happy. It is God's will--let us mention it no more.' And from
that day he would never pronounce her name; but became more anxious
when he spoke of Ada,--so much so as to disquiet himself when the usual
accounts sent him were for a post or two delayed."[91]

The melancholy death of poor Shelley, which happened, as we have seen,
also during this period, seems to have affected Lord Byron's mind, less
with grief for the actual loss of his friend, than with bitter
indignation against those who had, through life, so grossly
misrepresented him; and never certainly was there an instance where the
supposed absence of all religion in an individual was assumed so eagerly
as an excuse for the absence of all charity in judging him. Though never
personally acquainted with Mr. Shelley, I can join freely with those who
most loved him in admiring the various excellences of his heart and
genius, and lamenting the too early doom that robbed us of the mature
fruits of both. His short life had been, like his poetry, a sort of
bright erroneous dream,--false in the general principles on which it
proceeded, though beautiful and attaching in most of the details. Had
full time been allowed for the "over-light" of his imagination to have
been tempered down by the judgment which, in him, was still in reserve,
the world at large would have been taught to pay that high homage to his
genius which those only who saw what he was capable of can now be
expected to accord to it.

It was about this time that Mr. Cowell, paying a visit to Lord Byron at
Genoa, was told by him that some friends of Mr. Shelley, sitting
together one evening, had seen that gentleman, distinctly, as they
thought, walk into a little wood at Lerici, when at the same moment, as
they afterwards discovered, he was far away in quite a different
direction. "This," added Lord Byron, in a low, awe-struck tone of
voice, "was but ten days before poor Shelley died."

[Footnote 89: My poor Zimmerman, who now will understand thee?"--such
was the touching speech addressed to Zimmerman by his wife, on her
death-bed; and there is implied in these few words all that a man of
morbid sensibility must be dependant for upon the tender and
self-forgetting tolerance of the woman with whom he is united.]

[Footnote 90: "In Pisa abbiamo continuato anche piu rigorosaraente a
vivere lontano dalla societa. Essendosi pero in Pisa molti Inglesi egli
non pote escusarsi dal fare la conoscenza di varii amici d