myself.

"The journey back I performed on foot, together with another of the
guests. We walked about twenty-five miles a day; but were a week on
the road, from being detained by the rain.

"So here I close my account of an expedition which has somewhat
extended my knowledge of this country. And where do you think I am
going next? To Constantinople!--at least, such an excursion has been
proposed to me. Lord B. and another friend of mine are going thither
next month, and have asked me to join the party; but it seems to be
but a wild scheme, and requires twice thinking upon.

"Addio, my dear I., yours very affectionately,

"C.S. MATTHEWS."

Having put the finishing hand to his new edition, he, without waiting
for the fresh honours that were in store for him, took leave of London
(whither he had returned) on the 11th of June, and, in about a
fortnight after, sailed for Lisbon.

Great as was the advance which his powers had made, under the
influence of that resentment from which he now drew his inspiration,
they were yet, even in his Satire, at an immeasurable distance from
the point to which they afterwards so triumphantly rose. It is,
indeed, remarkable that, essentially as his genius seemed connected
with, and, as it were, springing out of his character, the
developement of the one should so long have preceded the full maturity
of the resources of the other. By her very early and rapid expansion
of his sensibilities, Nature had given him notice of what she destined
him for, long before he understood the call; and those materials of
poetry with which his own fervid temperament abounded were but by slow
degrees, and after much self-meditation, revealed to him. In his
Satire, though vigorous, there is but little foretaste of the wonders
that followed it. His spirit was stirred, but he had not yet looked
down into its depths, nor does even his bitterness taste of the bottom
of the heart, like those sarcasms which he afterwards flung in the
face of mankind. Still less had the other countless feelings and
passions, with which his soul had been long labouring, found an organ
worthy of them;--the gloom, the grandeur, the tenderness of his
nature, all were left without a voice, till his mighty genius, at
last, awakened in its strength.

In stooping, as he did, to write after established models, as well in
the Satire as in his still earlier poems, he showed how little he had
yet explored his own original resources, or f