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Page 16
The lifting her over the sill seems to be something like the same
superstition that we have in Scott's _Eve of St. John_:--
"But I had not had pow'r to come to thy bow'r,
If Though had'st not charm'd me so."
I have no doubt that Lara is the Corsair; and Kaled Gulnare, from the
Corsair: the least inspection is enough to show this. Ezzelin must also
be Seyd; but that does not answer quite so well. All that there is to
prepare it is, that Seyd is only left for dead, in a great hurry, and
therefore might recover; and that he drank wine, and therefore might be
of Christian extraction. In Lara he is described as dark; but his
appearance is rather confusedly related, as if he never appeared but
once, and yet Otho knows him, and he has a dwelling. The shriek is more
difficult. There could be no meeting, then, between Ezzelin and Lara,
because Ezzelin is surprised by meeting him at Otho's. Whether the
shriek may not be owing to a meeting between Kaled and Ezzelin, is in
not so clear. From the splendid description of her looking down upon
him, it is not proved that she there saw him first; and Ezzelin never
sees her at all there.
Nothing is more interesting than these mysteries left in narrative
fictions. The story of Gertude, in that first of romances, the _Promessi
Sposi_, is a very great instance; and the bad taste, of bringing her up
again to the subject of a story by another writer, is so extreme, that I
never could look into the book. That Mazoni has left the character, whom
he calls the _Innominato_, in mystery, is historical, and not of his own
contrivance.
I used to think that Scott had left the part of Clara, in _St. Ronan's
Well_, intentionally mysterious, as to a most important circumstance;
but we learn, from his _Life_, that he meant to have made that
circumstance a part of the story, but was prevented by the publisher. It
is natural that the altered novel, therefore, should retain some
impressions of it. I refer particularly to the latter part of the
communications between her and her brother. But the meeting between her
and Tyrell in the woods, and their conversation there, I now think,
forbid the reader to suspect any thing like what I speak of. In such
cases I do not myself wish to know too much about the matter. Sometimes
the author wishes you to have the pleasure of guessing, as I think, in
Lara; sometimes he means to be more mysterious; sometimes he does not
know himself. It would have been idle to have asked Johnson where Ajeet
went to.
C.B. {325}
_Sir William Rider_ (No. 12. p. 186).--"H.F." will find some account of
the acts and deeds of Sir Thomas Lake and Dame Mary Lake his wife in the
_13th Report on Charities_, p. 280, as to their gifts to Muccleston in
Staffordshire. In the _24th Report_, p. 300, as to Drayton in the same
county. Dame Mary Lake was also a benefactor to the parish of Little
Stanmore, see _9th Report_, p. 271. See also Stow's _Survey_ 593. (ed.
1633.)
H.E.
_God tempers the Wind_ (No. 14. p. 211.; No. 15. p 236.).--The proverb
is French: "A brebis tondue Dieu mesure le vent;" but I cannot tell now
where to find it in print, except in Chambaud's _Dictionary_. That is
why Sterne puts it into the mouth of Maria.
C.B.
_Complutensian Polyglot._--"Mr. JEBB" asks (No. 14. p. 213.), "In what
review or periodical did there appear a notice of the supposed discovery
of the MSS. from which the _Complutensian Polyglot_ was compiled?"
He will find an article on this subject in the _Irish Ecclesiastical
Journal_ for April, 1847; from which I learn that there was a previous
article, by Dr. James Thomson, one of the agents of the British and
Foreign Bible Society, in the _Biblical Review_, a London periodical
publication. Dr. Thomson, if I understand the matter aright, professed
to have found at Madrid the MSS., so long supposed to have been lost.
There is also an article on the same subject by Dr. Bowring, in the
_Monthly Repository_, vol. xvi. (1821), p. 203.
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