and then with an unembarrassed air turned to his play." There were, indeed, few things Lord Byron more delighted in than to watch beautiful children at play;-"many a lovely Swiss child (says a person who saw him daily at this time) received crowns from him as the reward of their grace and sweetness."

Speaking of their lodgings at Nerni, which were gloomy and dirty, Mr. Shelley says, "On returning to our inn, we found that the servant had arranged our rooms, and deprived them of the greater portion of their former disconsolate appearance. They reminded my companion of Greece --it was five years, he said, since he had slept in such beds."

Luckily for Shelley's full enjoyment of these scenes, he had never before happened to read the Heloise; and though his companion had long been familiar with that romance, the sight of the region itself, the "birthplace of deep Love," every spot of which seemed instinct with the passion of the story, gave to the whole a fresh and actual existence in his mind. Both were under the spell of the genius of the place, both full of emotion; and as they walked silently through the vineyards that were once the "bosquet de Julie," Lord Byron suddenly exclaimed, "Thank God, Polidori is not here."

That the glowing stanzas suggested to him by this scene were written upon the spot itself appears almost certain, from the letter addressed to Mr. Murray on his way back to Diodati, in which he announces the Third Canto as complete, and consisting of 117 stanzas. At Ouchy, near Lausanne,-the place from which that letter is dated,he and his friend were detained two days, in a small inn, by the weather; and it was there, in that short interval, that he wrote his "Prisoner of Chillon," adding one more deathless association to the already immortalized localities of the Lake.

On his return from this excursion to Diodati, an occasion was afforded for the gratification of his jesting propensities by the avowal of the young physician that he had fallen in love. On the evening of this tender confession they both appeared at Shelley's cottageLord Byron, in the highest and most boyish spirits, rubbing his hands as he walked about the room, and in that utter incapacity of retention which was one of his foibles, making jesting allusions to the secret he had just heard. The brow of the doctor darkened as this pleasantry went on, and, at last, he angrily accused Lord Byron of hardness of heart. "I never," said he, " met with a person so unfeeling." This sally, though the poet had evidently brought it upon himself, annoyed him most deeply. "Call me cold hearted-me insensible!" he exclaimed, with manifest emotion-" as well might you say that glass is not brittle, which has been cast down a precipice, and lies dashed to pieces at the foot !"

In the month of July he paid a visit to Copet, and was received by the distinguished hostess with a cordiality the more sensibly felt by him, as, from his personal unpopularity at this time, he had hardly ventured to count upon it.* In her usual frank style, she took him to

*In the account of this visit to Copet in his Memoranda, he spoke in high terms of the daughter of his hostess, the present Dutchess de Broglie, and, in noticing how much she appeared to be attached to her husband, remarked that "Nothing was more pleasing to see the developement of the domestic affections in a very young woman." Of Madame de Staël, in that Memoir. he spoke thus: "Madame de Staël was a good woman at heart and the

A. D. 1816.]

Her

task upon his matrimonial conduct-but in a way that won upon his mind, and disposed him to yield to her suggestions. He must endeavour, she told him, to bring about a reconciliation with his wife, and must submit to contend no longer with the opinion of the world. In vain did he quote her own motto to Delphine, "Un homme peut braver, une femme doit se succomber aux opinions du monde ;"-her reply was, that all this might be very well to say, but that, in real life, the duty and necessity of yielding belonged also to the man. eloquence, in short, so far succeeded, that he was prevailed upon to write a letter to a friend in England, declaring himself still willing to be reconciled to Lady Byron,-a concession not a little startling to those who had so often, lately, heard him declare that, "having done all in his power to persuade Lady Byron to return, and with this view put off as long as he could signing the deed of separation, that step being once taken, they were now divided for ever."

Of the particulars of this brief negotiation that ensued upon Madame de Staël's suggestion, I have no very accurate remembrance; but there can be little doubt that its failure, after the violence he had done his own pride in the overture, was what first infused any mixture of resentment or bitterness into the feelings hitherto entertained by him throughout these painful differences. He had, indeed, since his arrival in Geneva, invariably spoken of his lady with kindness and regret, imputing the course she had taken, in leaving him, not to herself, but others, and assigning whatever little share of blame he would allow her to bear in the transaction to the simple, and, doubtless, true cause her not at all understanding him. "I have no doubt," he would sometimes say, "that she really did believe me to be mad."

Another resolution connected with his matrimonial affairs, in which he often, at this time, professed his fixed intention to persevere, was that of never allowing himself to touch any part of his wife's fortune. Such a sacrifice, there is no doubt, would have been, in his situation, delicate and manly: but though the natural bent of his disposition led him to make the resolution, he wanted-what few, perhaps, could have attained-the fortitude to keep it.

The effects of the late struggle on his mind, in stirring up all its resources and energies, was visible in the great activity of his genius during the whole of this period, and the rich variety, both in character and colouring, of the works with which it teemed. Besides the Third Canto and the Prisoner of Chillon, he produced also his two poems, "Darkness" and "The Dream," the latter of which cost him many a tear in writing,-being, indeed, the most mournful, as well as picturesque story of a wandering life" that ever came from the pen and heart of Those verses, too, entitled “The Incantation," which he introduced afterward, without any connexion with the subject, into Manfred, were also (at least, the less bitter portion of them) the production of this period; and as they were written soon after the last fruitless attempt at reconciliation, it is needless to say who was in his thoughts while he penned some of the opening stanzas.

66

man.

