He then remarked the heavy smoke that rolled away from the city, spreading in the distance a vale of mist, through which the golden clouds of evening appeared.

“It is fine,” said Lord Byron, “but no sunsets are to be compared with those of Venice. They are too gorgeous for any painter, and defy any poet. My rides, indeed, would have been nothing without the Venetian sunsets. Ask Shelley.”

“Stand on the marble bridge,” said Shelley, “cast your eye, if you are not dazzled, on its river glowing as with fire, then follow the graceful curve of the palaces on the Lung’ Arno till the arch is naved by the massy dungeon-tower (erroneously called Ugolino’s), forming in dark relief, and tell me if any thing can surpass a sunset at Pisa.”

Calling on Lord Byron one evening after the opera, we happened to talk of Cavalieri Serventi, and Italian women; and he contended that much was to be said in excuse for them, and in defence of the system.

“We will put out of the question,” said he, “a Cavalier Serventecism; that is only another term for prostitution, where the women get all the money they can, and have (as is the case in all such contracts) no love to give in exchange.—I speak of another, and of a different service.”

“Do you know how a girl is brought up here?” continued he. “Almost from infancy she is deprived of the endearments of home, and shut up in a convent till she has attained a marriageable or marketable age. The father now looks out for a suitable son-in-law. As a certain portion of his fortune is fixed by law for the dower of his children, his object is to find some needy man of equal rank, or a very rich one, the older the better, who will consent to take his daughter off his hands, under the market price. This, if she happen to be handsome, is not difficult of accomplishment. Objections are seldom made on the part of the young lady to the age, and personal or other defects of the intended, who perhaps visits her once in the parlour as a matter of form or curiosity. She is too happy to get her liberty on any terms, and he her money or her person. There is no love on either side. What happiness is to be expected, or constancy, from such a liaison? Is it not natural, that in her intercourse with a world, of which she knows and has seen nothing, and unrestrained mistress of her own time and actions, she should find somebody to like better, and who likes her better, than her husband? The Count Guiccioli, for instance, who is the richest man in Romagna, was sixty when he married Teresa; she sixteen. From the first they had separate apartments, and she always used to call him Sir. What could be expected from such a preposterous connexion? For some time she was an Angiolina, and he a Marino Faliero, a good old man; but young women, and your Italian ones too, are not satisfied with your good old men. Love is not the same dull, cold, calculating feeling here as in the North. It is the business, the serious occupation of their lives; it is a want, a necessity. Somebody properly defines a woman, ‘a creature that loves.’ They die of love; particularly the Romans: they begin to love earlier, and feel the passion later than the Northern people. When I was at Venice, two dowa-gers of sixty made love to me.—But to return to the Guiccioli. The old Count did not object to her availing herself of the privileges of her country; an Italian would have reconciled him to the thing: indeed for some time he winked at our intimacy, but at length made an exception against me, as a foreigner, a heretic, an Englishman, and, what was worse than all, a liberal.

“He insisted—the Guiccioli was as obstinate; her family took her part. Catholics cannot get divorces. But, to the scandal of all Romagna, the matter was at length referred to the Pope, who ordered her a separate maintenance, on condition that she should reside under her father’s roof. All this was not agreeable, and at length I was forced to smuggle her out of Ravenna, having disclosed a plot laid with the sanction of the Legate for shutting her up in a convent for life, which she narrowly escaped.—Except Greece, I was never so attached to any place in my life as to Ravenna, and but for the failure of the Constitutionalists and this fracas, should probably never have left it. The peasantry are the best people in the world, and the beauty of their women is extraordinary. Those at Tivoli and Frescati, who are so much vaunted, are mere Sabines, coarse creatures, compared to the Romagnese. You may talk of your English women, and it is true that out of one hundred Italians and English you will find thirty of the latter handsome; but then there will be one Italian on the other side of the scale, who will more than balance the deficit in numbers—one who, like the Florence Venus, has no rival, and can have none in the North. I have learnt more from the peasantry of the countries I have travelled in than from any other source, especially from the women*: they are more intelligent, as well as communicative, than the men. I found also at Ravenna much education and liberality of thinking among the higher classes. The climate is delightful. I was unbroken in upon by society. It lies out of the way of travellers. I was never tired of my rides in the pine-forest: it breathes of the Decameron; it is poetical ground. Francesca * ——“Female hearts are such a genial soil For kinder feeling, whatsoe’er their nation, They generally pour the wine and oil, Samaritans in every situation.” Don Juan, Canto V. Stanza 122. lived, and Dante was exiled and died at Ravenna. There is something inspiring in such an air.*

“The people liked me, as much as they hated the Government. It is not a little to say, I was popular with all the leaders of the Constitutional party. They knew that I came from a land of liberty, and wished well to their cause. I would have espoused it too, and as-

* The following lines will shew the attachment Lord Byron had to the tranquil life he led at Ravenna:

“There was something piquant, and what we term pretty, in Miss Millbank. Her features were small and feminine, though not regular. She had the fairest skin imaginable. Her figure was perfect for her height, and there was a simplicity, a retired modesty about her, which was very characteristic, and formed a happy contrast to the cold artificial formality, and studied stiffness, which is called fashion. She interested me exceedingly. It is unnecessary to detail the progress of our acquaintance. I became daily more attached to her, and it ended in my making her a proposal that was rejected. Her refusal was couched in terms that could not offend me. I was besides persuaded that, in declining my offer, she was governed by the influence of her mother; and was the more confirmed in this opinion by her reviving our correspondence herself twelve months after. The tenor of her letter was, that although she could not love me, she desired my friendship. Friendship is a dangerous word for young ladies; it is Love full-fledged, and waiting for a fine day to fly.

“It had been predicted by Mrs. Williams, that twenty-seven was to be a dangerous age for me. The fortune-telling witch was right; it was destined to prove so. I shall never forget the 2d of January! Lady Byron (Byrn, he pronounced it) was the only unconcerned person present; Lady Noel, her mother, cried; I trembled like a leaf, made the wrong responses, and after the ceremony called her Miss Millbank.

“There is a singular history attached to the ring. The very day the match was concluded, a ring of my mother’s, that had been lost, was dug up by the gardener at Newstead. I thought it was sent on purpose for the wedding; but my mother’s marriage had not been a fortunate one, and this ring was doomed to be the seal of an unhappier union still.*

“After the ordeal was over, we set off for a country-seat of Sir Ralph’s; and I was surprised at the arrangements for the journey, and somewhat out of humour to find a lady’s-maid stuck between me and my bride. It was rather too early to assume the husband; so I was * ————“Save the ring, Which, being the damned’st part of matrimony—” Don Juan, Canto IX. Stanza 70. forced to submit, but it was not with a very good grace. Put yourself in a similar situation, and tell me if I had not some reason to be in the sulks. I have been accused of saying, on getting into the carriage, that I had married Lady Byron out of spite, and because she had refused me twice. Though I was for a moment vexed at her prudery, or whatever you may choose to call it, if I had made so uncavalier, not to say brutal a speech, I am convinced Lady Byron would instantly have left the carriage to me and the maid (I mean the lady’s). She had spirit enough to have done so, and would properly have resented the affront.

