Then temper'd to thy want, or will, * If solitude succeed to grief, Might thank the pang that made it less. Whose beak unlocks her bosom's stream The waste of feelings unemploy'd. it. The Giaour is certainly a bad character, but not dan. gerous; and I think his fate and his feelings will meet with few proselytes."-L. E. The passage referred to by the Reviewers is in the poem entitled Resentment; and the following is the part which Lord Byron is accused of having imitated:- "Those are like wax-apply them to the fire, And again moulded with an equal ease; (1) Mr. Galt, in his life of Lord Byron, alluding to this and the following five lines, points out a coincidence be Has been thy lot from youth to age; Now leagued with friends, now girt by foes, I loathed the languor of repose. And I shall sleep without the dream Dark as to thee my deeds may seem. My memory now is but the tomb Of joys long dead; my hope, their doom Though better to have died with those Than bear a life of lingering woes. My spirit shrunk not to sustain The searching throes of ceaseless pain; Nor sought the self-accorded grave Of ancient fool and modern knave; Yet death I have not fear'd to meet; And in the field it had been sweet, Had danger woo'd me on to move The slave of glory, not of love. I've braved it-not for honour's boast; I smile at laurels won or lost; To such let others carve their way, For high renown, or hireling pay: But place again before my eyes Aught that I deem a worthy prize, The maid I love, the man I hate; And I will hunt the steps of fate, To save or slay, as these require, Through rending steel, and rolling fire: Nor needst thou doubt this speech from one Who would but do-what he hath done. Death is but what the haughty brave, The weak must bear, the wretch must crave; I have not quail'd to danger's brow tween them and some verses of his own. "I do not claim," says he, "any paternity in these lines; but not the most judicious action of all my youth was to publish certain dramatic sketches, and his Lordship had the printed book in his possession long before the Giaour was published, and may have read the following passage in a dream which was intended to be very hideous: Then did I hear around I felt the many-foot and beetle creep And on my breast the cold worm coil and crawl.'"-P. E. (2) The pelican is, I believe, the bird so libelled, by the imputation of feeding her chickens with her blood. "I loved her, friar! nay, adored But these are words that all can use- It warm'd the heart of one abhorr'd: Was wormwood to his Paynim spleen. "She died-I dare not tell thee how; But look 't is written on my brow! There read of Cain the curse and crime, In characters unworn by time: Still, ere thou dost condemn me, pause; (1) This superstition of a second hearing (for I never met with downright second-sight in the East) fell once under my own observation. On my third journey to Cape Colonna, early in 1811, as we passed through the defile that leads from the hamlet between Keratia and Colonna, I observed Dervish Tahiri riding rather out of the path, and leaning his head upon his hand, as if in pain. I rode up and inquired. "We are in peril," he answered. "What peril? we are not now in Albania, nor in the passes to Ephesus, Messalunghi, or Lepanto; there are plenty of us, well armed, and the Choriates have not courage to be thieves."— "True, Affendi, but nevertheless the shot is ringing in my ears."—" The shot! not a tophaike has been fired this morn ing."-"I hear it notwithstanding-bom-bom-as plainly as I hear your voice."-" Psha !"-" As you please, Affendi; if it is written, so will it be."-I left this quick-eared predestinarian, and rode up to Basili, his Christian compatriot, whose ears, though not at all prophetic, by no means relished the intelligence. We all arrived at Colonna, remained some hours, and returned leisurely, saying a variety of brilliant things, in more languages than spoiled the building of Babel, upon the mistaken seer. Romaic, Arnaout, Turkish, Italian, and English were all exercised, in various conceits, upon the unfortunate Mussulman. While we were contemplating the beautiful prospect, Dervish was occupied about the columns. I thought he was deranged into an antiquarian, and asked him if he had become a "Palao His death sits lightly; but her fate As filed the troop to where they fell! I gazed upon him where he lay, I search'd, but vainly search'd, to find "The cold in clime are cold in blood, Their love can scarce deserve the name; But mine was like the lava flood That boils in Etna's breast of flame. I cannot prate in puling strain Of ladye-love, and beauty's chain: If changing cheek, and scorching vein, Lips taught to writhe, but not complain, If bursting heart, and maddening brain, And daring deed, and vengeful steel, And all that I have felt, and feel, Betoken love-that love was mine, And shown by many a bitter sign. 