fore the Parthenon, the latter said, "Well, this is surely very grand." Byron replied, "Very like the Mansion-House.")

At this time we generally had a regular quarrel every night; and he would abuse me through thick and thin, raking up all the stories he had heard which he thought most likely to mortify me,-how I had behaved with great cruelty to Murphy, refusing to assist him in his distress, &c., &c. But next morning he would shake me kindly by both hands; and we were excellent friends again.

When I parted from him in Italy (never to meet him more), a good many persons were looking on, anxious to catch a glimpse of "the famous lord."

Campbell used to say that the lines which first convinced him that Byron was a true poet were these;

"Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild;

Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields,

The whole secret consisted in a strict adherence to two rules; the one, always to observe the picture might have been better if the painter had taken more pains; and the other, to praise the works of Pietro Perugino." Chap. xx. Compare Byron's own account of this visit to the Pitti Palace in his Life by Moore, vol. v. 279. -ED.

i

Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smil'd,
And still his honied wealth Hymettus yields;
There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds,
The free-born wanderer of thy mountain air;
Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,
Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare;
Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.

Where'er we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground,
No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould,
But one vast realm of wonder spreads around,
And all the Muse's tales seem truly told,

Till the sense aches with gazing to behold

The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon: Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold Defies the power which crush'd thy temples gone : Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon."*

For my own part, I think that this passage is perhaps the best that Byron ever wrote;

"To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,

To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,

Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,

And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;

Childe Harold, c. ii. st. 87, E8.-ED.

To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,

With the wild flock that never needs a fold;

Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;

This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold

Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd.

But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,

To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,

And roam along, the world's tir'd denizen,

With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;
Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!
None that, with kindred consciousness endued,

If we were not, would seem to smile the less,

Of all that flatter'd, foilow'd, sought, and sued; This is to be alone; this, this is solitude."*

The lines in the third canto of Childe Harold about the ball given by the Duchess of Richmond at Brussels, the night before the battle of Waterloo, &c., are very striking. The Duchess told me that she had a list of her company, and that, after the battle, she added “dead” to the names of those who had fallen, the number being fearful.

* Childe Harold, c. ii. st. 25, 26.-ED.

1

Mrs. Barbauld once observed to me that she thought Byron wrote best when he wrote about the sea or swimming.

There is a great deal of incorrect and hasty writing in Byron's works; but it is overlooked in this age of hasty readers. For instance,

"I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs,

A palace and a prison on each hand."*

He meant to say, that on one hand was a palace, on

the other a prison.—And what think you of—

"And dashest him again to earth :-there let him lay”?†

Mr. -'s house, the

is very splendid;

it contains a quantity of or-molu. Now, I like to

* Childe Harold, c. iv. st. 1.—ED.

Id. c. iv. st. 180.—A lady resident in Aberdeen told me that she used to sit in a pew of St. Paul's Chapel in that town, next to Mrs. Byron's; and that one Sunday she observed the poet (then about seven or eight years old) amusing himself by disturbing his mother's devotions; he every now and then gently pricked with a pin the large round arms of Mrs. Byron, which were covered with white kid gloves.-Professor Stuart, of the Marischal College, Aberdeen, mentioned to me the following proof of Lord Byron's fondness for his mother. Georgy, and some other little boys, were one day allowed, much to their delight, to assist at a gathering of apples in the Professor's garden, and were rewarded for their labour

have a kettle in my bed-room, to heat a little water if necessary; but I can't get a kettle at the though there is a quantity of or-molu. Lady says, that when she is at the, she is obliged to. have her clothes unpacked three times a day; for there are no chests-of-drawers, though there is a quantity of or-molu.

The letters I receive from people, of both sexes (people whom I never heard of), asking me for money, either as a gift or as a loan, are really innumerable. Here's one from a student at Durham,

with some of the fruit. Georgy, having received his portion of apples, immediately disappeared; and, on his return, after half-anhour's absence, to the inquiry where he had been, he replied that he had been "carrying some apples to his poor dear mother."

At the house of the Rev. W. Harness I remember hearing Moore remark that he thought the natural bent of Byron's genius was to satirical and burlesque poetry: on which Mr. Harness related what follows. When Byron was at Harrow, he, one day, seeing a young acquaintance at a short distance who was a violent admirer of Buonaparte, roared out this extemporaneous couplet,

"Bold Robert Speer was Bony's bad precursor;

Bob was a bloody dog, but Bonapart's a worser." Moore immediately wrote the lines down, with the intention of inserting them in his Life of Byron, which he was then preparing; but they do not appear in that work.-ED.

* I read the letter.-ED.