“Our honeymoon was not all sunshine; it had its clouds: and Hobhouse has some letters which would serve to explain the rise and fall in the barometer,—but it was never down at zero.

“You tell me the world says I married Miss Millbank for her fortune, because she was a great heiress. All I have ever received, or am likely to receive, (and that has been twice paid back too,) was 10,000l. My own income at this period was small, and somewhat bespoke. Newstead was a very unprofitable estate, and brought me in a bare 1500l. a-year; the Lancashire property was hampered with a law-suit, which has cost me 14,000l., and is not yet finished.

“We had a house in town, gave dinner-parties, had separate carriages, and launched into every sort of extravagance. This could not last long. My wife’s 10,000l. soon melted away. I was beset by duns, and at length an execution was levied, and the bailiffs put in possession of the very beds we had to sleep on. This was no very agreeable state of affairs, no very pleasant scene for Lady Byron to witness; and it was agreed she should pay her father a visit till the storm had blown over, and some arrangements had been made with my creditors. You may suppose on what terms we parted, from the style of a letter she wrote me on the road: you will think it began ridiculously enough,—‘Dear Duck!’*

“Imagine my astonishment to receive, immediately on her arrival in London, a few lines from her father, of a very dry and unaffectionate nature, beginning ‘Sir,’

* Shelley, who knew this story, used to say these two words would look odd in an Italian translation, Anitra carissima.

“I was not so young when my father died, but that I perfectly remember him; and had very early a horror of matrimony, from the sight of domestic broils: this feeling came over me very strongly at my wedding. Something whispered me that I was sealing my own death-warrant. I am a great believer in presentiments. Socrates’ dæmon was no fiction. Monk Lewis had his monitor, and Napoleon many warnings. At the last moment I would have retreated, if I could have done so. I called to mind a friend of mine, who had married a young, beautiful, and rich girl, and yet was miserable. He had strongly urged me against putting my neck in the same yoke: and to shew you how firmly I was resolved to attend to his advice, I betted Hay fifty guineas to one, that I should always remain single. Six years afterwards I sent him the money. The day before I proposed to Lady Byron, I had no idea of doing so.”

After this digression he continued:—

“I lost my father when I was only six years of age. My mother, when she was in a rage with me, (and I gave her cause enough,) used to say, ‘Ah, you little dog, you are a Byron all over; you are as bad as your father!’ It was very different from Mrs. Malaprop’s saying, ‘Ah! good dear Mr. Malaprop, I never loved him till he was dead.’ But, in fact, my father was, in his youth, any thing but a ‘Caelebs in search of a wife.’ He would have made a bad hero for Hannah More. He ran out three fortunes, and married or ran away with three women, and once wanted a guinea, that he wrote for; I have the note. He seemed born for his own ruin, and that of the other sex. He began by seducing Lady Carmarthen, and spent for her 4000l. a-year; and not content with one adventure of this kind, afterwards eloped with Miss Gordon. His marriage was not destined to be a very fortunate one either, and I don’t wonder at her differing from Sheridan’s widow in the play. They certainly could not have claimed the flitch.

“The phrenologists tell me that other lines besides that of thought, (the middle of three horizontal lines on his forehead, on which he prided himself,) are strongly developed in the hinder part of my cranium; particularly that called philoprogenitiveness*. I

* He appears to have mistaken the meaning of this word in the vocabulary of the Craniologists, as in Don Juan.

“I always took great delight,” observed he, “in the English Cathedral service. It cannot fail to inspire every man, who feels at all, with devotion. Notwithstanding which, Christianity is not the best source of inspiration for a poet. No poet should be tied down to a direct profession of faith. Metaphysics open a vast field; Nature, and anti-Mosaical speculations on the origin of the world, a wide range, and sources of poetry that are shut out by Christianity.”

I advanced Tasso and Milton.

“Tasso and Milton,” replied he, “wrote on Christian subjects, it is true; but how did they treat them? The ‘Jerusalem Delivered’ deals little in Christian doctrines, and the ‘Paradise Lost’ makes use of the heathen mythology, which is surely scarcely allowable. Milton discarded papacy, and adopted no creed in its room; he never attended divine worship.

“They were devotedly attached to me, and watched me day and night. I am more indebted to a good constitution for having got over this attack, than to the drugs of an ignorant Turk, who called himself a physician. He would have been glad to have disowned the name, and resigned his profession too, if he could have escaped from the responsibility of attending me; for my Albanians came the Grand Signior over him, and threatened that if I were not entirely recovered at a certain hour on a certain day, they would take his life. They are not people to make idle threats, and would have carried them into execution had any thing happened to me. You may imagine the fright the poor devil of a Doctor was in; and I could not help smiling at the ludicrous way in which his fears shewed themselves. I believe he was more pleased at my recovery than either my faithful nurses, or myself. I had no intention of dying at that time; but if I had died, the same story would have been told of me as was related to have happened to Colonel Sherbrooke in America. On the very day my fever was at the highest, a friend of mine declared that he saw me in St. James’s Street; and somebody put my name down in the book at the Palace, as having enquired after the King’s health.

“The players retrenched, transposed, and even altered the text, to suit the audience or please themselves. Who knows how much rust they rubbed off? I am sure there is rust and base metal to spare left in the old plays. When Leigh Hunt comes we shall have battles enough about those old ruffiani, the old dramatists, with their tiresome conceits, their jingling rhymes, and endless play upon words. It is but lately that people have been satisfied that Shakspeare was not a god, nor stood alone in the age in which he lived; and yet how few of the plays, even of that boasted time, have survived, and fewer still are now acted! Let us count them. Only one of Massinger’s (New Way to pay Old Debts), one of Ford’s,* one of Ben Jonson’s,* and half-a-dozen of Shakspeare’s; and of these last, ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’ and ‘The Tempest’ have been turned into operas. You cannot call that having a theatre. Now that Kemble has left the stage, who will endure Coriolanus? Lady Macbeth died with Mrs. Siddons, and Polonius will with Munden. Shakspeare’s Comedies are quite out of date; many of them are insufferable to read, much more to see. They are gross food, only fit for an English or German palate;

* Of which I have forgot the name he mentioned.

“I am becoming more weaned from it every day,” said he after a pause, “and have had enough to wean me from it!—No! Lady Byron will not make it up with me now, lest the world should say that her mother only was to blame! Lady Noel certainly identifies herself very strongly in the quarrel, even by the account of her last injunctions; for she directs in her will that my portrait, shut up in a case by her orders, shall not be opened till her grand-daughter be of age, and then not given to her if Lady Byron should be alive.

