["Independently of the suitableness of such an event to the power of Lord Byron's genius, the Fall of Corinth afforded local attractions, by the intimate knowledge which the poet had of the place and surrounding objects.... Thus furnished with that topographical information which could not be well obtained from books and maps, he was admirably qualified to depict the various operations and progress of the siege."—Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Right Honourable Lord Byron, London, 1822, p. 222.]
[332] {449} [The introductory lines, 1-45, are not included in the copy of the poem in Lady Byron's handwriting, nor were they published in the First Edition. On Christmas Day, 1815, Byron, enclosing this fragment to Murray, says, "I send some lines written some time ago, and intended as an opening to the Siege of Corinth. I had forgotten them, and am not sure that they had not better be left out now;—on that you and your Synod can determine." They are headed in the MS., "The Stranger's Tale," October 23rd. First published in Letters and Journals, 1830, i. 638, they were included among the Occasional Poems in the edition of 1831, and first prefixed to the poem in the edition of 1832.]
[333] [The metrical rendering of the date (miscalculated from the death instead of the birth of Christ) may be traced to the opening lines of an old ballad (Kölbing's Siege of Corinth, p. 53)—
"Upon the sixteen hunder year
Of God, and fifty-three,
From Christ was born, that bought us dear,
As writings testifie," etc.
See "The Life and Age of Man" (Burns' Selected Poems, ed. by J. L. Robertson, 1889, p. 191).]
[334] [Compare letter to Hodgson, July 16, 1809: "How merrily we lives that travellers be!"—Letters, 1898, i. 233.]
[335] {450} [For "capote," compare Childe Harold, Canto II. stanza lii. line 7, and Byron's note (24.B.), Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 132, 181. Compare, too, letter to Mrs. Byron, November 12, 1809 (Letters, 1899, i. 253): "Two days ago I was nearly lost in a Turkish ship of war.... I wrapped myself up in my Albanian capote (an immense cloak), and lay down on deck to wait the worst.">[
[336] The last tidings recently heard of Dervish (one of the Arnauts who followed me) state him to be in revolt upon the mountains, at the head of some of the bands common in that country in times of trouble.
[nz] {451} But those winged days——.—[MS.]
[337] [Compare Kingsley's Last Buccaneer—