1 |
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!" |
1 |
mould Nature,
form, or character.
|
2 |
deign’st Condescends;
sees fit.
|
2 |
minstrel’s Poet-servant’s.
|
3-4 |
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 . . .").
|
5 |
the
moderns People of the present or recent past, as
distinct from those of remote or ancient times.
|
6 |
Urging Inspiring.
|
6 |
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.
|
7 |
rhyming
pack Cf. Byron, Hints from Horace, 39-41:
"The greater portion of the rhyming tribe . . .
Are led astray by some peculiar lure."
|
8 |
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.
|
9 |
hackney’d Made
trite or commonplace (with a pun on "hack": see
previous note).
|
10 |
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
. . .").
|
11 |
Gall’d Sore
and irritated.
|
11 |
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. . . ."
|
11 |
per
force Perforce: by force; of necessity.
|
12 |
least Lest:
that . . . not.
|
13 |
blythe
votaries Blithe (cheerful, unthinking) devotees
or followers.
|
14 |
"fiddle-faddle!" Nonsense.
|
16 |
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.
|
17-24 |
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.).
|
19 |
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
. . .").
|
20 |
"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).
|
21 |
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.
|
22 |
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 . . ."
|
22 |
fancy Inspiration;
imagination.
|
23 |
ship-board Being
on board a ship.
|
25 |
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."
|
27 |
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.
|
29 |
suspension Cessation
or deprivation of a privilege or power.
|
30 |
sphere Place;
society; hemisphere.
|
31 |
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.
|
31 |
profan’d Treated
with irreverence; put to unworthy uses.
|
32 |
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?").
|
33 |
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.
|
35 |
murky Dark;
gloomy.
|
35 |
garret "A
traditional—and clichéd—place for a writer to live and
work" (M.C.).
|
36 |
rueful
countenance Piteous, sorrowful, mournful
appearance.
|
37 |
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.
|
38 |
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. . . ."
|
39 |
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."
|
40 |
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."
|
40 |
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."
|
41 |
cast
a libel Defame or discredit.
|
44 |
Would
fain that Would be delighted or glad if.
|
45 |
shew Show.
|
49 |
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. . . ."
|
52 |
scribbling
plan See the note to 31, above and Byron, English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 452: "His scribbling
toils. . . ."
|
54 |
lays Poems.
|
56-64 |
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. . . ."
|
57 |
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."
|
59 |
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."
|
60 |
ambient Surrounding.
|
61 |
jocund Cheerful;
merry.
|
62 |
damsels
to devotion Byronic: see, for example, Don
Juan, VI, 25: "The damsels, who had thoughts of some
great harm . . ."; damsels: young,
unmarried women.
|
65 |
clime Region.
|
65-68 |
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. . .").
|
66 |
fetter Chain;
constraint.
|
68 |
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. . . ."
|
69 |
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.
|
72 |
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. . . ."
|
72 |
en
masse French: as a group.
|
73-77 |
Cf.
Byron, Beppo, 402-403: ". . . could I
scale Parnassus, where the Muses sit inditing / Those pretty
poems. . . ."
|
75 |
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. . . ."
|
76 |
cheek
of rose See the previous entry and Byron, Beppo,
672: " . . . her cheek, out-blooming all."
|
76 |
lips
vermilion See previous entries; vermilion:
"A brilliant scarlet, or a cosmetic used to produce such a
colour" (M.C.).
|
77 |
indite Compose;
write. See the quotation at 73-77, above and Byron, English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 713: " . . .
their harmless lays indite. . . ."
|
78 |
Fancy Imagination,
particularly of a lower or more trivial kind.
|
80 |
metamorphose Transform;
change.
|
81 |
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."
|
83 |
How
to describe the sex See the quotation from Byron’s
Beppo at 72, above.
|
83 |
hallow Reverence.
|
84 |
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.
|
85 |
prosy Prosaic;
unpoetical; matter-of-fact.
|
85 |
fain Necessarily.
|
86 |
personage Person;
exalted person; character in a story or play.
|
89-91 |
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.
|
94 |
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."
|
97-103 |
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. . . ."
|
99-102 |
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).
|
99 |
floods Rivers.
|
100-101 |
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.
|
102 |
rack
their voices in rude revelry Torture or strain
their voices in coarse and ungenteel merry-making.
|
104 |
the
deuce take Euphemism: the devil take.
|
106 |
malady Illness.
|
106 |
blustering
people People who utter their words in an angry,
bullying, or stormy manner.
|
108 |
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.
|
112 |
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!"
|
114-119 |
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.
|
119-121 |
See the
quotation from Lambert’s Travels at 567-574, below.
|
121 |
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.).
|
123-128 |
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. . . ."
|
126 |
rout Fight;
disturbance.
