Morning Chronicle, October 17, 1812.]
[45] {57} [Busby's translation of Lucretius (The Nature of Things, a Didascalie Poem) was published in 1813. Byron was a subscriber, and is mentioned in the preface as "one of the most distinguished poets of the age." The passage in question is, perhaps, taken from the Second Book, lines 880, 881, which Busby renders—
"Just as she quickens fuel into fire,
And bids it, flaming, to the skies aspire.">[
[46] {59} [The Leasowes, the residence of the poet Shenstone, is near the village of Halesowen, in Shropshire.]
[47] [See Dryden's Cymon and Iphigenia, lines 84, 85.]
[48] [The sequel of a temporary liaison formed by Lord Byron during his career in London, occasioned this impromptu. On the cessation of the connection, the fair one [Lady C. Lamb: see Letters, 1898, ii. 451] called one morning at her quondam lover's apartments. His Lordship was from home; but finding Vathek on the table, the lady wrote in the first page of the volume the words, "Remember me!" Byron immediately wrote under the ominous warning these two stanzas.—Conversations of Lord Byron, by Thomas Medwin, 1824, pp. 329, 330.
In Medwin's work the euphemisms false and fiend are represented by asterisks.]
[49] {60} ["To Bd., Feb. 22, 1813.
"'Remember thee,' nay—doubt it not—
Thy Husband too may 'think' of thee!
By neither canst thou be forgot,
Thou false to him—thou fiend to me!
"'Remember thee'? Yes—yes—till Fate
In Lethe quench the guilty dream.
Yet then—e'en then—Remorse and Hate
Shall vainly quaff the vanquished stream."