In

However often Byron would deny the resemblance said to exist between himself and the Genevese (1), we must yet confess that in many points they were strangely akin in their egotism, and in the effect they produced on others; in the exaggeration also of their own misfortunes, governed by which sentiment the young lord flies his native land, everywhere dragging along with him his antipathy to his wandering countrymen, in whose presence he everywhere finds himself. He meets them on the field of Waterloo, purchasing fragments of French arms and speculating in the bones of the unburied. At Rome he sees them hurrying past the masterpieces for which the study of a day should scarce suffice. Switzerland, at one of those stupendous prospects, never effaced from the mind of him who once has contemplated them, he encountered a family of these new-fashioned gipsies, who, were journeying whilst asleep in their travelling calèche. He met them trafficking even amidst the ruins of Athens, where Lord Elgin, proud of having robbed Greece of those memorials of art the barbarians had spared, carved his name on a column of a ruined temple, a column which still proudly towers, a remnant amidst the sacred dust of ancient freedom-an outrage, however, which the poet avenged by erasing that name with his own hand. A little later, and he will again meet them in awakened Greece, when, asked for arms and bread, they offer music and band instruments.

Thenceforth, the poet wanted no motive for exasperation against them, and one might say lived in a perpetual abnegation of the land of his birth. Hence the affectation of hatred of his countrymen, which was refuted by his hospitality towards them. Hence no longer was celebrated in song his native isle, the favourite or usual theme of British poets. Hence strove he to rob them of the laurels acquired in Spain and at Waterloo. Hence spontaneously he rose to denounce the atrocious selfishness wherewith nations sell and thus betray the new Themistocles, who came a suppliant for their hospitality, and found chains on the land that claims to be hospitable and free (2).

Hence why, even in his style of writing, he followed not (2) The author's rather than the editor's sentiments!

any of the English classic writers, but composed with mixture of bitterness and grace, negligence and precision, gravity and mockery, which might perhaps find a parallel only in the "Pulci" of Ariosto, in Dante, or other Italian poets.

XVI.

ITALY.

The land and ashes of these bards he came to mourn over, to venerate that lovely Italy, which now, for the fourth time, held its pre-eminence in the world, the primacy of power with the Romans-that of religion under the Popes, that of commerce with the Republics-and lastly that of arts and learning.

Descending the Simplon, where he regards with wonder both nature and art (1), one can scarcely say which the most stupendous, he visits the charming delights of Lago Maggiore. Thence, in Milan, admires the wonders of the Duomo, and the courtesy of the inhabitants (2); at Garda he contemplates the Benaco (3) surging with the noise of the sea; at Verona, so many recollections of love and grandeur.

Then he descends the Po, and amidst the wide and grassworn streets of Ferrara, indites a sonnet to the good Torquato, whose name finds everywhere an echo of applause in this Athenæum of his country:

Peace to Torquato's injured shade! 'twas his
In life and death to be the inark where wrong
Aim'd with his poisoned arrows but to miss.

He then passes to the happy banks of the Arno and to Rome, tho" Niobe of nations;" at length repairs to

Venice, of all places but the East the most courted of his fancy (1):

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs:
A palace and a prison on each band;
I saw from out the wave her structures rise,
As from the stroke of the Enchanter's Wand;
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying glory miles

O'er the far times, when many a subject land
Looked to the winged Lion's marbled piles,

Where Venice sat in state, throned on her hundred Isles !

She looks a Sea-Cybele, fresh from ocean;

Rising, with her tiara of proud towers

At airy distance, with majestic motion,

A ruler of the waters and their powers.

And such she was,-her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations; and the exhaustless East
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers;
In purple was she robed, and of her feast

Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased.

XVII.

MODE OF LIFE IN VENICE.