|
127 |
Boreas In
Greek mythology, the northern wind.
|
130 |
imperious Commanding;
domineering.
|
131 |
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 . . . ")
|
132 |
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. . . ."
|
136 |
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.
|
137 |
Oh
Love See Byron, Don Juan, II, 1633 and
1639: "Oh, Love! . . . Oh, Love!"
|
138 |
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. . . ."
|
139 |
minion Favourite;
dependent.
|
140 |
pinion Part
of a wing or, poetically, a wing. Cupid is traditionally
represented as a winged (and blind) boy with a bow and arrows.
|
142 |
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. . . ."
|
143 |
frolic Merry-making.
|
144 |
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.
|
145 |
purse-proud Proud
of their wealth.
|
146 |
dart Arrows.
See the note to 140, above.
|
148 |
sanguiferous Technically,
bearing or conveying blood; bloody.
|
153-155 |
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. . . ."
|
155-156 |
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."
|
157 |
pander Go-between
in a love affair; procurer; pimp.
|
159 |
Petrarch The
love of the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) for
Laura was clandestine because she was a married woman.
|
163 |
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.
|
165 |
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.
|
165 |
bowers Arbours:
shady shelters made with branches or vines.
|
166 |
balmy Fragrant;
soothing.
|
169 |
numbers Groups
of notes.
|
171 |
zephyrs Breezes.
|
172 |
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. . . ."
|
172 |
azure Blue;
the sky.
|
173 |
vestal Virgin.
|
176 |
essence Spirit;
soul.
|
177-184 |
See the
quotation from Byron’s Beppo at 49, above.
|
179 |
stright Straight.
|
181 |
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. . . ."
|
182 |
lopp’d Lopped:
shortened.
|
185 |
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. . . ."
|
185-187 |
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.
|
190 |
weal Wealth.
|
192 |
id
est Latin: that is. Cf. Byron, Beppo, 584:
". . . in short, a fool,— "
|
194 |
caprices Whims,
fancies.
|
195-200 |
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."
|
204 |
folly Silliness;
weakness of mind; sin.
|
208 |
bigot Someone
blindly and obstinately devoted to a particular creed or party;
particularly, someone whose zeal in religious matters is
regarded as excessive.
|
208 |
rake Debauched
or dissolute person, especially a man of fashion.
|
211 |
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.
|
212 |
rue Regret;
contemplate.
|
214 |
imbue Fill;
moisten; tinge.
|
216 |
foibles Weaknesses;
failings.
|
216 |
deem Judge;
believe.
|
223 |
disparage Dishonour
by comparison with what is inferior; talk slightingly of;
undervalue.
|
224 |
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."
|
225 |
connubial Matrimonial.
In conjunction with the ensuing lines, cf. Don Juan , II,
1641: "Thou [Love] mak’st the chaste connubial state
precarious. . . ."
|
227 |
protestations Declarations.
|
231 |
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."
|
232 |
shew Show.
|
233 |
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. . . ."
|
235 |
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.
|
239-240 |
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.
|
242 |
sweet
chubby brats so squalling Cf. Richard Steele, The
Spectator, No. 479: "The noise of those . . .
squalling brats. . . ."
|
244 |
comfits Sugar-coated
nuts or other delicacies; sugar plums.
|
245 |
malady An
unusual usage: sickness, affliction.
|
246 |
caterwalling Sounds
similar to those made by a cat in heat.
|
247 |
uxorious Excessively
or submissively fond of his wife.
|
251 |
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.
|
263-264 |
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.
|
270 |
infusion Pouring
in, or something poured in; liquor; potion; medicine;
inspiration.
|
272 |
table-talk Talk
at table; gossip; a subject for such conversation.
|
273 |
cloaths Clothes.
|
274 |
novel New;
new and strange.
|
274 |
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).
|
276 |
small
cloaths Breeches; trousers that come to just
below the knee.
|
278 |
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."
|
279 |
forsook Denied
himself.
|
280 |
prim
perruque Formal wig. The French "perruque"
is usually anglicized as "peruke".
|
281-284 |
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. . . ."
|
285-289 |
Cf.
