remarkable and almost incredible "Adventures." Trelawny is at present in command of Byron's yacht the Bolivar, lying in the harbour of Genoa.

The poet welcomes these new additions to his company: for, since his arrival in Pisa, he has begun to entertain men at dinner-parties, for the first time since leaving England. A very cheerful company sits down with him to dinner: their host displays himself to great advantage, "being at once," to quote Shelley, "polite and cordial, full of social hilarity and the most perfect good humour, never diverging into ungraceful merriment, and yet keeping up the spirit of liveliness throughout the evening." Byron, according to his own declaration, has never passed two hours in mixed society without wishing himself out of it again. Nobody, however, could guess at this fact from his bright, frank, and spontaneous gaiety. Always an abstemious eater—"I have fed at times for over two months together," he assures his friends, "on sheer biscuit and water,"—very little food suffices him: and besides, bien entendu, he is anxious to retain that "happy slenderness" on which he prides himself,—the slenderness which is a characteristic of his family, and which he has recently endangered by a lazy life in Venice. The guests sit fascinated by his enthralling personality: they recognize that he wears a natural greatness which "his errors can only half obscure:" and they rivet their gaze upon that pale and splendid face, the only one, as Scott says, that ever came up to an artist's notion of what the lineaments of a poet should be. He looks around him upon the ethereal and feminine countenance of Shelley, the visionary,—the kind, pleasant, honest English faces of Medwin and Williams,—the good-looking Italian Gamba, the quaint little Irishman Taafe,—last, not least, the dark mustachios and wildly-flashing Celtic eyes of the Cornish adventurer Trelawny. This latter might well have served for a model of Conrad the Corsair: and so he is assured by his companions.

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But where, they ask, shall the original of Gulnare be found,—Gulnare, who stains her hand with the blood of her lord the Pasha, to save the Corsair from a dreadful death? Byron refuses to reveal his source of inspiration: but Shelley quotes with sincere approval the lines which most emphatically delineate that lovely, desperate woman.

But—"Heavens, Shelley!" cries his host, "what infinite nonsense are you quoting?" and he hastily turns the current of conversation towards more impersonal subjects.

The evening wears on: the guests depart: the clear spring moonlight streams upon the winding Arno. Byron stands dreaming at the open window, the bridges and buildings of Pisa lie still and silver-lit before him: a subtle influence of quietude steals down upon him from the stars. "What nothings we are," he murmurs, "before the least of these stars!" One in particular—is it Sirius?—entrances his attention with its cold refulgence of pure light. His thoughts involuntarily shape themselves in rhythm and rhyme;

It is the hour when Byron's brain becomes thronged with a glowing phantasmagoria of ideas that cry aloud for visible expression. He forgets, under the stress of creative impulse, the sources and causes of his inherent melancholy,—the miserable days of his childhood, with a Fury for a mother,—the wound, never to be healed, of his unrequited love for Mary Chaworth,—the inimical wife from whom he is eternally alienated,—the little daughter that he may never hold in his arms,—the beloved sister separated from his side,—the ancestral home of his forefathers now