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AS A SLIGHT BUT MOST SINCERE TOKEN OF ADMIRATION FOR HIS GENius, RESPECT FOR HIS CHARACTER, AND GRATITUDE FOR HIS FRIENDSHIP,

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ADVERTISEMENT.

THE tale which these disjointed fragments present is founded upon circumstances now less common in the East than formerly; either because the ladies are more circumspect than in the "olden time," or because ↑ the Christians have better fortune, or less enterprise. The story, when entire, contained the adventures of a female slave, who was thrown, in the Mussulman

(1) The Giaour was published in May 1813, and abundantly sustained the impression created by the two first can. tos of Childe Harold. It is obvious that in this, the first of his romantic narratives, Lord Byron's versification reflects the admiration he always avowed for Mr. Coleridge's Christabel, the irregular rhythm of which had already been adopted in the Lay of the Last Minstrel. The fragmentary style of the composition was suggested by the then new and popular Columbus of Mr. Rogers. As to the subject, it was not merely by recent travel that the author had familiarized himself with Turkish history. "Old Knolles," he said at Missolonghi, a few weeks before his death, "was one of the first books that gave me pleasure when a child; and I believe it had much influence on my future wishes to visit the Levant, and gave, perhaps, the oriental colouring which is observed in my poetry." In the margin of his copy of Mr. D'Israeli's Essay on the Literary Character, we find the following note:-"Knolles, Cantemir, De Tott, Lady M. W. Montague, Hawkins's translation from Mignot's History of the Turks, the Arabian Nights-all travels or histories, or books upon the East, I could meet with, I had read, as well as Ricaut, before I was ten years old."—L. E.

(2) Moore states that this motto, taken from one of the Irish Melodies, had been quoted incorrectly in the first editions of the poem. Byron subsequently made a similar ! mistake in the lines from Burns, prefixed to the Bride of Abydos.-P. E.

(3) An event, in which Lord Byron was personally concerned, undoubtedly supplied the groundwork of this tale; but for the story, so circumstantially put forth, of his having

manner, into the sea for infidelity, and avenged by a young Venetian, her lover, at the time the Seven Islands were possessed by the Republic of Venice, and soon after the Arnauts were beaten back from the Morea, which they had ravaged for some time subsequent to the Russian invasion. The desertion of the Mainotes, on being refused the plunder of Misitra, led to the abandonment of that enterprise, and to the desolation of the Morea, during which the cruelty exercised on all sides was unparalleled even in the annals of the Faithful.(3)

himself been the lover of this female slave, there is no foundation. The girl whose life the poet saved at Athens was not, we are assured by Sir John Hobhouse, an object of his Lordship's attachment, but of that of his Turkish servant. For the Marquis of Sligo's account of the affair, see Moore's Life.-L. E.

The following is Lord Byron's own version of the story, as reported in Medwin's Conversations. Whether the noble Bard was veracious, or, as might be inferred from the preceding note, merely indulged in the pastime of mystifying the gallant Captain, we leave it to others to determine:-"When I was at Athens, there was an edict in force similar to that of Ali's, except that the mode of punishment was different. [Ali Pacha of Yanina issued an order that any Turkish female convicted of incontinence with a Christian should be stoned to death.] It was necessary, therefore, that all love affairs should be carried on with the greatest privacy. I was very fond, at that time, of a Turkish girl,―-ay, fond of her as I have been of few woAll went on very well till the Ramazan for forty days. During this Lent of the Mussulmans, the women are not allowed to quit their apartments. I was in despair, and could hardly contrive to get a cinder or a token-flower sent to express it. We had not met for several days, and all my thoughts were occupied in planning an assignation, when, as ill fate would have it, the means I took to effect it led to the discovery of our secret. The penalty was death -death without reprieve-a horrible death, at which one cannot think without shuddering. An order was issued for the law being put into immediate effect. In the mean time,

men.

THE GIAOUR.

No breath of air to break the wave
That rolls below the Athenian's grave,
That tomb (1) which, gleaming o'er the cliff,
First greets the homeward-veering skiff,
High o'er the land he saved in vain:
When shall such hero live again?

