APRIL 10.
During the early part of my outward-bound voyage I was extremely afflicted with sea-sickness; and between eight o’clock on a Monday morning, and twelve on the following Thursday, I actually brought up almost a thousand lines, with rhymes at the end of them. Having nothing better to do at present, I may as well copy them into this book. Composed with such speed, and under such circumstances, I take it for granted that the verses cannot be very good; but let them be ever so bad, I defy any one to be more sick while reading them than the author himself was while writing them. This strange story was found by me in an old Italian book, called “II Palagio degli Incanti,” in which it was related as a fact, and stated to be taken from the “Annals of Portugal,” an historical work. I will not vouch for the truth of it myself; and, at all events, I earnestly request that no person who may read these verses will ask me “who the hero really was?” If he does, I shall only return the same answer which the lady gave her husband when, being on the point of shipwreck, he requested her to tell him whether she had really ever wronged his bed? “My dear,” said she, “sink or swim, that secret shall go to the grave with me.”
THE ISLE OF DEVILS.
A METRICAL TALE.
“Should I report this now, would they believe me?
If I should say, I saw such islanders,
Who, though they were of monstrous shape, yet, note,
Their manners were more gentle-kind, than of
Our human generation you shall find
Many; nay, almost any!”—
Tempest, Act 3.