Your dying accents fell, as wrecking ships,
After the dreadful yell, sink murm'ring down,
And bubble up a noise."
I have now before me a print of John, the first Lord Byron, engraved from a painting in the collection of Lord Delaware; in which he is pourtrayed in armour, with a truncheon in the left hand, and the right arm bare to above the elbow. Can this have suggested to Lord Byron the idea of describing "Alp the renegade" as fighting with "the white arm bare," in the Siege of Corinth?
Byron refers to Smollett as an authority for "blatant beast," apparently forgetting that the figure originated with Spenser. Again, in a note to Don Juan respecting his use of the phrase "reformadoes," he remarks:
"The Baron Bradwardine, in Waverley, is authority for the word."
It occurs, however, in Ben Jonson, and may be found in Blount's Glossographia; Phillips's World of Words, and other old dictionaries of the same period.
T. C. Smith.
Footnote 1:[(return)]
Sir Walter Scott.