His days were chiefly spent on the water; the management of his boat, its alterations and improvements, were his principal occupation.  At night, when the unclouded moon shone on the calm sea, he often went alone in his little shallop to the rocky caves that bordered it, and, sitting beneath their shelter, wrote the “Triumph of Life”, the last of his productions.  The beauty but strangeness of this lonely place, the refined pleasure which he felt in the companionship of a few selected friends, our entire sequestration from the rest of the world, all contributed to render this period of his life one of continued enjoyment.  I am convinced that the two months we passed there were the happiest which he had ever known:  his health even rapidly improved, and he was never better than when I last saw him, full of spirits and joy, embark for Leghorn, that he might there welcome Leigh Hunt to Italy.  I was to have accompanied him; but illness confined me to my room, and thus put the seal on my misfortune.  His vessel bore out of sight with a favourable wind, and I remained awaiting his return by the breakers of that sea which was about to engulf him.

He spent a week at Pisa, employed in kind offices toward his friend, and enjoying with keen delight the renewal of their intercourse.  He then embarked with Mr. Williams, the chosen and beloved sharer of his pleasures and of his fate, to return to us.  We waited for them in vain; the sea by its restless moaning seemed to desire to inform us of what we would not learn:—­but a veil may well be drawn over such misery.  The real anguish of those moments transcended all the fictions that the most glowing imagination ever portrayed; our seclusion, the savage nature of the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, and our immediate vicinity to the troubled sea, combined to imbue with strange horror our days of uncertainty.  The truth was at last known,—­a truth that made our loved and lovely Italy appear a tomb, its sky a pall.  Every heart echoed the deep lament, and my only consolation was in the praise and earnest love that each voice bestowed and each countenance demonstrated for him we had lost,—­not, I fondly hope, for ever; his unearthly and elevated nature is a pledge of the continuation of his being, although in an altered form.  Rome received his ashes; they are deposited beneath its weed-grown wall, and ‘the world’s sole monument’ is enriched by his remains.

I must add a few words concerning the contents of this volume.  “Julian and Maddalo”, the “Witch of Atlas”, and most of the “Translations”, were written some years ago; and, with the exception of the “Cyclops”, and the Scenes from the “Magico Prodigioso”, may be considered as having received the author’s ultimate corrections.  The “Triumph of Life” was his last work, and was left in so unfinished a state that I arranged it in its present form with great difficulty.  All his poems which were scattered in periodical works are collected in this volume, and I have added a reprint of “Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude”:  the difficulty with which a copy can be obtained is the cause of its republication.  Many of the Miscellaneous Poems, written on the spur of the occasion, and never retouched, I found among his manuscript books, and have carefully copied.  I have subjoined, whenever I have been able, the date of their composition.