(_Diary_, November 16) "for the sake of _employment_" (Letter to Moore,
November 30, 1813). He had been staying during part of October and
November at Aston Hall, Rotherham, with his friend James Wedderburn
Webster, and had fallen in love with his friend's wife, Lady Frances.
From a brief note to his sister, dated November 5, we learn that he was
in a scrape, but in "no immediate peril," and from the lines, "Remember
him, whom Passion's power" (_vide ante_, p. 67), we may infer that he
had sought safety in flight. The _Bride of Abydos_, or _Zuleika_, as it
was first entitled, was written early in November, "in four nights"
(_Diary_, November 16), or in a week (Letter to Gifford, November
12)--the reckoning goes for little--as a counter-irritant to the pain
and distress of _amour interrompu_.

The confession or apology is eminently characteristic. Whilst the
_Giaour_ was still in process of evolution, still "lengthening its
rattles," another Turkish poem is offered to the public, and the natural
explanation, that the author is in vein, and can score another trick, is
felt to be inadequate and dishonouring--"To withdraw _myself_ from
_myself_," he confides to his _Diary_(November 27), "has ever been my
sole, my entire, my sincere motive for scribbling at all."

It is more than probable that in his twenty-sixth year Byron had not
attained to perfect self-knowledge, but there is no reason to question
his sincerity. That Byron loved to surround himself with mystery, and to
dissociate himself from "the general," is true enough; but it does not
follow that at all times and under all circumstances he was insincere.
"Once a _poseur_ always a _poseur_" is a rough-and-ready formula not
invariably applicable even to a poet.

But the _Bride of Abydos_ was a tonic as well as a styptic. Like the
_Giaour_, it embodied a personal experience, and recalled "a country
replete with the _darkest_ and _brightest_, but always the most _lively_
colours of my memory" (_Diary_, December 5, 1813).

In a letter to Galt (December 11, 1813, Letters, 1898, ii. 304,
reprinted from _Life of Byron_, pp. 181, 182) Byron maintains that the
first part of the _Bride_ was drawn from "observations" of his own,
"from existence." He had, it would appear, intended to make the story
turn on the guilty love of a brother for a sister, a tragic incident of
life in a Harem, which had come under his notice during his travels in
the East, but "on second thoughts" ha