Chapter X: Canto THE SECOND: 96 (3)

{122}[154] [Strabo (lib. xvi. ed. 1807, p. 1106) gives various explanations of the name, assigning the supposed redness to the refraction of the rays of the vertical sun; or to the shadow of the scorched mountain-sides which form its shores; or, as Ctesias would have it, to a certain fountain which discharged red oxide of lead into its waters. "Abyssinian" Bruce had no doubt that "large trees or plants of coral spread everywhere over the bottom," made the sea "red," and accounted for the name. But, according to Niebuhr, the Red Sea is the Sea of Edom, which, being interpreted, is "Red."]

[bo]
---- _just the same_
_As at this moment I should like to do;--_
_But I have done with kisses--having kissed_
_All those that would--regretting those I missed_.--[MS.]

{124}[bp]
_Fair as the rose just plucked to crown the wreath_,
_Soft as the unfledged birdling when at rest_.--[MS.]

[155] [Compare _Mazeppa_, lines 829, sq., _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 232.]

{125}[bq]
_That finer melody was never heard_,
_The kind of sound whose echo is a tear_,
_Whose accents are the steps of Music's throne_.[*]--[MS.]

[*] ["To the Publisher. Take of these varieties which is thought best. I have no choice."]

{128}[156] [Moore, quoting from memory from one of Byron's MS. journals, says that he speaks of "making earnest love to the younger of his fair hostesses at Seville, with the help of a dictionary."--_Life,_ p. 93. See, too, letter to his mother, August 11, 1809, _Letters,_ 1898, i. 240.]

[br] _Pressure of hands, et cetera--or a kiss_.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

[bs] _Italian rather more, having more teachers_.--[MS. erased.]

[157] ["In 1813 ... in the fashionable world of London, of which I then formed an item, a fraction, the segment of a circle, the unit of a million, the nothing of something.... I had been the lion of 1812."--Extracts from a Diary, January 19, 1821, _Letters_, 1901, v. 177, 178.]

[bt]
_foes, friends, sex, kind, are nothing more to me_
_Than a mere dream of something o'er the sea_.--[MS.]

{129}[158] [For the same archaism or blunder, compare _Manfred_, act i. sc. 4, line 19, _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 132.]

[159] [Compare _The Prisoner of Chillon_, line 78, _ibid_., p. 16.]

[bu]
_Holding her sweet breath o'er his cheek and mouth_,
_As o'er a bed of roses, etc_.--[MS.]

[160] [_Vide post_, Canto XVI. stanza lxxxvi. line 6, p. 598, note 1.]

{130}[bv]
_For without heart Love is not quite so good_;
_Ceres is commissary to our bellies_,
_And Love, which also much depends on food_:
_While Bacchus will provide with wine and jellies_--
_Oysters and eggs are also living food_.--[MS.]

[bw]
_He was her own, her Ocean lover, cast_
_To be her soul's first idol, and its last_.--[MS.]

{131}[bx] _And saw the sunset and the rising moon_.--[MS.]

{132}[161] [The MS. and the editions of 1819, 1823, 1828, read "woman." The edition of 1833 reads "women." The text follows the MS. and the earlier editions.]

[162] [Compare stanza prefixed to Dedication, _vide ante_, p. 2.]

[163] [Compare--

"Yes! thy Sherbet to-night will sweetly flow,
See how it sparkles in its vase of snow!"

_Corsair_, Canto I. lines 427, 428, _Poetical Works_, 1900, iii. 242.]

[by]
_A pleasure naught but drunkenness can bring:_
_For not the blest sherbet all chilled with snow._
_Nor the full sparkle of the desert-spring,_
_Nor wine in all the purple of its glow_.--[MS.]

{134}[bz] _Spread like an Ocean, varied, vast, and bright._--[MS.]

[ca]
_---- I'm sure they never reckoned;_
_And being joined--like swarming bees they clung,_
_And mixed until the very pleasure stung._

or,

_And one was innocent, but both too young,_
_Their hearts the flowers, etc_.--[MS.]

{135}[cb]
_In all the burning tongues the Passions teach_
_They had no further feeling, hope, nor care_
_Save one, and that was Love_.--[MS. erased.]

{136}[cc]
_Pillowed upon her beating heart--which panted
With the sweet memory of all it granted_.--[MS.]

{138}[cd] _Some drown themselves, some in the vices grovel_.--[MS.]

[164] [Lady Caroline Lamb's _Glenarvon_ was published in 1816. For Byron's farewell letter of dismissal, which Lady Caroline embodied in her novel (vol. iii. chap. ix.), see _Letters_, 1898, ii. 135, note 1. According to Medwin (_Conversations_, 1824, p. 274), Madame de Staël catechized Byron with regard to the relation of the story to fact.]

{139}[ce]
_In their sweet feelings holily united,_
_By Solitude (soft parson) they were wed_.--[MS.]

[165] [Titus forebore to marry "Incesta" Berenice (see Juv., _Sat_. vi. 158), the daughter of Agrippa I., and wife of Herod, King of Chalcis, out of regard to the national prejudice against intermarriage with an alien.]

[166] [Cæsar's third wife, Pompeia, was suspected of infidelity with Clodius (see Langhorne's _Plutarch_, 1838, p. 498); Pompey's third wife, Mucia, intrigued with Cæsar (_vide ibid_., p. 447); Mahomet's favourite wife, Ayesha, on one occasion incurred suspicion; Antonina, the wife of Belisarius, was notoriously profligate (see Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_, 1825, iii. 432, 102).]

{140}[167] [Compare _Sardanapalus_, act i. sc. 2, line 252, _Poetical Works_, 1901, v. 23, note 1.]

{141}[cf] _--of ticklish dust_.--[MS. Alternative reading.]

{142}[168] ["Mr. Hobhouse is at it again about indelicacy. There is _no indelicacy_. If he wants _that_, let him read Swift, his great idol; but his imagination must be a dunghill, with a viper's nest in the middle, to engender such a supposition about this poem."--Letter to Murray, May 15, 1819, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 295.]

[cg] _Two hundred stanzas reckoned as before._--[MS.]