[194] {223} [This political allusion having been objected to by a friend, Byron composed a second dedication, which he sent to Moore, with a request that he would "take his choice." Moore chose the original dedication, which was accordingly prefixed to the First Edition. The alternative ran as follows:—

"January 7th, 1814.

My dear Moore,

I had written to you a long letter of dedication, which I suppress, because, though it contained something relating to you, which every one had been glad to hear, yet there was too much about politics and poesy, and all things whatsoever, ending with that topic on which most men are fluent, and none very amusing,—one's self. It might have been re-written; but to what purpose? My praise could add nothing to your well-earned and firmly established fame; and with my most hearty admiration of your talents, and delight in your conversation, you are already acquainted. In availing myself of your friendly permission to inscribe this poem to you, I can only wish the offering were as worthy your acceptance, as your regard is dear to

Yours, most affectionately and faithfully,

Byron."]

[195] {224} [After the words, "Scott alone," Byron had inserted, in a parenthesis, "He will excuse the 'Mr.'—we do not say Mr. Cæsar."]

[196] {225} ["It is difficult to say whether we are to receive this passage as an admission or a denial of the opinion to which it refers; but Lord Byron certainly did the public injustice, if he supposed it imputed to him the criminal actions with which many of his heroes were stained. Men no more expected to meet in Lord Byron the Corsair, who 'knew himself a villain,' than they looked for the hypocrisy of Kehama on the shores of the Derwent Water; yet even in the features of Conrad, those who had looked on Lord Byron will recognize the likeness—

"'To the sight

No giant frame sets forth his common height;

Sun-burnt his cheek, his forehead high and pale

The sable curls in wild profusion veil....'"

Canto I. stanza ix.

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

[197] {227} The time in this poem may seem too short for the occurrences, but the whole of the Ægean 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.

[198] [Compare—"Survey the region, and confess her home." Windsor Forest, by A. Pope, line 256.]

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

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

[199] [Compare The Isle of Palms, by John Wilson, Canto I. (1812, p. 8)—

"She sailed amid the loveliness

Like a thing with heart and mind."]

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

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

[ho]

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.]

[200] {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 menaçant; il fixoit sur la terre son visage féroce, et ne donnoit point d'essor à 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 éclatoit de toutes partes.... Eccelino étoit d'une petite taille; mais tout l'aspect de sa personne, tous ses mouvemens, indiquoient un soldat. Son langage étoit amer, son déportement superbe, et par son seul regard, il faisoit trembler les plus hardis."—Simonde de Sismondi, Histoire des Républiques Italiennes du Moyen Age, 1809, iii. 219.

Again, "Gizericus [Genseric, king of the Vandals, the conqueror of both Carthage and Rome] ... staturâ mediocris, et equi casu claudicans, animo profundus, sermone ratus, luxuriæ contemptor, irâ 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.]

[201] [Stanza x. was an after-thought. It is included in a sixth revise, in which lines 244-246 have been erased, and the present reading superscribed. A seventh revise gives the text as above.]

[hp] {236}

Released but to convulse or freeze or glow!

Fire in the veins, or damps upon the brow.—[MS.]

[hq]

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.]

[202] {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.]

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

[hs] {239}

Now to Francesca.—[MS.]

Now to Ginevra.—[Revise of January 6, 1814.]

Now to Medora.—[Revise of January 15, 1814.]

[ht] Yet heed my prayer—my latest accents hear.—[MS.]

[203] [Compare—

"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.]

[204] {243} [For Bireno's desertion of Olympia, see] Orlando Funoso, Canto X. [stanzas 1-27].

[hu] {244}

Oh! he could bear no more—but madly grasped

Her form—and trembling there his own unclasped.—[MS.]

[205] {247} By night, particularly in a warm latitude, every stroke of the oar, every motion of the boat or ship, is followed by a slight flash like sheet lightning from the water.

[206] {248} [Cape Gallo is at least eight miles to the south of Corone; but Point Lividia, the promontory on which part of the town is built, can hardly be described as a "jutting cape," or as (see line 1623) a "giant shape."]

[207] {249} [Coron, or Corone, the ancient Colonides, is situated a little to the north of a promontory, Point Lividia, on the western shore of the Gulf of Kalamata, or Coron, or Messenia.

