“Fair clime! where ceaseless summer smiles
    Benignant o’er those blessed isles,
    Which, seen from far Colonna’s height,
    Make glad the heart that hails the sight,
    And give to loneliness delight. 
    There shine the bright abodes ye seek,
    Like dimples upon Ocean’s cheek,—­
    So smiling round the waters lave
    These Edens of the eastern wave. 
    Or if, at times, the transient breeze
    Break the smooth crystal of the seas,
    Or brush one blossom from the trees,
    How grateful is the gentle air
    That wakes and wafts the fragrance there.”

Among the other passages added to this edition (which was either the third or fourth, and between which and the first there intervened but about six weeks) was that most beautiful and melancholy illustration of the lifeless aspect of Greece, beginning “He who hath bent him o’er the dead,”—­of which the most gifted critic of our day[64] has justly pronounced, that “it contains an image more true, more mournful, and more exquisitely finished, than any we can recollect in the whole compass of poetry."[65] To the same edition also were added, among other accessions of wealth[66], those lines, “The cygnet proudly walks the water,” and the impassioned verses, “My memory now is but the tomb.”

On my rejoining him in town this spring, I found the enthusiasm about his writings and himself, which I left so prevalent, both in the world of literature and in society, grown, if any thing, still more general and intense.  In the immediate circle, perhaps, around him, familiarity of intercourse might have begun to produce its usual disenchanting effects.  His own liveliness and unreserve, on a more intimate acquaintance, would not be long in dispelling that charm of poetic sadness, which to the eyes of distant observers hung about him; while the romantic notions, connected by some of his fair readers with those past and nameless loves alluded to in his poems, ran some risk of abatement from too near an acquaintance with the supposed objects of his fancy and fondness at present.  A poet’s mistress should remain, if possible, as imaginary a being to others, as, in most of the attributes he clothes her with, she has been to himself;—­the reality, however fair, being always sure to fall short of the picture which a too lavish fancy has drawn of it.  Could we call up in array before us all the beauties whom the love of poets has immortalised, from the high-born dame to the plebeian damsel,—­from the Lauras and Sacharissas down to the Cloes and Jeannies,—­we should, it is to be feared, sadly unpeople our imaginations of many a bright tenant that poesy has lodged there, and find, in more than one instance, our admiration of the faith and fancy of the worshipper increased by our discovery of the worthlessness of the idol.