At Bologna, according to the appointment made between them, Lord Byron and Mr. Rogers met; and the record which this latter gentleman has, in his Poem on Italy, preserved of their meeting conveys so vivid a picture of the poet at this period, with, at the same time, so just and feeling a tribute to his memory, that, narrowed as my limits are now becoming, I cannot refrain from giving the sketch entire.

"BOLOGNA.

"Twas night: the noise and bustle of the day
Were o'er. The mountebank no longer wrought
Miraculous cures he and his stage were gone;
And he who, when the crisis of his tale

Came, and all stood breathless with hope and fear,
Sent round his cap; and he who thrumm'd his wire
And sang, with pleading look and plaintive strain
Melting the passenger. Thy thousand cries,*
So well pourtray'd and by a son of thine,
Whose voice had swell'd the hubbub in his youth,
Were bush'd, BOLOGNA, silence in the streets,

The squares, when hark, the clattering of fleet hoofs;
And soon a courier, posting as from far,
Housing and holster, boot and belted coat
And doublet, stain'd with many a various soil,
Stopt and alighted. 'Twas where hangs aloft
That ancient sign, the Pilgrim, welcoming
All who arrive there, all perhaps save those
Clad like himself, with staff and scallop-shell,
Those on a pilgrimage: and now approach'd
Wheels, through the lofty porticoes resounding,
Arch beyond arch, a shelter or a shade

As the sky changes. To the gate they came;
And, ere the man had half his story done,
Mine host received the Master-one long used
To sojourn among strangers, every where
(Go where he would, along the wildest track)
Flinging a charm that shall not soon be lost,
And leaving footsteps to be traced by those
Who love the haunts of Genius; one who saw,
Observed, nor shunn'd the busy scenes of life,
But mingled not; and mid the din, the stir,
Lived as a separate Spirit.

"See the cries of Bologna, as drawn by Annibal Caracci. He was of very humble origin; and, to correct his brother's vanity, once sent him a portrait of their father, the tailor, threading his needle."

Much had pass'd

Since last we parted; and those five short years—
Much had they told! His clustering locks were turn'd
Gray; nor did aught recall the Youth that swam
From Sestos to Abydos. Yet his voice,

Still it was sweet; still from his eye the thought,
Flashed lightning-like, nor lingered on the way,
Waiting for words. Far, far into the night
We sat, conversing-no unwelcome hour,
The hour we met; and, when Aurora rose,
Rising, we climb'd the rugged Apennine.

Well I remember how the golden sun
Fill'd with its beams the unfathomable gulfs,
As on we travell'd, and along the ridge,
'Mid groves of cork, and cistus, and wild fig,
His motley household came.—Not last nor least,
Battista, who upon the moonlight sea

Of Venice had so ably, zealously

Served, and at parting thrown his oar away

To follow through the world: who without stain
Had worn so long that honorable badge,

The gondolier's, in a Patrician House

Arguing unlimited trust.-Not last, nor least,
Thou, though declining in thy beauty and strength,
Faithful Moretto, to the latest hour

Guarding his chamber-door, and now along
The silent, sullen strand of MISSOLONGHI

Howling in grief.

He had just left that Place

Of old-renown, once in the ADRIAN sea,‡

RAVENNA; where from DANTE's sacred tomb
He had so oft, as many a verse declares,‡
Drawn inspiration; where, at twilight-time,
Through the pine-forest wandering with loose rein,
Wandering and lost, he had so oft beheld §
(What is not visible to a poet's eye) ?

The spectre-knight, the bell-hounds, and their prey.
The chase, the slaughter, and the festal mirth

Suddenly blasted. 'Twas a theme he loved,

But others claim'd their turn; and many a tower,
Shatter'd, uprooted from its native rock,

Its strength the pride of some heroic age,

"The principal gondolier, il fante di poppa, was almost always in the confidence of his master, and employed on occasions that required judgment and address.

+"Adrianum mare.--CICERO."

"See the Prophecy of Dante."

"See the tale as told by Boccaccio and Dryden."

Appear'd and vanish'd (many a sturdy steer*
Yoked and unyoked,) while, as in happier days,
He pour'd his spirt forth. The past forgot,
All was enjoyment. Not a cloud obscured
Present or future.

He is now at rest;

And praise and blame fall on his ear alike,
Now dull in death. Yes, BYRON, thou art gone,
Gone like a star that through the firmament
Shot and was lost, in its eccentric course
Dazzling, perplexing. Yet thy heart, methinks,
Was generous, noble-noble in its scorn
Of all things low or little; nothing there
Sordid or servile. If imagined wrongs
Pursued thee, urging thee sometimes to do
Things long regretted, oft, as many know,
None more than I, thy gratitude would build
On slight foundations: and, if in thy life
Not happy, in thy death thou surely wert,
Thy wish accomplish'd; dying in the land
Where thy young mind bad caught ethereal fire,
Dying in GREECE, and in a cause so glorious!

