of Mytilene, who teaches not only the Hellenic,
but Latin, French, and Italian."--_Travels in Albania_, _etc._, i. 509,
510.]

[258] [Francois Horace Bastien, Conte Sebastiani (1772-1851), was
ambassador to the _Sublime Porte_, May, 1806-June, 1807.]

[259] [Gregor Alexandrovitch Potemkin (1736-1791), the favourite of the
Empress Catherine II.]

[260] {201} In a former number of the _Edinburgh Review_, 1808, it is
observed: "Lord Byron passed some of his early years in Scotland, where
he might have learned that _pibroch_ does not mean a _bagpipe_, any more
than _duet_ means a _fiddle_." Query,--Was it in Scotland that the young
gentlemen of the _Edinburgh Review_ _learned_ that _Solyman_ means
_Mahomet II._ any more than _criticism_ means _infallibility_?--but thus
it is,

"Caedimus, inque vicem praebemus crura sagittis."
Persius, _Sat._ iv. 42.

The mistake seemed so completely a lapse of the pen (from the great
_similarity_ of the two words, and the _total absence of error_ from the
former pages of the literary leviathan) that I should have passed it
over as in the text, had I not perceived in the _Edinburgh Review_ much
facetious exultation on all such detections, particularly a recent one,
where words and syllables are subjects of disquisition and
transposition; and the above-mentioned parallel passage in my own case
irresistibly propelled me to hint how much easier it is to be critical
than correct. The _gentlemen_, having enjoyed many a _triumph_ on such
victories, will hardly begrudge me a slight _ovation_ for the present.

[At the end of the review of _Childe Harold_, February, 1812 (xix.,
476), the editor inserted a ponderous retort to this harmless and
good-natured "chaff:" "To those strictures of the noble author we feel
no inclination to trouble our readers with any reply ... we shall merely
observe that if we viewed with astonishment the immeasurable fury with
which the minor poet received the innocent pleasantry and moderate
castigation of our remarks on his first publication, we now feel nothing
but pity for the strange irritability of temperament which can still
cherish a private resentment for such a cause, or wish to perpetuate
memory of personalities as outrageous as to have been injurious only to
their authors."]

[261] ["O Athens, first of all lands, why in these latter days dost thou
nourish asses?"]

[262] [Anna Comnena (1083-1148), d