taking measures to carry on the cake-shop. I was before my age in this respect: as a boy-reader of Boswell, and a few other things that fell in my way, I came to a clearness that the conduct of society towards Mrs. Piozzi was blackguard. She wanted nothing but what was in that day a woman's only efficient protection, a male relation with a brace of pistols, and a competent notion of using them.
Byron's mistake about Hallam in the Pindar story may be worth placing among absurdities. For elucidation, suppose that some poet were now to speak—
Eve gave to Adam in his birthday suit—
and some critic were to call it nonsense, would that critic be laughing at Milton? Payne Knight, in his Taste, translated part of Gray's Bard into Greek. Some of his lines are
Greek characters)(
Greek characters)(
Greek characters)Literally thus:—
Continuous chant with fearful
Voice he sang.
On which Hallam remarks: 'The twelfth line [our first] is nonsense.' And so it is, a poet can no more wet his tears with his groans than wet his ale with his whistle. Now this first line is from Pindar, but is only part of the sense; in full it is:—
Greek characters)Seppa o& réyywr ddxpva crovaycig ipSir porvace.
Pindar's must be Englished by shedding, and he stands alone in this use. He says, 'shedding warm tears, he cried out loud, with groans.' Byron speaks of—
and represents him as criticising the Greek of all Payne's lines, and not discovering that 'the lines' were Pindar's until after publication. Byron was too much of a scholar to make this
