nto something more beautiful and precious, yet he was
never so masterly as in describing the scenery of Greece, and
Albanian manners. In a general estimate of his works, it may be
found that he has produced as fine or finer passages than any in his
Grecian poems; but their excellence, either as respects his own, or
the productions of others, is comparative. In the Grecian poems he
is only truly original; in them the excellence is all his own, and
they possess the rare and distinguished quality of being as true to
fact and nature, as they are brilliant in poetical expression.
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is the most faithful descriptive poem
which has been written since the Odyssey; and the occasional scenes
introduced into the other poems, when the action is laid in Greece,
are equally vivid and glowing.

When I saw him at Athens, the spring was still shrinking in the bud.
It was not until he returned from Constantinople in the following
autumn, that he saw the climate and country with those delightful
aspects which he has delineated with so much felicity in The Giaour
and The Corsair. It may, however, be mentioned, that the fine
description of a calm sunset, with which the third canto of The
Corsair opens, has always reminded me of the evening before his
departure from Athens, owing to the circumstance of my having, in the
course of the day, visited the spot which probably suggested the
scene described.

It was the 4th of March, 1810; the Pylades sloop of war came that
morning into the Piraeus, and landed Dr Darwin, a son of the poet,
with his friend, Mr Galton, who had come out in her for a cruise.
Captain Ferguson, her commander, was so kind as to offer the English
then in Athens, viz., Lord Byron, Mr Hobhouse, and myself, a passage
to Smyrna. As I had not received my luggage from Specia, I could not
avail myself of the offer, but the other two did: I accompanied
Captain Ferguson, however, and Dr Darwin, in a walk to the Straits of
Salamis; the ship, in the meantime, after landing them, having been
moored there.

It was one of those serene and cloudless days of the early spring,
when the first indications of leaf and blossom may just be discerned.
The islands slept, as it were, on their glassy couch, and a slight
dun haze hung upon the mountains, as if they too were drowsy. After
an easy walk of about two hours, passing through the olive groves,
and along the bottom of the hill on which Xerxes sat to view the