acted on him more than on others, and it might almost be
said that his sky was mirrored in his soul, the latter often taking its
color from the former; and if by that is understood the hereditary
malady spoken of by others and himself, then they are right, for he had
truly inherited a most impressionable temperament._"

Moreover, the absolute, inexorable solitude caused by the absence of all
his friends from Ravenna, was still further augmented by the occurrence
of intermittent marshy fevers, which every body endeavors to avoid by
flying from Ravenna at the close of summer, and to which he fell a prey.
This fever, that seized hold of him, and even prevented his departure,
might alone have sufficed to render him melancholy, for nothing more
inclines to sadness. But so intimate was his persuasion that when
sadness does not proceed from the heart it has no cause for existence,
and so little was he occupied with self, that he would not allow there
could be sufficient cause for melancholy in all the sufferings weighing
upon him.

"I ride, I am not intemperate in eating or drinking, and my general
health is as usual, except a slight ague, which rather does good than
not. It must be constitutional; for I know nothing more than usual to
depress me to that degree."[192]

But so little was it the necessary product of his temperament alone, so
much, on the contrary, did it result from a host of causes accidentally
united, that he had scarcely arrived at Pisa, where most of the causes
either ceased or were neutralized, than his mind recovered its serenity,
and he could write to Moore:--

"At present, owing to the climate (I can walk down into my garden and
pluck my own oranges, indulging in this meridian luxury of
proprietorship), my spirits are much better."

Whenever, then, his heart was happy in the happiness of those he loved,
wherever he found an intellectual society to animate the mind, diverting
and amusing him without imposing the chains of etiquette, we vainly seek
the faintest trace of melancholy. But two great griefs soon befell him
at Pisa, for sorrow never made long truces with Byron. Truly might we
say that fate ceased not from making him pay for the privilege of his
great superiority, by all the sufferings he endured. Soon after his
arrival at Pisa, his little daughter Allegra, whom he was having
educated at a convent in Romagna, died of fever, and shortly afterward
Shelley was drowned! About the same time the