[Selim II. (1524-1574) succeeded his father as Sultan in 1566. Hofmann (_Lexicon Univ_.) describes him as "meticulosus, effeminatus, ebriosus," but neither Demetrius Cantemir, in his _History of the Growth and Decay of the Othman Empire_ (translated by N. Tyndal, 1734); nor _The Turkish History_ (written by Mr. Knolles, 1701), cast any doubts on his legitimacy. Byron complained of the omission from the notes to the first edition of Don Juan, of his corrections of Bacon's "Apophthegms" (see _Letters_, 1901, v. Appendix VI. pp. 597-600), in a letter to Murray, dated January 21, 1821,--_vide ibid_., p. 220.] {260}[314] [Gibbon.] [fv] _Because he kept them wrapt up in his closet, he_ _Ruled fair wives and twelve hundred whores, unseen,_ _More easily than Christian kings one queen_.--[MS.] [fw] _Then ended many a fair Sultana's trip_: _The Public knew no more than does this rhyme_; _No printed scandals flew,--the fish, of course,_ _Were better--while the morals were no worse_.--[MS.] [fx] _No sign of its depression anywhere_.--[MS.] [315] ["We attempted to visit the Seven Towers, but were stopped at the entrance, and informed that without a firman it was inaccessible to strangers.... It was supposed that Count Bulukof, the Russian minister, would be the last of the _Moussafirs_, or imperial hostages, confined in this fortress; but since the year 1784 M. Ruffin and many of the French have been imprisoned in the same place; and the dungeons.... were gaping, it seems, for the sacred persons of the gentlemen composing his Britannic Majesty's mission, previous to the rupture between Great Britain and the Porte in 1809."--Hobhouse, _Travels in Albania_, 1858, ii. 311, 312.] {261}[316] ["The princess" (Asma Sultana, daughter of Achmet III.) "complained of the barbarity which, at thirteen years of age, united her to a decrepit old man, who, by treating her like a child, had inspired her with nothing but disgust."--_Memoirs of Baron de Toil_, 1786, i. 74. See, too, _Mémoires_, etc., 1784, i. 84, 85.] {262}[317] [The connection between "horns" and Heaven, to which Byron twice alludes, is not very obvious. The reference may be to the Biblical "horn of salvation," or to the symbolical horns of Divine glory as depicted in the Moses of Michel Angelo. Compare _Mazeppa_, lines 177, 178, _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 213.] [fy]---- _with solemn air and wise_.--[MS.] [fz] _Virginity in these unhappy climes_.--[MS.] {263}[318] [This stanza, which Byron composed in bed, February 27, 1821 (see _Extracts from a Diary, Letters_, 1901, v. 209), is not in the first edition. On discovering the omission, he wrote to Murray: "Upon what principle have you omitted ... one of the concluding stanzas sent as an addition?--because it ended, I suppose, with-- 'And do not link two virtuous souls for life Into that moral centaur, man and wife?'