No More Learning

They had lent their money when the currency was inflated, and should not
now be paid off in gold.

"But _you_," exclaims Cobbett [Letter to Mr. Western (_Weekly Register_,
November 23, 1822)], "what can induce you to stickle for the Pitt system
[i. e. paper-money]? I will tell you what it is: you loved the _high
prices_, and the domination that they gave you. . . . Besides this, you
think that the _boroughs can be preserved_ by a return to paper-money,
and along with them the hare-and-pheasant law and justice. You loved the
glorious times of paper-money, and you want them back again. You think
that they could go on for ever. . . .
The bill of 1819 was really a great
relaxation of the Pitt system, and when you are crying out _spoliation_
and _confiscation_, when you are bawling out so lustily about the robbery
committed on you by the fund-holders and the placemen, and are praising
the infernal Pitt system at the same time, . . . you say they are
receiving, the fund-vagabonds in particular, _more_ than they ought. " It
is evident that Byron's verse is a reverberation of Cobbett's prose. ]

[336] [Petitions were presented by the inhabitants of St. Andrew,
Holborn; St. Botolf, Bishopsgate; and St. Gregory by St. Paul, to the
Court of Common Council, against a tithe-charge of 2s, 9d. in the pound
on their annual rents. --_Morning Chronicle_, November 1, 1822. ]

[337] Lines 614-657 are not in the MS.

[338] {573}[The Symplegades, or "justling rocks," Ovid's _instabiles
Cyaneae_, were supposed to crush the ships which sailed between them. ]

[339] [Alcina, the personification of carnal pleasure in the _Orlando
Furioso_, is the counterpart of Homer's _Circe_. "She enjoyed her lovers
for a time, and then changed them into trees, stones, fountains, or
beasts, as her fancy dictated.