ntess Albruzzi and
Countess Benzoni, where he was not only welcome, but so much liked, that
these salons were voted dull when he did not appear. Lastly, his social
qualities and amiability gave so much pleasure at Venice, and the
inhabitants were so desirous of keeping him among them, that his
departure for Ravenna actually stirred up malice, quite foreign to the
usual simplicity characterizing Venetian society.[122]

The friends who came to see him there,--Hobhouse, Lewis, Kinnaird,
Shelley, Rose, etc.,--succeeded each other at short intervals, and their
arrivals were so many fetes for him. But while he was leading this
sociable life, vulgar tourists, who had not been able to succeed in
getting presented to him, took their revenge, by repeating in every
direction fables they had gleaned from the gondoliers for a few
pence--viz., that Lord Byron was a misanthrope and hated his countrymen.
Mr. Hoppner, who was an ocular witness of the life which Lord Byron led
at Venice, and whose testimony is so worthy of respect, told Moore how
much annoyance Lord Byron endured from English travellers, bent on
following him everywhere, eyeglass in hand, staring at him with
impertinence or affectation during his walks, getting into his palace
under some pretext, and even penetrating into his bedroom.

"Thence," says he, "his bitterness toward them. The sentiments he has
expressed in a note termed cynical, as well as the misanthropical
expressions to be found in his first poems, _are not at all his natural
sentiments_."

And then he adds that he is very certain "_never to have met with in his
lifetime more real goodness than in Lord Byron_."

Moore, also, is indignant at all these perfidious inventions:--

"Among those minor misrepresentations," says he, "of which it was Lord
Byron's fate to be the victim, advantage was at this time taken of his
professed distaste to the English, to accuse him of acts of
inhospitality, and even rudeness, toward some of his fellow-countrymen.
How far different was his treatment of all who ever visited him, many
grateful testimonies might be collected to prove; but I shall here
content myself with selecting a few extracts from an account given to me
by Mr. Joy, of a visit which, in company with another English gentleman,
he paid to the noble poet, during the summer of 1817, at his villa on
the banks of the Brenta. After mentioning the various civilities they
had experienced from Lord Byron; and, among