[pj] {467} A little space of light grey sand.—[MS. G. erased.]
[355] [Compare The Island, Canto IV. sect. ii. lines 11, 12—
"A narrow segment of the yellow sand
On one side forms the outline of a strand.">[
Or would not waste on a single head
The ball on numbers better sped.—[MS. G. erased]
[pl] I know not in faith——.—[MS. G.]
[ [356] [Gifford has drawn his pen through lines 456-478. If, as the editor of The Works of Lord Byron, 1832 (x. 100), maintains, "Lord Byron gave Mr. Gifford carte blanche to strike out or alter anything at his pleasure in this poem as it was passing through the press," it is somewhat remarkable that he does not appear to have paid any attention whatever to the august "reader's" suggestions and strictures. The sheets on which Gifford's corrections are scrawled are not proof-sheets, but pages torn out of the first edition; and it is probable that they were made after the poem was published, and with a view to the inclusion of an emended edition in the collected works. See letter to Murray, January 2, 1817.]
[357] {468} This spectacle I have seen, such as described, beneath the wall of the Seraglio at Constantinople, in the little cavities worn by the Bosphorus in the rock, a narrow terrace of which projects between the wall and the water. I think the fact is also mentioned in Hobhouse's Travels [in Albania, 1855, ii. 215]. The bodies were probably those of some refractory Janizaries.
[358] This tuft, or long lock, is left from a superstition that Mahomet will draw them into Paradise by it.
[pm] {469} Deep in the tide of their lost blood lying.—[MS. G. Copy.]