[Footnote 1:  Colonel Stanhope, who saw clearly this leading character of Byron’s mind, has thus justly described it:—­“Lord Byron’s was a versatile and still a stubborn mind; it wavered, but always returned to certain fixed principles.”]

At the worst, therefore, though allowing that, from disappointment or disgust, he might have been led to withdraw all personal participation in such a cause, in no case would he have shown himself a recreant to its principles; and though too proud to have ever descended, like Egalite, into the ranks of the people, he would have been far too consistent to pass, like Alfieri, into those of their enemies.

After the failure of those hopes with which he had so sanguinely looked forward to the issue of the late struggle between Italy and her rulers, it may be well conceived what a relief it was to him to turn his eyes to Greece, where a spirit was now rising such as he had himself imaged forth in dreams of song, but hardly could have even dreamed that he should live to see it realised.  His early travels in that country had left a lasting impression on his mind; and whenever, as I have before remarked, his fancy for a roving life returned, it was to the regions about the “blue Olympus” he always fondly looked back.  Since his adoption of Italy as a home, this propensity had in a great degree subsided.  In addition to the sedatory effects of his new domestic r, there had, at this time, grown upon him a degree of inertness, or indisposition to change of residence, which, in the instance of his departure from Ravenna, was with some difficulty surmounted.

The unsettled state of life he was from thenceforward thrown into, by the precarious fortunes of those with whom he had connected himself, conspired with one or two other causes to revive within him all his former love of change and adventure; nor is it wonderful that to Greece, as offering both in their most exciting form, he should turn eagerly his eyes, and at once kindle with a desire not only to witness, but perhaps share in, the present triumphs of Liberty on those very fields where he had already gathered for immortality such memorials of her day long past.

Among the causes that concurred with this sentiment to determine him to the enterprise he now meditated, not the least powerful, undoubtedly, was the supposition in his own mind that the high tide of his poetical popularity had been for some time on the ebb.  The utter failure of the Liberal,—­in which, splendid as were some of his own contributions to it, there were yet others from his pen hardly to be distinguished from the surrounding dross,—­confirmed him fully in the notion that he had at last wearied out his welcome with the world; and, as the voice of fame had become almost as necessary to him as the air he breathed, it was with a proud consciousness of the yet untouched reserves of power within him he now saw that, if arrived at the end of one path of fame, there were yet others for him to strike into, still more glorious.