In the month of August, Madame Guiccioli had joined her father at Pisa, and was now superintending the preparations at the Casa Lanfranchi,—­one of the most ancient and spacious palaces of that city,—­for the reception of her noble friend.  “He left Ravenna,” says this lady, “with great regret, and with a presentiment that his departure would be the forerunner of a thousand evils to us.  In every letter he then wrote to me, he expressed his displeasure at this step.  ’If your father should be recalled,’ he said, ’I immediately return to Ravenna; and if he is recalled previous to my departure, I remain.’  In this hope he delayed his journey for several months; but, at last, no longer having any expectation of our immediate return, he wrote to me, saying—­’I set out most unwillingly, foreseeing the most evil results for all of you, and principally for yourself.  I say no more, but you will see.’  And in another letter he says, ’I leave Ravenna so unwillingly, and with such a persuasion on my mind that my departure will lead from one misery to another, each greater than the former, that I have not the heart to utter another word on the subject.’  He always wrote to me at that time in Italian, and I transcribe his exact words.  How entirely were these presentiments verified by the event!"[60]

After describing his mode of life while at Ravenna, the lady thus proceeds:—­

“This sort of simple life he led until the fatal day of his departure for Greece, and the few variations he made from it may be said to have arisen solely from the greater or smaller number of occasions which were offered him of doing good, and from the generous actions he was continually performing.  Many families (in Ravenna principally) owed to him the few prosperous days they ever enjoyed.  His arrival in that town was spoken of as a piece of public good fortune, and his departure as a public calamity; and this is the life which many attempted to asperse as that of a libertine.  But the world must at last learn how, with so good and generous a heart, Lord Byron, susceptible, it is true, of the most energetic passions, yet, at the same time, of the sublimest and most pure, and rendering homage in his acts to every virtue—­how he, I say, could afford such scope to malice and to calumny.  Circumstances, and also, probably, an eccentricity of disposition, (which, nevertheless, had its origin in a virtuous feeling, an excessive abhorrence for hypocrisy and affectation,) contributed, perhaps, to cloud the splendour of his exalted nature in the opinion of many.  But you will well know how to analyse these contradictions in a manner worthy of your noble friend and of yourself, and you will prove that the goodness of his heart was not inferior to the grandeur of his genius."[61]

At Bologna, according to the appointment made between them, Lord Byron and Mr. Rogers met; and the record which this latter gentleman has, in his Poem on Italy, preserved of their meeting, conveys so vivid a picture of the poet at this period, with, at the same time, so just and feeling a tribute to his memory, that, narrowed as my limits are now becoming, I cannot refrain from giving the sketch entire.