*

Fair clime! (2) where every season smiles
Benignant o'er those blessed isles,
Which, seen from far Colonna's height,
Make glad the heart that hails the sight,
And lend to loneliness delight.
There mildly dimpling, Ocean's cheek
Reflects the tints of many a peak
Caught by the laughing tides that lave
These Edens of the eastern wave:
And if at times a transient breeze
Break the blue crystal of the seas,
Or sweep one blossom from the trees,
How welcome is each gentle air

That wakes and wafts the odours there!
For there the Rose o'er crag or vale,
Sultana of the Nightingale, (3)
The maid for whom his melody,
His thousand songs are heard on high,
Blooms blushing to her lover's tale:
His queen, the garden queen, his Rose,
Unbent by winds, unchill'd by snows,

I knew nothing of what had happened, and it was determined that I should be kept in ignorance of the whole affair till it was too late to interfere. A mere accident only enabled me to prevent the conclusion of the sentence. I was taking one of my usual evening rides by the sea-side, when I observed a crowd of people moving down to the shore, and the arms of the soldiers glittering among them. They were not so far off, but that I thought I could now and then distinguish a faint and stifled shriek. My curiosity was forcibly excited, and I despatched one of my followers to inquire the cause of the procession. What was my horror to learn that they were carrying an unfortunate girl, sewn up in a sack, to be thrown into the sea! I did not hesitate as to what was to be done. I knew I could depend on my faithful Albanians, and rode up to the officer commanding the party, threatening, in case of his refusal to give up his prisoner, that I would adopt means to compel him. He did not like the business he was on, or perhaps the determined look of my body-guard, and consented to accompany me back to the city with the girl, whom I soon discovered to be my Turkish favourite. Suffice it to say, that my interference with the chief magistrate, backed by a heavy bribe, saved her; but it was only on condition that I should break off all intercourse with her, and that she should immediately quit Athens, and be sent to her friends in Thebes. There she died, a few days after her arrival, of a fever-perhaps of love."-P. E.

(1) A tomb above the rocks on the promontory, by some supposed the sepulchre of Themistocles.-"There are," says Cumberland, in his Observer, "a few lines by Plato, upon the tomb of Themistocles, which have a turn of elegant and pathetic simplicity in them, that deserves a better translation than I can give :

By the sea's margin, on the watery strand,
Thy monument, Themistocles, shall stand:

By this directed to thy native shore,

The merchant shall convey his freighted store:
And when our fleets are summon'd to the fight,

Athens shall conquer with thy tomb in sight."-L. E.

(2) "Of the beautiful flow of Byron's fancy," says Moore, "when its sources were once opened on any subject, the Giaour affords one of the most remarkable instances: this poem having accumulated under his hand, both in printing

Far from the winters of the west,
By every breeze and season blest,
Returns the sweets by Nature given
In softest incense back to heaven;
And grateful yields that smiling sky
Her fairest hue and fragrant sigh.
And many a summer flower is there,
And many a shade that love might share,
And many a grotto, meant for rest,
That holds the pirate for a guest;
Whose bark in sheltering cove below
Lurks for the passing peaceful prow,
Till the gay mariner's guitar (4)
Is heard, and seen the evening star;
Then stealing with the muffled oar,
Far shaded by the rocky shore,

Rush the night-prowlers on the prey,
And turn to groans his roundelay.

Strange that where Nature loved to trace,
As if for gods, a dwelling-place,
And every charm and grace hath mix'd
Within the paradise she fix'd,
There man, enamour'd of distress,
Should mar it into wilderness,

And trample, brute-like, o'er each flower
That tasks not one laborious hour;
Nor claims the culture of his hand
To bloom along the fairy land,

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But springs as to preclude his care,
And sweetly woos him-but to spare!
Strange that where all is peace beside,
There Passion riots in her pride,

and through successive editions, till from four hundred lines, of which it consisted in its first copy, it at present amounts to fourteen hundred. The plan, indeed, which he had adopted, of a series of fragments, a set of orient pearls at random strung'-left him free to introduce, without reference to more than the general complexion of his story, whatever sentiments or images his fancy, in its excursions, could collect; and, how little fettered he was by any regard to connection in these additions, appears from a note which accompanied his own copy of this paragraph, in which he says 'I have not yet fixed the place of insertion for the following lines, but will, when I see you-as I have no copy." Even into this new passage, rich as it was at first, his fancy afterwards poured a fresh infusion."-The value of these after-touches of the master may be appreciated by comparing the following verses, from his original draft of this paragraph, with the form which they now wear :-

