During my whole life I had felt a strong desire to visit Rome and the other celebrated cities and regions of Italy, but did not think myself justified in incurring the necessary expense till I received from Mr. Moxon, the publisher of a large edition of my poems, a sum sufficient to enable me to gratify my wish without encroaching upon what I considered due to my family.  My excellent friend H.C.  Robinson readily consented to accompany me, and in March 1837 we set off from London, to which we returned in August—­earlier than my companion wished, or I should myself have desired, had I been, like him, a bachelor.  These Memorials of that Tour touch upon but a very few of the places and objects that interested me; and in what they do advert to are for the most part much slighter than I could wish.  More particularly do I regret that there is no notice in them of the south of France, nor of the Roman antiquities abounding in that district; especially of the Pont de Degard, which, together with its situation, impressed me full as much as any remains of Roman architecture to be found in Italy.  Then there was Vaucluse, with its fountain, its Petrarch, its rocks [query—­roses?] of all seasons, its small plots of lawn in their first vernal freshness, and the blossoms of the peach and other trees embellishing the scene on every side.  The beauty of the stream also called forcibly for the expression of sympathy from one who from his childhood had studied the brooks and torrents of his native mountains.  Between two and three hours did I run about, climbing the steep and rugged craggs, from whose base the water of Vaucluse breaks forth.  ‘Has Laura’s lover,’ often said I to myself, ‘ever sat down upon this stone?  Or has his foot ever pressed that turf?’ Some, especially of the female sex, could have felt sure of it; my answer was (impute it to my years), ‘I fear, not.’  Is it not in fact obvious that many of his love-verses must have flowed, I do not say from a wish to display his own talent, but from a habit of exercising his intellect in that way, rather than from an impulse of his heart?  It is otherwise with his Lyrical Poems, and particularly with the one upon the degradation of his country.  There he pours out his reproaches, lamentations, and aspirations like an ardent and sincere patriot.  But enough; it is time to turn to my own effusions, such as they are.

296. Ibid.

The Tour, of which the following Poems are very inadequate remembrances, was shortened by report, too well founded, of the prevalence of cholera at Naples.  To make some amends for what was reluctantly left unseen in the south of Italy, we visited the Tuscan Sanctuaries among the Apennines, and the principal Italian Lakes among the Alps.  Neither of those lakes, nor of Venice, is there any notice in these poems, chiefly because I have touched upon them elsewhere.  See in particular ‘Descriptive Sketches,’ ‘Memorials of a Tour on the Continent in 1820,’ and a Sonnet upon the extinction of the Venetian Republic.