“I might have claimed all the fortune for my life, if I had chosen to have done so; but have agreed to leave the division of it to Lord Dacre and Sir Francis Burdett. The whole management of the affair is confided to them; and I shall not interfere, or make any suggestion or objection, if they award Lady Byron the whole.”

I asked him how he became entitled?

“The late Lord Wentworth,” said he, “bequeathed a life interest in his Lancashire estates to Lady Byron’s mother, and afterwards to her daughter: that is the way I claim.”

Some time after, when the equal partition had been settled, he said:

“I have offered Lady Byron the family mansion in addition to the award, but she has declined it: this is not kind.”

The feeling with which he recited these admirable stanzas, I shall never forget. After he had come to an end, he repeated the third, and said it was perfect, particularly the lines “But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him.”

“I should have taken,” said Shelley, “the whole for a rough sketch of Campbell’s.”

“No,” replied Lord Byron: “Campbell would have claimed it, if it had been his.”

I afterwards had reason to think that the ode was Lord Byron’s;* that he was piqued at none of his own being mentioned; and, after he had praised the verses so highly, could not own them. No other reason can be assigned for his not acknowledging himself the author, particularly as he was a great admirer of General Moore.

“Murray published a letter I wrote to him from Venice, which might have seemed an idle display of vanity; but the object of my writing it was to contradict what Turner had asserted about the impossibility of crossing the Hellespont from the Abydos to the Sestos side, in consequence of the tide.

“One is as easy as the other; we did both.” Here he turned round to Fletcher, to whom he occasionally referred, and said, “Fletcher, how far was it Mr. Ekenhead and I swam?” Fletcher replied, “Three miles and a half, my Lord.” (Of course he did not diminish the distance.) “The real width of the Hellespont,” resumed Lord Byron, “is not much above a mile; but the current is prodigiously strong, and we were carried down notwithstanding all our efforts. I don’t know how Leander contrived to stem the stream, and steer straight across; but nothing is impossible in love or religion. If I had had a Hero on the other side, perhaps I should have worked harder. We were to have undertaken this feat some time before, but put it off in consequence of the coldness of the water; and it was chilly enough when we performed it. I know I should have made a bad Leander, for it gave me an ague that I did not so easily get rid of. There were some sailors in the fleet who swam further than I did—I do not say than I could have done, for it is the only exercise I pride myself upon, being almost amphibious.

“I remember being at Brighton many years ago, and having great difficulty in making the land,—the wind blowing off the shore, and the tide setting out. Crowds of people were collected on the beach to see us. Mr. —— (I think he said Hobhouse) was with me; and,” he added, “I had great difficulty in saving him—he nearly drowned me.

“When I was at Venice, there was an Italian who knew no more of swimming than a camel, but he had heard of my prowess in the Dardanelles, and challenged me. Not wishing that any foreigner at least should beat me at my own arms, I consented to engage in the contest. Alexander Scott proposed to be of the party, and we started from Lido. Our land-lubber was very soon in the rear, and Scott saw him make for a Gondola. He rested himself first against one, and then against another, and gave in before we got half way to St. Mark’s Place. We saw no more of him, but continued our course through the Grand Canal, landing at my palace-stairs. The water of the Lagunes is dull, and not very clear or agreeable to bathe in. I can keep myself up for hours in the sea: I delight in it, and come out with a buoyancy of spirits I never feel on any other occasion.

“If I believed in the transmigration of your Hindoos, I should think I had been a Merman in some former state of existence, or was going to be turned into one in the next.”

“I remember Hogg the Ettrick Shepherd telling me, many years ago, that I should never be able to condense my powers of writing sufficiently for the stage, and that the fault of all my plays would be their being too long for acting. The remark occurred to me when I was about ‘Marino Faliero;’ but I thought it unnecessary to try and contradict his prediction, as I did not study stage-effect, and meant it solely for the closet. So much was I averse from its being acted, that, the moment I heard of the intention of the Managers, I applied for an injunction; but the Chancellor refused to interfere, or issue an order for suspending the representation. It was

* He gave me the copy, with the number of lines marked with his own pencil. I have left it in England.

“I had once an idea of following the Arminian Scriptures, and making Cain’s crime proceed from jealousy, and love of his uterine sister; but, though a more probable cause of dispute, I abandoned it as unorthodox.

“One mistake crept in,—Abel’s should have been made the first sacrifice: and it is singular that the first form of religious worship should have induced the first murder.

“Hobhouse has denounced ‘Cain’ as irreligious, and has penned me a most furious epistle, urging me not to publish it, as I value my reputation or his friendship. He contends that it is a work I should not have ventured to have put my name to in the days of Pope, Churchill, and Johnson, (a curious trio!) Hobhouse used to write good verses once himself, but he seems to have forgotten what poetry is in others, when he says my ‘Cain’ reminds him of the worst bombast of Dryden’s. Shelley, who is no bad judge of the compositions of others, however he may fail in procuring success for his own, is most sensitive and indignant at this critique, and says (what is not the case) that ‘Cain’ is the finest thing I ever wrote, calls it worthy of Milton, and backs it against Hobhouse’s poetical Trinity.

Dining with him another day, the subject of private theatricals was introduced.

“I am very fond of a private theatre,” said he. “I remember myself and some friends at Cambridge getting up a play; and that reminds me of a thing which happened, that was very provoking in itself, but very humorous in its consequences.

“On the day of representation, one of the performers took it into his head to make an excuse, and his part was obliged to be read. Hobhouse came forward to apologize to the audience, and told them that a Mr. —— had declined to perform his part, &c. The gentleman was highly indignant at the ‘a,’ and had a great inclination to pick a quarrel with Scroope Davies, who replied, that he supposed Mr. —— wanted to be called the Mr. so and so. He ever after went by the name of the ‘Definite Article.’

“After this preface, to be less indefinite, suppose we were to get up a play. My hall, which is the largest in Tuscany, would make a capital theatre; and we may send to Florence for an audience, if we cannot fill it here. And as to decorations, nothing is easier in any part of Italy than to get them: besides that, Williams will assist us.”

It was accordingly agreed that we should commence with “Othello.” Lord Byron was to be Iago. Orders were to be given for the fitting up of the stage, preparing the dresses, &c., and rehearsals of a few scenes took place. Perhaps Lord Byron would have made the finest actor in the world. His voice had a flexibility, a variety in its tones, a power and pathos beyond any I ever heard; and his countenance was capable of expressing the tenderest, as well as the strongest emotions. I shall never forget his reading Iago’s part in the handkerchief scene.

