completed, for renting a country house among the Euganean hills near Este, from Mr. Hoppner, the English Consul at Venice, who bears frequent testimony to his kindness and courtesy. In October we find him settled for the winter in Venice, where he first occupied his old quarters in the Spezieria, and afterwards hired one of the palaces of the Countess Mocenigo on the Grand Canal. Setween this mansion, the cottage at Este, and the villa of La Mira, he divided his time for the next two years. During the earlier part of his Venetian career he had continued to frequent the salon of the Countess Albrizzi, where he met with people of both sexes of some rank and standing who appreciated his genius, though some among them fell into absurd mistakes. A gentleman of the company informing the hostess, in answer to some inquiry regarding Canova's busts, that Washington, the American President, was shot in a duel by Burke, "What in the name of folly are you thinking of?" said Byron, perceiving that the speaker was confounding Washington with Hamilton, and Burke with Burr. He afterwards tranferred himself to the rival coterie of the Countess Benzoni, and gave himself up with little reserve to the intrigues which cast discredit on this portion of his life. Nothing is so conducive to dissipation as despair, and Byron had begun to regard the Sea-Cybele as a Sea-Sodom-when he wrote, "To watch a city die daily, as she does, is a sad contemplation. I sought to distract my mind from a sense of her desolation and my own solitude, by plunging into a vortex that was anything but pleasure." In any case, he forsook the "Dame," and by what his biographer calls a "descent in the scale of refinement for which nothing but the wayward state of his mind can account," sought the companions of his leisure hours among the wearers of the "fazzioli." The carnivals of the years 1818, 1819, mark the height of his excesses. Early in the former, Mariana Segati fell out of favour, owing to Byron's having detected her in selling the jewels he had given as presents, and so being led to suspect a large mercenary element in her devotion. To her succeeded Margarita Cogni, the wife of a baker, who proved as accommodating as his predecessor, the linen-draper. This woman was decidedly a character, and Señor Castelar has almost elevated her into a heroine. A handsome virago, with brown shoulders and black hair, endowed with the strength of an Amazon, "a face like Faustina's, and the figure of a Juno-tall and energetic as a pythoness," she quartered herself for twelve months in the palace as "Donna di governo," and drove the servants about without let or hindrance. Unable to read or write, she intercepted his lordship's letters to little purpose; but she had great natural business talents, reduced by one half the expenses of his household, kept everything in good order, and, when her violence roused his wrath, turned it off with some ready retort or witticism. The was very devout, and would cross herself three times at the Angelus. One instance, of a different kind of devotion, from Byron's own account, is sufficiently graphic; "In the autumn one day, going to the Lido with my gondoliers, we were overtaken by a heavy squall, and the gondola put in peril, hats blown away, boat filling, oar lost, tumbling sea, thunder, rain in torrents, and wind unceasing. On our return, after a tight struggle, I found her on the open steps of the Mocenigo Palace on the Grand Canal, with her great black eyes flashing through her tears, and the long dark hair which was streaming, drenched with rain, over her brows. The was perfectly exposed to the storm; and the wind blowing her dress about her thin figure, and the lightning flashing round her, made her look like Medea alighted from her chariot, or the Sibyl of the tempest that was rolling round her, the only living thing within hail at that moment except ourselves. On seeing me safe, she did not wait to greet me, as might have been expected; but, calling out to me, 'Ah! can' della Madonna, xe esto il tempo per andar' al' Lido,” ran into the house, and solaced herself with scolding the boatmen for not foreseeing the temporale.' Her joy at seeing me again was moderately mixed with ferocity, and gave me the idea of a tigress over her recovered cubs." Some months after, she became ungovernable-threw plates about, and snatched caps from the heads of other women who looked at her lord in public places. Byron told her she must go home; whereupon she proceeded to break glass, and threaten "knives, poison, fire;" and on his calling his boatmen to get ready the gondola, threw herself in the dark night into the canal. She was rescued, and in a few days finally dismissed; after which he saw her only twice, at the theatre. Her whole picture is more like that of Théroigne de Méricourt than that of Raphael's Fornarina, whose name she received. 