[118] Lord Rowton.
[119] Tara is about six and a half miles south of Navan by road crossing the Boyne by Kilcarn bridge. “Here, it is supposed,” writes Seward, “there was anciently a magnificent royal palace, the residence of the Kings of Ireland, where triennial parliaments were held, in which all the nobility, gentry, priests, etc. assembled, and here laws were enacted and repealed, and the general advantage of the nation consulted. This place is otherwise called Teagh-mor-Ragh, the great house of the King, and much celebrated in ancient Irish history.”
[120] Binns was hangman at this time.
[121] Thomas Moore was a great “Diner-out,” and we have it on Byron’s authority “that he dearly loved a Lord.”
[122] Seager—a distiller noted for his fine flavoured Old Tom, considered the best in the metropolis: whether tossed off short, or mixed into grog.
[123] The plant known as asphodel to the later Greeks used to be laid tombs as food for the dead.
[124] Daniel O’Connell. M.P.
[125] A possible place of exile for the Ameer, as it was used for the King of Delhi’s prison.
[126] “The Living Lustres appear to us a very fair imitation of the fantastic verses which that ingenious person, Mr. Moore, indites when he is merely gallant, and, resisting the lures of voluptuousness, is not enough in earnest to be tender.”—Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review.
[127] This alludes to two massive pillars of verd antique which then flanked the proscenium, but which were afterwards removed. Their colour reminds the bard of the Emerald Isle, and this causes him (more suo) to fly off at a tangent, and Hibernicise the rest of the poem.