To follow half on which the eye dilates,
Though views more dazzling unto mortal ken
Than those whereof such things the bard relates,
Who to the awe-struck world unlock’d Elysium’s gates?
Sir Wm. Napier’s correction, in his History of the Peninsular War, of the blunder about the supposed site of the convention, is well known, but deserves to be repeated:—
“The armistice, the negotiations, the convention itself, and the execution of its provisions, were all commenced, conducted, and concluded, at the distance of thirty miles from Cintra, with which place they had not the slightest connection, political, military, or local; yet Lord Byron has gravely asserted, in prose and verse, that the convention was signed at the Marquis of Marialva’s house at Cintra; and the author of ‘The Diary of an Invalid,’ improving from a poet’s discovery, detected the stains of the ink spilt by Junot upon the occasion.”
As when to them who sail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, off at sea, north-east winds blow