Canto I. Stanza Ix.

--Sir Walter Scott, Quart. Rev., No. xxxi. October, 1816.]

{227} The time in this poem may seem too short for the occurrences, but the whole of the AEgean isles are within a few hours' sail of the continent, and the reader must be kind enough to take the wind as I have often found it.

{228} Protract to age his painful doting day.--[MS. erased.]

{230} Her nation--flag--how tells the telescope.--[MS.]

"She sailed amid the loveliness Like a thing with heart and mind."]

{231} Till creaks her keel upon the shallow sand.--[MS.]

{234} The haughtier thought his bosom ill conceals.--[MS.]

He had the skill when prying souls would seek, To watch his words and trace his pensive cheek.--[MS.] His was the skill when prying, etc.--[Revise.]

{235} That Conrad is a character not altogether out of nature, I shall attempt to prove by some historical coincidences which I have met with since writing The Corsair.

"Eccelin, prisonnier," dit Rolandini, "s'enfermoit dans un silence menacant; il fixoit sur la terre son visage feroce, et ne donnoit point d'essor a sa profonde indignation. De toutes partes cependant les soldats et les peuples accouroient; ils vouloient voir cet homme, jadis si puissant ... et la joie universelle eclatoit de toutes partes.... Eccelino etoit d'une petite taille; mais tout l'aspect de sa personne, tous ses mouvemens, indiquoient un soldat. Son langage etoit amer, son deportement superbe, et par son seul regard, il faisoit trembler les plus hardis."--Simonde de Sismondi, Histoire des Republiques Italiennes du Moyen Age, 1809, iii. 219.

Again, "Gizericus [Genseric, king of the Vandals, the conqueror of both Carthage and Rome] ... statura mediocris, et equi casu claudicans, animo profundus, sermone ratus, luxuriae contemptor, ira turbidus, habendi cupidus, ad sollicitandas gentes providentissimus," etc., etc.--Jornandes, De Getarum Origine ("De Rebus Geticis"), cap. 33, ed. 1597, p. 92.

I beg leave to quote those gloomy realities to keep in countenance my Giaour and Corsair.--[Added to the Ninth Edition.]

{236} Released but to convulse or freeze or glow! Fire in the veins, or damps upon the brow.--[MS.]

Behold his soul once seen not soon forgot! All that there burns its hour away--but sears The scathed Remembrance of long coming years.--[MS.]

{237} [Lines 277-280 are not in the MS. They were inserted on a detached printed sheet, with a view to publication in the Seventh Edition.]

{238} Not Guilt itself could quench this earliest one.--[MS. erased.]

{239} Now to Francesca.--[MS.] Now to Ginevra.--[Revise of January 6, 1814.] Now to Medora.--[Revise of January 15, 1814.]

Yet heed my prayer--my latest accents hear.--[MS.]

"He gave to Misery all he had, a tear, He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend." Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard.]

{243} [For Bireno's desertion of Olympia, see] Orlando Funoso,