[5]. Byron, who, much as he loved Cintra, hated Lisbon and the Portuguese generally, which perhaps is not very surprising when it is considered that he visited it in 1809, after the first French invasion and before the Peninsular War, thus wrote of Lisbon:—
“What beauties does Lisboa first unfold;
Her image floating on that noble tide,
Which poets vainly pave with sands of gold,
And now whereon a thousand keels do ride.
But whoso entereth within this town,
That sheening far celestial seems to be,
Disconsolate will wander up and down,
Mid many things unsightly to strange ee.”