Pillow dictionary

Literally:

When at Seville in 1809, Lord Byron lodged in the house of two unmarried ladies; and in his diary he describes himself as having made earnest love to the younger of them, with the help of a dictionary. “For some time,” he says, ” I went on prosperously, both as a linguist and a lover, till, at length, the lady took a fancy to a ring which I wore, and set her heart on my giving it to her, as a pledge of my sincerity. This, however, could not be; — any thing but the ring, I declared, was at her service, and much more than its value, — but the ring itself I had made a vow never to give away.”

The note refers to stanza 164 of canto 2 of Don Juan, which describes how “Juan learn’d his alpha beta better/From Haidee’s glance than any graven letter:

‘T is pleasing to be school’d in a strange tongue
By female lips and eyes–that is, I mean,
When both the teacher and the taught are young,
As was the case, at least, where I have been;
They smile so when one’s right, and when one’s wrong
They smile still more, and then there intervene
Pressure of hands, perhaps even a chaste kiss;–
I learn’d the little that I know by this:

That is, some words of Spanish, Turk, and Greek;
Italian not at all, having no teachers;
Much English I cannot pretend to speak,
Learning that language chiefly from its preachers,
Barrow, South, Tillotson, whom every week
I study, also Blair, the highest reachers
Of eloquence in piety and prose–
I hate your poets, so read none of those.

And so say all of us.

Trevor @ 16 September 2008 1:30 PM

Categories

Related posts

• Robin Good and Mad Marian, English Christmas heroes
• Turkish Jews in Westerbork transit camp
• passionate kisses
• Turk’s head
• Teachers/examiners with less skills than pupils/examinees

Previous/next post

Comments

Feeds: RSS

Trackback link.

Tell me if the spam dragon gives you a hard time. Log in if you want to be really foul.