Autthor's note:
Preface to Canto I: The following poem is founded on an occurrence mentioned by D'Herbelot in his Eastern Notes and Sketches. The character introduced to the reader is a Spanish roue, who having conceived an immoral passion for a Castillian lady, but being disappointed in his hopes, and banished to Greece, at a period when that enslaved country was distracted by petty revolutions, he there ended his miserable life. Such is the bare fact on which the poem is founded....
Dated: Epping, April 28, 1869.
