an early devotion to the fine statues of antiquity, extricate his genius
on the canvas from the hard forms of marble: he sculptured with his
pencil; and that cold austerity of tone, still more remarkable in his last
pictures, as it became mannered, chills the spectator on a first glance.
When POPE was a child, he found in his mother's closet a small library of
mystical devotion; but it was not suspected, till the fact was discovered,
that the effusions of love and religion poured forth in his "Eloisa" were
caught from the seraphic raptures of those erotic mystics, who to the last
retained a place in his library among the classical bards of antiquity.
The accidental perusal of Quintus Curtius first made BOYLE, to use his own
words, "in love with other than pedantic books, and conjured up in him an
unsatisfied appetite of knowledge; so that he thought he owed more to
Quintus Curtius than did Alexander." From the perusal of Rycaut's folio of
Turkish history in childhood, the noble and impassioned bard of our times
retained those indelible impressions which gave life and motion to the
"Giaour," "the Corsair," and "Alp." A voyage to the country produced the
scenery. Rycaut only communicated the impulse to a mind susceptible of the
poetical character; and without this Turkish history we should still have
had the poet.[A]

[Footnote A: The following manuscript note by Lord Byron on this passage,
cannot fail to interest the lovers of poetry, as well as the inquirers
into the history of the human mind. His lordship's recollections of his
first readings will not alter the tendency of my conjecture; it only
proves that he had read much more of Eastern history and manners than
Rycaut's folio, which probably led to this class of books:

"Knolles--Cantemir--De Tott--Lady M.W. Montagu--Hawkins's translation from
Mignot's History of the Turks--the Arabian Nights--all travels or
histories or books upon the East I could meet with, I had read, as well as