f in a quarrel with an
officer; but it was satisfactorily settled.

His residence at Malta did not greatly interest him. The story of
its chivalrous masters made no impression on his imagination--none
that appears in his works--but it is not the less probable that the
remembrance of the place itself occupied a deep niche in his bosom:
for I have remarked, that he had a voluntary power of forgetfulness,
which, on more than one occasion, struck me as singular: and I am
led in consequence to think, that something unpleasant, connected
with this quarrel, may have been the cause of his suppression of all
direct allusion to the island. It was impossible that his
imagination could avoid the impulses of the spirit which haunts the
walls and ramparts of Malta; and the silence of his muse on a topic
so rich in romance, and so well calculated to awaken associations
concerning the knights, in unison with the ruminations of Childe
Harold, persuades me that there must have been some specific cause
for the omission. If it were nothing in the duel, I should be
inclined to say, notwithstanding the seeming improbability of the
notion, that it was owing to some curious modification of vindictive
spite. It might not be that Malta should receive no celebrity from
his pen; but assuredly he had met with something there which made him
resolute to forget the place. The question as to what it was, he
never answered the result would throw light into the labyrinths of
his character.

CHAPTER X

Sails from Malta to Prevesa--Lands at Patras--Sails again--Passes
Ithaca--Arrival at Prevesa

It was on the 19th of September, 1809, that Byron sailed in the
Spider brig from Malta for Prevesa, and on the morning of the fourth
day after, he first saw the mountains of Greece; next day he landed
at Patras, and walked for some time among the currant grounds between
the town and the shore. Around him lay one of the noblest landscapes
in the world, and afar in the north-east rose the purple summits of
the Grecian mountains.

Having re-embarked, the Spider proceeded towards her destination; the
poet not receiving much augmentation to his ideas of the grandeur of
the ancients, from the magnitude of their realms and states. Ithaca,
which he doubtless regarded with wonder and disappointment, as he
passed its cliffy shores, was then in the possession of the French.
In the course of a month after, the kingdom of Ulysses surrendered to
a British