catch the first "glimpses of his glorious
mind." One of his chief delights, as he mentioned in his "Memoranda,"
was, when bathing in some retired spot, to seat himself on a high rock
above the sea, and there remain for hours, gazing upon the sky and the
waters[1], and lost in that sort of vague reverie, which, however
formless and indistinct at the moment, settled afterwards on his pages,
into those clear, bright pictures which will endure for ever.

Were it not for the doubt and diffidence that hang round the first steps
of genius, this growing consciousness of his own power, these openings
into a new domain of intellect, where he was to reign supreme, must have
made the solitary hours of the young traveller one dream of happiness.
But it will be seen that, even yet, he distrusted his own strength, nor
was at all aware of the height to which the spirit he was now calling up
would grow. So enamoured, nevertheless, had he become of these lonely
musings, that even the society of his fellow-traveller, though with
pursuits so congenial to his own, grew at last to be a chain and a
burden on him; and it was not till he stood, companionless, on the shore
of the little island in the Aegean, that he found his spirit breathe
freely. If any stronger proof were wanting of his deep passion for
solitude, we shall find it, not many years after, in his own written
avowal, that, even when in the company of the woman he most loved, he
not unfrequently found himself sighing to be alone.

It was not only, however, by affording him the concentration necessary
for this silent drawing out of his feelings and powers, that travel
conduced so essentially to the formation of his poetical character. To
the East he had looked, with the eyes of romance, from his very
childhood. Before he was ten years of age, the perusal of Rycaut's
History of the Turks had taken a strong hold of his imagination, and he
read eagerly, in consequence, every book concerning the East he could
find.[2] In visiting, therefore, those countries, he was but realising
the dreams of his childhood; and this return of his thoughts to that
innocent time, gave a freshness and purity to their current which they
had long wanted. Under the spell of such recollections, the attraction
of novelty was among the least that the scenes, through which he
wandered, presented. Fond traces of the past--and few have ever retained
them so vividly--mingled themselves with the impressions of the o