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_.