low-men attach value to it as an instrument; and the more lowly they
are inclined to estimate the disinterestedness of the human heart, the
more available and precious will they consider the talisman that gives
such power over it. Hence, certainly, it is not among those who have
thought highest of mankind that the disposition to avarice has most
generally displayed itself. In Swift the love of money was strong and
avowed; and to Voltaire the same propensity was also frequently
imputed,--on about as sufficient grounds, perhaps, as to Lord Byron.

On the day preceding that of my departure from Venice, my noble host, on
arriving from La Mira to dinner, told me, with all the glee of a
schoolboy who had been just granted a holiday, that, as this was my last
evening, the Contessa had given him leave to "make a night of it," and
that accordingly he would not only accompany me to the opera, but we
should sup together at some cafe (as in the old times) afterwards.
Observing a volume in his gondola, with a number of paper marks between
the leaves, I enquired of him what it was?--"Only a book," he answered,
"from which I am trying to _crib_, as I do wherever I can[52];--and
that's the way I get the character of an original poet." On taking it up
and looking into it, I exclaimed, "Ah, my old friend,
Agathon!"[53]--"What!" he cried, archly, "you have been beforehand with
me there, have you?"

Though in imputing to himself premeditated plagiarism, he was, of
course, but jesting, it was, I am inclined to think, his practice, when
engaged in the composition of any work, to excite thus his vein by the
perusal of others, on the same subject or plan, from which the slightest
hint caught by his imagination, as he read, was sufficient to kindle
there such a train of thought as, but for that spark, had never been
awakened, and of which he himself soon forgot the source. In the present
instance, the inspiration he sought was of no very elevating
nature,--the anti-spiritual doctrines of the Sophist in this Romance[54]
being what chiefly, I suspect, attracted his attention to its pages, as
not unlikely to supply him with fresh argument and sarcasm for those
depreciating views of human nature and its destiny, which he was now,
with all the wantonness of unbounded genius, enforcing in Don Juan.

Of this work he was, at the time of my visit to him, writing the third
Canto, and before dinner, one day, read me two or three hundred lines of
it;--be