d to accept a thousand
guineas for his own requirements, and not for other
beneficiaries--Godwin, Coleridge, or Maturin) yielded to his publisher's
wishes and representations. At any rate, the _Siege of Corinth_ and
_Parisina_, which, says Moore, "during the month of January and part of
February were in the hands of the printers" (_Life_, p. 300), were
published in a single volume on February 7, 1816. The greater reviews
were silent, but notices appeared in numerous periodicals; e.g. the
_Monthly Review_, February, 1816, vol. lxxix. p. 196; the _Eclectic
Review_, March, 1816, N.S. vol. v. p. 269; the _European_, May, 1816,
vol. lxxix. p. 427; the _Literary Panorama_, June, 1816, N.S. vol. iv.
p. 418; etc. Many of these reviews took occasion to pick out and hold up
to ridicule the illogical sentences, the grammatical solecisms, and
general imperfections of _technique_ which marked and disfigured the
_Siege of Corinth_. A passage in a letter which John Murray wrote to his
brother-publisher, William Blackwood (_Annals of a Publishing House_,
1897, i. 53), refers to these cavillings, and suggests both an apology
and a retaliation--

"Many who by 'numbers judge a poet's song' are so stupid as not to
see the powerful effect of the poems, which is the great object of
poetry, because they can pick out fifty careless or even bad lines.
The words may be carelessly put together; but this is secondary.
Many can write polished lines who will never reach the name of
poet. You see it is all poetically conceived in Lord B.'s mind."

In such wise did Murray bear testimony to Byron's "splendid and
imperishable excellence, which covers all his offences and outweighs all
his defects--the excellence of sincerity and strength."

To

JOHN HOBHOUSE, ESQ.,

this poem is inscribed,

by his

FRIEND.

_January 22nd_, 1816.

ADVERTISEMENT

"The grand army of the Turks (in 1715), under the Prime Vizier, to open
to themselves a way into the heart of the Morea, and to form the siege
of Napoli di Romania, the most considerable place in all that
country,[331] thought it best in the first place to attack Corinth, upon
which they made several storms. The garrison being weakened, and the
governor seeing it was impossible to hold out su