’d  For what reason intended.

profusely  Abundantly.

. . . old time . . .  Time is usually represented as an old ("antique") man carrying a scythe and an hour-glass who is bald but has a long lock of hair at the front of his head. "[W]ings" (1054) would be emblematic of the swift passage of time and are sometimes attached to the hour-glass in pictorial representations of Time. Cf. the discussion of "Father Time" in Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors, II, ii, 65-90.

flaxen  Light yellow (and, conceivably, made of flax fibres).

motley  See the note to 33, above.

wantonness  Lewd or lustful (crude) behaviour.

hirelings  servants; mercenaries.

resort  Crowd.

England . . . mob . . . "Freedom’s" pleasure . . .   Cf. Byron, Beppo, 386: "Our [England’s] little riots just to show we’re free men. . . ."

John Bull  A generic name for an Englishman, from John Arbuthnot’s History of John Bull (1712).

"Magna Charta"  Magna Carta (Latin): the Great Charter of rights and freedoms sealed by King John of England at Runnymede in 1215 and confirmed many times by later monarchs.

"Reformation"  Perhaps the great European religious movement of the sixteenth century, which resulted in the establishment of Protestantism (in England, the cause of the Reformation was espoused by King Henry VIII), or the movement in Britain for political and parliamentary reform (see the note to 1097-1104, below).

ascendance  Paramount influence; highest priority.

Hunt  Henry Hunt (1773-1835) was an English farmer and radical Reformer (see the note to 1097-1104, below) whose eloquence earned him the title of Orator Hunt. In August, 1819, he presided over the great meeting of some five thousand reformers at Peter’s Field in Manchester, England which was the occasion of the infamous Manchester or Peterloo Massacre. (Some of the soldiers who were sent to arrest Hunt charged the essentially peaceable crowd, killing several people and injuring many hundreds more.) Hunt was subsequently sentenced to a two and a half year prison term, during which he wrote A Peep into a Jail, a work that helped to promote prison reform. His Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. were published in 1820-1822.

Hone  William Hone (1780-1842) was an English author and bookseller whose championship of political reform and satirical attacks on the British establishment had made him famous (or notorious) by the early 1820s. When he was acquitted in 1817 on three counts of publishing materials by other writers that were critical of the church and monarchy he received a tumultuous popular ovation. His own writings about state abuses in The Reformer’s Register (1817) were a foretaste of his best-known political satires, The Political House that Jack Built (1819), The Queen’s Matrimonial Ladder (1820), The Man in the Moon (1820), and The Political Showman (1821), all of which were illustrated by the renowned caricaturist George Cruikshank.

Westminster  The borough of London, England in which the Houses of Parliament are located—hence, its allusive use to signify British parliamentary and political life.

Constitution  The system or body of fundamental principles according to which a state (or some other organization) is governed.

"the Common’s House of Parliament"  The House of Commons: the "lower" of the two Houses of the British Parliament. Whereas the upper House—the House of Lords—is composed of lords temporal and spiritual, the lower House is composed of representatives of the common people.

jurisprudence  Body of law; legal system.

King Charles’ decapitation  The reign of Charles I (1600-1649), King of England and Scotland (1625-1649), was marked by the religious and political crises that culminated in the Civil War. After being tried by a special parliamentary court, he was beheaded in January, 1649.

Tory, now so high in fame . . .  Between 1689 and c.1830 (when it was superseded by the term Conservative), Tory was the name of the more conservative (royalist, anti-liberal) of the two great political and parliamentary parties in England and Great Britain. (For the Whig party, see the note to 1089-1096, below.) The Tory ministry (1812-1827) of the Earl of Liverpool was in power during much of the period (1811-1814) in which Napoleon’s fortunes went from bad to worse.

pat  Glib; repetitive.

Nap . . . St. Helena  See the note to 725, above.

the Whig, or alias "Opposition"  Between 1689 and the middle of the nineteenth century (when it was superseded by Liberal), Whig was the name given to the other great party in England and Great Britain (see the note to 1081-1088, above). Partly on account of the opposition that they had offered to the war with France even while the Duke of Wellington was bringing about the defeat of Napoleon in Spain in 1811-1812, the Whigs were still not popular at the time The Charivari was written and published. In the late ’twenties, however, they began to regain power by associating themselves with parliamentary reform, and eventually succeeded in passing the Reform Bill in 1832.

demur  Objection.

dismission  Deprivation of office; discharge from service; dismissal.

standard  Level of excellence (with reference also, perhaps, to the British flag).

