almost the only amusement in which he could not share.  The address was written at the request of Lord Holland, when of some hundred competitive pieces none had been found exactly suitable—­a circumstance which gave rise to the famous parodies entitled The Rejected Addresses—­and it was thought that the ultimate choice would conciliate all rivalry.  The care which Byron bestowed on the correction of the first draft of this piece, is characteristic of his habit of writing off his poems at a gush, and afterwards carefully elaborating them.

The Waltz was published anonymously in April, 1813.  It was followed in May by the Giaour, the first of the flood of verse romances which, during the three succeeding years, he poured forth with impetuous fluency, and which were received with almost unrestrained applause.  The plots and sentiments and imagery are similar in them all.  The Giaour steals the mistress of Hassan, who revenges his honour by drowning her.  The Giaour escapes; returns, kills Hassan, and then goes to a monastery.  In the Bride of Abydos, published in the December of the same year, Giaffir wants to marry his daughter Zuleika to Carasman Pasha.  She runs off with Selim, her reputed brother—­in reality her cousin, and so at last her legitimate lover.  They are caught; he is slain in fight; she dies, to slow music.  In the Corsair, published January, 1814, Conrad, a pirate, “linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes!” is beloved by Medora, who on his predatory expeditions, sits waiting for him (like Hassan’s and Sisera’s mother) in a tower.  On one of these he attacks Seyd Pasha, and is overborne by superior force; but Gulnare, a female slave of Seyd, kills her master, and runs off with Conrad, who finds Medora dead and vanishes.  In Lara, the sequel to this—­written in May and June, published in August—­a man of mystery appears in the Morea, with a page, Kaled.  After adventures worthy of Mrs. Radcliffe—­from whose Schledoni the Giaour is said to have been drawn—­Lara falls in battle with his deadly foe, Ezzelin, and turns out to be Conrad, while Kaled is of course Gulnare.  The Hebrew Melodies, written in December, 1814, are interesting, in connexion with the author’s early familiarity with the Old Testament, and from the force and music that mark the best of them; but they can hardly be considered an important contribution to the devotional verse of England.  The Siege of Corinth and Parisina, composed after his marriage in the summer and autumn of 1815, appeared in the following year.  The former is founded on the siege of the city, when the Turks took it from Menotti; but our attention is concentrated on Alp the renegade, another sketch from the same protoplastic ruffian, who leads on the Turks, is in love with the daughter of the governor of the city, tries to save her, but dies.  The poem is frequently vigorous, but it ends badly. Parisina, though unequal, is on the whole a poem of a higher order than the others of the period.  The trial scene exhibits some dramatic power, and the shriek of the lady mingling with Ugo’s funeral dirge lingers in our ears, along with the convent bells—­