I have no doubt that Lara is the Corsair; and Kaled Gulnare, from the Corsair:  the least inspection is enough to show this.  Ezzelin must also be Seyd; but that does not answer quite so well.  All that there is to prepare it is, that Seyd is only left for dead, in a great hurry, and therefore might recover; and that he drank wine, and therefore might be of Christian extraction.  In Lara he is described as dark; but his appearance is rather confusedly related, as if he never appeared but once, and yet Otho knows him, and he has a dwelling.  The shriek is more difficult.  There could be no meeting, then, between Ezzelin and Lara, because Ezzelin is surprised by meeting him at Otho’s.  Whether the shriek may not be owing to a meeting between Kaled and Ezzelin, is in not so clear.  From the splendid description of her looking down upon him, it is not proved that she there saw him first; and Ezzelin never sees her at all there.

Nothing is more interesting than these mysteries left in narrative fictions.  The story of Gertude, in that first of romances, the Promessi Sposi, is a very great instance; and the bad taste, of bringing her up again to the subject of a story by another writer, is so extreme, that I never could look into the book.  That Mazoni has left the character, whom he calls the Innominato, in mystery, is historical, and not of his own contrivance.

I used to think that Scott had left the part of Clara, in St. Ronan’s Well, intentionally mysterious, as to a most important circumstance; but we learn, from his Life, that he meant to have made that circumstance a part of the story, but was prevented by the publisher.  It is natural that the altered novel, therefore, should retain some impressions of it.  I refer particularly to the latter part of the communications between her and her brother.  But the meeting between her and Tyrell in the woods, and their conversation there, I now think, forbid the reader to suspect any thing like what I speak of.  In such cases I do not myself wish to know too much about the matter.  Sometimes the author wishes you to have the pleasure of guessing, as I think, in Lara; sometimes he means to be more mysterious; sometimes he does not know himself.  It would have been idle to have asked Johnson where Ajeet went to.

C.B. {325}

Sir William Rider (No. 12. p. 186).—­“H.F.” will find some account of the acts and deeds of Sir Thomas Lake and Dame Mary Lake his wife in the 13th Report on Charities, p. 280, as to their gifts to Muccleston in Staffordshire.  In the 24th Report, p. 300, as to Drayton in the same county.  Dame Mary Lake was also a benefactor to the parish of Little Stanmore, see 9th Report, p. 271.  See also Stow’s Survey 593. (ed. 1633.)

H.E.

God tempers the Wind (No. 14. p. 211.; No. 15. p 236.).—­The proverb is French:  “A brebis tondue Dieu mesure le vent;” but I cannot tell now where to find it in print, except in Chambaud’s Dictionary.  That is why Sterne puts it into the mouth of Maria.