Byron, Beppo, 497-498: "To turn,—and to return;—the
devil take it! / The story slips for ever through my
fingers. . . ."
|
288 |
the
mother of boy-Cupid See the note to 138, above;
Tooke, Pantheon, p. 123 gives "Venus Urania" as
Cupid’s mother.
|
289 |
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. . . ."
|
292 |
sobriety Conduct;
calmness; seriousness; state of being sober.
|
295 |
who
rules the tides Diana, the goddess of the moon
(see the note to 172, above).
|
296 |
form’d Created;
made; shaped.
|
299 |
those
above Presumably angels.
|
302 |
fraught
with incense Laden with perfume.
|
303 |
heav’nly zone Paradise; Eden.
|
304 |
our first parents Adam and Eve.
|
305 |
imparidis’d the Earth Made the
earth a paradise—a place of supreme and perfect happiness like Eden.
|
315 |
enamours Charms; inflames with love.
|
315 |
mein Look; bearing; manner; facial
expression; physical attributes.
|
316 |
beatified Made blessed or happy;
sanctified.
|
321-327 |
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.
|
326 |
beguile Divert attention.
|
327-328 |
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.
|
330 |
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).
|
333 |
commingled Mixed together.
|
336 |
female wit Cf. Byron, Beppo,
583- 584: "usher of the school of female wits, boy bards
. . ." (M.C.).
|
337-344 |
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.
|
340 |
succour Aid in distress.
|
341 |
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."
|
345-350 |
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 . . .").
|
349 |
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. . . ."
|
353-357 |
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.
|
356 |
throe Pang.
|
360 |
funning,—feasting,—revels,—dice,—and
dresses. Cf. Byron, Beppo, 7: "fiddling, feasting,
dancing, drinking, masquing. . . ."
|
363 |
"Experience makes us wiser" Proverbial,
but cf. John Gay, "The Shepherd and the Philosopher," Fables:
"long experience made him sage."
|
365 |
magnetic qualities Powers of
attraction.
|
367 |
schism Split; division; gap.
|
368 |
desperate Dangerous.
|
368 |
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.
|
369 |
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.
|
370 |
Purges Purifies; frees from
uncleanliness or evil.
|
374 |
inference Infer: deduce; conclude.
|
387 |
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).
|
390 |
bear Bear off: win.
|
390 |
rabble Crowd or mob composed of the
lower classes of people.
|
392 |
visage Face.
|
395 |
diffidence Lack of self-confidence.
|
395 |
forsooth In truth
(M.C.).
|
396-399 |
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.).
|
400 |
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.
|
401-405 |
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).
|
402 |
cotemporary Contemporary.
|
404 |
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.
|
408 |
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."
|
414 |
beguil’d Seduced into a certain
course.
|
416 |
ilk Kind; species.
|
419 |
bilk Trick. cheat.
|
420 |
. . . 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."
|
422 |
gingham Cotton cloth woven from
coloured yarns into stripes or checks.
|
424 |
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.
|
425 |
Epicure Person of refined tastes in
food and drink; a lover of sensuous and luxurious pleasures.
|
426 |
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.
|
429 |
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).
|
429 |
sinecure Office without work; easy
job.
|
433-440 |
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.
|
439 |
grosser Excessive to the point of
vice (gluttony).
|
442 |
glance of blue "Annette’s eyes
are blue. See line 346, where her eyes are considered with ‘the sapphire’s
blaze’ . . ." (M.C.).
|
443 |
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!’"
|
446-449 |
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."
|
450-456 |
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.
|
450 |
ministry Service.
|
456 |
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."
|
465 |
frolic or vagary Merry-making or
devious diversion.
|
468 |
cavil Raise false issues; find fault
unfairly.
|
469 |
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).
|
470-471 |
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").
|
481-488 |
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.
|
489 |
Didst ever . . . Cf. Byron,
Beppo, 145: "Didst ever see a Gondola?" Didst: did
you.
|
489-552 |
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.
|
492 |
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.
|
494 |
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."
|
494 |
environ Surround; encircle.
|
495 |
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. . . ."
|
496-500 |
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".
|
503-512 |
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).
|
510 |
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).
|
511 |
Nor of the sex Not a female. Cf. the
quotation from Byron at 72 above.
|
513-520 |
"Venus Medici" . . .
beau-ideal . . . Apollo . . . Cf. Byron, Don
Juan, II, 1665 and 1681-1688 (M.C.):
I hate inconstancy . . .
. . .
that which
Men call inconstancy is nothing more
Than admiration due where nature’s rich
Profusion with young beauty covers o’er
Some favour’d object; and as in the niche
A lovely statue we almost adore,
This sort of adoration of the real
Is but a hightening of the ‘beau ideal.’