"Fair clime! where ceaseless summer smiles.
Benignant o'er those blessed isles,
Which, seen from far Colonna's height,
Make glad the heart that hails the sight,
And give to loneliness delight.
There shine the bright abodes ye seek,
Like dimples upon Ocean's cheek,
So smiling round the waters lave
These Edens of the eastern wave.
Or if, at times, the transient breeze
Break the smooth crystal of the seas,
Or brush one blossom from the trees,
How grateful is the gentle air

That waves and wafts the fragrance there."

The whole of this passage, from line 7 down to line 167, "Who heard it first had cause to grieve," was not in the first edition.-L. E.

(3) The attachment of the nightingale to the rose is a well-known Persian fable. If 1 mistake not, the "Bulbul of a thousand tales" is one of his appellations.-[Thus Mesihi, į as translated by Sir William Jones:

"Come, charming maid! and hear thy poet sing,
Thyself the rose, and he the bird of spring:
Love bids him sing, and Love will be obey'd.

Be gay too soon the flowers of spring will fade."—L. E ] (4) The guitar is the constant amusement of the Greek sailor by night: with a steady fair wind, and during a calm, it is accompanied always by the voice, and often by dancing.

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He who hath bent him o'er the dead (1)
Ere the first day of death is fled,
The first dark day of nothingness,
The last of danger and distress,
(Before Decay's effacing fingers

Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,)
And mark'd the mild angelic air,

The rapture of repose that's there,
The fix'd yet tender traits that streak
The languor of the placid cheek,
And-but for that sad shrouded eye,
That fires not, wins not, weeps not, now,
And but for that chill changeless brow,
Where cold Obstruction's apathy (2)
Appals the gazing mourner's heart,
As if to him it could impart

The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon;
Yes, but for these and these alone,
Some moments, ay, one treacherous hour,
He still might doubt the tyrant's power;
So fair, so calm, so softly seal'd,
The first, last look by death reveal'd! (3)
Such is the aspect of this shore;

"Tis Greece, but living Greece no more! (4)
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,
We start, for soul is wanting there.
Hers is the loveliness in death,

That parts not quite with parting breath;
But beauty with that fearful bloom,
That hue which haunts it to the tomb,
Expression's last receding ray,

A gilded halo hovering round decay,

The farewell beam of Feeling past away! Spark of that flame, perchance of heavenly birth, Which gleams, but warms no more its cherish'd earth! (5)

(1) "If once the public notice is drawn to a poet, the talents he exhibits on a nearer view, the weight his mind car. ries with it in his every-day intercourse, somehow or other are reflected around on his compositions, and co-operate in giving a collateral force to their impression on the public. To this we must assign some part of the impression made I by the Giaour. The thirty-five lines, beginning 'He who bath bent him o'er the dead,' are so beautiful, so original, and so utterly beyond the reach of any one whose poetical genius was not very decided and very rich, that they alone, under the circumstances explained, were sufficient to secure celebrity to this poem." Sir E. Brydges.-L. E.

(2) "Ay, but to die and go we know not where,
To lie in cold obstruction?"

Measure for Measure.

(3) I trust that few of my readers have ever had an opportunity of witnessing what is here attempted in description, but those who have will probably retain a painful remembrance of that singular beauty which pervades, with few exceptions, the features of the dead, a few hours, and but for a few hours, after "the spirit is not there." It is to be remarked in cases of violent death by gun-shot wounds the expression is always that of languor, whatever the natural energy of the sufferer's character: but in death from ; a stab the countenance preserves its traits of feeling or ferocity, and the mind its bias, to the last.

