rget _to spare the living without insulting the dead_."

On reading, at Ravenna, that Schlegel said, that Dante was not popular
in Italy, and accused him of want of pathos: "'Tis false," said he, with
indignation; "there have been more editors and commentators (and
imitators ultimately) of Dante, than of all their poets put together.
_Not_ a favorite! Why they talk Dante, write Dante, and think and dream
Dante at this moment (1821) to an excess which would be ridiculous, but
that he deserves it.

"In the same style this German talks of gondolas on the Arno--a precious
fellow to dare to speak of Italy!

"He says, also, that Dante's chief defect is a want, in a word, of
gentle feelings. Of gentle feelings! and this in the face of 'Francesca
of Rimini'--and the father's feelings in 'Ugolino'--and 'Beatrice'--and
'La Pia!' Why, there is a gentleness in Dante beyond all gentleness,
when he is tender. It is true, that in treating of the Christian Hades,
or Hell, there is not much scope or room for gentleness; but who _but_
Dante could have introduced any 'softness' at all into Hell? Is there
any in Milton? No--and Dante's heaven is all _love_, and _glory_, and
_majesty_."

We have alluded to his admiration for Pope. It was such as to appear
almost a kind of filial love. He was sorry, mortified, and humbled, not
to find in Westminster Abbey the monument of so great a man:--

"Of all the disgraces that attach to England, the greatest," said he,
"is that there should be no place assigned to Pope in Poets' Corner. I
have often thought of erecting a monument to him at my own expense in
Westminster Abbey; and hope to do so yet."

To add any thing more to show how totally Byron was free from all
sentiments of an envious nature, would be to exhaust the subject, and to
abuse the reader's patience. This absence of envy in him shows itself so
clearly in all his sayings and doings, that it appears to be impossible
to doubt it, and yet he has not been spared even such a calumny! I do
not allude to the French critics, who neither knew the man nor the
author, and whose systematic attacks have no value; but I allude to a
certain article in the "London Magazine," which appeared shortly before
his death, under the title of "Personal Character of Lord Byron," and
which caused some sensation because it appeared to have been written by
some one who had known Byron intimately. It was all the more perfidious
because it gave an appearance of t