was told," adds Lord Sligo, "that you then
conveyed her in safety to the convent, and despatched her off at night
to Thebes." The letter, which Byron characterizes as "curious," is by no
means conclusive, and to judge from the designedly mysterious references
in the Journal, dated November 16 and December 5, and in the second
postscript to a letter to Professor Clarke, dated December 15, 1813
(_Letters_, 1898, ii. 321, 361, 311), "the circumstances which were the
groundwork" are not before us. "An event," says John Wright (ed. 1832,
ix. 145), "in which Lord Byron was personally concerned, undoubtedly
supplied the groundwork of this tale; but for the story so
circumstantially set forth (see Medwin's _Conversations_, 1824, pp. 121,
124) of his having been the lover of this female slave, there is no
foundation. The girl whose life the poet saved at Athens was not, we are
assured by Sir John Hobhouse (_Westminster Review_, January, 1825, iii.
27), an object of his Lordship's attachment, but of that of his Turkish
servant." Nevertheless, whatever Byron may have told Hobhouse (who had
returned to England), and he distinctly says (_Letters_, 1898, ii. 393)
that he did not tell him everything, he avowed to Clarke that he had
been led "to the water's edge," and confided to his diary that to
"describe the _feelings_ of _that_ situation was impossible--it is _icy_
even to recollect them."

For the allusive and fragmentary style of the _Giaour_, _The Voyage of
Columbus_, which Rogers published in 1812, is in part responsible. "It
is sudden in its transitions," wrote the author, in the Preface to the
first edition, "... leaving much to be imagined by the reader." The
story or a part of it is told by a fellow-seaman of Columbus, who had
turned "eremite" in his old age, and though the narrative itself is in
heroic verse, the prologue and epilogue, as they may be termed, are in
"the romance or ballad-measure of the Spanish." The resemblance between
the two poems is certainly more than accidental. On the other hand, a
vivid and impassioned description of Oriental scenery and customs was,
as Gifford observed, new and original, and though, by his own admission,
Byron was indebted to _Vathek_ (or rather S. Henley's notes to _Vathek_)
and to D'Herbelot's _Bibliotheque Orientale_ for allusions and details,
the "atmosphere" could only have been reproduced by the creative fancy
of an observant and enthusiastic traveller who had lived under East