CANTO I.]
CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE.
17
III.
Childe Harold was he hight:[1]— but whence his name[2]
And lineage long, it suits me not to say;
Suffice it, that perchance they were of fame,
And had been glorious in another day:
But one sad losel soils a name for ay,[3]
However mighty in the olden time;
Nor all that heralds rake from coffined clay,
Nor florid prose, nor honied lies of rhyme,[4]
Can blazon evil deeds, or consecrate a crime.
IV.
Childe Harold basked him in the Noontide sun,[5]
- ↑ ["Hight" is the preterite of the passive "hote," and means "was called." "Childe Harold he hight" would be more correct. Compare Spenser's Faërie Queene, bk. i. c. ix. 14. 9, "She Queene of Faeries hight." But "hight" was occasionally used with the common verbs "is," "was." Compare The Ordinary, 1651, act iii. sc. 1—
"... the goblin
That is hight Good-fellow Robin."
Dodsley (ed. Hazlitt), xii. 253.] - ↑ Childe Burun ——.—[MS.]
- ↑ [William, fifth Lord Byron (the poet's grand-uncle), mortally wounded his kinsman, Mr. Chaworth, in a duel which was fought, without seconds or witnesses, at the Star and Garter Tavern, Pall Mall, January 29, 1765. He was convicted of wilful murder by the coroner's jury, and of manslaughter by the House of Lords; but, pleading his privilege as a peer, he was set at liberty. He was known to the country-side as the "wicked Lord," and many tales, true
- ↑ —— nor honied glose of rhyme.—[D. pencil.]
- ↑ Childe Burun ——.—[MS.]
