at Montenero near Leghorn, but as the authorities were still dissatisfied
they removed to Genoa. Byron and Leigh Hunt left Pisa on the last day of
September. On reaching Genoa Byron took up his quarters with the Gambas at
the Casa Saluzzo, "a fine old palazzo with an extensive view over the bay,"
and Hunt and his party at the Casa Negroto with Mrs Shelley. Life at Genoa
was uneventful. Of Hunt and Mrs Shelley he saw as little as possible, and
though his still unpublished poems were at the service of _The Liberal_, he
did little or nothing to further its success. Each number was badly
received. Byron had some reason to fear that his popularity [v.04 p.0903]
was on the wane, and though he had broken with Murray and was offering _Don
Juan_ (cantos vi.-xii.) to John Hunt, the publisher of _The Liberal_, he
meditated a "run down to Naples" and a recommencement of _Childe Harold_.
There was a limit to his defiance of the "world's rebuke." Home politics
and the congress of Verona (November-December 1822) suggested a satire
entitled "The Age of Bronze" (published April 1, 1823). It is, as he said,
"stilted," and cries out for notes, but it embodies some of his finest and
most vigorous work as a satirist. By the middle of February (1823) he had
completed _The Island; or Christian and his Comrades_ (published June 26,
1823). The sources are Bligh's _Narrative of the Mutiny of the Bounty_, and
Mariner's _Account of the Tonga Islands_. Satire and tale are a reversion
to his earlier method. The execution of _The Island_ is hurried and
unequal, but there is a deep and tender note in the love-story and the
recital of the "feasts and loves and wars" of the islanders. The poetic
faculty has been "softened into feeling" by the experience of life.

When _The Island_ was finished, Byron went on with _Don Juan_. Early in
March the news reached him that he had been elected a member of the Greek
Committee, a small body of influential Liberals who had taken up the cause
of the liberation of Greece. Byron at once offered money and advice, and
after some hesitation on the score of health, determined "to go to Greece."
His first step was to sell the "Bolivar" to Lord Blessington, and to
purchase the "Hercules," a collier-built tub of 120 tons. On the 23rd of
July the "Hercules" sailed from Leghorn and anchored off Cephalonia on the
3rd of August. The party on board consisted of Byron, Pietro Gamba,
Trelawny, Hamilton Browne and six or seven servants