They in thy train-ah, little did they think,
As round we went, that they so soon should sit
Mourning beside thee, while a Nation mourn'd,
Changing her festal for her funeral song;
That they so soon should hear the minute-gun,
As mourning gleam'd on what remain'd of thee,
Roll o'er the sea, the mountains, numbering
Thy years of joy and sorrow.

Thou art gone;

And he who would assail thee in thy grave,
Oh! let him pause! For who among us all,
Tried as thou wert- even from thine earliest years,
When wandering, yet unspoilt, a highland-boy--
Tried as thou wert, and with thy soul of flame ;
Pleasure, while yet the down was on thy cheek,
Uplifting, pressing, and to lips like thine,
Her charmed cup-ah! who among us all
Could say he had not err'd as much, and more?"

On the road to Bologna he had met with his early and dearest friend, Lord Clare, and the following description of their short interview is given in his "Detached Thoughts."

"They wait for the traveller's carriage at the foot of

every hill."

"Pisa, November 5th, 1821.

"There is a strange coincidence sometimes in the little things of this world, Sancho,' says Sterne in a letter (if I mistake not,) and so I have often found it.

"Page 128, article 91, of this collection, I had alluded to my friend Lord Clare in terms such as my feelings suggested. About a week or two afterwards, I met him on the road between Imola and Bologna, after not having met for seven or eight He was abroad in 1814, and came home just as I set

years.

out in 1816.

"This meeting annbilated for a moment all the years between the present time and the days of Harrow. It was a new and inexplicable feeling, like rising from the grave, to me. Clare too was much agitated-more in appearance than was myself; for I could feel his heart beat to his fingers' ends, unless, indeed, it was the pulse of my own which made me think so. He told me that I should find a note from him left at Bologna. I did. We were obliged to part for our different journeys, he for Rome, 1 for Pisa, but with the promise to meet again in spring. We were but five minutes together, and on the public road; but I hardly recollect an hour of my existence which could be weighed against them. He had heard that I was coming on, and had left his letter for me at Bologna, because the people with whom he was travelling could not wait longer.

"Of all I have ever known, he has always been the least altered in every thing from the excellent qualities and kind affections which attached me to him so strongly at school. I should hardly have thought it possible for society (or the world, as it is called) to leave a being with so little of the leaven of bad passions.

"I do not speak from personal experience only, but from all I have ever heard of him from others, during absence and distance."

After remaining a day at Bologna, Lord Byron crossed the Apennines with Mr. Rogers; and I find the following note of their visit together to the Gallery at Florence.

"I revisited the Florence Gallery &c. My former impressions were confirmed; but there were too many visitors there to allow one to feel any thing property. When we were (about thirty or forty) all stuffed into the cabinet of gems and knick

knackeries, in a corner of one of the galleries, I told Rogers that it felt like being in the watch-house.' I left him to make his obeisances to some of his acquaintances, and strolled on alone-the only four minutes I could snatch of any feeling for the works around me. I do not mean to apply this to a tête-atête scrutiny with Rogers, who has an excellent taste, and deep feeling for the arts (indeed much more of both than I can possess, for of the FORMER I have not much,) but to the crowd of jostling starers and travelling talkers around me.

"I heard one bold Briton declare to the woman on his arm, looking at the Venus of Titian, Well, now, this is really very fine indeed,'-an observation which, like that of the landlord in Joseph Andrews on the certainty of death,' was (as the landlord's wife observed)' extremely true.'

"In the Pitti Palace, I did not omit Goldsmith's prescription for a connoisseur, viz. that the pictures would have been better if the painter had taken more pains, and to praise the works of Pietro Perugino.'”

LETTER CCCCLXVI.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Pisa, November 3rd, 1821.

"The two passages cannot be altered without making Lucifer talk like the Bishop of Lincoln, which would not be in the character of the former. The notion is from Cuvier (that of the old worlds,) as I have explained in an additional note to the preface. The other passage is also in character: if nonsense, so much the better, because then it can do no harm, and the sillier Satan is made, the safer for every body. As to 'alarms,' &c. do you really think such things ever led any body astray? Are these people more impious than Milton's Satan? or the Prometheus of Eschylus? or even than the Sadducees of ⚫, the Fall of Jerusalem'? Are not Adam, Eve, Adah, and Abel, as pious as the catechism?

"Gifford is too wise a man to think that such things can have any serious effect: who was ever altered by a poem? I beg leave to observe, that there is no creed nor personal hypothesis of mine in all this; but I was obliged to make Cain and Lucifer talk consistently, and surely this has always been permitted to poesy. Cain is a proud man: if Lucifer promised him kingdom, &c. it would elate him: the object of the Demon is to depress him still further in his own estimation than he was before, by showing him infinite things and his own abasement, till he falls into the frame of mind that leads to the catastrophe,