Note 196 — BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON THE CORSAIR.
Reading edition
{225} ["It is difficult to say whether we are to receive this passage as an admission or a denial of the opinion to which it refers; but Lord Byron certainly did the public injustice, if he supposed it imputed to him the criminal actions with which many of his heroes were stained. Men no more expected to meet in Lord Byron the Corsair, who 'knew himself a villain,' than they looked for the hypocrisy of Kehama on the shores of the Derwent Water; yet even in the features of Conrad, those who had looked on Lord Byron will recognize the likeness—
"'To the sight No giant frame sets forth his common height; Sun-burnt his cheek, his forehead high and pale The sable curls in wild profusion veil....'"
Canto I. stanza ix.
—Sir Walter Scott, Quart. Rev., No. xxxi. October, 1816.]