From the "Spirit of the Age." Discussions of Byron's poetry are also to be
found in the review of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" (Works, XI, 420-426)
and in "Pope, Lord Byron and Mr. Bowles" (XI, 486-508).
P. 236. _As if a man_. "Coriolanus," v, 3, 36.
_cloud-capt_. "Tempest," iv, I, 152.
P. 237. _prouder than_. Cf. Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida," i, 3,
380: "His crest that prouder than blue Iris bends."
_silly sooth_. "Twelfth Night," ii, 4, 47.
P. 239. _denotes a foregone conclusion_. "Othello." iii, 3, 428.
P. 240. _in cell monastic_. Cf. "As You Like It," iii, 2, 441: "To live in
a nook merely monastic."
P. 241. _thoughts that breathe_. Gray's "Progress of Poesy," 110.
P. 242. _Lord Byron does not exhibit a new view of nature._ In the paper
on "Pope, Lord Byron and Mr. Bowles," Hazlitt's tone is more generous:
"His Lordship likes the poetry, the imaginative part of art, and so do
we.... He likes the _sombre_ part of it, the thoughtful, the decayed, the
ideal, the spectral shadow of human greatness, the departed spirit of
human power. He sympathizes not with art as a display of ingenuity, as
the triumph of vanity or luxury, as it is connected with the idiot,
superficial, petty self-complacency of the individual and the moment
(these are to him not 'luscious as locusts, but bitter as coloquintida');
but he sympathizes with the triumphs of Time and Fate over the proudest
works of man--with the crumbling monuments of human glory--with the dim
vestiges and countless generations of men--with that which claims alliance
with the grave, or kindred with the elements of nature." Works, XI, 496.
_poor men's cottages_. "Merchant of Venice," i, 2, 14.
_reasons high_. "Paradise Lost," II, 558.
P. 243. _Till Contemplation_. Dyer's "Grongar Hill," 26.
_this bank_. "Macbeth," i, 7, 6.
P. 244. _The Liberal_: Verse and Prose from the South, a quarterly
published in Italy by Leigh Hunt and Byron, 1822-23, to which Hazlitt also
contributed. In the second of its four numbers appeared Byron's "Heaven
and Earth: A Mystery."
_the deluge_, in "Heaven and Earth."
_his aversion_. See "Don Juan," III, stanza 94:
"A drowsy frowzy poem, called the Excursion,
Writ in a manner which is my aversion."
_born in a garret_. In the "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," Byron,
speaking of Jeffrey, refers to "the sixteenth story, where himself was
born."
_Letter to the Editor_. The Letter to William Roberts, editor of the
British Review, appeared in the first number of the Liberal.
_Long's_, a restaurant in Bond Street.
P. 245. _the controversy about Pope_. See note to p. 118.
_Scrub_, in Farquhar's "Beaux' Stratagem."
_very tolerable_. "Much Ado About Nothing," iii, 3, 37.
P. 246. _a chartered libertine_. "Henry V," i, 1, 48.
P. 247. _Like proud seas_. "Two Noble Kinsmen," ii, 2, 23.
_Did the latter ever acknowledge the obligation?_ Scott wrote to Byron's
publisher, John Murray, December 17, 1821: "I accept with feelings of
great obligation, the flattering proposal of Lord Byron to prefix my name
to the very grand and tremendous drama of 'Cain.' I may be partial to it,
and you will allow I have cause; but I do not think that his Muse has ever
taken so lofty a flight amid her former soarings."
_Farthest from them_. "Paradise Lost," I, 247.
P. 248. _the first Vision of Judgment_, the one composed by Southey on
the occasion of the death of George III, celebrating that monarch's entry
into heaven and provoking a spirited travesty from Byron.
_None but itself_. This line is quoted by Burke in the "Letters on a
Regicide Peace," from a play written or adapted by Lewis Theobald, "The
Double Falsehood" (1727). Waller-Glover.
_the tenth transmitter_. Richard Savage's "The Bastard."
P. 250. _Nothing can cover_. Beaumont and Fletcher's "The False One," ii,
1.