146 Byron's Memoirs. QFEE. 



racy of his descriptions, and the beauty of their reality. Meillerie, Clarens, 

 and Vevay, with the Chateau de Chillon, are places of which I shall say little, 

 because all that I could say must fall short of the impressions that they 

 stamp. 



" Three days ago we were most nearly wrecked, in a squall off Meillerie, 

 and driven to shore. I ran no risk, being so near the rocks, and a good 

 swimmer ; but our party were wet, and incommoded a good deal." 



The letter concludes with a hint on his authorship : 



" I have finished a third canto of ' Childe Harold/ 117 stanzas longer than 

 cither of the two former, and in some parts it may be better. But, of course, 

 on that I cannot determine." 



But his journals are much more amusing than his letters ; and of 

 journalizing he appears to have been fond. It evidently served to pro- 

 duce a set of common-place-books for his poetry : 



" Yesterday, Sept. 17, I set out with Mr. Hobhouse on an excursion of 

 some days to the mountains. Rose at five. Weather fine. Lakij calm and 

 clear. Mont Blanc, and the Aiguille d'Argentieres, both very distinct. 

 Reached Lausanne before sunset." 



He then gives some account of the old English republican monu- 

 ments : 



" Stopped at Vevay two hours. View from the church-yard superb ; within 

 it General Ludlow (the regicide's) monument ; black marble ; long inscrip- 

 tion ; he was an exile two-and-thirty years ; one of King Charles's judges. 

 Near him, Broughton, who read King Charles's sentence, is buried, with a 

 queer, but rather canting inscription. Ludlow's house is still shewn : it 

 retains still its inscription e Omne solum forti patria.' 



" On our return, met an English party in a carriage a lady in it fast 

 asleep fast asleep in the most anti-narcotic spot in the world ! Excellent ! 

 I remember, at Chamouni, in the very eyes of Mont Blanc, hearing another 

 woman, English also, exclaim to her party, ' Did you ever see any thing 

 more rural?' As if it was Highgate or Hampstead, or Brompton or Hayes ! 

 Rural, quotha! Rocks, pines, torrents, glaciers, clouds, and summits of 

 eternal snow far above them and rural !" 



He continued his roamings through the finest part of the Swiss 

 scenery, laying up images for new cantos of " Childe Harold :" 



" The music of the cows'-bells for their wealth is cattle in the pastures, 

 which reach to a height far above any mountain in Britain, and the shepherds 

 shouting to us from crag to crag, and playing on their reeds where the steeps 

 appeared almost inaccessible, with the surrounding scenery, realized all that 

 I have ever heard or imagined of a pastoral existence, much more so than Greece 

 or Asia-Minor ; for there we are a little too much of the sabre and musket 

 order, and if there is a crook in one hand, you are sure to see a gun in the 

 other. But this was pure and unmixed solitary, savage, and patriarchal." 



Within a day or two after this mountain ramble, he became intimate 

 with Shelley and his wife, and " & female relative" of Mrs. Shelley. 

 Here his lordship found the kind of associates that suited all his tastes ; 

 but the rest of this lucky intercourse we leave to the gossips, who love 

 scandal better than we do. Yet, whatever were the other results of this 

 association, Shelley was made madder than ever by it ; and he disputed, 

 scribbled, talked nonsense, and boated with increased vigour for the 

 rest of his worthless life. Mr. Moore hopelessly attempts to gloss over 

 the wretched career of this man. With the biographer, all Shelley's 



