x to _Childe Harold_. It is certain
that Byron had begun the fourth canto, and written some thirty or more
stanzas, before Hobhouse rejoined him at his villa of La Mira on the
banks of the Brenta, in July, 1817; and it would seem that, although he
had begun by saying "that he was too short a time in Rome for it," he
speedily overcame his misgivings, and accomplished, as he believed, the
last "fytte" of his pilgrimage. The first draft was Byron's unaided
composition, but the "additional stanzas" were largely due to Hobhouse's
suggestions in the course of conversation, if not to his written
"researches." Hobhouse himself made no secret of it. In his preface (p.
5) to _Historical Illustrations_ he affirms that both "illustrations"
and notes were "for the most part written while the noble author was yet
employed in the composition of the poem. They were put into the hands of
Lord Byron much in the state in which they now appear;" and, writing to
Murray, December 7, 1817, he says, "I must confess I feel an affection
for it [Canto IV.] more than ordinary, as part of it was begot as it
were under my own eyes; for although your poets are as shy as elephants
and camels ... yet I have, not unfrequently, witnessed his lordship's
coupleting, and some of the stanzas owe their birth to our morning walk
or evening ride at La Mira." Forty years later, in his revised and
enlarged "Illustrations" (_Italy: Remarks made in Several Visits from
the year 1816 to 1854_, by the Right Hon. Lord Broughton, G.C.B., 1859,
i. p. iv.), he reverts to this collaboration: "When I rejoined Lord
Byron at La Mira ... I found him employed upon the Fourth Canto of
_Childe Harold_, and, later in the autumn, he showed me the first sketch
of the poem. It was much shorter than it afterwards became, and it did
not remark on several objects which appeared to me peculiarly worthy of
notice. I made a list of these objects, and in conversation with him
gave him reasons for the selection. The result was the poem as it now
appears, and he then engaged me to write the notes."

As the "delicate spirit" of Shelley suffused the third canto of _Childe
Harold_, so the fourth reveals the presence and co-operation of
Hobhouse. To his brother-poet he owed a fresh conception, perhaps a
fresh appreciation of nature; to his lifelong friend, a fresh enthusiasm
for art, and a host of details, "dry bones ... which he awakened into
the fulness of life."

The Fourth Canto was publishe