[k] Oh, thou of yore esteemed——.—[D.]
[l] Since later lyres are only strung on earth.—[D.]
[20] [For the substitution of the text for vars. [ii.], [iii.], see letter to Dallas, September 21, 1811 (Letters, 1898, ii. 43).]
——thy glorious rill.—[D.]
or, —wooed thee, drank the vaunted rill.—[D.]
[n] [{16}] Sore given to revel and to Pageantry.—[MS. erased.]
He chused the bad, and did the good affright
With concubines——.—[MS.]
No earthly things——.—[D.]
[21] ["We [i.e. Byron and C.S. Matthews] went down [April, 1809] to Newstead together, where I had got a famous cellar, and Monks' dresses from a masquerade warehouse. We were a company of some seven or eight, ... and used to sit up late in our friars' dresses, drinking burgundy, claret, champagne, and what not, out of the skull-cup, and all sorts of glasses, and buffooning all round the house, in our conventual garments" (letter to Murray, November 19, 1820. See, too, the account of this visit which Matthews wrote to his sister in a letter dated May 22, 1809 [Letters, 1898, i. 150-160, and 153, note]). Moore (Life, p. 86) and other apologists are anxious to point out that the Newstead "wassailers" were, on the whole, a harmless crew of rollicking schoolboys "—were, indeed, of habits and tastes too intellectual for mere vulgar debauchery." And as to the "alleged 'harems,'" the "Paphian girls," there were only one or two, says Moore, "among the ordinary menials." But, even so, the "wassailers" were not impeccable, and it is best to leave the story, fact or fable, to speak for itself.
[22] [{17}] ["Hight" is the preterite of the passive "hote," and means "was called." "Childe Harold he hight" would be more correct. Compare Spenser's Faërie Queene, bk. i. c. ix. 14. 9, "She Queene of Faeries hight." But "hight" was occasionally used with the common verbs "is," "was." Compare The Ordinary, 1651, act iii. sc. 1—