“Shakspeare was right,” said he, after he had finished, “in making Othello’s jealousy turn upon that circumstance.* The handkerchief is the strongest proof of

* Calderon says, in the Cisma de l’ Inglaterra, (I have not the original,) “She gave me, too, a handkerchief,—a spell— A flattering pledge, my hopes to animate— An astrologic favour—fatal prize That told too true what tears must weep these eyes!”

“Kean began by acting Richard the Third when quite a boy, and gave all the promise of what he afterwards became. His Sir Giles Overreach was a wonderful performance. The actresses were afraid of him; and he was afterwards so much exhausted himself, that he fell into fits. This, I am told, was the case with Miss O’Neil.*

“Kemble did much towards the reform of our stage. Classical costume was almost unknown before he undertook to revise the dresses. Garrick used to act Othello in a red coat and epaulettes, and other characters had prescriptive habits equally ridiculous. I can conceive nothing equal to Kemble’s Coriolanus; and he looked the Roman so well, that even ‘Cato,’ cold and stiltish as it is, had a run. That shews what an actor can do for a play! If he had acted ‘Marino Faliero,’ its fate would have been very different.

“Kemble pronounced several words affectedly, which should be cautiously avoided on the stage. It is no-

* And he might have added Pasta.

“‘The leprosy of lust’ I discover, too, is not mine. ‘Thou tremblest,’—‘’Tis with age then,’ which I am accused of borrowing from Otway, was taken from the Old Bailey proceedings. Some judge observed to the witness, ‘Thou tremblest;’—‘’Tis with cold then,’ was the reply.

“These Specimens of Lamb’s I never saw till today. I am taxed with being a plagiarist, when I am least conscious of being one; but I am not very scrupulous, I own, when I have a good idea, how I came into possession of it. How can we tell to what extent Shakspeare is indebted to his contemporaries, whose works are now lost? Besides which, Cibber adapted his plays to the stage.

“The invocation of the witches was, we know, a servile plagiarism from Middleton. Authors were not so squeamish about borrowing from one another in those days. If it be a fault, I do not pretend to be immaculate. I will lend you some volumes of Shipwrecks, from which my storm in ‘Don Juan’ came.

“Lend me also ‘Casti’s Novelle,’” said I. “Did you never see in Italian,—

“In less than a year and a half it passed through four editions, and rather large ones. To some of them, contrary to the advice of my friends, I affixed my name. The thing was known to be mine, and I could not have escaped any enemies in not owning it; besides, it was more manly not to deny it. There were many things in that satire which I was afterwards sorry for, and I wished to cancel it. If Galignani chose to reprint it, it was no fault of mine. I did my utmost to suppress the publication, not only in England, but in Ireland. I will tell you my principal reason for doing so: I had good grounds to believe that Jeffrey (though perhaps really responsible for whatever appears in ‘The Edinburgh,’ as Gifford is for ‘The Quarterly,’ as its editor) was not the author of that article,—was not guilty of it. He disowned it; and though he would not give up the aggressor, he said he would convince me, if I ever came to Scotland, who the person was. I have every reason to believe it was a certain lawyer, who hated me for something I once said of Mrs. ——. The technical language about ‘minority pleas,’ ‘plaintiffs,’ ‘grounds of action,’ &c. a jargon only intelligible to a lawyer, leaves no doubt in my mind on the subject. I bear no animosity to him now, though, independently of this lampoon, which does him no credit, he gave me cause enough of offence.

“The occasion was this:—In my separation-cause, that went before the Chancellor as a matter of form, when the proceedings came on, he took upon himself to apply some expressions, or make some allusions to me, which must have been of a most unwarrantable nature, as my friends consulted whether they should acquaint me with the purport of them. What they precisely were I never knew, or should certainly have made him retract them. I met him afterwards at Coppet, but was not at that time acquainted with this circumstance. He took on himself the advocate also, in writing to Madame de Staël, and advising her not to meddle in the quarrel between Lady Byron and myself. This was not kind; it was a gratuitous and unfeed act of hostility. But there was another reason that influenced me even more than my cooled resentment against Jeffrey, to suppress ‘English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.’ In the duel-scene I had unconsciously made part of the ridicule fall on Moore. The fact was, that there was no imputation on the courage of either of the principals. One of the balls fell out in the carriage, and was lost; and the seconds, not having a further supply, drew the remaining one.

“Shortly after this publication I went abroad: and Moore was so offended by the mention of the leadless pistols, that he addressed a letter to me in the nature of a challenge, delivering it to the care of Mr. Hanson, but without acquainting him with the contents. This letter was mislaid,—at least never forwarded to me.

“‘Heaven and Earth’ was commenced,” said he, “at Ravenna, on the 9th October last. It occupied about fourteen days. Douglas Kinnaird tells me that he can get no bookseller to publish it. It was offered to Murray, but he is the most timid of God’s booksellers, and starts at the title. He has taken a dislike to that three-syllabled word Mystery, and says, I know not why, that it is another ‘Cain.’ I suppose he does not like my making one of Cain’s daughters talk the same language as her father’s father, and has a prejudice against the family. I could not make her so unnatural as to speak ill of her grandfather. I was forced to make her aristocratical, proud of her descent from the eldest born. Murray says, that whoever prints it will have it pirated, as ‘Cain’ has been,—that a Court of justice will not sanction it as literary property. On what plea? There is nothing objectionable in it, that I am aware of. You have read it; what do you think? If ‘Cain’ be immoral (which I deny), will not the Chancellor’s refusal to protect, and the cheapness of a piratical edition, give it a wider circulation among the lower classes? Will they not buy and read it for the very reason that it is considered improper, and try to discover an evil tendency where it was least meant? May not impiety be extracted by garbling the Bible? I defy the common people to understand such mysteries as the loves of the Angels, at least they are mysteries to me. Moore, too, is writing on the same text. Any thing that he writes must succeed.”

I told him that the laughter of the fiends in the Cave of Caucasus reminded me of the row of the Furies in the ‘Eumenides’ of Aeschylus.

