.--[MS. M.]

[382] {331} [The Rialto, or Rivo alto, "the middle group of islands
between the shore and the mainland," on the left of the Grand Canal, was
the site of the original city, and till the sixteenth century its formal
and legal designation. The Exchange, or Banco Giro, was held in the
piazza, opposite the church of San Giacomo, which stands at the head of
the canal to the north of the Ponto di Rialto. It was on the Rialto that
Antonio rated Shylock about his "usances." "What news on the Rialto?"
asks Solanio (_Merchant of Venice_, act i. sc. 3, line 102; act iii. sc.
1, line 1). Byron uses the word symbolically for Venetian commerce.]

[383] [Pierre is the hero of Otway's _Venice Preserved_. Shylock and the
Moor stand where they did, but what of Pierre? If the name of
Otway--"master of the tragic art"--and the title of his
masterpiece--_Venice Preserved, or The Plot Discovered_ (first played
1682)--are not wholly forgotten, Pierre and Monimia and Belvidera have
"decayed," and are memorable chiefly as favourite characters of great
actors and actresses. Genest notes twenty revivals of the _Venice
Preserved_, which was played as late as October 27, 1837, when Macready
played "Pierre," and Phelps "Jaffier." "No play that I know," says
Hartley Coleridge (Essays, 1851, ii. 56), "gains so much by acting as
_Venice Preserved_.... Miss O'Neill, I well remember, made me weep with
Belvidera; but she would have done the same had she spoken in an unknown
tongue." Byron, who professed to be a "great admirer of Otway," in a
letter to Hodgson, August 22, 1811 (_Letters_, 1898, i. 339, note 1),
alludes to some lines from _Venice Preserved_ (act ii. sc. 3), which
seem to have taken his fancy. Two lines spoken by Belvidera (act ii.),
if less humorous, are more poetical--

"Oh, the day
Too soon will break, and wake us to our sorrow;
Come, come to bed, and bid thy cares Good night!"]

[384] {332} [Compare _The Dream_, i.--

"The mind can make
Substance, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh."

The ideal personages of the poet's creations have the promise of
immortality. The ideal forms which people his imagination transfigure
and supplant the dull and grievous realities of his mortal being and
circumstance; but there are "things" more radiant, more enchanting
sti