FOOTNOTES:
[287] {381} [In a manuscript note to a letter of Byron's, dated June 11, 1814, Wedderburn Webster writes, "I did take him to Lady Sitwell's party.... He there for the first time saw his cousin, the beautiful Mrs. Wilmot [who had appeared in mourning with numerous spangles in her dress]. When we returned to ... the Albany, he ... desired Fletcher to give him a tumbler of brandy, which he drank at once to Mrs. Wilmot's health.... The next day he wrote some charming lines upon her, 'She walks in beauty,' etc."—Letters, 1899, iii. 92, note 1.
Anne Beatrix, daughter and co-heiress of Eusebius Horton, of Catton Hall, Derbyshire, married Byron's second cousin, Robert John Wilmot (1784-1841), son of Sir Robert Wilmot of Osmaston, by Juliana, second daughter of the Hon. John Byron, and widow of the Hon. William Byron. She died February 4, 1871.
Nathan (Fugitive Pieces, 1829, pp. 2, 3) has a note to the effect that Byron, while arranging the first edition of the Melodies, used to ask for this song, and would not unfrequently join in its execution.]
[le] {382}
The Harp the Minstrel Monarch swept,
The first of men, the loved of Heaven,
Which Music cherished while she wept.—[MS. M.]
[lf] {383} It told the Triumph——.—[MS. M.]
[288] ["When Lord Byron put the copy into my hand, it terminated with this line. This, however, did not complete the verse, and I asked him to help out the melody. He replied, 'Why, I have sent you to Heaven—it would be difficult to go further!' My attention for a few moments was called to some other person, and his Lordship, whom I had hardly missed, exclaimed, 'Here, Nathan, I have brought you down again;' and immediately presented me the beautiful and sublime lines which conclude the melody."—Fugitive Pieces, 1829, p. 33.]
It there abode, and there it rings,
But ne'er on earth its sound shall be;
The prophets' race hath passed away;
And all the hallowed minstrelsy—
From earth the sound and soul are fled,
And shall we never hear again?—[MS. M. erased.]