“I have never read any of his plays since I left Harrow,” said Lord Byron. “Shelley, when I was in Switzerland, translated the ‘Prometheus’ to me before I wrote my ode; but I never open a Greek book. Shelley tells me that the choruses in ‘Heaven and Earth’ are deficient. He thinks that lyrical poetry should be metrically regular. Surely this is not the case with the Greek choruses that he makes such a fuss about. However, Hunt will be glad of it for his new periodical work. I talked of writing a second part to it; but it was only as Coleridge promised a second part to ‘Christabel.’ I will tell you how I had an idea of finishing it:

“Let me see—where did I leave off? Oh, with Azazael and Samiasa refusing to obey the summons of Michael, and throwing off their allegiance to Heaven. They rise into the air with the two sisters, and leave this globe to a fate which, according to Cuvier, it has often undergone, and will undergo again. The appearance of the land strangled by the ocean will serve by way of scenery and decorations. The affectionate tenderness of Adah for those from whom she is parted, and for ever, and her fears contrasting with the loftier spirit of Aholibamah triumphing in the hopes of a new and greater destiny, will make the dialogue. They in the mean time continue their aerial voyage, every where denied admittance in those floating islands on the sea of space, and driven back by guardian-spirits of the different planets, till they are at length forced to alight on the only peak of the earth uncovered by water. Here a parting takes place between the lovers, which I shall make affecting enough. The fallen Angels are suddenly called, and condemned,—their destination and punishment unknown. The sisters still cling to the rock, the waters mounting higher and higher. Now enter Ark. The scene draws up, and discovers Japhet endeavouring to persuade the Patriarch, with very strong arguments of love and pity, to receive the sisters, or at least Adah, on board. Adah joins in his entreaties, and endeavours to cling to the sides of the vessel. The proud and haughty Aholibamah scorns to pray either to God or man, and anticipates the grave by plunging into the waters. Noah is still inexorable. The surviving daughter of Cain is momentarily in danger of perishing before the eyes of the Arkites. Japhet is in despair. The last wave sweeps her from the rock, and her lifeless corpse floats past in all its beauty, whilst a sea-bird screams over it, and seems to be the spirit of her angel lord. I once thought of conveying the lovers to the moon, or one of the planets; but it is not easy for the imagination to make any unknown world more beautiful than this; besides, I did not think they would approve of the moon as a residence. I remember what Fontenelle said of its having no atmosphere, and the dark spots being caverns where the inhabitants reside. There was another objection: all the human interest would have been destroyed, which I have even endeavoured to give my Angels. It was a very Irish kind of compliment Jeffrey paid to Moore’s ‘Lalla Rookh,’ when he said the loves were those of Angels; meaning that they were like nothing on earth. What will he say of ‘The Loves of the Angels?’—that they are like (for he has nothing left) nothing in Heaven?”

“You see I am true to Nature in making the advances come from the females. I shall next draw a town and country life at home, which will give me room for life, manners, scenery, &c. I will make him neither a dandy in town nor a fox-hunter in the country. He shall get into all sorts of scrapes, and at length end his career in France. Poor Juan shall be guillotined in the French Revolution! What do you think of my plot? It shall have twenty-four books too, the legitimate number. Episodes it has, and will have, out of number; and my spirits, good or bad, must serve for the machinery. If that be not an epic, if it be not strictly according to Aristotle, I don’t know what an epic poem means.”

Lord Byron wrote the same day the letter contained in the Notes on ‘Cain.’ Some months afterwards he said in a letter:

“Murray and I have dissolved all connection. He had the choice of giving up me or the ‘Navy Lists.’ There was no hesitation which way he should decide: the Admiralty carried the day. Now for ‘The Quarterly:’ their batteries will be opened; but I can fire broadsides too. They have been letting off lots of squibs and crackers against me, but they only make a noise and *    *    *”

In a letter dated from Genoa the 5th of May, 1823, he says:

“‘Werner’ was the last book Murray published for me, and three months after came out the Quarterly’s article on my plays, when ‘Marino Faliero’ was noticed for the first time,” &c.

“I need not say that I shall be delighted by your inscribing your ‘Wanderer’ to me; but I would recommend you to think twice before you inscribe a work to me, as you must be aware that at present I am the most unpopular writer going*, and the odium on the dedicatee may recur on the dedicator. If you do not think this a valid objection, of course there can be none on my part,” &c.

“I was very much amused with Coleridge’s ‘Memoirs.’ There is a great deal of bonhommie in that book, and he does not spare himself. Nothing, to me at least, is so entertaining as a work of this kind—as private biography: ‘Hamilton’s Memoirs,’ for instance, that were the origin of the style of Voltaire. Madame de Staël used to say, that ‘De Grammont’ was a book containing, with less matter, more interest than any she knew. Alfieri’s ‘Life’ is delightful. You will see my Confessions in good time, and you will wonder at two things—that I should have had so much to confess, and that I should have confessed so much. Coleridge, too, seems sensible enough of his own errors. His sonnet to the Moon is an admirable burlesque on the Lakists, and his own style. Some of his stories are told with a vast deal of humour, and display a fund of good temper that all his disappointments could not sour. Many parts of his ‘Memoirs’ are quite unintelligible, and were, I apprehend, meant for Kant; on the proper pronunciation of whose name I heard a long argument the other evening.

“Coleridge is like Sosia in ‘Amphytrion;’—he does not know whether he is himself, or not. If he had never gone to Germany, nor spoilt his fine genius by the tran-scendental philosophy and German metaphysics, nor taken to write lay sermons, he would have made the greatest poet of the day. What poets had we in 1795? Hayley had got a monopoly, such as it was. Coleridge might have been any thing: as it is, he is a thing ‘that dreams are made of.’”

“I will myself,” said he, “write immediately to Lord Guilford.”

He did so, and received an answer a few hours after, telling him that the same report had reached Lord Guilford; but that he had learned, on investigation, that it was unfounded.

It appeared that the Duchess had issued a proclamation which made the peasant amenable, when apprehended, to the ancient laws of Spain; but that he had escaped to Florence and given himself up to the police, who had stipulated not to make him over to the authorities at Lucca, but on condition of his being tried by the Tuscan laws.

“To the great horror of the former, she soon sported her Ultraisms. No one possessed so little tact as Madame de Staël,—which is astonishing in one who had seen so much of the world and of society. She used to assemble at her routs politicians of both sides of the House, and was fond of setting two party-men by the ears in argument. I once witnessed a curious scene of this kind. She was battling it very warmly, as she used to do, with Canning, and all at once turned round to (I think he said) Lord Grey, who was at his elbow, for his opinion. It was on some point upon which he could not but most cordially disagree. She did not understand London society, and was always sighing for her coterie at Paris. The dandies took an invincible dislike to the De Staëls, mother and daughter. Brummel was her aversion;—she, his. There was a double marriage talked of in town that season:—Auguste (the present Baron) was to have married Miss Millbank; I, the present Duchess of Broglio. I could not have been worse embroiled.

“Madame de Staël had great talent in conversation, and an overpowering flow of words. It was once said of a large party that were all trying to shine, ‘There is not one who can go home and think.’ This was not the case with her. She was often troublesome, some thought rude, in her questions; but she never offended me, because I knew that her inquisitiveness did not proceed from idle curiosity, but from a wish to sound people’s characters. She was a continual interrogatory to me, in order to fathom mine, which requires a long plumb line. She once asked me if my real character was well drawn in a favourite novel of the day (’Glenarvon’). She was only singular in putting the question in the dry way she did. There are many who pin their faith on that insincere production.