Reformer . . .   An advocate of political or parliamentary reform in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries—that is, in the period leading up to the Reform Bill of 1832, which, among other things, considerably widened the electorate in Britain. See the notes to 1071 and 1089-1096, above and 1104, below.

Conjur’d with  Brought into existence.

ranting  Bombastic; mouthy.

W¾ ¾ n  Probably "Doctor" James Watson (1766-1838), a prominent member of The Society of Spencean Philanthropists (the Spenceans) who followed Thomas Spence in urging the adoption of a form of rural communism as a cure for England’s social problems. Watson was "one of the leaders of the revolutionary party in London [England] from 1816 to 1820" (T.M. Parssinen, Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals, I). As a result of his participation in the Spa Field riots in London in December, 1816, Watson was accused of High Treason, a charge of which he was acquitted in January, 1817. The Spa Field riots had their origins in meetings held by "Orator" Hunt in November, 1816 to secure the appointment of himself and Sir Francis Burdett (see the notes to 1071, above and 1104 below) as the bearers of a reformist petition from the people of London to the Prince Regent. They ended when Watson and two other leaders were arrested at the head of a mob intent on taking over the Bank of England and the Tower of London. In 1818, Watson again came to prominence as the advocate of a parliament and "Union of Non-Represented People," a scheme which petered out for lack of funds. A "fiery if crude" orator, he died in poverty in New York in 1838.

C¾ ¾  t William Cobbett (1762-1835), an English author, journalist, and, by 1807, radical reformer who used his weekly newspaper, the Political Register (1802-1835) to denounce social injustice and political abuse. In 1816 he began issuing a cheap version of the Political Register addressed to working people in England, and in 1819, to avoid arrest, he fled to the United States. Later the same year he returned to England to become a principal agitator for working- class rights and parliamentary reform.

H¾ ¾  e  Joseph Hume (1777-1855), a British politician who began his parliamentary career in 1812 as a Tory, but soon adopted reformist views. After being returned to Parliament in 1818 he was assiduous in fighting for such issues as workers’ rights and in protesting against the wasteful use of public monies.

B¾ ¾ t  Sir Francis Burdett (1770-1884), an English politician who from 1796 (when he became a member of Parliament) to 1837 (when he became a Conservative) fought continuously on the side of reform and against corruption. A speech published in Cobbett’s Political Register in 1810 led to his arrest and imprisonment in the Tower of London. After his release he continued to fight for the reform of Parliament and for the removal of restrictions upon Roman Catholics, and in 1820 he severely criticised the government’s action at Peterloo (see the note to 1071, above).

avow  Declare; acknowledge.

pros’d . . . prose  See the note to 85, above.

cavils  Frivolous objections. Cf. Byron, Beppo, 414: "Not caring as I ought for critics’ cavils . . ." (M.C.).

aye  Yes; indeed. As Cullen points out, "aye" is also an affirmative vote (or voter) in parliament.

staunch  Firm and trustworthy in principles, pursuits, and support.

supplies . . . finances  In the early eighteen twenties in Lower Canada, the annual bills authorizing a supply of money from the province to the provincial government were a continuous source of contention in the House of Assembly. As Manning puts it in The Revolt of French Canada, 1800-1835, p. 139: "the assembly, having little better to do [in the period 1821-1825] . . . advanced new claims to control the appropriation of all revenues collected in the province. . . ."

They understand . . . / Profit and Loss . . .  Longmore’s reference is to politicians whose motivation is fundamentally financial, but see also Lambert, Travels, I, 330 where the lack of intellectual and artistic activity in Lower Canada is attributed to the fact that the province’s businessmen are primarily interested in "the science of barter, and the art of gaining cent. per cent. upon their goods." Longmore later puns on the financial meanings of "‘Bill’" (1120) and "slips" (1125).

Tare  The weight of a vessel, packaging, or container which, when subtracted from the overall (gross) weight of a shipment of goods, gives the actual (net) weight of the goods themselves.

Tret  An allowance to purchasers of 4 pounds on every 104 pounds for waste.