Beau-ideal: French (beau-idéal): a type or
embodiment of ideal beauty. In Longmore’s day, two statues, the Venus dei
Medici and the Apollo Belvedere, were widely regarded as
representations of ideal female and male beauty. Looted by Napoleon from the
Vatican (to which they were later returned), the Venus dei Medici and
the Apollo Belvedere were exhibited between 1802 and 1813 at the Musée
Napoleon in Paris, where they created a sensation. "In the literature of
praise the Medici Venus fills almost as many pages as the Apollo
Belvedere. . .," writes Kenneth Clark in The Nude: a
Study in Ideal Form, Bollingen Series XXV.2 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1956), p. 86, and certainly comments on the two statues are
almost ubiquitous in belletristic writing of the Romantic period. In both
statues, the figure is naked, but in Venus’s case her hands are placed so as
partly to cover her breasts and pubic area.
|
518 |
insatiate Insatiable; never
satisfied.
|
525 |
satyrize Satirize.
|
526 |
Admits Allows as valid.
|
526 |
"tù quoque" Latin: you too.
|
529 |
All are imperfect See the quotation
at 503-512, above.
|
529 |
durst Dares.
|
530-534 |
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.
|
537-539 |
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.
|
541 |
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).
|
543 |
throng Crowd.
|
545-560 |
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. . . ."
|
545 |
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 . . .").
|
547 |
dower Dowry; accompanying ‘gift’.
|
550 |
alms Relief given out of pity to the
poor.
|
552 |
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").
|
554-560 |
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.
|
556 |
Sol "This glorious sun, which
illustrates all things with his light, is called Sol
. . ." (Tooke, Pantheon, p. 47).
|
556 |
phlegmatic See the note to 211,
above.
|
560 |
hoary Frosty;
grey-white with frost
or age.
|
560 |
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."
|
561 |
perchance By chance; perhaps.
|
561 |
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.
|
562 |
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. . . ."
|
563-568 |
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."
|
563 |
raiment Clothing.
|
565 |
airy fancy Atmospheric or
meteorological taste; sprightly and light-hearted disposition.
|
566 |
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!"
|
567-574 |
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. . . ."
|
568 |
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.’"
|
584 |
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."
|
585-600 |
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).
|
585 |
ultra Extreme; furthermost.
|
586 |
mummy-fying Cf. Byron, The Age of
Bronze, 196: ". . . frozen mummies on the Polar
plains."
|
592 |
the "véritable" French:
the real thing (M.C.).
|
593 |
sorry Poor; miserable; worthless.
|
594,
596 |
powers, . . .
deities Pagan gods.
|
594 |
mortal effigy Death-like appearance.
An effigy is a representation or likeness of a person.
|
597-600 |
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).
|
604 |
"De gustibus non disputandum est" Latin:
‘there is no arguing about matters of taste.’
|
606 |
tax Blame.
|
607 |
worsted drawers Undergarments for the
legs and lower body made of fine wool
|
607 |
flannel Soft woolen cloth for
undergarments, etc.; the garments themselves.
|
608 |
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.
|
609 |
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.
|
613 |
syllogism Logical argument in three
propositions—two propositions and a conclusion that follows necessarily from
them.
|
616 |
scold Rude, clamorous woman.
|
616 |
on the fret Eating into someone;
corroding; vexing.
|
617-632 |
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.
|
620 |
recreate / The frame Reinvigorate or
refresh the body; to amuse by sport or pastime.
|
622 |
pate Head; crown of head.
|
624 |
tits Small horses, with a pun on the
slang term for women’s breasts (M.C.).
|
633-640 |
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. . . ."
|
639 |
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).
|
644 |
gall Bitterness; sourness; bile.
|
645 |
Savours Gives forth a scent or
odour.
|
645-646 |
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 . . .").
|
647 |
luxuriancy Superabundant growth. See
Addison, Spectator, No. 414: "A Tree in all its luxuriancy
. . . of boughs and branches. . . ."
|
648 |
shew Show.
|
651 |
wholly Thoroughly.
|
652 |
rife Prevalent.
|
655 |
captious Fault-finding; carping
(M.C.).
|
656 |
scandalizing Uttering malicious and
false reports.
|
658 |
turn’d Diverted, deflected: turned
aside.
|
658 |
hippish Somewhat
hypocondriacal;
low-spirited; depressed. Cf. Byron, Beppo, 508-509: "I’m rather
hippish, and may borrow / Some spirits. . . ."
|
660 |
skippish Bouncy.
|
662 |
sheepish Embarrassed; bashful; shy.
|
666 |
ap’d Aped: imitated.
|
668-669 |
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.
|
669-670 |
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. . . ."
|
671 |
suffic’d Made sufficient provision
for; satisfied.
|
675 |
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]. . . ."
|
680 |
abortion Product of arrested
development; misshapen being or monster.
|
681 |
ennui French: feeling of weariness,
listlessness, and boredom. Byron, Don Juan, XIII, 805-810:
". . . ennui . . . That awful yawn which sleep
can not abate."
|
685 |
cupidity Covetousness.
|
687-688 |
sober habits . . . to bed a ten o’clock Cf.
