I must here be permitted to interrupt, for a while, the progress of this Journal,—which extends through some months of the succeeding year,—for the purpose of noticing, without infringement of chronological order, such parts of the poet's literary history and correspondence as belong properly to the date of the year 1813.
At the beginning, as we have seen, of the month of December, The Bride of Abydos was published,—having been struck off, like its predecessor, The Giaour, in one of those paroxysms of passion and imagination, which adventures such as the poet was now engaged in were, in a temperament like his, calculated to excite. As the mathematician of old required but a spot to stand upon, to be able, as he boasted, to move the world, so a certain degree of foundation in fact seemed necessary to Byron, before that lever which he knew how to apply to the world of the passions could be wielded by him. So small, however, was, in many instances, the connection with reality which satisfied him, that to aim at tracing through his stories these links with his own fate and fortunes, which were, after all, perhaps, visible but to his own fancy, would be a task as uncertain as unsafe;—and this remark applies not only to The Bride of Abydos, but to The Corsair, Lara, and all the other beautiful fictions that followed, in which, though the emotions expressed by the poet may be, in general, regarded as vivid recollections of what had at different times agitated his own bosom, there are but little grounds,—however he might himself, occasionally, encourage such a supposition,—for connecting him personally with the groundwork or incidents of the stories.
While yet uncertain about the fate of his own new poem, the following observations on the work of an ingenious follower in the same track were written.
LETTER 143. TO MR. MURRAY.
"Dec. 4. 1813.
"I have redde through your Persian Tales[105], and have taken the liberty of making some remarks on the blank pages. There are many beautiful passages, and an interesting story; and I cannot give you a stronger proof that such is my opinion, than by the date of the hour—two o'clock, till which it has kept me awake without a yawn. The conclusion is not quite correct in costume; there is no Mussulman suicide on record—at least for love. But this matters not. The tale must have been written by some one who has been on the spot, and I wish him, and he deserves, success. Will you apologise to the author for the liberties I have taken with his MS.? Had I been less awake to, and interested in, his theme, I had been less obtrusive; but you know I always take this in good part, and I hope he will. It is difficult to say what will succeed, and still more to pronounce what will not. I am at this moment in that uncertainty (on our own score); and it is no small proof of the author's powers to be able to charm and fix a mind's attention on similar subjects and climates in such a predicament. That he may have the same effect upon all his readers is very sincerely the wish, and hardly the doubt, of yours truly, B."
To The Bride of Abydos he made additions, in the course of printing, amounting, altogether, to near two hundred lines; and, as usual, among the passages thus added, were some of the happiest and most brilliant in the whole poem. The opening lines,—"Know ye the land,' &c.—supposed to have been suggested to him by a song of Goëthe's[106]—were among the number of these new insertions, as were also those fine verses,—"Who hath not proved how feebly words essay," &c. Of one of the most popular lines in this latter passage, it is not only curious, but instructive, to trace the progress to its present state of finish. Having at first written—
"Mind on her lip and music in her face,"