I cannot agree with your able corespondent "C.B." (No. 20. p. 324., and
No. 17. p. 262.), that Ezzelin in "Lara" is Seyd of the "Corsair." My
interpretation of both tales is as follows:--Lara and Ezzelin both lived
in youth where they afterwards met, viz. in a midland county of
England--time about the fourteenth century. Ezzelin was a kinsman, or,
more probably, a lover of Medora, whom Lara induced to fly with him, and
who shared his corsair life. When Lara had returned home, the midnight
scene in the gallery arose from some Frankenstein creation of his own
bad conscience; a "horrible shadow," an "unreal mockery." Kaled was
Gulnare disguised as a page; and when Lara met Ezzelin at Otho's house,
Ezzelin's indignation arose from his recollection of Medora's abduction.
Otho favours Ezzelin in this quarrel; and, when Kaled looks down upon
the "sudden strife," and becomes deeply moved, her agitation was from
seeing in Ezzelin the champion of Medora, her own rival in the
affections of Lara. Ezzelin is murdered, probably by the contrivance of
Kaled, who had before shown that she could lend a hand in such an
affair. After this, Lara collects a band, like what David gathered to
himself in the cave of Adullam, and what follows suits the mediæval
period of English history.
I will briefly quote in support of this view. Otho shows that Lara and
Ezzelin had both sprung from one spot, when he says,
"I pledge myself for thee, as not unknown,
Though like Count Lara now return'd alone
From other lands, almost a stranger grown."
The 9th section of canto 1. is a description of Byron himself at
Newstead (the two poems are merely vehicles of their authors' own
feelings), with the celebrated skull, since made into a drinking cup,
beside him. The succeeding section is a picture {444} of "our own dear
lake." That Medora was a gentlewoman, and not from the slave-market, is
shown by Conrad's appreciation of her in the 12th section of the first
canto of the "Corsair;" and why not formerly beloved by Ezzelin, and
thus alluded to by him in the quarrel scene?
"And deem'st thou me unknown too? Gaze again!
At least thy memory was not given in vain,
Oh! never canst thou cancel half _her_ debt,
Eternity forbids thee to forget."
The accents, muttered in a foreign tongue by Lara, on recovering from
his swoon in the gallery,--
"And meant to meet an ear
That hears him not--alas! that cannot hear"--
were addressed, I think, to Medora; and I am only the more disposed to
this opinion by their effect on Kaled. (See canto 1. sec. 14.)