Resolutions  Bills; formal proposals presented to the House of Assembly.

dry goods to the hammer  Textile fabrics and the like (as distinguished from groceries, hardware, etc.) to the auctioneer’s gavel.

entail  Inheritance, tradition, cause.

and n. specious. . . . Atterbury   Longmore’s definition of "specious" (which ordinarily means outwardly attractive or respectable but containing little real worth) probably comes from the entry in Johnson’s Dictionary, where the word is given a primary definition of "Showy; pleasing to the view" and a secondary definiton of "Plausible; superficially, not solidly right; striking at first view." Illustrating the latter sense of "specious" is a quotation—"This is the only specious objection which our Romish adversaries urge against the doctrine of this church in the point of celebacy"—attributed to Francis Atterbury (1662-1732), a distinguished English churchman who was successively Dean of Christ Church, Oxford University (1712) and Bishop of Rochester (1713). In 1722 Atterbury was arrested, imprisoned, and banished to France for his alleged complicity in a Jacobite plot against the government. He was a close friend of Pope, Swift, and other literary figures, and his own Miscellaneous Works were published in 1789-1798.

soi-disant  French: self-styled; pretended.

patriots . . ."Union"  Composed primarily of French-Canadians and increasingly looking for leadership to Louis-Joseph Papineau (the speaker of the House of Assembly after 1815), the Canadien or Patriote party was vehemently opposed to the union of Upper and Lower Canada (i.e., present-day Ontario and Quebec). A Bill proposing such a union was introduced into the British House of Commons in the summer of 1822. When knowledge of the proposal reached Lower Canada, meetings were held in Montreal and Quebec to marshall support against it, and in 1823 Papineau and John Neilson travelled to England to make known to the British government the opposition to the Union Bill in Lower Canada. Partly as a result of these representations the Union Bill was defeated, and the union of Upper and Lower Canada delayed until 1840, when the rebellions of 1837 "appeared to justify such a drastic measure, regardless of the wishes of the French Canadians" (Manning, The Revolt of French Canada, 1800-1835, p. 169). The "creed" whose "psalmody" (collective religious song) was "‘Union’" was found primarily in the English party in Lower Canada, a group who saw both financial and economic advantages to closer political ties with English-speaking Upper Canada.

But I forgot, that I had left my hero  Byronic: see, for example, Beppo, 739-740 ("Oh, I had forgot—/ Pray don’t you think the weather here is colder?"), Don Juan, IV, 705 ("‘Our baritone I almost had forgot . . .’"), and Don Juan, IX, 331 ("I left Don Juan with his horses . . .").

thermometer at zero . . . See the note at 567-574, above.

a most valiant Cavaliero  Cf., in conjunction with the "hero" rhyme of line 1129, Byron, Beppo, 263- 264: "In short, he was a perfect cavaliero, / And to his very valet seem’d a hero." Cavaliero: Spanish: gallant; lady’s man.

pantaloons  Trousers, with associations of the Pantaloon character in early Italian comedy, a thin old man who wears baggy pants. See also Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 614-615 ("Italy’s buffoons / . . . pantaloons") and Don Juan, I, 322-324 ("gods and goddesses . . . never put on pantaloons or bodices . . ."), and also Shakespeare, As You Like It, II, vii, 157-159: "The sixth age [of man] shifts into the lean and slippered Pantaloon / With spectacles on nose and pouch on side. . . ."

asunder  Apart (M.C.).

knock under  Short for "knock under board" : acknowledge defeat.

laurels  A wreath of the evergreen laurel plant is traditionally an emblem of military victory or literary achievement.

station  Position in life (especially a high social position).

molestation  Annoyance; interference of a troublesome, hostile, or violent kind.

hurly-burly  Commotion. See Shakespeare, Macbeth, I, i, 3: "When the hurly-burly’s done. . . ."

yclept  Called or styled: a poeticism used by Byron in Don Juan, V, 1207 and elsewhere.

Charivari,—whence was the term deriv’d?  See the note, below to Longmore’s Appendix to The Charivari, and, in conjunction with the ensuing lines, Byron, Beppo, 284: "I can’t tell who first brought the custom in. . . ."

litterati  Men of letters; learned people.

wags  Mischievous people; jokers; wits.

Jacques Cartier  The French explorer Jacques Cartier (1491-1557) made three voyages to Canada, in 1534, 1535, and 1541. It was on his second voyage that, with the help of two sons of the Iroquois chief Donnacona, he sailed up the St. Lawrence as far as Hochelaga (see the note to 330, above) and wintered at Stadacona (Quebec), where several of his crew died of scurvy before he learned of a cure for the disease from the Indians. When he returned to France in 1536, he took some captured Iroquois (including Donnacona) with him. None of these prisoners survived to return to Canada with Cartier on his third voyage, the purpose of which was to establish the first French colony in America.

rout  Disorderly flight; utter defeat.

antic  Grotesque; bizarre; disorderly.

indented  Joined together along a zigzag line.

