As the ghost of Homer clings
  Round Seamander’s wasting springs,
  As divinest Shakespeare’s might
  Fills Avon and the world with light.

“The sun,” he says, at a later date, “has extinguished the glowworm;” and again, “I despair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well I may; and there is no other with whom it is worth contending.”

Shelley was, in the main, not only an exquisite but a trustworthy critic; and no man was more absolutely above being influenced by the fanfaronade of rank or the din of popularity.  These criticisms are therefore not to be lightly set aside, nor are they unintelligible.  Perhaps those admirers of the clearer and more consistent nature, who exalt him to the rank of a greater poet, are misled by the amiable love of one of the purest characters in the history of our literature.  There is at least no difficulty in understanding why he should have been, as it were, concussed by Byron’s greater massiveness and energy into a sense—­easy to an impassioned devotee—­of inferiority.  Similarly, most of the estimates—­ many already reversed, others reversible—­by the men of that age, of each other, can be explained.  We can see how it was that Shelley overestimated both the character and the powers of Hunt; and Byron depreciated Keats, and was ultimately repelled by Wordsworth, and held out his hand to meet the manly grasp of Scott.  The one enigma of their criticism is the respect that they joined in paying to the witty, genial, shallow, worldly, musical Tom Moore.

This favourite of fortune and the minor muses, in the course of a short tour through the north of Italy in the autumn of 1819, found his noble friend on the 8th of October at La Mira, went with him on a sight-seeing expedition to Venice, and passed five or six days in his company.  Of this visit he has recorded his impressions, some of which relate to his host’s personal appearance, others to his habits and leading incidents of his life.  Byron “had grown fatter, both in person and face, and the latter had suffered most by the change, having lost by the enlargement of the features some of that refined and spiritualized look that had in other times distinguished it, but although less romantic he appeared more humorous.”  They renewed their recollections of the old days and nights in London, and compared them with later experiences of Bores and Blues, in a manner which threatened to put to flight the historical and poetical associations naturally awakened by the City of the Sea.  Byron had a rooted dislike to any approach to fine talk in the ordinary intercourse of life; and when his companion began to rhapsodize on the rosy hue of the Italian sunsets, he interrupted him with, “Come, d—­n it, Tom, don’t be poetical.”  He insisted on Moore, who sighed after what he imagined would be the greater comforts of an hotel, taking up his quarters in his palace; and as they were groping their way through the somewhat dingy entrance, cried