Byron, Don Juan, XIII, 864: ". . . then retreated
soberly—at ten."
|
691 |
Tracts . . . strictures Pamphlets
. . . (restrictive) comments.
|
692 |
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.
|
693 |
satellites Small or secondary planets
that revolve around larger ones.
|
693-694 |
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".
|
694 |
betide Befall; become of.
|
699 |
on the fret In a state of distress or
vexation (and see the note to 616, above).
|
700 |
alloying Impairing or qualifying.
|
700 |
choicest Most desirable and valuable.
|
703-704 |
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. . . ."
|
707-712 |
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. . . ."
|
709-710 |
Chasten’d, and crystaliz’d Purified
(or made modest), and given form (or shape).
|
715 |
leagued Allied (or, perhaps,
engaged).
|
716 |
straiten’d Inadequate.
|
717 |
duns Creditors; debt collectors.
|
722-728 |
that fickle jade . . . Fortune;
see the note to 108, above. A "jade" here is an untrustworthy woman.
|
724 |
escalade Climb; specifically, the
military action of scaling the walls of a fortified place through the use of
ladders.
|
725 |
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).
|
728 |
gall See the note to 144 and 644,
above.
|
734 |
bar Enclosure.
|
735 |
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
. . .")
|
736 |
Hymen Marriage.
|
742 |
vale Valley.
|
750 |
mien A literary term for the
appearance of a person as expressive of their mood or character.
|
751-768 |
one face . . . Probably
Longmore’s mother; see the Introduction, pp. xii and 1 n. 110.
|
758 |
sympathize Harmonize.
|
759 |
Calumny may dart Slander (false
accusation) may throw a dart (or other hurtful missile).
|
770 |
burthens Burdens (sorrows,
responsibilities, etc.).
|
777 |
But to my tale Byron, Beppo,
393: "But to my tale. . . ."
|
786 |
raillery Good-humoured ridicule.
|
789 |
Suffus’d Overspread or covered with
colour or light (M.C.).
|
792 |
Grand Turk The Sultan of the Ottoman
Empire.
|
793 |
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. . . ."
|
795 |
even Evening.
|
796 |
wont Accustomed.
|
797 |
Bespangled Adorned with spangles
(i.e., glittering plates of metal) or anything sparkling or shining.
|
798 |
fretted Adorned with carvings in
elaborate and decorative patterns.
|
798 |
canopy Overhanging covering.
|
802 |
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).
|
803-804 |
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.
|
806 |
pother Trouble, fuss.
|
807 |
before-hand with In advance of;
earlier than.
|
809-810 |
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.
|
810 |
counterpart A person so resembling
another as to appear a complete duplicate of him or her; one of two people who
complement one another.
|
812 |
Bolus Medical term: a larger than
ordinary pill (often used contemptuously).
|
814 |
Physic the art or practice of
medicine, with a pun on "physic" as a term for a purgative.
|
814-815 |
the sister like a lily / All white
appeared See the note to 802, above and the Introduction, pp.
xxii-xxiii.
|
815-816 |
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).
|
817-824 |
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."
|
819 |
by mishap Unfortunately (and see
previous entry).
|
824 |
zest Piquancy:
flavour; excitement.
|
825 |
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.
|
829-880 |
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.
|
830 |
"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.
|
830-831 |
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."
|
836-837 |
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).
|
837 |
make you stare Excite astonishment:
make you open your eyes with amazement.
|
838 |
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.
|
842 |
prate Talk at length to little
purpose.
|
842 |
intellectual The pejorative context
suggests that Longmore is using this word in the old sense of non-material.
|
843 |
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).
|
843 |
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."
|
843 |
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."
|
845-856 |
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).
|
846 |
jurisprudence Legal system.
|
847 |
exstatic Ecstatic.
|
848 |
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 . . .")
|
849-850 |
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."
|
853 |
bed of feather See Byron, Beppo,
137-140: " . . . jealousy . . . smothers women in a
bed of feather . . ."
|
853 |
radical heat The heat or energy that
is fundamental to life.
|
857-880 |
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.
|
863 |
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.
|
863 |
eloquential Rhetorical.
|
864 |
like a pendulum By hanging.
|
868 |
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.
|
868 |
"the Ratters" (Musk-)rat
catchers, with a pun on a term for traitors—presumably with reference to the
North-Westers.
|
870 |
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.
|
872 |
de facto, et de jure Latin and
legalese: in fact and by right: really and legally.
|
875 |
parson Priest.
|
876-877 |
made their oratory clue / All canvass
up A nautical metaphor: caused the sail ("clue") of
their argument ("oratory") to be drawn in.
|
879 |
on the itch "On the
lookout" (M.C.).
|
881 |
fain See the note to 85, above.
|
882-896 |
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."
|
885 |
declension Decline; sinking; decay.
|
886 |
quell’d Extinguished; crushed.
|
887 |
direly Dreadfully
(M.C.).
|
892 |
routs See the note to 278, above.
