Life of Lord Byron Volume III Part 31

"In the weather for this tour (of 13 days), I have been very fortunate--fortunate in a companion (Mr. H.)--fortunate in our prospects, and exempt from even the little petty accidents and delays which often render journeys in a less wild country disappointing. I was disposed to be pleased. I am a lover of nature and an admirer of beauty.

I can bear fatigue and welcome privation, and have seen some of the n.o.blest views in the world. But in all this--the recollection of bitterness, and more especially of recent and more home desolation, which must accompany me through life, have preyed upon me here; and neither the music of the shepherd, the cras.h.i.+ng of the avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor enabled me to lose my own wretched ident.i.ty in the majesty, and the power, and the glory, around, above, and beneath me."

Among the inmates at Secheron, on his arrival at Geneva, Lord Byron had found Mr. and Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, and a female relative of the latter, who had about a fortnight before taken up their residence at this hotel. It was the first time that Lord Byron and Mr. Sh.e.l.ley ever met; though, long before, when the latter was quite a youth,--being the younger of the two by four or five years,--he had sent to the n.o.ble poet a copy of his Queen Mab, accompanied by a letter, in which, after detailing at full length all the accusations he had heard brought against his character, he added, that, should these charges not have been true, it would make him happy to be honoured with his acquaintance. The book alone, it appears, reached its destination,--the letter having miscarried,--and Lord Byron was known to have expressed warm admiration of the opening lines of the poem.

There was, therefore, on their present meeting at Geneva, no want of disposition towards acquaintance on either side, and an intimacy almost immediately sprung up between them. Among the tastes common to both, that for boating was not the least strong; and in this beautiful region they had more than ordinary temptations to indulge in it. Every evening, during their residence under the same roof at Secheron, they embarked, accompanied by the ladies and Polidori, on the Lake; and to the feelings and fancies inspired by these excursions, which were not unfrequently prolonged into the hours of moonlight, we are indebted for some of those enchanting stanzas[116] in which the poet has given way to his pa.s.sionate love of Nature so fervidly.

"There breathes a living fragrance from the sh.o.r.e Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear Drips the light drop of the suspended oar.

At intervals, some bird from out the brakes Starts into voice a moment, then is still.

There seems a floating whisper on the hill, But that is fancy,--for the starlight dews All silently their tears of love instil, Weeping themselves away."

A person who was of these parties has thus described to me one of their evenings:--"When the _bise_ or north-east wind blows, the waters of the Lake are driven towards the town, and with the stream of the Rhone, which sets strongly in the same direction, combine to make a very rapid current towards the harbour. Carelessly, one evening, we had yielded to its course, till we found ourselves almost driven on the piles; and it required all our rowers' strength to master the tide. The waves were high and inspiriting--we were all animated by our contest with the elements. 'I will sing you an Albanian song,' cried Lord Byron; 'now, be sentimental and give me all your attention.' It was a strange, wild howl that he gave forth; but such as, he declared, was an exact imitation of the savage Albanian mode,--laughing, the while, at our disappointment, who had expected a wild Eastern melody."

Sometimes the party landed, for a walk upon the sh.o.r.e, and, on such occasions, Lord Byron would loiter behind the rest, lazily trailing his sword-stick along, and moulding, as he went, his thronging thoughts into shape. Often too, when in the boat, he would lean abstractedly over the side, and surrender himself up, in silence, to the same absorbing task.

The conversation of Mr. Sh.e.l.ley, from the extent of his poetic reading, and the strange, mystic speculations into which his system of philosophy led him, was of a nature strongly to arrest and interest the attention of Lord Byron, and to turn him away from worldly a.s.sociations and topics into more abstract and untrodden ways of thought. As far as contrast, indeed, is an enlivening ingredient of such intercourse, it would be difficult to find two persons more formed to whet each other's faculties by discussion, as on few points of common interest between them did their opinions agree; and that this difference had its root deep in the conformation of their respective minds needs but a glance through the rich, glittering labyrinth of Mr. Sh.e.l.ley's pages to a.s.sure us.

