from one misery to another, each greater than the former, that I have not the heart to utter another word on the subject.' He always wrote to me at that time in Italian, and I transcribe his exact words. How entirely were these presentiments verified by the event!" *

After describing his mode of life while at Ravenna, the lady thus proceeds:—

"This sort of simple life he led until the fatal day of his departure for Greece, and the few variations he made from it may be said to have arisen solely from the greater or smaller number of occasions which were offered him of doing good, and from the generous actions he was continually performing. Many families (in Ravenna principally) owed to him the few prosperous days they ever enjoyed. His arrival in that town was spoken of as a piece of public good fortune, and his departure as a public calamity; and this is the life which many attempted to asperse as that of a libertine. But the world must at last learn how, with so good and generous a heart, Lord Byron, susceptible, it is true, of the most energetic passions, yet, at the same time, of the sublimest and most pure, and rendering homage in his acts to every virtue-how he, I say, could afford such scope to malice and to calumny. Circumstances, and also, probably, an eccentricity of disposition (which, nevertheless, had its origin in a virtuous feeling, an excessive abhorrence for hypocrisy and affectation), contributed perhaps to cloud the splendour of his exalted nature in the opinion of many. But you will well know how to analyse these contradictions in a manner worthy of your noble friend and of yourself, and you will prove that the goodness of his heart was not inferior to the grandeur of his genius."+

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

*Egli era partito con molto rincrescimento da Ravenna, e col presentimento che la sua partenza da Ravenna ci sarebbe cagione di molti mali. In ogni lettera che egli mi scriveva allora egli mi esprimeva il suo dispiacere di lasciare Ravenna. 'Se papà è richiamato (mi scriveva egli) io torno in quel istante a Ravenna, e se è richiamato prima della mia partenza' io non parto.' In questa speranza egli differì varii mesi a partire. Ma, finalmente, non potendo più sperare il nostro ritorno prossimo, egli mi scriveva-'Io parto molto mal volentieri prevedendo dei mali assai grandi per voi altri e massime per voi; altro non dico,-lo vedrete.' E in un altra lettera, 'Io lascio Ravenna così mal volentieri, e così persuaso che la mia partenza non può che condurre da un male ad un altro più grande che non ho cuore di scrivere altro in questo punto ' Egli mi scriveva allora sempre in Italiano e trascrivo le sue precise parole-ma come quei suoi presentimenti si verificarono poi in appresso!"

†The leaf that contains the original of this extract I have unluckily mislaid.

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 hush'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.
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 linger'd 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 honourable 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,t
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 hell-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 inany a tower,
Shatter'd, uprooted from its native rock,
Its strength the pride of some heroic age,

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

†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 spirit 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 had 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 morning 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."

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 years. He was abroad in 1814, and came home just as I set out in 1816.

"This meeting annihilated 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, I 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

**They wait for the traveller's carriage at the foot of every hill."

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 Appenines 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 properly. 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 watchhouse.' 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 à-tête 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

"Pisa, November 3d, 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 Saddueees 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, from mere internal irritation, not premeditation, or envy of Abel (which would have made him contemptible), but from rage and fury against the inadequacy of his state to his conceptions, and which discharges itself rather against life, and the author of life, than the mere living.

"His subsequent remorse is the natural effect of looking on his sudden deed. Had the deed been premeditated, his repentance would have been tardier.

"Either dedicate it to Walter Scott, or if you think he would like the dedication of the Foscaris' better, put the dedication to the Foscaris.' Ask him which.

*

*

"Your first note was queer enough; but your two other letters, with Moore's and Gifford's opinions, set all right again. I told you before that I can never recast any thing. I am like the tiger: if I miss the first spring, I go grumbling back to my jungle again; but if I do hit, it is crushing. You disparaged the last three cantos to me, and kept them back above a year; but I have heard from England that (notwithstanding the errors of the press) they are well thought of; for instance, by American Irving, which last is a feather in my (fool's) cap.

"You have received my letter (open) through Mr Kinnaird, and so, pray, send me no more reviews of any kind. I will read no more of evil or good in that line. Walter Scott has not read a review of himself for thirteen years.

"The bust is not my property, but Hobhouse's. I addressed it to you as an Admiralty man, great at the custom-house. Pray deduct the expenses of the same, and all others.

"Yours, &c."

LETTER CCCCLXVII.

TO MR MURRAY.

"Pisa, Nov. 9th, 1821.

* “I never read the Memoirs at all, not even since they were written; and I never will: the pain of writing them was enough; you may spare me that of a perusal. Mr Moore has (or may have) a discretionary power to omit any repetition, or expressions which do not seem good to him, who is a better judge than you or I.

"Enclosed is a lyrical drama (entitled 'a Mystery,' from its subject), which, perhaps, may arrive in time for the volume. You will find it pious enough, I

trust, at least some of the Chorus might have been written by Sternhold and Hopkins themselves for that, and perhaps for melody. As it is longer, and more lyrical and Greek, than I intended at first, I have not divided it into acts, but called what I have sent Part First, as there is a suspension of the action, which may either close there without impropriety, or be continued in a way that I have in view. I wish the first part to be published before the second, because, if it don't succeed, it is better to stop there than to go on in a fruitless experiment.

"I desire you to acknowledge the arrival of this packet by return of post, if you can conveniently, with a proof. Your obedient, &c.

"P. S. My wish is to have it published at the same time, and, if possible, in the same volume, with the others, because, whatever the merits or demerits of these pieces may be, it will perhaps be allowed that each is of a different kind, and in a different style; so that, including the prose and the Don Juans, &c., I have at least sent you variety during the last year

or two."

LETTER CCCCLXVIII.

TO MR MOORE.

