Of old renown, once in the ADRIAN sea*,
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 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§
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 etherial 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,

*“ 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 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 finger's 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 '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 everything from the excellent quali'ties 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 visitors there to allow one to feel anything '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 466.

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 Prome'theus 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 not '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 per'mitted 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 the 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 anything. 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

VOL. III.

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