Pleased round the chalky floor, how well they trip,
  One hand[A] reposing on the royal hip,
  The other to the shoulder no less royal
  Ascending with affection truly loyal.

[Footnote A:  I.e. one of the lady’s hands.]

These lines imply an attitude unknown to contemporary waltzers, but the description involves no poetic license.  Our dear grandmothers (giddy, giddy girls!) did their waltz that way.  Let me quote: 

The lady takes the gentleman round the neck with one arm, resting against his shoulder.  During the motion, the dancers are continually changing their relative situations:  now the gentleman brings his arm about the lady’s neck, and the lady takes him round the waist.

At another point, the lady may “lean gently on his shoulder,” their arms (as it appears) “entwining.”  This description is by an eyewitness, whose observation is taken, not at the rather debauched court of the Prince Regent, but at the simple republican assemblies of New York.  The observer is the gentle Irving, writing in 1807.  Occasional noteworthy experiences they must have had—­those modest, blooming grandmothers—­for, it is to be borne in mind, tipsiness was rather usual with dancing gentlemen in the fine old days of Port and Madeira; and the blithe, white-armed grandmothers themselves did sip their punch, to a man.  However, we may forbear criticism.  We, at least, owe nothing but reverent gratitude to a generation from which we derive life, waltzing and the memory of Madeira.  Even when read, as it needs should be read, in the light of that prose description of the dance to which it was addressed, Lord Byron’s welcome to the waltz will be recognized as one more illustration of a set of hoary and moss-grown truths.

    As parlor-soldiers, graced with fancy-scars,
    Rehearse their bravery in imagined wars;
    As paupers, gathered in congenial flocks,
    Babble of banks, insurances, and stocks;
    As each if oft’nest eloquent of what
    He hates or covets, but possesses not;
    As cowards talk of pluck; misers of waste;
    Scoundrels of honor; country clowns of taste;
    Ladies of logic; devotees of sin;
    Topers of water; temperance men of gin—­

my lord Byron sang of waltzing.  Let us forgive and—­remembering his poor foot—­pity him.  Yet the opinions of famous persons possess an interest that is akin, in the minds of many plain folk, to weight.  Let us, then, incline an ear to another:  “Laura was fond of waltzing, as every brisk and innocent young girl should be,” wrote he than who none has written more nobly in our time—­he who “could appreciate good women and describe them; and draw them more truly than any novelist in the language, except Miss Austen.”  The same sentiment with reference to dancing appears in many places in his immortal pages.  In his younger days as attache of legation in Germany, Mr. Thackeray became a practiced waltzer.  As a censor he thus possesses over Lord Byron whatever advantage may accrue from knowledge of the subject whereof he wrote.