EDITORIAL NOTES

‘Preface’ (p. 3): Beddoes’s preface had no heading in Dykes

Campbell’s ‘MS. II’. Bilderdijk (p. 4): Donner identifies and quotes the passage from

Bilderdijk’s essay, but it was not transcribed by Campbell (see Works, pp. 714–15). ‘a German critic just mentioned’ (p. 5): A.W. Schlegel, from whom

Beddoes adapts the analogy between an English tragedy and a Gothic cathedral. ‘a living writer who will occur to the reader’ (p. 6): Donner suggests that this is intended as a (rather extravagant) compliment to Procter (Works, p. 715). Greek epigraph (p. 9): ‘[The motto] refers to Archedemos, the alien politician whom the Athenians disliked, but who, according to Aristophanes, was demagogue among the dead and contrived to keep the leadership in that “rascaldom”. — “Let us haste to the meadows where they hold their vigil, let us haste to the roses in those meadows in our own old fashion.”’ (From Donner’s note, Works, p. 712). ‘The historical fact…’ (p. 122): Beddoes’s note refers to Karl

Friedrich Flögel, Geschichte der Hofnarren (1789). The Latin quotation can be roughly translated: ‘So after the Fool [Morio], provoked by chance, had extinguished the Bolco line by sharply throwing a brick (which was considered at that time an omen of the destruction of the nation) at the last heir, the dynasty became sterile and thus there was no hope at the Court.’ ‘Aldabaron, called by the Hebrews Luz’ (p. 122): The account of

Jewish doctrine here is well researched, although Reich seems never to have published his treatise. For further discussion of Beddoes’s relationship with Jewish doctrine, see Christopher Moylan, ‘“For Luz is a Good Joke”: Thomas Lovell Beddoes and Jewish Eschatology’ (2002), listed in the bibliography.