ssrs.
Brothers, upholsterers; and a circumstance told of the veteran, Joe
Murray, on this occasion, well deserves to be mentioned. To this
faithful old servant, jealous of the ancient honour of the Byrons, the
sight of the notice of sale, pasted up on the abbey-door, could not be
otherwise than an unsightly and intolerable nuisance. Having enough,
however, of the fear of the law before his eyes, not to tear the writing
down, he was at last forced, as his only consolatory expedient, to paste
a large piece of brown paper over it.

Notwithstanding the resolution, so recently expressed by Lord Byron, to
abandon for ever the vocation of authorship, and leave "the whole
Castalian state" to others, he was hardly landed in England when we find
him busily engaged in preparations for the publication of some of the
poems which he had produced abroad. So eager was he, indeed, to print,
that he had already, in a letter written at sea, announced himself to
Mr. Dallas, as ready for the press. Of this letter, which, from its
date, ought to have preceded some of the others that have been given, I
shall here lay before the reader the most material parts.

[Footnote 1: To this he alludes in those beautiful stanzas,

"To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell," &c.

Alfieri, before his dramatic genius had yet unfolded itself, used to
pass hours, as he tells us, in this sort of dreaming state, gazing upon
the ocean:--"Apres le spectacle un de mes amusemens, a Marseille, etait
de me baigner presque tous les soirs dans la mer. J'avais trouve un
petit endroit fort agreable, sur une langue de terre placee a droite
hors du port, ou, en m'asseyant sur le sable, le dos appuye contre un
petit rocher qui empechait qu'on ne put me voir du cote de la terre, je
n'avais plus devant moi que le ciel et la mer. Entre ces deux immensites
qu'embellissaient les rayons d'un soleil couchant, je passai en revant
des heures delicieuses; et la, je serais devenu poete, si j'avais su
ecrire dans une langue quelconque."]

[Footnote 2: But a few months before he died, in a conversation with
Maurocordato at Missolonghi, Lord Byron said--"The Turkish History was
one of the first books that gave me pleasure when a child; and I believe
it had much influence on my subsequent wishes to visit the Levant, and
gave perhaps the oriental colouring which is observed in my
poetry."--COUNT GAMBA's _Narrative_.

In the last edition of Mr. D'Israeli's work on "the Litera