In Lord Byron, the real was never forgotten in the fanciful. However Imagination had placed her whole realm at his disposal, he was no less a man of this world than a ruler of hers; and, accordingly, through the airiest and most subtile creations of his brain still the life-blood of truth and reality circulates. With Sh.e.l.ley it was far otherwise;--his fancy (and he had sufficient for a whole generation of poets) was the medium through which he saw all things, his facts as well as his theories; and not only the greater part of his poetry, but the political and philosophical speculations in which he indulged, were all distilled through the same over-refining and unrealising alembic. Having started as a teacher and reformer of the world, at an age when he could know nothing of the world but from fancy, the persecution he met with on the threshold of this boyish enterprise but confirmed him in his first paradoxical views of human ills and their remedies; and, instead of waiting to take lessons of authority and experience, he, with a courage, admirable had it been but wisely directed, made war upon both. From this sort of self-willed start in the world, an impulse was at once given to his opinions and powers directly contrary, it would seem, to their natural bias, and from which his life was too short to allow him time to recover. With a mind, by nature, fervidly pious, he yet refused to acknowledge a Supreme Providence, and subst.i.tuted some airy abstraction of "Universal Love" in its place. An aristocrat by birth and, as I understand, also in appearance and manners, he was yet a leveller in politics, and to such an Utopian extent as to be, seriously, the advocate of a community of property. With a delicacy and even romance of sentiment, which lends such grace to some of his lesser poems, he could notwithstanding contemplate a change in the relations of the s.e.xes, which would have led to results fully as gross as his arguments for it were fastidious and refined; and though benevolent and generous to an extent that seemed to exclude all idea of selfishness, he yet scrupled not, in the pride of system, to disturb wantonly the faith of his fellowmen, and, without subst.i.tuting any equivalent good in its place, to rob the wretched of a hope, which, even if false, would be worth all this world's best truths.

Upon no point were the opposite tendencies of the two friends,--to long-established opinions and matter of fact on one side, and to all that was most innovating and visionary on the other,--more observable than in their notions on philosophical subjects; Lord Byron being, with the great bulk of mankind, a believer in the existence of Matter and Evil, while Sh.e.l.ley so far refined upon the theory of Berkeley as not only to resolve the whole of Creation into spirit, but to add also to this immaterial system some pervading principle, some abstract non-ent.i.ty of Love and Beauty, of which--as a subst.i.tute, at least, for Deity--the philosophic bishop had never dreamed. On such subjects, and on poetry, their conversation generally turned; and, as might be expected, from Lord Byron's facility in receiving new impressions, the opinions of his companion were not altogether without some influence on his mind. Here and there, among those fine bursts of pa.s.sion and description that abound in the third Canto of Childe Harold, may be discovered traces of that mysticism of meaning,--that sublimity, losing itself in its own vagueness,--which so much characterised the writings of his extraordinary friend; and in one of the notes we find Sh.e.l.ley's favourite Pantheism of Love thus glanced at:--"But this is not all: the feeling with which all around Clarens and the opposite rocks of Meillerie is invested, is of a still higher and more comprehensive order than the mere sympathy with individual pa.s.sion; it is a sense of the existence of love in its most extended and sublime capacity, and of our own partic.i.p.ation of its good and of its glory: it is the great principle of the universe, which is there more condensed, but not less manifested; and of which, though knowing ourselves a part, we lose our individuality, and mingle in the beauty of the whole."

Another proof of the ductility with which he fell into his new friend's tastes and predilections, appears in the tinge, if not something deeper, of the manner and cast of thinking of Mr. Wordsworth, which is traceable through so many of his most beautiful stanzas. Being naturally, from his love of the abstract and imaginative, an admirer of the great poet of the Lakes, Mr. Sh.e.l.ley omitted no opportunity of bringing the beauties of his favourite writer under the notice of Lord Byron; and it is not surprising that, once persuaded into a fair perusal, the mind of the n.o.ble poet should--in spite of some personal and political prejudices which unluckily survived this short access of admiration--not only feel the influence but, in some degree, even reflect the hues of one of the very few real and original poets that this age (fertile as it is in rhymers _quales ego et Cluvienus_) has had the glory of producing.

When Polidori was of their party, (which, till he found attractions elsewhere, was generally the case,) their more elevated subjects of conversation were almost always put to flight by the strange sallies of this eccentric young man, whose vanity made him a constant b.u.t.t for Lord Byron's sarcasm and merriment. The son of a highly respectable Italian gentleman, who was in early life, I understand, the secretary of Alfieri, Polidori seems to have possessed both talents and dispositions which, had he lived, might have rendered him a useful member of his profession and of society. At the time, however, of which we are speaking, his ambition of distinction far outwent both his powers and opportunities of attaining it. His mind, accordingly, between ardour and weakness, was kept in a constant hectic of vanity, and he seems to have alternately provoked and amused his n.o.ble employer, leaving him seldom any escape from anger but in laughter. Among other pretensions, he had set his heart upon s.h.i.+ning as an author, and one evening at Mr.

