AustLit

Editor's note: By the late Henry Vaux, Esq. D.A.C.G., who was unfortunately drowned at Norfolk Island

Editor of the Sydney Times, Nataniel Lipscom Kentish writes: 'Note accompanying the above lines from a friend of the deceased, by whom we have been favored [sic] with the same: The circumstances which occasioned the above, was a spider having woven its web within the scull [sic] of a black native female of King George's Sound, who was in her lifetime notorious for treachery, lechery, and cruelty. She was also said to have possessed great personal charms. This scull the writer used to keep on a shelf in his bed-room, and on perceiving the fact stated above, wrote these beautiful lines. They are truly Byronic; only (as a friend who I consider a very competent judge in such matters, justly remarked) had they proceeded from Lord Byron, the ideas would have been expressed with more clearness - the result of his being so much more in the habit of clothing his thoughts in poetry than the author of these, although no doubt the circumstances would have given rise to the same train of reflection in both'.