66 Other stories, of course, gathered round this strange life—personal encounters, aquatic feats, and all manner of romantic and impossible episodes; their basis being that Byron on one occasion thrashed,on another challenged, a man who tried to cheat him, was a frequent rider, and a constant swimmer, so that he came to be called "the English fish," water-spaniel," sea-devil," &c. One of the boatmen is reported to have said, "He is a good gondolier, spoilt by being a poet and a lord; " and in answer to a traveller's inquiry, "Where does he get his poetry?" "He dives for it." His habits, as regards eating, seem to have been generally abstemious; but he drank a pint of gin and water over his verses at night, aud then took claret and soda in the morning. Riotous living may have helped to curtail Byron's life, but it does not seem to have seriously impaired his powers. Among these adverse surroundings of the "court of Circe," he threw off Beppo, Mazeppa, and the early books of Don Juan. The first canto of the last was written in November, 1818; the second in January, 1819; the third and fourth towards the close of the same year. Beppo, its brilliant prelude, sparkles like a draught of champagne. This "Venetian story," or sketch, in which the author broke ground on his true satiric field-the satire of social life— and first adopted the measure avowedly suggested by Frere's Whistlecraft, was drafted in October, 1817, and appeared in May, 1818. It aims at comparatively little, but is perfectly successful in its aim, and unsurpassed for the incisiveness of its side strokes, and the courtly ease of a manner that never degenerates into mannerism. In Mazeppa the poet reverts to his earlier style, and that of Scott; the description of the headlong ride hurries us along with a breathless expectancy that gives it a conspicuous place among his minor efforts. The passage about the howling of the wolves, and the fever faint of the victim, is as graphic as anything in Burns— 66 "The skies spun like a mighty wheel, I saw the trees like drunkards reel." In the May or June of 1818 Byron's little daughter, Allegra, had been sent from England, under the care of a Swiss nurse too young to undertake her management in such trying circumstances, and after four months of anxiety he placed her in charge of Mrs. Hoppner. In the course of this and the next year there are frequent allusions to the child, all, save one which records a mere affectation of indifference, full of affectionate solicitude. In June, 1819, he writes, "Her temper and her ways, Mr. Hoppner says, are like mine, as well as her features; she will make, in that case, a manageable young lady." Later he talks of her as "flourishing like a pomegranate blossom." In March, 1820, we have another reference. Allegra is prettier, I think, but as obstinate as a mule, and as ravenous as a vulture; health good to judge by the complexion, temper tolerable but for vanity and pertinacity. She thinks herself handsome, and will do as she pleases." In May he refers to having received a letter from her mother, but gives no details. In the following year, with the approval of the Shelleys, then at Pisa, he placed her for education in the convent of Cavalli Bagni in the Romagna. "I have," he writes to Hoppner, who had thought of having her boarded in Switzerland, "neither spared care, kindness, nor expense, since the child was sent to me. people may say what they please. I must content myself with not deserving, in this instance, that they should speak ill. The place is a country town, in a good air, and less liable to objections of every kind. It has always appeared to me that the moral defect in Italy does not proceed from a conventual education; because, to my certain knowledge, they come out of their convents innocent, even to ignorance of moral evil; but to the state of society into which they are directly plunged on coming out of it. It is like educating an infant on a mountain top, and then taking him to the sea and throwing him into it, and desiring him to swim." Elsewhere he says, "I by no means intend to give a natural child an English education, because, with the disadvantages of her birth, her after settlement would be doubly difficult. Abroad, with a fair foreign education, and a portion of 5000l. or 6000l. (his will leaving her 5000l., on condition that she should not marry an Englishman, is here explained and justified), she might, and may, The marry very respectably. In England such a dowry would be a pittance, while elsewhere it is a fortune. It is, besides, my wish that she should be a Roman Catholic, which I look upon as the best religion, as it is assuredly the oldest of the various branches of Christianity." It only remains to add that, when he heard that the child had fallen ill of fever in 1822, Byron was almost speechless with agitation, and, on the news of her death, which took place April 22nd, he seemed at first utterly prostrated. Next day he said, Allegra is dead; she is more fortunate than we. It is God's will; let us mention it no more." Her remains rest beneath the elmtree at Harrow which her father used to haunt in boyhood, with the