the time that Minetto was among the slain; but, as Brue afterwards discovered, he was secretly conveyed to Smyrna, and ultimately ransomed by the Dutch Consul. The late Professor Kölbing (_Siege of Corinth_, 1893, p. xxvii.), in commenting on the sources of the poem, suggests, under reserve, that Byron may have derived the incident of Minetto's self-immolation from an historic source--the siege of Zsigetvar, in 1566, when a multitude of Turks perished from the explosion of a powder magazine which had been fired at the cost of his own life by the Hungarian commander Zrini. It is, at least, equally probable that local patriotism was, in the first instance, responsible for the poetic colouring, and that Byron supplemented the meagre and uninteresting historic details which were at his disposal by "intimate knowledge" of the Corinthian version of the siege. (See _Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Right Hon. Lord Byron_, London, 1822, p. 222; and _Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Lord Byron_, by George Clinton, London, 1825, p. 284.) It has been generally held that the _Siege of Corinth_ was written in the second half of 1815 (Kölbing's _Siege of Corinth_, p. vii.). "It appears," says John Wright (_Works_, 1832, x. 100), "by the original MS., to have been begun in July, 1815;" and Moore (_Life_, p. 307), who probably relied on the same authority, speaks of "both the _Siege of Corinth_ and _Parisina_ having been produced but a short time before the Separation" (i.e. spring, 1816). Some words which Medwin (_Conversations_, 1824, p. 55) puts into Byron's mouth point to the same conclusion. Byron's own testimony, which is completely borne out by the MS. itself (dated J^y [i.e. January, not July] 31, 1815), is in direct conflict with these statements. In a note to stanza xix. lines 521-532 (_vide post_, pp. 471-473) he affirms that it "was not till after these lines were written" that he heard "that wild and singularly original and beautiful poem [_Christabel_] recited;" and in a letter to S. T. Coleridge, dated October 27, 1815 (_Letters_, 1899, iii. 228), he is careful to explain that "the enclosed extract from an unpublished poem (i.e. stanza xix. lines 521-532) ... was written before (not seeing your _Christabelle_ [sic], for that you know I never did till this day), but before I heard Mr. S[cott] repeat it, which he did in June last, and this thing was begun in January, and more than half written before the Summer." The question of plagiarism will be discussed in an addendum to Byron's note on the lines in question; but, subject to the correction that it was, probably, at the end of May (see Lockhart's _Memoir of the Life of Sir W. Scott_, 1871, pp. 311-313), not in June, that Scott recited _Christabel_ for Byron's benefit, the date of the composition of the poem must be determined by the evidence of the author himself.