as was such a document, and justifying the most lively hopes, it has acquired now the greatest, though most painful value, from the untimely death of the lofty writer, which adds a peculiar edge to the grief felt generally throughout the whole moral and poetical world at his loss:  for we were warranted in hoping, that when his great deeds should have been achieved, we might personally have greeted in him the pre-eminent intellect, the happily acquired friend, and the most humane of conquerors.  At present we can only console ourselves with the conviction that his country will at last recover from that violence of invective and reproach which has been so long raised against him, and will learn to understand that the dross and lees of the age and the individual, out of which even the best have to elevate themselves, are but perishable and transient, while the wonderful glory to which he in the present and through all future ages has elevated his country, will be as boundless in its splendour as it is incalculable in its consequences.  Nor can there be any doubt that the nation, which can boast of so many great names, will class him among the first of those through whom she has acquired such glory.”

The following is Lord Byron’s answer to the communication above mentioned from Goethe:—­

LETTER 524.  TO GOETHE.

“Leghorn, July 24. 1823.

“Illustrious Sir,

“I cannot thank you as you ought to be thanked for the lines which my young friend, Mr. Sterling, sent me of yours; and it would but ill become me to pretend to exchange verses with him who, for fifty years, has been the undisputed sovereign of European literature.  You must therefore accept my most sincere acknowledgments in prose—­and in hasty prose too; for I am at present on my voyage to Greece once more, and surrounded by hurry and bustle, which hardly allow a moment even to gratitude and admiration to express themselves.

“I sailed from Genoa some days ago, was driven back by a gale of wind, and have since sailed again and arrived here, ‘Leghorn,’ this morning, to receive on board some Greek passengers for their struggling country.

“Here also I found your lines and Mr. Sterling’s letter; and I could not have had a more favourable omen, a more agreeable surprise, than a word of Goethe, written by his own hand.

“I am returning to Greece, to see if I can be of any little use there:  if ever I come back, I will pay a visit to Weimar, to offer the sincere homage of one of the many millions of your admirers.  I have the honour to be, ever and most,

“Your obliged,

“NOEL BYRON.”

From Leghorn, where his Lordship was joined by Mr. Hamilton Browne, he set sail on the 24th of July, and, after about ten days of most favourable weather, cast anchor at Argostoli, the chief port of Cephalonia.