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 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 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 seat,
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. "T was 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,
Appear'd and vanish'd (many a sturdy steer

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

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 unspoil'd, 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 afterward, 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 agi-
tated-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 differ-
ent 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 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 visiters 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 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 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 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 farther 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 discre

tionary 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 do n'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