Instance  For instance (M.C.).

reticular  Netted, net-like. In Don Juan, XII, 467 and 470 Byron also rhymes "reticular" with "perpendicular".

’twixt  Between (M.C.).

auricular In the ear.

Id est  See the note to 192, above.

atmosphere  "Weather, and, perhaps, circumstances (the presence of the crowd)" (M.C.).

imbrued  Inspired; imparted.

effervescent  "In a state of bubbling . . . heat" (M.C.).

uncover’d . . . as the gods of old  See the quotation from Byron’s Don Juan at 1136, above.

Betty  A stock name for a female servant. See, for example, Pope, The Rape of the Lock, I, 148 ("And Betty’s praised for Labours not her own"), Swift "The Lady’s Dressing Room," 6 ("And Betty otherwise employed . . ."), and Dr. Syntax (William Combe), A Tour in Search of the Picturesque, IV: "Betty . . . op’d the chamber-door . . . And, in most ear-piercing tone . . . She told him it was time to rise. / The noise his peaceful slumbers broke . . . Betty was court’sying by the bed:—‘What brought you here, fair maid, I pray?"—/ ‘To tell you, Sir, how wears the day. . . .’"

John  A representative proper name for a male servant.

indenture  Indentation; incision.

inexpressibles  Euphemism: trousers or breeches.

palls  Makes feint or feeble (with "every sense" as the object).

Chaos had come again  Cf. Shakespeare, Othello, III, iii, 91-92: "And when I love thee not, / Chaos is come again!"

row  Noisy squabble; brawl.

frolic  See the note to 465, above.

stout pugilistic match  Vigorous fist fight.

fray  Fight, brawl.

vulgars  Plebeians; common or ordinary people.

inebriety  Drunkenness (M.C.).

As demonstrated by Cullen, the stanza is a pastiche of passages from Byron; see Don Juan, II, 529-530 ("But man is a carnivorous production, / And must have meals, at least one meal a day . . ."), II, 1423 ("Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter . . ."), II, 1696 (". . . flesh is formed of fiery dust"), and I, 1631-1632 ("I’ll call the work ‘Longinus o’er a Bottle, / Or, Every Poet his own Aristotle’").

epicurean  See the note to 425, above.

incentive  Exciting; provocative.

Longinus  The name given to the author of the Greek literary treatise whose title translates as On the Sublime (c.100 A.D.).

Aristotle  A Greek philosopher whose works touch on a vast array of subjects, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) appears here and in the original passage in Byron (see the note to 1209-1216, above) because in the Poetics he describes the rules to which different kinds of writing conform.

"Give physic to the dogs"  Shakespeare, Macbeth, V, iii, 46: "Throw physic to the dogs, I’ll none of it."

canker  Decay; grow rotten.

pines  Wastes away, especially under pain or mental stress.

Pandora  Tooke, Pantheon, pp. 157-158: "It is . . . [said by the ancient Greeks], that the first woman was fashioned by the hammer of Vulcan, and that every god gave her some present, whence she was called Pandora. . . . They say also, that . . . Jupiter . . . sent Pandora . . . with a sealed box . . . to the wife of Epimetheus . . . ; and she, out of a curiosity natural to her sex, opened it, which as soon as she had done, all sorts of diseases and evils, with which it was filled, flew among mankind, and have infested them ever since; and nothing was left in the bottom of the box but hope."

best bower anchor  "Larger ships carry two anchors at the bow: the best bower anchor and the small bower anchor" (M.C.). Cf. Byron, Don Juan, XII, 19-20: "Theirs [misers’ love of gold] is the best bower anchor, the chain cable / Which holds fast other pleasures great and small." In Christian art, the anchor is a traditional emblem of Hope.