date of birth and death, and the verse 66 "I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me." The most interesting of the visits paid to Byron during the period of his life at Venice was that of Shelley, who, leaving his wife and children at Bagni di Lucca, came to see him in August, 1818. He arrived late, in the midst of thunder-storm; and next day they sailed to the Lido, and rode together along the sands. The attitude of the two poets towards each other is curious; the comparatively shrewd man of the world often relied on the idealist for guidance and help in practical matters, admired his courage and independence, spoke of him invariably as the best of men, but never paid a sufficiently warm tribute in public to his work. Shelley, on the other hand, certainly the most modest of great poets, contemplates Byron in the fixed attitude of a literary worshipper. The introduction to Julian and Maddalo, directly suggested by this visit, under the slight veil of a change in the name, gives a summary of the view of his friend's character which he continued to entertain. "He is a person of the most consummate genius, and capable, if he would direct his energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. But it is his weakness to be proud; he derives, from a comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. passions and his powers are incomparably greater than those of other men; and instead of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have mutually lent each other strength; but "in social life no human being can be more gentle, patient, and unassuming. He is cheerful, frank, and witty. His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication; men are held by it as by a spell." His Subsequently to this visit Byron lent the villa at Este to his friend, and during the autumn weeks of their residence there were written the lines among the Euganean hills, where, in the same strain of reverence, Shelley refers to the "tempest-cleaving swan of Albion," to the "music flung o'er a mighty thunder-fit," and to the sun-like soul destined to immortalise his ocean refuge "As the ghost of Homer clings Fills Avon and the world with light." "The sun," he says, at a later date, "has extinguished the glowworm;" and again, "I despair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well I may; and there is no other with whom it is worth contending.' Shelley was, in the main, not only an exquisite but a trustworthy critic; and no man was more absolutely above being influenced by the fanfaronade of rank or the din of popularity. These criticisms are therefore not to be lightly set aside, nor are they unintelligible. Perhaps those admirers of the clearer and more consistent nature, who exalt him to the rank of a greater poet, are misled by the amiable love of one of the purest characters in the history of our literature. There is at least no difficulty in understanding why he should have been, as it were, concussed by Byron's greater massiveness and energy into a sense-easy to a man half bard, half saint of inferiority. Similarly, most of the estimates-many already reversed, others reversible-by the men of that age, of each other, can be explained. We can see how it was that Shelley overestimated both the character and the powers of Hunt; and Byron depreciated Keats, and was ultimately repelled by Wordsworth, and held out his hand to meet the manly grasp of Scott. The one enigma of their criticism is the respect that they joined in paying to the witty, genial, shallow, worldly, musical Tom Moore. This favourite of fortune and the minor muses, in the course of a short tour through the north of Italy in the autumn of 1819, found his noble friend on the 8th of October at La Mira, went with him on a sight-seeing expedition to Venice, and passed five or six days in his company. Of this visit he has recorded his impressions, some of which relate to his host's personal appearance, others to his habits and leading incidents of his life. Byron "had grown fatter, both in person and face, and the latter had suffered most by the change, having lost by the enlargement of the features, some of that refined and spiritualised look that had in other times distinguished it; but although less romantic, he appeared more humorous." They renewed their recollections of the old days and nights in London, and compared them with later experiences of Bores and Blues, in a manner which threatened to put to flight the historical and poetical associations naturally awakened by the City of the Sea. Byron had a rooted dislike to any approach to fine talk in the ordinary intercourse of life; and when his companion began to rhapsodise on the rosy hue of the Italian sunsets, he interrupted him with, “Come, d-n it, Tom, don't be poetical." He insisted on Moore, who sighed after what he imagined would be the greater comforts of an hotel, taking up his quarters in his palace; and as they were groping their way through the somewhat dingy entrance, cried out, Keep clear |