[Footnote 65:  The perfect purity with which the Greeks wrote their own language, was, with justice, perhaps, attributed by themselves to their entire abstinence from the study of any other.  “If they became learned,” says Ferguson, “it was only by studying what they themselves had produced.”]

[Footnote 66:  The only circumstance I know, that bears even remotely on the subject of this poem, is the following.  About a year or two before the date affixed to it, he wrote to his mother, from Harrow (as I have been told by a person to whom Mrs. Byron herself communicated the circumstance), to say, that he had lately had a good deal of uneasiness on account of a young woman, whom he knew to have been a favourite of his late friend, Curzon, and who, finding herself, after his death, in a state of progress towards maternity, had declared Lord Byron was the father of her child.  This, he positively assured his mother, was not the case; but, believing, as he did firmly, that the child belonged to Curzon, it was his wish that it should be brought up with all possible care, and he, therefore, entreated that his mother would have the kindness to take charge of it.  Though such a request might well (as my informant expresses it) have discomposed a temper more mild than Mrs. Byron’s, she notwithstanding answered her son in the kindest terms, saying that she would willingly receive the child as soon as it was born, and bring it up in whatever manner he desired.  Happily, however, the infant died almost immediately, and was thus spared the being a tax on the good nature of any body.]

[Footnote 67:  In this practice of dating his juvenile poems he followed the example of Milton, who (says Johnson), “by affixing the dates to his first compositions, a boast of which the learned Politian had given him an example, seems to commend the earliness of his own compositions to the notice of posterity.”

The following trifle, written also by him in 1807, has never, as far as I know, appeared in print:—­

     “EPITAPH ON JOHN ADAMS, OF SOUTHWELL, A CARRIER,

     “WHO DIED OF DRUNKENNESS.

    “John Adams lies here, of the parish of Southwell,
    A Carrier, who carried his can to his mouth well;
    He carried so much, and he carried so fast,
    He could carry no more—­so was carried at last;
    For, the liquor he drank being too much for one,
    He could not carry off,—­so he ’s now carri-on.

“B——­, Sept. 1807.” ]

[Footnote 68:  Annesley is, of course, not forgotten among the number:—­

    “And shall I here forget the scene,
       Still nearest to my breast? 
     Rocks rise and rivers roll between
       The rural spot which passion blest;
     Yet, Mary, all thy beauties seem
     Fresh as in Love’s bewitching dream,” &c. &c.
]

[Footnote 69:  It appears from a passage in one of Miss ——­’s letters to her brother, that Lord Byron sent, through this gentleman, a copy of his poems to Mr. Mackenzie, the author of the Man of Feeling:—­“I am glad you mentioned Mr. Mackenzie’s having got a copy of Lord B.’s poems, and what he thought of them—­Lord B. was so much pleased!”