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Rousseau has not been particularly fortunate in the preservation of the "local habitations" he has given to " airy. nothings." The Prior of Great St. Bernard has cut down some of his woods for the sake of a few casks of wine, and Buonaparte has levelled part of the rocks of Meillerie in improving the road to the Simplon. The road is an excellent one, but I cannot quite agree with a remark which I heard made, that "La route vaut mieux que les souvenirs."

23.

Lausanne! and Ferney! ye have been the abodes.

Stanza cv. line 1.

Voltaire and Gibbon.

24.

Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.

Stanza cxiii. line last.

"If it be thus,

"For Banquo's issue have I filed my mind."

25.

Macbeth.

O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve.

Stanza cxiv. line 7.

It is said by Rochefoucault that "there is always something

"in the misfortunes of men's best friends not displeasing to "them."

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.

CANTO IV.

Visto ho Toscana, Lombardia, Romagna,
Quel Monte che divide, e quel che serra
Italia, e un mare e l'altro, che la bagna.

ARIOSTO, Satira iii.

T

то

Venice, January 2, 1818.

JOHN HOBHOUSE, ESQ. A. M. F. R.S.

&c. &c. &c.

MY DEAR HOBHOUSE,

AFTER an interval of eight years between

the composition of the first and last cantos of Childe Harold, the conclusion of the poem is about to be submitted to the public. In parting with so old a friend it is not extraordinary that I should recur to one still older and better,-to one who has beheld the birth and death of the other, and to whom I am far more indebted for the social advantages of an enlightened friendship, than— though not ungrateful—I can, or could be, to Childe Harold, for any public favour reflected through the poem on the poet,-to one, whom I have known long, and accompanied far, whom I have found wakeful over my sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my prosperity and firm in my adversity, true in counsel and trusty in

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