. At the time when he had to stand this
unexpected shock, his financial troubles, which had led to eight or nine
executions in his house within the year, had arrived at their utmost;
and at a moment when, to use his own expression, he was "standing alone
on his hearth, with his household gods shivered around him," he was also
doomed to receive the startling intelligence that the wife who had just
parted with him in kindness, had parted with him for ever.

I must quote from a letter he wrote me in March: "The fault was not in
my choice, unless in choosing at all; for I do not believe--and I must
say it in the very dregs of all this bitter business--that there ever
was a better, or even a brighter, a kinder, or a more amiable and
agreeable being than Lady Byron. I never had any reproach to make her
while with me. Where there is blame, it belongs to myself, and if I
cannot redeem, I must bear it."

_IV.--Wanderings and Work_

On April 25, 1816, being now twenty-eight years of age, Byron took final
leave of England, and sailed with two servants for Ostend. His route, by
Flanders and the Rhine, may be traced in his matchless verses. He
settled in Geneva, where he met Shelley and Mrs. Shelley; they boated on
the lake and walked together, and Byron's susceptible mind was deeply
influenced by his mystical companion. We may discover traces of that
vague sublimity in the third canto of "Childe Harold," and traces also
of Mr. Wordsworth's mood which Byron absorbed from Shelley's favourite
author.

From November, 1816, his letters are dated from Venice. "This has always
been, next to the East, the greenest island of my imagination, and it
has not disappointed me." They are considerably taken up with love
affairs of an irregular kind, and contain also many vivid pictures of
Venetian society and manners. "Manfred" was completed in 1817, and was
followed by the fourth canto of "Childe Harold." Margarita Cogni was the
reigning favourite of Byron's unworthy harem at this time; and his poem
of "Don Juan," now begun, most faithfully and lamentably reflects every
whim and passion that, like the rack of autumn, swept across his mind.

But April, 1819, brought a revulsion against all this libertine way of
living, and brought also the dawn of the only real love of his whole
life. Lord Byron had first met the Countess Guiccioli in the autumn of
1818, when she made her appearance, three days after her marriage, at
the house of the Coun