alone; but I know that my companion would have attempted to save me, and
I was overcome with humiliation, when I thought that his life might have
been risked to preserve mine."--_Letters from Abroad_, etc.; _Essays_,
by Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Mrs. Shelley, 1840, ii. 68, 69.]

[362] [Byron and Shelley slept at Clarens, June 26, 1816. The windows of
their inn commanded a view of the _Bosquet de Julie_. "In the evening we
walked thither. It is, indeed, Julia's wood ... the trees themselves
were aged but vigorous.... We went again (June 27) to the _Bosquet de
Julie_, and found that the precise spot was now utterly obliterated, and
a heap of stones marked the place where the little chapel had once
stood. Whilst we were execrating the author of this brutal folly, our
guide informed us that the land belonged to the Convent of St. Bernard,
and that this outrage had been committed by their orders. I knew before
that if avarice could harden the hearts of men, a system of prescriptive
religion has an influence far more inimical to natural sensibility. I
know that an isolated man is sometimes restrained by shame from
outraging the venerable feelings arising out of the memory of genius,
which once made nature even lovelier than itself; but associated man
holds it as the very sacrament of this union to forswear all delicacy,
all benevolence, all remorse; all that is true, or tender, or
sublime."--_Essays, etc._, 1840, ii. 75.]

* * * * *

CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.

CANTO THE FOURTH.

"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 iv. lines 58-60.

* * * * *

INTRODUCTION TO THE FOURTH CANTO.

The first draft of the Fourth Canto of _Childe Harold_, which embodies
the original and normal conception of the poem, was the work of
twenty-six days. On the 17th of June, 1817, Byron wrote to Murray: "You
are out about the Third Canto: I have not done, nor designed, a line of
continuation to that poem. I was too short a time at Rome for it, and
have no thought of recommencing." But in spite of this assertion, "the
numbers came," and on June 26 he made a beginning. Thirty stanzas "were
roughened off" on the 1st