They then separated, and Byron went on to Patras in the
Morea, where he had business with the Consul. He dates from there at the
close of July. It is impossible to give a consecutive account of his life
during the next ten months, a period consequently filled up with the
contradictory and absurd mass of legends before referred to. A few facts
only of any interest are extricable. During at least half of the time his
head-quarters were at Athens, where he again met his friend the Marquis,
associated with the English Consul and Lady Hester Stanhope, studied
Romaic in a Franciscan monastery--where he saw and conversed with a motley
crew of French, Italians, Danes, Greeks, Turks, and Americans,--wrote to
his mother and others, saying he had swum from Sestos to Abydos, was sick
of Fletcher bawling for beef and beer, had done with authorship, and hoped
on his return to lead a quiet recluse life. He nevertheless made notes to
_Harold_, composed the _Hints from Horace_ and the _Curse of Minerva_, and
presumably brooded over, and outlined in his mind, many of his verse
romances. We hear no more of the, _Maid of Athens_, but there is no fair
ground to doubt that the _Giaour_ was suggested by his rescue of a young
woman whom, for the fault of an amour with some Frank, a party of
Janissaries were about to throw, sewn up in a sack, into the sea.
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