a wish, on relanding, to visit his own palace, which he had left to the care of Mr Barry during his absence, and from which Madame Guiccioli had early that morning departed, he now proceeded thither, accompanied by Count Gamba alone. «His conversation,>> says this gentleman, «was somewhat melancholy on our way to Albaro: he spoke much of his past life, and of the uncertainty of the future. Where,' said he, 'shall we be in a year?-It looked (adds his friend) like a melancholy foreboding; for, on the same day, of the same month, in the next year, he was carried to the tomb of his ancestors.>> It took nearly the whole of the day to repair the damages of their vessel; and the greater part of this interval was passed by Lord Byron, in company with Mr Barry, at some gardens near the city. Here his conversation, as this gentleman informs me, took the same gloomy turn. That he had not fixed to go to England, in preference, seemed one of his deep regrets; and so hopeless were the views he expressed of the whole enterprise before him, that, as it appeared to Mr Barry, nothing but a devoted sense of duty and honour could have determined him to persist in it. In the evening of that day they set sail;-and now, fairly launched in the cause, and disengaged, as it were, from his former state of existence, the natural power of his spirit to shake off pressure, whether from within or without, began instantly to display itself. According to the report of one of his fellow-voyagers, though so clouded while on shore, no sooner did he find himself, once more, bounding over the waters, than all the light and life of his better nature shone forth. In the breeze that now bore him towards his beloved Greece, the voice of his youth seemed again to speak. Before the titles of hero, of benefactor, to which he now aspired, that of poet, however pre-eminent, faded into nothing. His love of freedom, his generosity, his thirst for the new and adventurous,—all were re-awakened ; and even the bodings that still lingered at the bottom of his heart but made the course before him more precious from his consciousness of its brevity, and from the high and selfennobling resolution he had now taken to turn what yet remained of it gloriously to account. Parte, e porta un desio d'eterna ed alına Gir fra i nemici―ivi o cipresso o palma After a passage of five days, they reached Leghorn, at which place it was thought necessary to touch, for the purpose of taking on board a supply of gunpowder, and other English goods not to be had elsewhere. It would have been the wish of Lord Byron, in the new path he had now marked out for himself, to disconnect from his name, if possible, all those poetical associations, which, by throwing a character of romance over the step he was now taking, might have a tendency, as he feared, to impair its practical utility; and it is, perhaps, hardly saying too much for his sincere zeal in the cause to assert, that he would willingly at this moment have sacrificed his whole fame, as poet, for even the prospect of an equivalent renown, as philanthropist and liberator. How vain, however, was the thought that he could thus supersede his own glory, or cause the fame of the lyre to be forgotten in that of the sword, was made manifest to him by a mark of homage which reached him, while at Leghorn, from the hands of one of the only two men of the age who could contend with him in the universality of his literary fame. Already, as has been seen, an exchange of courtesies, founded upon mutual admiration, had taken place between Lord Byron and the great poet of Germany, Goëthe. Of this intercourse between two such men, the former as brief a light in the world's eyes, as the latter has been long and steadily luminous,-an account has been by the venerable survivor put on record, which, as a fit preliminary to the letter I am about to give, I shall here insert in as faithful a translation as it has been in my power to procure. << The German poet who, down to the latest period of his long life, had been always anxious to acknowledge the merits of his literary predecessors and contemporaries, because he has always considered this to be the surest means of cultivating his own powers, could not but have his attention attracted to the great talent of the noble lord almost from his earliest appearance, and uninterruptedly watched the progress of his mind throughout the great works which he unceasingly produced. It was immediately perceived by him that the public appreciation of his poetical merits kept pace with the rapid succession of his writings. The joyful sympathy of others would have been perfect, had not the poet, by a life marked by self-dissatisfaction, and the indulgence of strong passions, disturbed the enjoyment which his infinite genius produced. But his German admirer was not led astray by this, or prevented from 'following with close attention both his works and his life in all their eccentricity. These astonished him the more, as he found in the experience of past ages no element for the calculation of so eccentric an orbit. «These endeavours of the German did not remain unknown to the Englishman, of which his poems contain unambiguous proofs, and he also availed himself of the means afforded by various travellers, to forward some friendly salutation to his unknown admirer. At length a manuscript Dedication of Sardanapalus, in the most complimentary terms, was forwarded to him, with an obliging inquiry whether it might be prefixed to the tragedy. The German, who, at his advanced age, was conscious of his own powers and of their effects, could only gratefully and modestly consider this Dedication as the expression of an inexhaustible intellect, deeply feeling and creating its own object. He was by no means dissatisfied when, after a long delay, Sardanapalus appeared without the Dedication; and was made happy by the possession of a fac-simile of it, engraved on stone, which he considered a precious memorial. «The noble lord, however, did not abandon his purpose of proclaiming to the world his valued kindness towards his German contemporary and brother poet, a precious evidence of which was placed in front of the tragedy of Werner. It will be readily believed, when so unhoped for an honour was conferred upon the German poet-one seldom experienced in life, and that too from one himself so highly distinguished-he was by no means reluctant to express the high esteem and sympathising sentiment with which his unsurpassed contemporary had inspired him. The task was difficult, and was found the more so, the more it was contemplated; for what can be said of one, whose unfathomable qualities are not to be reached by words? But when a young gentleman, Mr Sterling, of pleasing person and excellent character, in the spring of 1823, on a journey from Genoa to Weimar, delivered a few lines under the hand of the great man as an introduction; and when the report was soon after spread that the noble peer was about to direct his great mind and various power to deeds of sublime daring beyond the ocean, there appeared to be no time left for further delay, and the following lines were hastily written :' Ein freundlich Wort kommt eines nach dem andern Wohl sey ihm doch, wenn er sich selbst empfindet! «The verses reached Genoa, but the excellent friend to whom they were addressed was already gone, and to a distance, as it appeared, inaccessible. Driven back, however, by storms, he landed at Leghorn, where these cordial lines reached him just as he was about to embark, on the 24th July, 1823. He had barely time to answer by a well filled page, which the possessor has preserved among his most precious papers, as the worthiest evidence of the connexion that had been formed. Affecting and delightful as was such a document, and justifying the most lively hopes, it has acquired now the greatest, 'I insert the verses in the original language, as an English version gives but a very imperfect notion of their meaning. |