Sh.e.l.ley's, producing a tragedy of his own writing, insisted that they should undergo the operation of hearing it. To lighten the infliction, Lord Byron took upon himself the task of reader; and the whole scene, from the description I have heard of it, must have been not a little trying to gravity. In spite of the jealous watch kept upon every countenance by the author, it was impossible to withstand the smile lurking in the eye of the reader, whose only resource against the outbreak of his own laughter lay in lauding, from time to time, most vehemently, the sublimity of the verses;--particularly some that began "'Tis thus the goiter'd idiot of the Alps,'--and then adding, at the close of every such eulogy, "I a.s.sure you when I was in the Drury Lane Committee, much worse things were offered to us."

After pa.s.sing a fortnight under the same roof with Lord Byron at Secheron, Mr. and Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley removed to a small house on the Mont-Blanc side of the Lake, within about ten minutes' walk of the villa which their n.o.ble friend had taken, upon the high banks, called Belle Rive, that rose immediately behind them. During the fortnight that Lord Byron outstaid them at Secheron, though the weather had changed and was become windy and cloudy, he every evening crossed the Lake, with Polidori, to visit them; and "as he returned again (says my informant) over the darkened waters, the wind, from far across, bore us his voice singing your Tyrolese Song of Liberty, which I then first heard, and which is to me inextricably linked with his remembrance."

In the mean time, Polidori had become jealous of the growing intimacy of his n.o.ble patron with Sh.e.l.ley; and the plan which he now understood them to have formed of making a tour of the Lake without him completed his mortification. In the soreness of his feelings on this subject he indulged in some intemperate remonstrances, which Lord Byron indignantly resented; and the usual bounds of courtesy being pa.s.sed on both sides, the dismissal of Polidori appeared, even to himself, inevitable. With this prospect, which he considered nothing less than ruin, before his eyes, the poor young man was, it seems, on the point of committing that fatal act which, two or three years afterwards, he actually did perpetrate. Retiring to his own room, he had already drawn forth the poison from his medicine chest, and was pausing to consider whether he should write a letter before he took it, when Lord Byron (without, however, the least suspicion of his intention) tapped at the door and entered, with his hand held forth in sign of reconciliation. The sudden revulsion was too much for poor Polidori, who burst into tears; and, in relating all the circ.u.mstances of the occurrence afterwards, he declared that nothing could exceed the gentle kindness of Lord Byron in soothing his mind and restoring him to composure.

Soon after this the n.o.ble poet removed to Diodati. He had, on his first coming to Geneva, with the good-natured view of introducing Polidori into company, gone to several Genevese parties; but, this task performed, he retired altogether from society till late in the summer, when, as we have seen, he visited Copet. His means were at this time very limited; and though he lived by no means parsimoniously, all unnecessary expenses were avoided in his establishment. The young physician had been, at first, a source of much expense to him, being in the habit of hiring a carriage, at a louis a day (Lord Byron not then keeping horses), to take him to his evening parties; and it was some time before his n.o.ble patron had the courage to put this luxury down.

The liberty, indeed, which this young person allowed himself was, on one occasion, the means of bringing an imputation upon the poet's hospitality and good breeding, which, like every thing else, true or false, tending to cast a shade upon his character, was for some time circulated with the most industrious zeal. Without any authority from the n.o.ble owner of the mansion, he took upon himself to invite some Genevese gentlemen (M. Pictet, and, I believe, M. Bonstetten) to dine at Diodati; and the punishment which Lord Byron thought it right to inflict upon him for such freedom was, "as he had invited the guests, to leave him also to entertain them." This step, though merely a consequence of the physician's indiscretion, it was not difficult, of course, to convert into a serious charge of caprice and rudeness against the host himself.

By such repeated instances of thoughtlessness (to use no harsher term), it is not wonderful that Lord Byron should at last be driven into a feeling of distaste towards his medical companion, of whom he one day remarked, that "he was exactly the kind of person to whom, if he fell overboard, one would hold out a straw, to know if the adage be true that drowning men catch at straws."

A few more anecdotes of this young man, while in the service of Lord Byron, may, as throwing light upon the character of the latter, be not inappropriately introduced. While the whole party were, one day, out boating, Polidori, by some accident, in rowing, struck Lord Byron violently on the knee-pan with his oar; and the latter, without speaking, turned his face away to hide the pain. After a moment he said, "Be so kind, Polidori, another time, to take more care, for you hurt me very much."--"I am glad of it," answered the other; "I am glad to see you can suffer pain." In a calm suppressed tone, Lord Byron replied, "Let me advise you, Polidori, when you, another time, hurt any one, not to express your satisfaction. People don't like to be told that those who give them pain are glad of it; and they cannot always command their anger. It was with some difficulty that I refrained from throwing you into the water; and, but for Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley's presence, I should probably have done some such rash thing." This was said without ill temper, and the cloud soon pa.s.sed away.

