Note to "Itinerary."
[For dates and names of towns and villages, see Travels in Albania, and other Provinces of Turkey, in 1809 and 1810, by the Right Hon. Lord Broughton, G.C.B. [John Cam Hobhouse], two volumes, 1858. The orthography is based on that of Longmans' Gazetteer of the World, edited by G. G. Chisholm, 1895. The alternative forms are taken from Heinrich Kiepert's Carte de l'Épire et de la Thessalie, Berlin, 1897, and from Dr. Karl Peucker's Griechenland, Wien, 1897.]
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE
A ROMAUNT.
"L'univers est une espèce de livre, dont on n'a lu que la première page quand on n'a vu que son pays. J'en ai feuilleté un assez grand nombre, que j'ai trouvé également mauvaises. Cet examen ne m'a point été infructueux. Je haïssais ma patrie. Toutes les impertinences des peuples divers, parmi lesquels j'ai vécu, m'ont reconcilié avec elle. Quand je n'aurais tiré d'autre bénéfice de mes voyages que celui-là, je n'en regretterais ni les frais ni les fatigues."—Le Cosmopolite, ou, le Citoyen du Monde, par Fougeret de Monbron. Londres, 1753.
Preface a to the First and Second Cantos.
The following poem was written, for the most part, amidst the scenes which it attemptsb to describe. It was begun in Albania; and the parts relative to Spain and Portugal were composed from the author's observations in those countries. Thus much it may be necessary to state for the correctness of the descriptions. The scenes attempted to be sketched are in Spain, Portugal, Epirus, Acarnania and Greece. There, for the present, the poem stops: its reception will determine whether the author may venture to conduct his readers to the capital of the East, through Ionia and Phrygia: these two cantos are merely experimental.
A fictitious character is introduced for the sake of giving some connection to the piece; which, however, makes no pretension to regularity. It has been suggested to me by friends, on whose opinions I set a high value,c—that in this fictitious character, "Childe Harold," I may incur the suspicion of having intended some real personage: this I beg leave, once for all, to disclaim—Harold is the child of imagination, for the purpose I have stated.
In some very trivial particulars, and those merely local, there might be grounds for such a notion;d