Notwithstanding the resolution, so recently expressed by Lord Byron, to abandon for ever the vocation of authorship, and leave "the whole Castalian state" to others, he was hardly landed in England when we find him busily engaged in preparations for the publication of some of the poems which he had produced abroad. So eager was he, indeed, to print, that he had already, in a letter written at sea, announced himself to Mr. Dallas, as ready for the press. Of this letter, which, from its date, ought to have preceded some of the others that have been given, I shall here lay before the reader the most material parts.
[Footnote 1: To this he alludes in those beautiful stanzas,
"To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell," &c.
Alfieri, before his dramatic genius had yet unfolded itself, used to pass hours, as he tells us, in this sort of dreaming state, gazing upon the ocean:--"Après le spectacle un de mes amusemens, à Marseille, était de me baigner presque tous les soirs dans la mer. J'avais trouvé un petit endroit fort agréable, sur une langue de terre placée à droite hors du port, où, en m'asseyant sur le sable, le dos appuyé contre un petit rocher qui empêchait qu'on ne pût me voir du côté de la terre, je n'avais plus devant moi que le ciel et la mer. Entre ces deux immensités qu'embellissaient les rayons d'un soleil couchant, je passai en rêvant des heures délicieuses; et là, je serais devenu poëte, si j'avais su écrire dans une langue quelconque."]
[Footnote 2: But a few months before he died, in a conversation with Maurocordato at Missolonghi, Lord Byron said--"The Turkish History was one of the first books that gave me pleasure when a child; and I believe it had much influence on my subsequent wishes to visit the Levant, and gave perhaps the oriental colouring which is observed in my poetry."--COUNT GAMBA's _Narrative_.
In the last edition of Mr. D'Israeli's work on "the Literary Character," that gentleman has given some curious marginal notes, which he found written by Lord Byron in a copy of this work that belonged to him. Among them is the following enumeration of the writers that, besides Rycaut, had drawn his attention so early to the East:--
"Knolles, Cantemir, De Tott, Lady M.W. Montague, Hawkins's Translation from Mignot's History of the Turks, the Arabian Nights, all travels, or histories, or books upon the East I could meet with, I had read, as well as Rycaut, before I was _ten years old_. I think the Arabian Nights first. After these, I preferred the history of naval actions, Don Quixote, and Smollett's novels, particularly Roderick Random, and I was passionate for the Roman History. When a boy, I could never bear to read any Poetry whatever without disgust and reluctance."]