Besides these curious superstitious peculiarities, they have among them persons who pretend to know the character of approaching events by hearing sounds which resemble those that shall accompany the actual occurrence.  Having, however, given Lord Byron’s account of the adventure of his servant Dervish, at Cape Colonna, it is unnecessary to be more particular with the subject here.  Indeed, but for the great impression which everything about the Albanians made on the mind of the poet, the insertion of these memoranda would be irrelevant.  They will, however, serve to elucidate several allusions, not otherwise very clear, in those poems of which the scenes are laid in Greece; and tend, in some measure, to confirm the correctness of the opinion, that his genius is much more indebted to facts and actual adventures, than to the force of his imagination.  Many things regarded in his most original productions, as fancies and invention, may be traced to transactions in which he was himself a spectator or an actor.  The impress of experience is vivid upon them all.

CHAPTER XX

Table of Contents

Local Pleasures—Byron’s Grecian Poems—His Departure from Athens—Description of Evening in “The Corsair”—The Opening of “The Giaour”—State of Patriotic Feeling then in Greece—Smyrna—Change in Lord Byron’s Manners

The genii that preside over famous places have less influence on the imagination than on the memory.  The pleasures enjoyed on the spot spring from the reminiscences of reading; and the subsequent enjoyment derived from having visited celebrated scenes, comes again from the remembrance of objects seen there, and the associations connected with them.

A residence at Athens, day after day, is but little more interesting than in a common country town: but afterwards, in reading either of the ancient or of the modern inhabitants, it is surprising to find how much local knowledge the memory had unconsciously acquired on the spot, arising from the variety of objects to which the attention had been directed.