so"
(published July 17, 1817). He passed through Florence, where he saw "_the_
Venus" (of Medici) in the Uffizi Gallery, by reedy Thrasymene and Term's
"matchless cataract" to "Rome the Wonderful." At Rome, with Hobhouse as
companion and guide, he stayed three weeks. He returned to Venice on the
28th of May, but shortly removed to a villa at Mira on the Brenta, some 7
m. inland. A month later (June 26) when memory had selected and reduced to
order the first impressions of his tour, he began to work them up into a
fourth canto of _Childe Harold_. A first draft of 126 stanzas was finished
by the 29th of July; the 60 additional stanzas which made up the canto as
it stands were written up to material suggested by or supplied by Hobhouse,
"who put his researches" at Byron's disposal and wrote the learned and
elaborate notes which are appended to the poem. Among the books which
Murray sent out to Venice was a copy of Hookham Frere's _Whistlecraft_.
Byron took the hint and produced _Beppo, a Venetian Story_ (published
anonymously on the 28th of February 1818). He attributes his choice of the
mock heroic _ottava-rima_ to Frere's example, but he was certainly familiar
with Casti's _Novelle_, and, according to Stendhal, with the poetry of
Buratti. The success of _Beppo_ and a growing sense that "the excellent
manner of _Whistlecraft_" was the manner for him, led him to study Frere's
masters and models, Berni and Pulci. An accident had led to a great
discovery.

The fourth canto of _Childe Harold_ was published on the 28th of April
1818. Nearly three months went by before Murray wrote to him, and he began
to think that his new poem was a failure. Meanwhile he completed an "Ode on
Venice," in which he laments her apathy and decay, and contrasts the
tyranny of the Old World with the new birth of freedom in America. In
September he began _Don Juan_. His own account of the inception of his last
and greatest work is characteristic but misleading. He says (September 9)
that his new poem is to be in the style of _Beppo_, and is "meant to be a
little quietly facetious about everything." A year later (August 12, 1819),
he says that he neither has nor had a _plan_--but that "he had or has
_materials_." By materials he means books, such as Dalzell's _Shipwrecks
and Disasters by Sea_, or de Castelnau's _Histoire de la nouvelle Russie_,
&c., which might be regarded as poetry in the rough. The dedication to
Robert Southey (not published till 183