THE ARGUMENT.
In the Spring of 1814, two Strangers, a Lady and a Gentleman,
were disembarked with a few domestics on a small and
thinly inhabited Island in the Mediterranean, not many
leagues distant from the Isle of Elba. They excited some
curiosity, which was subsequently much increased by a
singular occurrence that happened to them, during the Autumn
of the same year, in consequence of a visit paid to the
Island by Napoleon Buonaparte. A very short time ago,
the gentleman having been with considerable difficulty
traced to his retirement by the affectionate exertions of a
brother, who had recently returned from America, was persuaded
to reveal the cause which had originally led him to
seek, and that which still induced him to retain, his romantic
seclusion. Though he evidently laboured to command
his emotion, and was not immethodical in the
greater part of his narrative, yet his deportment, at some
particular moments of the recital, almost indicated insanity.
His story, as thus related by himself, is the subject of the
following Poem.