"Though thy slumber must be deep,
Yet thy spirit shall not sleep;

čleverest at bottom, but spoiled by a wish to be-she knew not what.

In her

own house she was amiable; in any other person's, you wished her gone, and in her own again."

There are shades which will not vanish,
There are thoughts thou canst not banish,
By a power to thee unknown,

Thou canst never be alone;

Thou art wrapt as with a shroud,
Thou art gathered in a cloud;
And for ever shalt thou dwell
In the spirit of this spell.

"Though thou seest me not pass by,
Thou shalt feel me with thine eye,
As a thing that, though unseen,
Must be near thee, and hath been;
And when, in that secret dread,
Thou hast turn'd around thy head,
Thou shalt marvel I am not
As thy shadow on the spot,

And the power which thou dost feel
Shall be what thou must conceal."

Besides the unfinished "Vampire," he began also, at this time, another romance in prosc, founded upon the story of the Marriage of Belphegor, and intended to shadow out his own matrimonial fate. A devil, under the guise of an English gentleman, of the name of Lovel, was supposed to arrive at Seville, and by his riches and mode of life to attract some attention, which was considerably increased when he came to display his powers of fiddling-all the world, far and near, flocking to hear his music. The ladies, in particular, were so captivated by it, that his life became exceedingly pleasant; till the painful idea crossed him, "If I forget the Devil, what the devil will the Devil say to me?" He then described the future wife of this Satanic personage, much in the same spirit that pervades his delineation of Donna Ines in the first Canto of Don Juan. While engaged, however, in writing this story, he heard from England that Lady Byron was ill, and, his heart softening at the intelligence, he threw the manuscript into the fire. So constantly were the good and evil principles of his nature conflicting for mastery over him.*

The two following Poems, so different from each other in their character, the first prying with an awful skepticism into the darkness of another world, and the second breathing all that is most natural and tender in the affections of this,--were also written at this time, and have never before been published.

* Upon the same occasion, indeed, he wrote some verses in a spirit not quite so generous, of which a few of the opening lines is all I shall give :

"And thou wert sad-yet was I not with thee;

And thou wert sick-and yet I was not near.
Methought that Joy and Health alone could be
Where I was not, and pain and sorrow here.
And is it thus ?-it is as I foretold,

And shall be more so :"-&c. &c.

EXTRACT FROM AN UNPUBLISHED POEM.

"Could I remount the river of my years

To the first fountain of our smiles and tears,
I would not trace again the stream of hours
Between their outworn banks of wither'd flowers,
But bid it flow as now-until it glides
Into the number of the nameless tides.

What is this Death ?—a quiet of the heart?
The whole of that of which we are a part?
For Life is but a vision-what I see
Of all which lives alone is life to me,
And being so-the absent are the dead,
Who haunt us from tranquillity, and spread
A dreary shroud around us, and invest
With sad remembrancers our hours of rest.
"The absent are the dead--for they are cold,
And ne'er can be what once we did behold;
And they are changed, and cheerless,-or if yet
The unforgotten do not all forget,

Since thus divided-equal must it be
If the deep barrier be of earth or sea;
It may be both-but one day end it must
In the dark union of insensate dust.

"The under-earth inhabitants-are they
But mingled millions decomposed to clay?
The ashes of a thousand ages spread
Wherever man has trodden or shall tread?
Or do they in their silent cities dwell
Each in his incommunicative cell?

Or have they their own language? and a sense

Of breathless being ?-darken'd and intense

As midnight in her solitude ?-Oh, Earth!

Where are the past?-and wherefore had they birth?
The dead are thy inheritors--and we

But bubbles on thy surface;-and the key
Of thy profundity is in the grave,
The ebon portal of thy peopled cave,
Where I would walk in spirit, and behold
Our elements resolved to things untold,
And fathom hidden wonders, and explore
The essence of great bosoms now no more."

"TO AUGUSTA.

I.

"My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine.
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:

Go where I will, to me thou art the same-
A loved regret which I would not resign.
There yet are two things in my destiny,-
A world to roam through, and a home with thee.

II.

"The first were nothing-had I still the last,
It were the haven of my happiness;

But other claims and other ties thou hast,
And mine is not the wish to make them less.
A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past
Recalling, as it lies beyond redress;

Reversed for him your grandsire's* fate of yore,—
He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore.

III.

"If my inheritance of storms hath been
In other elements, and on the rocks

Of perils, overlooked or unforeseen,

I have sustained my share of worldly shocks,
The fault was mine; nor do I seek to screen
My errors with pretence or paradox;

I have been cunning in mine overthrow,
The careful pilot of my proper wo.

IV.

"Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward.
My whole life was a contest, since the day
That gave me being, gave me that which marr'd
The gift, a fate, or will, that walk'd astray;
And I at times have found the struggle hard,
And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay :
But now I fain would for a time survive,
If but to see what next can well arrive.

V.

"Kingdoms and empires in my little day
I have outlived, and yet I am not old;
And when I look on this, the petty spray
Of my own years of trouble, which have roll'd
Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away:
Something I know not what-does still uphold
A spirit of slight patience;-not in vain,
Even for its own sake, do we purchase pain.

* "Admiral Byron was remarkable for never making a voyage without a tempest. He was known to the sailors by the facetious name of Foulweather Jack.'

But, though it were tempest-toss'd,

Still his bark could not be lost.'

He returned safely from the wreck of the Wager (in Anson's Voyage), and subsequently circumnavigated the world, many years after, as commander of a similar expedition."