[51] [Illusion, or the Trances of Nourjahad, a melodrama founded on The History of Nourjahad, By the Editor of Sidney Bidulph (Mrs. Frances Sheridan, née Chamberlaine, 1724-1766), was played for the first time at Drury Lane Theatre, November 25, 1813. Byron was exceedingly indignant at being credited with the authorship or adaptation. (See Letter to Murray, November 27, 1813, Letters, 1898, ii. 288, note 1.) Miss Sophia Lee, who wrote some of the Canterbury Tales, "made a very elegant musical drama of it" (Memoirs of Mrs. F. Sheridan, by Alicia Lefanu, 1824, p. 296); but this was not the Nourjahad of Drury Lane.]
[52] [Millbank Penitentiary, which was built in the form of a pentagon, was finally taken in hand in the spring of 1813. Solitary confinement in the "cells" was, at first, reserved as a punishment for misconduct.—Memorials of Millbank, by Arthur Griffiths, 1875, i. 57.]
WINDSOR POETICS.
LINES COMPOSED ON THE OCCASION OF HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE REGENT BEING SEEN STANDING BETWEEN THE COFFINS OF HENRY VIII. AND CHARLES I., IN THE ROYAL VAULT AT WINDSOR.
Famed for contemptuous breach of sacred ties,
By headless Charles see heartless Henry lies;
Between them stands another sceptred thing—
It moves, it reigns—in all but name, a king:
Charles to his people, Henry to his wife,
—In him the double tyrant starts to life:
Justice and Death have mixed their dust in vain,
Each royal Vampire wakes to life again.
Ah, what can tombs avail!—since these disgorge
The blood and dust of both—to mould a George.[53]
[First published, Poetical Works, Paris, 1819, vi. 125.]