[IG] {346}
—— as feminine of feature.—[MS.]
Led him on—although he was the gentlest creature,
As kind in heart as feminine of feature.—[MS. erased.]
[438] {347}[Pistol's "Bezonian" is a corruption of bisognoso—a rogue, needy fellow. Byron, quoting from memory, confuses two passages. In 2 Henry VI., act iv. sc. 1, line 134, Suffolk says, "Great men oft die of vile bezonians;" in 2 Henry IV., act v. sc. 3, line 112, Pistol says, "Under which King, Besonian? speak or die.">[
[439] ["Le Général Lascy, voyant arriver un corps, si à-propos à son secours, s'avança vers l'officier qui l'avait conduit, et, le prenant pour un Livonien, lui fit, en allemand, les complimens les plus flatteurs; le jeune militaire (le Duc de Richelieu) qui parlait parfaitement cette langue, y répondit avec sa modestie ordinaire."-Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, ii. 211.]
[440] {348}[The Task, bk. i. line 749. It was pointed out to Cowper that the same thought had been expressed by Isaac Hawkins Browne, in The Fire-side, a Pastoral Soliloquy, lines 15, 16 (Poems, ed. 1768, p. 125)—
"I have said it at home, I have said it abroad,
That the town is Man's world, but that this is of God."
There is a parallel passage in M.T. Varro, Rerum Rusticarum, lib. iii. I. 4, "Nee minim, quod divina natura dedit agros, ars humami aedificavit urbes."—See The Task, etc., ed. by H.T. Griffith, 1896, ii. 234.]