At the beginning, as we have seen, of the month of December, The Bride
of Abydos was published,--having been struck off, like its predecessor,
The Giaour, in one of those paroxysms of passion and imagination, which
adventures such as the poet was now engaged in were, in a temperament
like his, calculated to excite. As the mathematician of old required but
a spot to stand upon, to be able, as he boasted, to move the world, so a
certain degree of foundation in _fact_ seemed necessary to Byron, before
that lever which he knew how to apply to the world of the passions could
be wielded by him. So small, however, was, in many instances, the
connection with reality which satisfied him, that to aim at tracing
through his stories these links with his own fate and fortunes, which
were, after all, perhaps, visible but to his own fancy, would be a task
as uncertain as unsafe;--and this remark applies not only to The Bride
of Abydos, but to The Corsair, Lara, and all the other beautiful
fictions that followed, in which, though the emotions expressed by the
poet may be, in general, regarded as vivid recollections of what had at
different times agitated his own bosom, there are but little
grounds,--however he might himself, occasionally, encourage such a
supposition,--for connecting him personally with the groundwork or
incidents of the stories.

While yet uncertain about the fate of his own new poem, the following
observations on the work of an ingenious follower in the same track were
written.

LETTER 143. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Dec. 4. 1813.