“No woman had so much bonne foi as Madame de Staël: hers was a real kindness of heart. She took the greatest possible interest in my quarrel with Lady Byron, or rather Lady Byron’s with me, and had some influence over my wife,—as much as any person but her mother, which is not saying much. I believe Madame de Staël did her utmost to bring about a reconciliation between us. She was the best creature in the world.

“Women never see consequences—never look at things straight forward, or as they ought. Like figurantes at the Opera, they make a hundred pirouettes and return to where they set out. With Madame de Staël this was sometimes the case. She was very indefinite and vague in her manner of expression. In endeavouring to be new she became often obscure, and sometimes unintelligible. What did she mean by saying that ‘Napoleon was a system, and not a man?’

“I cannot believe that Napoleon was acquainted with all the petty persecutions that she used to be so garrulous about, or that he deemed her of sufficient importance to be dangerous: besides, she admired him so much, that he might have gained her over by a word. But, like me, he had perhaps too great a contempt for women; he treated them as puppets, and thought he could make them dance at any time by pulling the wires. That story of ‘Gardez vos enfans’ did not tell much in her favour, and proves what I say. I shall be curious to see Las Cases’ book, to hear what Napoleon’s real conduct to her was.”

I told him I could never reconcile the contradictory opinions he had expressed of Napoleon in his poems.

“Cælum ipsum petimus stultitid,” said I.

“There is not so much folly as you may suppose, and a vast deal of poetry, in the idea,” replied Lord Byron. “Where shall we set bounds to the power of steam? Who shall say, ‘Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther?’ We are at present in the infancy of science. Do you imagine that, in former stages of this planet, wiser creatures than ourselves did not exist? All our boasted inventions are but the shadows of what has been,—the dim images of the past—the dream of other states of existence. Might not the fable of Prometheus, and his stealing the fire, and of Briareus and his earth-born brothers, be but traditions of steam and its machinery? Who knows whether, when a comet shall approach this globe to destroy it, as it often has been and will be destroyed, men will not tear rocks from their foundations by means of steam, and hurl mountains, as the giants are said to have done, against the flaming mass?—and then we shall have traditions of Titans again, and of wars with Heaven.”

“A mighty ingenious theory,” said I laughing,—and was near adding, in the words of ‘Julian and Maddalo’:

“There were two stories which he almost believed by telling. One happened to himself whilst he was residing at Manheim. Every night, at the same hour, he heard or thought he heard in his room, when he was lying in bed, a crackling noise like that produced by parchment, or thick paper. This circumstance caused enquiry, when it was told him that the sounds were attributable to the following cause:—The house in which he lived had belonged to a widow, who had an only son. In order to prevent his marrying a poor but amiable girl, to whom he was attached, he was sent to sea. Years passed, and the mother heard no tidings of him, nor the ship in which he had sailed. It was supposed that the vessel had been wrecked, and that all on board had perished. The reproaches of the girl, the upbraidings of her own conscience, and the loss of her child, crazed the old lady’s mind, and her only pursuit became to turn over the Gazettes for news. Hope at length left her: she did not live long,—and continued her old occupation after death.

“The other story that I alluded to before, was the original of his ‘Alonzo and Imogene,’ which has had such a host of imitators. Two Florentine lovers, who had been attached to each other almost from childhood, made a vow of eternal fidelity. Mina was the name of the lady—her husband’s I forget, but it is not material. They parted. He had been for some time absent with his regiment, when, as his disconsolate lady was sitting alone in her chamber, she distinctly heard the well-known sound of his footsteps, and starting up beheld, not her husband, but his spectre, with a deep ghastly wound across his forehead, entering. She swooned with horror: when she recovered, the ghost told her that in future his visits should be announced by a passing-bell, and these words, distinctly whispered, ‘Mina, I am here!’ Their interviews now became frequent, till the woman fancied herself as much in love with the ghost as she had been with the man. But it was soon to prove otherwise. One fatal night she went to a ball:—what business had she there? She danced too; and, what was worse, her partner was a young Florentine, so much the counter-part of her lover, that she became estranged from his ghost. Whilst the young gallant conducted her in the waltz, and her ear drank in the music of his voice and words, a passing-bell tolled! She had been accustomed to the sound till it hardly excited her attention, and now lost in the attractions of her fascinating partner, she heard but regarded it not. A second peal!—she listened not to its warnings. A third time the bell, with its deep and iron tongue, startled the assembled company, and silenced the music! Mina then turned her eyes from her partner, and saw reflected in the mirror, a form, a shadow, a spectre: it was her husband! He was standing between her and the young Florentine, and whispered in a solemn and melancholy tone the accustomed accents, ‘Mina, I am here!’—She instantly fell dead.

“Lewis was not a very successful writer. His ‘Monk’ was abused furiously by Matthias, in his ‘Pursuits of Literature,’ and he was forced to suppress it. ‘Abellino’ he merely translated. ‘Pizarro’ was a sore subject with him, and no wonder that he winced at the name. Sheridan, who was not very scrupulous about applying to himself literary property at least, manufactured his play without so much as an acknowledgment, pecuniary or otherwise, from Lewis’s ideas; and bad as ‘Pizarro’ is, I know (from having been on the Drury-Lane Committee, and knowing, consequently, the comparative profits of plays,) that it brought in more money than any other play has ever done, or perhaps ever will do.

“There was a time when he would have written better; but perhaps Peter thinks feelingly.

“The republican trio, when they began to publish in common, were to have had a community of all things, like the ancient Britons; to have lived in a state of nature, like savages, and peopled some ‘island of the blest’ with children in common, like ——. A very pretty Arcadian notion! It amuses me much to compare the Botany Bay Eclogue, the Panegyric of Martin the Regicide, and ‘Wat Tyler,’ with the Laureate Odes, and Peter’s Eulogium on the Field of Waterloo. There is something more than rhyme in that noted stanza containing ‘Yea, slaughter Is God’s daughter!’*—

“I offended the par nobile mortally,—past all hope of forgiveness—many years ago. I met, at the Cumberland

* Wordsworth’s Thanksgiving Ode.

“Of all the disgraces that attach to England in the eye of foreigners, who admire Pope more than any of our poets, (though it is the fashion to under-rate him among ourselves,) the greatest perhaps is, that there should be no place assigned to him in Poets’ Corner. I have often thought of erecting a monument to him at my own expense, in Westminster Abbey; and hope to do so yet. But he was a Catholic, and, what was worse, puzzled Tillotson and the Divines. That accounts for his not having any national monument. Milton, too, had very nearly been without a stone; and the mention of his name on the tomb of another was at one time considered a profanation to a church. The French, I am told, lock up Voltaire’s tomb. Will there never be an end to this bigotry? Will men never learn that every great poet is necessarily a religious man?—so at least Coleridge says.”

“Yes,” replied Shelley; “and he might maintain the converse,—that every truly religious man is a poet; meaning by poetry the power of communicating intense and impassioned impressions respecting man and Nature.”

