unceasing.  On our return, after a tight struggle, I found her on the open stops of the Mocenigo Palace on the Grand Canal, with her great black eyes flashing through her tears, and the long dark hair which was streaming, drenched with rain, over her brows.  She was perfectly exposed to the storm; and the wind blowing her dress about her thin figure, and the lightning flashing round her, made her look like Medea alighted from her chariot, or the Sibyl of the tempest that was rolling around her, the only living thing within hail at that moment, except ourselves.  On seeing me safe she did not wait to greet me, as might have been expected; but, calling out to me, ‘Ah! can’ della Madonna, xe esto il tempo per andar’ al’ Lido,’ ran into the house, and solaced herself with scolding the boatmen for not foreseeing the ‘temporale.’  Her joy at seeing me again was moderately mixed with ferocity, and gave me the idea of a tigress over her recovered cubs.”

Some months after she became ungovernable—­threw plates about, and snatched caps from the heads of other women who looked at her lord in public places.  Byron told her she must go home; whereupon she proceeded to break glass, and threaten “knives, poison, fire;” and on his calling his boatmen to get ready the gondola, threw herself in the dark night into the canal.  She was rescued, and in a few days finally dismissed; after which he saw her only twice, at the theatre.  Her whole picture is more like that of Theroigne de Mericourt than that of Raphael’s Fornarina, whose name she received.

Other stories, of course, gathered round this strange life—­personal encounters, aquatic feats, and all manner of romantic and impossible episodes; their basis being, that Byron on one occasion thrashed, on another challenged, a man who tried to cheat him, was a frequent rider, and a constant swimmer, so that he came to be called “the English fish,” “water-spaniel,” “sea-devil,” &c.  One of the boatmen is reported to have said, “He is a good gondolier, spoilt by being a poet and a lord;” and in answer to a traveller’s inquiry, “Where does he get his poetry?” “He dives for it.”  His habits, as regards eating, seem to have been generally abstemious; but he drank a pint of gin and water over his verses at night, and then took claret and soda in the morning.

Riotous living may have helped to curtail Byron’s life, but it does not seem to have seriously impaired his powers.  Among these adverse surroundings of the “court of Circe,” he threw off Beppo, Mazeppa, and the early books of Don Juan.  The first canto of the last was written in November, 1818, the second in January, 1819, the third and fourth towards the close of the same year. Beppo, its brilliant prelude, sparkles like a draught of champagne.  This “Venetian story,” or sketch, in which the author broke ground on his true satiric field—­the satire of social life—­and first adopted the measure avowedly suggested by Whistlecraft (Frere), was drafted