Antoine Louis Castellan (1772-1838), with whose larger work on Turkey Byron professed himself familiar (Letter to Moore, August 28, 1813), gives a vivid description of Coron and the bey's palace in his Lettres sur la Morée, etc. (first published, Paris, 1808), 3 vols., 1820. Whether Byron had or had not consulted the "Letters," the following passages may help to illustrate the scene:—

"La châine caverneuse du Taygete s'élève en face de Coron, à l'autre extrémité du golfe" (iii. 181).

"Nous avons aussi été faire une visite au bey, qui nous a permis de parcourir la citadelle" (p. 187).

"Le bey fait a exécuter en notre présence une danse singuliére, qu'on peut nommer danse pantomime" (p. 189; see line 642).

"La maison est assez bien distribuée et proprement meublée à la manière des Turcs. La principale pièce est grande, ornée d'une boisserie ciselée sur les dessins arabesques, et même marquetée. Les fenêtres donnent sur le jardin ... les volets sont ordinairement fermés, dans le milieu de la journée, et le jour ne pénètre alors qu'a travers des ouvertures pratiquées, au dessus des fenêtres et garnis de vitraux colorés" (p. 200).

Castellan saw the palace and bay illuminated (p. 203).]

[208] {250} Coffee.

[209] "Chibouque" [chibûk], pipe.

[210] {251} Dancing girls. [Compare The Waltz, line 127, Poetical Works, 1898, i. 492, note 1.]

[211] It has been observed, that Conrad's entering disguised as a spy is out of nature. Perhaps so. I find something not unlike it in history.—"Anxious to explore with his own eyes the state of the Vandals, Majorian ventured, after disguising the colour of his hair, to visit Carthage in the character of his own ambassador; and Genseric was afterwards mortified by the discovery, that he had entertained and dismissed the Emperor of the Romans. Such an anecdote may be rejected as an improbable fiction; but it is a fiction which would not have been imagined unless in the life of a hero."—See Gibbon's Decline and Fall [1854, iv. 272.]

[212] {252} [On the coast of Asia Minor, twenty-one miles south of Smyrna.]

[213] [A Levantine bark—"a kind of ketch without top-gallant sail, or mizzen-top sail."]

[214] {254} [Compare the Giaour, line 343, note 2; vide ante, p. 102.]

[215] The Dervises [Dervish, Persian darvesh, poor] are in colleges, and of different orders, as the monks.

[216] {255} "Zatanai," Satan. [Probably a phonetic rendering of σατανὰ(ς). The Turkish form would be sheytan. Compare letter to Moore, April 9, 1814, Letters, 1899, iii. 66, note 1.]

[217] {256} A common and not very novel effect of Mussulman anger. See Prince Eugene's Mémoires, 1811, p. 6, "The Seraskier received a wound in the thigh; he plucked up his beard by the roots, because he was obliged to quit the field." ["Le séraskier est blessé a la cuisse; il s'arrache la barbe, parce qu'il est obligé de fuir." A contemporary translation (Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1811), renders "il s'arrache la barbe" he tore out the arrow.]

[218] {257} Gulnare, a female name; it means, literally, the flower of the pomegranate.

[219] {259} [The word "to" had been left out by the printer, and in a late revise Byron supplies the omission, and writes—

"To Mr. Murray or Mr. Davison.

Do not omit words—it is quite enough to alter or mis-spell them.

Bn."

In the MS. the line ran—

"To send his soul—he scarcely cared to Heaven."

"Asked" is written over in pencil, but "cared" has not been erased.]

[220] {261} [Compare—"One anarchy, one chaos of the mind." The Wanderer, by Richard Savage, Canto V. (1761, p. 86).]

[221] {262} [Compare—"That hideous sight, a naked human heart." Night Thoughts, by Edward Young (Night III.) (Anderson's British Poets, x. 71).]

[222] {263} [Compare—

"When half the world lay wrapt in sleepless night,

A jarring sound the startled hero wakes.

He hears a step draw near—in beauty's pride

A female comes—wide floats her glistening gown—

Her hand sustains a lamp...."

Wieland's Oberon, translated by W. Sotheby, Canto XII. stanza xxxi., et seq.]

[223] {265} In Sir Thomas More, for instance, on the scaffold, and Anne Boleyn, in the Tower, when, grasping her neck, she remarked, that it "was too slender to trouble the headsman much." During one part of the French Revolution, it became a fashion to leave some "mot" as a legacy; and the quantity of facetious last words spoken during that period would form a melancholy jest-book of a considerable size.