Saturnalia  Tooke, Pantheon, pp. 143-144: "The feasts [of Saturn, an Italian god of agriculture], Saturnalia . . . , were instituted either by Tullus, King of the Romans, or . . . by Sempronius and Minutius, the consuls. Till the time of Julius Caesar they were finished in one day, on the nineteenth of December; but then they began to be celebrated in three days, and afterwards in four or five, by the order of Caligula: Some write that they have lasted seven days. . . . And when these days were added to the feast, the first day of celebrating it was the seventeenth of December. Upon these festival days, 1. The senate did not sit. 2. The schools kept holiday. 3. Presents were sent to and from amongst friends. 4. It was unlawful to proclaim war, or execute any offenders. 5. Servants were allowed to be jocose and merry toward their masters. . . . 6. Nay, the masters waited on their servants, who sat at table, in memory of the liberty which all enjoyed in ancient times in Saturn’s reign, when there was no servitude. 7. Contrary to the custom, they washed them as soon as they rose, as if they were about sitting down to table. 8. And, lastly, they put on a certain festival garment, called Synthesis, like a cloak, of purple or scarlet colour, and this gentlemen only wore." Cf. Byron, Beppo, 639: ". . . old Saturn’s reign of sugar-candy! . . ."

digressions metaphysical . . .  Cf. Byron, Don Juan, 321-330: "But I am apt to grow too metaphysical: . . . I quite forget this poem’s merely quizzical, / And deviate into matters rather dry. . . . So on I ramble, now and then narrating, / Now pondering. . . ." metaphysical: abstract, philosophical.

grave, or quizzical  Serious or comical.

Muse’s wandering flight  Cf. Byron, Don Juan, "Dedication," 57 ("For me . . . wandering with pedestrian Muses . . .") and I, 51-52 ("The regularity of my design / Forbids all wandering . . .")

Poesy  Poetry.

in thy dawn of Fame, first hail’d the shore  Byron first visited Greece in 1810, two years before the publication of the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage made him famous.

that all-inspiring font  Greece. Cf. Byron, Don Juan, V, 366: "The arts of which these lands were once the font. . . ." font: fountain.

unexpiring  Undying.

this resplendent clime  Gorgeously bright or splendid country.

van  Vanguard: the foremost portion of an army.

fraught  Supplied with.

bounteous  Generous.

Shew’d  Showed.

See the note to 489-552 for Byron’s death on April 19, 1824 while serving the "cause" of Greek freedom.

memorize  Cause to be remembered; perpetuate in memory.

Now to my tale again  Byronic: see the note to 545- 560, above.

jibes  Taunts; insults (M.C.).

waggish  Mischievously merry; jesting.

splenetic organs . . . bile  See the notes to 144 and 433-440, above.

trial  Attempt (M.C.).

in treble shakes  In a high-pitched tone; shrilly.

viol  Violin-like instrument.

odd sound such as the cuckoo makes  The name of the cuckoo is an imitation of the mating call of the male bird. The word "cuckold" has a similar sound.

oath  Swear-word; curse.

deign’d  Thought worthy; intended.

incomprehensive  Incomprehensible (M.C.).

adulations own  Praises possess.

transaction  Business; action. See Byron, Beppo, 717-720: "Said he; ‘don’t let us make ourselves absurd / In public by a scene, nor raise a din, / For then the chief and only satisfaction / Will be much quizzing on the whole transaction.’"

protraction  Delay; extension of time.

vexatious  Troubling; annoying (M.C.).

petulance  Peevish impatience in restraint or opposition.

save his bacon  Cf. Byron, Don Juan, VII, 336: ". . . yet wish’d to save their bacon" (M.C.).

Canute in his power’s voracity  Cnut (c.994-1035), the Danish King who ruled England from 1017 to 1035, is most commonly remembered for his failure to stop the rising tide, a feat that he had attempted because his sycophantic courtiers had convinced him he was all-powerful. voracity: greediness; insatiability.

controul  Control.

first estate  Spiritual level. In most European countries, the highest of the three classes or estates in the body politic was the clergy.

influenc’d  Infused, instilled.

innate  Inborn.

gaunt  Lean or haggard (M.C.).

