[32] Edleston had died five months before Byron heard the sad news.
[33] ‘I think it proper to state to you that this stanza alludes to an event which has taken place since my arrival here, and not to the death of any male friend.’—Lord Byron to Mr. Dallas.
[34] That this Thyrza was no passing fancy is proved by Lord Lovelace’s statement in ‘Astarte’ (p. 138): ‘He had occasionally spoken of Thyrza to Lady Byron, at Seaham and afterwards in London, always with strong but contained emotion. He once showed his wife a beautiful tress of Thyrza’s hair, but never mentioned her real name.’
[35] Captain (afterwards Commodore) Walter Bathurst was mortally wounded at the Battle of Navarino, on October 20, 1827.—‘Battles of the British Navy,’ Joseph Allen, vol. ii., p. 518.
[36] The last line was in the first draft.
[37] Medwin (edition of 1824), p. 63.
[38] ‘A power of fascination rarely, if ever, possessed by any man of his age’ (‘Recollections of a Long Life,’ by Lord Broughton, vol. ii., p. 196).
[39] ‘Letters and Journals of Byron,’ vol. iii., p. 406, edited by Rowland E. Prothero.
[40] Moore had rented a cottage in Nottinghamshire, not very remote from Newstead Abbey.
[41] See ‘Letters and Journals of Lord Byron,’ edited by Rowland Prothero, vol. ii., pp. 267, 269, 278, 292.