[hv] {268}

I breathe but in the hope—his altered breast

May seek another—and have mine at rest.

Or if unwonted fondness now I feign.[*]—[MS.]

[*] [The alteration was sent to the publishers on a separate quarto sheet, with a memorandum, "In Canto first—nearly the end," etc.—a rare instance of inaccuracy on the part of the author.]

[224] {270} The opening lines, as far as section ii., have, perhaps, little business here, and were annexed to an unpublished (though printed) poem [The Curse of Minerva]; but they were written on the spot, in the Spring of 1811, and—I scarce know why—the reader must excuse their appearance here—if he can. [See letter to Murray, October 23, 1812.]

[225] [See Curse of Minerva, line 7, Poetical Works, 1898, i. 457. For Hydra, see A. L. Castellan's Lettres sur la Morée, 1820, i. 155-176. He gives (p. 174) a striking description of a sunrise off the Cape of Sunium.]

[226] {271} Socrates drank the hemlock a short time before sunset (the hour of execution), notwithstanding the entreaties of his disciples to wait till the sun went down.

[227] The twilight in Greece is much shorter than in our own country: the days in winter are longer, but in summer of shorter duration.

[228] {272} The Kiosk is a Turkish summer house: the palm is without the present walls of Athens, not far from the temple of Theseus, between which and the tree, the wall intervenes.—Cephisus' stream is indeed scanty, and Ilissus has no stream at all.

[E. Dodwell (Classical Tour, 1819, i. 371) speaks of "a magnificent palm tree, which shoots among the ruins of the Ptolemaion," a short distance to the east of the Theseion. There is an illustration in its honour. The Theseion—which was "within five minutes' walk" of Byron's lodgings (Travels in Albania, 1858, i. 259)—contains the remains of the scholar, John Tweddell, died 1793, "over which a stone was placed, owing to the exertions of Lord Byron" (Clarke's Travels, Part II. sect. i. p. 534). When Byron died, Colonel Stanhope proposed, and the chief Odysseus decreed, that he should be buried in the same spot.—Life, p. 640.]

[229] {273} [After the battle of Salamis, B.C. 480, Paros fell under the dominion of Athens.]

[hw] {274}

They gather round and each his aid supplies.—[MS.]

[hx] {275}

Within that cave Debate waxed warm and strange.—[MS.]

Loud in the cave Debate waxed warm and strange.—

[January 6, 1814.]

In that dark Council words waxed warm and strange.—

[January 13, 1814.]

[230] [Lines 1299-1375 were written after the completion of the poem. They were forwarded to the publisher in time for insertion in a revise dated January 6, 1814.]

[231] The comboloio, or Mahometan rosary; the beads are in number ninety-nine. [Vide ante, p. 181, The Bride of Abydos, Canto II. line 554.]

[hy] {276}

Methinks a short release by ransom wrought

Of all his treasures not too cheaply bought.—[MS. erased.]

Methinks a short release for ransom—gold.—[MS.]

[hz] {277}

Of thine adds certainty to all I heard.—[MS.]

[ia] {278}

When every coming hour might view him dead.—[MS.]

[232] ["By the way—I have a charge against you. As the great Mr. Dennis roared out on a similar occasion—'By G-d, that is my thunder!' so do I exclaim, 'This is my lightning!' I allude to a speech of Ivan's, in the scene with Petrowna and the Empress, where the thought and almost expression are similar to Conrad's in the 3d canto of The Corsair. I, however, do not say this to accuse you, but to exempt myself from suspicion, as there is a priority of six months' publication, on my part, between the appearance of that composition and of your tragedies" (Letter to W. Sotheby, September 25, 1815, Letters, 1899, iii. 219). The following are the lines in question:—

"And I have leapt

In transport from my flinty couch, to welcome

The thunder as it burst upon my roof,

And beckon'd to the lightning, as it flash'd

And sparkled on these fetters."

Act iv. sc. 3 (Ivan, 1816, p. 64).

According to Moore, this passage in The Corsair, as Byron seemed to fear, was included by "some scribblers"—i.e. the "lumbering Goth" (see John Bull's Letter), A. A. Watts, in the Literary Gazette, February and March, 1821—among his supposed plagiarisms. Sotheby informed Moore that his lines had been written, though not published, before the appearance of the Corsair. The Confession, and Orestes, reappeared with three hitherto unpublished tragedies, Ivan, The Death of Darnley, and Zamorin and Zama, under the general title, Five Unpublished Tragedies, in 1814.