Clime of the unforgotten brave!
Whose land, from plain to mountain-cave,
Was Freedom's home or Glory's grave!
Shrine of the mighty! can it be,

That this is all remains of thee?
Approach, thou craven crouching slave:

Say, is not this Thermopyla?
These waters blue that round you lave,
O servile offspring of the free!-
Pronounce what sea, what shore is this?
The gulf, the rock of Salamis! (6)
These scenes, their story not unknown,
Arise, and make again your own;
Snatch from the ashes of your sires
The embers of their former fires;
And he who in the strife expires
Will add to theirs a name of fear
That Tyranny shall quake to hear,
And leave his sons a hope, a fame,
They too will rather die than shame:
For Freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeath'd by bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft is ever won.
Bear witness, Greece, thy living page,
Attest it many a deathless age!
While kings, in dusty darkness hid,
Have left a nameless pyramid,

Thy heroes, though the general doom
Hath swept the column from their tomb,
A mightier monument command,
The mountains of their native land!
There points thy Muse to stranger's eye
The graves of those that cannot die!
"Twere long to tell, and sad to trace,
Each step from splendour to disgrace;
Enough- -no foreign foe could quell
Thy soul, till from itself it fell;
Yes! self-abasement paved the way
To villain-bonds and despot sway.

What can he tell who treads thy shore? No legend of thine olden time,

No theme on which the Muse might soar High as thine own in days of yore, When man was worthy of thy clime.

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(4) In Dallaway's Constantinople, a book which Lord Byron is not unlikely to have consulted, I find a passage quoted from Gillies's History of Greece, which contains, perhaps, the first seed of the thought thus expanded into full perfection by genius:-"The present state of Greece, compared to the ancient, is the silent obscurity of the grave contrasted with the vivid lustre of active life." Moore.-L. E.

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(5) "There is infinite beauty and effect, though of a painful and almost oppressive character, in this extraordinary passage; in which the author has illustrated the beautiful, but still and melancholy, aspect of the once-busy and glorious shores of Greece, by an image more true, more mournful, and more exquisitely finished, than any that we can recollect in the whole compass of poetry." Jeffrey.-L. E. (6) The Isle of Salamis lies in the Saronic Gulf, on the southern coast of Attica, nearly opposite to Eleusis. belonged to the Athenians, though, from its situation between Athens and Megara, the inhabitants of the latter city contested its possession for some time with the Athenians. The name, says Gillies, in his History of Greece, is associated with the honourable battle fought on the 20th October, 480 years before Christ, between the Persians under Xerxes, when he invaded Attica, and the Greeks, who successfully defended their country with a force of only 380 ships against 2,000, of which they destroyed about 200. -P. E.

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The hearts within thy valleys bred,
The fiery souls that might have led
Thy sons to deeds sublime,
Now crawl from cradle to the grave,
Slaves-nay, the bondsmen of a slave,(1)
And callous, save to crime;
Stain'd with each evil that pollutes
Mankind, where least above the brutes;
Without even savage virtue blest,
Without one free or valiant breast,
Still to the neighbouring ports they waft
Proverbial wiles, and ancient craft;
In this the subtle Greek is found,
For this, and this alone, renown'd..
In vain might Liberty invoke
The spirit to its bondage broke,

Or raise the neck that courts the yoke:
No more her sorrows I bewail,
Yet this will be a mournful tale,
And they who listen may believe,
Who heard it first had cause to grieve.

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Who thundering comes on blackest steed,(2) With slacken'd bit and hoof of speed? Beneath the clattering iron's sound The cavern'd echoes wake around In lash for lash, and bound for bound; The foam that streaks the courser's side Seems gather'd from the ocean-tide: Though weary waves are sunk to rest, There's none within his rider's breast; And though to-morrow's tempest lower, "Tis calmer than thy heart, young Giaour! (3) I know thee not, I loathe thy race, But in thy lineaments I trace What time shall strengthen, not efface: Though young and pale, that sallow front Is scathed by fiery passion's brunt; Though bent on earth thine evil eye, As meteor-like thou glidest by, Right well I view and deem thee one Whom Othman's sons should slay or shun.

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(I) Athens is the property of the Kislar Aga (the slave of the seraglio and guardian of the women), who appoints the Waywode. A pander and eunuch-these are not polite, yet true appellations-now governs the governor of Athens!

