Note 78 — CANTO THE FIRST.
Reading edition
[Writing to his mother (August 11, 1809), Byron compares "the Spanish style" of beauty to the disadvantage of the English: "Long black hair, dark languishing eyes, clear olive complexions, and forms more graceful in motion than can be conceived by an Englishman ... render a Spanish beauty irresistible" (Letters, 1898, i. 239). Compare, too, the opening lines of The Girl of Cadiz, which gave place to the stanzas To Inez, at the close of this canto—
"Oh never talk again to me Of northern climes and British ladies."
But in Don Juan, Canto XII. stanzas lxxiv.-lxxvii., he makes the amende to the fair Briton—
"She cannot step as doth an Arab barb, Or Andalusian girl from mass returning. But though the soil may give you time and trouble, Well cultivated, it will render double."]