9.
Though your visions of lawn
Have all been withdrawn,
And you missed your bold stroke for a mitre;
In a very snug way
You may still preach and pray,
And from bishop sink into backbiter!"
[First published, Works (Galignani), 1831, p. 116.]
FOOTNOTES:
[127] [George Frederick Nott (1767-1841), critic and divine, was Rector of Harrietsham and Woodchurch, a Prebendary of Winchester and of Salisbury. He was Bampton Lecturer in 1802, and, soon afterwards, was appointed sub-preceptor to the Princess Charlotte of Wales. He was a connoisseur of architecture and painting, and passed much of his time in Italy and at Rome. When he was at Pisa he preached in a private room in the basement story of the house in Pisa where Shelley was living, and fell under Byron's displeasure for attacking the Satanic school, and denouncing Cain as a blasphemous production. "The parsons," he told Moore (letter, February 20, 1820), "preached at it [Cain] from Kentish Town to Pisa." Hence the apostrophe to Dr. Nott. (See Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author, by E. T. Trelawny, 1887, pp. 302, 303.)]
[128] [According to Lady Anne Hamilton (Secret History of the Court of England, 1832, i. 198-207), the Princess Charlotte incurred the suspicion and displeasure of her uncles and her grandmother, the Queen, by displaying an ardent and undue interest in her sub-preceptor. On being reproved by the Queen for "condescending to favour persons in low life with confidence or particular respect, persons likely to take advantage of your simplicity and innocence," and having learnt that "persons" meant Mr. Nott, she replied by threatening to sign a will in favour of her sub-preceptor, and by actually making over to him by a deed her library, jewels, and all other private property. Lady Anne Hamilton is not an accurate or trustworthy authority, but her extremely circumstantial narrative was, no doubt, an expansion of the contemporary scandal to which Byron's lampoon gave currency.]
LUCIETTA. A FRAGMENT.
Lucietta, my deary,
That fairest of faces!
Is made up of kisses;
But, in love, oft the case is
Even stranger than this is—
There's another, that's slyer,
Who touches me nigher,—
A Witch, an intriguer,
Whose manner and figure
Now piques me, excites me,
Torments and delights me—
Cætera desunt.
[From an autograph MS. in the possession of Mr. Murray, now for the first time printed.]