|
893 |
entrée French: introduction
(M.C.).
|
893 |
belle French: beautiful woman
(M.C.).
|
895-896 |
bile . . . jaundice See the notes
to 144, 433-440, and 668-669, above.
|
897-900 |
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."
|
901-904 |
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.
|
904 |
connexions Connections: spouses.
|
910 |
consummated Completed, finished.
|
916 |
raillery See the note to 786, above.
|
919 |
fret See the notes to 616 and 798,
above.
|
920 |
in a net Pun or double entendre: in
Annette.
|
921-924 |
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. . . ."
|
925 |
tart Sharp, biting.
|
927 |
onsets Quarrels; battles of words
(M.C.).
|
928
|
parry Ward or keep off; turn aside.
|
931 |
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 . . .").
|
935 |
languishing Pining and/or drooping.
|
941-942 |
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."
|
941 |
luxuriance Abundance, profuseness.
|
947-949 |
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.
|
950 |
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.
|
951 |
purport Bearing; substance; purpose
in life.
|
954 |
fitted on Moved quickly by.
|
958 |
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. . . ."
|
960 |
as nightingale or dove Cf. Byron, Don
Juan, IV, 152: ". . . nightingales or doves."
|
961 |
grievous Painful; hurtful.
|
962 |
rude alarms Harsh and discordant
noises or disturbances.
|
965 |
droop’d Grew weak; hung down (with,
as Cullen suggests, a sexual innuendo).
|
967-968 |
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.).
|
969 |
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.
|
970 |
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.
|
972 |
vagaries Pranks; unkind tricks.
|
973 |
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. . . ."
|
974 |
airies Aeries or
eyries: homes high
in the air.
|
981 |
antic Fantastic figure, action, or
trick.
|
982-983 |
rout / From out Root out; turn up; bring to
light.
|
982 |
Kalendar Calendar: record, list,
directory.
|
984 |
cast Form; arrangement.
|
984 |
sublime See the note to 22, above.
|
990 |
concert Harmony
(M.C.).
|
993 |
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. . . ."
|
994 |
Palsied Paralysed.
|
998-1000 |
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. . . ."
|
1002 |
reta’en its sway Retaken or
regained control.
|
1004 |
"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.
|
1018 |
hypocritic Deceiving. In Latin, the
word hypocrita refers to an actor on the stage.
|
1019 |
libel Misrepresents; distorts.
|
1031 |
queer genus Odd species.
|
1032 |
the boy of Venus Cupid (see the note
to 138 and 289, above).
|
1033 |
mimic’d all the dyes Imitated all
the colours.
|
1034 |
Iris, with its varied hue Rainbow
(see the note to 163, above), with its various colours.
|
1035 |
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).
|
1036 |
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.
|
1037 |
visage Face.
|
1038 |
Caliban The brutish and mis-shapen
son of the witch Sycorax who becomes the servant of Prospero in Shakespeare’s
The Tempest.
|
1040 |
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."
|
1041 |
wight Person or creature.
|
1042 |
array’d Displayed
(M.C.).
|
1043-1048 |
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).
|
1045 |
pattern Typical example; archetype.
|
1047 |
wherefore deem’d For what reason
intended.
|
1047 |
profusely Abundantly.
|
1049-1056 |
. . . 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.
|
1051 |
flaxen Light yellow (and,
conceivably, made of flax fibres).
|
1057 |
motley See the note to 33, above.
|
1058 |
wantonness Lewd or lustful (crude)
behaviour.
|
1059 |
hirelings servants; mercenaries.
|
1061 |
resort Crowd.
|
1063-1071 |
England . . . mob . . .
"Freedom’s" pleasure . . . Cf. Byron, Beppo,
386: "Our [England’s] little riots just to show we’re free
men. . . ."
|
1065 |
John Bull A generic name for an
Englishman, from John Arbuthnot’s History of John Bull (1712).
|
1067 |
"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.
|
1067 |
"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).
|
1068 |
ascendance Paramount influence;
highest priority.
|
1071 |
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.
|
1071 |
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.
|
1074 |
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.
|
1076 |
Constitution The system or body of
fundamental principles according to which a state (or some other organization)
is governed.
|
1078 |
"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.
|
1079 |
jurisprudence Body of law; legal
system.
|
1080 |
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.
|
1081-1088 |
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.
|
1082 |
pat Glib; repetitive.
|
1085-1088 |
Nap . . . St. Helena See
the note to 725, above.
|
1089-1096 |
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.
|
1090 |
demur Objection.
|
1091 |
dismission Deprivation of office;
discharge from service; dismissal.
|
1096 |
standard Level of excellence (with
reference also, perhaps, to the British flag).
|
1097-1104 |
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.
|
1098 |
Conjur’d with Brought into
existence.
|
1103 |
ranting Bombastic; mouthy.
|
1104 |
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.
|
1104 |
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.
|
1104 |
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.
|
1104 |
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).
|
1105 |
avow Declare; acknowledge.
|
1108 |
pros’d . . . prose See
the note to 85, above.
|
1112 |
cavils Frivolous objections. Cf.