(2) "The reciter of the tale is a Turkish fisherman, who has been employed during the day in the Gulf of Ægina, and in the evening, apprehensive of the Mainote pirates who infest the coast of Attica, lands with his boat on the harbour of Port Leone, the ancient Piræus. He becomes the eye-witness of nearly all the incidents in the story, and in one of them is a principal agent. It is to his feelings, and particularly to his religious prejudices, that we are in

On-on he hasten'd, and he drew My gaze of wonder as he flew : Though like a demon of the night He pass'd, and vanish'd from my sight, His aspect and his air impress'd A troubled memory on my breast, And long upon my startled ear Rung his dark courser's hoofs of fear. He spurs his steed; he nears the steep That, jutting, shadows o'er the deep; He winds around; he hurries by; The rock relieves him from mine eye: For well I ween unwelcome he Whose glance is fix'd on those that flee; And not a star but shines too bright On him who takes such timeless flight. He wound along; but ere he pass'd One glance he snatch'd, as if his last, A moment check'd his wheeling steed, A moment breathed him from his speed, A moment on his stirrup stood— Why looks he o'er the olive wood? The crescent glimmers on the hill, The mosque's high lamps are quivering still: Though too remote for sound to wake In echoes of the far tophaike,(4) The flashes of each joyous peal Are seen to prove the Moslem's zeal. To-night, set Rhamazani's sun; To-night, the Bairam feast's begun; To-night-but who and what art thou Of foreign garb and fearful brow? And what are these to thine or thee, That thou shouldst either pause or flee?

He stood some dread was on his face,
Soon Hatred settled in its place:
It rose not with the reddening flush
Of transient Anger's hasty blush,(5)
But pale as marble o'er the tomb,
Whose ghastly whiteness aids its gloom.
His brow was bent, his eye was glazed;
He raised his arm, and fiercely raised,
And sternly shook his hand on high,
As doubting to return or fly:
Impatient of his flight delay'd,'
Here loud his raven charger neigh'd—
Down glanced that hand, and grasp'd his blade:
That sound had burst his waking dream,
As Slumber starts at owlet's scream.
The spur hath lanced his courser's sides;
Away, away, for life he rides!

Swift as the hurl'd on high jerreed (6)
Springs to the touch his startled steed;

The rock is doubled, and the shore

Shakes with the clattering tramp no more;

debted for some of the most forcible and splendid parts of the poem." George Ellis.-L. E.

(3) In Dr. Clarke's Travels, this word, which means Infidel, is always written according to its English pronunciation, Djour. Lord Byron adopted the Italian spelling usual among the Franks of the Desert.-L. E.

(4) "Tophaike," musket.-The Bairam is announced by the cannon at sunset; the illumination of the mosques, and the firing of all kinds of small-arms, loaded with ball, proclaim it during the night.

(5) "Hasty blush."-For hasty all the editions, till the twelfth, read “darkening blush."-L. E.

(6) Jerreed, or Djerrid, a blunted Turkish javelin, which

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The crag is won-no more is seen
His Christian crest and haughty mien.(1)
"Twas but an instant he restrain'd
That fiery barb, so sternly rein'd;
'Twas but a moment that he stood,
Then sped as if by Death pursued:
But in that instant o'er his soul
Winters of Memory seem'd to roll,
And gather in that drop of time
A life of pain, an age of crime.

O'er him who loves, or hates, or fears,
Such moment pours the grief of years:
What felt he then, at once opprest
By all that most distracts the breast?
That pause, which ponder'd o'er his fate,
Oh, who its dreary length shall date!
Though in Time's record nearly nought,
It was Eternity to Thought!
For infinite as boundless space

The thought that Conscience must embrace,
Which in itself can comprehend
Woe without name, or hope, or end.

The hour is past, the Giaour is gone;
And did he fly or fall alone?
Woe to that hour he came or went!!
The curse for Hassan's sin was sent
To turn a palace to a tomb;

He came, he went, like the simoom,(2)
That harbinger of fate and gloom,
Beneath whose widely-wasting breath
The very cypress droops to death-
Dark tree, still sad when others' grief is fled,
The only constant mourner o'er the dead!

The steed is vanish'd from the stall; 287
No serf is seen in Hassan's hall;
The lonely spider's thin grey pall
Waves slowly widening o'er the wall;
The bat builds in his haram bower;
And in the fortress of his power
The owl usurps the beacon-tower;

is darted from horseback with great force and precision. It is a favourite exercise of the Mussulmans; but I know not if it can be called a manly one, since the most expert in the art are the black eunuchs of Constantinople. I think, next to these, a Mamlouk at Smyrna was the most skilful that came within my observation.

