Footnote 2: [(return)]
Dr. Mead, in his Narrative of the Great Plague in London, particularly mentions its introduction into Eyam, through the medium of a box of clothes, sent to a tailor who resided there.
Footnote 3: [(return)]
Table Book, 1827, p. 481.
Footnote 4: [(return)]
Vol. xi. p. 40.
Footnote 5: [(return)]
From King John, the Eyam estate descended to the Stafford family, on whom it was bestowed in consideration of certain military services, and on the express condition "that a lamp should be kept perpetually burning before the altar of St. Helen, in the parish-church of Eyam." The lamp has long since ceased to burn, and the estate has passed into other hands: it now constitutes a part of the immense property of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire.
Footnote 6: [(return)]
Lord Byron has remarked of the Italian women, (and he could speak avec connaissance de fait,) that they are the only women in the world capable of impressions at once very sudden and very durable; which, he adds, is to be found in no other nation. Mr. Moore observes afterwards, how completely an Italian woman, either from nature or her social position, is led to invert the usual course of frailty among ourselves, and weak in resisting the first impulses of passion, to reserve the whole strength of her character for a display of constancy and devotedness afterwards.—Both these traits of national character are exemplified in Juliet.—Moore's Life of Byron, vol. ii p. 303, 338, 4to edit.
Footnote 7: [(return)]
The "Giulietta" of Luigi da Porta was written about 1520. In a popular little book published in 1565, thirty years before Shakspeare wrote his tragedy, the name of Juliet occurs as an example of faithful love, and is thus explained by a note in the margin. "Juliet, a noble maiden of the citie of Verona, which loved Romeo, eldest son of the Lord Monteschi; and being privily married together, he at last poisoned himself for love of her: she, for sorrow of his death, slew herself with his dagger." This note, which furnishes in brief, the whole argument of Shakspeare's play, might possibly have made the first impression on his fancy.
Footnote 8: [(return)]
There is nothing so improbable in the story of Romeo and Juliet as to make us doubt the tradition that it is a real fact. "The Veronese," says Lord Byron, in one of his letters from Verona, "are tenacious to a degree of the truth of Juliet's story, insisting on the fact, giving the date 1303, and showing a tomb. It is a plain, open, and partly decayed sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden—once a cemetery, now ruined, to the very graves! The situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their love." He might have added, that when Verona itself, with its amphitheatre and its Palladian structures, lies level with the earth, the very spot on which it stood will still be consecrated by the memory of Juliet. When in Italy, I met a gentleman, who being then "dans le genre romantique," wore a fragment of Juliet's tomb set in a ring.
Footnote 9: [(return)]
In all probability, the crypt of the church of Aix-la-Chapelle, as it stands at present, is all that remains of the original edifice.
Footnote 10: [(return)]
The baths of Aix-la-Chapelle, constructed by the emperor for the enjoyment of this recreation, were of immense extent; and while their splendour and their size showed the progress of luxury, the manner in which they were used, evinces the curious simplicity and condescension of the monarch. "Not only his sons," says Eginhard, "but also the great men of his court, his friends, and the soldiers of his guard, were invited to partake of the enjoyment which the monarch had provided for himself; so that sometimes as many as a hundred persons were known to bathe there together."
Footnote 11: [(return)]
Stoves were furnished also to warm those who might take refuge in these general chambers; and the Monk of St. Gaul asserts, that the apartments of Charlemagne were so constructed, that he could see everything which took place in the building round about,—an impossible folly, imagined by the small cunning of a monk.