The story of the critic John Dennis (1657-1734) and the "thunder" is related in Cibber's Lives, iv. 234. Dennis was, or feigned to be, the inventor of a new method of producing stage-thunder, by troughs of wood and stops. Shortly after a play (Appius and Virginia) which he had put upon the stage had been withdrawn, he was present at a performance of Macbeth, at which the new "thunder" was inaugurated. "That is my thunder, by God!" exclaimed Dennis. "The villains will play my thunder, but not my plays."—Dict. Nat. Biog., art. "Dennis."]

[ib] {282}

But speak not now—on thine and on my head

O'erhangs the sabre——.—[MS.]

[ic] {284}

Night wears apace—and I have need of rest.—[MS.]

[id] {286} A variant of lines 1596, 1597 first appeared in MS. in a revise numbering 1780 lines—

Blood he had viewed, could view unmoved—but then

It reddened on the scarfs and swords of men.

In a later revise line 1597 was altered to—

It flowed a token of the deeds of men.

[ie] {287} His silent thoughts the present, past review.—[MS. erased.]

[if] Fell quenched in tears of more than misery.—[MS.]

[ig] {288} They count the Dragon-teeth around her tier.—[MS.]

[233] ["Tier" must stand for "hold." The "cable-tier" is the place in the hold where the cable is stowed.]

[ih] {289} Whom blood appalled not, their rude eyes perplex.—[MS. erased.]

[234] [Compare—

"And I the cause—for whom were given

Her peace on earth, her hopes in heaven."

Marmion, Canto III. stanza xvii. lines 9, 10.]

[ii] {290}

"Gulnare"—she answered not again—"Gulnare"

She raised her glance—her sole reply was there.—[M.S.]

[ij]

That sought from form so fair no more than this

That kiss—the first that Frailty wrung from Faith

That last—on lips so warm with rosy breath.—[MS. erased.]

[ik] As he had fanned them with his rosy wing.—[MS.]

[il] {291}

Oh! none so prophesy the joys of home

As they who hail it from the Ocean-foam.—[MS.]

Oh—what can sanctify the joys of home

Like the first glance from Ocean's troubled foam.—[Revise.]

[235] {292} In the Levant it is the custom to strew flowers on the bodies of the dead, and in the hands of young persons to place a nosegay.

[Compare—"There shut it inside the sweet cold hand." Evelyn Hope, by Robert Browning.]

[236] {293} [Compare—"And—but for that sad shrouded eye," etc. and the whole of the famous passage in the Giaour (line 68, sq., vide ante, p. 88), beginning—"He who hath bent him o'er the dead."]

[im] Escaped the idle braid that could not bind.—[MS.]

[in] By the first glance on that cold soulless brow.—[MS.]

[io] {294} And the night cometh—'tis the same to him.—[M.S.]

[237] [Stanza xxiii. is not in the MS. It was forwarded on a separate sheet, with the following directions:— (1814, January 10, 11.) "Let the following lines be sent immediately, and form the last section (number it) but one of the 3rd (last) Canto."]

[238] {295} [Byron had, perhaps, explored the famous stalactite cavern in the island of Anti-Paros, which is described by Tournefort, Clarke, Choiseul-Gouffier, and other travellers.]

