Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 6.djvu/42

 12 DON JUAN. [canto I. II. Vernon,^ the butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke, Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe, Evil and good, have had their tithe of talk, And filled their sign-posts then, like Wellesley now ; Each in their turn like Banquo's monarchs stalk, Followers of Fame, " nine farrow" ^ of that sow : France, too, had Buonaparte ^ and Dumourier * Recorded in the Moniteur and Courier. . [Edward Vernon, Admiral (1684-1757), took Porto Bello in 1739, William Augustus, second son of George II. (1721-1765), fought at the battles of Dettingen, 1743 ; Fontenoy, 1745 ; and at CuUoden, 1746. For the " severity of the Duke of Cumberland," see Scott's Tales of a Grandfather, Prose Works, 1830, vii. 852, sq. James Wolfe, General, born January 2, 1726, was killed at the siege of Quebec, September 13, 1759. Edward, Lord Hawke, Admiral (1715-1781), totally defeated the French fleet in Quiberon Bay, November 20, 1759. Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick (1721-1792), gained the victory at Minden, August i, 1759. John Manners, Marquess of Granby (1721-1790), commanded the British forces in Germany (1766- 1769). John Burgoyne, General, defeated the Americans at Germantown, October 3, 1777, but surrendered to General Gates at Saratoga, October 17, 1778. He died in 1792. Augustus, Viscount Keppel, Admiral (1725-1786), was tried by court- martial, January-February, 1779, for allowing the French fleet off Ushant to escape, July, 1778. He was honourably acquitted. Richard, Earl Howe, Admiral (1725-1799), known by the sailors as " Black Dick," defeated the French off Ushant, June i, 1794.] . [Compare Macbeth, act iv. sc. i, line 65.] . [" In the eighth and concluding lecture of Mr. Hazlitt's canons of criticism, delivered at the Surrey Institution The English Poets, 1870, pp. 203, 204], I am accused of having ' lauded Buonaparte to the skies in the hour of his success, and then peevishly wreaking my disappoint- ment on the god of my idolatry.' The first lines I ever wrote upon Buonaparte were the ' Ode to Napoleon,' after his abdication in 1814. All that I have ever written on that subject has been done since his decline; — I never 'met him in the hour of his success.' I have con- sidered his character at different periods, in its strengh and in its weakness : by his zealots I am accused of injustice — by his enemies as his warmest partisan, in many publications, both English and foreign. " For the accuracy of my delineation I have high authority. A year and some months ago, 1 had the pleasure of seeing at Venice my friend the honourable Douglas Kinnaird. In his way through Germany, he told me that he had been honoured with a presentation to, and some interviews with, one of the nearest family connections of Napoleon (Eugene Beauharnais). During one of these, he read and translated the lines alluding to Buonaparte, in the Third Canto of Childe Harold. He informed me, that he was authorized by the illustrious personage — (still recognized as such by the Legitimacy in Europe)— to whom they