VI.

"Perhaps the workings of defiance stir
Within me, or perhaps a cold despair,
Brought on when ills habitually recur,-
Perhaps a kinder clime, a purer air,

(For ev'n to this may change of soul refer,
And with light armour we may learn to bear,)
Have taught me a strange quiet which was not
The chief companion of a calmer lot.

VII.

"I feel almost at times as I have felt

In happy childhood; trees, and flowers, and brooks, Which do remember me of where I dwelt Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books, Come as of yore upon me, and can melt My heart with recognition of their looks; And ev'n at moments I would think I see Some living things I love-but none like thee.

VIII.

"There are the Alpine landscapes which create A fund for contemplation ;-to admire

Is a brief feeling of a trivial date;

But something worthier do such scenes inspire:
Here to be lonely is not desolate,

For much I view which I could most desire,
And, above all, a lake I can behold

Lovelier, not dearer, than our own of old.

IX.

"Oh that thou wert but with me!--but I grow The fool of my own wishes, and forget

The solitude which I have vaunted so

Has lost its praise in this but one regret;

There may be others which I less may show ;-
I am not of the plaintive mood, and yet
I feel an ebb in my philosophy,

And the tide rising in my alter'd eye.

X.

"I did remind you of our own dear lake,*
By the old hall which may be mine no more,
Leman's is fair; but think not I forsake
The sweet remembrance of a dearer shore:
Sad havoc Time must with my memory make
Ere that or thou can fade these eyes before;

Though, like all things which I have loved, they are Resign'd for ever, or divided far.

XI.

"The world is all before me; I but ask

Of nature that with which she will comply

The lake of Newstead Abbey.

It is but in her summer's sun to bask,
To mingle with the quiet of her sky,
To see her gentle face without a mask,
And never gaze on it with apathy.

She was my early friend, and now shall be
My sister-till I look again on thee.

66

XII.

"I can reduce all feelings but this one;
And that I would not ;--for at length I see
Such scenes as those wherein my life begun,
The earliest were the only paths for me:
Had I but sooner learn'd the crowd to shun,
I had been better than I now can be ;

The passions which have torn me would have slept; I had not suffer'd, and thou hadst not wept.

XIII.

"With false ambition what had I to do?

Little with love, and least of all with fame;
And yet they came unsought, and with me grew,
And made me all which they can make-a name.
Yet this was not the end I did pursue;

Surely I once beheld a nobler aim.
But all is over-I am one the more
To baffled millions who have gone before.

XIV.

"And for the future, this world's future may
From me demand but little of my care;
I have outlived myself for many a day;
Having survived so many things that were,
My years have been no slumber, but the prey
Of all sensations ;-I have had such share
Of life as might have fill'd a century,
Before its fourth in time had pass'd me by.

XV.

"And for the remnants which may be to come
I am content; and for the past I feel
Not thankless,-for within the crowded sum
Of struggles, happiness at times would steal.
And for the present, I would not benumb
My feelings farther.-Nor shall I conceal
That with all this I still can look around
And worship nature with a thought profound.

XVI.

"For thee, my own sweet sister, in thy heart
I know myself secure, as thou in mine;
We were and are-I am, ev'n as thou art-
Beings who ne'er each other can resign;
It is the same together or apart,

From life's commencement to its long decline."

In the month of August, Mr. M. G. Lewis arrived to pass some time with him; and he was soon after visited by Mr. Richard Sharpe, of whom he makes such honourable mention in the Journal already given, and with whom, as I have heard this gentleman say, it now gave him evident pleasure to converse about their common friends in England. Among those who appeared to have left the strongest impressions of interest and admiration on his mind was (as easily will be believed by all who know this distinguished person) Sir James Mack

intosh.

Soon after the arrival of his friends, Mr. Hobhouse and Mr. S. Davies, he set out, as we have seen, with the former on a tour through the Bernese Alps,-after accomplishing which journey, about the beginning of October he took his departure, accompanied by the same gentleman, for Italy.

The first letter of the following series was, it will be seen, written a few days before he left Diodati.

LETTER CCXLVII.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Diodati, Oct. 5, 1816.

*

"Save me a copy of 'Buck's Richard III.' republished by Longman; but do not send out more books-I have too many.

"The Monody' is in too many paragraphs, which makes it unintelligible to me; if any one else understands it in the present form, they are wiser; however, as it cannot be rectified till my return, and has been already published, even publish it on in the collection-it will fill up the place of the omitted epistle.

"Strike out by request of a friend,' which is sad trash, and must have been done to make it ridiculous.

"Be careful in the printing the stanzas beginning,

Though the day of my destiny's,' &c.

which I think well of as a composition.

"The Antiquary' is not the best of the three, but much above all the last twenty years, saving its elder brothers. Holcroft's Memoirs are valuable, as showing the strength of endurance in the man, which is worth more than all the talent in the world.

"And so you have been publishing Margaret of Anjou' and an Assyrian tale, and refusing W. W.'s Waterloo, and the Hue and Cry.' I know not which most to admire, your rejections or acceptances. I believe that prose is, after all, the most reputable; for certes, if one could foresee-but I won't go on-that is, with this sentence; but poetry is, I fear, incurable. God help me! if I proceed in this scribbling, I shall have frittered away my mind before I am thirty; but it is at times a real relief to me. For the present-good evening."