"Pisa, November 16th, 1821. "There is here Mr* *, an Irish genius, with whom we are acquainted. He hath written a really excellent Commentary on Dante, full of new and true information, and much ingenuity. But his verse is such as it hath pleased God to endue him withal. Nevertheless, he is so firmly persuaded of its equal excellence, that he won't divorce the Commentary from the traduction, as I ventured delicately to hint,—not having the fear of Ireland before my eyes, and upon the presumption of having shotten very well in his presence (with common pistols too, not with my Manton's) the day before.

"But he is eager to publish all, and must be gratified, though the Reviewers will make him suffer more tortures than there are in his original. Indeed, the Notes are well worth publication; but he insists upon the translation for company, so that they will come out together, like Lady C**t chaperoning Miss **. I read a letter of yours to him yesterday, and he begs me to write to you about his Poeshie. He is really a good fellow, apparently, and I dare say that his verse is very good Irish.

"Now what shall we do for him? He says that he will risk part of the expense with the publisher. He will never rest till he is published and abused-for he has a high opinion of himself-and I see nothing left but to gratify him so as to have him abused as little as possible; for I think it would kill him. You must write, then, to Jeffrey to beg him not to review him, and I will do the same to Gifford, through Murray. Perhaps they might notice the Comment without touching the text. But I doubt the dogs-the text is too tempting,

*

*

"I have to thank you again, as I believe I did before, for your opinion of 'Cain,' &c. "You are right to allow to settle the claim, but I do not see why you should repay him out of

"I have received your letter. I need not say, that the extract which it contains has affected me, because it would imply a want of all feeling to have read it with indifference. Though I am not quite sure that it was intended by the writer for me, yet the date, the place where it was written, with some other circumstances that you mention, render the allusion probable. But for whomever it was meant, I have read it with all the pleasure which can arise from so melancholy a topic. I say pleasure-because your brief and simple picture of the life and demeanour of the excellent person whom I trust you will again meet, cannot be contemplated without the admiration due to her virtues, and her pure and unpretending piety. Her last moments were particularly striking; and I do not know that, the course of reading the story of mankind, and still less in my observations upon the existing portion, I ever met with any thing so unostentatiously beautiful. Indisputably, the firm believers in the gospel have a great advantage over all others, for this simple reason, that, if true, they will have their reward hereafter; and if there be no hereafter, they can be but with the infidel in his eternal sleep, having had the assistance of an exalted hope, through life, without subsequent disappointment, since (at the worst for them) 'out of nothing, nothing can arise,' not even sorrow. But a man's creed does not depend upon himself: who can say, I will believe this, that, or the other? and least of all, that which he least can comprehend. I have, however, observed, that those who have begun life with extreme faith, have in the end greatly narrowed it, as Chillingworth, Clarke (who ended as an Arian), Bayle, and Gibbon (once a Catholic), and some others; while, on the other hand, nothing is more common than for the early sceptic to end in a firm belief, like Maupertuis, and Henry Kirke White.

"But my business is to acknowledge your letter, and not to make a dissertation. I am obliged to you for your good wishes, and more than obliged by the extract from the papers of the beloved object whose qualities you have so well described in a few words. I can assure you that all the fame which ever cheated humanity into higher notions of its own importance would never weigh in my mind against the pure and pious interest which a virtuous being may be pleased to take in my welfare. In this point of view, I would not exchange the prayer of the deceased in my behalf for the united glory of Homer, Caesar, and Napoleon, could such be accumulated upon a living head. Do me at least the justice to suppose, that

"Video meliora proboque,'

however the deteriora sequor' may have been applied to my conduct. “I have the honour to be

"your obliged and obedient servant, "BYRON.

"P. S. I do not know that I am addressing a clergyman; but I presume that you will not be affronted by the mistake (if it is one) on the address of this letter. One who has so well explained, and deeply felt the doctrines of religion, will excuse the error which led me to believe him its minister."

LETTER CCCCLXX.

TO MR MURRAY.

"Pisa, December 4th, 1821. "By extracts in the English papers,—in your holy ally, Galignani's 'Messenger,'-I perceive that 'the two greatest examples of human vanity in the present age' are, firstly, the ex-Emperor Napoleon,' and, secondly, his lordship, &c., the noble poet,' meaning your humble servant, 'poor guiltless I.'

"Poor Napoleon! he little dreamed to what vile comparisons the turn of the wheel would reduce him!

"I have got here into a famous old feudal palazzo, on the Arno, large enough for a garrison, with dungeons below and cells in the walls, and so full of ghosts, that the learned Fletcher (my valet) has begged leave to change his room, and then refused to occupy his new room, because there were more ghosts there than in the other. It is quite true that there are most extraordinary noises (as in all old buildings), which have terrified the servants so as to incommode me extremely. There is one place where people were evidently walled up, for there is but one possible passage, broken through the wall, and then meant to be closed again upon the inmate. The house belonged to the Lanfranchi family (the same mentioned by Ugolino in his dream, as his persecutor with Sismondi), and has had a fierce owner or two in its time. The staircase, &c. is said to have been built by Michael Angelo. It is not yet cold enough for a fire. What a climate!

"I am, however, bothered about these spectres (as they say the last occupants were, too), of whom I have as yet seen nothing, nor, indeed, heard (myself); but all the other ears have been regaled by all kinds of supernatural sounds. The first night I thought I heard an odd noise, but it has not been repeated. J have now been here more than a month. “ Yours, &c. "

LETTER CCCCLXXI.

TO MR MURRAY.

"Pisa, December 10th, 1821. "This day and this hour (one, on the clock,) my daughter is six years old. I wonder when I shall see her again, or if ever I shall see her at all.

"I have remarked a curious coincidence, which almost looks like a fatality.