Volume II Part 69 (1/2)

[Footnote 1: Jerry Sneak, in Foote's 'Mayor of Garratt' (act ii.), says to Major Sturgeon, ”I heard of your tricks at the King of Bohemy.”]

[Footnote 2:

”The Ode of Horace--

'Natis in usum laet.i.tiae,' etc.;

some pa.s.sages of which I told him might be parodied, in allusion to some of his late adventures:

'Quanta laboras in Charybdi!

Digne puer meliore flamma!'”

(Moore.)]

[Footnote 3:

”In his first edition of 'The Giaour' he had used this word as a trisyllable--'Bright as the gem of Giamschid'--but on my remarking to him, upon the authority of Richardson's Persian Dictionary, that this was incorrect, he altered it to 'Bright as the ruby of Giamschid.' On seeing this, however, I wrote to him, 'that, as the comparison of his heroine's eye to a ”ruby” might unluckily call up the idea of its being bloodshot, he had better change the line to ”Bright as the jewel of Giamschid;”' which he accordingly did in the following edition”

(Moore).

In the 'Shah Nameh', Giamschid is the fourth sovereign of the ancient Persians, and ruled seven hundred years. His jewel was a green chrysolite, the reflection of which gives to the sky its blue-green colour. Byron probably changed to ”ruby” on the authority of 'Vathek'

(p. 58, ed. 1856), where Beckford writes,

”Then all the riches this place contains, as well as the carbuncle of Giamschid, shall be hers.”]

[Footnote 4: Moore's reference (see 'note' 1) to John Richardson's 'Dictionary of Persian, Arabic, and English' (1777), suggests to Byron that Moore was at work on an Oriental poem, probably 'Lalla Rookh', which would surpa.s.s the 'Charlemagne' of Lucien Buonaparte.]

[Footnote 5: The 'Shah Nameh' is a rhymed history of Persia, in which occurs the famous episode of Sohrab and Rustem. It was written in thirty years by Abul Kasim Firdausi, the last name being given to him by Sultan Mahmud because he had shed over the court at Ghizni the delights of ”Paradise.” Firdausi is said to have lived about 950 to 1030. (See The 'Shah Nameh', translated and abridged by James Atkinson.)]

[Footnote 6: Jacques Cazotte (1720-1792) wrote 'La Patte du Chat'

(1741); 'Mille et une Fadaises' (1742); 'Observations sur la lettre de Rousseau au sujet de la Musique Francaise' (1754); and other works. 'Le Diable Amoureux' appeared in 1772. Cazotte escaped the September Ma.s.sacres at the Abbaye in 1792, through the heroism of his daughter, but was executed on the twenty-fifth of the same month.]

[Footnote 7:

”I had already, singularly enough, antic.i.p.ated this suggestion, by making the daughter of a Peri the heroine of one of my stories, and detailing the love adventures of her aerial parent in an episode. In acquainting Lord Byron with this circ.u.mstance, in my answer to the above letter, I added, 'All I ask of your friends.h.i.+p is--not that you will abstain from Peris on my account, for that is too much to ask of human (or, at least, author's) nature--but that, whenever you mean to pay your addresses to any of these aerial ladies, you will, at once, tell me so, frankly and instantly, and let me, at least, have my choice whether I shall be desperate enough to go on, with such a rival, or at once surrender the whole race into your hands, and take, for the future, to Antediluvians with Mr. Montgomery'”