Byron, Beppo, 414: "Not caring as I ought for critics’ cavils
. . ." (M.C.).
|
1114 |
aye Yes; indeed. As Cullen points
out, "aye" is also an affirmative vote (or voter) in parliament.
|
1114 |
staunch Firm and trustworthy in
principles, pursuits, and support.
|
1116 |
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. . . ."
|
1118-1120 |
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).
|
1119 |
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.
|
1119 |
Tret An allowance to purchasers of 4
pounds on every 104 pounds for waste.
|
1121 |
Resolutions Bills; formal proposals
presented to the House of Assembly.
|
1123 |
dry goods to the hammer Textile
fabrics and the like (as distinguished from groceries, hardware, etc.) to the
auctioneer’s gavel.
|
1124 |
entail Inheritance, tradition,
cause.
|
1125 |
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.
|
1127 |
soi-disant French: self-styled;
pretended.
|
1127-1128 |
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.
|
1129 |
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 . . .").
|
1131-1132 |
thermometer at zero . . . See
the note at 567-574, above.
|
1133 |
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.
|
1136 |
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. . . ."
|
1139 |
asunder Apart
(M.C.).
|
1141 |
knock under Short for "knock
under board" : acknowledge defeat.
|
1142 |
laurels A wreath of the evergreen
laurel plant is traditionally an emblem of military victory or literary
achievement.
|
1143 |
station Position in life (especially
a high social position).
|
1144 |
molestation Annoyance; interference
of a troublesome, hostile, or violent kind.
|
1145 |
hurly-burly Commotion. See
Shakespeare, Macbeth, I, i, 3: "When the hurly-burly’s
done. . . ."
|
1145 |
yclept Called or styled: a poeticism
used by Byron in Don Juan, V, 1207 and elsewhere.
|
1146-1152 |
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. . . ."
|
1147 |
litterati Men of letters; learned
people.
|
1152 |
wags Mischievous people; jokers;
wits.
|
1155 |
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.
|
1156 |
rout Disorderly flight; utter
defeat.
|
1157 |
antic Grotesque; bizarre;
disorderly.
|
1160 |
indented Joined together along a
zigzag line.
|
1163 |
Instance For instance
(M.C.).
|
1164 |
reticular Netted, net-like. In Don
Juan, XII, 467 and 470 Byron also rhymes "reticular" with
"perpendicular".
|
1166 |
’twixt Between
(M.C.).
|
1166 |
auricular In the ear.
|
1167 |
Id est See the note to 192, above.
|
1169 |
atmosphere "Weather, and,
perhaps, circumstances (the presence of the crowd)" (M.C.).
|
1171 |
imbrued Inspired; imparted.
|
1172 |
effervescent "In a state of
bubbling . . . heat" (M.C.).
|
1175 |
uncover’d . . . as the gods of
old See the quotation from Byron’s Don Juan at 1136,
above.
|
1182 |
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. . . .’"
|
1183 |
John A representative proper name
for a male servant.
|
1192 |
indenture Indentation; incision.
|
1192 |
inexpressibles Euphemism: trousers
or breeches.
|
1197 |
palls Makes feint or feeble (with
"every sense" as the object).
|
1200 |
Chaos had come again Cf.
Shakespeare, Othello, III, iii, 91-92: "And when I love thee not,
/ Chaos is come again!"
|
1201 |
row Noisy squabble; brawl.
|
1202 |
frolic See the note to 465, above.
|
1203 |
stout pugilistic match Vigorous fist
fight.
|
1203 |
fray Fight, brawl.
|
1204 |
vulgars Plebeians; common or
ordinary people.
|
1204 |
inebriety Drunkenness
(M.C.).
|
1209-1216 |
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’").
|
1211 |
epicurean See the note to 425,
above.
|
1213 |
incentive Exciting; provocative.
|
1215 |
Longinus The name given to the
author of the Greek literary treatise whose title translates as On the
Sublime (c.100 A.D.).
|
1216 |
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.
|
1217 |
"Give physic to the dogs" Shakespeare,
Macbeth, V, iii, 46: "Throw physic to the dogs, I’ll none of
it."
|
1217 |
canker Decay; grow rotten.
|
1218 |
pines Wastes away, especially under
pain or mental stress.
|
1219 |
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."
|
1221 |
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.
|
1224 |
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! . . ."
|
1225-1232 |
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.
|
1229 |
grave, or quizzical Serious or
comical.
|
1234 |
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 . . .")
|
1235 |
Poesy Poetry.
|
1237 |
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.
|
1240 |
that all-inspiring font Greece. Cf.
