The works of Lord Byron :: :: University of Virginia Library

The works of Lord Byron

A new, revised and enlarged edition, with illustrations. Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge and R. E. Prothero

Byron, George Gordon Byron (1788-1824)

Vol. I. HOURS OF IDLENESS AND OTHER EARLY POEMS.

II.

III.

IV.

II.

III.

IV.

THE DEFORMED TRANSFORMED:

THE AGE OF BRONZE;

THE ISLAND;

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Shades of those Belles whose reign began of yore,
With George the Third's—and ended long before!—
Though in your daughters' daughters yet you thrive,
Burst from your lead, and be yourselves alive!
Back to the Ball-room speed your spectred host,
Fool's Paradise is dull to that you lost.

493

No treacherous powder bids Conjecture quake;
No stiff-starched stays make meddling fingers ache;
(Transferred to those ambiguous things that ape
Goats in their visage, women in their shape;)
No damsel faints when rather closely pressed,
But more caressing seems when most caressed;
Superfluous Hartshorn, and reviving Salts,
Both banished by the sovereign cordial “Waltz.”

It cannot be complained now, as in the Lady Baussière's time, of the “Sieur de la Croix,” that there be “no whiskers;” but how far these are indications of valour in the field, or elsewhere, may still be questionable. Much may be, and hath been; avouched on both sides. In the olden time philosophers had whiskers, and soldiers none—Scipio himself was shayen—Hannibal thought his one eye handsome enough without a beard; but Adrian, the emperor, wore a beard (having warts on his chin, which neither the Empress Sabina nor even the courtiers could abide)—Turenne had whiskers, Marlborough none—Buonaparte is unwhiskered, the Regent whiskered; “argal” greatness of mind and whiskers may or may not go together; but certainly the different occurrences, since the growth of the last mentioned, go further in behalf of whiskers than the anathema of Anselm did against long hair in the reign of Henry I.—Formerly, red was a favourite colour. See Lodowick Barrey's comedy of Ram Alley, 1661; Act I. Scene I.

“Taffeta.

Now for a wager—What coloured beard comes next by the window?

“Adriana.

A black man's, I think.

“Taffeta.

I think not so: I think a red, for that is most in fashion.”

There is “nothing new under the sun:” but red, then a favourite, has now subsided into a favourite's colour.

The paragraph “Much may be” down to “reign of Henry I.” was added in Revise I, and the remainder of the note in Revise 2.