e walls,"--

Stanza clxxxii. "Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee,"--

(52 stanzas.)

ADDITIONS INCLUDED IN MS. D.,[363] BUT NOT AMONG MSS. M.

Stanza xli. "The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust,"--

Stanza xcvii. "But France got drunk with blood to vomit crime,"--

Stanza xcviii. "Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying,"--

Stanza cxx. "Alas! our young affections run to waste,"--

Stanza cxxi. "Oh, Love! no habitant of earth thou art,"--

Stanza cxxii. "Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,"--

Stanza cxxiv. "We wither from our youth, we gasp away,"--

(Seven stanzas.)

* * * * *

TO

JOHN HOBHOUSE, ESQ., A.M., F.R.S.,

&c., &c., &c.
Venice, _January_ 2, 1818.

* * * * *

My dear Hobhouse,

After an interval of eight years between the composition of the first
and last cantos of _Childe Harold_, the conclusion of the poem is about
to be submitted to the public. In parting with so old a friend,[364] it
is not extraordinary that I should recur to one still older and
better,--to one who has beheld the birth and death of the other, and to
whom I am far more indebted for the social advantages of an enlightened
friendship, than--though not ungrateful--I can, or could be, to _Childe
Harold_, for any public favour reflected through the poem on the
poet,--to one, whom I have known long, and accompanied far, whom I have
found wakeful over my sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my
prosperity and firm in my adversity, true in counsel and trusty in
peril,--to a friend often tried and never found wanting;--to yourself.

In so doing, I recur from fiction to truth; and in dedicating to you in
its complete, or at least concluded state, a poetical work which is the
longest, the most thoughtful and comprehensive of my compositions, I
wish to do honour to myself by the record of many years' intimacy with a
man of learning, of talent, of steadiness, and of honour. It is not for
minds like ours to give or to receive flattery; yet the praises of
sincerity have ever been permitted to the voice of friendship; and it is
not for you, nor even for others, but to relieve a heart which has not
elsewhere, or lately, been so much accustomed to th