[Footnote 17:  Notwithstanding the lively recollections expressed in this poem, it is pretty certain, from the testimony of his nurse, that he never was at the mountain itself, which stood some miles distant from his residence, more than twice.]

[Footnote 18:  The Island.]

[Footnote 19:  Dante, we know, was but nine years old when, at a May-day festival, he saw and fell in love with Beatrice; and Alfieri, who was himself a precocious lover, considers such early sensibility to be an unerring sign of a soul formed for the fine arts:—­“Effetti,” he says, in describing the feelings of his own first love, “che poche persone intendono, e pochissime provano:  ma a quei soli pochissimi e concesso l’ uscir dalla folla volgare in tutte le umane arti.”  Canova used to say, that he perfectly well remembered having been in love when but five years old.]

[Footnote 20:  To this Lord Byron used to add, on the authority of old servants of the family, that on the day of their patron’s death, these crickets all left the house simultaneously, and in such numbers, that it was impossible to cross the hall without treading on them.]

[Footnote 21:  The correct reading of this legend is, I understand, as follows:—­

    “Brig o’ Balgounie, wight (strong) is thy wa’;
    Wi’ a wife’s ae son on a mare’s ae foal,
    Down shall thou fa’.”
]

[Footnote 22:  In a letter addressed lately by Mr. Sheldrake to the editor of a Medical Journal, it is stated that the person of the same name who attended Lord Byron at Dulwich owed the honour of being called in to a mistake, and effected nothing towards the remedy of the limb.  The writer of the letter adds that he was himself consulted by Lord Byron four or five years afterwards, and though unable to undertake the cure of the defect, from the unwillingness of his noble patient to submit to restraint or confinement, was successful in constructing a sort of shoe for the foot, which in some degree alleviated the inconvenience under which he laboured.]

[Footnote 23:  “Quoique,” says Alfieri, speaking of his school-days, “je fusse le plus petit de tons les grands qui se trouvaient au second appartement ou j’etais descendu, e’etait precisement mon inferiorite de taille, d’age, et de force, qui me donnait plus de courage, et m’engageait a me distinguer.”]

[Footnote 24:  The following is Lord Byron’s version of this touching narrative; and it will be felt, I think, by every reader, that this is one of the instances in which poetry must be content to yield the palm to prose.  There is a pathos in the last sentences of the seaman’s recital, which the artifices of metre and rhyme were sure to disturb, and which, indeed, no verses, however beautiful, could half so naturally and powerfully express:—­