[239] {296} That the point of honour which is represented in one instance of Conrad's character has not been carried beyond the bounds of probability, may perhaps be in some degree confirmed by the following anecdote of a brother buccaneer in the year 1814:—"Our readers have all seen the account of the enterprise against the pirates of Barataria; but few, we believe, were informed of the situation, history, or nature of that establishment. For the information of such as were unacquainted with it, we have procured from a friend the following interesting narrative of the main facts, of which he has personal knowledge, and which cannot fail to interest some of our readers:—Barataria is a bayou, or a narrow arm of the Gulf of Mexico; it runs through a rich but very flat country, until it reaches within a mile of the Mississippi river, fifteen miles below the city of New Orleans. This bayou has branches almost innumerable, in which persons can lie concealed from the severest scrutiny. It communicates with three lakes which lie on the south-west side, and these, with the lake of the same name, and which lies contiguous to the sea, where there is an island formed by the two arms of this lake and the sea. The east and west points of this island were fortified, in the year 1811, by a band of pirates, under the command of one Monsieur La Fitte. A large majority of these outlaws are of that class of the population of the state of Louisiana who fled from the island of St. Domingo during the troubles there, and took refuge in the island of Cuba; and when the last war between France and Spain commenced, they were compelled to leave that island with the short notice of a few days. Without ceremony they entered the United States, the most of them the state of Louisiana, with all the negroes they had possessed in Cuba. They were notified by the Governor of that State of the clause in the constitution which forbade the importation of slaves; but, at the same time, received the assurance of the Governor that he would obtain, if possible, the approbation of the General Government for their retaining this property.—The island of Barataria is situated about lat. 29 deg. 15 min., lon. 92. 30.; and is as remarkable for its health as for the superior scale and shell fish with which its waters abound. The chief of this horde, like Charles de Moor, had, mixed with his many vices, some transcendant virtues. In the year 1813, this party had, from its turpitude and boldness, claimed the attention of the Governor of Louisiana; and to break up the establishment he thought proper to strike at the head. He therefore, offered a reward of 500 dollars for the head of Monsieur La Fitte, who was well known to the inhabitants of the city of New Orleans, from his immediate connection, and his once having been a fencing-master in that city of great reputation, which art he learnt in Buonaparte's army, where he was a captain. The reward which was offered by the Governor for the head of La Fitte was answered by the offer of a reward from the latter of 15,000 for the head of the Governor. The Governor ordered out a company to march from the city to La Fitte's island, and to burn and destroy all the property, and to bring to the city of New Orleans all his banditti. This company, under the command of a man who had been the intimate associate of this bold Captain, approached very near to the fortified island, before he saw a man, or heard a sound, until he heard a whistle, not unlike a boatswain's call. Then it was he found himself surrounded by armed men who had emerged from the secret avenues which led to this bayou. Here it was that this modern Charles de Moor developed his few noble traits; for to this man, who had come to destroy his life and all that was dear to him, he not only spared his life, but offered him that which would have made the honest soldier easy for the remainder of his days, which was indignantly refused. He then, with the approbation of his captor, returned to the city. This circumstance, and some concomitant events, proved that this band of pirates was not to be taken by land. Our naval force having always been small in that quarter, exertions for the destruction of this illicit establishment could not be expected from them until augmented; for an officer of the navy, with most of the gun-boats on that station, had to retreat from an overwhelming force of La Fitte's. So soon as the augmentation of the navy authorised an attack, one was made; the overthrow of this banditti has been the result: and now this almost invulnerable point and key to New Orleans is clear of an enemy, it is to be hoped the government will hold it by a strong military force."—American Newspaper.

[The story of the "Pirates of Barataria," which an American print, the National Intelligencer, was the first to make public, is quoted in extenso by the Weekly Messenger (published at Boston) of November 4, 1814. It is remarkable that a tale which was destined to pass into the domain of historical romance should have been instantly seized upon and turned to account by Byron, whilst it was as yet half-told, while the legend was still in the making. Jean Lafitte, the Franco-American Conrad, was born either at Bayonne or Bordeaux, circ. 1780, emigrated with his elder brother Pierre, and settled at New Orleans, in 1809, as a blacksmith. Legitimate trade was flat, but the delta of the Mississippi, with its labyrinth of creeks and islands and bayous, teemed with pirates or merchant-smugglers. Accordingly, under the nominal sanction of letters of marque from the Republic of Cartagena, and as belligerents of Spain, the brothers, who had taken up their quarters on Grande Terre, an island to the east of the "Grand Pass," or channel of the Bay of Barataria, swept the Gulph of Mexico with an organised flotilla of privateers, and acquired vast booty in the way of specie and living cargoes of claves. Hence the proclamation of the Governor of Louisiana, W. C. C. Claiborne, in which (November 24, 1813) he offered a sum of $500 for the capture of Jean Lafitte. For the sequel of this first act of the drama the "American newspaper" is the sole authority. The facts, however, if facts they be, which are pieced together by Charles Étienne Arthur Gayarré, in the History of Louisiana (1885, iv. 301, sq.), and in two articles contributed to the American Magazine of History, October and November, 1883, are as curious and romantic as the legend. It would appear that early in September, 1814, a British officer, Colonel E. Nicholls, made overtures to Jean Lafitte, offering him the rank of captain in the British army, a grant of lands, and a sum of $30,000 if he would join forces with the British squadron then engaged in an attack on the coast of Louisiana. Lafitte begged for time to consider Colonel Nicholls's proposal, but immediately put himself in communication with Claiborne, offering, on condition of immunity for past offences, to place his resources at the disposal of the United States. Claiborne's reply to this patriotic offer seems to have been to despatch a strong naval force, under Commander Daniel Patterson, with orders to exterminate the pirates, and seize their fort on Grande Terre; and, on this occasion, though the brothers escaped, the authorities were successful. A proclamation was issued by General Andrew Jackson, in which the pirates were denounced as "hellish banditti," and, to all appearances, their career was at an end. But circumstances were in their favour, and a few weeks later Jackson not only went back on his own mandate, but accepted the alliance and services of the brothers Lafitte and their captains at the siege of New Orleans, January 8, 1815. Finally, when peace with Great Britain was concluded, President Madison publicly acknowledged the "unequivocal traits of courage and fidelity" which had been displayed by the brothers Lafitte, and the once proscribed band of outlaws. Thenceforth Pierre Lafitte disappears from history; but Jean is believed to have settled first at Galveston, in Texas, and afterwards, in 1820, on the coast of Yucatan, whence "he continued his depredations on Spanish commerce." He died game, a pirate to the last, in 1826. See, for what purports to be documentary evidence of the correspondence between Colonel E. Nicholls and Jean Lafitte, Historical Memoirs of the War in West Florida and Louisiana, by Major A. La Carriére Latour, 1816, Appendix III. pp. vii.-xv. See, too, Fernando de Lemos (an historical novel), by Charles Gayarré, 1872, pp. 347-361.]

