after a dastardly attempt to escape and conceal himself, he was
recognized by the crowd and stabbed to death.

Petrarch first made his acquaintance in 1340, when he was summoned to
Rome to be crowned as poet laureate. Afterwards, when Rienzi was
imprisoned at Avignon, Petrarch interceded on his behalf with the pope,
but, for a time, in vain. He believed in and shared his enthusiasms; and
it is probable that the famous Canzone, "Spirto gentil, che quelle
membra reggi," was addressed to the Last of the Tribunes.

Rienzi's story forms the subject of a tragedy by Gustave Drouineau,
which was played at the Odeon, January 28, 1826; of Bulwer Lytton's
novel _The Last of the Tribunes_, which was published in 1835; and of an
opera (1842) by Richard Wagner.

(See _Encyc. Met._, art. "Rome," by Professor Villari; La Rousse, _G.
Dict. Univ._, art. "Rienzi;" and a curious pamphlet by G. W. Meadley,
London, 1821, entitled _Two Pairs of Historical Portraits_, in which an
attempt is made to trace a minute resemblance between the characters and
careers of Rienzi and the First Napoleon.)]

[494] {415} [The word "nympholepsy" may be paraphrased as "ecstatic
vision." The Greeks feigned that one who had seen a nymph was henceforth
possessed by her image, and beside himself with longing for an
impossible ideal. Compare stanza cxxii. line 7--"The unreached Paradise
of our despair." Compare, too, _Kubla Khan_, lines 52, 53--

"For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise."]

[ol] _The lovely madness of some fond despair_.--[MS. M.]

[495] {416} [Byron is describing the so-called Grotto of Egeria, which
is situated a little to the left of the Via Appia, about two miles to
the south-east of the Porta di Sebastiano: "Here, beside the Almo
rivulet [now the Maranna d. Caffarella], is a ruined nymphaeum ... which
was called the 'Grotto of Egeria,' till ... the discovery of the true
site of the Porta Capena fixed that of the grotto within the walls....
It is now known that this nymphaeum ... belonged to the suburban villa
called Triopio of Herodes Atticus." The actual site of Egeria's fountain
is in the grounds of the Villa Mattei, to the south-east of the Caelian,
and near the Porta Metronia. "It was buried, in 1867, by the military
engineers, while building their new hospital near S. Stefano Rotondo"
(Prof. Lanciani).

In lines 5-9 Byron is recalling Juvenal's description of the valley of
Egeria, under the mistak