LETTER CCXLVIII.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Martigny, October 9th, 1816. "Thus far on my way to Italy. We have just passed the PisseVache' (one of the first torrents in Switzerland) in time to view the iris which the sun flings along it before noon.

"I have written to you twice lately. Mr. Davies, I hear, is arrived. He brings the original MS. which you wished to see. Recollect that the printing is to be from that which Mr. Shelley brought; and recollect also, that the concluding stanzas of Childe Harold (those to my daughter) which I had not made up my mind whether to publish or not when they were first written (as you will see marked on the margin of the first copy), I had (and have) fully determined to publish with the rest of the Canto, as in the copy which you received by Mr. Shelley, before I sent it to England.

"Our weather is very fine, which is more than the summer has been. At Milan I shall expect to hear from you. Address either to Milan, poste restante, or by way of Geneva, to the care of Monsr. Hentsch, Banquier. I write these few lines in case my other letter should not reach you; I trust one of them will.

"P.S. My best respects and regards to Mr. Gifford. Will you tell him, it may perhaps be as well to put a short note to that part relating to Clarens, merely to say, that of course the description does not refer to that particular spot so much as to the command of scenery round it? I do not know that this is necessary, and leave it to Mr. G.'s choice, as my editor,-if he will allow me to call him so at this distance."

LETTER CCXLIX.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Milan, October 15th, 1816. "I hear that Mr. Davies has arrived in England,—but that of some letters, &c., committed to his care by Mr. H., only half have been delivered. This intelligence naturally makes me feel a little anxious for mine, and among them for the MS., which I wished to have compared with the one sent by me through the hands of Mr. Shelley. I trust that it has arrived safely,-and indeed not less so, that some little crystals, &c., from Mont Blanc, for my daughter and my nieces, have reached their address. Pray have the goodness to ascertain from Mr. Davies that no accident (by custom-house or loss) has befallen them, and satisfy me on this point at your earliest convenience.

"If I recollect rightly, you told me that Mr. Gifford had kindly undertaken to correct the press (at my request) during my absence-at least I hope so. It will add to my many obligations to that gentleman. "I wrote to you, on my way here, a short note, dated Martigny. Mr. Hobhouse and myself arrived here a few days ago, by the Simplon and Lago Maggiore route. Of course we visited the Borromean Islands, which are fine, but too artificial. The Simplon is magnificent in its nature and its art,-both God and man have done wonders,-to say nothing of the Devil, who must certainly have had a hand (or a

A. D. 1816.]

hoof) in some of the rocks and ravines through and over which the works are carried.

"Milan is striking-the cathedral superb. The city altogether reminds me of Seville, but a little inferior. We had heard divers bruits, and took precautions on the road, near the frontier, against some 'many worthy fellows (i. e. felons) that were out,' and had ransacked some preceding travellers, a few weeks ago, near Sesto,-or Cesto, I forget which, of cash and raiment, besides putting them in bodily fear, and lodging about twenty slugs in the retreating part of a courier belonging to Mr. Hope. But we were not molested, and, I do not think, in any danger, except of making mistakes in the way of cocking and priming whenever we saw an old house, or an ill-looking thicket, and now and then suspecting the true men,' who have very much the appearance of the thieves of other countries. What the thieves may look like, I know not, nor desire to know, for it seems they come upon you in bodies of thirty (in buckram and Kendal green') at a time, so that voyagers have no great chance. It is something like poor dear Turkey in that respect, but not so good, for there you can have as great a body of rogues to match the regular banditti; but here the gens-d'armes are said to be no great things, and as for one's own people, one can't carry them about like Robinson Crusoe with a gun on each shoulder.

"I have been to the Ambrosian library-it is a fine collection-full of MSS. edited and unedited. I enclose you a list of the former recently published: these are matters for your literati. For me, in my simple way, I have been most delighted with a correspondence of letters, all original and amatory, between Lucretia Borgia and Cardinal Bembo, preserved there. I have pored over them and a lock of her hair, the prettiest and fairest imaginable-I never saw fairer-and shall go repeatedly to read the epistles over and over; and if I can obtain some of the hair by fair means, I shall try. I have already persuaded the librarian to promise me copies of the letters, and I hope he will not disappoint me. They are short, but very simple, sweet, and to the purpose; there are some copies of verses in Spanish also by her; the tress of her hair is long, and as I said before, beautiful. The Brera gallery of paintings has some fine pictures, but nothing of a collection. Of painting I know nothing; but I like a Guercino-a picture of Abraham putting away Hagar and Ishmael-which seems to me natural and goodly. The Flemish school, such as I saw it in Flanders, I utterly detested, despised, and abhorred; it might be painting, but it was not nature; the Italian is pleasing, and their ideal very noble. "The Italians I have encountered here are very intelligent and agreeable. In a few days I am to meet Monti. By-the-way, I have just heard an anecdote of Beccaria, who published such admirable things against the punishment of death. As soon as his book was out, his servant (having read it, I presume) stole his watch; and his master, while correcting the press of a second edition, did all he could to have him hanged by way of advertisement.

"I forgot to mention the triumphal arch begun by Napoleon, as a gate to this city. It is unfinished, but the part completed worthy of another age and the same country. The society here is very oddly carried on,-at the theatre, and the theatre only, which answers to our opera. People meet there as at a rout, but in very small circles. From Milan I shall go to Venice. If you write, write to Geneva, as Yours ever." before the letter will be forwarded.

VOL. II.-C

t