Mariner' in his peculiar and emphatic manner. Byron knew as little what an ode meant, as he did a sonnet-the most difficult of all compositions.

Shelley's lines beginning,

There's blood on the ground,

were not composed on the occasion of the Spanish revolution, as they are entitled, but on the Manchester massacre.

We had many conversations on the subject of Keats, who, with a mind and frame alike worn out by disappointment and persecution, was come to lay his bones in Italy. Shelley was enthusiastic in his admiration of 'Hyperion' and the Ode to Pan in the 'Endymion'; but was little partial to Keats's other works. Their correspondence at this period would prove highly interesting. Poor Keats died three days before I arrived at Rome, in March or April 1821; and much of the remainder of that year, which Shelley passed at the Baths of St. Julian, was occupied on 'Adonais,' which breathes

all the tenderness of Moschus and Bion, and loses nothing in comparison with those divine productions on which it was modelled. Not the least valuable part of that Idyll is the picture he has drawn of himself, in the two well-known stanzas beginning "'Mid others of less note." How well do those expressions, "a pard-like spirit, beautiful and swift!"-"a love in desolation marked"

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a power girt round with weakness"—designate him.

There is a passage in that elegy which has always struck me as among the sublimest in any language, though it is rather understood than to be explained, like Milton's "Smoothing the raven down," &c.

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity,

Until death tramples it to fragments.

His great amusement during this summer was, with his friend Williams, to navigate the clear and

rapid little river, the Serchio, and the canals that branch from it. This chosen companion and partaker of his fate, lived in the place of Pisan Villagiatura, some miles higher up the stream, against which Shelley used often to tow his light skiff, in order to enjoy the rapidity of the descent. A boat was to Shelley what a plaything is to a child-his peculiar hobby. He was eighteen when he used to float paper ones on the Serpentine; and I have no doubt, at twenty-eight, would have done the same with any boy. It was the revival of this dormant passion for boat-building which led to the fatal project of building a schooner at Genoa, of a most dangerous construction: all her ballast, I forget how many pounds of lead, being in her keel.

It may be imagined that Shelley was of a melancholy cast of mind—on the contrary, he was naturally full of playfulness, and remarkable for the fineness of his ideas; and I have never met with

any one in whom the brilliance of wit and humour was more conspicuous. In this respect he fell little short of Byron; and perhaps it was one of the great reasons why Byron found such a peculiar charm in his conversation. I doubt whether Byron could have surpassed him in his Parody on Wordsworth's 'Peter Bell,' and some other fugitive pieces of the same kind, remarkable for a keen sense of the ridiculous.

At the latter end of this year he paid a visit to Lord Byron at Ravenna. He was then writing 'Cain,' and owes to Shelley the Platonic idea of his Hades and the phantasmal worlds-perhaps suggested to Shelley himself by Lucian's IcaroMenippus.'*

*Northcote used to take leave of his pupils going on their continental tours, with "Now, young man, remember you cross the Alps expressly to become a thief." Byron was as little scrupulous as the great artist in appropriating to himself the works of others; but he had the ingenuity to select those that were in bad repute, and therefore not generally read. Shelley's 'Queen Mab' and Casti's Novelle' were two of his favourite

It was this visit which decided Byron on wintering at Pisa-a wish to be near Shelley was one of his inducements; independent of which, Tuscany was almost the only State in Italy where a foreigner, situated as Byron then was, could find

cribbing books. I taxed him roundly more than once with this habit of his; and especially of his having plagiarized his lines in Cain' from

Earth's distant orb appeared

The smallest light that twinkles in the heavens ;
Whilst round the chariot's way
Innumerable systems rolled,
And countless spheres diffused
An ever varying glory, &c.

and of taking Don Juan' from Casti, passim. "I mean," said I to him, "one of these days to translate the Novelle."" Byron seemed rather alarmed at the idea. "Casti! why you could not have a notion of such a thing? There are not ten Englishmen who have ever read the Novelle.' They are a sealed book to women. It is in the Pope's Index. The Italians think nothing of it."—"What do you think of it, Byron ?"—" I sha'nt tell you," replied he, laughing, and changed the subject. Speaking of the Index Expurgatorius,' Shelley used to tell an amusing anecdote of the Roman Dogannieri. On passing the frontier, his books were searched with much strictness, and among them was a Spinosa and an English Bible. Which do you suppose was seized and confiscated? The Bible!