[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, "Cædimus, inque vicem præbemus 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), daughter of Alexis I., wrote the _Alexiad_, a history of her father's reign.] [263] [Zonaras (_Annales_, B 240), lib. viii. cap. 26, A 4. Venice, 1729.] [264] [See _English Bards, etc._, line 877: _Poems_, 1898, i. 366, _note 1._] [265] {203} [For Vely Pacha, the son of Ali Pacha, Vizier of the Morea, see _Letters_, 1898, i. 248, note 1.] [266] [The Caimacam was the deputy or lieutenant of the grand Vizier.] [267] [Scott published "_Sir Tristrem, a Metrical Romance of the Thirteenth Century_, by Thomas of Ercildoun," in 1804.] [268] [Captain Lismahago, a paradoxical and pedantic Scotchman, the favoured suitor of Miss Tabitha Bramble, in Smollett's _Expedition of Humphry Clinker_.]