Another time, when the lady just mentioned was, after a shower of rain, walking up the hill to Diodati, Lord Byron, who saw her from his balcony where he was standing with Polidori, said to the latter, "Now, you who wish to be gallant ought to jump down this small height, and offer your arm." Polidori chose the easiest part of the declivity, and leaped;--but the ground being wet, his foot slipped, and he sprained his ankle.[117]

Lord Byron instantly helped to carry him in and procure cold water for the foot; and, after he was laid on the sofa, perceiving that he was uneasy, went up stairs himself (an exertion which his lameness made painful and disagreeable) to fetch a pillow for him. "Well, I did not believe you had so much feeling," was Polidori's gracious remark, which, it may be supposed, not a little clouded the n.o.ble poet's brow.

A dialogue which Lord Byron himself used to mention as having taken place between them during their journey on the Rhine, is amusingly characteristic of both the persons concerned. "After all," said the physician, "what is there you can do that I cannot?"--"Why, since you force me to say," answered the other, "I think there are three things I can do which you cannot." Polidori defied him to name them. "I can,"

said Lord Byron, "swim across that river--I can snuff out that candle with a pistol-shot at the distance of twenty paces--and I have written a poem[118] of which 14,000 copies were sold in one day."

The jealous pique of the Doctor against Sh.e.l.ley was constantly breaking out; and on the occasion of some victory which the latter had gained over him in a sailing-match, he took it into his head that his antagonist had treated him with contempt; and went so far, in consequence, notwithstanding Sh.e.l.ley's known sentiments against duelling, as to proffer him a sort of challenge, at which Sh.e.l.ley, as might be expected, only laughed. Lord Byron, however, fearing that the vivacious physician might still further take advantage of this peculiarity of his friend, said to him, "Recollect, that though Sh.e.l.ley has some scruples about duelling, _I_ have none; and shall be, at all times, ready to take his place."

At Diodati, his life was pa.s.sed in the same regular round of habits and occupations into which, when left to himself, he always naturally fell; a late breakfast, then a visit to the Sh.e.l.leys' cottage and an excursion on the Lake;--at five, dinner[119] (when he usually preferred being alone), and then, if the weather permitted, an excursion again. He and Sh.e.l.ley had joined in purchasing a boat, for which they gave twenty-five _louis_,--a small sailing vessel, fitted to stand the usual squalls of the climate, and, at that time, the only keeled boat on the Lake. When the weather did not allow of their excursions after dinner,--an occurrence not unfrequent during this very wet summer,--the inmates of the cottage pa.s.sed their evenings at Diodati, and, when the rain rendered it inconvenient for them to return home, remained there to sleep. "We often," says one, who was not the least ornamental of the party, "sat up in conversation till the morning light. There was never any lack of subjects, and, grave or gay, we were always interested."

During a week of rain at this time, having amused themselves with reading German ghost-stories, they agreed, at last, to write something in imitation of them. "You and I," said Lord Byron to Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, "will publish ours together." He then began his tale of the Vampire; and, having the whole arranged in his head, repeated to them a sketch of the story[120] one evening,--but, from the narrative being in prose, made but little progress in filling up his outline. The most memorable result, indeed, of their story-telling compact, was Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley's wild and powerful romance of Frankenstein,--one of those original conceptions that take hold of the public mind at once, and for ever.

Towards the latter end of June, as we have seen in one of the preceding letters, Lord Byron, accompanied by his friend Sh.e.l.ley, made a tour in his boat round the Lake, and visited, "with the Heloise before him," all those scenes around Meillerie and Clarens, which have become consecrated for ever by ideal pa.s.sion, and by that power which Genius alone possesses, of giving such life to its dreams as to make them seem realities. In the squall off Meillerie, which he mentions, their danger was considerable[121]. In the expectation, every moment, of being obliged to swim for his life, Lord Byron had already thrown off his coat, and, as Sh.e.l.ley was no swimmer, insisted upon endeavouring, by some means, to save him. This offer, however, Sh.e.l.ley positively refused; and seating himself quietly upon a locker, and grasping the rings at each end firmly in his hands, declared his determination to go down in that position, without a struggle.[122]

Subjoined to that interesting little work, the "Six Weeks' Tour," there is a letter by Sh.e.l.ley himself, giving an account of this excursion round the Lake, and written with all the enthusiasm such scenes should inspire. In describing a beautiful child they saw at the village of Nerni, he says, "My companion gave him a piece of money, which he took without speaking, with a sweet smile of easy thankfulness, and then with an unembarra.s.sed air turned to his play." There were, indeed, few things Lord Byron more delighted in than to watch beautiful children at play;--"many a lovely Swiss child (says a person who saw him daily at this time) received crowns from him as the reward of their grace and sweetness."