'Tis true, I could not whine nor sigh, I knew but to obtain or die. I die-but first I have possess'd, And, come what may, I have been blest. castro" man? "No," said he, "but these pillars will be useful in making a stand;" and added other remarks, which at least evinced his own belief in his troublesome faculty of forehearing. On our return to Athens we heard from Leone (a prisoner set ashore some days after) of the intended attack of the Mainotes, mentioned, with the cause of its not taking place, in the notes to Childe Harold, Canto 2d. I was at some pains to question the man, and he described the dresses, arms, and marks of the horses of our party so accurately, that, with other circumstances, we could not doubt of his having been in "villanous company," and ourselves in a bad neighbourhood. Dervish became a soothsayer for life, and I dare say is now hearing more musketry than ever will be fired, to the great refreshment of the Arnaouts of Berat, and his native mountains.-1 shall mention one trait more of this singular race. In March, 181i, a remarkably stout and active Arnaout came (I believe the fif tieth on the same errand) to offer himself as an attendant, which was declined: "Well, Affendi," quoth he, "may you live-you would have found me useful. I shall leave the town for the hills to-morrow, in the winter I return, perhaps you will then receive me."-Dervish, who was present, remarked, as a thing of course and of no consequence, "In the mean time he will join the Klephtes" (robbers), which was true to the letter. If not cut off, they come down in the winter, and pass it unmolested in some town, where they are often as well known as their exploits. Shall I the doom I sought upbraid? "Yes, Love indeed is light from heaven; (3) A spark of that immortal fire With angels shared, by Alla given, To lift from earth our low desire. That mortals by the name miscall; Then deem it evil, what thou wilt; She was my life's unerring light: That quench'd, what beam shall break my night? This present joy, this future hope, In frenzy then their fate accuse: That seem to add but guilt to woe? Hath nought to dread from outward blow: Who falls from all he knows of bliss, Cares little into what abyss. (1) "These, in our opinion, are the most beautiful pas sages of the poem; and some of them of a beauty which it would not be easy to eclipse by many citations in the language." Jeffrey.—L. E. (2) This and the three following lines were added after the poem had gone through several editions.-P. E. (3) The hundred and twenty-six lines which follow, down to "Tell me no more of fancy's gleam," first appeared in the fifth edition In returning the proof, Lord Byron says: "I bave, but with some difficulty, not added any more to this snake of a poem, which has been lengthening its rattles every month. It is now fearfully long. being more than a canto and a half of Childe Harold. The last lines Hodgson likes. It is not often he does; and when he don't, he tells me with great energy, and I fret, and alter. I have thrown them in to soften the ferocity of our Infidel; and, for a dying man, have given him a good deal to say for himself. Do you know any body who can stopI mean, point-commas, and so forth? for 1 am, 1 hear, a sad hand at your punctuation." Among the Giaour MSS. is the first draught of this passage, which we subjoin: Fierce as the gloomy vulture's now To thee, old man, my deeds appear: I read abhorrence on thy brow, And this too was I born to bear! But deem such feeble heartless man He left believing and betray'd. (4) These beautiful lines were probably suggested by the following passage which occurs in Byron's Diary:-Tonight I saw both the sisters of my God! the youngest so like! I thought I should have sprung across the house, and am so glad no one was with me in Lady H.'s box. I hate those likenesses--the mock-bird, but not the nightingale so like as to remind, so different as to be painful. One quarrels equally with the points of resemblance and of distinction."--P. E. But talk no more of penitence; "In earlier days, and calmer hours, When heart with heart delights to blend, Where bloom my native valley's bowers I had-ah! have I now?-a friend! To him this pledge I charge thee send, Memorial of a youthful vow; I would remind him of my end: Though souls absorb'd like mine allow And I have smiled-1 then could smile- And he will start to hear their truth, And wish his words had not been sooth: Tell him, unheeding as I was, Through many a busy bitter scene Such cold request might sound like scorn; I wish'd but for a single tear, I care not; so my arms enfold I knew 't was false-she could not die! I saw him buried where he fell; He comes not, for he cannot break (1) The circumstance to which the above story relates was not very uncommon in Turkey. A few years ago the wife of Muchtar Pacha complained to his father of his son's supposed infidelity; he asked with whom, and she had