[EF] To help the ladies in their dress and lacing.—[MS.]
[254] It is strange that it should be the Pope and the Sultan, who are the chief encouragers of this branch of trade—women being prohibited as singers at St. Peter's, and not deemed trustworthy as guardians of the harem.
["Scarcely a soul of them can read. Pacchierotti was one of the best informed of the castrati ... Marchesi is so grossly ignorant that he wrote the word opera, opperra, but Nature has been so bountiful to the animal, that his ignorance and insolence were forgotten the moment he sang."—Venice, etc., by a Lady of Rank, 1824, ii. 86.]
[255] {208}[The N. Engl. Dict. cites Bunyan, Walpole, Fielding, Miss Austen, and Dickens as authorities for the plural "was." See art. "be." Here, as elsewhere, Byron wrote as he spoke.]
[EG] He never shows his feelings, but his teeth.—[MS. Alternative reading.]
[256] ["Our firman arrived from Constantinople on the 30th of April (1810)."—Travels in Albania, 1858, ii. 186.]
[EH] {209}
That each pulled, different ways—and waxing rough,
Had cuffed each other, only for the cuff.—[MS.]
[257] {210}