At page 99 D’Israeli says,

“The great poetical genius of our times has openly alienated himself from the land of his brothers” (over the word brothers Lord Byron has written Cains.) “He becomes immortal in the language of a people whom he would contemn, he accepts with ingratitude the fame he loves more than life, and he is only truly great on that spot of earth, whose genius, when he is no more, will contemplate his shade in sorrow and in anger.”

Lord Byron has underlined several words in this passage, and writes thus in the margin: 

“What was rumoured of me in that language, if true, I was unfit for England; and if false, England was unfit for me.  But ’there is a world elsewhere.’  I have never for an instant regretted that country,—­but often that I ever returned to it.  It is not my fault that I am obliged to write in English.  If I understood any present language, Italian, for instance, equally well, I would write in it:—­but it will require ten years, at least, to form a style.  No tongue so easy to acquire a little of, and so difficult to master thoroughly, as Italian.”

The next note is amusing; at page 342 is mentioned the anecdote of Petrarch, who when returning to his native town, was informed that the proprietor of the house in which he was born had often wished to make alterations in it, but that the town’s-people had risen to insist that the house consecrated by his birth should remain unchanged;—­“a triumph,” adds D’Israeli, “more affecting to Petrarch than even his coronation at Rome.”

Lord Byron has written in the margin—­“It would have pained me more that the proprietor should often have wished to make alterations, than it would give me pleasure that the rest of Arezzo rose against his right (for right he had:) the depreciation of the lowest of mankind is more painful, than the applause of the highest is pleasing.  The sting of the scorpion is more in torture than the possession of any thing short of Venus would be in rapture.”

* * * * *

The public gardens are the work of the French, and occupy the extremity of one of the islands.  They contain the only trees I have seen at Venice:—­a few rows of dwarfish unhappy-looking shrubs, parched by the sea breezes, and are little frequented.  We found here a solitary gentleman, who was sauntering up and down with his hands in his pockets, and a look at once stupid and disconsolate.  Sometimes he paused, looked vacantly over the waters, whistled, yawned, and turned away to resume his solemn walk.  On a trifling remark addressed to him by one of our party, he entered into conversation, with all the eagerness of a man, whose tongue had long been kept in most unnatural bondage.  He congratulated himself on having met with some one who would speak English; adding contemptuously, that “he understood none