Byron, Don Juan, V, 366: "The arts of which these lands were once
the font. . . ." font: fountain.
|
1243 |
unexpiring Undying.
|
1245 |
this resplendent clime Gorgeously
bright or splendid country.
|
1246 |
van Vanguard: the foremost portion
of an army.
|
1247 |
fraught Supplied with.
|
1247 |
bounteous Generous.
|
1252 |
Shew’d Showed.
|
1253-1256 |
See the note to 489-552 for Byron’s death on
April 19, 1824 while serving the "cause" of Greek freedom.
|
1256 |
memorize Cause to be remembered;
perpetuate in memory.
|
1257 |
Now to my tale again Byronic: see
the note to 545- 560, above.
|
1261 |
jibes Taunts; insults
(M.C.).
|
1261 |
waggish Mischievously merry;
jesting.
|
1263-1264 |
splenetic organs . . .
bile See the notes to 144 and 433-440, above.
|
1265 |
trial Attempt
(M.C.).
|
1266 |
in treble shakes In a high-pitched
tone; shrilly.
|
1267 |
viol Violin-like instrument.
|
1268 |
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.
|
1271 |
oath Swear-word; curse.
|
1275 |
deign’d Thought worthy; intended.
|
1276 |
incomprehensive Incomprehensible
(M.C.).
|
1278 |
adulations own Praises possess.
|
1282 |
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.’"
|
1286 |
protraction Delay; extension of
time.
|
1291 |
vexatious Troubling; annoying
(M.C.).
|
1292 |
petulance Peevish impatience in
restraint or opposition.
|
1292 |
save his bacon Cf. Byron, Don
Juan, VII, 336: ". . . yet wish’d to save their
bacon" (M.C.).
|
1300 |
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.
|
1301 |
controul Control.
|
1307 |
first estate Spiritual level. In
most European countries, the highest of the three classes or estates in the
body politic was the clergy.
|
1309 |
influenc’d Infused, instilled.
|
1309 |
innate Inborn.
|
1310 |
gaunt Lean or haggard
(M.C.).
|
1313-1314 |
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).
|
1318 |
spendthrift One who spends the
savings of thrift or frugality.
|
1319-1320 |
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."
|
1323 |
cavil See the note to 1112, above.
|
1326 |
part . . . asunder Move
. . . in two separate directions.
|
1329 |
vent Discharge; let out.
|
1329 |
round Solid
(M.C.).
|
1330 |
electric spirit See the note to 233,
above.
|
1333 |
redresses Remedies; relieves; sets
to right.
|
1338 |
valet . . . groom Men-servants
who attend, respectively, to clothes and horses.
|
1339 |
rife Abounding; full.
|
1340 |
doom Destiny.
|
1344 |
spleen See the note to 144, above.
|
1347 |
Cytherea Venus.
Tooke, Pantheon,
p.111: "[Venus is called] Cytherea, from the island of Cytherea,
whither she was first carried in a sea-shell."
|
1352 |
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!"
|
1354 |
most offenceless Least offending or
insulting.
|
1356 |
impetuous Rash; vehement; rowdy;
violent.
|
1358 |
avow’d Declared.
|
1361 |
ill-starr’d Unfortunate.
|
1362 |
agitation Putting into action.
|
1365 |
rout See the note to 278, above.
|
1368 |
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."
|
1373 |
avail’d Benefitted.
|
1374 |
inflam’d Passionate; enraged;
angry.
|
1375 |
salutation Greeting
(M.C.).
|
1376 |
obsequious Servile; excessively
polite.
|
1377 |
inauguration Formal ceremony of
introduction.
|
1379 |
good fellows Agreeable or jovial
companions; revellers. In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
Puck is styled Robin Goodfellow.
|
1383 |
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. . . ."
|
1390 |
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!’"
|
1392 |
diffus’d Extended; spread out.
|
1393-1394 |
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."
|
1400 |
sweep Chimney-sweeper.
|
1400 |
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.
|
1401-1408 |
"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.
|
1403 |
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."
|
1404 |
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. . . ."
|
1405 |
construe into faults Interpret as
defects (M.C.).
|
1405 |
pleader Advocate.
|
1406 |
sects Groups of people who attach
special importance to matters of minor importance.
|
1406 |
bug-bears Hobgoblins supposed to
devour naughty children.
|
1408 |
noxious Harmful; hurtful.
|
1419-1420 |
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.
|
1423 |
roundelay A short simple song with a
refrain (M.C.).
|
1425 |
gage Pledge: something offered as
security or as a guarantee.
|
1427 |
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.).
|