In [the Rev. Mark] Noble's continuation of "Granger's Biographical History" [of England, 1806, iii. 68], there is a singular passage in his account of Archbishop Blackbourne [1658-1743]; and as in some measure connected with the profession of the hero of the foregoing poem, I cannot resist the temptation of extracting it.—"There is something mysterious in the history and character of Dr. Blackbourne. The former is but imperfectly known; and report has even asserted he was a buccaneer; and that one of his brethren in that profession having asked, on his arrival in England, what had become of his old chum, Blackbourne, was answered, he is Archbishop of York. We are informed, that Blackbourne was installed sub-dean of Exeter in 1694, which office he resigned in 1702; but after his successor Lewis Barnet's death, in 1704, he regained it. In the following year he became dean; and in 1714 held with it the archdeanery [i.e. archdeaconry] of Cornwall. He was consecrated Bishop of Exeter, February 24, 1716; and translated to York, November 28, 1724, as a reward, according to court scandal, for uniting George I. to the Duchess of Munster. This, however, appears to have been an unfounded calumny. As archbishop he behaved with great prudence, and was equally respectable as the guardian of the revenues of the see. Rumour whispered he retained the vices of his youth, and that a passion for the fair sex formed an item in the list of his weaknesses; but so far from being convicted by seventy witnesses, he does not appear to have been directly criminated by one. In short, I look upon these aspersions as the effects of mere malice. How is it possible a buccaneer should have been so good a scholar as Blackbourne certainly was? He who had so perfect a knowledge of the classics (particularly of the Greek tragedians), as to be able to read them with the same ease as he could Shakespeare, must have taken great pains to acquire the learned languages; and have had both leisure and good masters. But he was undoubtedly educated at Christ-church College, Oxford. He is allowed to have been a pleasant man; this, however, was turned against him, by its being said, 'he gained more hearts than souls.'"

[Walpole, in his Memoirs of the Reign of King George II., 1847, i. 87, who makes himself the mouthpiece of these calumnies, says that Hayter, Bishop of Norwich, was "a natural son of Blackbourne, the jolly old Archbishop of York, who had all the manners of a man of quality, though he had been a Buccaneer, and was a clergyman; but he retained nothing of his first profession except his seraglio."]

"The only voice that could soothe the passions of the savage (Alphonso III.) was that of an amiable and virtuous wife, the sole object of his love; the voice of Donna Isabella, the daughter of the Duke of Savoy, and the grand-daughter of Philip II. King of Spain. Her dying words sunk deep into his memory [A.D. 1626, August 22]; his fierce spirit melted into tears; and, after the last embrace, Alphonso retired into his chamber to bewail his irreparable loss, and to meditate on the vanity of human life."—Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works [1837, p. 831].

[This final note was added to the Tenth Edition.]