"Quanta laboras in Charybdi!
Digne puer meliore flammâ!"
[80] In his first edition of The Giaour he had used this word as a trisyllable,—"Bright as the gem of Giamschid,"—but on my remarking to him, upon the authority of Richardson's Persian Dictionary, that this was incorrect, he altered it to "Bright as the ruby of Giamschid." On seeing this, however, I wrote to him, "that, as the comparison of his heroine's eye to a 'ruby' might unluckily call up the idea of its being blood-shot, he had better change the line to "Bright as the jewel of Giamschid;"—which he accordingly did in the following edition.
[81] Having already endeavoured to obviate the charge of vanity, to which I am aware I expose myself by being thus accessory to the publication of eulogies, so warm and so little merited, on myself, I shall here only add, that it will abundantly console me under such a charge, if, in whatever degree the judgment of my noble friend may be called in question for these praises, he shall, in the same proportion, receive credit for the good-nature and warm-heartedness by which they were dictated.
[82] I had already, singularly enough, anticipated this suggestion, by making the daughter of a Peri the heroine of one of my stories, and detailing the love adventures of her aërial parent in an episode. In acquainting Lord Byron with this circumstance, in my answer to the above letter, I added, "All I ask of your friendship is—not that you will abstain from Peris on my account, for that is too much to ask of human (or, at least, author's) nature—but that, whenever you mean to pay your addresses to any of these aërial ladies, you will, at once, tell me so, frankly and instantly, and let me, at least, have my choice whether I shall be desperate enough to go on, with such a rival, or at once surrender the whole race into your hands, and take, for the future, to Antediluvians with Mr. Montgomery."
[83] The letter of Lord Sligo, already given.
[84] Now printed in his Works.
[85] The motto to The Giaour, which is taken from one of the Irish Melodies, had been quoted by him incorrectly in the first editions of the poem. He made afterwards a similar mistake in the lines from Burns prefixed to the Bride of Abydos.
[86] The Bride of Abydos.
[87] Among the stories intended to be introduced into Lalla Rookh, which I had begun, but, from various causes, never finished, there was one which I had made some progress in, at the time of the appearance of "The Bride," and which, on reading that poem, I found to contain such singular coincidences with it, not only in locality and costume, but in plot and characters, that I immediately gave up my story altogether, and began another on an entirely new subject, the Fire-worshippers. To this circumstance, which I immediately communicated to him, Lord Byron alludes in this letter. In my hero (to whom I had even given the name of "Zelim," and who was a descendant of Ali, outlawed, with all his followers, by the reigning Caliph) it was my intention to shadow out, as I did afterwards in another form, the national cause of Ireland. To quote the words of my letter to Lord Byron on the subject:—"I chose this story because one writes best about what one feels most, and I thought the parallel with Ireland would enable me to infuse some vigour into my hero's character. But to aim at vigour and strong feeling after you is hopeless;—that region 'was made for Cæsar.'"
[88] "C'est surtout aux hommes qui sont hors de toute comparaison par le génie qu'on aime à ressembler au moins par les foiblesses."—GINGUENE.