When I entered the room, Lord Byron was devouring, as he called it, a new novel of Sir Walter Scott’s.

“How difficult it is,” said he, “to say any thing new! Who was that voluptuary of antiquity, who offered a reward for a new pleasure? Perhaps all nature and art could not supply a new idea.

“This page, for instance, is a brilliant one; it is full of wit. But let us see how much of it is original. This passage, for instance, comes from Shakspeare; this bon mot from one of Sheridan’s Comedies; this observation from another writer (naming the author); and yet the ideas are new-moulded,—and perhaps Scott was not aware of their being plagiarisms. It is a bad thing to have too good a memory.”

“I should not like to have you for a critic,” I observed.

“‘Set a thief to catch a thief,’” was the reply.

“I never travel without Scott’s Novels,” said he: “they are a library in themselves—a perfect literary treasure. I could read them once a-year with new pleasure.”

“You are very hard upon the dead* poet,—upon the late lamented Mr. Samuel Rogers, (as he has been called,)—and upon me too, to suspect me of speaking ironically upon so serious a subject.”

“It was a very doubtful expression, however, that ‘Nestor of little poets,’” rejoined the other. “Compliments ought never to have a double sense—a cross meaning. And you seem to be fond of this mode of writing, for you call Lady Morgan’s ‘Italy’ a fearless and excellent work. What two odd words to be coupled together!”

“Take it as you like,” replied Lord Byron, “I say the ‘Pleasures of Memory’ will live.”

“The Pleasures of Mummery! Pray now, (speak can-

* He used to tell a story of Rogers and —— visiting the Catacombs at Paris together. As Rogers, who was last, was making his exit, —— said to him, “Why, you are not coming out, are you? Surely you are not tired of your countrymen! You don’t mean to forsake them, do you?”

“I have often wished,” said I to Lord Byron one day, “to know how you passed your time after your return from Greece in 1812.”

“There is little to be said about it,” replied he. “Perhaps it would have been better had I never returned! I had become so much attached to the Morea, its climate, and the life I led there, that nothing but my mother’s death* and my affairs would have brought me home. However, after an absence of three years, behold! I was again in London. My Second Canto of ‘Childe Harold’ was then just published; and the impersonation of myself, which, in spite of all I could say, the world would discover in that poem, made every one curious to know me, and to discover the identity. I received every where a marked attention, was courted in all societies, made much of by Lady Jersey, had the entré at Devonshire-house, was in favour with Brummel, (and that was alone enough to make a man of fashion at that time;) in fact, I was a lion—a ball-room bard—a hot-pressed darling! ‘The Corsair’ put my reputation au comble, and

* In August 1811.

“You tell me that the Baron Lutzerode has been asking you for some authentic particulars of my life, to affix to his translation of ‘Cain,’ and thus contradict the German stories circulated about me, and which, I understand, even Goëthe believes. Why don’t you write something for him, Medwin? I believe you know more of me than any one else,—things even that are not in the book.”

I said, “My friend the Baron is a great enthusiast about you, and I am sure you would like him.”

“Taafe told me the other day,” he replied, “a noble trait of him, which perhaps you have not heard, and which makes me highly respect him. An only child of his was dangerously ill of a malignant fever: it was supposed by the physicians that he might be saved by bleeding, but blood would not follow the lancet, and the Baron breathed the vein with his mouth. The boy died, and the father took the contagion, and was near following his child to the grave.”

“Well then,” said I, “shall I bring the Baron?”

“I have declined,” replied Lord Byron, “going to Court; and as he belongs to it, must also decline his visit. I neither like princes nor their satellites; though the Grand Duke is a very respectable tyrant—a kind of Leopold. I will make my peace with your amiable friend by sending him a ‘Cain’ and ‘Don Juan’ as a present, and adding to the first page of the latter an impression of my seal, with the motto ‘Elle vous suit partout.’* This will please a German sentimentalist.”

“There is an acquaintance of mine here,” said I, “who has made a translation of a passage in De la Martine, relating to you, which I will shew you. He compares you to an eagle feeding on human hearts, and lapping their blood, &c.”

“Why, we have got a little nest of singing birds here,” said he; “I should like to see it. I never met with the ‘ Méditations Poétiques:’ bring it to-morrow.”

The next day I shewed him the lines, which he compared with the original, and said they were admi-

* See ‘Don Juan,’ Canto I. Stanza 198.

I remarked that ‘Hyperion’ was a fine fragment, and a proof of his poetical genius.

“‘Hyperion!’” said he: “why, a man might as well pretend to be rich who had one diamond. ‘Hyperion’ indeed! ‘Hyperion’ to a satyr! Why, there is a fine line in Lord Thurlow (looking to the West that was gloriously golden with the sunset) which I mean to borrow some day: ‘And all that gorgeous company of clouds’—

“Do you think they will suspect me of taking from Lord Thurlow?”

“Because he wrote,” said Lord Byron, “in order to get the situation at the Brazils, and did not know a word of Portuguese when he commenced.”

“Moore was suspected of assisting his Lordship,” said I. “Was that so?”

“I am told not,” said Lord Byron. “They are great friends; and when Moore was in difficulty about the Bermuda affair, in which he was so hardly used, Lord Strangford offered to give him 500l.; but Moore had too much independence to lay himself under an obligation. I know no man I would go further to serve than Moore.

“‘The Fudge Family’ pleases me as much as any of his works. The letter which he versified at the end was given him by Douglas Kinnaird and myself, and was addressed by the Life-guardsman, after the battle of Waterloo, to Big Ben. Witty as Moore’s epistle is, it falls short of the original. ‘Doubling up the Mounseers in brass,’ is not so energetic an expression as was used by our hero,—all the alliteration is lost.

“Moore is one of the few writers who will survive the age in which he so deservedly flourishes. He will live in his ‘Irish Melodies;’ they will go down to posterity with the music; both will last as long as Ireland, or as music and poetry.”

“His Lordship, hearing the order given for their arrest, spurred on his horse, and one of the party did the same; and they succeeded in forcing their way through the soldiers, who flew to their muskets and bayonets, whilst the gate was closed on the rest, together with the courier, who was foremost.

“Mr. Trelawney now found his horse seized by the bridle by two soldiers, with their swords drawn, and himself furiously assaulted by the hussar, who made several cuts at him with his sabre, whilst the soldiers struck him about the thighs. He and his companions were all unarmed, and asked this madman the reason of his conduct; but his only reply was blows.

“Mr. Shelley received a sabre-stroke on the head, which threw him off his horse. Captain Hay, endeavouring to parry a blow with a stick that he used as a whip, the edge of the weapon cut it in two, and he received a wound on his nose. The courier also suffered severely from several thrusts he received from the hussar and the rest of the soldiers. After all this, the hussar spurred on his horse, and took the road to the Lung’ Arno.

