Byron was familiar with Thomas Taylor's translation of the Periegesis Græciæ (vide ante, [p. 109], and "Observations," etc., Letters, v. Appendix III. p. 574), and with Mitford's Greece (Don Juan, Canto XII. stanza xix. line 7). Hence his knowledge of Aristomenes. The thought expressed in lines 5-11 was, possibly, suggested by Coleridge's translation of the famous passage in Schiller's Piccolomini (act ii. sc. 4, lines 118, sq., "For fable is Love's world, his home," etc.), which is quoted by Sir Walter Scott, in the third chapter of Guy Mannering.]
THE BLUES:
A LITERARY ECLOGUE.
"Nimium ne crede colori."—Virgil, [Ecl. ii. 17]
O trust not, ye beautiful creatures, to hue, Though your hair were as red, as your stockings are blue.