At Venice, Byron shut himself in his chamber, and nothing was more strange than his mode of life. Ho questions the memories of the past, revives the ruins of a people who once were what the English now are; studies Armenian in the Convent of San Lazaro (1), prostrates himself before the Helen of Canova (2), visits the galleries of art, but without indication of due appreciation for the beautiful (3). "Depend upon it, of all the arts, it (painting) is the most artificial and unnatural, and that by which the nonsense of mankind is most imposed upon. I never yet saw the picture or statue which came a league within my conception, or expectation, but I have seen many mountains, and seas, and views, and two or three women who went far beyond it-besides some horses, and a lion (at Veli Pacha's) in the Morea, and a tiger at supper in Exeter Change (4)."

(1) Childe Harold, Canto 4.

At the same time he seems to have dictated to himself the Epicurean maxim "eat, drink, and be merry, for to morrow we die." His mother was no more; & coal mine had been discovered on his estates; large remuneration had been given for the publication of his works (5) so that, no longer straitened in circumstances, he found himself liberally provided with everything suitable to his position. Strange caprice! He had his horses brought to Venice, and there, on the strand of the Lido, he took his gallop. After passing the entire day in a city where no blade of grass or shrub grows, Byron, nurtured amidst mountains, must needs have the illusive pleasure of again bounding over a verdant soil; and, in presence of the immensity of the ocean, gallop from the ruined fort as far as the rock he had selected as his tomb, with the epitaph, "Byron implorat pacem." To the rides succeed the gondola, then swimming, and then training his monkeys and dogs, and castigation of the raven for devouring the mapie's food, and pistol shooting. In this exercise he was very skilful, and prided himself on it (1). "I think there are three things I can do which you cannot," he had said to Dr. Polidori, who defied him to name them. "I can swim across that river (2)-I can snuff out that candle with a pistol shot at 20 paces--and I have written a poem of which 14,000 copies were sold in one day." (8) The air of Venice intoxicated him. Scarcely arrived, he falls in love with the wife of a merchant, in whose house he had taken up his abode; then, he abandons the house and love of Marianna (6) to occupy a marble palace on the Grand Canal (4): he next buys a villa on the banks of the Brenta (5) lovely by nature and art, and worthy of a Doge, and here abandons himself to all the delights of a Southern clime.

There, he has theatricals, the Ridotto, the music of Rossini, and the bautta rosa, and the frantic enjoyments of the Mardi Gras, inebriating himself with wines and aguardiente, surrounded by swaggering and brawling

retainers; and, amidst maddening play, and women, and challenges, and rivalries, and all the ribaldry of disorder, Venice believes the carnival and gala days of the past are revived, and follows after this Cavalier. Every one talks of the young English nobleman with the odd name, who lavishes so profuse an expenditure: every conversazione desires to fête him: every traveller seeks him out all the women look for a glance from his eye, -a favour, indeed, it was not difficult to obtain. From the high-born dame he passes to the market wench, from the palace to the fisherman's hut. "Venice pleases me as much as I expected, and I expected much. It

is a very good place for women. I like the dialect and their manner very much. There is a naiveté about them which is very winning, and the romance of the place is a mighty adjunct; the bel sangue, is not, however, now amongst the dame or higher orders, but all under i fazzioli, or kerchiefs (a white kind of veil which the lower orders wear upon their heads the vesta Zendale, or old national female costume, is no more. [The city, however, is decaying daily, and does not gain in popula tion. However, I prefer it to any other in Italy; and here I pitched my staff, and here I do purpose to reside for the remainder of my life* &c., &c." (7)

XVIII.

LA FORNARINA.

The most romantic being whom the poet encountered was the Fornarina. He thus speaks of her:

Since you desire the story of Margarita Cogni you shall be told it, though it may be lengthy.

Her face is of the fine Vonetian cast of the old time; her figure, though perhaps too tall, is not less fine-and taken altogether in the national dress.

(6) The Italian author has not thought it needful to repeat the lines within brackets.

(7) Moore's Life, 1830, pp. 60 & 167.-Letters to Mr. Murray & Rogers.

D