["But here (at Gloucester) is a modernity, which beats all antiquities for curiosity. Just by the high altar is a small pew hung with green damask, with curtains of the same; a small corner-cupboard, painted, carved, and gilt, for books, in one corner, and two troughs of a bird-cage, with seeds and water. If any mayoress on earth was small enough to inclose herself in this tabernacle, or abstemious enough to feed on rape and canary, I should have sworn that it was the shrine of the queen of the aldermen. It belongs to a Mrs. Cotton, who, having lost a favourite daughter, is convinced her soul is transmigrated into a robin redbreast, for which reason she passes her life in making an aviary of the cathedral of Gloucester."—Letter to Richard Bentley, September, 1753 (Lord Orford's Works, 1798, v. 279).]
[192] {210} [According to J. B. Le Chevalier (Voyage de La Propontide, etc., an. viii. (1800), p. 17), the Turkish name for a small bay which formed the ancient port of Sestos, is Ak-Bachi-Liman (Port de la Tête blanche).]
And in its stead that mourning flower
Hath flourished—flourisheth this hour,
Alone and coldly pure and pale
As the young cheek that saddens to the tale.
And withers not, though branch and leaf
Are stamped with an eternal grief.—[MS.]
An earlier version of the final text reads—
As weeping Childhood's cheek at Sorrow's tale!
[ [193] ["The Bride, such as it is is my first entire composition of any length (except the Satire, and be damned to it), for The Giaour is but a string of passages, and Childe Harold is, and I rather think always will be, unconcluded" (Letter to Murray, November 29, 1813). It (the Bride) "was published on Thursday the second of December; but how it is liked or disliked, I know not. Whether it succeeds or not is no fault of the public, against whom I can have no complaint. But I am much more indebted to the tale than I can ever be to the most partial reader; as it wrung my thoughts from reality to imagination—from selfish regrets to vivid recollections—and recalled me to a country replete with the brightest and darkest, but always most lively colours of my memory" (Journal, December 5, 1813, Letters, 1898, ii. 291, 361).]
THE CORSAIR:
A TALE.
——"I suoi pensieri in lui dormir non ponno."
Tasso, Gerusalemme Liberata, Canto X. [stanza lxxviii. line 8].