t he read
_every book_ relating to the east before he was ten years old,
including De Tott and Cantemir as well as Rycaut: at that age, he says
that he _detested_ all poetry, and adds, "when I was in Turkey, I was
oftener tempted to turn mussulman than poet: and have often regretted
since that _I did not_."

At page 99 D'Israeli says,

"The great poetical genius of our times has openly alienated himself
from the land of his brothers" (over the word _brothers_ Lord Byron
has written _Cains_.) "He becomes immortal in the _language_ of a
_people_ whom he would _contemn_, he accepts with ingratitude the fame
he loves more than life, and he is only truly great on that _spot_ of
_earth_, whose genius, when he is no more, will contemplate his shade
in sorrow and in anger."

Lord Byron has underlined several words in this passage, and writes
thus in the margin:

"What was rumoured of me in that language, if _true_, I was unfit for
England; and if _false_, England was unfit for me. But 'there is a
world elsewhere.' I have never for an instant regretted that
country,--but often that I ever returned to it. It is not my fault
that I am obliged to write in English. If I understood any present
language, Italian, for instance, equally well, I would write in
it:--but it will require ten years, at least, to form a style. No
tongue so easy to acquire a little of, and so difficult to master
thoroughly, as Italian."

The next note is amusing; at page 342 is mentioned the anecdote of
Petrarch, who when returning to his native town, was informed that the
proprietor of the house in which he was born had _often_ wished to
make alterations in it, but that the town's-people had risen to insist
that the house consecrated by his birth should remain unchanged;--"a
triumph," adds D'Israeli, "more affecting to Petrarch than even his
coronation at Rome."

Lord Byron has written in the margin--"It would have pained _me_ more
that the proprietor should _often_ have wished to make alterations,
than it would give me pleasure that the rest of Arezzo rose against
his right (for _right_ he had:) the depreciation of the lowest of
mankind is more painful, than the applause of the highest is pleasing.
The sting of the scorpion is more in _torture_ than the possession of
any thing short of Venus would be in rapture."

* * * * *

The public gardens are the work of the French, and occupy the
extremity of one of the island