Note 75 — LORD BYRON: (continued 5)

Of this kind are the accounts, filled with all sorts of circumstantial wonders, of his residence in the island of Mytilene;—his voyages to Sicily,—to Ithaca, with the Countess Guiccioli, &c. &c. But the most absurd, perhaps, of all these fabrications, are the stories told by Pouqueville, of the poet's religious conferences in the cell of Father Paul, at Athens; and the still more unconscionable fiction in which Rizo has indulged, in giving the details of a pretended theatrical scene, got up (according to this poetical historian) between Lord Byron and the Archbishop of Arta, at the tomb of Botzaris, in Missolonghi.