LXXXIX.

"That lady is my wife!" Much wonder paints
The lady's changing cheek, as well it might;
But where an Englishwoman sometimes faints,
Italian females don't do so outright;

They only call a little on their saints,

And then come to themselves, almost or quite;

Which saves much hartshorn, salts, and sprinkling faces, And cutting stays, as usual in such cases.

XC.

She said,-what could she say? Why not a word:

But the Count courteously invited in

The stranger, much appeased by what he heard:

"Such things, perhaps, we'd best discuss within,”

Said he; "don't let us make ourselves absurd

"In public, by a scene, nor raise a din,

"For then the chief and only satisfaction

"Will be much quizzing on the whole transaction."

XCI.

They enter'd, and for coffee call'd,—it came,

A beverage for Turks and Christians both,

Although the way they make it's not the same.
Now Laura, much recover'd, or less loth

To speak, cries "Beppo! what's your pagan name?
"Bless me! your beard is of amazing growth!
"And how came you to keep away so long?
"Are you not sensible 'twas very wrong?

XCII.

"And are you really, truly, now a Turk? "With any other women did you wive?

"Is't true they use their fingers for a fork?

"Well, that's the prettiest shawl-as I'm alive! "You'll give it me? They say you eat no pork. "And how so many years did you contrive

"To-Bless me! did I ever? No, I never

"Saw a man grown so yellow! How's your liver?

XCIII.

"Beppo! that beard of yours becomes you not;
"It shall be shaved before you're a day older:
"Why do you wear it? Oh! I had forgot-

"Pray don't you think the weather here is colder ? "How do I look? You sha'n't stir from this spot

"In that queer dress, for fear that some beholder "Should find you out, and make the story known. "How short your hair is! Lord! how gray it's grown!"

XCIV.

What answer Beppo made to these demands
Is more than I know. He was cast away
About where Troy stood once, and nothing stands;
Became a slave of course, and for his pay

Had bread and bastinadoes, till some bands
Of pirates landing in a neighbouring bay,
He join'd the rogues and prosper'd, and became
A renegado of indifferent fame.

NOTES TO THE POEMS.

Note 1, page 214.

Written after swimming from Sestos to Abydos. On the 3d of May, 1810, while the Salsette (Captain Bathurst) was lying in the Dardanelles, Lieutenant Ekenhead of that frigate and the writer of these rhymes swam from the European shore to the Asiatic-by-the-by, from Abydos to Sestos would have been more correct. The whole distance from the place whence we started to our landing on the other side, including the length we were carried by the current, was computed by those on board the frigate at upwards of four English miles; though the actual breadth is barely one. The rapidity of the current is such that no boat can row directly across, and it may in some measure be estimated from the circumstance of the whole distance being accomplished by one of the parties in an hour and five, and by the other in an hour and ten, minutes. The water was extremely cold from the melting of the mountain-snows. About three weeks before, in April, we had made an attempt, but having ridden all the way from the Troad the same morning, and the water being of an icy chillness, we found it necessary to postpone the completion till the frigate anchored below the castles, when we

VOL. IV.

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swam the straits, as just stated; entering a considerable way above the European, and landing below the Asiatic, fort. Chevalier says that a young Jew swam the same distance for his mistress; and Oliver mentions its having been done by a Neapolitan; but our consul, Tarragona, remembered neither of these circumstances, and tried to dissuade us from the attempt. A number of the Salsette's crew were known to have accomplished a greater distance; and the only thing that surprised me was, that, as doubts had been entertained of the truth of Leander's story, no traveller had ever endeavoured to ascertain its practicability.

Note 2, page 216.

Ζώη μᾶ, σὰς ἀγαπῶ.

Zoë mou, sas agapo, or Ζώη με, σας ἀγαπῶ, a Romaic expression of tenderness: if I translate it I shall affront the gentlemen, as it may seem that I supposed they could not; and if I do not I may affront the ladies. For fear of any misconstruction on the part of the latter I shall do so, begging pardon of the learned. It means, "My life, I love you!" which sounds very prettily in all languages, and is as much in fashion in Greece at this day as, Juvenal tells us, the two first words were amongst the Roman ladies, whose exotic expressions were all Hellenized.

Note 3, page 217, line 3.

By all the token-flowers that tell.

In the East (where ladies are not taught to write, lest they should scribble assignations) flowers, cinders, pebbles, &c. convey the sentiments of the parties by that universal deputy of Mercury-an old woman. A cinder says, "I burn