[798] {595}[For "Septemberers (Septembriseurs)," see Carlyle's French Revolution, 1839, iii. 50.]
[799] {596}["Query, Sydney Smith, author of Peter Plymley's Letters?—Printer's Devil."—Ed. 1833. Byron must have met Sydney Smith (1771-1845) at Holland House. The "fat fen vicarage" (vide infra, [stanza lxxxii. line 8]) was Foston-le-Clay (Foston, All Saints), near Barton Hill, Yorkshire, which Lord Chancellor Erskine presented to Sydney Smith in 1806. The "living" consisted of "three hundred acres of glebe-land of the stiffest clay," and there was no parsonage house.—See A Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith, by Lady Holland, 1855, i. 100-107.]
[800] ["Observe, also, three grotesque figures in the blank arches of the gable which forms the eastern end of St. Hugh's Chapel," and of these, "one is popularly said to represent the 'Devil looking over Lincoln.'"—Handbook to the Cathedrals of England, by R.J. King, Eastern Division, p. 394, note x.
The devil looked over Lincoln because the unexampled height of the central tower of the cathedral excited his envy and alarm; or, as Fuller (Worthies: Lincolnshire) has it, "overlooked this church, when first finished, with a torve and tetrick countenance, as maligning men's costly devotions." So, at least, the vanity of later ages interpreted the saying; but a time was when the devil "looked over" Lincoln to some purpose, for in A.D. 1185 an earthquake clave the Church of Remigius in twain, and in 1235 a great part of the central tower, which had been erected by Bishop Hugh de Wells, fell and injured the rest of the building.]
[OD] {597}For laughter rarely shakes these aguish folks.—[MS, erased.]
[OE] Took down the gay bon-mot——.—[MS. erased.]
[OF] To hammer half a laugh——.—[MS. erased.]
["There's a difference to be seen between a beggar and a Queen;
And I 'll tell you the reason why;