While yet uncertain about the fate of his own new poem, the following observations on the work of an ingenious follower in the same track were written.

LETTER 143.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Dec. 4. 1813.

“I have redde through your Persian Tales[105], and have taken the liberty of making some remarks on the blank pages.  There are many beautiful passages, and an interesting story; and I cannot give you a stronger proof that such is my opinion, than by the date of the hour—­two o’clock, till which it has kept me awake without a yawn.  The conclusion is not quite correct in costume; there is no Mussulman suicide on record—­at least for love.  But this matters not.  The tale must have been written by some one who has been on the spot, and I wish him, and he deserves, success.  Will you apologise to the author for the liberties I have taken with his MS.?  Had I been less awake to, and interested in, his theme, I had been less obtrusive; but you know I always take this in good part, and I hope he will.  It is difficult to say what will succeed, and still more to pronounce what will not. I am at this moment in that uncertainty (on our own score); and it is no small proof of the author’s powers to be able to charm and fix a mind’s attention on similar subjects and climates in such a predicament.  That he may have the same effect upon all his readers is very sincerely the wish, and hardly the doubt, of yours truly, B.”

[Footnote 105:  Poems by Mr. Gally Knight, of which Mr. Murray had transmitted the MS. to Lord Byron, without, however, communicating the name of the author.]

* * * * *

To The Bride of Abydos he made additions, in the course of printing, amounting, altogether, to near two hundred lines; and, as usual, among the passages thus added, were some of the happiest and most brilliant in the whole poem.  The opening lines,—­“Know ye the land,’ &c.—­supposed to have been suggested to him by a song of Goethe’s[106]—­were among the number of these new insertions, as were also those fine verses,—­“Who hath not proved how feebly words essay,” &c.  Of one of the most popular lines in this latter passage, it is not only curious, but instructive, to trace the progress to its present state of finish.  Having at first written—­

    “Mind on her lip and music in her face,”

he afterwards altered it to—­

    “The mind of music breathing in her face.”

But, this not satisfying him, the next step of correction brought the line to what it is at present—­

    “The mind, the music breathing from her face."[107]