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 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. Her 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

In the account of this visit to Copet in his Memoranda, he spoke in high terms of the daughter of his hostess, the present Duchesse de Broglie, and, in noticing how much she appeared to be attached to her husband, remarked that « Nothing was more pleasing than to see the development 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 cleverest at bottom, but spoilt by a wish to beshe knew not what. In her own house she was amiable; in any other person's, you wished her gone, and in her own again."

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 of Childe Harold and the Prisoner of Chil-
lon, 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 man.
Those verses,
too, entitled the Incantation," which he introduced
afterwards, without any connexion with the subject, into
Manfred, were also (at least, the le s bitter portion of
them) the prod ction of this period; and as they were
written soon after the last fruitless attempt at reconci-
liation, it is needless to say who was in his thoughts
while he penned some of the opening stanzas.

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

There are shades which wil. not vanish;
There are thoughts thou canst not banish:
By a power to thee unknown,

Thou canst never be alone:

Thou art wrap as with a shroud,

Thou art gather'd in a cloud:

And for ever shalt thou dwell
In the spirit of this spell.

Though thou see'st me not pass by,
Thou shal 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 prose, founded upon the story of the Marriage of Belphegor, and intended to shadow out his own matrimonial fate. The wife of this satanic personage he described 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 scepticism 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.

.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.

*

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 såd—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 :-etc.

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. »