Speaking of their lodgings at Nerni, which were gloomy and dirty, Mr.

Sh.e.l.ley says, "On returning to our inn, we found that the servant had arranged our rooms, and deprived them of the greater portion of their former disconsolate appearance. They reminded my companion of Greece:--it was five years, he said, since he had slept in such beds."

Luckily for Sh.e.l.ley's full enjoyment of these scenes, he had never before happened to read the Heloise; and though his companion had long been familiar with that romance, the sight of the region itself, the "birth-place of deep Love," every spot of which seemed instinct with the pa.s.sion of the story, gave to the whole a fresh and actual existence in his mind. Both were under the spell of the Genius of the place,--both full of emotion; and as they walked silently through the vineyards that were once the "bosquet de Julie," Lord Byron suddenly exclaimed, "Thank G.o.d, Polidori is not here."

That the glowing stanzas suggested to him by this scene were written upon the spot itself appears almost certain, from the letter addressed to Mr. Murray on his way back to Diodati, in which he announces the third Canto as complete, and consisting of 117 stanzas. At Ouchy, near Lausanne,--the place from which that letter is dated--he and his friend were detained two days, in a small inn, by the weather: and it was there, in that short interval, that he wrote his "Prisoner of Chillon,"

adding one more deathless a.s.sociation to the already immortalised localities of the Lake.

On his return from this excursion to Diodati, an occasion was afforded for the gratification of his jesting propensities by the avowal of the young physician that--he had fallen in love. On the evening of this tender confession they both appeared at Sh.e.l.ley's cottage--Lord Byron, in the highest and most boyish spirits, rubbing his hands as he walked about the room, and in that utter incapacity of retention which was one of his foibles, making jesting allusions to the secret he had just heard. The brow of the Doctor darkened as this pleasantry went on, and, at last, he angrily accused Lord Byron of hardness of heart. "I never,"

said he, "met with a person so unfeeling." This sally, though 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 gla.s.s 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.[123] 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 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 Stael'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. .h.i.therto 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 a.s.signing 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 fort.i.tude 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 Chillon, 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, ent.i.tled "The Incantation," which he introduced afterwards, without any connection with the subject, into Manfred, were also (at least, the less bitter portion of them) the production of this period; and as they were written soon after the last fruitless attempt at reconciliation, 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 will not vanish, There are thoughts thou canst not banish; By a power to thee unknown, Thou canst never be alone; Thou art wrapt 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 pa.s.s by, Thou shalt 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 Inez 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 ma.n.u.script into the fire. So constantly were the good and evil principles of his nature conflicting for mastery over him.[124]

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.

[Footnote 116: Childe Harold, Canto iii.]

[Footnote 117: To this lameness of Polidori, one of the preceding letters of Lord Byron alludes.]

[Footnote 118: The Corsair.]

[Footnote 119: His system of diet here was regulated by an abstinence almost incredible. A thin slice of bread, with tea, at breakfast--a light, vegetable dinner, with a bottle or two of Seltzer water, tinged with vin de Grave, and in the evening, a cup of green tea, without milk or sugar, formed the whole of his sustenance. The pangs of hunger he appeased by privately chewing tobacco and smoking cigars.]

[Footnote 120: From his remembrance of this sketch, Polidori afterwards vamped up his strange novel of the Vampire, which, under the supposition of its being Lord Byron's, was received with such enthusiasm in France.

It would, indeed, not a little deduct from our value of foreign fame, if what some French writers have a.s.serted be true, that the appearance of this extravagant novel among our neighbours first attracted their attention to the genius of Byron.]

[Footnote 121: "The wind (says Lord Byron's fellow-voyager) gradually increased in violence until it blew tremendously; and, as it came from the remotest extremity of the Lake, produced waves of a frightful height, and covered the whole surface with a chaos of foam. One of our boatmen, who was a dreadfully stupid fellow, persisted in holding the sail at a time when the boat was on the point of being driven under water by the hurricane. On discovering this error, he let it entirely go, and the boat for a moment refused to obey the helm; in addition, the rudder was so broken as to render the management of it very difficult; one wave fell in, and then another."]

[Footnote 122: "I felt, in this near prospect of death (says Mr.