self judge how far I possessed the
promise of better things hereafter. Still I did nothing. Travelling, and
the cares of a family, occupied my time; and study, the way of reading,
or improving my ideas in communication with his far more cultivated
mind, was all of literary employment that engaged my attention. In the
summer of 1816, we visited Switzerland, and became the neighbors of Lord
Byron. At first we spent our pleasant hours on the lake, or wandering on
its shores: and Lord Byron, who was writing the third canto of Childe
Harold, was the only one among us who put his thoughts upon paper.
These, as he brought them successively to us, clothed in all the light
and harmony of poetry, seemed to stamp as divine the glories of heaven
and earth, whose influences we partook with him. But it proved a wet,
ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined us for days to the
house. Some volumes of ghost stories, translated from the German into
French, fell into our hands. There was the History of the Inconstant
Lover, who when he thought to clasp the bride to whom he had pledged his
vows, found himself in the arms of the pale ghost of her whom he had
deserted. There was the tale of the sinful founder of his race, whose
miserable doom it was to bestow the kiss of death on all the younger
sons of his fated house, just when they reached the age of promise. His
gigantic, shadowy form, clothed like the ghost in Hamlet, in complete
armor, but with the beaver up, was seen at midnight, by the moon's
fitful beams, to advance slowly along the gloomy avenue. The shape was
lost beneath the shadow of the castle walls; but soon a gate swung back,
a step was heard, the door of the chamber opened, and he advanced to the
couch of the blooming youths, cradled in healthy sleep. Eternal sorrow
sat upon his face as he bent down and kissed the forehead of the boys,
who from that hour withered like flowers snapt upon the stalk. I have
not seen these stories since then; but their incidents are as fresh in
my mind as if I had read them yesterday. 'We will each write a ghost
story,' said Lord Byron; and his proposition was acceded to. There were
four of us. The noble author began a tale, a fragment of which he
printed at the end of his poem of Mazeppa. Shelley, more apt to embody
ideas and sentiments in the radiance of brilliant imagery, and in the
music of the most melodious verse that adorns our language, than to
invent the machinery of a story, com