the barbarity to give in a list of the twelve handsomest women in Yanina. They were seized, fastened up in sacks, and drowned in the lake the same night! One of the guards who was present informed me, that not one of the victims uttered a cry, or showed a symptom of terror at so sudden a "wrench from all we know, from all we love." The fate of Phrosine, the fairest of this sacrifice, is the subject of many a Romaic and Arnaout ditty. The story in the text is one told of a young Venetian many years ago, and now nearly forgotten. I heard it by accident recited by one of the coffee-house story-tellers who abound in the Levant, and sing or recite their narratives. The additions and interpolations by the translator will be easily distinguished from the rest, by the want of Eastern imagery; and I regret that my memory has retained so few fragments of the original. For the contents of some of the notes I am indebted partly to D'Herbelot, and partly to that most Eastern, and, as Mr. Weber justly entitles it, "sublime tale," the Caliph Vathek. I do not know from what source the author of He pass'd-nor of his name and race that singular volume may have drawn his materials; some of his incidents are to be found in the Bibliothèque Orien tale; but for correctness of costume, beauty of description. and power of imagination, it far surpasses all European imitations; and bears such marks of originality, that those who bave visited the East will find some difficulty in believ ing it to be more than a translation. As an Eastern tale, even Rasselas must bow before it; his "Happy Valley" will not bear a comparison with the "Hall of Eblis." (2) "In this poem, which was published after the two first cantos of Childe Harold, Lord Byron began to show his powers. He had now received encouragement which set free his daring hands, and gave his strokes their natural force. Here, then, we first find passages of a tone peculiar to Lord Byron; but still this appearance was not uniform: he often returned to his trammels, and reminds us of the manner of some favourite predecessor; among these, I think we sometimes catch the notes of Sir Walter Scott. But the internal tempest-the deep passion, sometimes buried, and sometimes blazing from some incidental touch—the intensity of agonising reflection, which will always distinguish Lord Byron from other writers- now began to display them. selves." Sir Egerton Brydges.-L. E. The Bride of Abydos, A TURKISH TALE. (1) "Had we never loved so kindly, Never met or never parted, We had ne'er been broken-hearted.”—Burns. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD HOLLAND, This Tale is Inscribed, WITH EVERY SENTIMENT OF regard and RESPECT, BY HIS GRATEFULLY OBLIGED AND SINCERE FRIEND, BYRON. CANTO I I. KNOW ye the land where the cypress and myrtle (2) Are emblems of deeds that are done in their cline, Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime? (1) The Bride of Abydos was published in the beginning of December, 1813. The mood of mind in which it was struck off is thus stated by Lord Byron, in a letter to Mr. Gifford "You have been good enough to look at a thing of mine in MS.-a Turkish story-and I should feel gratified if you would do it the same favour in its probationary state of printing. It was written, I cannot say for amusement, nor obliged by hunger and request of friends,' but in a state of mind, from circumstances which occasionally ocenr to us youth,' that rendered it necessary for me to apply my mind to something, any thing, but reality; and under this not very brilliant inspiration it was composed. Send it either to the flames, or A hundred hawkers' load, It deserves no better than the first, as the work of a week, and scribbled stans pede in uno' (by the by, the only foot I have to stand on); and I promise never to trouble Know ye the land of the cedar and vine, Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine; Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppress'd with perfume, Wax faint o'er the gardens of Gul (3) in her bloom; you again under forty cantos, and a voyage between each.” -L. E. Murray tells me that Croker asked him why the thing is called the Bride of Abydos?' It is an awkward question, being unanswerable: she is not a bride; only about to be one. I don't wonder at his finding out the bull; but the detection is too late to do any good. I was a great fool to have made it, and am ashamed of not being an Irishman." B. Diary, Dec. 6, 1813.-L. E. (2) To the Bride of Abydos, Lord Byron made many additions during its progress through the press, amounting to about two hundred lines; and, as in the case of the Giaour, the passages so added will be seen to be some of the most splendid in the whole poem. These opening lines, which are among the new insertions, are supposed to have been suggested by a song of Goethe's "Kennst du das land wo die citronen blühn."-L. E. (3) "Gul," the rose. |