that his eagerness and facility in producing, was sometimes
almost equalled by his anxious care in correcting. In the long passage
just referred to, the six lines beginning "Blest as the Muezzin's
strain," &c., having been despatched to the printer too late for
insertion, were, by his desire, added in an errata page; the first
couplet, in its original form, being as follows:--

"Soft as the Mecca-Muezzin's strains invite
Him who hath journey'd far to join the rite."

In a few hours after, another scrap was sent off, containing the lines
thus--

"Blest as the Muezzin's strain from Mecca's dome,
Which welcomes Faith to view her Prophet's tomb"--

with the following note to Mr. Murray:--

"December 3. 1813.

"Look out in the Encyclopedia, article _Mecca_, whether it is there
or at _Medina_ the Prophet is entombed. If at Medina, the first
lines of my alterration must run--

"Blest as the call which from Medina's dome
Invites Devotion to her Prophet's tomb," &c.

If at Mecca, the lines may stand as before. Page 45. canto 2d,
Bride of Abydos. Yours, B.

"You will find this out either by article _Mecca_, _Medina_, or
_Mohammed_. I have no book of reference by me."

[Footnote 106: "Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen bluehn," &c.]

[Footnote 107: Among the imputed plagiarisms so industriously hunted out
in his writings, this line has been, with somewhat more plausibility
than is frequent in such charges, included,--the lyric poet Lovelace
having, it seems, written,

"The melody and music of her face."

Sir Thomas Brown, too, in his Religio Medici, says--"There is music even
in beauty," &c. The coincidence, no doubt, is worth observing, and the
task of "tracking" thus a favourite writer "in the snow (as Dryden
expresses it) of others" is sometimes not unamusing; but to those who
found upon such resemblances a general charge of plagiarism, we may
apply what Sir Walter Scott says, in that most agreeable work, his Lives
of the Novelists:--"It is a favourite theme of laborious dulness to
trace such coincidences, because they appear to reduce genius of the
higher order to the usual standard of humanity, and of course to bring
the author nearer to a level with his critics."]

[Footnote 108: It will be seen, however, from a subsequent letter to Mr.
Murray, that he himself was at first unaware of the peculiar felicity of
this epithet; and it is