“When his Lordship reached the palace, he gave directions to his secretary to give immediate information to the police of what was going on; and, not seeing his companions come up, turned back towards the gate. On the way he met the hussar, who rode up to him, saying, ‘Are you satisfied?’ His Lordship, who knew nothing or hardly any thing of the affray that had taken place at the gate, answered, ‘No, I am not! Tell me your name!’—‘Serjeant-Major Masi,’ said he. One of his Lordship’s servants came up at the moment, and laid hold of the bridle of the Serjeant’s horse. His Lordship commanded him to let it go; when the Serjeant spurred his horse, and rushed through an immense crowd collected before the Lanfranchi palace, where, as he deposes, he was wounded and his chaco found, but how or by whom they knew not, seeing that they were either in the rear or in their way home. They had further to depose that Captain Hay was confined to his house by reason of his wound; also that the courier had spit blood from the thrust he received in the breast, as might be proved by the evidence of the surgeons.”

18th August, 1822.—On the occasion of Shelley’s melancholy fate I revisited Pisa, and on the day of my arrival learnt that Lord Byron was gone to the sea-shore, to assist in performing the last offices to his friend.* We came to a spot marked by an old and withered trunk of a fir-tree; and near it, on the beach, stood a solitary hut covered with reeds. The situation was well calculated for a poet’s

* It is hoped that the following memoir, as it relates to Lord Byron, may not be deemed misplaced here.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was removed from a private school at thirteen, and sent to Eton. He there shewed a character of great eccentricity, mixed in none of the amusements natural to his age, was of a melancholy and reserved disposition, fond of solitude, and made few friends. Neither did he distinguish himself much at Eton, for he had a great contempt for modern Latin verses, and his studies were directed to any thing rather than the exercises of his class. It was from an early acquaintance with German writers that he probably imbibed a romantic turn of mind; at least, we find him before fifteen publishing two Rosa-Matilda-like novels, called ‘Justrozzi’ and ‘The Rosicrucian,’ that bore no marks of being the productions of a boy, and were much talked of, and reprobated as immoral by the journalists of the day. He also made great progress in chemistry. He used to say, that nothing ever delighted him so much as the discovery that there

“One of the first visits I paid to Hunt was in prison. I remember Lady Byron was with me in the carriage, and I made her wait longer than I intended at the gate of the King’s Bench.

“When party feeling ran highest against me, Hunt was the only editor of a paper, the only literary man, who dared say a word in my justification. I shall always be grateful to him for the part he took on that occasion. It was manly in him to brave the obloquy of standing alone.

“Shelley and myself furnished some time ago a suite of apartments in my house for him, which he now occupies. I believe I told you of a plan we had in agitation for his benefit. His principal object in coming out was to establish a literary journal, whose name is not yet fixed.

“I have promised to contribute, and shall probably make it a vehicle for some occasional poems;—for instance, I mean to translate Ariosto. I was strongly advised by Tom Moore, long ago, not to have any connection with such a company as Hunt, Shelley, and Co.; but I have pledged myself, and besides could not now, if I had ever so great a disinclination for the scheme, disappoint all Hunt’s hopes. He has a large family, has undertaken a long journey, and undergone a long series of persecutions.

“Moore tells me that it was proposed to him to contribute to the new publication, but that he had declined it. You see I cannot get out of the scrape. The name is not yet decided upon,—half-a-dozen have been rejected.

“Hunt would have made a fine writer, for he has a great deal of fancy and feeling, if he had not been spoiled by circumstances. He was brought up at the Blue-coat foundation, and had never till lately been ten miles from St. Paul’s. What poetry is to be expected from such a course of education? He has his school, however, and a host of disciples. A friend of mine calls ‘Rimini,’ Nimini Pimini; and ‘Foliage,’ Follyage. Perhaps he had a tumble in ‘climbing trees in the Hesperides!’* But

* The motto to his book entitled ‘Foliage.’

“Once landed in that country, perhaps I should not have soon left it;—I might have settled there, for I shall never revisit England. On Lady Noel’s death, I thought I should have been forced to go home (and was for a moment bent on doing so on another occasion, which you know); but I told Hanson that I would rather make any sacrifice.

“The polite attentions of the American sailor were very different from the treatment I met with from the captain

English gentleman lately gone up to Greece, are hitherto favourable; but he had not yet reached the seat of the Provisional Government, and I am anxiously expecting further advice.

“An American has a better right than any other to suggest to other nations the mode of obtaining that liberty which is the glory of his own!”

“There is no tale of Scott’s finer than ‘The German’s Tale.’ I admired it when I was a boy, and have continued to like what I did then. This tale, I remember, particularly affected me. I could not help thinking of the authoress, who destroyed herself. I was very young when I finished a few scenes of a play founded on that story. I perfectly remember many of the lines as I go on.

“‘Vathek’ was another of the tales I had a very early admiration of. You may remember a passage I borrowed from it in ‘The Siege of Corinth,’ which I almost took verbatim.* No Frenchman will believe that ‘Vathek’ * “There is a light cloud by the moon; ’Tis passing, and will pass full soon. If by the time its vapoury sail Hath ceased the shaded orb to veil, Thy heart within thee is not changed,- Then God and man are both avenged,— Dark will thy doom be—darker still Thine immortality of ill.” Siege of Corinth. is the work of a foreigner. It was written at seventeen. What do you think of the Cave of Eblis, and the picture of Eblis himself? There is poetry. I class it in merit with (though it is a different sort of thing from) ‘Paul and Virginia,’ and Mackenzie’s ‘Man of Feeling,’ and ‘La Roche’ in ‘The Mirror.’”

‘Werner’ was written in twenty-eight days, and one entire act at a sitting. The MS. had scarcely an alteration in it for pages together. I remember retaining in my memory one passage, which he repeated to me, and which I consider quite Shakspearian.

“How do you explain,” said I, “the first line,— ‘The sun thunders through the sky’?”

“He speaks of the music of the spheres in Heaven,” said he, “where, as in Job, the first scene is laid.”

“Though opposed to the foreign policy of England, he was no revolutionist. The best proof of his prizing the

* “Perhaps of all his friends Sir Walter Scott had the most influence over him. The sight of his hand-writing, he said, put him in spirits for the day. Shelley’s disapprobation of a poem caused him to destroy it. In compliance with the wishes of the public, he relinquished the drama. Disown it as he may, he is ambitious of fame, and almost as sensitive as Voltaire or Rousseau: even the gossip of this little town annoys him.”

The high admiration in which Lord Byron was held in Germany may be appreciated by the following communication, and tribute to his memory, which I have just received from the illustrious and venerable Goëthe, who, at the advanced age of seventy-five, retains all the warmth of his feelings, and fire of his immortal genius.