(1) "Every gesture of the impetuous horseman is full of anxiety and passion. In the midst of his career, whilst in full view of the astonished spectator, he suddenly checks his steed, and, rising on his stirrup, surveys, with a look of agonising impatience, the distant city illuminated for the feast of Bairam; then, pale with anger, raises his arm as if in menace of an invisible enemy; but, awakened from his trance of passion by the neighing of his charger, again burries forward, and disappears." George Ellis.-L. E.

(2) The blast of the desert, fatal to every thing living, and often alluded to in eastern poetry.—[Abyssinian Bruce gives, perhaps, the liveliest account of the appearance and effects of the suffocating blast of the desert:-“ At eleven o'clock," he says, "while we contemplated with great pleasure the rugged top of Chiggre, to which we were fast approaching, and where we were to solace ourselves with plenty of good water, Idris, our guide, cried out with a loud voice, Fall upon your faces, for here is the simoom.' I saw from the south-east a haze come, in colour like the purple part of the rainbow, but not so compressed or thick. It did not occupy twenty yards in breadth, and was about twelve feet high from the ground. It was a kind of blush upon the air, and it moved very rapidly; for I scarce could turn to fall upon the ground, with my head to the northward, when I felt the heat of its current plainly upon my face. We all lay flat on the ground as if dead, till Idris

[spread.

The wild-dog howls o'er the fountain's brim,
With baffled thirst and famine grim;
For the stream has shrunk from its marble bed,
Where the weeds and the desolate dust are
"Twas sweet of yore to see it play
And chase the sultriness of day,
As springing high the silver dew
In whirls fantastically flew,
And flung luxurious coolness round
The air, and verdure o'er the ground.
'Twas sweet, when cloudless stars were bright,
To view the wave of watery light,
And hear its melody by night.
And oft had Hassan's childhood play'd
Around the verge of that cascade;
And oft upon his mother's breast
That sound had harmonized his rest;
And oft had Hassan's youth along

Its bank been soothed by Beauty's song;
And softer seem'd each melting tone
Of music mingled with its own.
But ne'er shall Hassan's age repose
Along the brink at twilight's close:
The stream that fill'd that fount is fled-
The blood that warm'd his heart is shed!
And here no more shall human voice

Be heard to rage, regret, rejoice.
The last sad note that swell'd the gale
Was woman's wildest funeral wail:
That quench'd in silence, all is still,
But the lattice that flaps when the wind is shrill:
Though raves the gust, and floods the rain,
No hand shall close its clasp again.(3)
On desert sands 't were joy to scan
The rudest steps of fellow-man,
So here the very voice of Grief
Might wake an echo like relief-
At least 't would say, "All are not gone;
There lingers life, though but in one
For many a gilded chamber's there,
Which Solitude might well forbear; (4)

"

told us it was blown over. The meteor, or purple haze, which I saw was, indeed, passed, but the light air, which still blew, was of a heat to threaten suffocation. For my part, I found distinctly in my breast that I had imbibed a part of it; nor was 1 free of an asthmatic sensation till 1 had been some months in Italy, at the baths of Poretta, near two years afterwards." See Bruce's Life and Travels, p. 470. edit. 1830.-L. E.]

(3) This part of the narrative not only contains much brilliant and just description, but is managed with unusual taste. The fisherman has, hitherto, related nothing more than the extraordinary phenomenon which had excited his curiosity, and of which it is his immediate object to explain the cause to his hearers; but, instead of proceeding to do so, he stops to vent his execrations on the Giaour, to describe the solitude of Hassan's once-luxurious haram, and to lament the untimely death of the owner, and of Leila, together with the cessation of that hospitality which they had uniformly experienced. He reveals, as if unintentionally and unconsciously, the catastrophe of his story; but he thus prepares his appeal to the sympathy of his audience, without much diminishing their suspense." George Ellis.-L. E. (4) "I have just recollected an alteration you may make in the proof. Among the lines on Hassan's serai is thisUnmeet for Solitude to share.'

Now, to share implies more than one, and Solitude is a single gentleman; it must be thus

For many a gilded chamber's there,
Which Solitude might well forbear ;'

and so on. Will you adopt this correction? and pray accept a Stilton cheese from me for your trouble.-P. S. ]

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