e, _they being interred in_ St. Mark's. Make a
note of this, by the _Editor_, to rectify the fact.

"In the notes to 'Marino Faliero,' it may be as well to say that
'_Benintende_' was not really of the _Ten_, but merely _Grand
Chancellor_, a separate office (although important); it was an arbitrary
alteration of mine.

"As I make such pretentious to accuracy, I should not like to be twitted
even with such trifles on that score. Of the play they may say what they
please, but not so of my costume and _dram. pers._,--they having been
real existences."[200]

"As to Sardanapalus," he writes to Murray, "I thought of nothing but
Asiatic history. The Venetian play, too, is rigidly historical. My
object has been to dramatize, like the Greeks (a _modest_ phrase),
striking passages of history.

"All I ask is a preference for accuracy as relating to Italy and other
places."

In books, monuments, and the fine arts, it was always _truth_ that
interested him. Except Sir Walter Scott's productions, he gave no place
in his library to novels; other works of imagination, especially poetry,
were excluded; two-thirds of his books were French works. His reading
lay chiefly in history, biography, and politics.

Among the books Murray sent him were some travels: "Send me no more of
them," he wrote, "I have travelled enough already; and, besides, _they
lie_."[201]

Books with effected sentiment of any kind, imaginary itineraries, made
him very impatient. High-sounding phrases jarred on his ears; and I
thoroughly believe that the _forty centuries' looking down from the
Pyramids upon the grand French army_ somewhat _spoilt_ his hero for him.

What he especially sought for in monuments and among ruins was their
authenticity. It was on this sole condition that he took interest in
them.

Campbell, in his "Lives of English Poets," had averred that readers
cared no more for the truth of the manners portrayed in Collins's
"Eclogues" than for the authenticity of the history of Troy:--

"'Tis false," says Lord Byron in his memoranda, after having read
Campbell; "we do care about 'the authenticity of the tale of Troy.' I
have stood upon that plain daily, for more than a month, in 1810; and if
any thing diminished my pleasure, it was that the blackguard Bryant had
impugned its veracity. It is true that I read 'Homer Travestied' (the
first twelve books), because Hobhouse and others bored me with their
learned localities, and I love quizzing. Bu