no
independence, there can be no real self-respect. I believe that I
mistook or mis-stated one of her phrases in my letter; it should
have been--'Can' della Madonna cosa vus' tu? esto non e tempo per
andar' a Lido?'"

[Footnote 23: The following are extracts from a letter of Shelley's to a
friend at this time.

"Venice, August, 1818.

"We came from Padua hither in a gondola; and the gondolier, among
other things, without any hint on our part, began talking of Lord
Byron. He said he was a 'Giovanotto Inglese,' with a 'nome
stravagante,' who lived very luxuriously, and spent great sums of
money.

"At three o'clock I called on Lord Byron. He was delighted to see
me, and our first conversation of course consisted in the object of
our visit. He took me in his gondola, across the Laguna, to a long,
strandy sand, which defends Venice from the Adriatic. When we
disembarked, we found his horses waiting for us, and we rode along
the sands, talking. Our conversation consisted in histories of his
own wounded feelings, and questions as to my affairs, with great
professions of friendship and regard for me. He said that if he had
been in England, at the time of the Chancery affair, he would have
moved heaven and earth to have prevented such a decision. He talked
of literary matters,--his fourth Canto, which he says is very good,
and indeed repeated some stanzas, of great energy, to me. When we
returned to his palace, which is one if the most magnificent in
Venice," &c. &c.
]

[Footnote 24: In the preface also to this poem, under the fictitious
name of Count Maddalo, the following just and striking portrait of Lord
Byron is drawn:--

"He is a person of the most consummate genius, and capable, if he would
direct his energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his
degraded country. But it is his weakness to be proud: he derives, from a
comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects
that surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human
life. His passions and his powers are incomparably greater than those of
other men, and instead of the latter having been employed in curbing the
former, they have mutually lent each other strength. His ambition preys
upon itself for want of objects which it can consider worthy of
exertion. I say that Maddalo is proud, because I can