Timon . . . Apemantus   Longmore refers here to Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens where Timon is a noble Athenian who is noted for his wealth and extravagance and Apemantus, "a churlish philosopher," is one of his bitterest critics. "What needs these feasts, pomps, and vainglories?" (II, i, 248-249) asks Apemantus early in the play, and Timon comes to agree: after retreating to a cave and giving away his gold he dies in the conviction that "Graves only be men’s works, and death their gain!" (V, i, 225).

spendthrift  One who spends the savings of thrift or frugality.

cynically . . . Diogenes . . . tub  The founder of the Cynics, the Greek philosopher Diogenes (c.400-c.325 B.C.), lived in Athens in extreme poverty and, according to legend, in a tub. Cf. Bryon, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage III, 368-369: "Like stern Diogenes to mock at men; / For sceptred cynics earth were far too wide a den."

cavil  See the note to 1112, above.

part . . . asunder  Move . . . in two separate directions.

vent  Discharge; let out.

round  Solid (M.C.).

electric spirit  See the note to 233, above.

redresses  Remedies; relieves; sets to right.

valet . . . groom  Men-servants who attend, respectively, to clothes and horses.

rife  Abounding; full.

doom  Destiny.

spleen  See the note to 144, above.

Cytherea  Venus. Tooke, Pantheon, p.111: "[Venus is called] Cytherea, from the island of Cytherea, whither she was first carried in a sea-shell."

Like Falstaff hissing hot, as any horse-shoe  The allusion is to Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, III, v, 116-124 (Falstaff is describing his experiences while hidden in a basket of dirty laundry): "Think of that—a man of my kidney— . . . that am as subject to heat as butter, a man of continual dissolution and thaw. . . . And in the height of this bath, when I was more than half stewed in grease, like a Dutch dish, to be thrown into the Thames, and cooled, glowing hot, in that surge, like a horseshoe! Think of that—hissing hot—think of that, Master Brook!"

most offenceless  Least offending or insulting.

impetuous  Rash; vehement; rowdy; violent.

avow’d  Declared.

ill-starr’d  Unfortunate.

agitation  Putting into action.

rout  See the note to 278, above.

old rum  Rum was the drink of the ordinary people of Lower Canada. Lambert, Travels, I, 526 writes that it could be "obtained for less than five shillings a gallon."

avail’d  Benefitted.

inflam’d  Passionate; enraged; angry.

salutation  Greeting (M.C.).

obsequious  Servile; excessively polite.

inauguration  Formal ceremony of introduction.

good fellows  Agreeable or jovial companions; revellers. In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Puck is styled Robin Goodfellow.

there’s Time for all things  Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors, II, ii, 65-66: "Well, sir, learn to jest in good time. There’s a time for all things." See also Ecclesiastes 3.1: "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. . . ."

I wish, Good night / To all  Cf. Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, V, 443 (Puck’s closing speech): "So, good night unto you all." See also Moore, "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (final line): "‘Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!’"

diffus’d Extended; spread out.

There’s nothing good or bad in Life,—but thinking / Makes it to sense  Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, ii, 255-257: ". . . there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."

sweep  Chimney-sweeper.

candle-snuffer  Servant whose duty it is to attend to candles. In a theatre, the person in charge of the lights when these were candles.

"Who steals my purse steals trash" . . . filches us of reputation . . . Shakespeare ("the bard"), Othello, III, iii, 157-161: "Who steals my purse steals trash . . . But he that filches from me my good name / Robs me of that which not enriches him / And makes me poor indeed" (M.C.). filches: robs.

Critic . . . voracious feeder  See the note to 1300, above, and Byron, Hints from Horace, 803-804: "erring trifles lead to serious ills, / And furnish food for critics, or their quills."

litigation  Disputation; argument; quibbling. In conjunction with the legal metaphor of the ensuing lines, see Byron, Don Juan, X, 105- 106: "The lawyer and the critic but behold / The baser sides of literature and life. . . ."

construe into faults  Interpret as defects (M.C.).

pleader  Advocate.

sects  Groups of people who attach special importance to matters of minor importance.

bug-bears  Hobgoblins supposed to devour naughty children.

noxious  Harmful; hurtful.

Jason’s . . . golden fleece  In Greek mythology, Jason is the leader of the Argonauts in the quest for the Golden Fleece, a fleece of gold from the ram that carried Phrixus through the air to Colchis. It was guarded by a dragon and secured by Jason with the help of Medea. See Tooke, Pantheon, pp. 303-305.

roundelay  A short simple song with a refrain (M.C.).

gage  Pledge: something offered as security or as a guarantee.

until  a certain age See Byron, Beppo, 169-175 ("She was not old, nor young, nor at the years / Which people call a ‘certain age,’ / Which yet the most uncertain age appears / Because I never heard . . . The period meant precisely by that word . . .") and Don Juan, VI, 545-547 (". . . and what is she? / A lady of a ‘certain age,’ which means / Certainly agèd . . .") (M.C.).